Suzanne Kemmer

Glastonbury Abbey, August 1998

Associate Professor of Linguistics
Rice University

Director of Cognitive Sciences
Undergraduate Major Adviser, Linguistics
College Associate and Divisional Adviser, Social Sciences, Sid Richardson College

Office Herring Hall 209
Office phone (713) 348-6225
Email kemmer AT rice.edu
Office Hours Spring 2008 WF 1:15-2:30 and by appointment

Mailing address
Department of Linguistics, MS 23
Rice University
P.O. Box 1892
Houston, TX 77251-1892
U.S.A.

Current courses (Fall 2008):

Ling/Engl 215 Words in English: Structure, History, Use, MWF 10:00-10:50
Ling 554 Seminar in Semantic Theory MW 2:00-3:30, Hermann Brown Hall

Interests

Cognitive Linguistics, Language Universals and Typology, Semantics/Pragmatics, Language Change, Germanic languages, Nilo-Saharan Languages, African Languages, Austronesian languages

Activities

My new blog and Q&A

I have started a Language Blog with my observations about words, including neologisms and observations on etymology and word usage.

I am also running a Q&A forum called Ask Dr. Eek for answering questions from the general public about English Words and Grammar. This is an "outreach" activity, to help bring knowledge about language to the public. It is an outgrowth of my longstanding class on English Words.

International Cognitive Linguistics Association

The 10th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference (ICLC 10) was held at the University of Krakow, Poland, July 20-25, 2007.

The 9th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference was held at Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea, in July 2005.

The ICLA website has been based at Rice University since 2003. Martin Hilpert (now at the University of Freiburg) is the Web Editor, and I am the Webmaster.

See the ICLA site for information on events, governance, and other ICLA matters.

CSDL

The 8th Conceptual Structure, Discourse and Language Conference (CSDL 8) took place at the University of California, San Diego, November 2006. Seana Coulson was the organizer and the conference was hosted by the Cognitive Science Department at UCSD. A volume from the general session of the conference is in preparation.

The 7th Conceptual Structure, Discourse and Language Conference (CSDL 7) was held at the University of Edmonton in Alberta, Canada, October 8-10, 2004. Sally Rice and John Newman were the organizers. The volume from the conference is in preparation.

The 6th Conceptual Structure, Discourse and Language Conference (CSDL 6) was held at Rice University October 12-14, 2002. Michel Achard and I co-organized the conference. Keynote speakers: John Lucy, Susanna Cumming, Ron Langacker. Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Cultures, the Dept. of Linguistics, the School of Humanities, and the Program in Cognitive Sciences, Rice University.

Language, Culture and Mind volume

Language, Culture and Mind, edited by Michel Achard and Suzanne Kemmer, was published in October 2004 by CSLI Publications, Stanford. The volume is an edited selection of 35 of the 70 papers presented at CSDL 6. Two substantial new keynote articles by John Lucy and Ronald W. Langacker bookend the volume. Other contributors include Ben Bergen, Michael Israel, Sally Rice and John Newman, Anatol Stefanowitsch and Stefan Gries, Fay Wouk, Barbara Kelly and Christine Halvorson, Kristin Davidse, Carol Moder, Barbara Dancygier, Joanne Scheibman, and Grace Song and Phillip Wolff. View the Table of Contents at LCM Contents.

Rice - U.T. Austin Workshop

I coordinated, with the help of Martin Hilpert, the first Rice - U.T. Austin Workshop, "Language in Use", held at Rice Oct. 23-24, 2004.

Usage-Based Models of Language

The book Usage-Based Models of Language, ed. by Michael Barlow and Suzanne Kemmer, appeared in June 2000. It contains 9 original papers based on a wide range of methodologies and types of data, all converging on the basic idea that the study of language structure must be grounded in the study of language use. Contributors include Ronald Langacker, Joan Bybee, Sydney Lamb, Brian MacWhinney, Connie Dickinson and T. Givon, Douglas Biber, Mira Ariel, Arie Verhagen, and Michael Barlow. The link above allows you to "Search Inside" the volume and look at the table of contents.

Upcoming Trips and Presentations

Sept.-October 2008. Cognitive Linguistics Conference, Dubrovnik, Croatia.

Past Conference Trips (back to 2002)

July 2008. University of Osnabrück, Germany

July 2008. University of Hamburg, Germany.

June 2008. Graduate Summer Institute on "Cognition, communication and culture", June 16-20, 2008, Shanghai International University, Shanghai, China.

June 2008. Department of Applied Language Studies and Linguistics, University of Auckland, New Zealand.

March 2008. Rice-NTU Workshop, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan July 2007. International Cognitive Linguistics Conference. Krakow, Poland.

March 2007. Keynote speaker, International Symposium on Language, Culture and Cognition. National Taiwan University.

December 2006. Keynote speaker, BAAHE conference, University of Leuven, Belgium.

November 2006. Talks in Nagoya, University of Tokyo, Tohoko University Sendai, Japan.

November 2006. CSDL, University of California, San Diego.

October 2006. Helsinki, Finland. Research visit and various talks.

January 2006. With Martin Hilpert. Change in Collocational Profiles as a Process of Grammaticalization. Linguistic Society of America winter meeting, Albuquerque, NM.

December 2005. Utrecht, Netherlands. Workshop on Causation. Constructional Grammaticalization.

November 2005. Helsinki, Finland. Keynote speaker, Symposium on Interdisciplinary Themes in Cognitive Linguistics

November 2005. Linguistics Colloquium, University of Tartu, Estonia.

October 2005. Constructional Profiles as the Basis of Semantic Analysis. Link to Powerpoint presentation. Dubrovnik, Croatia. Keynote speaker, Converging and Diverging Trends in Cognitive Linguistics.

August 2005. With Martin Hilpert. Constructional Grammaticalization. Presented at ICHL 17, U. Wisconsin at Madison.

July 2005. Keynote speaker, ICLC 9. Yonsei University. Seoul, Korea.

May 2005. Keynote speaker, First FCLA meeting, Bordeaux, France

March 2005. University of Nijmegen "Pionier" Lecture Series.

December 2004. Keynote speaker, University of Hamburg, Germany

November 2004. Keynote speaker, High Desert Linguistics Society, University of Albuquerque, NM. "Causation and Grammar".

November 2004. Keynote Speaker, Conference on Passive. "Passive and Usage". University of Oslo, Norway.

June 30-July 3, 2004. LIPP Symposium on Language and Linguistics, University of Munich.

September 2003. Conference on Imagery in Language, in Honor of Ronald W. Langacker. Lodz, Poland. (Invited Plenary Speaker)

July 20-25, 2003, 8th ICLC conference, Logrono, Spain. "Function, Discourse, and Mind: Unifying the Perspectives".

July 25-27, 2002, Second Nilo-Saharan NSF Workshop, Max Planck Insititute, Leipzig, Germany (Invited speaker)

July 4-6, 2002 Rhetoric, Culture and Communication Conference, Mainz, Germany (Invited speaker)

April 2002 Global Perspectives on Human Language Conference, Stanford University (Invited speaker)

March 2002 First Nilo-Saharan NSF Workshop, Kisumu, Kenya (invited speaker)

Teaching at LSA Institute

In Summer 2001 I was a Visiting Professor, Linguistic Society of America Linguistic Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara.

CSC Fellowship

Fall semester 2000 I was a fellow of the Center for the Study of Cultures. I was working on a research project on causation in Luo and human language generally.

Sabbatical at Max Planck

In spring-summer 2000 I was a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, in the Department of Psychology.

Recent courses

Spring 2008

Ling 320 Origins and Evolution of Human Language
Ling 403 Foundations of Linguistics

Courses Fall 2007
Ling/Psych 315 Introduction to Semantics

Ling 550/Linguistics Colloquium Colloquium Schedule 2007-8

Courses Spring 2007
Ling 394, The Structure of English
Ling 554, Advanced Lexical Semantics
Ling 405: Topics in Language Change. Topic for 2005: Constructions and Language Change

Other courses I have taught

Ling 416: Language Universals and Typology
Ling 551: Graduate Seminar Seminar on Constructional Syntax
Ling 402: Syntax and Semantics
Rice Continuing Studies: The English Language, Past and Present
Ling 595LB: UC Santa Barbara: Cognitive Lexical Semantics
Ling 550: Seminar in Semantic Theory (with Michel Achard)
Ling 409: Seminar on Causation and Motion (with Michel Achard)
Univ 112: The Power of Persuasion (with M. Achard, M. Hebl, C. Funk)
Ling 408: Field Methods: The Luo Language, Part II, Morphosyntax

Other Course Pages

The Luo Database

Data elicited by my 1997-98 Field Methods class on The Luo Language has been put into a searchable database accessible via the web. The Luo page also includes some grammatical sketches written by the students and some other useful links. Page design: Sue Wen Chiao.

New Words in English

Students in Linguistics 215 put together a page called "New Words in English" for neologisms (recently coined words) and examples of their use. These words were collected in "Word Journals" that the students kept during Fall 1996 (Fall 1998 soon to be added). Page design: Carlos Nash.

New Word Journal

Another collection from the Word Journals of the Linguistics 215 class from Fall 1997. This one has a web interface designed by Jenn Drummond. Students inputted their entries directly to the web, and provided actual citations (context and source) as well as comments on usage. This journal includes both neologisms and conventional words that happened to be new to the students. (The latter give an idea of what college-level vocabulary acquisition looks like.)

Emoticons

A collection of shorthand iconic emotive signalizers for use in electronic mail (ranging from the useful to the silly).

Enjoy Words

Enjoywords is my hobby website run from my home. On it I run a language blog about English words and a Q&A Forum about words and grammar called "Ask Dr. Eek".

Dictionaries, Texts, and Other Language Reference

Oxford English Dictionary Online. (Accessible to the Rice community.)
YourDictionary.com Lots of dictionaries of various languages. (Formerly A Web of On-line Dictionaries.)
WordNet
Electronic Text Resources
Corpus Linguistics: Zillions of Corpora
World Wide Words

My Favorite Other Links

Famous Paintings. WebMuseum Paris.
Cave Paintings: Ardèche
Victorian Women Writers Project

Quote Corner

Illuminating quote from a person lacking all sense of irony:

"In the sciences, one confronts some puzzling facts and attempts to
devise principles that will explain them. In ideological warfare, one
begins with Higher Truths dictated from above. The task is to select
the facts, or invent them, in such a way as to render the required
conclusions not too transparently absurd--at least for properly
disciplined minds."

--Noam Chomsky, "Is Peace at Hand?" Zeta magazine, p. 12, Jan. 1988

(unknown)