Program Update

France-Berkeley Fund CNRS Exchange

UC Berkeley-CNRS Agreement
Since 1992, International and Area Studies has had an exchange agreement with the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Département des Sciences de l'Homme et de la Société (SHS). This exchange is designed to promote scientific, cultural, and pedagogical exchanges of faculty and researchers between Berkeley and French CNRS centers in all fields of the humanities and social sciences. UC Berkeley ladder faculty in the divisions of social sciences and humanities, and the schools of law, public policy, business, and journalism, are eligible to be affiliated with any CNRS laboratory in France from one to nine months during the academic year.

The CNRS pays a stipend of $1500 per month to assist Berkeley visitors in France, and the FBF pays $1200 per month to assist CNRS visitors at UC Berkeley. Both benefit from all the privileges given to the host institution affiliates (including access to libraries). In return, the visitors are expected to participate in the research activities of the specific laboratories that welcome them.

Via this agreement between the CNRS and UCB, Maarten Lemmens, maître de conference at the University of Lille (English Linguistics), obtained a research grant for a month-long research stay at Berkeley, to collaborate with UCB professor Dan Slobin from the Institute of Human Development in the Psychology Department.

This stay, which took place in November 2003, has been quite successful and holds promises for further collaboration.

Lemmens’ research topic provides a complement to typological work on manner of motion verbs that was initiated by Dan Slobin in the '90s and that, since then, has been further elaborated by Slobin as well as others for a growing number of languages, drawing on a wide variety of empirical methods (psycholinguistic experiments, corpus data, etc.). This vast body of research on motion verbs has substantiated important typological differences between languages in the way in which they encode motion events.

Via his work on the three cardinal posture verbs (sit, lie, stand) in Dutch, Lemmens has observed clear parallels to the typological differences observed for motion verbs, yet also some patterns that do not parallel these of motion verbs. The aim of Lemmens’ research at UCB stay was to elaborate his research project in two ways: (1) to set up a wider typological study to parallel that for motion verbs and (2) to enlarge the lexical scope to make it include other location verbs as well (e.g. kneel, place, set, lay, etc.), indispensable in the wider typological study.

During his research stay, Lemmens was able to have fruitful discussions with Dan Slobin and other UCB faculty, to explore some of the existing data on motion verbs, and to carry out some pilot experiments, which yielded interesting results. Its promising character has incited Slobin and Lemmens to continue their collaboration in a joined research project. Lemmens also gave a presentation of his semantic and typological work on posture and location verbs at a special Berkeley Linguistics Colloquium, on Nov. 24, 2003.

For more information on the research project, or for downloadable papers, see Lemmens’ web page at www.univ-lille3.fr/silex/lemmens.htm.

Larry Hyman, one of the world’s most famous linguists, also benefited from this exchange agreement. He just came back to Berkeley after a year’s stay at the CNRS. He spent some time in the "Laboratoire Dynamique du Langage" (UMR 5596, CNRS/Université Lyon2). He received a letter of invitation on August 1, 2003 from Dr. Jean-Marie Hombert, director of the "laboratoire" -- with whom he has had a longstanding collaboration -- inviting him to Lyon. The purpose of his visit was to work on his joint project with Dr. Gérard Philippson, entitled "Linguistic Philogenies in the Bantu Domain", for which they received a one-year France-Berkeley Grant covering the period of Dec. 1, 2002 - Nov. 30, 2003. This research project aims to refine the classification of the Bantu languages (with the purpose of comparing their results with those coming from the genetics of the population.) This project brought together the "bantoutist" linguistic expertise from UC Berkeley and the "Laboratoire Dynamique du Langage" expertise in Lyon. In addition, Hyman received the France Berkeley Fund grant, which allowed him to spend November - December in France and cover his travel expenses. The CNRS-Berkeley agreement helped him cover housing expenses during the period in November - December 2003 when he was resident in France. For further information on Larry Hyman’s reasarch: www.cbold.ddl.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/

Paolo Mancosu from the Philosophy department is going to go to the CNRS May 1st and will stay 2 1/2 months. He will be hosted by Jacques Dubucs at the "Institut d'histoire et de philosophie des sciences". His research project,"Heinrich Behmann and the emergence of computability theory," focuses on the emergence of computability theory and in particular the decision problem. Computability theory is the area of mathematical logic that has had the widest influence outside mathematical logic proper. It forms the underpinning of theoretical computer science and all the computational approaches in cognitive psychology rely on it. For more information about Paolo Mancosu please check his web page: socrates.berkeley.edu/%7Emancosu/

The CNRS welcome researchers from everywhere. It is a great place to work and has been since it was created on October 19, 1939, in the early days of World War II, by decree of President Albert Lebrun. The aim was to merge all the non-specialized state organizations involved in basic and applied research into a single institution in order to coordinate research at the national level. The CNRS was the brainchild of a handful of scientists, and especially of Jean Perrin, who was awarded the Nobel Physics Prize for 1926.

A great many famous researchers have worked, at one moment or another in their careers, in CNRS-supported laboratories.

Several among them earned the Nobel Prize: Jean Perrin, founder of the CNRS, earned the Nobel Physics Prize in 1926, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, the first postwar CNRS director-general was awarded the Nobel Chemistry Prize in 1935.

More recently, the Nobel Prize was awarded to the following CNRS researchers:

Physics: Alfred Kasler (1966), Louis Néel (1970), Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (1991), Georges Charpak (1992) and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji (1997)
Chemistry: Jean-Marie Lehn (1987),
Biology and medecine: the disciples of Pasteur André Lwoff, Jacques Monod and François Jacob (1965), Jean Dausset (1980),
Economics: Maurice Allais (1988).

In mathematics, a science for which there is no Nobel Prize, several CNRS researchers were awarded the Fields medal, the highest distinction for mathematicians. These are Jean-Pierre Serre, René Thom, Alexandre Grothendieck, Alain Connes, Laurent Schwarz and Laurent Lafforgue. Pierre-Louis Lions and Jean-Christophe Yoccoz, who received the Fields medal in 1994, both work in joint CNRS research units.

Since 1954, the CNRS gold, silver and bronze medals have been awarded each year to world-famous French scientists and promising young researchers. The most recent gold medal winners are: Pierre Bourdieu, sociologist, for 1993, who came to Berkeley; Claude Allègre, earth physicist, for 1994; and Claude Hagège, linguist, for 1995 (he will be the French studies program’s host in April, an event that should not be missed! claude.hagege.free.fr/).

Other winners were, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, physicist, for 1996; Jean Rouxel, chemist, for 1997; Pierre Potier, for 1998; Jean-Claude Risset for 1999; Michel Lazdunski for 2000; Maurice Godelier for 2001; Claude Lorius and Jean Jouzel for 2002; and Albert Fert for 2003.

For further information on the CNRS please check www.cnrs.fr

And for further information on the UC Berkeley-CNRS agreement or the French Berkeley Fund please check ies.berkeley.edu/fbf/ or call 643-5799 or stop by 203 Moses Hall.