# Dominant group/Letter of interest/NSF - Linguistics Program

A letter of interest to a program manager at the United States National Science Foundation (NSF) is written and sent to politely ascertain whether there is sufficient interest in a proposal topic on the part of the program manager to warrant the submission of a formal proposal through the FastLane system.
Many program managers at NSF are chosen because their current interest and often the topic of their career research beginning with their PhD thesis is in a field that the National Science Board believes NSF should be leading the national research effort in.
Interest in an unsolicited proposal often stems from this National Science Board directive and program manager selection.
Lack of interest on the part of the NSF program manager, in the past, has meant a high likelihood that the unsolicited proposal will not be funded, or even reviewed.

## Points of interest

The concept embodied by the two-word scientific term dominant group may be primordial to human society, culture, and language. Searching context and usage of the term and its relative synonyms in contemporary and extinct languages, and those languages on the verge of extinction may reveal important facts about this concept. It is sometimes the case that a language is on the verge of extinction precisely because of the presence of a dominant group, especially one engaging in monopolistic or oligopolistic practices.
Dominant group may represent a force for extinction in the evolution and application of language, specifically terminology, to the real and imaginary world.

## Program directors

In the Linguistics program of the division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences (BCS) are two program directors:
* Joan Maling and
* William Badecker.
Each of these program directors has program responsibilities:
William Badecker
* Building Community and Capacity for Data-Intensive Research in the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences and in Education and Human Resources (BCC-SBE/EHR)
* Cyberinfrastructure Training, Education, Advancement, and Mentoring for Our 21st Century Workforce
* Linguistics.
Joan Maling
* Documenting Endangered Languages (DEL)
* Linguistics.
Of these two program directors, Joan Maling may be the more potentially interested in a proposal to explore dominant group.

## Relevant news

"The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) yesterday announced the award of five fellowships, 32 institutional grants, and six doctoral dissertation research awards totaling $4.5 million in the agencies' ongoing Documenting Endangered Languages (DEL) program."

## Intellectual merit

The current activity is exploratory in nature and is resulting in an advance of knowledge and understanding about the term dominant group and its uses within various fields. The identification of its own field may result; thereby, in allowing differentiation of other fields so as to determine how knowledge is advanced across those different fields. It's like differential equations. Although differential equations is a subject within mathematics, it's spread to other subjects such as physics with ensuing use advances knowledge within physics. Differential equations is a two-word scientific term.

### Advancing knowledge and understanding

The proposed activity consists of finding the origin of dominant group or one of its relative synonyms, defining the two-word scientific/technical term perhaps from context (lexical pragmatics) (or perhaps rigorously), determining why scientists outside biology (especially evolution or entomology) use the term, and verifying its divergence and radiance by examples.
The field of dominant group appears to be regions, or the science of regions. Within a region in any science, including the social sciences, there may be a dominant group. Each region is defined by its limits. These limits in turn may allow for a dominant group. Change the limits (characteristics) for any region and the dominant group may go extinct. If a regional genome in biology lacks the potency to take advantage of any change in regional characteristics, there will be no dominant biological group.

### In each field of use

Part of the proposed activity is to determine how dominant group advances knowledge and understanding within each field which may be considered its own field or across all these different fields.
Dominant group is already being used as a scientific/technical term to advance knowledge and understanding across a great many fields.
In theory, dominant group in any field may have at least two uses: (1) a group of field-based entities, sources, or objects, or (2) a dominant group in some way associated with that field.
In practice, depending upon the scientist's intent, dominant group may be the bad group that engages in monopolistic practices, or socially negative behavior such as discrimination, abuse, punishment, and additional possible criminal activity against other demographic groups.
It can also serve as an empirical identifier in observations. At one extreme, it is 100 % of the effect or phenomenon under study. At the other, it is a minority group effect that perhaps has some natural or artificial unfair advantage. In a society a dominant group often has an unfair advantage such as numbers, military power, or assets and money. Here's an example of how searching and using the power of the internet can bring about remarkable discoveries.
In an article that appeared in the American Scientist (May-June 2012) issue entitled "Herschel and the Puzzle of Infra-red", "Jack White mentions that it is not known who coined the term "infrared."" "A Google Books search for "infra-red" finds two articles published in April 1874, both of which use the term in the context of Edmond Bacquerel's treatise on light." There is an 1867 work using the French infra-rouge and one in English near the same time using "infra-red", "having translated it from the French."
The author responds that "ultra red" and "infra-red" appear in a paper from 1873, researched in 1960 "in the dark ages before the Internet. Rosenberg's find is a reminder of the Internet's amazing, growing power to search original works in different languages."

### Evolution

The term dominant group and perhaps the concept the term represents has been an integral part of nearly every theory of evolution.
Hypothesis: As an evolutionary process, a dominant group may be a force for extinction by driving a number of groups to extinction and a force for speciation when spatial or temporal dispersion creates diversity and isolation which may eventually produce new groups. As a force for extinction a particular dominant group may also through its actions on other groups ultimately produce its own extinction event. This departure from a zone then allows other groups to fill the niche.
Changes in the characteristics or properties of a region may force the dominant group into extinction; thereby, making room for the next dominant group. However, some changes may not allow a dominant group to emerge. Additionally, properties of dominance may be appearance only. No competition for resources may have occurred.

### Lexical pragmatics

From a metadefinitional point of view each use of dominant group has a relationship between members of the dominant group, a population from which the dominant group is a subset, a criterion for dominance, and a region, range, distribution or "in their own country". But, each of these four structures may have their meaning in the context within which the author or speaker places the two-word scientific/technical term.

### Oldest two-word terms

It may be one of the oldest two-word scientific/technical terms. Some of its relative synonyms predate 1826: for example, the phrase “die Dominanten Religionen von ganz Europa” occurs in 1726.

### Origins

The proposed activity consists of finding the origin of dominant group or one of its relative synonyms. The fundamental concepts encompassed by the totality of relative synonyms may have very early origins in primitive languages.

### Own field

The first question to answer is "What is dominant group's own field?"
It is a scientific or technical term, specifically a two-word scientific or technical term. Its overall field is linguistics, or technical language, terminology. It is and refers to an entity. An overall field allowing application to other fields is regions or the science of regions, usually spatial, but not necessarily always spatial. Spatial science or the science of space may be the appropriate field for dominant group.

### Proposer qualifications

Much of the explorational data for reviewer evaluation sits within the resource structure and substructure of the dominant group research project displayed in the template entitled "Dominant group" near the bottom of this page.
Initial efforts using the scientific method may be found within the effort to demonstrate proof of concept.

### Transformative concepts

"[T]wo-word glossary items are the most common technical terms". Dominant group is a likely two-word glossary item captured by data mining algorithms. A first-principle's demonstration that dominant group is a two-word scientific/technical term yields one test standard for data mining algorithms to find.
Dominant group serves as an indicator that original research has been conducted, especially when it appears in a primary source.
As a two-word scientific/technical term, is dominant group a member of the dominant group of two-word scientific/technical terms?
This exploratory investigation into dominant group and its usage has the potential to demonstrate that dominant group
* when identified is a causative force for change that by its nature requires further investigation,
* should be no longer used as a scientific/technical term because its meanings are unclear and vague, or
* identifies an inhibiting or moderating force that works against 'high-risk, high-reward' "research with an inherent high degree of uncertainty and the capability to produce a major impact on important problems in biomedical/behavioral research", or in other scientific/technical fields.

### Conception and organization

This exploratory effort uses the template system (the dominant group template is near the bottom of this page) to organize and keep readily available the efforts already begun and those still needed.

### Access to resources

Part of the challenge of this type of experimental inquiry is that authors of today or even in the 1800s are likely to use dominant group to describe the past when the term itself was actually not used by an earlier author.
University level access, including its medial research center, (both of which are available local to the principal investigator, PI) to much earlier original documents may be required to confirm the term earlier than 1826, its current date of specific use in English by Kirby. Local availability for interlibrary loan of needed resources also exists.
As Google scholar, for example, displays older and older manuscripts or books, especially before 1826, the probability increases of finding the term or eliminating its use by specific authors.
Web-based resources (including e-mail) are available to the PI.

## Broader impacts

Exploring modern languages, languages on the verge of extinction, and extinct languages for terms that are either relative or exact synonyms (translations) for dominant group advances discovery and raises awareness of meaning and terminology.
For example: "In January 2008, a coalition of over 40 civil society groups endorsed a statement of principles calling for precautionary action related to nanotechnology." "The group has urged action based on eight principles. They are 1) A Precautionary Foundation 2) Mandatory Nano-specific Regulations 3) Health and Safety of the Public and Workers 4) Environmental Protection 5) Transparency 6) Public Participation 7) Inclusion of Broader Impacts and 8) Manufacturer Liability."
"Nanomedicines are just beginning to enter drug regulatory processes, but within a few decades could comprise a dominant group within the class of innovative pharmaceuticals, the current thinking of government safety and cost-effectiveness regulators appearing to be that these products give rise to few if any nano-specific issues." Bold added.

### Advancing discovery and training

"Ethnocide is when a dominant political group attempts to purposely put an end to a people’s traditional way of life. Linguicide (linguistic genocide) is when such a dominant group tries to extinguish the language of a minority group, say by punishing anyone caught speaking it." Exploring the meaning and use of dominant group in such context increases understanding of the forces at work characterized by the terms inclusion.

### Underrepresented group participation

The proposed activity is ongoing at Wikiversity.
"Wikiversity is a Wikimedia Foundation project devoted to learning resources, learning projects, and research for use in all levels, types, and styles of education from pre-school to university, including professional training and informal learning. We invite teachers, students, and researchers to join us in creating open educational resources and collaborative learning communities. To learn more about Wikiversity, try a guided tour or start editing now."

### Infrastructure enhancement

Information may be made available in various venues:
* databases or contributions to other databases of all institutions, agencies, and individuals who manage similar databases,
* contributions to ongoing network analyses, and
* information sharing and access.
Wikiversity is the premier online research and education database, facility, network and partnership of the WMF. That the proposed activity is ongoing at Wikiversity makes the information generated available through access and sharing.
"Just as an FYI, Wikiversity has been placed among the 'top picks' for this Google+ education list. It has been shared over 2000 times since its original posting."
The proposed activity would partner NSF with Wikiversity to enhance the infrastructure for research and education, including where possible, facilities, instrumentation, and networks within Wikiversity and between Wikiversity and NSF.

### Broad dissemination

Dominant group is an ongoing original research project that is being open-sourced here at Wikiversity both as a learning resource and to yield the broadest possible dissemination.

### Benefits to society

"Dominant group(s)", designated vaguely by the term, and the associated ideologies of exclusion, serve as apparent focused power structures that increase existing disparities in wealth and status, while marginalizing or disenfranchising "Others".
This proposed activity explores the two-word term "dominant group" to increase awareness of what dominant groups are linguistically as well as socially and scientifically. As the original research effort is ongoing at Wikiversity it benefits all audiences that explore learning through Wikiversity. A successful collaboration between NSF and Wikiversity helps to disseminate the societal benefits of NSF to any local community where some access to the internet and computer terminals in various forms exists such as at pre-schools, elementary and secondary schools, high schools and universities.
Dominant group is a scientific/technical two-word term that occurs at least once in some 280 English Wikipedia entries. These usages may be original research, plagiarism, copyright violations, properly cited uses, or simply mistakes in usage by editors and contributors. Or, dominant group because of its long history may have become a commonly used two-word term that crosses the barrier between common language words that are in a dictionary and the scientific/technical vocabulary of specialists, scholars, and experts. On the general web as sampled by Google, dominant group yields about 513,000 results. Many of these relate right back to the ongoing research at Wikiversity or to the earlier dominant group entries on Wikipedia that were deleted as being original research.
As a potential indicator of copyright violation, dominant group may serve to help improve major web-based resources such as Wikipedia. On Wikipedia dominant group occurs in some 280 entries and as a split term such as dominant ethnic group in some 15,700 entries. Overall the English Wikipedia contains some 4,014,000 entries.
Articles or presentations of the research outside Wikiversity will be prepared openly here at Wikiversity as a teaching and training resource. Publication of such resources in open-access journals or scientific society journals benefits multiple audiences.
Before the benefits of the term and its relative synonyms is assessed, there is a need for some form of control group to serve as comparison. It should be noted that the two-word scientific term control group is a relative synonym of dominant group.

## Final email

What follows is a copy of a letter of interest sent by email to the NSF program director.
Subject: Interest in a proposal about the scientific term “dominant group”
Dear Program Director Maling,
If I may, I would like to ascertain your interest in a proposal subject (the two-word scientific term “dominant group”) before submitting the proposal to NSF. A perhaps more readable version can be found at [:http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Dominant_group/Funding].
The concept embodied by the two-word scientific term dominant group may be primordial to human society, culture, and language. Searching context and usage of the term and its relative synonyms in contemporary and extinct languages, and those languages on the verge of extinction may reveal important facts about this concept. It is sometimes the case that a language is on the verge of extinction precisely because of the presence of a dominant group, especially one engaging in monopolistic or oligopolistic practices.
Dominant group may represent a force for extinction in the evolution and application of language, specifically terminology, to the real and imaginary world.
Intellectual merit
The current activity is exploratory in nature and is resulting in an advance of knowledge and understanding about the term dominant group and its uses within various fields. The identification of its own field may result; thereby, in allowing differentiation of other fields so as to determine how knowledge is advanced across those different fields. It's like differential equations. Although differential equations is a subject within mathematics, it's spread to other subjects such as physics with ensuing use advancing knowledge within physics. Differential equations is a two-word scientific term.
Advancing knowledge and understanding
The proposed activity consists of finding the origin of dominant group or one of its relative synonyms, defining the two-word scientific/technical term perhaps from context (lexical pragmatics) (or perhaps rigorously), determining why scientists outside biology (especially evolution or entomology) use the term, and verifying its divergence and radiance by examples.
The field of dominant group appears to be regions, or the science of regions. Within a region in any science, including the social sciences, there may be a dominant group. Each region is defined by its limits. These limits in turn may allow for a dominant group. Change the limits (characteristics) for any region and the dominant group may go extinct. If a regional genome in biology lacks the potency to take advantage of any change in regional characteristics, there will be no dominant biological group.
In each field of use
Part of the proposed activity is to determine how dominant group advances knowledge and understanding within each field which may be considered its own field or across all these different fields.
Dominant group is already being used as a scientific/technical term to advance knowledge and understanding across a great many fields.
In theory, dominant group in any field may have at least two uses: (1) a group of field-based entities, sources, or objects, or (2) a dominant group in some way associated with that field.
In practice, depending upon the scientist's intent, dominant group may be the bad group that engages in monopolistic practices, or socially negative behavior such as discrimination, abuse, punishment, and additional possible criminal activity against other demographic groups.
It can also serve as an empirical identifier in observations. At one extreme, it is 100 % of the effect or phenomenon under study. At the other, it is a minority group effect that perhaps has some natural or artificial unfair advantage. In a society a dominant group often has an unfair advantage such as numbers, military power, or assets and money. Here's an example of how searching and using the power of the internet can bring about remarkable discoveries.
In an article that appeared in the American Scientist (May-June 2012) issue entitled "Herschel and the Puzzle of Infra-red", "Jack White mentions that it is not known who coined the term "infrared.""[1] "A Google Books search for "infra-red" finds two articles published in April 1874, both of which use the term in the context of Edmond Bacquerel's treatise on light."[1] There is an 1867 work using the French infra-rouge and one in English near the same time using "infra-red", "having translated it from the French."[1]
The author responds that "ultra red" and "infra-red" appear in a paper from 1873, researched in 1960 "in the dark ages before the Internet. Rosenberg's find is a reminder of the Internet's amazing, growing power to search original works in different languages."[2]
Evolution
The term dominant group and perhaps the concept the term represents have been an integral part of nearly every theory of evolution.
Hypothesis: As an evolutionary process, a dominant group may be a force for extinction by driving a number of groups to extinction and a force for speciation when spatial or temporal dispersion creates diversity and isolation which may eventually produce new groups. As a force for extinction a particular dominant group may also through its actions on other groups ultimately produce its own extinction event. This departure from a zone then allows other groups to fill the niche.
Changes in the characteristics or properties of a region may force the dominant group into extinction; thereby, making room for the next dominant group. However, some changes may not allow a dominant group to emerge. Additionally, properties of dominance may be appearance only. No competition for resources may have occurred.
Lexical pragmatics
From a metadefinitional point of view, each use of dominant group has a relationship between members of the dominant group, a population from which the dominant group is a subset, a criterion for dominance, and a region, range, distribution or "in their own country". But, each of these four structures may have their meaning in the context within which the author or speaker places the two-word scientific/technical term.
Proposer qualifications
Much of the explorational data for reviewer evaluation sits within the resource structure and substructure of the dominant group research project displayed in the template entitled "Dominant group" near the bottom of the page [:http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Dominant_group/Funding].
Initial efforts using the scientific method may be found within the effort to demonstrate proof of concept.
Transformative concepts
"[T]wo-word glossary items are the most common technical terms".[3] Dominant group is a likely two-word glossary item captured by data mining algorithms. A first-principle's demonstration that dominant group is a two-word scientific/technical term yields one test standard for data mining algorithms to find.
Dominant group serves as an indicator that original research has been conducted, especially when it appears in a primary source.
As a two-word scientific/technical term, is dominant group a member of the dominant group of two-word scientific/technical terms?
This exploratory investigation into dominant group and its usage has the potential to demonstrate that dominant group
1. when identified is a causative force for change by its nature, requires further investigation, 2. should be no longer used as a scientific/technical term because its meanings are unclear and vague, or 3. identifies an inhibiting or moderating force that works against 'high-risk, high-reward' "research with an inherent high degree of uncertainty and the capability to produce a major impact on important problems in biomedical/behavioral research"[4], or in other scientific/technical fields.
Conception and organization
This exploratory effort uses the template system (the dominant group template is near the bottom of this page [:http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Dominant_group/Funding]) to organize and keep readily available the efforts already begun and those still needed.
Access to resources
Part of the challenge of this type of experimental inquiry is that authors of today or even in the 1800s are likely to use dominant group to describe the past when the term itself was actually not used by an earlier author.
University level access, including its medial research center, (both of which are available local to the principal investigator, PI) to much earlier original documents may be required to confirm the term earlier than 1826, its current date of specific use in English by Kirby regarding the distributions of insects. Local availability for interlibrary loan of needed resources also exists.
As Google scholar, for example, displays older and older manuscripts or books, especially before 1826, the probability increases of finding the term or eliminating its use by specific authors.
Web-based resources (including e-mail) are available to the PI.
Broader impacts
Exploring modern languages, languages on the verge of extinction, and extinct languages for terms that are either relative or exact synonyms (translations) for dominant group advances discovery and raises awareness of meaning and terminology.
For example: "In January 2008, a coalition of over 40 civil society groups endorsed a statement of principles[5] calling for precautionary action related to nanotechnology."[6] "The group has urged action based on eight principles. They are 1) A Precautionary Foundation 2) Mandatory Nano-specific Regulations 3) Health and Safety of the Public and Workers 4) Environmental Protection 5) Transparency 6) Public Participation 7) Inclusion of Broader Impacts and 8) Manufacturer Liability."[6]
"Nanomedicines are just beginning to enter drug regulatory processes, but within a few decades could comprise a dominant group within the class of innovative pharmaceuticals, the current thinking of government safety and cost-effectiveness regulators appearing to be that these products give rise to few if any nano-specific issues.[7]"[6] Bold added.
Advancing discovery and training
"Ethnocide is when a dominant political group attempts to purposely put an end to a people’s traditional way of life. Linguicide (linguistic genocide) is when such a dominant group tries to extinguish the language of a minority group, say by punishing anyone caught speaking it."[8] Bold added, Exploring the meaning and use of dominant group in such context increases understanding of the forces at work characterized by the terms inclusion.
Underrepresented group participation
The proposed activity is ongoing at Wikiversity [:http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Main_Page].
"Wikiversity is a Wikimedia Foundation project devoted to learning resources, learning projects, and research for use in all, types, and styles of education from pre-school to university, including professional training and informal learning. We invite teachers, students, and researchers to join us in creating open educational resources and collaborative learning communities. To learn more about Wikiversity, try a guided tour or start editing now."[8]
Infrastructure enhancement
Information may be made available in various venues:
1. databases or contributions to other databases of all institutions, agencies, and individuals who manage similar databases, 2. contributions to ongoing network analyses, and 3. information sharing and access.[10]
Wikiversity is the premier online research and education database, facility, network and partnership of the WMF. That the proposed activity is ongoing at Wikiversity makes the information generated available through access and sharing.
"Just as an FYI, Wikiversity has been placed among the 'top picks' for this Google+ education list. It has been shared over 2000 times since its original posting.[11]"
The proposed activity would partner NSF with Wikiversity to enhance the infrastructure for research and education, including where possible, facilities, instrumentation, and networks within Wikiversity and between Wikiversity and NSF.
Broad dissemination
Dominant group is an ongoing original research project that is being open-sourced here at Wikiversity both as a learning resource and to yield the broadest possible dissemination.
Benefits to society
"Dominant group(s)", designated vaguely by the term, and the associated ideologies of exclusion, serve as apparent focused power structures that increase existing disparities in wealth and status, while marginalizing or disenfranchising "Others".[10] Bold added.
This proposed activity explores the two-word term "dominant group" to increase awareness of what dominant groups are linguistically as well as socially and scientifically. As the original research effort is ongoing at Wikiversity it benefits all audiences that explore learning through Wikiversity. A successful collaboration between NSF and Wikiversity helps to disseminate the societal benefits of NSF to any local community where some access to the internet and computer terminals in various forms exists such as at pre-schools, elementary and secondary schools, high schools and universities.
Dominant group is a scientific/technical two-word term that occurs at least once in some 280 English Wikipedia entries. These usages may be original research, plagiarism, copyright violations, properly cited uses, or simply mistakes in usage by editors and contributors. Or, dominant group because of its long history may have become a commonly used two-word term that crosses the barrier between common language words that are in a dictionary and the scientific/technical vocabulary of specialists, scholars, and experts. On the general web as sampled by Google, dominant group yields about 513,000 results. Many of these relate right back to the ongoing research at Wikiversity or to the earlier dominant group entries on Wikipedia.
As a potential indicator of copyright violation, dominant group may serve to help improve major web-based resources such as Wikipedia. On Wikipedia dominant group also occurs as a split term such as dominant ethnic group in some 15,700 entries. Overall the English Wikipedia contains some 4,014,000 entries.
Articles or presentations of the research outside Wikiversity will be prepared openly here at Wikiversity as a teaching and training resource. Publication of such resources in open-access journals or scientific society journals benefits multiple audiences.
Before the benefits of the term and its relative synonyms are assessed, there is a need for some form of control group to serve as comparison. It should be noted that the two-word scientific term control group is a relative synonym of dominant group.
Sincerely,
(User: Marshallsumter at Wikiversity)
References
* Gary Rosenberg (September-October 2012). "Infrared Dating, In: Letters to the Editor". American Scientist 100 (5): 355. Retrieved on 2012-08-16.
* Jack White (September-October 2012). "Mr. White responds, In: Letters to the Editor". American Scientist 100 (5): 355. Retrieved on 2012-08-16.
* Youngja Park, Roy J Byrd and Branimir Boguraev (2002). Automatic Glossary Extraction: Beyond Terminology Identification, In: "Proceedings of the Nineteenth International Conference on Computational Linguistics". Morristown, New Jersey. pp. 772-8.
* Austin, F.C. (2008). High-Risk High-Reward Research Demonstration Project, presentation given to the NIH Council of Councils. Available at: http://dpcpsi.nih.gov/pdf/CoC-112008-Austin-HRHR.pdf
* (2008) "Principles for the Oversight of Nanotechnologies and Nanomaterials". International Center for Technology Assessment.
* (May 9, 2010) "Regulation of nanotechnology". Wikipedia. San Francisco, California: Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Retrieved on 2012-08-27.
* Vines T and Faunce TA Assessing the safety and cost-effectiveness of early nanodrugs Journal of Law and Medicine 2007; 16: 822-845
* Thomas N. Headland (2003). Thirty Endangered Languages in the Philippines, In: Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session. 47. Toledo-Cebu: Philippine Tourism. pp. 12. Retrieved 2012-08-08.
* (April 28, 2012) "Wikiversity:Main Page". Wikipedia. San Francisco, California: Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Retrieved on 2012-06-22.
* William Doelle (August 2011). "Proposal Submitted to NSF Archaeology Program by: Center for Desert Archaeology". archaeologysouthwest.org. Retrieved on 2012-01-29.
* The Jade Knight (March 20, 2012). "Wikiversity:Colloquium/archives/March 2012". Wikiversity: 1. Retrieved on 2012-04-13. --Marshallsumter (talk) 21:23, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

## NSF Program Director response

"Thank you for your inquiry. Your project on two-word scientific terms, specifically “dominant group,” does not fall within the scope of basic scientific research supported by NSF’s Linguistics Program.
You did not identify a particular research question or hypothesis, but based on the description provided, your ultimate goal seems to be understanding societal organization rather than linguistic structure. I asked the program director for Sociology to review your project summary; she indicated that although the concept of “dominant group” might be useful to understanding stratification, the purpose of your project does not seem to advance stratification research, and the methodology is not one that sociologists would employ.
You might check with the Program Directors for Science, Technology & Society (STS) to see whether your topic would be of interest to them. You can find a description of that program here: http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5324 It may be that it is more of a Humanities project, and thus more suitable for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).
Sincerely,
Joan Maling"

### Scope of Linguistics Program

"The Linguistics Program supports basic science in the domain of human language, encompassing investigations of the grammatical properties of individual human languages, and of natural language in general. Research areas include syntax, semantics, morphology, phonetics, and phonology."
"The program encourages projects that are interdisciplinary in methodological or theoretical perspective, and that address questions that cross disciplinary boundaries, such as (but not limited to):
* What are the psychological processes involved in the production, perception, and comprehension of language?
* What are the computational properties of language and/or the language processor that make fluent production, incremental comprehension or rapid learning possible?
* How do the acoustic and physiological properties of speech inform our theories of language and/or language processing?
* What role does human neurobiology play in shaping the various components of our linguistic capacities?
* How does language develop in children?
* What social and cultural factors underlie language variation and change?"

### Recent program funding

An NSF awards search using "linguistics program" "recent awards" returned five:
* Initiating New Science Partnerships in Rural Education (INSPIRE) Program
* "Kreyol-based Cyberlearning for a New Perspective on the Teaching of STEM in local Languages"
* "The underpinnings of Semantic change: A Linguistic, Cognitive, and Information-Theoretic Investigation"
* "Dynamical Principles of Animal Movement"
* CAREER award
* "The Grammar Matrix: Computational Linguistic Typology"
Programs specifically directed by Joan Maling include
* "A Linguistic Taxonomy of English Web Registers", Start Date: September 15, 2012.
* "Documentation of the Vlashki/Zheyanski Language ('RUO')", Start Date: September 1, 2012.
* "Effects of Syntactic Constituency on Phonology and Phonetics of Tone", Start Date: July 1, 2012.

### Closer topics to scope

"Explaining the Propensity of Dominant group type terms in the Languages of the World" may have been closer to scope.
Perhaps "Acquiring the semantics and pragmatics of dominant group type scientific terms" is also.

## Hypotheses

* Linguistics may have the same origin as dominant group.