Call for papers: Typology of labile verbs: Focus on diachrony Thessaloniki, Greece, 3-5 April 2009 The term ‘labile' refers to verbs or verbal forms which can show valency alternation, i.e. changes in syntactic pattern, with no formal change in the verb. Very often (but not always) the term ‘labile' is only employed to refer to verbs (or verbal forms) which can be employed both transitively and intransitively, as in (1-2); some scholars use other, less widely accepted terms in this sense, such as ‘ambitransitive' (R. M. W. Dixon 1994) or ‘optionally transitive' (J. G. Miller 1993): (1) English a. John broke the vase b. The vase broke (2) Greek a. O Janis efage mesimeriano the:NOM Janis:NOM ate:3SG lunch:ACC ‘Janis ate lunch' b. O Janis efage the:NOM Janis:NOM ate:3SG ‘Janis ate' (1) exemplifies Patient-preserving lability (P-lability), while (2) instantiates an Agent-preserving lability (A-lability). Other types of syntactic alternation, such as locative alternation (cf. John sprayed paint on the wall ~ John sprayed the wall with paint) or dative shift (Mary gave John an apple ~ Mary gave an apple to John) are usually treated separately from P- and A-lability. Of particular interest is P-lability, common in ergative-absolutive languages (for instance, in many Daghestan languages), quite frequent also in some nominative-accusative languages (such as English, Greek, German or French), but (almost) entirely lacking in many others (e.g. in Slavic or Uralic).Although there are a number of studies dealing with this phenomenon in individual languages, such as English (e.g. Keyser Roeper 1984; McMillion 2006), French (Larjavaara 2000), Greek (Alexiadou Anagnostopoulou 1999, 2004, Theophanopoulou-Kontou 1983-4, 2004, Tsimpli 1989, 2006) and some others, a cross-linguistic study of lability is rather neglected (with a few exceptions such as Letuchiy 2006). Even less attention has been paid to the diachronic aspects of labile verbs. In many cases, we cannot explain why and how the lability emerges and disappears. We do not know why in several languages labile verbs become more productive and the class of labile verbs is constantly increasing (as in English, Greek or some Daghestan languages), while in some other languages this class is decreasing (as in Sanskrit) or entirely lacking (as in modern Turkic or Kartvelian languages). Only a few mechanisms responsible for the emergence of lability (such as the phonetic merger of transitive and intransitive forms or the deletion of the reflexive pronoun, attested in the history of English) are mentioned in the literature. The few studies dealing with the diachronic aspects of labile verbs, their rise, development or decay and loss include Kitazume 1996 (on English), Kulikov 2003 (on [...]

This guest post is written by Matt Rutherford, Web Strategist and technology producer for Charlie Rose. Matt focuses on the macro themes affecting the internet and the wider world.

In an intimate interview with Charlie Rose on PBS tonight, and available here, Stanford professor Larry Lessig reveals some profound views on copyright, remix culture, and the new hybrid economy that is emerging.

In particular, Lessig speaks out against the abolitionist movement growing against copyright:

My real fear is that the last 10 years have unleashed a kind of revolutionary attitude among the generation that will take over in 10 years. And it will be hard for them to distinguish between sensible copyright legislation and the kind that we’ve got right now. So my real fear is we’re going to lose control of this animal... I just want to reform [copyright] to make it make sense.

A reform of copyright is clearly overdue. We require a new form of regulation that takes into account the ease and speed of digital distribution and appropriation. Every week, books cross my desk clamoring for this change - some of which are certainly worth reading. And as Lessig explains on the show, it’s counterproductive to continue to criminalize kids for file-sharing, remixing and recreating with content. Copyright was established to encourage creativity, not stifle it.

Cultural Roots

Lessig thinks on a macro time scale. For him, the emerging “read-write creativity” seen on YouTube and elsewhere is actually a return to our natural cultural roots. Historically, man has always absorbed and re-created culture – the symbolic retelling of stories and re-interpreting of songs on the front porch. It is only the emergence of mass media in the last century that caused us to accept a passive relationship with culture.

What’s so extraordinary about the last four years is that they’ve demonstrated that the technology of the internet is giving us a chance to go back to the way culture has been from the beginning…Only the 20th century was a deviation from this. But from the beginning of culture, it was a normal thing for people to be able to create and recreate the most important parts of culture that were around them.

As evidence of this, Lessig cites the numerous Charlie Rose remix videos that are floating around the web.

I’ve seen some of these Rose remixes, and they are enormous. They’re fantastic. But I would hope, you know, eventually you could be in a position to say I want to encourage this, please. Please do it.

A lot of these remixes also come across my desk. In the spirit of research, here are a few of the best so far: Beckett, Kung Fu, nuclear weapons. They’re all superb. And yes, we do encourage this. As Lessig says, Please do it.

Hybrid Economy

There remains the fundamental question of how a ‘new’ copyright can maintain revenue. After all, despite the ease of pointing out the flaws in the current system, it’s quite another matter to propose a viable alternative. Lessig sees the solution, in part, coming from a new hybrid economy, one that combines the traditional commercial economy with sharing economies seen in Wikipedia, YouTube and elsewhere:

Businesses have begun to realize that the world is in part divided between commercial economies like buying and selling books, and sharing economies like Wikipedia where enormous value is produced for nothing, people are doing it all for free. The most interesting thing I think we’ve seen though in the last five years is the development of a hybrid economy where commercial entities are trying to leverage value out of these sharing economies or vice versa, sharing economies trying to leverage value out of commercial entities. And this hybrid depends upon the commercial entity showing the proper respect for the creation in the sharing economy, and giving space to it, encouraging it so that the sharing economy can produce enormous value that is beneficial to the people inside, and also to the commercial business.

Lessig’s Big Idea

Lessig concludes the interview with his ‘big idea’. It is an inspiring, and elegant reminder that we are in the midst of an unprecedented social change. Just as the Gutenberg press facilitated the spread of the Protestant Reformation, fundamentally altering the course of Western civilization, so too is the internet beginning to spark tectonic changes, the breadth of which we don’t yet have the historical perspective to grasp. As Lessig explains:

I think the big idea, as every big idea is, is just one amazing step beyond where we are right now. And I think you think about the Obama campaign, something like Wikipedia, something like the stuff that’s going on on the Internet, the kind that I think of as read write culture. What it really is doing is reviving the sense that people can do something. Not the passive couch potato politics or couch potato culture, but that they can do something. We’re close to making it really effective. I think the next cycle, what you’re going to see in the way politics functions, will be unrecognizable, even from today. But when we’re there, it will be a revival of ideals, aspirations about democracy that will surprise us. The cynicism that we had in the 20th century will look very 20th century.

Larry Lessig’s interview on Charlie Rose was first broadcast on Friday 11/21/08 on PBS, and is available in full or in clips: Larry Lessig (full segment), Larry Lessig (clips). Matt Rutherford can be reached at matt@charlierose.com.

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div class="rxbodyfield"p page="1" class="ArticleBody"a target="_blank" href="http://www.nemertes.com/"Nemertes Research/a continued to throw cold water on the future of the Internet this week, releasing a study projecting that demand for bandwidth on the Web would exceed its capacity by 2012./pp align="right"a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/idg.us.info.rss/news;pos=imu;tile=6;sz=336x280;skey=patch_management;pkey=security;ord=123456789?" target="_blank" /img src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/idg.us.info.rss/news;pos=imu;tile=6;sz=336x280;skey=patch_management;pkey=security;ord=123456789?" width="336" height="280" border="0" alt="" align="right"//a/pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"The study, which is a follow-up to a target="_blank" href="http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2007/111907johnson.html"similar research/a Nemertes conducted last year, projects that the current global economic recession will only delay rather than eliminate the increased demand for bandwidth the firm predicted last year. Then, Nemertes projected that traffic growth would eclipse supply by 2010, but the firm now says it has adjusted its projections to reflect deteriorating global economic conditions./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"b[ Does the#160;a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/11/11/46FE-broadband-limits_1.html"bandwidth shortage mean out Internet future is in danger/a? ]/b/pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"Nemertes emphasized it is not projecting that the Internet will crash or shut down altogether. Rather, the typical user probably will experience Internet quot;brownouts,quot; where such high-bandwidth applications as high-definition video-streaming and peer-to-peer file-sharing will stop performing up to users#39; expectations, the firm says.#160;/pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"During a presentation at an Internet Innovation Alliance symposium this week, Nemertes analyst Mike Jude a target="_blank" href="http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/111908-alliance-national-broadband.html"said/a that one consequence of declining Web performance would be that users would look less to the Internet to deliver their desired applications. quot;More and more applications are coming online that will drive expectations for service quality even higher,quot; he said. quot;I#39;m not saying that the Internet is going to crash in 2011, but that people#39;s expectations are going to be throttled. People will stop going to the Internet for those services.quot;/pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"One big reason for the projected growth in traffic is the continuing emergence of virtual workers who work from home or in remote branch offices located far away from companies#39; central offices, Nemertes says. In particular, these remote workers quot;expect seamless communications, regardless of where they conduct businessquot; and they quot;often require more advanced communication and collaboration tools than those who work at headquarters,quot; including videoconferencing and Web conferencing, the report says./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"Another factor is simply the large growth in high-bandwidth applications for users to employ. More ISPs in the coming years will follow the lead of such companies as a target="_blank" href="http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/082908-critics-question-comcast-broadband.html"Comcast/a and a target="_blank" href="http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/110408-att-trialing-dsl-bandwidth.html"ATamp;T/a trying out bandwidth caps that will charge extra money each month for heavy bandwidth consumers, Nemertes says. Although#160;a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/08/29/Comcast_sets_monthly_bandwidth_limit_for_customers_1.html"Comcast now caps individual bandwidth consumption at a relatively high 250GB per month/a, average future users will easily reach or surpass that bandwidth limit as they find higher-bandwidth applications to use, the firm says./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"quot;Though this traffic load is [currently] more than typical, it certainly isn#39;t exceptional,quot; Nemertes reports. quot;This type of usage will become typical over the next three to five years. The fact that Comcast#39;s network is, by its own admission, not able to cope with such usage patterns is a clear indication that the crunch we predicted last year is beginning to occur.quot;/pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"Looking forward, Nemertes says that if this capacity issue is not addressed, the Internet will fracture into a tiered system where companies with the most money will pay for specialized network infrastructure that will ensure their content is delivered at higher speeds than non-favored content./pp page="2" class="ArticleBody"This fractured system -- where certain entities can pay extra money to give their content favored treatment -- is what advocates of a target="_blank" href="http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/092208-politicians-push-for-net-neutrality.html"network neutrality/a have been working to avoid by preventing ISPs from discriminating against certain types of content. The Nemertes report gloomily concludes that although the Internet will not shut down entirely, it will experience a dramatic slowdown in innovation because quot;new content and application providers will be handicapped by the relatively poorer performance of their offerings vis-#224;-vis those created by the established players.quot;/p/divbr style=clear: both;/ a href=http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=6f133e36fa7698c33d630eb489aa4407p=1img alt= style=border: 0; border=0 src=http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=6f133e36fa7698c33d630eb489aa4407p=1//a img src=http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=6f133e36fa7698c33d630eb489aa4407 style=display: none; border=0 height=1 width=1 alt=/

"Yesterday we reported that GT200 to go 55nm silently? Non-ref Card hits early 09, and what we’re even more interested is whether NVIDIA is going to unveil a flagship dual-GPU card after the processing upgrades to 55nm. It’s known that AMD Radeon 4870X2 has become the most powerful ”weapon” in its important meetings such as financial report.

As informer tells, NVIDIA has decided to release GeForce GTX260 GX2 to hit back in January next year. Anyway, we know the emergence of such a product is really the way to go."

http://en.expreview.com/2008/11/19/n...up-jan-09.html

pAs another follow-up to a href="http://www.coolfer.com/blog/archives/2008/11/the_lure_of_d2c.php"yesterday's post/a on a speech by Ian Rogers (Topspin Media, ex-Yahoo Music) about, for lack of a better summary, the future of music, here's a a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/19/ian-rogers-on-the-death-of-the-music-cd-business-i-dont-care/"link to coverage today at TechCrunch/a. Skip the post and go straight to the commentary. You get everything from (paraphrasing loosely here) "Technology will kill labels -- Kozmo.com should have been the next eBay" to "Less popular music is less popular because it sucks." And plenty of opinion in between. Rogers even left a comment./p pWhat is missing from the discussion is the competitive role technology will play for music's middle class. Forget any Utopian ideas of a growing, more self-sufficient middle class. I understand that may be difficult when we're frequently presented with success stories big (Nine Inch Nails) and small (Josh Rouse). But don't forget the stories of mediocrity and failure. There are plenty of them. Case studies and success stories sell a product and a vision. They do not accurately represent the entire marketplace./p pThe best assumption is -- short of the emergence of government endowments and grants for everyday musicians -- the middle class will stay about the same size, and consuming spending on music will stay about the same. Given those assumptions, middle class artists will use digital technologies in heightened competition with other artists. New tools aren't about growing the middle class, they're about enabling a portion of artists to divert money away from other artists. Today's ease and low cost of production and distribution have lowered the barriers to entry. Naturally, the market will see an influx of new entrants. The barriers to success, however, even modest success, are still there. /phr/a href="http://coolfer.jobamatic.com/a/jbb/job-details/34547" Sony BMG Music Entertainment is looking for a Mobile Account Executive/adiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/coolfer?a=eLrHn"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/coolfer?i=eLrHn" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/coolfer?a=qEWhN"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/coolfer?i=qEWhN" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/coolfer?a=soklN"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/coolfer?i=soklN" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/coolfer/~4/459006562" height="1" width="1"/