________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0101. Friday, 29 Mar 1991. Subj: 2.0101 For Your Information: Nameserver, Postdoc, Fellowship Total: 225 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Thur, 28 Mar 91 From: The LINGUIST Editors Subject: LINGUISTS Nameserver (2) Date: Wed, 27 Mar 91 20:00:01 EST From: Bob Freidin Subject: Announcing Psycoloquy (3) Date: Tue, 26 Mar 91 13:34:32 EST From: Peter Cole Subject: Minority fellowships at the Univ. of Delaware (4) Date: Wed, 27 Mar 91 13:28:48 -0500 From: "Daniel L Everett" Subject: Possible Postdoc at Pittsburgh (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thur, 28 Mar 91 From: The LINGUIST Editors Subject: LINGUISTS Nameserver We urge all subscribers to LINGUIST who have not already done so to register with the LINGUISTS Nameserver which Norval Smith of the University of Amsterdam has so generously set up. This is a major resource for our discipline, in that it enables us to establish easy e-mail contact with our colleagues. To register, simply send a message: ADD surname, first-name: address e.g. ADD Smith, Joanna: jinx@wonderful.university.edu All requests should be addressed to: LINGUISTS@ALF.LET.UVA.NL The subject line will be ignored. Each request should be entered on a separate line. For further information on how to use the name-server, send the message HELP to the above address. (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 27 Mar 91 20:00:01 EST From: Bob Freidin Subject: Announcing Psycoloquy ANNOUNCING PSYCOLOQUY A refereed electronic forum of interest to linguists: PSYCOLOQUY is an electronic journal that disseminates information of interest to researchers working in a variety of areas including psychology, neuroscience, cognitive science, behavioral biology, computer science, linguistics, and philosophy. The journal is being sponsored on an experimental basis by the Science Directorate of the American Psychological Association. PSYCOLOQUY is co-edited by Stevan Harnad (Psychology Department, Princeton University) and Perry London (Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology, Rutgers University). It has been selected as one of the best new magazines of 1990 by Library Journal (article to appear April 15 1991). Sub-Editors for: Linguistics: Robert Freidin (bob@clarity.princeton.edu) Computational Linguistics: Alexis Manaster Ramer (Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@mts.cc.wayne.edu) We invite you to send us postings for possible inclusion in PSYCOLOQUY. Nominations for the Editorial Board are also invited. Other current lingustics-related editorial sub-editors are: Sign Language Studies: Judy Kegl (Judy_Kegl@axon.rutgers.edu) Language Disorders: Max Coltheart (ps_coltheart@vaxa.mqcc.mq.oz) PSYCOLOQUY can be accessed via USENET (sci.psychology.digest), and BITNET (psyc@pucc.bitnet). If you receive PSYCOLOQUY on the INTERNET, the name will depend on local custom and usage. For more information about subscribing to PSYCOLOQUY, contact your local computing group. If you still are not able to access PSYCOLOQUY, contact Robert Freidin. If you prefer to receive PSYCOLOQUY postings through your electronic mail, send the one line message sub psyc Firstname Lastname (substituting your first and last names) to listserv@pucc.bitnet. Appropriate submissions to PSYCOLOQUY include: 1. "Scholarly Skywriting": PSYCOLOQUY can be used to "pilot" new ideas and findings with peers across disciplines and around the world. The speed and interactiveness of a computer-mediated journal will encourage the development of networks of researchers working on related topics. Submissions should be in the form of brief target articles and briefer commentaries. All contributions are refereed. 2. Abstracts or preprints. PSYCOLOQUY presents a unique opportunity for rapid dissemination of research results. Linguists doing research related to cognition or brain function are invited to submit brief summaries of their research for posting. 3. News items of interest to linguists working on cognition. PSYCOLOQUY can be used to disseminate information concerning professional organizations and journals--including meetings, workshops and conferences on topics of special interest. 4. Job announcements. PSYCOLOQUY can be used to announce openings in professional positions. Schools who have openings in cognitively oriented areas of linguistics are invited to submit job announcements for posting. Please forward this announcement to anyone you think might be interested in PSYCOLOQUY. Robert Freidin Program in Linguistics/Department of Philosophy Princeton University Bitnet address: freidin@pucc.bitnet Internet address: bob@clarity.princeton.edu Alexis Manaster Ramer Department of Linguistics Wayne State University Internet address: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu --------------------------------------------------------- For those who receive PSYCOLOQUY from listserv@pucc.bitnet (as opposed to the Usenet version, sci.psychology.digest): There has been a discussion about the retrievability of the subscriber list, which is now 1,984 on the Bitnet end. Although it has not begun to happen yet, there is a danger that as the list continues to grow, some may try to use it for commercial purposes. It is currently available to anyone who simply send the command REV PSYC to listserv@pucc.bitnet However, you can conceal your name on this list, if you wish, in such a way that you continue to receive PSYCOLOQUY but your name does not appear on the "rev psyc" list. To do so, use the following procedure, but you must make sure the message is sent from the exact login from which you signed on: The command to prevent your name from appearing on a REVIEW listing is SET PSYC CONCEAL To issue this command from a VM machine you would use a command like: TELL LISTSERV AT TCSVM SET PSYC CONCEAL You could also send mail to the listserver with SET PSYC CONCEAL as the first (and only) line of the body of the mail. ---------------------------------------------------------- If you wish to protect yourself from possible junk mail in the future, please send the above message right away. (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 26 Mar 91 13:34:32 EST From: Peter Cole Subject: Minority fellowships at the Univ. of Delaware The University of Delaware has expanded its program of fellowships for members of minority groups (defined here as Blacks and Hispanics,but Native Amer- icans would probably qualify). It seems likely that minority students who meet our usual admission requirements would qualify for a fellowship. Although our usual deadline for financial aid has passed, we will still be able to recommend qualified minority candidates for the next month or so. If you know of any students who would be interested, please ask them to contact: James Lantolf, Graduate Advisor or Peter Cole, Chair Dept. of Linguistics same address University of Delaware Newark, DE 19716 Telephone (302) 451-6806 (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 27 Mar 91 13:28:48 -0500 From: "Daniel L Everett" Subject: Possible Postdoc at Pittsburgh There may be a postdoc position available at the University of Pittsburgh for 1991-92. We must move quickly if we are to fill the position, however. (If filled, it must be so by May 28). The position involves analysis of formal linguistic cues of reasoning patterns and topical organization in dialogic discourse. The individual selected would work with a team of psychologists, philosophers, and one linguist (me) in conjunction with a grant to Pitt's Learning Research and Development Center (LRDC). Fresh PhDs with a strong background in discourse analysis, with some knowledge of phonology and sentence syntax, should contact me at: Daniel L. Everett Dept. of Linguistics University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh, PA 15260 412-624-8101 FAX 412-624-6130 dever@unix.cis.pitt.edu I cannot guarantee at this time that the position will be filled. It depends primarily on finding a person that fits the needs of the project very closely (and before the end of May). Dan Everett [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0101] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0102. Friday, 29 Mar 1991. Subj: 2.0102 Functionalism and Computational Linguistics Total: 207 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Tue, 26 Mar 91 20:06:29 -0800 From: Frederick Newmeyer Subject: formal and functional approaches (2) Date: Wed, 27 Mar 91 08:15 PST From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: MT (3) Date: Wed, 27 Mar 91 09:58:00 PST From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com Subject: Computational Linguists vs. 'Real' Linguists (4) Date: Thu, 28 Mar 91 13:11:50 EST From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Locality (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 26 Mar 91 20:06:29 -0800 From: Frederick Newmeyer Subject: formal and functional approaches I knew that I couldn't stay out of this debate for long! Scott Delancey writes correctly that the formalist and functionalist research programs are different, but implies incorrectly that they are incompatible. Why should they be? As I see it, the task of the formalist is to characterize the structural possibilities of language, both universal and language-particular. The task of the functionalist is to elucidate the principles (largely nonspecific to language) governing how those structures are employed in actual discourses. Thus each will find different data relevant to their concerns. For example, the formalist will show little interest in the fact that referential-indefinite NP's rarely occur as subjects in English (Givon), since our grammars ALLOW us this possibility. To the functionalist, the rarity of such subjects in English and non- existence in many languages is a fact demanding a functional explanation. The functionalist, on the other hand, will show little interest in the fact that speakers judge low text count sentences like 'This is the paper that I filed after reading' acceptable and 'I filed the paper after reading' unacceptable. To the formalist, however, these facts are central, since they point to knowledge without teaching/observing and from there to abstract structural principles. I realize that there are functionalists who argue it is incorrect to try to characterize structures independently of their functions (eg Hopper's 'emergent grammar'), and I dare not hog the space in one message to try to rebut them. But the most frequently voiced argument for this position, namely that functional factors shape the form of grammars, is not a threat to autonomy. It's quite true, I'm sure, that (functional) pressure on the parser explains why in V-O languages heavy constituents tend to appear at the right (Hawkins). I suspect that Tomlin's functional explanation for why certain word order types predominate is also largely right. But how grammatical properties were shaped is quite a different matter from whether grammar is a formal system governed by 'internal' principles. The formalist position entails the characterizability of grammatical systems by means of an elegant set of principles and that this system is actually used by the speaker and hearer. I feel that the evidence supporting the former is overwhelming and that supporting the latter is very strong. I can't resist another chess analogy. Maybe it is the case that there is a functional explanation for why the pieces can move as they do. Maybe its inventor(s) worked out the most optimal set of moves to make chess as satisfying as possible. Maybe there were religious or political motives in having bishops move diagonally. I have no idea. But whatever, it has no bearing on whether the layout of the board, the pieces, and the moves form a structural system. One last point. Delancey writes (citing Givon) that the functionalist program, unlike the formalist, is subject to disconfirmation. As long as one can make unconstrained appeal to 'competing motivations', I doubt the the functionalist program is disconfirmable (Croft makes a similar point). If you have a functional principle to explain A and another to explain not-A, and can appeal to either at will, then what is explained? So, in what seems to me to be a particularly notorious example, Haiman, in a 1983 paper in Language, has two iconic functional principles, one which says that the linguistic distance between expressions corresponds to the conceptual distance between them, and the other which says that the linguistic separateness of an expression corresponds to the conceptual independence of the object or event which it represents. At times they conflict with each other. He chooses the principle that gives the right results for the particular example, saying that in that case it 'wins out' over the other. It's true that there is functionalist work (eg Du Bois on split ergativity) that recognizes this problem and tries to deal with it, but in my reading of the functionalist literature this happens very rarely indeed. As long as there are zillions of potential functional causes out there, and no independent means for weighting their relative importance, the functionalist program is on very shaky ground. Fritz Newmeyer University of Washington (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 27 Mar 91 08:15 PST From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: MT TO: AMR -- I think you and I better call it quits. We obviously do not understand each other, and seem to answer questions that are not raised by the other party. Oh well. TO: John Goldsmith. Of course you are right. I am not arguing against present people trying to work on MT or even people in the past who did but rather at the attitude displayed by many of the engineers who thought it was all a very simple job because language was simple -- despite the attempts on the part of linguists and others like Bar Hillel who was a philosopher and not a card-carrying-linguist to say, look, guys, it's a rough problem -- even beyond the difficulties of lexical ambiguity. How many 'meanings' were assigned to TIME FLIES LIKE AN ARROW? I forget you may remember, John. and why FRUIT FLIES LIKE A BANANA has fewer meanings. Despite the fact that this discussion makes it crystal clear (I was always worried about anything which was said to be crystal clear) that Kuhn was right regarding the difficulty of persuading someone of an opposing view in science and that in order for one view to triumph all the antis have to die off. I wouldn't go quite so far but it does dramatize the fact that we cling tenaciously to our passionately held beliefs. Maybe that is a good thing. It would be awful if we switched our scientific allegiances each time a new argument was presented. Nothing would get done. Vicki (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 27 Mar 91 09:58:00 PST From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com Subject: Computational Linguists vs. 'Real' Linguists There have been a few disparaging remarks in this forum about the competence of computational linguists, as opposed to so-called theoretical linguists. I certainly want to endorse John Goldsmith's remarks about MT, a field that has been widely misunderstood and unjustly battered. (I had occasion to visit a DARPA official last year, and he expressed their intention, at least, to acknowledge the suitability of MT for funding once again.) But there are two subjects I would like to comment on: the conflicting goals between NLP research and theoretical linguistics, and the reputation of Mr. Schank. 1) What mainstream linguists need to understand is that computational linguists, for the most part, must deal with issues that relate to producing and interpreting language. Linguistic theory, for the most part, has not matured to the point where it has very interesting or useful things to say about these issues. More specifically, linguists tend not to concern themselves with how speakers and listeners RESOLVE ambiguity or handle linguistic ill-formedness. On the other hand, mainstream linguists seem to have a better grasp of what the potential ambiguities are in text or speech than do many computationalists. 2) Schank's school of thought is much maligned, not just in the mainstream linguistic community, but in the computational community as well. I think that some of the criticism is deserved, but we should not let it dim our appreciation of his positive contributions. The overriding theme of his work is sound: to understand language is not to transduce a linguistic structure, but to relate it to a train of thought (represented by "scripts", sets of "goals", etc.). It is not necessary for all aspects of linguistic structure to be perceived perfectly in order for language understanding to be carried off. (Notice that this claim does not apply to language production, which requires robust grammatical knowledge to implement.) I don't believe that Schank has ever claimed that *no* grammatical knowledge is needed to understand text. I believe that he has been a minimalist rather than a nihilist in this respect. In Chomsky-like fashion, he has taken a rather extreme position and stuck with it to see how far he could go. And, like Chomsky, he has gotten more mileage out of his ideas than most of his critics wanted or expected. And, as with Chomsky, we may wish to chide him from time to time for not stopping to ask directions along the way. (Formal linguists should please excuse the metaphor. :-) -Rick Wojcik (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 28 Mar 91 13:11:50 EST From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Locality David Pesetsky very kindly points out that I said the opposite of what I meant in my last posting on the cognitive/functional/ modular/local issue. By omitting a 'not' and putting in an inadvertent 'even', I appeared to say that I attribute to him (and others) the idea that people who do not work on locality principles should not be taken seriously as syntacticians. I did originally think that that was his (their) view. But, of course, the point of my last posting was to accept the reassurance that this is not the case. The offending para should have read (and, boy, do I have egg on my face for this typo!): (4) I stand corrected specifically on the issue of locality. From now, no one need to labor under the mistaken assumption (as I did for so long) that people may NOT work on SYNTACTIC THEORY and BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY if they do not account for locality phenomena as their first order of business. I am so sorry about the misunderstanding. But you don't know the relief I feel now that it has been corrected. [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0102] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0103. Saturday, 30 Mar 1991. Subj: 2.0103 Wordperfect, Fonts, IT Total: 177 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Wed, 27 Mar 91 18:15:56 -0600 From: phall@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (David Perelman-Hall) Subject: Re: Wordperfect (2) Date: Fri, 29 Mar 1991 05:05:24 -0500 From: Pierre Martin Subject: RE: phonetic fonts (3) Date: Fri, 29 Mar 91 10:47:09 MST From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz) Subject: IT and Shoebox (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 27 Mar 91 18:15:56 -0600 From: phall@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (David Perelman-Hall) Subject: Re: Wordperfect This is a reply to Alexis Manaster Ramer's request for help with symbols in WordPerfect. Much of what you can do with symbols depends on which version of WordPerfect you use. Hopefully you have version 5.0 or 5.1. If this is the case (even with Version 4.x I think), then it won't matter what printer you use, WordPerfect will generate appropriate printer codes to create whichever symbol you tell it to. To create symbols with WP 5.x, you use the compose feature. WP's help menu (the F3 key) will tell you how to use compose. There is also a file that comes with WP5.x which contains all the symbols which WP can print. You should call this file up into WP and print it out--though it 20 or 30 pages. Each symbol in this file lists the keystrokes you need to create it using the compose feature. The name of this file is charactr.doc. If you have any questions, please mail me. (PS--I'm fairly sure that there are phonetic symbols in this large file.) My e-mail address in phall@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu. (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 29 Mar 1991 05:05:24 -0500 From: Pierre Martin Subject: RE A.M.-Ramer: phonetic fonts We've been using TURBOFONTS 512 for 2 years here at Laval University. We have a matrix and a laser version, both working with WordPerfect 5.0. This software allows you to display (EGA or better) and print phonetic symbols, and foreign language characters (including arabic, hebrew, japanese, russian, etc.) in 10/12 pitch--10 point fonts. Contact: Image Processing Software, Inc. P.O. Box 5016 Pierre Martin Madison, WI. 53705 Laboratoire de phonetique et phonologie Dept de langues et linguistique Universite Laval Sainte-Foy, Quebec G1K 7P4 Canada tel.: (418) 656.3263 fax: (418) 656.2019 (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 29 Mar 91 10:47:09 MST From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz) Subject: IT and Shoebox Recently there was a request for help with IT. Regretably, I am not in a position to help anyone with IT, since I have never gone further than a single experiment about four years ago. I had no problems, apart from one fairly central limitation. The limitation was this: when you add interlinear glosses, particularly several levels of them, the length of the resulting bundle of lines (original and glosses) tends to increase significantly in length. This is because each column of material (original text units and annotations) is as wide as its widest element. Unfortunately, when a bundle of lines got too long to fit within the maximum line length, IT terminated execution (as I recall). The obvious thing to do would be to "continue" the bundle, by breaking it at the end of the last column that fit on the current "line." I do not recall any 40 line limit on the length of the text, and I think that I exceeded that limit in my only experiment with IT. I don't recall the version number for my version of IT, but it was the second and most recent issue, apart from partial updates available on special request. Here is some information on IT from the most recent SIL/JAARS Notes on Computing Newsletter (Jan-Feb 1991, Vol. 10, No. 1). p. 10.1.46a: "Yes, believe it or not, the "final" version of IT is nearing completion. Larry Versaw, the programmer of the IT software, presently works in Dallas, but during his evenings has been helping Gary [Simons] with bug fixes, a couple of new features, and checking the rewritten documentation. I'm [Linda Simons] still not going to be so foolish as to predict an actual shipping date, but at last I can report progress is being made." [They request that all users send in any neglected changes of address, in order to ensure that they receive notice of the update.] p. 10.1.37: [1988 SIL Computer Technical Conference motion] 9. (That ICS port the Macintosh version of IT to Windows:) No action has been taken. Shoebox is taking over from IT and a Windows version will be developed. ------- Note that Shoebox, a newer SIL product, created by John Wimbish at the Ambon, Indonesia SIL branch, has many of the interlinearizing features of IT. Shoebox is ostensibly a menu-driven lexical database system, and as such it is able to slip from raw text, which naturally makes interlinearizing (glossing) desirable, so, of course, it has many of the features of IT! It's also a lot easier to use. And it is able to break bundles that get too long, without losing stride! JEK Per the Shoebox manual (p. 141) `In making a choice between the two programs [Shoebox and IT], the key difference can be summarized as follows: If your goal is to develop your lexicon in an integrated manner while interlinearizing, choose Shoebox. If your goal is interlinearizing, with no concern for any other related processes, you are probably better off with IT. Whereas Shoebox shines in the are[a] of having all data on line and integrated, IT is more flexible in its verify mode possibilities, and is also faster. On the other hand Shoebox provides more editing functions during the interlinearizing process, together with a simple parser [of morphological forms]. Future Shoebox versions should see the gap in functionality between the two programs continue to narrow.' In my opinion, Shoebox is a must for [DOS based] linguists doing either (a) fieldwork or (b) lexical work. The package consists of the manual, plus diskettes. To order, contact: Academic Book Center Summer Institute of Linguistics 7500 W. Camp Wisdom Road Dallas, TX 75236 or: Software Librarian International Computing Services Jungle Aviation and Radio Service, Inc. Box 248 Waxhaw, NC 28173 Specify the type of disks you want - 5.25 in. or 3.5 in.! The price (with shipping and handling) is c. $13.00. The Academic Book Center, at least, prefers to send an invoice for the exact amount. Since the price is so low, it seems quite feasible to require the manual as a text in field methods classes, though I don't know if this has been done anywhere. Ovbiously the hitch is that the students, department, or school have to supply the computers. In addition, Shoebox on a notebook sounds like a really terrific tool for fieldwork. Shoebox is a very hot item in and out of SIL use, and it should be supported for some time to come. The current release is Version 1.2, and 2 is already in the works. John Wimbish has been brought to Waxhaw to work on it. Significatly improvements in the special character facilities are one of the features being added. The current features aren't bad. Shoebox is one of those packages that gives you more than you thought you wanted and then makes you realize that you also need ... ----- All recommendations are my own, and do not reflect the practice or policies of my employers. [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0103] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0104. Saturday, 30 Mar 1991. Subj: 2.0104 Queries and Conference Total: 156 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Tue, 26 Mar 1991 06:55:47 -0500 From: Patrick Drouin Subject: Francais fondamental et VGOS (2) Date: Wed, 27 Mar 91 13:48:12 GMT From: Margaret Fleck Subject: reference on temporal connectives (3) Date: Thu, 28 Mar 1991 16:30 MST From: CAROLG@CC.UTAH.EDU Subject: Re: Reviewers with expertise in Fur Wanted (4) Date: Thu, 28 Mar 91 21:31 EST From: PSAMPAT@grad.cis.temple.edu Subject: info on discourse analysis wanted (5) Date: Fri, 29 Mar 91 11:19:14 +0100 (MET) From: garof@sixcom.sixcom.it (Joe Giampapa) Subject: language collisions (6) Date: Thu, 28 Mar 91 15:24 EST From: Subject: Ozark English (7) Date: Thu, 28 Mar 91 15:20 EST From: Subject: CALL FOR PAPERS FOR SAADS 1991 (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 26 Mar 1991 06:55:47 -0500 From: Patrick Drouin Subject: Francais fondamental et VGOS I am looking for the electronic version of the list of words from the following books: Le francais fondamental (1er degre) Le francais fondamental (2e degre) Le vocabulaire general d'orientation scientifique (known as the VGOS) I have the lists in the litterature but I just don't feel like typing them. I would appreciate if anyone who could help to contact me directly at the address below. Patrick Drouin Departement de langues et de linguistique Universite Laval BitNet : padrouin@lavalvm1 InterNet : padrouin@vm1.ulaval.ca (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 27 Mar 91 13:48:12 GMT From: Margaret Fleck Subject: reference on temporal connectives Does anyone have a full bibliographic reference for a paper circulated by the IULC in 1978 by Hein\"am\"aki on the meaning of temporal connectives? Margaret Fleck (fleck@robots.oxford.ac.uk) (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 28 Mar 1991 16:30 MST From: CAROLG@CC.UTAH.EDU Subject: Re: Reviewers with expertise in Fur Wanted Wanted: reviewers with expertise in Fur (Congo-Nile). If anyone out there has such, please reply to me: carolg@cc.utah.edu (Or let me know if you can refer me to someone else.) Thanks, Carol Georgopoulos (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 28 Mar 91 21:31 EST From: PSAMPAT@grad.cis.temple.edu Subject: info on discourse analysis wanted Hi, I am a new member on the list.I am not sure whether my question is within the field(PSYCHOLINGUISTICS).I am doing some work for a paper on "INFORMATION STRUCTURE" with reference to Cohesion at the sentence level in DISCOURSE ANALYSIS(I have referred HALLIDAY,CHAFE,CLARK,GRIMES,PRINCE etc). If anyone has any info on any recent(since 1985) papers on this topic please inform.Thanks Pragnesh Sampat psampat@grad.cis.temple.edu (5) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 29 Mar 91 11:19:14 +0100 (MET) From: garof@sixcom.sixcom.it (Joe Giampapa) Subject: language collisions The "phenomena": a multilingual person pronounces (at least) two words at the same time. Ex. English "what" with the Italian "cosa", may yield "quosa" or "quat" or an unintelligible utterance. More often than not, it is an unintelligible utterance. Question 1: Is there a name for this "phenomena"? Would this be studied as a component of linguistic competence? Question 2: Has it been studied before, or at least cited in a reference? Question 3: Has anyone ever had any experience(s) with this? -Joe Giampapa garof@sixcom.sixcom.it garof%sixcom.sixcom.it@uunet.uu.net (6) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 28 Mar 91 15:24 EST From: Subject: Ozark English I am currently completing my book on Ozark speech. I seek information about unpublished or hard to find articles, book, etc. on the subject, including material on verbal taboos and literary dialect as well as the usual dialect topics. Send information to Bethany Dumas Department of English University of Tennessee Knoxville, TN 37996-0430 USA (7) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 28 Mar 91 15:20 EST From: Subject: CALL FOR PAPERS FOR SAADS 1991 I am currently (through May 1) accepting abstracts for the South Atlantic American Dialect Society Section Meeting (with the South Atlantic Modern Language Association) in Atlanta Nov. 14-16. The suggested theme (not exclusive) is "Language of Law and Liturgy." The purpose of the theme is to encourage submissions on the topic of institutional language, particularly law and the church. Send abstracts (300 or fewer words) for 20-minute papers by May 1 to Bethany Dumas English Department University of Tennessee Knoxville, TN 37996-0430 USA [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0104] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0105. Sunday, 31 Mar 1991. Subj: 2.0105 Functionalism Total: 151 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Date: Tue, 26 Mar 91 20:36:32 EST From: Ellen Prince Subject: Re: Functional Linguistics (2) Date: Fri, 29 Mar 91 13:45:39 PST From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com Subject: formal and functional approaches (3) Date: Fri, 29 Mar 91 15:09:59 -0500 (EST) From: Brian MacWhinney Subject: Is functionalism Inherently Shaky? (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 26 Mar 91 20:36:32 EST From: Ellen Prince Subject: Re: Functional Linguistics >Date: Sun, 24 Mar 1991 10:53 PST >From: Scott Delancey >Subject: autonomous linguistics [...] >Poser and Everett, among others, seem to treat "cognitive" and "functionalist" , >in this context, as synonymous. This is both correct and incorrect (ass >any functionalist or cognitive grammarian would predict, of course; this >is how catgorization works); the essential point in which it is correct >is that all of the various research programs (there are at least three >clearly distinguishable ones) which fall under one or the other of these >terms share an unwillingness to accept a priori the assumption that >significant aspects of morphology and syntax (phonology is likely a >different story) are to be explained only in terms of language-specific >formal priniciples. at the risk of starting yet another long-winded debate, i must point out that there are those of us who consider ourselves 'functionalists' (in that we study the discourse and/or processing functions of linguistic form) who indeed do accept that significant aspects of syntax are to be explained only in terms of (autonomous-)language-faculty-specific formal principles. (i'm assuming that's what scott meant, not 'language-specific'.) furthermore, i for one have never seen any compelling evidence to the contrary, although i have seen a good deal that supports this position. so let's not be too quick to make generalizations about what various 'Xists' do or do not believe, ok guys? (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 29 Mar 91 13:45:39 PST From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com Subject: formal and functional approaches I don't quite agree with Fritz Newmeyer's view that 'formal' and 'functional' approaches are compatible, but maybe that is because half the discussion over these two approaches (trends?) seems to be an attempt to define just what they mean. I did appreciate Fritz's attempt to say where formalists and functionalists differ: > ...As I see it, the task of the > formalist is to characterize the structural possibilities of language, > both universal and language-particular. The task of the functionalist > is to elucidate the principles (largely nonspecific to language) > governing how those structures are employed in actual discourses. > Thus each will find different data relevant to their concerns... First of all, I think that this underscores a point I made recently about the needs of computational linguists. Although NLP research owes a great deal to the work of formalists, NLP researchers really need to be wary of formal linguists who want to sell their programs without really understanding what the customer wants. Being able to enumerate grammatical structures is largely worthless if you can't say how they are employed in actual discourses. You have to know what to do with the structures once you have them. Come to think of it, this point probably applies to most everybody outside the field of linguistics who are interested in linguistic phenomena. They like their skeletons covered with flesh. Secondly, I would like to point out that "the principles...governing how ...structures are employed in actual discourse" cannot possibly be nonspecific to language. They make crucial reference to the structures that are specific to language. The strategy that tells me how to use a relative clause has to know what a relative clause looks like, doesn't it? In order to produce a discourse, I have to know everything there is to know about the structural possibilities of discourses, don't I? It is true that I might understand the ill-formed sentence "I filed the paper after reading" in the way it was intended by the linguistic perpetrator, but does this mean that the rule which tells me that the participle is missing an object is *not* a rule of language use? All I can glean from that sentence is that the speaker doesn't employ the same linguistic strategies that I do. It should not compromise anyone's functionalist ideology to believe that such sentences are low-frequency because they violate regular strategies governing the production of English. So I don't agree at all that "the functionalist...will show little interest" in ungrammatical sentences. The question of grammatical well-formedness is (or ought to be) as important for functionalists as for formalists. If some functionalists disagreed with this point, I would not take it as an endorsement of a formalist approach, but rather as an indictment of their rendering of the functionalist approach. -Rick Wojcik (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 29 Mar 91 15:09:59 -0500 (EST) From: Brian MacWhinney Subject: Is functionalism Inherently Shaky? Fritz Newmeyer correctly notes that functionalist approaches must include some way of deciding the competition between conflicting motives. For example, if we say that the noun preceding a transitive verb in English is typically agential, we need to invoke some competing principle to account for the word order found in the passive. It is true that some functionalist accounts have failed to include such mechanisms. However, there is also a substantial body of work which makes use of the concepts of cue validity, cue cost, and cue strength within a mathematically explicit framework to escape the problem cited by Newmeyer. The full solution to the problem requires at least three levels of analysis. On the first level, one identifies the cues and motives that compete in sentence processing and language change. This level of analysis was already fairly solid in the functionalism of the 1970's. On the second level, one makes a psychometric/psycholingustic commitment to the empirical measurement of cue strength. For an excellent example of this form of analysis, see the fuzzy logic model in "Speech Perception by Ear and Eye" 1987 by Dominic Massaro. On the third level, one makes a commitment to predicting cue strength from the basic cue validity properties of the input to the language learner, as they are attenuated by cue cost factors. The concepts of cue validity and cue cost are applied to data on sentence processing in over a dozen languages in "The Crosslinguistic Study of Sentence Processing" by B. MacWhinney and E. Bates (Eds.) 1989. My guess is that, once he has taken a look at the Competition Model in the book edited by MacWhinney and Bates, Newmeyer will ask for still further commitments regarding the determinants of cue cost. A primary goal of psycholingusitics is the elucidation of detailed facts about cue costs as possible determinants of language universals. However, it believe that the mathematicization of the functionalist model presented in the MacWhinney-Bates book goes a long way toward addressing Newmeyer's concerns and demonstrating that functionalist linguistics need not rest on an empirically shaky foundation. --Brian MacWhinney Carnegie Mellon University [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0105] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0106. Sunday, 31 Mar 1991. Subj: 2.0106 Language Families and Phonology Total: 152 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Date: Tue, 26 Mar 1991 08:57 PST From: Scott Delancey Subject: Re: Language Families (2) Date: Thu, 28 Mar 91 13:23:00 EST From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Language Families (3) Date: Fri, 29 Mar 1991 04:47:21 -0500 From: Pierre Martin Subject: RE rwojcik: phonology (4) Date: Fri, 29 Mar 91 11:58:25 -0900 From: "ACAD3A::FFJAL1" Subject: Consonant cooccurrence constraints for roots (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 26 Mar 1991 08:57 PST From: Scott Delancey Subject: Re: Language Families To reply to Stahlke's note: There has been some discussion of the relevance of Greenberg's success in African classification to the evaluation of his American work. Certainly Greenberg and Ruhlen have not been shy about bringing it up, and at the conference on Greenberg's work at Colorado last year Paul Newman gave a paper making essentially your argument, i.e. Greenberg was right then, so using the same methods he's probably right now. The conservative Americanist response to this is to argue that American languages are much more diverse than African languages (or at least than N-K languages), so a slipshod method that might bring results in Africa where the languages really are related can't automatically be imported into the Americas where there's so much more diversity. The Greenbergian reply is that Americanists obviously don't know anything about African languages, which in fact show every bit as much diversity as American languages (that's a tricky thing to measure, needless to say), and that anyway the method couldn't give results if applied to languages that were really unrelated. Scott DeLancey (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 28 Mar 91 13:23:00 EST From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Language Families One more objection to the work on Nostratic and Sino-Caucasian has been received, in response I guess to Starostin's remark in Sc. Am. that words for 'hand' are never borrowed. This was taken by some to mean that perhaps the work on these two language families is crucially based on such arbitrary dicta about possible borrowing patterns. Such is not the case. First, the claims about what is borrowable are based on extensive research by Starostin and Dolgopolsky (although I have some reservations on this whole line of their work). Second, and more to the point, the work on Nostratic and S-C does NOT, as far as I can see, depend on any such assumptions any more than does the research on IE or Romance. Incidentally, I would appreciate an example, if someone knows one of a borrowed word for 'hand'. I myself know of one example of a borrowed word for 'heart' (which is perhaps even better, since 'hand' words are notorious for being unstable, whereas 'heart' words are not). The Polish word for 'heart' was borrowed in the late Middle Ages from Czech. Any other examples involving basic body parts (i.e., not things like uvula) would also be appreciated. My own view (as also of such people as Gerard Diffloth) is that borrowing patterns are highly culture-specific and so not a reasonable topic for universalist speculations (or, perhaps I should say, an even less reasonable topic for universalist speculation than other aspects of language). I note with interest the recent posting in praise of Greenberg's classification of African languages. I have always wondered what Africanists make of it. However, even if he was successful there, it does not follow that he would be in the American case, since the two appear to be quite different. Unless I am mistaken, the Africanist situation at the time was that people were making really fundamental mistakes like classifying languages typologically (e.g., by whether they have nominal classes), taking Bantu to be a separate family, and so on. I do not know of any comparable mistakes in the Americanist field. So, while Greenberg did a great job clearing up such problems in Africa, it is not clear what he can contribute to the Americas. Of course, I may be wrong about the scope of his Africanist achievements. I don't think I am about the Americanist ones. (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 28 Mar 91 07:31 EST From: BACH@cs.umass.EDU Subject: Joos and the Boas tradition When I was studying languages (not language) at the University of Chicago, one of my professors, John Kunstmann, used to thunder at us: Verify your references!! The Joos ascription is misleading, at best. The passage is presumably the one on p. 228 of Joos, Martin, ed. 1957. *Readings in Linguistics I.* ACLS. [I'm looking at the 4th edition, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.] J. is commenting on Hockett's Peiping Phonology: "In his [i.e. "the practicing analyst, in the American sense"'s EB] Boas tradition (languages can differ without limit as to either extent or direction),..." Note the ascription to the Boas tradition. It is a separate question whether this is a reasonable characterization of that tradition as it is whether Joos approved of that claim or not. Emmon Bach (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 29 Mar 1991 04:47:21 -0500 From: Pierre Martin Subject: RE rwojcik: phonology There is at least one school of thought in current phonological theory which practices a clear distinction between the purely phonic component of a language (=phonology) and the constraints imposed on the distinctive units by morphemes and vice-versa (moneme variants= morphology, and not morphonology!) This is the (structuralist) functionalist approach of Andre Martinet and his Paris School. (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 29 Mar 91 11:58:25 -0900 From: "ACAD3A::FFJAL1" Subject: Consonant cooccurrence constraints for roots Na-Dene languages have series cooccurrence constraints for CVC roots: essentially, sibilants and shibilants may not cooccur. For details, see Krauss, Michael E. 1964. Proto-Athabaskan-Eyak and the problem of Na-Dene I: Phonology. IJAL 30:118-131 Leer, Jeff. 1990. Tlingit: a portmanteau language family? In Linguistic change and reconstruction methodology. Trends in Linguistics Studies and Monographs 45, ed. Philip Baldi, pp. 73-98. [The information is in note 24. Essentially, I account for the fact that Tlingit lacks glottalized sh, whereas it has glottalized s, by proposing that the former merged with the latter. "The evidence relates to a restriction on cooccur- rence of different affricate series in the stem: [sibilant] and [shibilant]- series obstruents cannot cooccur unless the [sibilant]-series obstruent is _s'_. However, if the _s'_ in these cases represents a merger of what were originally *_$'_ and *_s'_, these cases would not have been exceptional before the merger took place." Note $=s-hachek.] [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0106] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0107. Monday, 1 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0107 Responses: Arabic, Ozark, English, WP, Pear, Phonology Total: 168 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Sat, 30 Mar 1991 10:07 CST From: EUBANK@vaxb.acs.unt.edu Subject: Re: Agreement in Arabic (2) Date: Sat, 30 Mar 91 11:03 PST From: Pamela Munro Subject: Ozark English (3) Date: Sat, 30 Mar 91 13:12:14 -0600 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Subject-Verb Agreement in English (4) Date: Sat, 30 Mar 91 16:18:04 EST From: John_M._Lawler@ub.cc.umich.edu Subject: Pear Stories! (5) Date: Sun, 31 Mar 91 01:05:11 EST From: Michael Covington Subject: Re: Wordperfect, Fonts, IT (6) Date: Sun, 31 Mar 91 17:15:46 EST From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Vowels and Stress (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 30 Mar 1991 10:07 CST From: EUBANK@vaxb.acs.unt.edu Subject: Re: Agreement in Arabic To alison henry, re agreement in arabic I don't know the answers to your questions myself, but I do know of a person who would: Jamal Ouhalla, Queen Mary and Westfield College, London University. He's probably got e-mail, but I don't have an address for him. He's into functional projections. Lynn Eubank (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 30 Mar 91 11:03 PST From: Pamela Munro Subject: Ozark English In Reply to 2-104 I'm sure Bethany Dumas knows this, but just in case others aren't aware of it, one of the major sources on the linguistics of Ozark English is Suzette Haden Elgin (perhaps best known to many as the author of the books on Verbal Self=Defense). I don't know if Suzette does e-mail, but she can be reached through the Ozark Center for Language Studies, PO Box 1137, Huntsville AL 72740. Pam Munro u (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 30 Mar 91 13:12:14 -0600 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Subject-Verb Agreement in English Susan Fischer notes a class of existential constructions in English where Subject-Verb agreement can evidently be violated. Her example involves num- ber agreement, but there are also cases involving lack of agreement in per- son. Consider e.g. the title of the song 'Till there was (*were!) you' from 'The Music Man'. Failure of both person and number agreement can be found in sentences like 'There was me, Bill and two people I didn't know'. If the sentence seems a bit forced in isolation, consider it in a context like 'Not many people showed up for the meeting. ...' Michael Kac (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 30 Mar 91 16:18:04 EST From: John_M._Lawler@ub.cc.umich.edu Subject: Pear Stories! I have been in communication with Wally Chafe, and he tells me that Prints of the Pear Film are available from: W.A. Palmer Films, 1475 Old Country Rd., Belmont, CA 94002 U.S.A. The last reported price for a print of the film is US$125.98. However, the price for a VHS videotape is US$20, plus shipping. Wally adds: "It is essential that you tell them that you want a copy of the film called 'Linguistics Department'. Otherwise they won't be able to find it." Seems appropriate... -J (5) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 31 Mar 91 01:05:11 EST From: Michael Covington Subject: Re: Wordperfect, Fonts, IT Turbofonts is unnecessary if you have Word Perfect 5.1, which has a gigantic character set all its own (including Greek, Russian, Kana, etc.) and can print on any printer using graphics mode. At Georgia we are still planning to distribute a font that fills in the few commonly used phonetic symbols that are not in the Word Perfect set. When we have something available, we will announce it here. --------------------------------------------------------- Michael A. Covington internet mcovingt@uga.cc.uga.edu Artificial Intelligence Programs bitnet MCOVINGT@UGA Graduate Studies Research Center phone 404 542-0359 The University of Georgia fax 404 542-0349 Athens, Georgia 30602 bix, mci mail MCOVINGTON U.S.A. packet radio N4TMI@WB4BSG (6) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 31 Mar 91 17:15:46 EST From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Vowels and Stress (1) Given that even the simplest question about phonological examples seems to elicit (meta)theoretical controversy, may I suggest that from now on people specify (both in queries and responses) the kind of phonological representation they are talking about. For example, phonetic, phonemic (and if so what kind), morphophonemic (alias underlying, and if so, according to which fashion of analysis). (2) There are examples of English nouns where a closed penult is not stressed and the antepenult is instead, where it does not seem possible to claim that they are disyllablic at an SPE-style underlying level, e.g. Orchestra, pOdagra (for some speakers, at least), ClArendon, CAvendish, Ogilvi(e), badminton. There is also example of a final syllable containing a tense vowel which does not seem to be derivable (SPE-style) from a lax one but which does not take either primary or secondary stress, viz., diabEtes (with "flapped" t!). (3) Regarding the question about languages which not only have more than one "reduced" vowel, I believe the question was ultimately restated in such a way that what it boils down to is: Is there a language in which there are more vowels under stress than without stress, where there exists a fully productive (perhaps even automatic) system of alternations between the stressed and unstressed sets, and the unstressed set contains MORE THAN ONE element? If so, most if not all of the examples many of us sent in were irrelevant (including mine). But what then seem to be relevant would be cases like Italian open and closed [e], which only contrast under stress, and where alternations are easy to demonstrate by adding various suffixes. Likewise, Korean long and short vowels under stress, only short without stress, alternations in compounds. And there are many other such examples (even some in English). In all these cases, the alternation is automatic, and there are fewer vowels without stress than under stress (but more than 1). However, often, the unstressed vowels are not "phonetically reduced" ( whatever that means precisely). [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0107] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0108. Monday, 1 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0108 Conferences: SAMLA, Southeast Asian, SPP Total: 489 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Sun, 31 Mar 91 14:36:51 CST From: nm1@Ra.MsState.Edu (Natalie Maynor) Subject: Re: South Atlantic MLA (2) Date: Sun, 31 Mar 91 16:01:21 EST From: martha ratliff Subject: Southeast Asian Linguistics Society: May conference (3) Date: Sun, 31 Mar 91 22:02 MST From: BLOOM@ccit.arizona.edu Subject: SPP schedule and registration (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 31 Mar 91 14:36:51 CST From: nm1@Ra.MsState.Edu (Natalie Maynor) Subject: Re: South Atlantic MLA Bethany's call for papers for SAADS/SAMLA reminded me that I should repeat the call for papers I posted on this list the day the list was born (I think). At that time there were probably no more than five or six subscribers. May 1 is also the deadline for abstracts (300 words or fewer) for the linguistics section of South Atlantic Modern Language Association. You can send abstracts by e-mail to nm1@ra.msstate.edu or by snail-mail to Natalie Maynor, Drawer E, Mississippi State, MS 39762, USA. I am acknowledging receipt of all abstracts sent via e-mail. --Natalie (nm1@ra.msstate.edu) (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 31 Mar 91 16:01:21 EST From: martha ratliff Subject: Southeast Asian Linguistics Society: May conference The first meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society will be held at Wayne State University in Detroit on May 9 through 11, 1991. The featured speakers are Gerard Diffloth of Cornell University, speaking on "Vietnamese as a Mon-Khmer Language" and James A. Matisoff of the University of California-Berkeley, speaking on "The Mother of All Morphemes: 'Big Mama' in Sino-Tibetan and Elsewhere". More information is available from Martha Ratliff: mratlif@waynest1.bitnet or mratlif@cms.cc.wayne.edu. (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 31 Mar 91 22:02 MST From: BLOOM@ccit.arizona.edu Subject: SPP schedule and registration PROGRAM, RESERVATION FORMS AND TRAVEL INFORMATION FOR SOCIETY FOR PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOLOGY 1991 MEETING SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY JUNE 9-12, 1991 MEETING SITE: Seven Hills Conference Center (west side of the San Francisco State University campus, off Lake Merced Blvd.) PROGRAM N = Nobhill Room P = Presidio Room SUNDAY, JUNE 9 9:00-11:00 Symposium I: Meaning Holism and Conceptual Role Semantics (N) Chair: Janet Levin (Philosophy, USC) Speakers: 1. Ernie Lepore and Jerry Fodor (Philosophy, Rutgers University) 2. Ned Block (Linguistics and Philosophy, MIT) 3. Michael Devitt (Philosophy, U Md/College Park) 11:00-11:15 break 11:15-12:15 Contributed paper 1 (N) Chair: Speaker: Christopher Gauker (Philosophy, University of Cincinnati) "Similarity judgments" Commentator: Robert MacCauley (Philosophy, Emory University) 11:15-12:15 Contributed paper 2 (P) Chair: Jane Duran (Philosophy, UC/Santa Barbara) Speaker: Dan Riesberg (Psychology, Reed College) and Deborah Chambers (Psychology, North Dakota State U.) "Images depict; images describe" Commentator: Kyle Cave (Psychology, Vanderbilt) 12:15-1:15 LUNCH 1:15-2:15 Contributed paper 3 Chair: Larry Birnbaum (Institute for the Learning Sciences, Northwestern University) Speaker: David Kirsh (Cognitive Science, UC/San Diego) "Some problems with the logicist view of artificial intelligence" Commentator: Pat Hayes (MCC) 1:15-2:15 Contributed paper 4 Chair: Irving Krakow (Philosophy, Camden County College) Speaker: Carol Slater (Psychology, Alma College) "Explaining behavior: why we can't lean on learning" Commentator: Joe Levine (Philosophy, NC State/Raleigh) 2:15-2:30 break 2:30-4:30 Symposium II: Is mathematics innate? (N) Chair: Speakers: 1. Karen Wynn (Psychology, U Arizona/Tucson) "Psychological evidence against empiricist theories of mathematical knowledge" 2. Robert Schwartz (Philosophy, U Wisconsin/Milwaukee) "Is mathematics innate?" 3. Philip Kitcher (Philosophy, UCSD) 4:30-4:45 break 4:45-6:00 Keynote address (N) Chair: Jerry Fodor (Philosophy, Rutgers University) Speaker: Steve Pinker (Brain and Cognitive Science, MIT) Title: "Rules and associations in human language" MONDAY, JUNE 10 9:00-11:00 Symposium III: The Roots of Social Cognition (N) Chair: Speakers: 1. Leda Cosmides (Psychology, UC/Santa Barbara) "The logic of social exchange versus the logic of logic" 2. Alan Fiske (Psychology, U Penn) "Innate hypotheses and cultural parameters for social relations" 3. Donald Symons (Anthropology, UC/Santa Barbara) 11:00-11:15 break 11:15-12:15 Contributed paper 5 Chair: Owen Flanagan (Philosophy, Wellesley College) Speaker: Janet Andrews (Psychology, Vassar College) "The role of prototypes in understanding category concepts: a critical assessment" Commentator: Margery Lucas (Psychology, Wellesley College) 11:15-12:15 Contributed paper 6 Chair: Speaker: Anthony Dardis (Philosophy, University of Georgia/Athens) "Content externalism and causal relevance" Commentator: Carol Cleland (Philosophy, University of Colorado/Boulder) 12:15-1:15 LUNCH 1:15-2:15 Contributed paper 7 Chair: Paul Pietroski (Philosophy, McGill Univ.) Speaker: Alvin Goldman (Philosophy, University of Arizona/Tucson) "Mental concepts, self-ascription, and consciousness" Commentator: Paul Boghossian (Philosophy, University of Michigan) 1:15-2:15 Contributed paper 8 Chair: Speaker: Naomi Goldblum (Psychology, Hebrew University) "The distinctiveness of metaphor: a psycholinguistic study" Commentator: Eva Kittay (Philosophy (SUNY/Stony Brook) 2:15-2:30 break 2:30-4:30 Symposium IV: Are Humans Rational? (N) Chair: ?? Speakers 1. Stuart Silvers (Philosophy, Clemson University) "Cognitive performance and assessment, epistemological norms, and the relativity of reason" 2. John Tooby (Psychology, UC/Santa Barbara) "Ecological rationality" 3. Edward Stein (Philosophy, Williams College & MIT) 7:00-8:30 Banquet (N) 8:30-10:00 Presidential Address (N) Chair: Patricia Kitcher (Philosophy, UCSD) Speaker: Ray Jackendoff (Program in Linguistics and Cognitive Science, Brandeis) Title: "Is there a faculty of social cognition?" TUESDAY, JUNE 11 9:00-10:00 Invited talk (N) Chair: Kent Bach (Philosophy, San Francisco State) Speaker: Michael Scriven (Pacific Graduate School of Psychology, Palo Alto, CA) Title: "Implicit rules in logic" 10:00-10:15 break 10:15-12:15 Symposium V: Prototype Theory and Concept Stability Chair: Ken Livingston (Psychology, Vassar College) Speakers 1. Georges Rey (Philosophy, U Md/College Park) "Concepts and reference fixers" 2. Alison Gopnik (Psychology, UC/Berkeley) "Concepts as theories: who's afraid of semantic holism" 3. George Bealer (Philosophy, UColorado/Boulder) "Philosophical constraints on a theory of concepts" 12:15-1:15 LUNCH 1:15-2:15 Contributed papers 9 (N)+(P) Chair: A.A. Howsepian (Philosophy, Notre Dame) Speakers: G. Lynn Stephens & George Graham (Philosophy, Univ of Alabama/Birmingham) "Introspective identification and disturbances of self consciousness" Commentator: Jennifer Church (Philosophy, Vassar College) 1:15-2:15 Contributed papers 10 (N)+(P) Chair: Anti Bax (Clemson University) Speaker: Kirk Ludwig (Philosophy, University of Florida/Gainesville) "How can reasons be causally relevant to what we do?" Commentator: Fred Dretske (Philosophy, Stanford University) 2:15-2:30 break 2:30-3:30 Contributed papers 11 (N)+(P) Chair: Speaker: Louise Antony (Philosophy, NC State University/Raleigh) "Rabbit pots and supernovas: on the relevance of psychological data to linguistic theory" Commentator: Scott Soames (Philosophy, Princeton University) 2:30-3:30 Contributed paper 12 (N)+(P) Chair: Speaker: Peter Ludlow (Philosophy, SUNY/Stony Brook) "In defense of the dual aspect theory" Commentator: Barbara Von Eckardt (University of Nebraska/Lincoln) 3:30-3:45 break 3:45-5:45 Contributed papers 13 & 14 (P) [B Chair: Jeffrey Poland (Psychology, U Nebraska/Lincoln) Speaker: Rob Wilson (Philosophy, Cornell University) "Individualism and causal powers" Commentator: Terry Horgan (Philosophy, Memphis State University) Speaker: Joseph Owens (Philosophy, University of Minnesota/Twin Cities) "Psychophysical supervenience and inner access" Commentator: Piers Rawling (Philosophy, University of Georgia/Athens) 3:45-5:45 Invited lecture (N) Chair: Speaker: Randy Gallistel (Psychology, UC/Berkeley) Title: "Is the associative bond the phlogiston of psychology?" Discussants: 1. Paul Churchland (Philosophy, UCSD) 2. Ben Williams (Psychology, UCSD) 5:45-6:30 Business meeting (N) WED JUNE 12 9:00-12:00 Symposium VI: Consciousness Chair: Speakers: 1. Dan Dennett (Philosophy, Tufts University) "Time and the brain: escape from the theater of consciousness" 2. Robert Van Gulick (Philosophy, Syracuse University) "Understanding the phenomenal mind" 3. Benjamin Libet (Physiology, School of Medicine, UC/San Francisco) "The cerebral time-on theory for conscious and unconscious mental function" 4. David Rosenthal (Philosophy, Graduate Center/CUNY) ........................................ Accomodations: Lodging is available at reasonable rates at two on campus locations. Both the Guest Center (hotel-like) and the Residence Halls (shared bath) are very near the Conference Center. Accomodations are available only in a complete package which includes 4 nights lodging (begining night of June 8) and breakfast and lunch each day of the conference. Rates are given on the Reservation Form (below). Limited availability for the Guest Center, so reservations will be taken in order received. (If you request the Guest Center and end up booked in the Residence Hall, the difference will be refunded at registration.) Please note that the SPP must supply SFSU with a guest list and full payment 30 days in advance to hold reservations. So please send your reservation and payment ASAP and by April 30 at the latest. Doubles can not be reserved until both persons register. STAYING ON: If you want to stay in SF for a few extra days, space should be available. Please indicate such an interest on the registration form. ARRIVAL: Check in time: after 3:00 PM Sat. June 8 (On Saturday 6/8 only - come to lounge of Verducci Hall, the only SFSU building on Lake Merced Boulevard. On other days registration will be at Conference Center) Check out time: 2:00 PM Wed. June 12 CHILDREN: Unfortunately insurance provisions do not permit children in SFSU lodging. .................................................... REGISTRATION & ROOM RESERVATIONS Room and Board (4 nights + 4 breakfasts & lunches) Guest Center: Single: $290. *Double Occ: $210. per person Residence Hall Single: $180. *Double Occ: $120. per person Total: $_____ (*If Double Occupancy, list name of person you are sharing with ___________________________) .................................................... CONFERENCE REGISTRATION: Member: $20 Nonmember: $30 Student: $10. $_________ .................................................... 1991 SPP MEMBERSHIP DUES: Regular: $15 Student: $ 5 (New members may pay 1991 dues and register as members.) $_________ ................................................... PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS BANQUET June 10 Price: $18.00 $_________ .................................................... 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Take 19th Ave. exit; bear right onto Sagamore Blvd. to Brotherhood Way to Junipero Serra Blvd north. Take Junipero Serra to Holloway Ave., turn left on Holloway to 19th Ave. LOCAL TRANSIT: From downtown San Francisco, take the Muni No. 17 Express (2nd and Market Streets) or the M Streetcar. For further information about any aspect of local arrangements call Kent Bach at 415-665-1040 The Program Chairs wish to thank the following for their help in refereeing contributed papers: Louise Antony, Kent Bach, Ned Block, Denise Cummins, A.J. Figuerado, Owen Flanagan, Alvin Goldman, George Graham, Kerry Green, Eli Hirsch, Terry Horgan, Eva Kittay, Ernie LePore, Dan Lloyd, Chris Maloney, Charles Marks, Bob Matthews, Lynn Nadel, Janet Nicol, Sarah Patterson, Paul Pietroski, William Rappoport, Georges Rey, Mark Richard, Bob Schwartz, Stuart Silvers, Varda Solomon, Ed Stein, Bob Van Gulik, Barbara Von Eckhardt, Stephen White, David Wong, Karen Wynn, Palle Yourgrau Program Chairs: Jerry Samet (Philosophy, Brandeis University) Paul Bloom (Psychology, University of Arizona) [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0108] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0109. Tuesday, 2 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0109 Functionalism Total: 126 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: 30 Mar 91 15:33:57 EST Subject: Newmeyer and functionalism From: JASKE@bat.bates.edu (2) Date: Sun, 31 Mar 91 20:01:33 -0600 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Functionalism vs. Formalism (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 30 Mar 91 15:33:57 EST Subject: Newmeyer and functionalism From: JASKE@bat.bates.edu I think that someone more qualified than myself from the functionalist camp should, and probably will, answer the recent contribution by Fritz Newmeyer (Vo. 2, No. 0102, 3/29/91). However, I can't resist the temptation and will have a couple of words to say about it. As far as I'm concerned formal accounts of linguistic data are fine as tighter restatements of some generalization or observation about the data, but as far as being explanatory I don't find them very interesting. Formulas that "account for" interplanetary attraction and so on are also not very interesting explanatorily speaking, but in that area we may not be able to go beyond that for now. Language is different though: We can go an awful long way towards understanding/explaning linguistic phenomena without resorting to formal principles of hocus pocus. For example we can go a long ways towards understanding/explaining island phenomena functionally without resorting to abstract barriers (cf e.g. Van Valin 1986, CLS 22/2). It is hard for me to understand why anyone would want to treat one extreme of the grammaticalization scale (the "exceptionless" end, if there is such a thing) as one type of phenomenon (be it subject definiteness, or verb-second positioning) and every other degree of grammaticalization, as well as the underlying functional motivation, as a different kind of phenomenon. The only reason someone could think like this is by holding the odd initial assumption that language is at some level (the "core", even if it's a very tiny core) a mathematical-like, formal system. Although this was perhaps a plausible and interesting assumption at one point, I think the data does not warrant such an assumption anymore. Sure some aspects of linguistic organization seem to act as part of a system. Even Paul Hopper would agree with this. But this system is not an independent formal system in any way, it is a leaky, quasi/semi-stable system that is in constant contact with the forces that mold it. It is more like the ice that forms in the river in the winter which is in constant contact with the water underneath and which in due time will melt back into it (i admit this is not a very good metaphor, but it will have to do). There is a lot of systematicity in language and most of it is not necessarily 100 percent isomorphic with function/meaning, even in the lowest corners of the periphery. This doesn't mean, by any stretch of the imagination, that this sytematicity must be autonomous from the underlying forces that mold it. Indeed form once established may "take a life of its own", but you can be sure that the leash will be short and that it won't wander very far away. And since Fritz brings up parasitic gaps, why not use this as a case in point too. I must admit my lack of expertise in the matter, but it seems obvious to me that the phenomenon is not unrelated to the phenomenon of across-the-board extraction in coordinate clauses. Given the functional/semantic similarity between these clauses and coordinate clauses, one is not surprised that zero-anaphora would come to be extended to these special cases. I don't see how one can start analyzing 'parasitic gaps' from any other perspective. (For a down-to- earth account (ie not a mathematical 'formula') of across-the- board extraction I refer readers to Lakoff 1987, CLS 23) Sure functional explanations won't be watertight and will have to rely on a realistic theory of grammaticalization which explains the sedimentation of functional principles, as well as a theory of the interaction of relatively sedimented (grammaticalized) functional principles (which are partially opaque) and the underlying, non-grammaticalized principles themselves. But linguistic and cognitive phenomena are not like gravitational phenomena at all. They are much more probabilistic and multi- functional. As I see it, formal principles (when they are meant as explanations) make a mockery of the complexity of human language and cognition, especially when they exclude from consideration perhaps the majority of linguistic phenomena to concentrate on isolated ones. This way, out of the fuller context, it's no wonder that some people start to believe that the phenomena is bizarre and unexplainable. Jon Aske UC Berkeley jonaske@garnet.berkeley.edu jaske@bat.bates.edu (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 31 Mar 91 20:01:33 -0600 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Functionalism vs. Formalism The discussion initiated by Newmeyer seems to accept his way of defining the difference between functionalists and formalists, but I'm not sure that all would agree with that way of drawing the dichotomy. From what I've seen of functionalist linguistics (not a lot, but some) there seems to also be a concern with characterizing what's available, and further, EXPLAINING its availability by alluding to some kind of communicative need that specific kinds of structures fulfill. I don't know if I necessarily buy that kind of explanation (since I don't think it's at all established that languages get the kinds of things they have because their speakers need them, though it may well be true that once they're available they get used to satisfy specific communicative needs), but I get the impression anyway that there are people out there to whom that's the name of the game. Michael Kac [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0109] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0110. Tuesday, 2 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0110 Queries And Austronesian Conference Total: 155 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Sat, 30 Mar 91 18:15:33 -1000 From: Phil Bralich Subject: Morphological Juncture (2) Date: Mon, 01 Apr 91 12:58:34 EST From: Ralf Thiede Subject: disagreement query (3) Date: Mon, 1 Apr 91 08:57:35 -1000 From: Byron Bender Subject: 6th International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 30 Mar 91 18:15:33 -1000 From: Phil Bralich Subject: Morphological Juncture I am looking for discussion and commentary on morphological juncture. I have just finished a dissertation which proposes a new theory of morphological juncture to replace the theories of word boundaries (Chomsky and Halle 1968 et alia) and Lexical phonology (Mohanan 1986 et alia). In the dissertation I demonstrate that it is possible to extend word level X-bar thory to morphology in a straightforward manner by modifying the condition on the pri nciple of locality. This extension of phrase-level X-bar theory used at word level can be used to predict the facts of the morphophonemic rules presented in Chomsky and Halle (1968) and Mohanan (1986). The dissertation reanalyses those rules in the new framework and demonstrates that the X-bar theory pre dicts the facts without the problems of ad hocity and coutenrexampls of the previous twop theories. I am specifically looking for discussion and commetary on this project. I ma also looking to try this theory on a polysynthetic language. I would like recommendations about polysynthetic languages that are already rather well described . Also the theory of morphological juncture presented in this dissertation is quite compatible with ther requirements of programming language and thus I suspect it could be useful to people who are programming morphology. Phil Bralich University of Hawaii bralich@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 01 Apr 91 12:58:34 EST From: Ralf Thiede Subject: disagreement query Michael Kac () wrote in that > Susan Fischer notes a class of existential constructions in English > where Subject-Verb agreement can evidently be violated, adding his example of "'Till there _was_ (*were) you." Two queries: 1) Is her research published, and can anyone supply bibliographic in- formation? 2) Is anyone aware of other studies on subject-verb disagreement _IN ENGLISH_? I am trying to build a case that first and second personal PNs can in certain contexts count as third person (namely, when they denote par- ticipants in an event which is not identical with the speech event, & when they are talked about as such). I suspect this distinction also underlies the acceptability of 1st & 2nd pers. PNs in by-phrases of syntactic passives (e.g. "This letter was signed by me personally" vs. "*This letter is being signed by me personally"). Hence, what I am really after, of course, is also what Thomas Roeper is working on: Are event models visible / productive in formal grammar. But that's not my specific question (yet). Thanks, (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 1 Apr 91 08:57:35 -1000 From: Byron Bender Subject: 6th International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics Attn: B. W. Bender, Chair Tel: (808)956-8374 Bitnet: t041320@uhccmvs Fax: (808)956-2191 March 27, 1991 FINAL CIRCULAR Conference Program (preliminary draft). Convenors and participants: please bring needed corrections to our attention so that the final copy of the program (to be distributed at registration on May 20) is as free of error as possible. We have been short on staff and clerical support, and have not been able to acknowledge all communications individually. A "Y" in front of your name on the program will confirm that your conference fee has been received. Paper Copy Service. As a service to those attending the conference, each author on the program is invited to provide the Copy Service with a reproducible copy of his or her paper. Submission of such a copy should be accompanied by authorization to reproduce it upon request for anyone at the conference. Orders may be placed for copies in the Copy Service Office by Wednesday noon, May 22, at the latest. The Office will be open during conference hours through Friday noon, May 24. Handouts. Authors are responsible for the production and distribution of any materials to accompany the presentation of their papers. In most cases it will probably be best to bring multiple copies with you; the Business Center at the hotel charges 15" a page. Audio-visual support. Overhead projectors and slide projectors will be made available upon request. Please let us know of your needs well beforehand. April 19 deadline for hotel reservations. For the special conference rates, one night's deposit must be received by then. Forms for the three levels of accommodation were enclosed with the Call for Abstracts, and are available again upon request. Due to the press of time it is recommended that the hotel be contacted directly: Toll Free: 1-800-367-5170; FAX: 1-800-456-4329. Conference fee. Rates are as follows, payable to "University of Hawaii Foundation", with the notation "6ICAL": Participant: $US 125 Accompanying person: 50 Student: 25 Payment of the conference fee includes a place at the Conference Banquet on May 24. Meeting of the On-going Committee for ICAL's. Prospective hosts for future conferences should prepare proposals for consideration by the Committee at this meeting, scheduled for Wednesday noon, May 22, and send them to B. W. Bender, who will convene the meeting. PRELIMINARY CONFERENCE PROGRAM FOLLOWS [Moderators' note: The program is too long to post in its entirety. It is available on the server. If you wish it to be sent to you, send the message: get austronesian-1991 to the address: listserv@uniwa.uwa.oz.au ] [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0110] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0111. Tuesday, 2 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0111 Responses Total: 141 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Mon, 01 Apr 91 09:05 PST From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: Conferences: SAMLA, Southeast Asian, SPP (2) Date: Mon, 1 Apr 1991 08:52 PST From: Thomas E Payne Subject: Shoebox (3) Date: Mon, 01 Apr 91 08:51:04 EST Subject: Ozark English From: billr@unagi.cis.upenn.edu (4) Subject: WordPerfect and special characters From: COWART@PORTLAND.maine.edu (Wayne Cowart) Date: Mon, 01 Apr 91 10:06:27 EST (5) Date: Mon, 01 Apr 91 16:41:34 -0900 From: "ACAD3A::FFJAL1" Subject: WP fonts (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 01 Apr 91 09:05 PST From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: Conferences: SAMLA, Southeast Asian, SPP To: Bloom et al organizers of SPP -- Randy Gallistel is at UC, Los Angeles (UCLA) NOT UC, Berkeley. We claim him as our own and want all the world to know it. Please correct in future announcements. Vicki Fromkin (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 1 Apr 1991 08:52 PST From: Thomas E Payne Subject: Shoebox Before everyone gets excited about Shoebox, let me add a note of caution. I have to date implemented Shoebox on a 2670 clause corpus, and it is currently being used in a field methods course here. So far we have encountered several bugs and a few conceptual problems. I won't dwell on the bugs, as these should we worked out as new versions emerge. I will mention a couple of conceptual problems. First, since the program is geared to generating dictionaries, it automatically alphabetizes all input by the first field in each record. You can imagine what happens to text when the sentences come out in alphabetical order, rather than in the natural order in which they were uttered! We had to contrive a "dummy" field that fooled the program into keeping the text in its natural order -- and still there are some record ordering problems that I can't decipher. Second, there is no way to "jump" to, say, record number 1897, and have access to that record and its context. You can goto 1897, but the "previous record" command does not take you to 1896. Rather you go back to the record prior to the record you issued the "goto" command from. If this sounds con- fusing, the result is this: if you want to start counting or reading text sequentially starting somewhere in the middle, you have to manually "browse" through the entire database to get to the point you want. Fortunately, you can start at the end or the beginning. But on my AT machine it takes about 10 minutes of hitting "PageDown" to get to the middle of my database. These conceptual problems plus the bugs make me hesitant to recommend Shoebox wholeheartedly to the linguist interested in using it for interlinear text work. I will say that if you are working primarily with dictionaries, and/or smaller databases, it may be more useful to you than it has been to me. I will also say that I have appreciated all the hard work that John Wimbish has put into this, and that it is a quantum leap beyond IT in terms of the range of database operations that it can perform (or at least is designed to perform). Like most non-commercial software, however, it is rather tricky and requires somme tinkering to make it work the way you want it to. For those who want to just "use" computers, and who don't appreciate spending hours pulling their hair out over uncooperative software, I would say either wait a year or so, or get someone else to implement the program for you. Respectfully, Tom Payne (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 01 Apr 91 08:51:04 EST Subject: Ozark English From: billr@unagi.cis.upenn.edu Regarding Pamela Munro's posting (107-2): Suzette Haden Elgin lives in Huntsville, Arkansas -- not Alabama. Bill Reynolds (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: WordPerfect and special characters From: COWART@PORTLAND.maine.edu (Wayne Cowart) Date: Mon, 01 Apr 91 10:06:27 EST Several items lately have noted that WordPerfect (5.0 & 5.1) allows the user to print virtually any special character on any printer. This is true, and it is a valuable feature. But anyone contemplating spending anything significant to get this capability might want to proceed with a little caution. When WP prints one of those 1500 or so characters that is in CHARACTER.DOC or CHARMAP.TST but that is *not* supported by your printer, it prints the character in graphics mode. This works fine, but with many possible computer/printer combinations it can be excruciatingly slow. Even rather modest documents with lots of special characters could turn out to be overnight jobs. Some realistic testing with your kind of document on the specific hardware configuration you plan to use may be in order. A good easy test is to have WP print CHARMAP.TST (this is distributed with WP and should be in the directory where you find WP). Be sure to try this with Graphics Quality set to High. If this is unacceptably slow, you might want to think about a printer that can handle soft fonts (and a soft font with the characters you need), a laser printer (with adequate memory) or other options. Wayne Cowart (5) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 01 Apr 91 16:41:34 -0900 From: "ACAD3A::FFJAL1" Subject: WP fonts >From Jeff Leer: My problem with the WordPerfect fonts is that to get all the combinations of characters and diacritics you are forced either to use Compose or else code in a complicated sequence of Advance commands. The problem with Compose is that it is IMPOSSIBLE to search for a given Compose combination, which means it is impossible to do a global search and replace for a given Compose combination if you want to change it to something else. I even wrote a letter to WordPerfect Corp. a couple years back, and they didn't know of any way around that limitation. Anybody know of anything like Superfrench for MS-DOS machines? They use that on the MacIntosh, and it's really nice. It counts diacritics as ordinary ascii characters, e.g. accented a is stored as "a;" or the like. You can pile on as many diacritics as you please, and search and replace at will. [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0111] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0112. Wednesday, 3 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0112 Responses: Functional, Warning, Joos, Finnish, Body-Parts Total: 195 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Mon, 1 Apr 1991 17:08 PST From: Scott Delancey Subject: formal and functional (2) Date: Tue, 2 Apr 91 14:04:58 EST From: John_M._Lawler@ub.cc.umich.edu Subject: A Word of Warning from John von Neumann (3) Date: Tue, 2 Apr 91 13:25 CST From: Bob King Subject: More on Martin Joos and the Boas Tradition (4) Date: Wed, 3 Apr 91 10:35 GMT From: Richard Ogden Subject: linguists working on Finnish (5) Date: Tue, 2 Apr 1991 11:16-0500 From: Allan C. Wechsler Subject: Borrowing of body-part words (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 1 Apr 1991 17:08 PST From: Scott Delancey Subject: formal and functional In Fritz Newmeyer's recent comment I can see a large gulf between his understanding and mine of the work that functionalists and cognitive grammarians are engaged in. This inspires in me the uneasy thought that my understanding of the autonomous linguistics position might be similarly unrecognizable to its adherents. Perhaps there's an opportunity here to talk (?) some of this out so that we can all at least agree on what we're arguing about. As I see it, the task of formal analysis of structural patterns is to identify and classify (which I take to be less than N means by "characterize") the structural possibilites of Language and languages. The task of functionally or cognitively-oriented research is then to explain these principles, i.e. to discover how they follow from Language-independent principles of cognition. If I sometimes use the term "formalist" with a pejorative tone (which I know I do, and I know it's inappropriate) it is in reference to what I take to be the error of confusing formalization with explanation. My understanding of the autonomous position it that it assumes (and I use the word advisedly) a) that the principles which determine linguistic structure are autonomous, and b) that this is because those principles reflect the structure of an innate linguistic capacity which is distinct from other cognitive systems, i.e. that language is the way it is because it is represented in a neurological distinct system. To me, this innate language capacity plays the same role in linguistic theory as vital essence once did in biology, i.e. it is invoked to avoid dealing with all the horrendously difficult questions of origin, transmission, and the manifestation of what are apparently the same structural principles of organization in remotely- or un-related systems. Autonomy is irrefutable in the same way as vitalism--vitalism did not disappear because anyone was able to prove the nonexistence of vital essence, but because researchers eventually realized that looking for real answers was more productive. And biologists did not wait, as some of the participants in this discussion seem to want to do, until good reductionist answers to all the big outstanding questions were in hand before giving up their faith in vitalism; if they had it would probably not be quite dead yet. I will not try to reply to all of N's points, at least not all in one note, but I must point out that his chess analogy is at best a parody of one particular functionalist school of thought. It certainly is not a tenet of many (if any) non-autonomous approaches that languages do not have structure, which seems to be the implication. But it is, if my understanding is correct, a tenet of autonomous approaches that most structural facts are predictable from a general theory of linguistic structure. Thus if N's analogy is pursued, it would seem to imply that the correct understanding of chess and the place of the bishop's move within it must proceed from a general theory of board games, one which has its own principles, not necessarily related to anything else in the psychology of humans or their reasons for playing games? And that it is that theory which tells us that a move such as the bishop's in chess is possible, while other possible moves (such as the knight's?) or systems of moves are not predicted by the theory and are therefore unlearnable? Scott DeLancey University of Oregon (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 2 Apr 91 14:04:58 EST From: John_M._Lawler@ub.cc.umich.edu Subject: A Word of Warning from John von Neumann "As a mathematical discipline travels far from its empirical source, or still more, if it is a second and third generation only indirectly in- spired from ideas coming from 'reality', it is beset with very grave dangers. It becomes more and more purely aestheticizing, more and more purely l'art pour l'art. This need not be bad, if the field is surrounded by correlated subjects, which still have closer empirical connections, or if the discipline is under the influence of men with an exceptionally well-developed taste. "But there is a grave danger that the subject will develop along the line of least resistance, that the stream, so far from its source, will separate into a multitude of insignificant branches, and that the discipline will become a disorganized mass of details and complexities. "In other words, at a great distance from its empirical source, or after much 'abstract' inbreeding, a mathematical subject is in danger of degen- eration. At the inception the style is usually classical; when it shows signs of becoming baroque the danger signal is up. It would be easy to examples, to trace specific evolutions into the baroque and the very high baroque, but this would be too technical. "In any event, whenever this stage is reached, the only remedy seems to me to be the rejuvenating return to th^Ee source: the reinjection of more or less directly empirical ideas. I am convinced that this is a necessary condition to conserve the freshness and the vitality of the subject, and that this will remain so in the future." --- 'The Mathematician' John von Neumann ------------------------------------------------ Now go back and substitute "linguistic" for "mathematical" if you don't get the point. (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 2 Apr 91 13:25 CST From: "Bob King - ligi355@utxvms.cc.utexas.edu" Subject: More on Martin Joos and the Boas Tradition Emmon Bach raised two questions about Martin Joos' characterization of the Boas tradition (in reply, wasn't it, to something Vicki Fromkin had said?). (1) Is Joos' formulation of the 'Boas tradition' in fact a correct formulation of what Boas actually believed? (2) Did Joos actually himself believe that 'languages can differ without limit as to either extent or direction'? On (1) I have nothing to say. On (2) I know, because I once asked him, that he did not, repeat not, literally believe that languages can differ without limit etc. (This would have been in 1968 when I taught at Toronto, where he had gone after leaving Wisconsin, and after I had moved a good way from the neo-Bloomfieldianism that I had gotten from Joos when I was his student at Wisconsin.) No, he said he had put it that way to dramatize through hyperbole the contrast between the grammatical tradition that made every language look like Latin and the 'American' descriptive position that languages need not be like that. Joos always formulated other linguists' positions in slightly outrageous terms. Some people thought that irresponsible and hated him for it. For me it was part of his very great charm, and I liked him for it. Bob King (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 3 Apr 91 10:35 GMT From: Richard Ogden Subject: linguists working on Finnish Thank you to those people who contacted me about Finnish. I have been trying to mail you with more information, and thought it would be a good idea if we could all know about each other... but we are having some sort of problem with the mail here and I can't get a message sent to a fair number of people. Please either get in touch again and I will instantly reply (!) or bear with me until I can send a common message out to everyone. Many thanks! Richard Ogden rao1@uk.ac.york.vaxb (5) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 2 Apr 1991 11:16-0500 From: Allan C. Wechsler Subject: Borrowing of body-part words The Australian word "ngapurlu" ("milk/breast") appears in identical form in at least two languages that are too disparate for the identity to be homologous -- it must be a loan, but I don't know the direction of borrowing. The two languages are Warlpiri and Murrinh-Patha. I should mention that in Australian languages, borrowings of fairly basic words are probably more common than elsewhere, because of the prevalence of speech taboo rules. When a word becomes taboo, the gap is frequently filled by borrowing from a neighboring language. This supports Alexis Ramer's assertion that "borrowing patterns are highly culture-specific and so not a reasonable topic for universalist speculations". I would weaken that assertion a bit, and simply say that universal statements about borrowing patterns are a dangerous foundation for comparative work. Perhaps David Nash can give more details on the Australian situation. [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0112] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0113. Wednesday, 3 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0113 Phonology Total: 234 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Mon, 1 Apr 91 11:03 MST From: Mike Hammond Subject: Penults in English (2) Date: Mon, 1 Apr 91 14:54:28 PST From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com Subject: History of Phonology (3) Date: Monday, 1 April 1991 12:19pm ET From: "Grover.Hudson" <22070MGR@msu.edu> Subject: Phonology (4) Date: Tue, 2 Apr 91 8:56 GMT From: John Coleman Subject: Vowel reduction; consonant cooccurence constraints (5) Date: Tue, 2 Apr 91 8:56 GMT From: John Coleman Subject: Consonant cooccurrence constraints for roots (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 1 Apr 91 11:03 MST From: Mike Hammond Subject: Penults in English Alexis Manaster-Ramer cites a number of interesting apparent counterexamples to the claim that closed penults in English attract stress and that long ultimae attract stress. Closed penult that doesn't attract stress: Orchestra, pOdagra (for some speakers, apparently), ClArendon, CAvendish, Ogilvi(e), badminton. long ultima that doesn't attract stress: diabEtes (with "flapped" t). Some of these are fairly easy to rule out. Orchestra and podagra contain open penults, assuming onsets are maximized. Ogilvie can be analyzed like galaxy--with a final /y/--notwithstanding the (irrelevant) spelling. Diabetes is probably analyzable as a "plural disease" with stem-final tensing: /diabete+s/, parallel to mumps, measles, shingles, etc. (Cf. cities, etc.) That leaves Clarendon, Cavendish, and badminton. Note that all of these penults are closed by sonorants (specifically an alveolar nasal here). A number of possibilities present themselves. One is to admit them as exceptions to the larger generalization about closed penults and treat them with some generalization of Sonorant Destressing. Another (perhaps less desirable) possibility is to maintain that the sonorant consonants are stray in underlying representation: /clarndon/, /cavndish/, and /badmnton/. Another possibility in the case of clarendon and badminton is to maintain that the final sonorant is stray: /clarendn/ and /badmintn/. Personally, I don't know if I get the stresses AM-R suggests. For me, they have the following stress patterns. clarendon 1 0 0 cavendish 1 0 2 badminton 1 2 0 My most natural pronunciation of badminton has an open penult: [baedmItn]. This still leaves clarendon as a counterexample though unless the final sonorant is stray. (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 1 Apr 91 14:54:28 PST From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com Subject: History of Phonology Pierre Martin writes: > There is at least one school of thought in current phonological theory which > practices a clear distinction between the purely phonic component of a > language (=phonology) and the constraints imposed on the distinctive units by > morphemes and vice-versa (moneme variants= morphology, and not > morphonology!) This is the (structuralist) functionalist approach of > Andre Martinet and his Paris School. It is interesting that Martinet was one of the few structuralists who made an effort to persuade his Prague School colleagues not to conflate archiphonemes (phonological theory) with morphophonemes (morphonological theory). I am not very familiar with this more recent school, unfortunately. Modern phonologists tend not to be very well schooled in the history of the field. Most (in the West, at least) do not realize that three distinct schools of phonology evolved out of Baudouin's alternational dichotomy: the Moscow school, the Leningrad school, and the Prague school. We in the West tend to view the Prague school as the foundation of modern phonology, although Baudouin's seminal work had begun roughly half a century earlier. The Leningrad school, the more visible Russian school of the two, was dominated by Shcherba, who completely revised Baudouin's alternational dichotomy. In Shcherba's approach, the phoneme came to be seen as a perceptual unit, so that phonemic neutralization (e.g. vowel neutralization, final devoicing) tended not to be recognized as a phonological phenomenon. Shcherba's ideas crept into the West and came to be accepted as the basis of what we now call 'classical phonemic theory'. Of the three schools, only the Moscow school retained the original Baudouinian level of phonemic (a.k.a. phonological) representation. Here is a rough sketch of how the three major schools might differ on the levels of representation for the noun 'lives' (although I am technically fudging the 'levels' to make a neater comparison): Prague(Trubetzkoy) Leningrad Moscow Morphophonological {layF+S} /layf+z/ /layf+z/ & Archiphonemic Phonemic /layv+z/ /layv+z/ /layv+z/ Phonetic [layvz] [layvz] [layvz] One major difference here is that the two Russian schools, like Baudouin, viewed the morphophonological 'level' as comprised completely of phonemes (which were phonetic segments). (OK. I'm ignoring the Moscow concept of the 'hyperphoneme', which is another story.) Other approaches to phonology which accept the Baudouin/Moscow level are/were Stampean Natural Phonology and Sapir's approach. I am unclear as to whether lexical phonology should be counted in this camp, although it has done something to repair the damage to phonological theory caused by the SPE model. (BTW, I claim that the SPE model of phonology does little, if anything, to resurrect Sapir's view of phonology. If anything, it completes the process of burying it.) SPE effectively threw out the baby with the bathwater when it trashed the Scherbeme level of phonemic representation without considering the Baudouin/Sapir/Moscow level as a possible alternative. The result was the mistaken position that there was no basic difference between morphonology and phonology. IMHO, an incredible setback for linguistic theory. -Rick Wojcik (rwojcik@atc.boeing.com) (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Monday, 1 April 1991 12:19pm ET From: "Grover.Hudson" <22070MGR@msu.edu> Subject: Phonology Emmon Bach properly provides clarification regarding the famous quote, attributed to Martin Joos that "languages can differ without limit...". On page 96 of the same book in another footnote, Joos attributes this idea not just to the "Boas tradition" but to the "American (Boas) tradition". (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 2 Apr 91 8:56 GMT From: John Coleman Subject: Vowel reduction; consonant cooccurence constraints Rick Wojcik passed the following comment on my "title/titular" suggestion: > Vowel Reduction is a phenomenon that bears on how we pronounce sounds in > prosodic environments. That is why stress is central to the question. The > 'title/titular' example bears on the question of what phonological forms we > assign to morphemes, not how we pronounce vowels. I wish that modern > phonologists would try harder to understand that fundamental dichotomy > in alternations that Baudouin de Courtenay observed when he developed > the foundations of modern phonology. He would have called vowel reduction > alternations 'physiophonetic' and the 'title/titular' vowel alternation > 'psychophonetic'. ... Alas, modern phonology > conflates the two very different phenomena under the rubric of 'phonology'. Whether a phenomenon such as this is morphophonological or just an automatic alternation depends on other considerations, especially the form of morphophonological representations and the theory of phonetic interpretation which is being assumed. Wojcik's comment seems to me to assume that both of these are settled, and that there can therefore be no redrawing of the lines between phonetics and phonology, even if such realignment allows data previously regarded as independent to be handled by generalisations already proposed for some other set of examples. To demonstrate my point about the theory-internal nature of the dividing line between (morpho)phonology and (physio)phonetics, EVEN IF THE TWO LEVELS ARE KEPT SEPARATE, consider the following two observations: 1) before the use of feature-based representations became commonplace, nonsegmental alternations were treated in segmental phonology essentially as suppletion i.e. there were two forms in the dictionary. 2) much recent work in Laboratory Phonology and speech synthesis, such as Pierrehumbert and Beckman's, Browman and Goldstein's (perhaps) and ours at York, has demonstrated that `systematic phonetic representations' can be far more `abstract' e.g. less specific about `allophonic' detail etc. than is usually assumed by phonologists working without an explicit model of phonetic interpretation. The "title/titular" case is just such. It is perfectly reasonable to propose a morphophonolical representation of the /titUl(ar)/ form and attribute the different phonetic exponents of /U/ to the different contexts with which it cooccurs. > But from a historical point of view, it is J. Coleman who is making the > theory-internal assumption about the relevance of certain vowel alternations. It's not an assumption. It was just a suggestion, backed up by a story about vowel "alternations" which is perhaps a bit new (and consequently, I had hoped, might have been of interest to some people). Pierre Martin comments: > There is at least one school of thought in current phonological theory which > practices a clear distinction between the purely phonic component of a > language (=phonology) and the constraints imposed on the distinctive units > by morphemes and vice-versa (moneme variants= morphology, and not > morphonology!) This is the (structuralist) functionalist approach of Andre > Martinet and his Paris School. There are two others I know of. The Copenhagen school, I believe still has adherents, and also Firthian Prosodic Analysis, which is still very much alive. That's my background, which is why I found Wojcik's piece a bit ironic. Keep it up, Rick! --- John Coleman (5) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 2 Apr 91 8:56 GMT From: John Coleman Subject: Consonant cooccurrence constraints for roots How about the English *sCXsC constraint that prohibits *stask, *spast, *skusp, *strask, *splast, *skrusp, or the *sC1XC1 that prohibits *spup, *skak, *snon, *smam, *splup, *skrak (C1:place \= [+coronal]), or the *CGXG constraint that prohibits *klilt, *krark, and *klul*. (I got these from C. E. Cairns (1988) "Phonotactics, markedness and lexical representation". Phonology 5, 209-236.) Also what about the distribution of /h/ in English? isn't that restricted to one occurence per root (excluding obvious loans such as "jojoba")? Come to think of it, what about /h/ in Classical Greek? or many other classical prosodic phenomena, such as Aspiration in Harauti, Nasalisation in Sundanese ... all these induce consonant cooccurence constraints when viewed segmentally rather than prosodically. --- John Coleman [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0113] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0114. Thursday, 4 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0114 Information, Workshop, Conference Total: 144 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Date: Thur, 04 Apr 91 Subject: Our 1000th Subscriber From: The LINGUIST Moderators (2) Date: Wed, 03 Apr 91 16:21:06 -0500 Subject: Informal Computing Workshop From: Jon Shultis (3) Date: Wed, 3 Apr 91 17:40:46 -0500 From: walker@flash.bellcore.com (Don Walker) Subject: ACL-91 Program and Registration Information (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thur, 04 Apr 91 Subject: Our 1000th Subscriber From: The LINGUIST Moderators If we were not an academic organization, and therefore had some money, we might hand out a prize for this. As it is, all we have to offer is congratulations to Colin Phillips (colin@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu), who is our 1000th subscriber. (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 03 Apr 91 16:21:06 -0500 Subject: Informal Computing Workshop From: Jon Shultis Workshop on Informal Computing 29-31 May 1991 Santa Cruz, California Fundamental questions about the nature of informality are gaining importance in computer science. What is informal understanding? What is the nature of informal reasoning? Why is it so powerful and efficient? How are the inconsistency, vagueness, and incompleteness of informal thought managed? How does natural language manage to communicate informal knowledge and reasoning? Computer applications in many fields, ranging from economics and medicine to software engineering and artificial intelligence, demand effective and cognitively accurate answers to these questions in order to capture, represent, and process informal information in computer systems. Inspired by trends toward formalization in logic, mathematics, linguistics, and philosophy, computer scientists historically have tended to regard informal processes as approximate, or imperfect, realizations of formal ideals. Increasingly, however, the idea that informal languages, ontology, and reasoning can (or should) be reduced to (or supplanted by) regimented and "perfected" formalisms is being challenged. Far from being flawed formalisms, informal processes are emerging as fundamental to human understanding and language. From the "informalist" perspective, formalism has been mistaken for the paradigm of intelligence, rather than simply a useful outgrowth of intelligence. The purpose of the Workshop on Informal Computing is to define the study of Informalism, and to begin a coordinated attack on the fundamental issues and problems of the field, bringing together the insights and experience of those who have been working to understand informality in specialized domains. Discussion at the workshop will focus on three major themes: informal knowledge and reasoning; modelling and interpretation; and conversational computing and adaptive languages. Relevant topics include, but are not limited to: intentionality and consciousness; dialogue management; informal meaning and pragmatics; evidential reasoning and belief; resource- and information-limited reasoning; neurocomputation; lessons and techniques from computational linguistics; dynamical and chaotic representations and reasoning; and philosophy of language. The program will be divided between hour-long presentations by invited speakers, and discussion sessions aimed at defining and clarifying informal computing issues, and at identifying promising directions and approaches for future research. The discussion sessions should provide ample opportunity for participants to exchange views, and the schedule will be flexible enough to permit impromptu presentations as appropriate. Also, a follow-up conference may be organized if there is sufficient interest. We are busy making arrangements for speakers and drawing up the schedule, but the basic plan is to devote one day to each of the three themes mentioned above. A preliminary list of speakers includes Bruce d'Ambrosio (Oregon State University) Sandra Carberry (University of Delaware) David Fisher (Incremental Systems) Donald Good (Computational Logic) David Mundie (Incremental Systems) Larry Reeker (IDA) Jeff Rothenberg (RAND) Jon Shultis (Incremental Systems) Tim Standish (University of California at Irvine) Edward Zalta (Stanford University) The final program will be announced on or before 8 May 1991. If you are interested in participating in the workshop, please submit, by 12 April 1991, a brief summary of your interests, and previous or ongoing research that is relevant to the workshop themes. The summaries will be reviewed, and notices of acceptance sent out on 26 April 1991, together with local arrangements information. Summaries should be sent to Jon Shultis Incremental Systems Corporation 319 South Craig Street Pittsburgh, PA 15213 e-mail: jon@incsys.com tel: (412) 621-8888 FAX: (412) 621-0259 Funding for the Workshop on Informal Computing is being provided by DARPA/ISTO in conjunction with ongoing research at Incremental Systems Corporation on adaptive languages for software engineering. (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 3 Apr 91 17:40:46 -0500 From: walker@flash.bellcore.com (Don Walker) Subject: ACL-91 Program and Registration Information Program of the ASSOCIATION FOR COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS 29th Annual Meeting 17-21 June 1991 University of California, Berkeley, California, USA [Moderators' note: The full program of the ACL meeting is too long to post to the entire list, and is available on the server. To have the program sent to you, send the message: get acl-91 to the address: listserv@uniwa.uwa.oz.au ] [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0114] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0115. Thursday, 4 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0115 Functionalism: Lost Correspondence; Language Families Total: 150 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Date: Thur, 4 Apr 91 From: The Moderators of LINGUIST Subject: Functionalism: Lost Correspondence (2) Date: Wed, 3 Apr 91 20:49:21 -0600 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: More on what American Structuralists REALLY believed (3) Date: Tue, 2 Apr 91 09:51 EST From: Herb Stahlke <00HFSTAHLKE%BSUVAX1.BITNET@UICVM.uic.edu> Subject: Language families: African language classification (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thur, 4 Apr 91 From: The Moderators of LINGUIST Subject: Functionalism: Lost Correspondence Our host machine went down during a collating process, and managed in the process to trash our entire file of messages collected on the subject of functionalism. If you submitted a message on this topic and have not yet seen it, then the odds are that it was part of the holocaust which has just taken place. You will have to resubmit your posting. Please accept our sincere apologies. The software "feature" which allowed this to occur has been fixed, so this should not occur again; but that will not, we're afraid, enable us to recover the lost data. We hope that all of you have copies and will not have to recompose your messages! (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 3 Apr 91 20:49:21 -0600 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: More on what American Structuralists REALLY believed The recent exchange of notes about Martin Joos and his famous dictum about unlimited variation in language prompts me to the following comment about a- nother caricature of American structuralism now pretty much taken for granted by contemporary linguists. It has to do with the idea that the structuralists, and most particularly the Structuralist's Structuralist Zellig Harris, were interested in finding discovery procedures for correct linguistic analyses. On a certain level this is true, but there's a bit more to the story than that. Harris evidently did indeed believe that it was possible to completely mechanize the process of linguistic analysis; it is not clear that he be- lieved that this mechanization, once in place, would replace the less ri- gorous methods then in use. Rather, the results of one's analysis -- however obtained -- could be CHECKED for correctness by showing that they're what one would have come up with if one had been applied the mechanical procedures. >From p. 1 of 'Methods in Structural Linguistics': 'In practice, linguists take unnumbered short cuts and intuitive or heuristic guesses, and keep many problems about a particular language before them at the same time ... The chief usefulness of the procedures listed below is therefore as a reminder in the course of the origiinal research, and as a form for checking or presenting the results, where it may be desirable to make sure that all the information called for in these procedures has been validly obtained.' Michael Kac (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 2 Apr 91 09:51 EST From: Herb Stahlke <00HFSTAHLKE%BSUVAX1.BITNET@UICVM.uic.edu> Subject: Language families: African language classification Perhaps because the debate is over two decades past, the vigor and content of the African language classification debate is poorly appreciated today. Several of Greenberg's conclusions were easily as startling at that time as his claim about Amerind are today. Classifying Mande and Bantu in the same language family, or Songhai, Kanuri, and Nilotic together was based on no claims of sound correspondences. Although some linguists, Welmers, for example, had suspected the Mande-Bantu relationship, Nilo-Saharan had not even been hinted at in the literature. Within the close confines of South Central Niger-Congo, a grouping which is, incidentally, based on a lexicostatistical study, not a comparative study, the Kwa languages had been classified with Bantu in Westermann's _Die westlichen Sudansprachen und ihre Beziehungen zum Bantu_ (1927). However, this classification and his reconstructions were widely questioned among continental Africanists trained in the Neo-grammarian tradition because his sound correspondences were not completely consistent. Malcolm Guthrie and his colleagues and students in the London school rejected Greenberg's conclusions on grounds that sound very much like the arguments Campbell, Goddard, and others put forward today. Their claim was that relationship can be demonstrated only by consistent sound correspondences and that such research needed to proceed slowly, with great care, and from groups where such correspondences could be demonstrated. However, Guthrie's method, as useful as his results have been, is only superficially like the comparative method, assuming as it does that language relationship is the result of borrowing rather than of common inheritance and that therefore the homeland of a language family is likely to be found in its area of greatest similarity, not its area of greatest diversity. Guthrie was unwilling even to call his formulae reconstructions, preferring to call them simply "starred forms." A more mainline attack on Greenberg's _The Languages of Africa_ came from Istvan Fodor in 1966 in a book, also published by Mouton, that painstakingly, and criticized the lack of consistency in sound correspondences in his cognate sets. This attack was irrelevant since it incorrectly assumed that regularity of sound correspondence was critical to the method of mass comparison. Westphal and others in South Africa criticized Khoi-San on the same grounds as Guthrie and Fodor used against Niger-Congo. Westphal had done some very solid comparative work within narrowly related groups in South Africa that he calls families. In a very interesting survey article (_Current Trends in Linguistics, Vol. VII: Linguistics in Sub-Saharan Africa_, Mouton, 1971, pp. 367-420), Westphal breaks Khoi-San into eight language families and claims that these are not related to each other. Westphal, Guthrie, and other British Africanists of the '40s, '50s, and '60s argued against Greenberg's classification on typological grounds that comparativists in the Neo-grammarian tradition rejected as irrelevant. In fact, some of those grounds, especially as the related to such groupings as Nilo-Hamitic, were based as much on bad theology as on bad linguistics. There was a wonderful article in the Journal of African History around 1974 that exposed that line of argument for what it was. I regret that I don't have the reference handy. To try to bring all of this together, I would acknowledge that the typological traditions that influenced African language classification before Greenberg are not present in the American language classification debate. However, the methodological and phenomenological elements of the two debates are similar. There is, by the way, an unpublished collection of articles that chronicles the Greenberg African debate. It was assembled 1967-68 by Chuck Kraft, then at UCLA, and formed the basis for a course on African language classification that I took with him at that time. If anyone is interested, I can get the bibliography entered and made available on this list. Perhaps the best way to end this too discursive review is to quote Westphal's _Current Trends..._ article (p. 371): "The result of Greenberg's super language families has been to force comparison where relationship was hotly denied...[or where (HS)]...relationship was not so much hotly denied as simply ignored in [previous (HS)] classifications." That's what our field is about: not "shouting down" serious proposals but testing them. In African linguistics much of that testing has been done and still more is going on. Greenberg's proposals, with some refinement, have held up. The jury will be out for some time on his American proposals, but given his success in Africa I suspect Greenberg will turn out to be pretty close this time too. Herb Stahlke Ball State University [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0115] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0116. Thursday, 4 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0116 Morphophonology Total: 116 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: salmons@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Joe Salmons) Subject: root structure constraints Date: Wed, 3 Apr 91 11:30:18 EST (2) Date: Wed, 03 Apr 91 19:12:32 -0500 From: Harry Bochner Subject: Morphological Juncture; Morphophonology (3) Date: Wed, 3 Apr 91 19:39:25 -1000 From: Phil Bralich Subject: Re: Morphological Juncture; Morphophonology (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- From: salmons@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Joe Salmons) Subject: root structure constraints Date: Wed, 3 Apr 91 11:30:18 EST We would like to thank everybody who responded to our query about about root structure constraints. The many examples we got supported our suspicion that RSCs on consonants all appear to involve identity, either mandating or forbidding it. Thanks again, joe salmons & Greg Iverson (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 03 Apr 91 19:12:32 -0500 From: Harry Bochner Subject: Morphological Juncture; Morphophonology Phil Bralich writes in Vol. 2, No. 0110 > I have just finished a dissertation which proposes a new theory of > morphological juncture to replace the theories of word boundaries (Chomsky and > Halle 1968 et alia) and Lexical phonology (Mohanan 1986 et alia). ... > I am specifically looking for discussion and commetary on this project. Well, let me see to it that the opposite end of the theoretical spectrum is represented: In my 1988 dissertation (available from UMI; a substantially revised version has recently been accepted for publication by Foris) I argue that an insightful account of certain 'junctural' phenomena, in particular Derived Environment effects, can be given in a word-based theory that does not have any notion of word-internal boundaries. The theory I develop is based on a radical reconsideration of the notion of morphological simplicity and the Evaluation Metric, and a full discussion of the issues would be rather long for this list. Here's a start ... Rick Wojcik's line of discussion (Vol. 2, No. 0113) becomes relevant here: > SPE effectively threw out the baby with the bathwater when it > trashed the Scherbeme level of phonemic representation without considering > the Baudouin/Sapir/Moscow level as a possible alternative. The result was the > mistaken position that there was no basic difference between morphonology > and phonology. I point out (along with Matthews, and maybe some others) that Halle's classic argument against Structuralist Phonemics is NOT an argument against the notion of a phonemic level, as it has commonly been taken to be: it is, rather, an argument (convincing, I think) that Structuralist Phonemics placed the boundary between Phonology and Morphophonology in the wrong place. I argue, on morphological grounds, for a revised Evaluation Metric which, as a side effect, makes it possible to build 'phonological' alternations directly into morphological rules. This leads to a theory of Morphophonology rather different both from the Structuralist position, and from modern reinterpretations of it. I show that if we take the class of phenomena that should be integrated into the Morphology to be roughly the class that Lexical Phonology handles with lexical 'phonological' rules, Derived Environment effects and certain kinds of 'cyclic' effects fall out automatically from the structure of the morphological theory I develop. -- Harry Bochner -- bochner@das.harvard.edu (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 3 Apr 91 19:39:25 -1000 From: Phil Bralich Subject: Re: Morphological Juncture; Morphophonology Your dissertation/upcoming publication sounds like something I would like to read. Is the Forris publication coming out soon? If you can account for these phenomena without any junctures, that would be very impressive. I need to know your version of the Evaluation Metric before I can think about this more accuarately. Also what phenomena do you account for? Strictly speaking the thoery I propose does not actually posit internal bound aries or juncture of any sort. The theory I propose merely claims that speakers are aware of the cateogies of the items involved in word formation. However, in the framework I propose the categories are enhanced with the the bar levels proivided by the X-bar theory. The notion juncture falls out from the fact that speakers consider the categories and bar levels of the items involved in word foramtion. The phenomena I use to demonstrate the proposal are the morphophonemic rules of SPE and Mohanan (1986). However, the stress phenomena I account for our limited. I only demonstrate that the theory I propose can account for the same facts that SPE used boundaries for. The later developments in stress will be investigated at another time. In any case if I could know when your book is coming out (I'd rather have that if it is substantially revised). At the very least I would like to know more about your version of the Evaluation Metric. Thanks Phil bralich@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.edu [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0116] There is no active message. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0117. Friday, 5 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0117 Queries Total: 121 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Date: Tue, 2 Apr 91 17:12:57 +0100 (MET) From: garof@sixcom.sixcom.it (Joe Giampapa) Subject: Reaching the nameserver (2) Date: Tue, 2 Apr 91 11:33:24 EST From: Cari Spring Subject: linguistic studies of emotions in tone languages (3) Date: Wed, 03 Apr 91 09:00:04 EST From: nikki keach Subject: Swahili native speakers (4) Date: Fri, 29 Mar 91 07:14 EDT From: Jean Veronis Subject: splitting a text in sentences and words (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 2 Apr 91 17:12:57 +0100 (MET) From: garof@sixcom.sixcom.it (Joe Giampapa) Subject: Reaching the nameserver Re: linguist nameserver: ----- Transcript of session follows ----- 554 linguist@alf.let.uva.nl... Host hp4nl not known within the UUCP domain Is anybody else having these difficulties? This message arrived from postmaster@carla.dist.unige.it, the Italian UUCP gateway. -Joe Giampapa garof@sixcom.sixcom.it [Moderators' Note: Norval Smith has informed us that the .nl domain is not a genuine domain on the internet, but is simply an MX address for mail-exchange. If you are having difficulty getting to it, sending mail via the CUNY gateway usually works. So try the address: linguists%alf.let.nl@cunyvm.cuny.edu This should solve the problem.] (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 2 Apr 91 11:33:24 EST From: Cari Spring Subject: linguistic studies of emotions in tone languages A student at Ohio State is looking for references to studies concerned with linguistic correlates of emotions in tone languages. If anybody knows of such references, or anybody working on this topic, please e-mail information over LINGUIST, or to pan@shs.ohio-state.edu. :-D (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 03 Apr 91 09:00:04 EST From: nikki keach Subject: Swahili native speakers I'm trying to locate native speakers of Swahili who're e-mail accessible. If you know any, please e-mail me directly. Thanks. (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 29 Mar 91 07:14 EDT From: Jean Veronis Subject: splitting a text in sentences and words The following message has appeared on the LN list, but I think it belongs here too --jv ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 26 Mar 91 11:56 N From: LTMATTHE@CNEDCU51.BITNET Hello everyone! My name is Alain Matthey and I am a computer scientist. I am working as a research assistant in the Laboratory of Speech and Language Processing of the University of Neuchatel (Switzerland). The members of this laboratory are working now on a research project which consists to develop a kind of spell and grammar checker like Grammatik, IBM's Critique, Mac Proof, Hugo or Sans fautes but for French native speakers who write in English. In this project, I will have to implemant the "preprocessing step" which consists to recognise and delimit the sentences and the words of a text. How to find and delimit automatically sentences and words in any kind of ASCII texts? That's the problem!!! So I am looking for some informations (bibliography, papers, etc.) about "preprocessing of ASCII texts". For any more informations or for an answer, please contact me at the address above: Alain Matthey Laboratoire de traitement du langage et de la parole UNIVERSITE DE NEUCHATEL Avenue du Premier-Mars 26 CH-2000 NEUCHATEL SWITZERLAND Phone: 038 25 38 51 (int. 27) Fax: 038 25 18 32 E-mail: LTMATTHEY@CNEDCU51.BITNET Thank you very much for your help! Best regards. Alain Matthey P.S. It is not forbidden to write in French!!! [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0117] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0118. Saturday, 6 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0118 Functionalism and MT Total: 237 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Thu, 4 Apr 91 17:37:07 -0800 From: Frederick Newmeyer Subject: formal and functional (2) Date: Thu, 04 Apr 91 12:15:56 +0200 From: Guido Vanden Wyngaerd Subject: Re: Responses: Functional (3) Date: Thu, 4 Apr 91 14:06:54 MST From: yorick@NMSU.Edu Subject: Re: Vicki Fromkin on MT (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 4 Apr 91 17:37:07 -0800 From: Frederick Newmeyer Subject: formal and functional Scott Delancey writes that my bulletin board contribution exhibits a deep misunderstanding of the work that functionalists are engaged in. But the only concrete example he gives to illustrate this lack of understanding is my supposed implication that functionalists believe 'that languages do not have structure'. I NEVER intended to imply such a thing and, rereading my piece, I do not see how such an implication could be drawn from it. Of course we all agree that languages have structure. The question is whether grammars are STRUCTURAL SYSTEMS, with their own internal principles shaping them. This I take to be the main issue separating generative grammar from the wing of functionalism that Delancey represents. Among such principles, I have in mind, of course, Subjacency, the ECP, Binding, the Case Filter, and so on. Why do they exist? In fact, I am perfectly happy to posit a 'functional' genesis for them: I assume that they arose to facilitate parsing. In effect, they help keep track of what's what and what's where. But over time, they have become so thoroughly grammaticized that their relation to parsing is indirect at best. (I.e. many if not most ECP violations pose no particular parsing problems.) This grammaticization was driven by what I see as an innate human drive to impose structure and to maximize and extend structural patterning (and thereby to wrench form away from function). So my position hardly entails sinking into 'vitalism', I would submit! In other words, I do believe that there is a level at which formal principles admit to functional explanation. It's just not at the level of synchronic grammatical analysis. Fritz Newmeyer University of Washington (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 04 Apr 91 11:38:53 +0200 From: Guido Vanden Wyngaerd Subject: Re: Functionalism John Aske writes: >And since Fritz brings up parasitic gaps, why not use this as a >case in point too. I must admit my lack of expertise in the >matter ...! Given the functional/semantic similarity >between these clauses and coordinate clauses, one is not >surprised that zero-anaphora would come to be extended to these >special cases. I don't see how one can start analyzing >'parasitic gaps' from any other perspective. I suggest you acquire some expertise on the matter before making such sweeping statements as the above. What formal research has revealed is that the occurrence of "null anaphora", as you call it, is subject to certain formal constraints, eg there has to be a "real gap" licensing the parasitic gap, the real gap must not c-command the parasitic gap, etc. As far as the analogy with coordination is concerned, an analysis of pg's in terms of coordination has in fact been proposed by R Huybregts and H van Riemsdijk in a NELS paper. The problem with it is that pg's typically occur in clauses with subordinating conjunctions, not coordinating ones. Scott Delancey writes: > My understanding of the autonomous position it that it >assumes (and I use the word advisedly) a) that the principles which >determine linguistic structure are autonomous, and b) that this >is because those principles reflect the structure of an innate >linguistic capacity which is distinct from other cognitive systems, >i.e. that language is the way it is because it is represented in >a neurological distinct system. Opponents of the autonomous position tend to confuse an issue of principle with a working hypothesis. The issue of principle is that the points under (a) and (b) are empirical questions, *not* a priori assumption. The working strategy is that of adopting the assumptions (a) and (b) and see where they lead. Rather than by making comparisons with biology, mathematics, chess, etc., the non-autonomist position would be better served by presenting empirical evidence against the points (a) and (b), eg by showing that, say parasitic gaps, are better analysed in terms of a given functional/cognitive principle than a formal one. I would be more than interested in such an explanation, but I am not aware of any. In contrast to Scott, I believe a formal explanation is better than no explanation. -Guido Vanden Wyngaerd (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 4 Apr 91 14:06:54 MST From: yorick@NMSU.Edu Subject: Re: Vicki Fromkin on MT This refers to Vicki Fromkin's historical reminiscences on machine translation and how, if I understand her correctly, it was all a waste of time and money for 20 years, and, she seems to add, speech recognition is now in the same situation. Oh dear, oh dear, where does one start to someone who has been asleep for so looooong!? Let me just settle for MT (though I have seen many effective and impressive demonstrations of speech recognition in the last few years). Let me put it this way: standard US Government MT programs for Russian-English do millions of words of MT a month and appear to have thousands of satisfied customers. The EEC now has memoranda roughly translated by MT between English and French on a daily basis and the scale of that usage is increasing. I have just toured Japan as part of an NSF/DARPA team inspecting MT R&D. We visited about 20 systems, gave them unseen texts etc., and about 6 are really pretty good. The EEC is using the Fujitsu system for the translation of thousands of abstracts a month. None of this is pipe dreams, just boring technology, stamina, money spent etc. Not much of it uses linguistics, rather more is AI of a sort. Sorry if this sounds like a commercial but what can one do in the face of tired old stories and memories combined with total unareness of what is going on out there? Yorick Wilks [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0118] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0119. Saturday, 6 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0119 Fonts; Shoebox; IT; Body-Part Borrowings Total: 173 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Date: Tue, 02 Apr 91 07:51:43 CST From: THE GAR Subject: Re: Wordperfect (2) Date: Tue, 2 Apr 91 12:55:50 EST From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: shoebox (3) Date: Wed, 3 Apr 1991 20:13:00 -0500 From: BELMORE@Vax2.Concordia.CA Subject: Responses to my query about IT (4) Date: Thu, 4 Apr 91 15:23:46 MST From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz) Subject: Conerting Macintosh Postscript Fonts to PC Postscript Fonts (5) Date: Fri, 5 Apr 91 12:26:16 BST Subject: Re: Borrowing words for parts of the body (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 02 Apr 91 07:51:43 CST From: THE GAR Subject: Re: Wordperfect FFJAL1 mentioned: > > My problem with the WordPerfect fonts is that to get all the >combinations of characters and diacritics you are forced either to >use Compose or else code in a complicated sequence of Advance commands. >The problem with Compose is that it is IMPOSSIBLE to search for a given >Compose combination, which means it is impossible to do a global >search and replace for a given Compose combination if you want to change >it to something else. I even wrote a letter to WordPerfect Corp. a couple >years back, and they didn't know of any way around that limitation. It has been my experience that there is no problem Word Perfect cannot overcome. Those interested in using special characters frequently (as most of us seem to be) should NOT use the Compose feature. What you need to do is use the KEYBOARD MAPPING feature. This will allow you to do your searches, and make using special characters painless. I have two alternate keyboard maps that I use for correspondence. One is for Esperanto, and the other for Spanish. If I wish to type a special character in either of these languages it is quite simple, since they are "based" on a common English character. In Spanish, I need an n/tilde, and each of the vowels/accent. I have assigned CTRL-Letter to be Capital-whatever, and ALT-Letter to be Lowercase-whatever. (I use ll for elle, which is close enough.) So now I need to search for man~ana. I simply strike F2 (search) and enter maALT-nana. Because I cannot tell WP that n~ and N~ are the same letter shifted, I do have to do case sensitive searches. To map the keyboard, refer to your WP5.1 manual p.342 and following. It will be useful to have a printout of the Character sets handy. Anyone needing help with this process can contact me for step-by-step directions. I can send you the instruction document that was provided me for Esperanto mapping by Andrew Wollert, to whom I am most grateful. (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 2 Apr 91 12:55:50 EST From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: shoebox If Shoebox is alphabetizing your *text* file, then you are not using it as intended. The index and sort functions should not be run on the text file, only the numbering function. As I recall, it was confusing to keep straight when I was converting an existing text database to Shoebox by putting in all the field markers with a word processor, but it's straightforward when you start de novo with plain text. This has probably been said, and I am sure you know this, but it might be helpful to others to say that Shoebox is designed for the linguist in the field: the model is that you enter some text, use the numbering function to assign a number to each sentence (or clause, if you set it up that way), then use the interlinearizing function iteratively to accumulate and verify entries in lexicon and parse databases. You use Shoebox to interlinearize text in a file. If it does not find the current string in the parse database and/or lexicon database, it asks you if you want to add a new entry, and in this way you build these databases up over time. You can go back at any time and re-interlinearize a text drawing on changed parse and lexicon databases. (The interlinearizing process itself is very fast.) To say it is for creating lexicons is incorrect and misleading. You can use the lexicon database to create varieties of dictionaries. You can use Shoebox to build and maintain other related databases, for phonological analysis, for grammatical and semantic analysis, for ethnographic information, and so on. Where I have found it crufty is in handling stem vowel alternations conditioned by affixes. This clears up as the underlying forms become apparent and you use them rather than the surface forms in the lexicon database, but getting there often requires making multiple entries, one for each alternant, and later merging them with an annotation about the rules and environments effecting the alternation. I know the SIL folks in New Mexico have a big text database project going on and have written some guidelines for using Shoebox and related tools. You might want to get in touch with them through SIL in Texas or Waxhaw, NC, wherever your present contacts are. Sorry, my records and correspondence with them are at home, and I'm at my office now. John Wimbish was here in the US this Fall, but I believe was going back to Indonesia. I have been using Shoebox to work up my field materials on Achumawi. I'll be in a position to chat more about Shoebox (and would enjoy doing so) in about a month. I'm afraid I must be pretty much incommunicado until then. Bruce Nevin bn@bbn.com (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 3 Apr 1991 20:13:00 -0500 From: BELMORE@Vax2.Concordia.CA Subject: Responses to my query about IT Many thanks for the helpful replies. It seems that it's best to proceed with caution when considering using IT or SHOEBOX (or any software). As Snoopy said, "Life is full of rude awakenings." (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 4 Apr 91 15:23:46 MST From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz) Subject: Conerting Macintosh Postscript Fonts to PC Postscript Fonts I previously reposted to this list some instructions on using the expensive Corel graphics package to convert Macintosh Postscript files to PC Postscript files. That generated some response, so the following may also be of interest. Here is a less expensive tool for making the conversion. Note that I am not the developer of the process, and have not tested it. I am simply reposting it so that it will reach a wider audience. The attraction of this process to PC using linguists and humanists is that there are a considerable number of third party Postscript fonts available in Macintosh format only, including some that support languages with non-Roman scripts, or extended Roman scripts. I believe that this conversion process makes them available to PC users, though I have not tested the assumption. Forwarded message follows: [The full text of the message is too long to post to the entire list. Those interested in seeing it should send the message: get mac-to-dos to the address: listserv@uniwa.uwa.oz.au ] (5) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 5 Apr 91 12:26:16 BST Subject: Re: Borrowing words for parts of the body The following Welsh words are Latin borrowings: braich - arm; coes - leg; boch - cheek; barf - beard; corun - top of the head; palf - palm. There may be others. All except the last are the normal words for those meanings. The Welsh word 'brest' is an old borrowing from English and is the normal word for the chest. [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0119] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0120. Saturday, 6 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0120 Queries and Software Total: 166 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: 2 Apr 91 17:26:00 EST From: "JOHAN ROORYCK" Subject: query: imperative + clitic ordering (2) Date: Thu, 4 Apr 91 16:55 MET From: Koenraad De Smedt Subject: syntactic complexity (3) Date: Tue, 2 Apr 91 08:41:41 IST From: Bernard Spolsky Subject: Banned languages (4) Date: Fri, 5 Apr 91 13:37 EST From: NAPOLI@campus.swarthmore.edu Subject: Poetry (5) Date: Fri, 05 Apr 91 01:32 PST From: Jonathan Mead Subject: Renumber Software (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 2 Apr 91 17:26:00 EST From: "JOHAN ROORYCK" Subject: query: imperative + clitic ordering It is well known that Romance languages have enclitic ordering in imperatives even if the unmarked order in the language is proclitic: Donne-le-lui Give it to-him' Je le lui donne I it to-him give' The descriptive generalization also seems to hold for completely unrelated languages such as Albanian and Modern Greek (Rivero 1988). My question is the following: is anyone aware of languages which arguably have clitics, but nevertheless proclitic ordering in imperatives? If so, please give me some references. I would also be interested in languages which confirm the general pattern of enclitic ordering with imperatives. I pretty much checked the various Romance dialects myself, but it would be interesting to know any examples confirming or falsifying the observation. Johan Rooryck (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 4 Apr 91 16:55 MET From: Koenraad De Smedt Subject: syntactic complexity In a recent posting, Frederick Newmeyer wrote: %% It's quite true, I'm %% sure, that (functional) pressure on the parser explains why in V-O %% languages heavy constituents tend to appear at the right (Hawkins) Now I'm very interested in a psycholinguistic account of syntactic complexity; so, does anyone have anything to say about this or has pointers to the literature about this? I have myself built a computational model for language production (rather than parsing as Hawkins presumably does) that is based on the assumption that if several constituents can be produced in parallel, then complex constituents will tend to be syntactically completed (and thus uttered) later even if their content was given sooner than that of shorter constituents. It would be nice to see if constraints on production and those on parsing tend to converge on this issue. It would also be nice if there was psycholinguistic work defining factors of syntactic complexity in some measurable way (Should one count in milliseconds per syllable, per word, or per node in the syntactic structure?:-) For some work on production that I mentioned, see my contribution in the forthcoming book edited by Adriaens, G. & Hahn, U. 'Parallel natural language processing' (or something similar) to be published soon by Ablex. Koenraad de Smedt (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 2 Apr 91 08:41:41 IST From: Bernard Spolsky Subject: Banned languages Does anyone know a list of languages that are legally banned in various parts of the world? I would be interested in cases where the use of a named language is specifically prohibited (as opposed to cases where the ban is implicit in the requirement to use anothrer language). Bernard Spolsky Department of English Telephone: +972-3-531-8239 Bar-Ilan University Home: +972-2-282-044 52 100 Ramat-Gan Fax: (office) +972-3-347-601 Israel (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 5 Apr 91 13:37 EST From: NAPOLI@campus.swarthmore.edu Subject: Poetry If you want to contribute poems to the next volume of poetry by linguists, send 3 copies of up to 10 poems by May 1, to NAPOLI@CAMPUS.SWARTHMORE.edu. If you want your poems back, use regular mail and enclose an SASE. Thank you. (5) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 05 Apr 91 01:32 PST From: Jonathan Mead Subject: Renumber Software [Moderators' Note: The following is an advertisement for shareware, and is offered here solely as a service to the subscribers of LINGUIST. We have no personal knowledge of the software in question, and have no idea of its effectiveness or its lack of it.] RENUMBER for the IBM PC and Macintosh RENUMBER is a program that renumbers both examples and references to examples in a linguistics text. It takes the misery out of adding or deleting examples or finding two examples with the same number. RENUMBER allows sequential numbering of separate files as well as the use of labels (e.g. ECP) instead of numbers. It is also clever enough to change only the example (i.e. 14a --> 15a). Best of all, RENUMBER is fast: a large document can be renumbered in a few minutes. The current IBM version of RENUMBER (1.3) is compatible with many popular word-processors including WordPerfect (4.0- 5.0), Microsoft Word (4.0-5.5), Wordstar (3.3), FinalWord II and Borland Sprint and any program that can generate ASCII files. The current Macintosh version (1.2), works with any word processor that can save to Rich Text Format (RTF) files including WriteNow version 2.0 and Microsoft Word versions 3.0 and 4.0. The price of RENUMBER is $20.00. Students can purchase the program at the special price of $15.00. To order a copy or get more information, write to: Jonathan Mead 356 N. Spaulding Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90036 Email inquiries can be sent to izzyt09@uclamvs (BITNET). Name:____________________________________________________ Address:_________________________________________________ City:______________________ Province or State:_________ Country:___________________ Postal Code:_______________ Email Address:___________________________________________ Version: PC _____ Diskette Size: 5.25 ____ 3.5 ___ Mac_____ [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0120] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0121. Sunday, 7 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0121 LINGUIST's Move; Verb Agreement Total: 106 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Sun, 7 Apr 91 From: The Moderators of LINGUIST Subject: LINGUIST is Moving (2) Date: Tue, 2 Apr 91 12:24 GMT From: Steve Harlow Subject: Subject-verb agreement in Arabic (3) Date: Wed, 3 Apr 91 21:50 EST From: "Hi, 'lo" Subject: Re: Verb Agreement (4) Date: Thu, 04 Apr 91 12:00:13 +0200 From: Guido Vanden Wyngaerd Subject: Re: Agreement (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 7 Apr 91 From: The Moderators of LINGUIST Subject: LINGUIST is Moving LINGUIST will soon be moving from its present site to a new one in the USA. We hope that this can be accomplished with a minimum of disruption and inconvenience to subscribers, but there may be minor delays in postings and acknowledgements of mail. For most of you, the only evidence of the move will be the new address from which LINGUIST will be originating. This move is necessitated by a number of different factors. First, LINGUIST has grown to such a degree that the software we are running is now having considerable difficulty generating mailings in a reasonable amount of time. In order to obviate this problem, we are having to make our postings somewhat longer than we would like. Second, we are running LINGUIST on a Unix machine, with collating software which is much inferior to that which can be provided on other platforms. This makes editing LINGUIST much more of a chore than it should be, and generates on occasion unfortunate errors in postings. Third, LINGUIST will acquire in this way both an Internet and a Bitnet address, which may facilitate communicating with some of you. Finally, and perhaps most important of all, the moderator who supervises the list at its site, Anthony Aristar, is moving from Australia to the US, and the list will have to move with him. At the time of the move, all subscribers will be sent complete information on LINGUIST's new addresses, and on how to interact with our new listserv. We would like to acknowledge, shortly before we make this move, the considerable debt LINGUIST owes to the Department of Anthropology at the University of Western Australia. It was their support, both administrative and financial, which enabled Anthony Aristar to found the list in the first place, and we owe them a great deal for this generosity. (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 2 Apr 91 12:24 GMT From: Steve Harlow Subject: Subject-verb agreement in Arabic Alison Henry doesn't need to go as far afield as Arabic to find examples of the kind she mentions. Her description is a pretty good account of what happens in Celtic languages. Broadly speaking, pronominal subjects in VSO clauses trigger person and number agreement on the verb. Non-pronominals do not. Preverbal subjects (of both sorts) fail to trigger agreement. You also get absence of agreement when the (post-verbal) subject is a WH-trace (although you get it back again in Welsh if the clause has a negative complementiser). There is a description of the phenomenon for Welsh in a paper by me in Frank Heny's 'Binding and Filtering' and for Irish in a paper in NLLT 1 by McCloskey and Hale. Borsley and Stephens discuss Breton in a paper in NLLT 7. There is an incorporation analysis of Welsh pronominal agreement by Rouveret in Syntax and Semantics Vol 23. Pronominally triggered agreement in Welsh was also (part of) the topic of Rouveret's paper at the GLOW meeting last week in Leiden. Steve Harlow (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 3 Apr 91 21:50 EST From: "Hi, 'lo" Subject: Re: Verb Agreement With regard to whether my observation on verb agreement has been published, I *think* I mentioned it (in a different context) in my 1971 MIT dissertation, "The acquisition of verb-particle and dative constructions," toward the end; I first observed the phenomenon listening to Haj Ross, and have mentioned it in print somewhere, so that's my best guess. Susan Fischer (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 04 Apr 91 12:00:13 +0200 From: Guido Vanden Wyngaerd Subject: Re: Agreement For Ralph Thiede ("disagreement query"): You will want to look at R. Kayne (1989) "Notes on English Agreement", ms. CUNY. Kayne also discusses a paper by J Kimball and J. Aissen (1971) "I Think, You Think, He Think," LI 2, 242-246, which might be of interest to you. -Guido Vanden Wyngaerd [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0121] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0122. Sunday, 7 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0122 (Morpho)phonology Total: 259 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Thu, 04 Apr 91 21:32:37 -0500 Subject: Morphology; Evaluation Metric From: bochner@das.harvard.edu (2) Date: Fri, 5 Apr 91 08:20:49 EST From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: morphophonology/phonology boundary (3) Date: Thu, 4 Apr 91 16:26:31 PST From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com Subject: RE: History of Phonology (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 04 Apr 91 21:32:37 -0500 Subject: Morphology; Evaluation Metric From: bochner@das.harvard.edu Phil Bralich writes: >Is the Forris publication coming out soon? >At the very least I would like to >know more about your version of the Evaluation Metric. The contract hasn't been signed yet, and we haven't discussed the production schedule yet. So I don't know; I'll let you know when I know more. I don't believe you mentioned whether your thesis would be available through UMI; probably it would be easier to get a copy from you? >Strictly speaking the thoery I propose does not actually posit internal bound >aries or juncture of any sort. The theory I propose merely claims that >speakers are aware of the cateogies of the items involved in word formation. >However, in the framework I propose the categories are enhanced with the the >bar levels proivided by the X-bar theory. The notion juncture falls out from >the fact that speakers consider the categories and bar levels of the items >involved in word foramtion. I agree that, in the context of a morpheme-based theory, this is a very attractive move. I argue, however, that the morpheme-based model is untenable for more basic reasons. This is the beginning of the Evaluation Metric argument, and the easiest part to summarize, so here goes: The usual, symbol-counting, Evaluation Metric is the implicit basis for most arguments for morpheme-based theories as opposed to word-based theories; cf. the arguments of Kiparsky(82). If you work out the implications: you find a clear prediction that a morphologically complex (= polymorphemic) word cannot have any properties that cannot be predicted directly from it's morphemes; again, cf K(82, page 28). But this prediction is easily falsified. The fact that it fails for cases of opaque semantics has been discussed a fair bit; the fact that it fails for routine cases of morpheme distribution ('potentiation' properties) has gotten less attention. Consider: perceive perceptible conceive *conceptible There's no semantic problem here: if *conceptible existed, it would mean 'conceivable'. So it clear that the ability to potentiate -ible can not be attributed to ceive/cept. But it can't be attributed to the prefixes either: *perversible shows that per- does not always enable -ible, while comprehensible shows that com- does not always block it. Examples of this sort can be multiplied at will. So a basic prediction of the model turns out to be false. I omit discussion of ways we might try to rescue it: I don't think any of them are compatible with a strict interpretation of the symbol-counting Evaluation Metric. I leave it to the proponents to work out an explict response to this problem. So if we reject the symbol-counting EM, we open the door to word-based theories. I take Jackendoff(75) as my starting point; my formalization of the EM involves pattern matching applied to sets of related lexical entries. Regardless of the formalization, however, the basic idea is that, instead of equating simplicity with brevity, as in the symbol-counting EM, we need to think of it as conformity with the patterns of the grammar. > Also what phenomena do you account for? My main concern is building up the morphological model; the morphophonological concerns we share are just secondary issue for me, and I don't do more than illustrate how the model works in this respect. Once you get into the details, English morphology turns out to much more interesting (and messy) that I expected! -- Harry Bochner -- bochner@das.harvard.edu (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 5 Apr 91 08:20:49 EST From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: morphophonology/phonology boundary To Harry Bochner , who in 0116 re "Morphological Juncture; Morphophonology" agrees with Rick Wojcic that SPE advanced the >> mistaken position that there was no basic difference between >> morphonology and phonology. and then suggests that Halle's original argument was >an argument (convincing, I think) that Structuralist Phonemics placed >the boundary between Phonology and Morphophonology in the wrong place. and not about the existence of that boundary, that is, not about the status of the phoneme. My question: which Structuralist Phonemics? The historical situation was richer in variety than is supposed in the traditionally recited strawman arguments. For example, Harris's more abstract phonemes allowed him to place the phonemics/morphophonemics boundary differently than Bloch and others were able to do with their less abstract (more "natural"?) phonemes. The salient distinction: for Bloch, two phones had to share a characteristic phonetic feature. He treated phonetic identity as the primitive term and from it (together with distributional criteria) derived contrast and its complement, repetition. Harris treated repetition (and therefore contrast) as primitive. This is the theoretical significance Harris's innovation, the pair test. Because of this move, Harrisian phonological theory can treat phonetic likeness not as a requirement but as just one optionally useful criterion among several. For Harris, distributional considerations may override phonetic likeness. Problematic cases of overlapping are the usual example, as in his treatment of the problem of vowel height (not length, though that is relevant in some dialects of English) in e.g. "writer/rider" by phonemicizing the sequence as a whole rather than one segment at a time. For Bloch, this rephonemicization step would not be possible because all his allophones of /d/ have to share the same characteristic phonetic feature, and all allophones of /t/ have to share a different phonetic feature, whatever the other phonetic differences between the allophones of either. Overlapping forces Bloch to accept awkward conclusions, and it is those conclusions that were usually the crux of attacks on "taxonomic phonemics." For similar reasons, Bloch distrusted the treatment of junctures as phonemic entities [relevant to his "pod:pa'd (go if he could)" example]. There are obvious parallels to the natural/abstract debate. A difference is that for Harris the arbitrariness of language that sets abstract phonological entities and rules off from natural ones is of a piece with the arbitrariness of all social convention, rather than being due to a language organ, which is to say "natural" in some neurological sense. In his (Naturalist) view, the language system is immanent in the speech community rather than in the biological endowment of individual language users, though doubtless constrained by neurological factors much as phonology is constrained by various kinds of phonetic factors. After a long reductio argument between two perspectives that seem to divide the universe between them it can be refreshing to include a third. Bruce Nevin bn@bbn.com (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 4 Apr 91 16:26:31 PST From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com Subject: RE: History of Phonology John Coleman writes: >Whether a phenomenon such as this is morphophonological or just an >automatic alternation depends on other considerations, especially the >form of morphophonological representations and the theory of phonetic >interpretation which is being assumed. Wojcik's comment seems to me to >assume that both of these are settled, and that there can therefore be >no redrawing of the lines between phonetics and phonology, even if such >realignment allows data previously regarded as independent to be handled >by generalisations already proposed for some other set of examples. We are talking at cross purposes. I never said anything about redrawing the lines between phonetics and phonology. I restricted my comments exclusively to the distinction between phonology and morphonology, the historical roots of which most modern linguists have little understanding. Vowel reduction usually refers to a purely phonological phenomenon--what happens when speakers try to pronounce vowels in unstressed environments. Purely phonological processes such as vowel reduction participate in phonological foreign accent. English speakers apply vowel reduction to foreign languages as well as their own. The 'title/titular' alternation is of a different nature. It does not bear on how we pronounce sounds and plays no concrete role in the mispronunciation of foreign words. (I am proposing phonological accent as a kind of litmus test, although I believe that there are rare cases where morphology influences accent--e.g. when English speakers pronounce Spanish plurals with a /z/ instead of an /s/.) >To demonstrate my point about the theory-internal nature of the dividing >line between (morpho)phonology and (physio)phonetics... I have little to say about most of what John wrote in the paragraph I excerpt this from, but I don't understand the parentheses around 'morpho' here. The correct historical relationship between Baudouin's terminology and Trubetzkoy's is the following: psychophonetics = morpho(pho)nology and physiophonetics = phonology. It was no accident that Trubetzkoy lumped archiphonemics and allophonics together under the rubric of 'phonology' in his Fundamentals. That was because the alternations covering those two phenomena in his theory corresponded to Baudouin's physiophonetic domain. Trubetzkoy mentioned morphonology briefly in an appendix to his text, since it wasn't properly a topic of discussion in a phonology text. (And I should mention that the term 'morphophoneme', first coined by Baudouin's student Ulaszyn, was historically misused by structuralists to represent psychophonetic alternations.) John further responds to my claim that Sapir, the Moscow School, and Stampean Natural Phonology retain the original Baudouinian dichotomy between phonology and morphonology: >There are two others I know of. The Copenhagen school, I believe still >has adherents, and also Firthian Prosodic Analysis, which is still very >much alive. That's my background, which is why I found Wojcik's >piece a bit ironic. I'm not sure that either school has anything to do with the original dichotomy, but I plead only a superficial grasp of both schools. I do know that British phoneticians were influenced by Shcherba (Leningrad), who redefined the phoneme as a purely perceptual unit. Shcherba, in effect, was an original proponent of the so-called "once a phoneme, always a phoneme" view. Reformatiskii (Moscow School) jokingly referred to his redefinition of the concept as the "Shcherbeme". The shcherbeme is essentially the classical phoneme as defined in the West. (Russian readers can look at A.A. Reformatskii's 1970 Iz_istorii_otechestvennoi_fonologii for a revealing Moscow-based retrospective on phonological history.) Here is the basic alternational dichotomy. Baudouin distinguished two-phoneme (psycophonetic) alternations from one-phoneme (physiophonetic) alternations. An example of a PHYSIOphonetic alternation is the word-final devoicing in the Russian word 'rod' [rot]/'roda' [roda] ('type, kind' nom./gen.). For Baudouin, there was only the single phoneme /d/ underlying the alternation, but for Shcherba there had to be two distinct phonemes /t/ and /d/. Baudouin believed that phonemes represented the phonetic segments that speakers attempted to pronounce. So he believed that Russians were intending to pronounce voiced obstruents at the ends of some words, but that they ended up pronouncing them as voiceless. To him, this was a 'physical' fact--not under the conscious control of the speaker. On the other hand, the /ay/~/I/ alternation in 'type/typical' is a PSYCHOphonetic alternation--an alternation that the speaker can control volitionally. You can say 't[ay]pIcal' or 't[I]pical' with no feeling of articulatory difficulty. Hence, two distinct phonemes are alternating here. (BTW, Shcherba was Baudouin's student in St. Petersburg and came to dominate the 'Leningrad School' after Baudouin left.) Sapir (cf. Language p. 62 in the Harcourt, Brace paperback) used 'book[s]~bag[z]' and 'hou[s]e~hou[z]es' to illustrate the dichotomy. He said "The two alternations belong...to entirely different psychological categories." Sapir was not unique or original in his view of the phoneme. In fact, he was one of the last advocates of the original concept of phonemics (=phonology) before the dark days of shcherbeme-dominated structuralism rolled over everything. (BTW, I purposely avoid the term "automatic alternation" for physiophonetic alternations, because the psychophonetic ones can be quite automatic as well.) -Rick Wojcik (rwojcik@atc.boeing.com) [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0122] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0123. Monday, 8 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0123 Conferences Total: 218 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Thu, 4 Apr 91 17:43 EST From: Subject: SECOL 44 PROGRAM FYI (2) Date: Fri, 5 Apr 91 11:45:20 -0500 From: walker@flash.bellcore.com (Don Walker) Subject: ACL-91 Annual Meeting -- summary description (3) Date: Thu, 4 Apr 91 08:35:24 MST From: John_Ohala@mts.ucs.ualberta.ca Subject: Conference On Spoken Language Processing (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 4 Apr 91 17:43 EST From: Subject: SECOL 44 PROGRAM FYI SECOL XLIV PROGRAM Friday, 5 April Second Language Acquisition/Grammatical Theory--James Polk Room, Hyatt--Chair, Dale Myers, UT-Knoxville [Moderators' Note: The program was too long to be sent to the entire list, but may be obtained by sending the message: get secol-91 to: listserv@uniwa.uwa.oz.au ] (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 5 Apr 91 11:45:20 -0500 From: walker@flash.bellcore.com (Don Walker) Subject: ACL-91 Annual Meeting -- summary description ASSOCIATION FOR COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS 29th Annual Meeting 17-21 June 1991 University of California, Berkeley, California, USA The program for the Annual Meeting itself, which will take place on 19-21 June, features papers on all aspects of computational linguistics. Two invited lectures will be given during the meeting: "Linguistic Problems and Extra-Linguistic Problems in Machine Translation" by Jun-ichi Tsujii, UMIST; and "Word Meaning: Starting where the MRDs Stop" by Charles Fillmore, University of California, Berkeley and Sue Atkins, Oxford University Press. In addition, there are a special set of Student Sessions featuring papers that describe `work in progress' so that students can receive feedback from other members of the computational linguistics community. The Annual Meeting is preceded on 18 June by a set of tutorials: "Natural Language Generation" by Kathleen McCoy and Johanna Moore; "Intonation in Spoken Language Systems" by Julia Hirschberg; "Computational Linguistics Methodologies for Humanities Computing" by Nancy M. Ide; and "Machine Translation: An In-Depth Tutorial" by Jaime Carbonell and Yorick Wilks. There are also three preconference workshops: (1) "Lexical Semantics and Knowledge Representation" (17 June), sponsored by the ACL Special Interest Group on the Lexicon (SIGLEX). For more information, contact James Pustejovsky, Computer Science Department, Ford Hall, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA 02254-9110, USA; (+1-617)736-2709; jamesp@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu. (2) Reversible Grammar in Natural Language Processing (17 June), sponsored by the ACL Special Interest Groups on Generation (SIGGEN) and Parsing (SIGPARSE). For more information, contact Tomek Strzalkowski, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University, 715 Broadway, Room 704, New York, NY 10003, USA; (+1-212)998-3496; tomek@cs.nyu.edu. (3) Evaluation of Natural Language Processing Systems (18 June). For more information, contact Jeannette G. Neal, Calspan Corporation, P.O. Box 400, Buffalo, NY 14225, USA; (+1-716)631-6844; neal@cs.buffalo.edu. Lexical Semantics and Knowledge Representation CONFERENCE INFORMATION The Program Committee was chaired by Douglas Appelt, SRI International. The Tutorials were organized by Cecile Paris, USC/ISI. The exhibits and demonstrations are being arranged by Sandra Newton, Brown Bear Consulting, 3842 Louis Road, Palo Alto, CA 94303, USA; (+1-415)856-6506; newton@decwrl.dec.com. Local arrangements are being handled by Peter Norvig, Division of Computer Science, University of California, 573 Evans Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA; (+1-415)642-9533; norvig@teak.berkeley.edu. For program and registration brochures and other information on the conference and on the ACL more generally, contact Don Walker (ACL), Bellcore, MRE 2A379, 445 South Street, Box 1910, Morristown, NJ 07960-1910, USA; (+1 201)829-4312; walker@flash.bellcore.com. (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 4 Apr 91 08:35:24 MST From: John_Ohala@mts.ucs.ualberta.ca Subject: Conference on Spoken Language Processing 1992 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SPOKEN LANGUAGE PROCESSING 12 - 16 October 1992, Banff Springs Hotel, Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada Sponsored by: University of Alberta in conjunction with: The Linguistic Society of America, The International Phonetic Association (among others). Following the success of the first in this series, ICSLP - 90 (Kobe, Japan), ths conference is intended to serve as an international, interdisciplinary, forum for the exchange of information on basic and applied reasearch dealing with spoken language processing, especially the interaction between speakers and machines. The conference will feature plenary talks, commercial exhibits, and technical sessions with contributed papers (both oral and poster). The spectacular natural beauty of Banff National Park, in the heart of the Canadian Rocky Mountains, should promote heightened interaction between researchers with different backgrounds but a common goal. Prospective authors are invited to propose papers in any of the following technical areas relevant to *Spoken Language* (SL): A. Phonetics & Phonology B. Dialects & Speech Styles in SL Processing C. Production of SL D. Perception of SL E. Analysis of SL F. Synthesis of SL G. Speech Coding & Transmission H. Speech Enhancement I. Automatic Speech Recognition & Understanding J. Analysis/Synthesis of Discourse K. Dialogue/Conversation & SL Processing L. Integration of Speech & Natural Language Processing M. Speaker Identification/Verification N. Neural Networks and Stochastic Modelling for SL Processing O. Hardware/Systems for SL Processing P. Performance/Evaluation and Human Factors Q. Standards in Speech Technology R. SL Databases S. Hearing/Speech Impairments and Aids T. SL Acquisition/Learning U. Instructional Technology for SL V. Applications of SL Processing W. Other The Program Committee of ICSLP - 92 will select papers for presentation and will organize the final program. Submission of an abstract implies a commitment to submit a 4-page camera-ready version of the paper and to present the paper if the abstract is accepted. Preliminary Reply: Registration forms and other information (lodging, tours, etc.) will be mailed to those who reply to the addresses give below. Note: there are advantages and incentives to early registration and hotel reservations: discounted registration fees are available up to 7 Oct 1991; there are also limited rooms available in the Banff Springs Hotel and room rates are subject to increase after 12 Oct 1991 (one year before the start of the conference). Reply to: ICSLP - 92 Attn: Ms. Cheryl Sarafinchan University of Alberta #103 Lister Hall Edmonton, Alberta Canada T6G 2H6 FAX: (403) 492 7032 e-mail: USEROHAL@MTS.UCS.UALBERTA.CA Phone: (403) 492 7200 Submission of Abstracts: Submit four copies of a 400-word, 1-page abstract . It should begin with the title of the paper, name(s) and address(es) of the author(s), followed by the letter code(s) (A - W) of the relevant technical area(s) listed in the order of preference. Also indicate which of the authors, if more than one, should receive the acceptance notice. The abstract should be received by * 2 March 1992 * at the following address: ICSLP - 92 Dept of Linguistics Univ of Alberta Assiniboia Hall Edmonton, Alberta Canada T6G 2E7 FAX: (403) 492 6145 e-mail: USEROHAL@MTS.UCS.UALBERTA.CA Schedule: Deadline for early discounted registration: 7 Oct 91 Deadline for receipt of abstracts: 2 Mar 92 Notification of acceptance: 4 May 92 Deadline for receipt of 4-page ms: 15 Jul 92 Conference dates: 12 - 16 Oct 92 Registration fees: Category of registrants: Member* Non-Member Student Before 7 Oct 91 Cdn $325** 360 150 8 Oct 91 to 12 Sep 92 425 470 200 After 12 Sep 92 500 555 250 * Member of sponsoring organization (e.g., LSA, IPA; send for complete list) **At current exchange rate Cdn $1 = US $ 0.86 Registration fees include admission to all plenary and technical sessions, commercial exhibits, 1 copy of conference preprints, opening reception. Banquet, tours, etc. are extra. [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0123] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0124. Monday, 8 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0124 Responses: Functionalism, Word-Processing, Banned Lgs, Mother Total: 200 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Date: Thu, 04 Apr 91 07:31 PST From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: Functionalism (2) Date: Sun, 7 Apr 91 10:31:13 CDT From: John Goldsmith Subject: Re: Word Processing (3) Date: Sun, 7 Apr 91 10:31:41 CDT From: John Goldsmith Subject: Banned Languages (4) Date: Sun, 07 Apr 91 14:48:00 IST From: Ellen Spolsky Subject: more on mother (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 04 Apr 91 07:31 PST From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: Functionalism TO: Michael Kac -- The question is not whether the structuralists followed what they preached. In fact all the years I was taught in that framework it was clear that they didn't. Rather -- it is the question of one's particular view of science. Empiricism 'at its roots' starts with the assumption that the only sure basis for knowledge is observation and experiment, that the scientist collects a large body of statements about particular events in the world or the laboratory, that by indcution, makes limi ted generalizations about classes of events, and proceeds to more general statements if above are verified, and evidence consists to a great extent to the methods used to obtain the generalizations. As Bloomfield stated: "The only useful generalizations about language are inductive generalizations" or Bloch & Trager "The linguist is a scientist whose task is to analyze and classify the facts of speech..." and Hocket: "Linguistics is a classificatory science whose objectives are to find (1) the universif of discourse.. and (2) CRITERIA TO MAKE CLASSIFICATIONS." (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 7 Apr 91 10:31:13 CDT From: John Goldsmith Subject: Re: Word Processing Renumbering is an important function of any word processor for linguists, but it is worth pointing out that it is a built-in function in Word Perfect for the IBM, and also Nisus for the Mac (and perhaps many others). John Goldsmith (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 7 Apr 91 10:31:41 CDT From: John Goldsmith Subject: Banned Languages Anyone devising a list of overtly or covertly banned languages might wish to include in the study the variant of banishment that consists of ignoring it. I was recently trying to find out where American Sign Language ranked among languages of the United States and found it was nowhere on the list. Some rough calculations suggest, however, that it should be quite high: probably number 7, just after English, Spanish, Italian, French, German, and Polish. (This remark should not be taken as ignoring that fact that ASL has indeed been banned at times and in places, but that's something else again.) John Goldsmith (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 07 Apr 91 14:48:00 IST From: Ellen Spolsky Subject: more on mother I have been brooding for about a month now over Mark Turner's meditation on mothers and am about ready to hatch my response - to try to articulate an important distinction he seems to be missing. Indeed, as he says, we all know what a mother is in many of the same ways, and it is this shared experience/knowledge that allows us to understand Saddam Hussein's metaphor, "the mother of all battles." Our shared context, however, does not explain why it was so immediately and widely a source of parodic response in the American media. Just as surely as there was commonality, there was difference, and it was that gap between the Western understanding of mother and that which the West attributed to Saddam that allowed the flow of humor. Indeed, the important point to note here is that language understanding is at all levels, from the phonological to the semantic, dependent on universal aspects and local differences. Saddam's mother is a collection of conditions largely but not entirely overlapping with the western stereotype, and the difference strikes us as funny. We would both probably agree on the awesome fertility which produces multiple offspring, and many other of the conditions Turner mentions, but his account lacks any note of a mother's feminine conditions, and this, at first glance, strikes me as crucial in this instance. I suggest (to open the discussion) that the jokes Americans have been producing strike Western ears as funny precisely because they are incongruous on the level of gender stereotypes - if we credit Hoberman's note of 15 March, reading the Arabic dictionary, gender doesn't matter to the use of the expression in Arabic - a masculine noun can be the mother of another masculine noun. He doesn't indicate that this is a source of humor. That we feel "mother" to be comic in the context of battles, junkyards, Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament Games and dog battles (some of the nouns it has been paired with according to a recent e-mail communication from Don Nilsen), is made explicit in the joke he attributes to Jay Leno on the Johnny Carson show: "Even Saddam's mother is mad at him: `You called it the WHAT of all battles???'" If I had to begin to guess the source of the cultural difference, I'd begin to look at the longstanding and widely dispersed presence in western culture of the image of the Virgin Mary - Mother of God - a powerful yet vulnerable figure whose association with stereotypically feminine characteristics ("meke and milde" for example, in Middle English hymns), makes her entirely unsuited for battle. For whatever historical reason, the current western image lacks the power of the matriarchal force Saddam makes use of. Western mothers are still conventionally sent flowers and brought breakfast in bed on Mother's Day. In early Jewish sources, incidentally, it is not difficult to find this powerful model of matriarchy without any mitigating softness. The book of Psalms, for example, praises an excellent woman (clearly a wife) and head of household as an "eshet hayel." This is usually translated as a woman of valor, the root of the second noun encompassing notions of strength, power, bravery, force, and vigor. It is also the root of the modern Hebrew word "soldier." On first reading Mark's description of mothers in his letter, it had seemed reasonable to question the many local informants in our part of the world about the semantic conditions of the image of mothers. As yet, however, talking about the metaphor of mothers with Israeli Palestinians is still too much like talking of rope in the house of a hanged man. Subject to substantiation, then, I would suggest that Mark's theory needs to be refined to account for both universals and culturally specific associations. This would be true even if we allow that Saddam, rather than representing an Arab, or Islamic cultural view of mothers, just represents his own peculiar view of them. (What would his mother think of him now?) While it would be unjust to make him a paradigm Arab thinker or rhetorician (especially as we deplore the fact that so many Palestinians have done just that), we may also remember how he was widely scorned in the early days after the invasion of Kuwait for moves that were interpreted as awkwardness in relating to western expectations. In this connection I would like to enter into the record two of my own favorite metaphors from the war, both attributed to "a pentagon source" by The Sunday Times (London) 26 August 1990. I think you'll see why I attribute the two to the same source. To me they were original, but their down home-ness suggests they may be familiar military expressions. (I'd be glad to hear more about them from anyone who knows them in fact not to be original.) 1) "The Pentagon also revealed that it has targeted a Tomahawk cruise missile on Saddam's Baghdad palace, to be fired if Bush gave the order to invade. `It would be like the Tripoli bombing in 1986,' said a Pentagon source. `If we hit the man, fine; and if we didn't it would give him a clear signal of our intent. At the very least, it would ruin his breakfast.'" The first sentence of the citation is a simile, the second a euphemism, and the third, (the last line of the citation) seems to me to be an example of a "twice true" metaphor. I'd love to be able to give credit to that "source." My second example came in reaction to Saddam's inviting western tv to televise British captives - including the famous picture of Saddam standing next to a young boy, playing "Uncle Saddam" (in the words of the Sunday Times report). The difficulties of intercultural interpretation are the theme of the newspaper report, and in fact, the "source" feels it necessary to interpret his own metaphor, as do the reporter and the and editor, apparently. 2) "The disturbing parade of Britons was indicative of the huge gulf dividing Saddam from the West. While clearly aware of its propaganda value, Arab sources said he regarded his gesture as a demonstration of humanity. The unremittingly hostile Western reaction must have surprised him. `I sat and watch that and thought: Oh boy, this guy is a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic' said one Pentagon source. `He's misjudged us badly if he thinks that will weaken our resolve.'" In more academic contexts I have cheered the recent breakthroughs on metaphor in work done by Lakoff, Johnson, and Turner as moving in the right direction. I appreciate the strong claims they make for the centrality of metaphor to human bodies and human lives as well as to human language. But a little humility seems in order. Dissertations in several disciplines could be written on the subject of the misunderstandings that produced the Gulf War. Perhaps it is my proximity to the sites of so much missile destruction, the entirely unmetaphoric gas mask I had close to hand for 6 weeks, and the continued turmoil in my part of the world which prompt me to note that until we can begin to understand metaphors cross-culturally, we're still a few sandwiches short of a picnic. [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0124] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0125. Tuesday, 9 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0125 Queries and Responses Total: 172 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Date: Sat, 6 Apr 91 16:06:23 EST From: A. Kathol Subject: V1 and V2 (2) Date: Thu, 4 Apr 1991 10:43:00 -0500 From: GL250012@Venus.YorkU.CA Subject: Californian Linguistic Newsletter (3) Date: Sun, 07 Apr 91 16:01 PDT From: Nakamura Akira Subject: Re Tsou (4) Date: Mon, 8 Apr 91 17:37:24 PDT From: bew@barney.ESL.COM (Bruce E Wilson) Subject: help with Latin -> English translation (5) Date: Sat, 6 Apr 91 12:12 MET From: "NORVAL SMITH (UVAALF::NSMITH)" Subject: RE: Nameserver (6) Date: Mon, 08 Apr 91 12:54 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: Renumber (7) Date: Mon, 8 Apr 91 15:57 EST From: "Hi, 'lo" Subject: Re: Banned Lgs (8) Date: Mon, 08 Apr 91 16:17:00 +0200 From: Guido Vanden Wyngaerd Subject: Renumbering (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 6 Apr 91 16:06:23 EST From: A. Kathol Subject: V1 and V2 At the danger of missing the obvious, here's something that's been puzzling me about GB analyses of Germanic syntax for quite a while: As I understand it, there seems to be a general consensus among GB syntacticians to analyze V2 sentence structure in languages like Swedish or German as movement of some phrase into SPEC(CP) and head movement of the finite verb into the COMP position. Given this, it appears that V1 clauses as in (complementizer-less) conditionals or yes/no questions also arise via head movement into COMP. If this is so, what blocks further movement of any other constituent into SPEC(CP), as in V2 clauses? Is it because there is no such position available in that case or is it filled by any (invisible) element? If the latter, does this element account for the particular kinds of meanings found with V1 clauses, and how so? Or is there yet another possibility? Has anyone proposed solutions to this problem? (references?) Thanks, --Andreas Kathol (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 4 Apr 1991 10:43:00 -0500 From: GL250012@Venus.YorkU.CA Subject: Californian Linguistic Newsletter Can anyone tell me the address (and editor) of the California Linguistic Newsletter? Thanks - Jim Benson (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 07 Apr 91 16:01 PDT From: Nakamura Akira Subject: Re Tsou I am working on reduplication in Tsou, a Taiwanese language. If anyone knows of any reference to Tsou (other than Tung (1964)'s _A Descriptive Study of the Tsou Language, Formosa_), or of any native speakers who are e-mail accessible, please send information to izzyt63@uclamvs.bitnet . Nakamura Akira (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 8 Apr 91 17:37:24 PDT From: bew@barney.ESL.COM (Bruce E Wilson) Subject: help with Latin -> English translation I'm helping a friend translate a Latin manuscript into English. I'm looking for suggestion for preferably MacIntosh programs that will help with Latin spelling / grammer checking for verification of correctness of the original manuscript. Then we see the second step as a mass traslation into English. We are looking for a very rough word for word translation to speed the process of looking for interesting concepts in the work. The manuscript is handwritten lecture notes with a few english words thrown in. The microfiche copy we are trying to work from is difficult to transcribe, so we are looking for any ways to speed the translation. I would appreciate any suggestions on approches. Please send replies to bew@esl.com and I will summarize if there is sufficient interest. Thanks very much for your help (5) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 6 Apr 91 12:12 MET From: "NORVAL SMITH (UVAALF::NSMITH)" Subject: RE: Nameserver NAMESERVER Further to Giampapa's remarks, I find it incredible that the Italian UUCP gateway postmaster is ignorant of the fact that hp4nl is the Dutch EUnet (i.e. European UUCP) backbone site. I shall be informing him of this, too! Norval Smith (6) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 08 Apr 91 12:54 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: Renumber re RENUMBER -- it is also compatible with WORDSTAR 5.5 etc. And it's terrific. V Fromkin (7) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 8 Apr 91 15:57 EST From: "Hi, 'lo" Subject: Re: Banned Lgs With regard to John Goldsmith's comments on ASL, I once read an article that said that "sign language" was either the *4th* most used foreign language in the US (after Spanish, Italian, & German) or the 4th most taught foreign language. note that ASL has never been totally banned from the US, but similar sign languages *have* been totally banned from other countries such as Germany. Indeed, a colleague of mine once told me that the German claim was that there were no deaf people in Germany; everyone was hard of hearing. Susan Fischer (8) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 08 Apr 91 16:17:00 +0200 From: Guido Vanden Wyngaerd Subject: Renumbering AUTOMATIC EXAMPLE NUMBERING WITH WORDPERFECT Guido Vanden Wyngaerd (NFWO) UFSAL Vrijheidslaan 17 B-1080 Brussels guidovdw@blekul11.bitnet 8 April 1991 The following describes in detail how to use the features of WordPerfect (version 5.0 or higher) to automatically renumber both your linguistic examples and the references made to them in the text, including footnotes and endnotes. Distribute Freely| [Moderator's Note: This posting is too long to distribute to every the whole list. It is available in its entirety by sending the message: get renumbering to: listserv@uniwa.uwa.oz.au ] [Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0125] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0126. Tuesday, 9 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0126 Functionalism, MT Total: 120 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Date: Mon, 08 Apr 91 10:00:15 +0100 Subject: functionalism versus formalism From: R.Hudson (2) Date: Mon, 08 Apr 91 12:27 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: Functionalism and MT (3) Date: Mon, 8 Apr 91 17:03:55 PDT From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com Subject: Re: formal and functional (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 08 Apr 91 10:00:15 +0100 Subject: functionalism versus formalism From: R.Hudson Fritz Newmeyer writes: [regarding] Subjacency, etc. Why do they exist? In fact I am perfectly happy to posit a `functional' genesis for them: I assume that they arose to facilitate parsing. ... But over time they have become so thoroughly grammaticized that their relation to parsing is indirect at best. .. This grammaticization was driven by what I see as an innate human drive to impose structure and to maximize and extend structural patterning (and thereby to wrench form away from function).' This looks fine to me, but it makes the difference between formalism and functionalism seem rather small, given that plenty of functionalists would probably go along with it too. But are we to understand Fritz as having abandoned the idea that Subjacency etc are innate? All that's innate in his account is the human drive to impose structure etc. If so, I am delighted to hear it. I think Robert Van Valin has said all that needs to be said about this debate - we're using these slogans as ways of protecting ourselves against each other. It's possible to admire both types of work - and to learn a lot from both. Dick Hudson Dept of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT (071) 387 7050 ext 3152 home: (081) 340 1253 (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 08 Apr 91 12:27 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: Functionalism and MT TO: Yorick W. FROM: Vicki Fromkin I really haven't been asleep. Did you read my followup to the first misunderstanding of what I wrote about MT? I was referring to the 'good old days' when everyone thought it was an easy task because they did not understand the complexities of language. My plea was for engineers and linguists (and AI people and computer scientists and psychologists etc etc etc) to work together and learn from each other and my remarks were in answer to those who believed non-linguists know more about language than linguists. Sorry about all this confusion. VAF (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 8 Apr 91 17:03:55 PDT From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com Subject: Re: formal and functional Fritz Newmeyer replies to Scott Delancey: > ...Of course we all agree that > languages have structure. The question is whether grammars are > STRUCTURAL SYSTEMS, with their own internal principles shaping > them. This I take to be the main issue separating generative > grammar from the wing of functionalism that Delancey represents. But this does not help very much. Fritz has just shifted the debate to the question of what excludes functionalist approaches to structure from being called 'structural systems'. I haven't got a clue as to what the answer is. > Among such principles, I have in mind, of course, Subjacency, the > ECP, Binding, the Case Filter, and so on. Why do they exist? In fact, I > am perfectly happy to posit a 'functional' genesis for them: I assume > that they arose to facilitate parsing. In effect, they help keep track > of what's what and what's where. But over time, they have become so > thoroughly grammaticized that their relation to parsing is indirect > at best. (I.e. many if not most ECP violations pose no particular > parsing problems.)... I had trouble with this passage until I came to realize that Fritz probably meant the 'comprehend' sense of 'parse' here. Personally, I think that too many linguists get their foot stuck in the comprehension bucket when they talk about linguistic performance. The fact is that the 'grammar' plays a direct role in language production. It has to. How would anyone know how to construct a grammatical sentence if it didn't? Since people can't control the form of the language that they process, a rather rigid use of grammatical filters on comprehension would be impractical. So you need to look at grammatical form not just in how it facilitates comprehension (parsing), but how it facilitates production. And those grammatical principles that Fritz cites, to the extent that they really exist as unitary phenomena, must play a very direct role in instructing us how to use pronouns, prepositions, and other grammatical structures. Not all functionalist explanations have to be grounded in comprehension issues alone. -Rick Wojcik [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0126] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0127. Tuesday, 9 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0127 (Morpho)phonology Total: 214 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Sun, 7 Apr 91 23:05:37 -1000 From: Phil Bralich Subject: Re: (Morpho)phonology (2) Date: Mon, 8 Apr 91 10:09:40 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Hammond on English stress and syllables (3) Date: Mon, 8 Apr 1991 07:52:26 -0400 From: Pierre Martin Subject: RE rwojcik: History of phonology (4) Date: Mon, 8 Apr 91 12:59:05 PDT From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com Subject: Re: (Morpho)phonology (5) Date: Mon, 8 Apr 91 21:45:00 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Phonology in the 19th and 20th Century (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 7 Apr 91 23:05:37 -1000 From: Phil Bralich Subject: Re: (Morpho)phonology In response to Harry Bochners comment about morpheme based theories. I agree completely. The theory I propose however takes the Word Based Hypothesis of Aronof (1976) as a basic assumption. The problem of conceive~*conceptible does not arise (along with a lot of other problems of a morpheme based therory) with the WBH. While I am reluctant to say too much before reading Bochners thesis I suspect the two theories are compatible. (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 8 Apr 91 10:09:40 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Hammond on English stress and syllables 1. I don't think it is enough to say that orchestra and podagra get initial stress because the second syllable is open. This is because words with such clusters between the second and third syllable do not ALWAYS behave this way. Thus, canasta, Modesto, and so on have second-syllable stress. Now, I am willing to believe that, SUPERFICIALLY, there is a difference in syllabification depending on the stress pattern. Thus orche$stra but canas$sta, say. However, that will not help make the stress pattern predictable, since the syllabification is dependent on the stress, not the other way around. 2. Any theory of English stress which requires diabetes to be analyzed as a morphological plural strikes me as unacceptable. Are we going to say the same in the case of Hades and Ulysses? 3. I don't think Cavendish has a secondary stress on the last syllable. I can say the -nd- as a kind of long [n:] much like I can in words like candy, and unlike words like Hindu. 4. Is there any plausibility of the SPE analysis of industry as having a final [y] rather than a final [I] or [i]? I really doubt that. (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 8 Apr 1991 07:52:26 -0400 From: Pierre Martin Subject: RE rwojcik: History of phonology I think Rick Wojcik's interpretation of Baudouin and Scherba's positions are historically correct. And I agree with him that modern phonologists would profit highly from a better understanding of the old views. May I put in a different (from that of Baudouin and that of Scherba) view on the examples given (vol. 2, no. 0122)? Russian [rot] 'rod' and [rod-(a)] 'rod-(a)' are what we (functionalists--Martinet style) call moneme variants. Of course, this morphological alternation is phonetically based (devoicing in final position). But, the only phonological alternation here is between the phoneme /d/, still opposed to /t/, intervocalically, in Russian, and the archiphoneme /t-d/ in final position. The case of English [ay]/[I] in 'type/typical' is, in fact, different. While the alternation is now totally morphologically based, the two units remain phonologically different, as is shown not by the above pair, but on the basis of lexical contrasts like the following: 'type/tip' (final closed syllable) and 'typing/tipping' (non final syllable). Pierre Martin (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 8 Apr 91 12:59:05 PDT From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com Subject: Re: (Morpho)phonology Bruce Nevin points out that one should not treat all Structuralists as if they agreed on how to arrive at phonemic representations. In fact, the issue of phonemic overlap was quite controversial in the structuralist heyday, as well it should have been. But the question I have specifically for Bruce is whether or not he thinks Harris could stand up to the Russian example that Halle gave in his famous argument. I don't see how any distributional argument could save him from taking a beating on that one. -Rick Wojcik (rwojcik@atc.boeing.com) (5) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 8 Apr 91 21:45:00 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Phonology in the 19th and 20th Century Rick Wojcik has done a great job raising everybody's consciousness to the fundamental issues in phonological theory (and the history thereof). I thought I would add just a few remarks: (1) Baudouin de Courtenay identified as phonemic a level of representation which we nowadays would say is the output of all purely morphophonemic and the input to all automatic (neutralizing as well as allophonic) rules. This level has been retained by the Moscow school of phonology, and I have often called it M(oscow)-phonemic, as a result. Baudouin himself explained this level in terms of the idea that phonemes are the intended sounds, which fail to be realized precisely as intended as a result of purely anatomical constraints. In other words, allophony (and apparently even neutralization) would arise as a result of the physical inability of a human being to realize the intended sound. This is the essence of the idea of "psychophonetics". David Stampe has a more sophisticated model, but based on the same basic idea, and it is not surprising that the level of representation Natural Phonology calls phonemic is this one. (2) Baudouin's student Ulaszyn proposed that Baudouin had confused two notions. Ulaszyn gave an argument based on Polish voicing assimilation which is an amazing mirror image of Halle's later argument against phonemics. Ulaszyn's point was that if a single process sometimes has neutralizing effects and other times allophonic ones, then speakers are conscious of the former but not of the latter. (In terms of Halle's Russian data, this would amount to saying that speakers can hear that mok+by is pronounced [mogby] but they cannot hear that zhech+by is pronounced [zhejhby]. I believe that this is correct. For example, I once wrote a term paper arguing that Polish [x] is not subject to voicing assimilation in cases like (orthographic) klechda 'legend'. Obviously, this is not true, but even after a couple of years of linguistics, I had trouble hearing the real pronunciation). As a result, Ulaszyn saw that there could not be a SINGLE level with all the properties that Baudouin attributed to phonemes. Rather, Ulaszyn proposed distinguishing two levels: the input to neutralizing rules (which he called morphophonemic) and the output of neutralizing rules (and input to automatic), which he called phonemic. This new sense of the term phoneme was adopted by the Leningrad school and hence I have often used the term L(eningrad)-phonemic here. ---------------------- Note: By 'zh', 'ch', and 'jh', I mean z-hachek, c-hachek, and j-hachek. And the 'l' in 'Ulaszyn' has a slash through it, like that in 'Walesa'. ---------------------- (3) The plot now thickens, for American structuralists (Bloomfield, Swadesh, Sapir, et al.) adopted Ulaszyn's notion of phoneme, but in the process of adopting his notion of morphophoneme changed the latter to mean roughly what it means today, i.e., the input to ALL rules (including non-automatic ones). (4) It might be added that with the advent of generative phonology, the term underlying representation replaced for the most part the term morphophonemic level. Also, for a time, the term systematic phonemes was used, in honor of which I have often called this the S(ystematic)-phonemic representation. (5) So much for terminology. Substantively, though, the problem has been all along that levels of representation are often claimed to have several properties, which, however, turn out not to correlate in the real world. For example, Baudouin thought that nondistinctiveness (i.e., complementarity of distribution) correlated with psychological indistinguishability. This insight, as a matter of fact, was quite literally the whole basis of phonology. Specifically, Baudouin pointed out that Polish and Russian vowels usually represented as 'i' and 'y' (the first accurately so; the latter purely conventionally) not only occurred in complementary distribution but also rhymed! He attributed the rhyming of the two phonetically quite different sounds precisely to the fact that they occurred in complementar y distribution. However, while at the time, the claim of complementarity was valid, today it is not (as has often been pointed out), especially in Polish but also in Russian. Yet the rhyming behavior continues, and (although this is purely anecdotal) it is my feeling that these rhymes are not perceived as poetic convention and they are not explicitly taught. However, it is possible that they are learned in early childhood as part of learning various verses and songs. This is hard to test. Also, as has been pointed out, Ukrainian, where 'i' and 'y' are not even close to being in complementary distribution also rhymes them (at least if the rhyme is feminine). Moreover, Baudouin himself was forced in later years to realize that there is something wrong, because (despite the rhyming facts!) his Polish and Russian colleagues etc. kept refusing to admit that 'i' and 'y' were intuitively the same sound. This also continues into the present: it is quite clear that Polish and Russian linguistics students have a lot of difficulty believing that these are the same sound. But, of course, the "psychophonetic" theory of the phoneme predicts that native speakers should not be able to distinguish the allophones of the same phoneme! (6) I believe that similar problems arise with many more recent attempts to lump different kinds of what I have called "phonological behavior" in terms of a single level of representation. In my dissertation, I started a systematic investigation of the level of representation involved in a number of different phenomena (rhyming, sound change, language games, spoonerisms) and tried to show that at least two different kinds of behavior exist: one of which involves L-phonemics, the other something even more superficial (i.e., some kind of SUBphonemic level). Even this was probably much too optimistic. But the study of these problems is still in its infancy. ------------------------------------ Note: The vowel represented as 'y' is in the case of Polish close to a barred i, but I think lower than that. In the case of Russian it is backer than a barred i and often diphthongized (with the offglide being much fronter than the nucleus). In the case of Ukrainian, it sounds to me more or less like [e]. This is very impressionist ic, and someone who is a better phonetician may wish to correct me. [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0127] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0128. Wednesday, 11 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0128 Queries; Russian Net; COSWL Total: 146 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Mon, 8 Apr 91 12:48:36 BST From: canon.co.uk!wachtel (Tom Wachtel) Subject: mis-course (2) Date: Tue, 9 Apr 91 08:54 MST From: STEELE@ccit.arizona.edu Subject: Re: Munda Homeland (3) Date: Tuesday, 9 April 1991 12:50pm ET From: "Barbara.Abbott" Subject: Pragmatics in Bantu (4) Date: Tue, 9 Apr 1991 12:32 PDT From: Thomas E Payne Subject: Re: Typologically Oriented Grammars in Austronesian (5) Date: Tue, 9 Apr 91 21:16:42 -0400 From: guidrzzm@acf5.NYU.EDU (M Christina Guidorizzi) Subject: acquisition of romance clitics - query (6) Date: Thu, 4 Apr 91 08:21:31 CST From: Andrew Wollert Subject: New List: RUSSIAN (7) Date: Sat, 6 Apr 91 22:29:09 EST From: Cari Spring Subject: COSWL (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 8 Apr 91 12:48:36 BST From: canon.co.uk!wachtel (Tom Wachtel) Subject: mis-course Quite independently of the content of Fritz Newmeyer's text (re: Functionalism and MT), which I have mutilated below for current purposes, isn't it interesting how often things like this appear on the net? Everywhere. Sometimes justified, sometimes not. It's so recurrent, it should become a smiley. > X writes that my bulletin board contribution exhibits Y. But the only > concrete example he gives to illustrate this is my supposed implication > that Z. I NEVER intended to imply such a thing and, rereading my piece, > I do not see how such an implication could be drawn from it. So, what are the rules that work in non-net dialogue but apparently fail on the net? (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 9 Apr 91 08:54 MST From: STEELE@ccit.arizona.edu Subject: Re: Munda Homeland I've been asked by a non-linguist colleague if I knew what the hypothesized homeland for the Munda language family is. I don't. But maybe someone out there does or knows where to find out. Thanks. Susan Steele (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tuesday, 9 April 1991 12:50pm ET From: "Barbara.Abbott" Subject: Pragmatics in Bantu I'm asking on behalf of a visitor (Elizabeth de Kadt, from the University of Natal) whether anybody knows of anybody working on pragmatic issues with respect to Bantu languages, especially Zulu. (De Kadt herself is working on requests in Zulu.) (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 9 Apr 1991 12:32 PDT From: Thomas E Payne Subject: Re: Typologically Oriented Grammars in Austronesian I would like to request references to all typologically oriented grammars of Austronesian languages. This would include unpublished works (disser- tations, etc.) and work in progress. In particular I would like to know of any grammars of Philippine languages that seriously consider the ergative hypothesis. Thank you for your help. Tom Payne, University of Oregon (5) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 9 Apr 91 21:16:42 -0400 From: guidrzzm@acf5.NYU.EDU (M Christina Guidorizzi) Subject: acquisition of romance clitics - query I would appreciate any bibliographic information on the topic of acquisition of clitics in romance languages. M.Christina Guidorizzi (6) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 4 Apr 91 08:21:31 CST From: Andrew Wollert Subject: New List: RUSSIAN RUSSIAN on LISTSERV@ASUACAD.BITNET A ListServ discussion group has been created to discuss Russian Language Issues, preferably in Russian. Topics include but are not limited to Russian language, linguistics, grammar, translations, literature. This list is geared toward students of Russian but, of course, _anyone_ who speaks/reads/writes Russian is invited and encouraged to participate. To subscribe to this list, send the following command to LISTSERV@ASUACAD on BITNET (in the body of mail or a message): SUB RUSSIAN your_name where your_name is your name as you wish it to appear on the subscription list (*not* userid at node). The name must include at the least a "first" and "last" name. For example, SUB RUSSIAN John Q. Public Thank you. Please direct questions and/or comments to the list owner, Andrew Wollert, at ISPAJW@ASUACAD.BITNET or ISPAJW@ASUVM.INRE.ASU.EDU. (7) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 6 Apr 91 22:29:09 EST From: Cari Spring Subject: COSWL LAST CALL FOR COSWL: At its May meeting, the LSA Executive Committee will be appointing new members to its various committees for terms beginning in January 1991. They will be appointing three new members to the Committee on the Status of Women in Linguistics (COSWL): two PhD's for terms of three years, and one student for two years. COSWL is submitting a list of people who are interested in serving on it, and who are prepared to put in a good deal of time doing so. We have already asked for volunteers, and we must send in our list immediately. However, there is time for last minute additions if people are quick. Anybody interested should send a message to Penelope Eckert (current chair of COSWL) at: eckert.parc@xerox.com, telling briefly why they want to be on COSWL. [Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0128] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0129. Wednesday, 11 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0129 Responses Total: 191 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Date: 9 Apr 91 09:52 EST From: pchapin@nsf.gov Subject: California Linguistic Newsletter and Tsou (2) Date: Tue, 9 Apr 1991 14:12 EDT From: Robert D Hoberman Subject: More on "Mother of Battles" (3) Date: Tue, 9 Apr 91 16:51 CDT From: Murvet Enc Subject: banned languages (4) Date: Tue, 09 Apr 91 22:14 PDT From: "JIM WILCE, " Subject: Re: Queries: Marking of Emotion in tone languages (5) Date: Wed, 10 Apr 91 15:16:48 CDT Subject: SIL software (IT, Shoebox, etc.) From: "Evan Antworth" (6) Date: Wed, 10 Apr 91 11:41:02 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Language Families (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 9 Apr 91 09:52 EST From: pchapin@nsf.gov Subject: California Linguistic Newsletter and Tsou (1) California Linguistic Newsletter -- the editor is Alan Kaye, Dept. of Ling., Cal. State U. Fullerton, Fullerton, CA 92634. (You'll probably get a hundred or so replies to this one.) (2) Tsou -- For information about Tsou and other Formosan languages, the first person I would ask would be Stanley Starosta, Dept. of Ling., U. of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI 96822. Paul Chapin, NSF (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 9 Apr 1991 14:12 EDT From: Robert D Hoberman Subject: More on "Mother of Battles" In Ellen Spolsky's April 8 discussion of the metaphoric (mis)understandings of Saddam's "mother of battles" (incidentally, first name, or title-plus-first-name, is one perfectly ordinary way to address someone in Arabic; Hussein is not a family name but his father's given name) she mentions my observations on "mother of" and "father of" terms in the Arabic dictionary. I wish to add only that I'm not at all sure that the "mother" or "father" part of these expressions is, in Arabic, still much of a metaphor. Metaphors do die; often relation and body-part terms become grammaticalized. For instance, in modern Aramaic the preposition "on" is a transparent derivative of "head", but all the metaphorical baggage that might be associated with heads does not accompany every use of "on". I have been called, in Arabic, "father of moustache", which does not suggest that I have many, or the largest, or the ancestor of other moustaches, but only that I have one; something like "the guy with the moustache". What we, as linguists, can contribute to the understanding of Saddam's expression is to investigate the range and meanings of such expressions in Arabic. (The interpretations English speakers have applied to the English translation of Saddam's expression are the topic of an entirely separate investigation. They seem to me to be analogous to President Bush's apparently intentional mispronunciation of Saddam's name as Sadd'm.) One question for which I would like to see an answer is, why does Wehr's Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic list more expressions with "mother" than with "father"? Is this preponderance true of the language, or an accident of the (very large) corpus that Wehr examined? What factors determine the choice of "mother" or "father"? And do the "mother of X" and "father of Y" schemata have the same range of functions? Robert Hoberman (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 9 Apr 91 16:51 CDT From: Murvet Enc Subject: banned languages This is in response to the request for information on banned languages. The Turkish government had banned Kurdish until very recently. It was, in fact, during the Gulf war that they rescinded the ban. (Not unreasonable to think that they could predict that the issue might come up in the near future in discussion about the plight of Kurds.) What is interesting is that the Turkish government, as far as I know, outlawed Kurdish while at the same time claiming that there were no Kurds in Turkey, only 'Mountain Turks'. Not bothered by trivial contradictions. (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 09 Apr 91 22:14 PDT From: "JIM WILCE, " Subject: Re: Queries: Marking of Emotion in tone languages In response to Cari Spring's query on studies of linguistic marking of emotion in tonal languages, Judith Irvine (Dept. of Anthropology, Brandeis University) would be a good source. She has investigated affect marking in Wolof, a "Niger -Congo" language (Comrie) which I assume is tonal. (5) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 10 Apr 91 15:16:48 CDT Subject: SIL software (IT, Shoebox, etc.) From: "Evan Antworth" There have been several postings recently about programs developed by the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), including IT (Interlinear Text Processor) and Shoebox (a linguistic data mangagement program). While it is not of general interest to respond here in detail to all the points raised in these postings, I would like to inform readers that some of us in the Academic Computing Department of SIL in Dallas, Texas are reading Linguist List and are available to answer questions and requests for information about SIL software. One caution: SIL is a very large, international organization and many entities and individual working under its auspices have developed (and continue to develop) software. This means that we can only speak authoritatively for the software that our department is directly responsible for; but we will certainly try to help in any way we can. Two points of immediate relevance: first, the author of the IT program, Gary Simons, is head of our department and is of course the local expert on the program. The programmer who did the Macintosh version of IT, John Thomson, also works here. And second, although Shoebox is not a product of our department, its author, John Wimbish is currently working here. We can also answer queries about other software including RAP, WORDSURV, AMPLE, STAMP, PC-KIMMO, and ITF. I will also submit to the listserver a bibliography of our computing publications. Since not all of the people here have email accounts, I will receive your queries and direct them to the proper person. Evan Antworth Academic Computing Department Summer Institute of Linguistics 7500 W. Camp Wisdom Road Dallas, TX 75236 U.S.A. phone: 214/709-2418 fax: 214/709-3387 email: evan@txsil.lonestar.org P.S. One clarification regarding IT. Someone said that it can only handle text of forty lines or so. This is incorrect. There is a limit of eighty lines per unit of text, e.g. a sentence, but there is no limit on the number of units (sentences) in a text. (6) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 10 Apr 91 11:41:02 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Language Families In response to Herb Stahlke's very illuminating comments re: Greenberg's classification of African languages, I would only point out that here again we are dealing with a difference between the African and the American situation. Unless I am mistaken, Greenberg (in addition to proposing certain very large families, whose existence may be difficult to establish or refute) also rectified a number of errors of classification which were quite easy to verify, in the African case. Now, again unless I am mistaken, his subclassification of Amerind does not have the same status. I know of no instance where he tells us something about manageable groups of languages that could quickly be checked by a comparativist. Many of his groupings are in fact what has been suspected all along. Thus, unlike in the African case, Greenberg's Americanist work appears to take hypotheses that are not particularly controversial qua hypotheses and proclaim as gospel truth. Yet precisely because many of these hypotheses have been around for a while and have no been definitely adjudicated, it seems to Americanist comparativists that he has not really told us much. And in those cases where he does propose something new (e.g., his Central Amerind), it is still no easier to decide if he is right. The languages are extremely divergent and the state of reconstruction for the component families usually lamentable. ------------------------------------------------------------- Re: Body part loan words, I would like to thank the person who sent in the list of Welsh borrowings from Latin (unfortunately, the return address part of their message was missing when it was posted on LINGUIST). If more examples come my way, I will compile a list and post it. -------------------------------------------------------------- [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0129] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0130. Wednesday, 11 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0130 Nameserver; NLP Software Registry Total: 202 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Date: Tue, 9 Apr 91 17:09 MET From: "NORVAL SMITH (UVAALF::NSMITH)" Subject: News from the nameserver (2) Date: Wed, 10 Apr 91 15:15:42 -0500 From: Computational Linguists Subject: Announcement of the NL Software Registry (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 9 Apr 91 17:09 MET From: "NORVAL SMITH (UVAALF::NSMITH)" Subject: News from the nameserver News from the nameserver With the size of the full e-mail address list fast approaching 200Kb, it is necessary to ask linguists not just to ADD their (new) addresses, but also to REMOVE their old and invalid addresses. There are a considerable number of people with addresses in two different universities, and while these may both valid in some cases, there are certainly a number of invalid addresses in the list. The value of such a list depends on the information it contains being kept up to date, so I would ask linguists who notice addresses in the list they know *for certain* to be invalid to send LINGUISTS a REMOVE command: REMOVE bloggs, bert: blogger@deckchair.sunshine-state.edu. It might well be worthwhile checking up on your own address with LIST, as there are very many addresses in the list that people did not send themselves. The list has a long history predating the nameserver. Norval Smith PS: a few hints: 1. begin your message at the margin 2. one command a line 3. follow the instructions available with HELP 4. do not try to deal with the server as if was human - it isn't! 5. do not use uppercase letters 6. (for UK people) do not use backward addresses. Other people cannot use them, and I just have to reverse them. 7. be sure of your address before you send it. For example anything ending in ..bitnet.edu or ..edu.bitnet just can't be right (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 10 Apr 91 15:15:42 -0500 From: Computational Linguists Subject: Announcement of the NL Software Registry [From Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 4, No. 1221] NATURAL LANGUAGE SOFTWARE REGISTRY The Natural Language Software Registry is a catalogue of software implementing core natural language processing techniques, whether available on a commercial or noncommercial basis. The current version includes + speech signal processors, such as the Computerized Speech Lab (Kay Electronics) + morphological analyzers, such as PC-KIMMO (Summer Institute for Linguistics) + parsers, such as Alveytools (University of Edinburgh) + knowledge representation systems, such as Rhet (University of Rochester) + multicomponent systems, such as ELU (ISSCO), PENMAN (ISI), Pundit (UNISYS), SNePS (SUNY Buffalo), + applications programs (misc.) This document is available on-line via anonymous ftp to tira.uchicago.edu (IP 128.135.96.31), by email to registry@tira.uchicago.edu, and by physical mail to the address below. If you have developed a piece of software for natural language processing that other researchers might find useful, you can include it by returning the description form, available from the same sources. Elizabeth Hinkelman, Director (registry@tira.uchicago.edu) NL Software Registry Center for Information and Language Studies 1100 East 57th Street Chicago, IL 60637, USA ----------------------- Authors: Person to contact for software (if different): Institution: Department: Street: City/State/Zip: Country: Phone (with country & area codes): Email network & address: Name of system: Type of system: research system / commercial product / other (specify) Primary task of system: linguistic analysis / test of linguistic theory (specify) / text generation / machine translation / text proofing / database interface / other (specify) Components: phonological analyzer/generator morphological analyzer/generator parser/generator semantic interpreter knowledge representation discourse structure pragmatic features other (specify) Components available as independent modules: (subsequent questions may need a separate answer for each) Components can be extended by: the developer / computational linguist / linguist / programmer / experienced user / new user Data components are: firmly embedded in program / independent of program Data provided: (give size, features and language as in the examples) 120,000 entry wordlist for French 5,000 word LFG lexicon of basic Swahili w/ affixes, English gloss 15 rule transformational grammar for Dutch cross-serial dependencies 200 node knowledge base for AIDS case histories w/ 10 30-node cases. Data components can be extended by: the developer / computational linguist / linguist / programmer / experienced user / new user Character set used for language data: programmable (describe) fixed, 16-bit -- Unicode fixed, 8-bit -- ISO (specify, eg ASCII+Latin II) / proprietary ASCII fixed, 7-bit -- ISO (specify, eg US ASCII) / extended ASCII (specify) other (specify) Range of applicable natural languages: (give theoretical or technical limits) Approximate number of examples processed successfully, as a power of 10: Specify example type: words / sentences / paragraphs / other Its coverage level is now: demonstration / small research / large research / production quality / high volume Size of system: lines of source code, kilobytes of executable Programming language: Operating system or hardware: Is there a stable version of the system? Is there continuing development? Summarize the main goals and ideas. Indicate what makes the project a useful and interesting tool for research applications. List documents in which the software is described: User documentation: System documentation: Available support: upgrades / source code / consulting / other Format for software distribution: Price: Restrictions on use: If you are willing to have the software reviewed, please send us a version along with this information. We are also interested in reports and documentation, even for software not reviewed. NL Software Registry Center for Information and Language Studies 1100 East 57th Street Chicago, IL 60637, USA registry@tira.uchicago.edu [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0130] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0131. Wednesday, 11 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0131 (Morpho)phonology Total: 286 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Date: Tue, 9 Apr 91 11:03 GMT From: John Coleman Subject: (Morpho)phonology (2) Date: Tue, 9 Apr 91 18:29 MST From: Mike Hammond Subject: (Morpho)phonology (3) Date: Wed, 10 Apr 91 09:35:14 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: Halle's classic argument (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 9 Apr 91 11:03 GMT From: John Coleman Subject: (Morpho)phonology I said before: >Whether a phenomenon such as this (the second syllables of `title/titular') >is morphophonological or just an >automatic alternation depends on other considerations, especially the >form of morphophonological representations and the theory of phonetic >interpretation which is being assumed. Wojcik's comment seems to me to >assume that both of these are settled Rick Wojcik responds: >Vowel reduction >usually refers to a purely phonological phenomenon--what happens when speakers >try to pronounce vowels in unstressed environments. Purely phonological >processes such as vowel reduction participate in phonological foreign accent. >English speakers apply vowel reduction to foreign languages as well as >their own. The 'title/titular' alternation is of a different nature. It does >not bear on how we pronounce sounds and plays no concrete role in the >mispronunciation of foreign words. If `title' and `titular' are analysed as, say, /tay.tl/ and /ti.tjUl.a/ there is an apparently non-physiophonetic alternation between the second syllables: /l/ vs. /tjUl/. If `title' and `titular' are analysed as /tayt.@l/ and /tic.@l.@/ or /tayt.Vl/ and /tic.Vl.V/, say (c = voiceless alveopalatal affricate, @ = `schwa' and V = underspecified vowel), then there is no phonological distinction between the second syllables (/@l/ or /Vl/) and the quality of the nucleus in both cases might be attributed to physiophonetic vowel reduction. If the nucleus of these syllables is analysed as combination of [+high], [+back] and [-rnd] then in `title' the nucleus and coda occur simultaneously with each other and with the features [+high, +back, -rnd] in a lump, whereas in `titular' the nucleus and coda are not completely simultaneous, and [+high] spills into the onset. So the distinction between them is again not psychophonetic but physiophonetic --- a distinction in the timing of the phonetic exponents of a single phonological representation. Here then are three possible analyses of the second syllable opposition in `title'/`titular'. They each make different claims about whether the opposition is `merely physiophonetic' e.g. `vowel reduction', or whether it is cognitively encoded at a more abstract level. Wojcik's claim that >The 'title/titular' alternation ... does >not bear on how we pronounce sounds rests either on some kind of phonological omnipotence that does not require us to dirty our hands with the consideration of actual analyses of the data, or it is just a theory-internal assertion. --- John Coleman (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 9 Apr 91 18:29 MST From: Mike Hammond Subject: (Morpho)phonology It was recently noted by Alexis Manaster-Ramer that "it is [not] enough to say that orchestra and podagra get initial stress because the second syllable is open. This is because words with such clusters between the second and third syllable do not ALWAYS behave this way. Thus, canasta, Modesto, and so on have second-syllable stress." I agree completely. Words like Canasta and Modesto show that words with light penults can exceptionally get penultimate stress. (Cf. vanilla, Kentucky, etc.) This is in sharp contrast with the behavior of words with heavy penults. They normally get penultimate stress and cannot be marked for exceptional antepenultimate stress. (Incidentally, this follows automatically on the theory of exceptional stress I pushed in a paper in _Phonology_6.1_.) Alexis goes on to question the analysis of diabetes as /diabete+s/ to account for flapping before a nonfinal and nonprevocalic [i]. "Any theory of English stress which requires diabetes to be analyzed as a morphological plural strikes me as unacceptable. Are we going to say the same in the case of Hades and Ulysses?" If Hades is pronounced [heDiz] then we're committed to a similar analysis: /hadi+s/. (Frankly, I have no clear intuition about whether that word is plural or singular.) Since there is no flap in Ulysses, there is no reason why it can't be treated as having final secondary stress to account for the full vowel. (Interestingly, I think it'd be pretty difficult to argue for a plural personal name, hence a prediction might be made that nothing phonologically like Hades could be a personal name.) Alexis also questions the SPE analysis of words like industry: "Is there any plausibility of the SPE analysis of industry as having a final [y] rather than a final [I] or [i]? I really doubt that." I don't really understand what's dubious about it. mike hammond (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 10 Apr 91 09:35:14 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: Halle's classic argument I took some time last night after getting the kids to bed to check some things and try to respond a bit more fully to Rich Wojcik . I hope this is coherent, as I haven't much time to edit it this morning. You and others have referred to "Halle's classic argument against the phoneme." Since what I had already written was not taken as germane to this, I assumed that you and others must mean something other than I remembered. However, all I can turn up is indeed just what I remembered. Please give me the citation you have in mind if I have this wrong. I am here today and will be back again on the 24th. (I depend on Anderson's 1985 rendition, since I don't have access to SPR at home or in my office and time is short.) In _The Sound Pattern of Russian_, Halle listed (p. 19) "six formal conditions which phonological descriptions must satisfy." The third of these, in two parts, is essentially a restatement of the requirement of biuniqueness, merged with a strong form of Bloch's (and Halle's) requirement of phonetic identity. Anderson in this section identifies biuniqueness with just one part of Halle's condition 3, reflecting the now conventional understanding of the term. A brief review of the history of the concept is in order. Chao (Non-uniqueness, 1934) had distinguished the "reading aspect" (phonemic to phonetic) from the "writing aspect" (phonetic to phonemic) of the correspondence between phones and phonemes. The reading aspect is straightforward, he says; the writing aspect is problematic and not always attained. Harris introduced the term "bi-uniqueness" (his hyphen) in the "Long Components" article. (Anderson 1985 misattributes this to the review of Newman's Yokuts, also 1944. He apparently took the citation of Harris's coinage from Hymes & Fought, whose typo, 1944a in place of 1944b, he seems to have copied without verifying. The page range in Hymes & Fought is on the money for the occurrence of the term in the long components paper, and out of range for the Yokuts. I have not verified whether or not the term occurs there as well. Anderson gives no page reference.) It means that for each sequence of phones there corresponds a unique sequence of phonemes, and for each sequence of phonemes there corresponds a unique sequence of phones. Later, Harris (1951, written in the second half of the 1940s) drops the term biuniqueness and uses "one-one correspondence" (required for phonemes) vs. "one-many correspondence" (characteristic of morphophonemes but disallowed for phonemes). Halle's restatement of the "writing aspect" in his condition 3a (p. 21 as quoted by Anderson) is stronger than a 1-1 correspondence. It is a requirement that one must be able to infer . . . the proper phonological representation of any speech event, without recourse to any information not contained in the physical signal. This adds to the "writing aspect" of a 1-1 correspondence an additional empiricist requirement of "discoverability" from the phonetic record (the "physical signal"). By a curious kind of augmented synecdoche, the "writing aspect" of biuniqueness, augmented by this discoverability requirement, is what is now known to every student of generative phonology as "biuniqueness, the cornerstone of structuralist phonemics." It is a caricature even of what Bloch claimed in his Postulates or his later article on contrast, for there at least distributional facts and (albeit uncomfortably for Bloch) junctural entities were relevant, and he only required that all allophones share some characteristic phonetic feature(s), something, as I have said, that Harris did not require. It is this strange artefact that is the cornerstone of Halle's argument from neutralization of voicing in Russian on the next two pages. The affricates [c], [C] (using uppercase for c-hacek) and velar spirant [x] have no voiced counterpart, but become voiced before a voiced obstruent. The other consonants do have voiced counterparts. In a phonological representation which satisfies both condition (3) [the reading aspect] and (3a) [the augmented writing aspect], the quoted utterances would be symbolized as follows: /m'ok l,i/, /m'og bI/, /Z'eC l,i/, /Z'eC bI/. Moreover, a rule would be required stating that obstruents lacking voiced cognates--i.e., /c/, /C/ and /x/--are voiced in position before voiced obstruents. Since this, however, is true of all obstruents, the net effect of the attempt to meet both condition (3) and (3a) would be a splitting up of the obstruents into two classes and the addition of a special rule. If condition (3a) is dropped, the four utterances would be symbolized as follows: {m'ok l,i}, {m'ok bi}, {Z'eC l,i}, {Z'eC bi}, and the above rule could be generalized to cover all obstruents, instead of only {C}, {c} and {x}. It is evident that condition (3a) involves a significant increase in the complexity of the representation. (As quoted in Anderson (1985:320), with a comma added. I have substituted uppercase C for c-hacek, Z for z-hacek, and I for barred i.) One question that Halle is broaching here in hindsight, it seems to me, is how abstract may one's underlying representation be? For Bloch, for Trager & Smith, and for Halle's condition 3a, not very. For Bloomfield and Harris, the UR could be pretty abstract if that made for a cleaner description. (Both have unreduced vowels underlying schwa in the phonetic record, for example, which Bloch and Hockett could not allow.) Alternatively, how much of the language structure antecedent to the most recent rounds of merger are still in some sense alive and productive in the language, and therefore legitimized as abstract entities in UR? For Sapir, the phonemic representation could be pretty abstract and etymological if the abstract terms and relations involved were still lively in the language, that is, a determinant of informants' perceptions. Needless to say, the abstract/"natural" dispute has not gone away in the contemporary literature on phonology. (It is interesting that the familiar writer/rider example is brought to bear against Hooper [Bybee] in Anderson's "Not `Natural'" paper, suggesting that NGP may be the heir apparent to the taxonomic tar and feathers.) In structuralist terms, a conservative ("natural") point of view like Bloch's would say that, in the present time-slice of Russian, voicing is allophonic for /c C x/, but morphophonemic for the other phonemes, and this may be awkward but that's the way languages really truly are and we just have to live with it. This is what Bloch did with Japanese phonemics, for example, and it has a special relevance to his interests as a consummate dialectologist. As Harris is not bound by Halle's condition 3a, he is not caught in the dilemma that it sets up. He might concur: "If condition (3a) is dropped, the four utterances would be symbolized as follows: {m'ok l,i}, {m'ok bi}, {Z'eC l,i}, {Z'eC bi}, and the above rule could be generalized to cover all obstruents, instead of only {C}, {c} and {x}." For Harris, a considerable range is available of other options that are not available to Halle, such as a long component of voicing extending leftward from voiced obstruents. (Johns, reprinted in Makkai, suggests a horizontal bundling of features. As Fought points out in Hymes & Fought, this is really a proposal of a long component solution for writer/rider which Johns does not recognize as such.) In the background of Halle's argument is the now tarnished rule-counting metric for adjudicating alternative grammars, and versions of learning theory that have lost credibility. (So far as I know, there is no evidence that language users economize tightly on their neurological real estate.) An important metric of the "goodness" of a grammar for Harris is lack of restriction on combinability of elements. This is because his interest is in studying language as a mathematical object. One consequence of this program is that the restrictions that remain have a semantic (informational) interpretation. But assuredly not all linguists are interested in a version of linguistics that is a branch of applied mathematics. (A concise and accessible overview is in the 1989 book _Language and Information_.) I think Harris would like plurilinear representations in phonology very much, in part as a representation for his long components, in part because it neatly partitions different domains of contrast. For him, it is the contrasts that are the underlying reality, and all the rest--phonemes, morphophonemes, long components, and rules--are representations. In this, I believe he integrated the often counterposed perspectives of his two teachers, Sapir and Bloomfield. But the psychological validity or non-validity of anything other than the structure of information in a subfield of a science (the 1990 book), to which phonology is irrelevant, has yet to be demonstrated. Again, please tell me if you had some other "classic argument against the phoneme" in mind. Bruce bn@bbn.com ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0132. Friday, 12 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0132 Responses: Munda, Banned Lgs, Fonts, Mother Total: 149 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Date: Thu, 11 Apr 91 08:27:07 CST From: GA3662%SIUCVMB.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU Subject: Munda languages (2) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 1991 09:01 PDT From: Scott Delancey Subject: Munda (3) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 91 10:25:01 EDT From: Michael Covington Subject: Phonetic fonts (4) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 1991 12:21:13 +0200 From: Kjetil R} Hauge Subject: banned languages (5) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 91 15:56:13 -0400 From: daniel@drew.cog.brown.edu (Daniel Radzinski) Subject: Banned languages (6) Date: Thu 11 Apr 91 10:28:47-EDT From: Dragon Systems Subject: More on Mother (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Apr 91 08:27:07 CST From: GA3662%SIUCVMB.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU Subject: Munda languages David Stampe (stampe@uhccux) knows about as much about Munda languages as anyone I know. Geoff Nathan (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Apr 1991 09:01 PDT From: Scott Delancey Subject: Munda The "homeland" of Munda per se isn't much of a problem; presumably the center of dispersal for that branch is the area of eastern India where most Munda languages are spoken. The problematic issue is the center of dispersal for Austroasiatic, including Mon-Khmer and Nicobarese as well as Munda, and thus distributed over all of mainland Southeast Asia and well into India. There are historical reasons to suppose that there may originally (say, two or three millenia ago) have been a continuous Austroasiatic speaking area extending from at least Cambodia west into India, but I doubt that anyone could give more than a very speculative answer to questions about an original homeland for PA. Scott DeLancey (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Apr 91 10:25:01 EDT From: Michael Covington Subject: Phonetic fonts We decided not to develop our own phonetic fonts after discovering that an excellent set is available free from Tim Montler, montler@vaxb.acs.unt.edu. These include all the characters for English (with lots of diacritics), IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, in several sizes, both Courier and Times Roman, upright and italics. Printer drivers for Word Perfect 5.1 and even a Hercules display driver are included. I forgot to mention that Tim Montler's fonts are for the HP Laserjet II (including IIP, IID, etc.) and III only. (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Apr 1991 12:21:13 +0200 From: Kjetil R} Hauge Subject: banned languages Murvet Enc wrote: >This is in response to the request for information on banned languages. The >Turkish government had banned Kurdish until very recently. [...] What is interesting is that the Turkish >government, as far as I know, outlawed Kurdish while at the same time claiming >that there were no Kurds in Turkey, only 'Mountain Turks'. Not bothered by >trivial contradictions. The ban did not mention Kurdish. It was worded as a ban on any language that was not the primary official language of some country, thus outlawing Basque and Welsh along with Kurdish. (5) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Apr 91 15:56:13 -0400 From: daniel@drew.cog.brown.edu (Daniel Radzinski) Subject: Banned languages As far as I can recall, Hebrew was studied clandestinely in pre-glasnost USSR (or at least in some of its republics). This suggests the existense of a ban; most likely an official one. I don't remember though, if Goldsmith, whom I think asked the question, was interested specifically in native languages. If so, this case would not apply, as the use of this language in the USSR is, generally, not by native speakers. Daniel Radzinski (6) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu 11 Apr 91 10:28:47-EDT From: Dragon Systems Subject: More on Mother Ellen Spolsky's contribution on "mother [of all battles]" touches some important points, but I think we've all (myself included) been missing the biggie. Q: What is THE main use of "mother" in contemporary American slang? A: "Motherfucker" [hereinafter "mf"]. Mf may be the single most obscene expression in the American vocabulary. By itself, either in the second person or the third, it is a gross insult, but in combination, especially in the form "a mf of an X", it generally means "big, powerful, impressive, dangerous": a close match to much of the semantic field covered by the Arabic "mother of X" (according to previous postings on the subject), but usually with a connotation of danger or at least difficulty. It is often shortened, either for brevity or for euphemism, to "mother". When Baghdad Radio promised "the mother of all battles", can any American, especially in the armed forces, have heard that expression without at least an unconscious resonance of "a mf of a battle"? Even before the broadcast, any GI, pilot, sailor, or Marine could easily have said to his (or her) buddies, "Anyone who messes with us is in for one mf of a battle", but you never would have heard it at an official briefing, much less in a statement from the White House. Saddam Hussein gave us a way to allude to the menace in this idiom, and the satisfaction that comes of using it, without violating the taboos that restrict its use. I think that a lot of the explosive popularity of "the mother of all Xes" comes from the doubled pleasure of (1) swearing in public and getting away with it and (2) turning the enemy's own (verbal) weapon against him IN A WAY HE DIDN'T FORESEE. While of course I can't prove it, I feel that the power of the translated Arabic idiom to suggest a richly emotive native one makes it especially pleasureable to use IN RESPONSE. This interpretation leads to the prediction that American use of "mother of all Xes" will be concentrated in contexts of retaliation against Iraq, rather than spreading to general use. [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0132] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0133. Friday, 12 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0133 Structuralism Total: 86 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Date: Wed, 10 Apr 91 20:21:37 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Structuralism, practice and preaching (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 10 Apr 91 20:21:37 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Structuralism, practice and preaching Vicki Fromkin says (I think in response to my comment about Harris and 'discovery procedures'): 'The question is not whether the structuralists followed what they preached. In fact all the years I was taught in that framework it was clear that they didn't. Rather -- it is the question of one's particular view of science. Empiricism 'at its roots' starts with the assumption that the only sure basis for knowledge is observation and experiment, that the scientist collects a large body of statements about particular events in the world or the laboratory, that by indcution, makes limited generalizations about classes of events, and proceeds to more general statements if above are verified, and evidence consists to a great extent to the methods used to obtain the generalizations. As Bloomfield stated: "The only useful generalizations about language are inductive generalizations" or Bloch & Trager "The linguist is a scientist whose task is to analyze and classify the facts of speech..." and Hocket: "Linguistics is a classificatory science whose objectives are to find (1) the universif of discourse.. and (2) CRITERIA TO MAKE CLASSIFICATIONS." ' First of all, I don't think that what's at issue here is a hypocritical discrepancy between theory and practice -- at least in Harris's case. Let me draw what I think is an accurate analogy in essential respects. If you look at the way a mathematical logician defines 'proof', the actual working practice of mathematicians doesn't come close to conforming to this definition. At best, what mathematicians give is proof sketches with many details omitted. But you could, in principle, give complete proofs if you wanted to -- what's standardly omitted is stuff that's so routine that anyone reading the proof is going to automatically fill in the gaps. One way of looking at Harris's *Methods* is as an attempt to secure the foundations of linguistic analysis in something like the same way -- providing the canons for rigor that, if not adhered to in actual practice for purely practical reasons, would nonetheless be the final arbiter of what was and wasn't a defensible analysis. Even that may have been too much to ask for, but it doesn't seem to me inherently unreasonable to want to give it a try. A couple of more general comments: I think Vicki is right that the most influential structuralists had a certain view of science that we would now properly reject. Whether 'empiricist' is quite the right word for it I'm not sure. Bloomfield tended to use the term 'mechanist' to describe his own mature philosophical outlook (where by 'mature' I mean 'subsequent to whenever exactly it was that he abandoned Wundtian psychology'). But I think that he in some ways gets an undeservedly bad rap for views that he formed in specific response to then prevalent ideas about language that we from our contemporary perspective would find just as unpalatable as he did. I wonder also if, at least in *Language* he might not have been in some ways deliberately overstating his case -- partly to provoke thought and perhaps partly pour epater les bourgeois. (Cf. Bob King's recent note on Joos.) As long as I'm at it, let me add a note about classification. I certainly would not want to come down on the side that taxonomy is all there is to linguistics (or science generally). But I think that there's a tendency for some contemporary linguists to think that taxonomy itself is somehow necessarily trivial. I think that biologists would find that view very strange. For that matter, the first real triumphs of scientific linguistics -- by anyone's definition, I should think -- were in part of a taxonomic nature: the development of the notion (to which we all still subscribe) of a language family and of the secure methodological footing upon which this notion was placed in the nineteenth century seems as clear a case in point as one could imagine. [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0133] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0134. Friday, 12 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0134 Queries Total: 125 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Date: Wed, 10 Apr 91 12:33 GMT From: Kelvin Woolacott Subject: HELP on German (2) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 91 09:27:55 EDT From: ram@cs.umb.edu (Robert Morris) Subject: online text (3) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 91 14:08:48 +0100 From: Dr M Sebba Subject: Query - Polynesian languages (4) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 91 10:25:12 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Address (5) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 1991 10:15:14 PDT From: John Batali Subject: Roget's Thesarus (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 10 Apr 91 12:33 GMT From: Kelvin Woolacott Subject: HELP To all of you out there... I've come across the terms "mutativ" and "Mutativa" (referring to categories of verbs in a book written in German, i.e. Moser/Wellmann/Wolf, "Geschichte der deutschen Sprache", Band I, 1981, Quelle & Meyer, Heidelberg. I can only assume this translates as "mutative"! But what is that supposed to mean? I found the occurences on page 80 and 81, but it no doubt occurs elsewhere in the work. Here are a couple of example sentences from the text: "es handelt sich dabei um die Partizipien von mutativen Verben, besonders um Transitiva" "Es kommt aber nicht nur zu solchen Syntagmen mit Transitiva, sondern auch mit intransitiven Mutativa" It could well be that this is a term "invented" by German linguists or which is just rare (after all, on the same page I found the term "Diathesen" meaning the voices of a verb!) Any help you could give me on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. KJW1 @ uk.ac.york.vaxa (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Apr 91 09:27:55 EDT From: ram@cs.umb.edu (Robert Morris) Subject: online text For two different projects, I am seeking machine readable text of the following forms, preferably available via Internet FTP, but anything will do. 1. American English at some standardized reading level, preferably 9th grade, preferably with a low content of proper names. This is for studies of the effects of various typographic variations on reading rate. 2. Text in any non-English language but in TeX input form, together with TeX fonts or Metafonts necessary to print them (actually, I don't print them, but I do image processing on the resulting text images, so I need the bit maps. I might consider alternatives to TeX form things, but as we are already set up to deal with TeX and Metafont, I hope I can get enough to keep me busy in that form). As I do not read the LINGUIST list, please reply directly to me. Thanks. Robert A. Morris Professor of Math. and C.S. University of Massachusetts/Boston (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Apr 91 14:08:48 +0100 From: Dr M Sebba Subject: Query - Polynesian languages I want to get some statistics for Polynesian languages concerning average word length in syllables and the distribution of phonemes. 1) Does anyone know of any work like this which has been done already? 2) Can anyone help me to get some texts in the following languages: Tongan, Maori, Hawaiian, Samoan? I am looking in to the possibility of getting bibles in these languages from libraries in Britain, but even these are surprisingly hard to find. Mark Sebba Dept. of Linguistics University of Lancaster, Lancaster LA1 4YT, England Telephone (0524) 65201 ext. 2241 (W) (0524) 69223 (H) Fax: (0524) 843085 e-mail: eia023@uk.ac.lancaster.central1 (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Apr 91 10:25:12 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Address Does anybody have Eric Wehrli's email address? (5) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Apr 1991 10:15:14 PDT From: John Batali Subject: Roget's Thesarus I need to find an on-line copy of Roget's Thesaurus. I would appreciate any relevant advice. [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0134] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0135. Friday, 12 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0135 Phonology Total: 111 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 91 11:27:32 EDT From: pesetsk@ATHENA.MIT.EDU Subject: Hades and Ulysses (2) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 91 11:23:12 PDT From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com Subject: Re: (Morpho)phonology (3) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 91 13:26:40 PDT From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com Subject: History of Phonology (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Apr 91 11:27:32 EDT From: pesetsk@ATHENA.MIT.EDU Subject: Hades and Ulysses Mike Hammond (HAMMOND@ccit.arizona.edu) writes: >If Hades is pronounced [heDiz] then we're committed to a similar >analysis: /hadi+s/. (Frankly, I have no clear intuition about whether >that word is plural or singular.)... (Interestingly, I think it'd be >pretty difficult to argue for a plural personal name, hence a >prediction might be made that nothing phonologically like Hades could >be a personal name.) Family names, unlike given names, can easily be pluralized. Mr. and Mrs. Jones are coming to dinner. Clearly one can say "the Joneses are coming to dinner". Now Mr. and Mrs. Hades (pronounced with two syllables) and all their kids are coming to dinner. For me, "the Hades are coming to dinner (along with all the little Hades)" is odd, but much better than "the Hadeses [heDiz@z] are coming to dinner". Likewise "the Ulysses are coming to dinner" is odd, but better than "the Ulysseses are coming to dinner". This suggests that Hades, Ulysses etc. are indeed pluralia tantum in English. Cf. "I need to buy three pants", which is worse than "three pairs of pants", but better than "three pantses". Thus, Hammond's suggestion might be right. -David Pesetsky (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Apr 91 11:23:12 PDT From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com Subject: Re: (Morpho)phonology I don't want to belabor the exhange with John Coleman, which I fear has been corrupted by some mutual misunderstandings. I would only point out that there are very good reasons for not considering the second syllables of the title/titular pair to involve a physiophonetic alternation, although alternate pronunciations of the word 'title' or the word 'titular' might be said to involve physiophonetic alternants. The position that the stems of both words should be represented by a single 'systematic' phonological representation in the lexicon strikes me as just plain wrong. And I have tried to point out why it is wrong on fairly intuitive grounds--because we want to distinguish between linguistic operations that govern the articulation of sounds from those that govern what sounds we try to articulate in the first place. It is this intuitive distinction that I tried to capture with the foreign accent 'litmus test'. And it is this distinction that has yet to be addressed seriously by mainstream linguists. As for the question of archisegments and/or underspecified elements, that really takes us into another realm. I don't believe in archisegments because I can't see any external justification for them. For example, it would seem less than ideal for a writing system to distinguish archisegments from fully specified ones. Indeed, alphabetic writing seems to settle consistently on segmental representations in which non-alternating sounds and alternating sounds are always represented by precisely the same class of symbols. Nevertheless, I would be willing to entertain the existence of archisegments if I felt they provided me with some insight into the use of language. -Rick Wojcik (rwojcik@atc.boeing.com) (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Apr 91 13:26:40 PDT From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com Subject: History of Phonology I accept Bruce Nevin's admonishment not to make such sweeping generalizations about structuralist phonemics. I would still hold that my historical claim-- that the roots of structuralist phonemics lay in Shcherba's redefinition-- is largely correct, and that for most structuralists (and, additionally, the non-structuralist Leningraders) Halle's argument is devastating. Alexis made some comments about Ulaszyn and Leningrad which I disagree with in some minor details. But it is worth saying that Baudouin had *some* appreciation of the perceptual role of phonemes, as did Sapir. In fact, one needs to remember that two types of external evidence were originally offered in support of phonemic theory: rhyme and alphabetic writing. Rhyme involves a match at the phonemic level of representation. Thus, Russian "rod" ([rOt] alternating with "roda"...) rhymes perfectly with the non- alternating [t] at the end of "tot" 'that'. Normally, phonological mismatches block rhyming. Secondly, Baudouin explicitly cited two types of alphabetic writing--"morphemographic" and "phonemographic"--to describe roughly morphophonemic (a la Ulaszyn) and phonemic (a la Shcherba) orthographic representation. (cf. "The Influence of Language on World-View and Mood" in the Stankiewicz reader--OK. That's one crazy title :-) And there are other examples--as David Stampe has pointed out to Alexis and me offline--that suggest Baudouin was more sophisticated about this than his students thought. The Moscow school, also, has its way of recognizing the perceptual autonomy of phonemic categories. -Rick Wojcik (rwojcik@atc.boeing.com) [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0135] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0136. Monday, 15 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0136 Responses: Banned Lgs, Wehrli, Mutative, Roget, Mother Total: 198 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 91 20:08:53 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Banned languages (2) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 91 10:29 MET From: "NORVAL SMITH (UVAALF::NSMITH)" Subject: wehrli; if this is not up to date, I obviously would like to know (3) Date: Mon, 15 Apr 1991 15:17 MST From: CAROLG@CC.UTAH.EDU Subject: Eric Wehrli's email address: (4) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 91 12:10:35 +0200 Subject: 'Mutative', Lexicon of Linguistic Terminology From: nerbonne@dfki.uni-sb.de (5) Date: Mon, 15 Apr 1991 11:06 EST From: GODDEN%RCSMPB@gmr.com Subject: Re: mutative (6) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 91 11:24:23 -0400 From: William J Frawley Subject: Re: Roget (7) Date: Fri 12 Apr 91 15:57:31-EDT From: Dragon Systems Subject: Sorry, Mother (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Apr 91 20:08:53 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Banned languages I believe that Irish was at one time (perhaps more than one) banned by the British authorities in Ireland. I don't know a lot of details, but there IS a song by the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem called 'Mr. Moses Ri-toora-li-ay' describing a supposedly real incident in which a Jewish shopkeeper in Dublin is arrested by British policeman for alleged defiance of the ban -- except that what the policeman thinks is Irish is actually Yiddish. The person to get details from is my colleague Nancy Stenson; address: Stenson@umnacvx.bitnet By the way, the shopkeeper ends up being brought before a Jewish judge, of course. 'This numbskull has blundered and for it will pay / Said the judge to Moses Ri-toora-li-ay'. (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 12 Apr 91 10:29 MET From: "NORVAL SMITH (UVAALF::NSMITH)" Subject: wehrli; if this is not up to date, I obviously would like to know Example output from the Linguists Name Server: From: UVAALF::LING_REPLY "Reply from Linguists name server." 12-APR-1991 10: 25 :37.24 To: NSMITH CC: Subj: Output from your request to Linguists@alf.let.uva.nl Welcome to Linguists@alf.let.uva.nl. If you want information, use the HELP command (no arguments). If you have other questions, contact nsmith@alf.let.uva.nl This facility was developed by CCL, the Computer Department of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Amsterdam. It is managed by CCL and the Department of General Linguistics of the University of Amsterdam. Note: For an explanation of the various symbols that may appear in responses to a LIST request, consult our help-file, obtainable in response to a message consisting of HELP sent to LINGUISTS (N.B. do not reply to LING_REPLY). ------------------------------------------------------------- list weh* eric wehrli: wehrli@uni2a.unige.ch eric wehrli: wehrli@cgeuge51.bitnet Message ends here. ------------------------------------------------------------- (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 15 Apr 1991 15:17 MST From: CAROLG@CC.UTAH.EDU Subject: Re: Eric Wehrli's email address: Try wehrli@cgeuge51.bitnet That's Rizzi's and Haegemann's address, and they're in the same place. (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 12 Apr 91 12:10:35 +0200 Subject: 'Mutative', Lexicon of Linguistic Terminology From: nerbonne@dfki.uni-sb.ed >> Date: Wed, 10 Apr 91 12:33 GMT >> From: Kelvin Woolacott >> Subject: HELP >> I've come across the terms "mutativ" and "Mutativa" (referring to categories >> ... >> I can only assume this translates as "mutative"! But what is that supposed to >> mean? 'Mutativ' refers to verbs which denote changes of state, and thus (through less than perfect generalization) to perfective aspect in general. By the way a good source of terminological information is Hadumod Bussman Lexikon der Sprachwissenschaft Kroener Verlag, Stuttgart 2nd Edition, 1990 She has this, and your 'Diathesen' as well. --John Nerbonne (5) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 15 Apr 1991 11:06 EST From: GODDEN%RCSMPB@gmr.com Subject: Re: mutative KJW1 @ uk.ac.york.vaxa asking about the term 'mutative'. From the _Dictionary of Linguistics_ by Pei and Gaynor (Littlefield, Adams, and Co.; 1975) we find: mutative. See factive. Under factive we find: A declensional case in certain languages (e.g. Japanese, Finno-Ugric languages, etc.), denoting the idea of becoming or turning or being transformed into something. (Called also 'mutative' or 'translative'.) -Kurt Godden (6) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 12 Apr 91 11:24:23 -0400 From: William J Frawley Subject: Re: Roget On John Batali's inquiry about machine-readable Roget. A recent posting on the Humanist bulletin board had a list of electronic dictionaries. Roget's was among them. Since the list is too long to post here, I'll send it separately to Batali. If anyone else wants the list, contact me directly. Bill Frawley (7) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri 12 Apr 91 15:57:31-EDT From: Dragon Systems Subject: Sorry, Mother "Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0132. Friday, 12 Apr 1991" includes a posting of mine on the relation between "mother of X; the mother of all battles" and "motherfucker (of an X); a motherfucker of a battle". (My name, by the way, is Mark Mandel; several of us at Dragon Systems use the same mail address, and the Linguist List processor persistently strips off my signature lines.) In reference to all the discussion that we've seen here on the subject, I remarked that "we've all (myself included) been missing the biggie." In response to that posting, Adam Kilgarriff (adamkas written to me: > A little acknowledgement please! Maybe you didn't read my message from a > couple of dats afte the `mother' debate started, but this was precisely the > point I made, as below > > From Adam Kilgarriff Mon Mar 11 15:51:19 GMT 1991 > > Mark Turner's piece was very interesting. One aspect of `mother' > allusions he did not refer to but which must play a role in the > catchiness of Saddam's phrase is its use in `motherfucker' and > derivatives. Calling a thing a `mother' in American English is very often > a display of anger and frustration at it. The conceptual link with the > mothers that bore us is attenuated, but the surface-language link with > Saddam's phrase is direct. A US soldier says `this is a mother of a > battle', while Saddam says `this will be the mother of all battles'. The > `motherfucker' association clearly plays a role in our responses, > throwing dollops of ambiguity, irony and general-purpose perversity into > the concoction of associations that Mark Turner documents. Perhaps it's > this twist that particularly appeals to the journalists, the politicians, > and all of our postmodern sensibilities? Adam certainly did get the biggie. I did not see that day's email, and I apologize to him for unwittingly failing to acknowledge his contribution, in which he made most of the points that it took me another month to hit upon. Sincerely, Mark A. Mandel (let's see if you can digest that, you signature-eater!) [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0136] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0137. Monday, 15 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0137 Responses: Munda, Shoebox Total: 236 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 1991 23:09:38 -0400 From: Ian Smith Subject: Re: Munda Homeland (2) Date: Mon, 15 Apr 91 12:34:05 MDT From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz) Subject: Shoebox (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Apr 1991 23:09:38 -0400 From: Ian Smith Subject: Re: Munda Homeland Re: Susan Steele's query about a hypothesized homeland for the Munda lgs Given that the Munda languages were in South Asia before the arrival of Indo- Aryan speakers (circa 14th C BC) and that there is a dearth of historical info on the languages (and of decent current info for many of them) any hypothesis would likely be pretty shaky. You could finesse the question by saying that ultimately it is the same as the homeland of the Austro-Asiatic family, of which Munda is a branch. Certainly Munda isn't considered to be connected with the Indus valley civilization (Mohanjo-Daro, Harappa etc.) since, for one thing its language seems to have been exclusively suffixing, while Munda makes extensive use of prefixes. More knowledgeable sources on Munda would be David Stampe (U Hawaii) or Norman Zide (U Chicago) Ian Smith, York University (iansmith@vm1.yorku.ca) (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 15 Apr 91 12:34:05 MDT From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz) Subject: Shoebox Comments on Shoebox Since Tom Payne's cautionary remarks on Shoebox, he and I have been corresponding on the problems he reports. One of his objections was that Shoebox alphabetizes all records by their key field. This means, as he stated, that for records consisting of glossed text one has to create a set of key fields apart from the text. These keys are called reference fields in Shoebox, and usually take the form of some field like \ref short_title sentence_number In Shoebox, since the keys are sorted alphabetically, one has to make sure that all numbers have the same length by adding leading zeroes. So, use 0001, 0002, etc., 0010, etc., since otherwise 1, 10, 100, 1000, etc., will sort before 2, 20, 200, 2000, etc., and so on! Actually the requirement for reference numbers is a property of both Shoebox and IT, the only two interlinear text glossing tools that I know of, and both tools automate the process of creating the keys to some extent. The value of reference fields as a book-keeping device is clear, and the Shoebox manual discusses the need for them as order preserving keys, and explains how Shoebox can generate them mechanically when a text is first broken down into records, or regenerate them when they fall out of regularity. However, what Tom objects to is not the existence of numbers, but the unnaturalness to have to work in terms of these reference numbers. One has to worry about creating and updating them, one seldom wants to access a record in terms of them, etc. While it is possible to work around the numbers in Shoebox, they are not a particularly natural way to organize text mentally, and a nicer model for manipulating the interlinearized text records could easily be imagined. One would prefer to work with a model in which the order of the sentence database was simply defined and maintained automatically, as the text was imported and updated. Rather than treating the reference numbers implied as the primary key of the database, it should be incidental information in an unkeyed database. In particular there should be a search command that could intantly access any original word or added gloss, etc., rather than a search than can only access reference numbers. In fact, some concordance type programs support this model as far as access is concerned, though I am not aware of anything that combines this with a running maintenance scheme of the type suggested, let alone with interlinearizing. Fortunately, there is nothing to keep one from using Shoebox (or IT) to interlinearize a text and then importing the results into a concordance program or any other system in order to search it. I've contemplated using WordCruncher or TACT in such roles, but so far haven't had the opportunity to go beyond experimentation. Unfortunately, a linguistic database, especially in a fieldworking situation, is apt to be undegoing continuous revision, and with concordance programs like this one has in most cases to perform a time-consuming reindexing operation after any modifications to the text. A degree of effort and computer savy is needed, too, since in going from Shoebox to the concordance program you are transferring data between different programs with different conventions for just about everything. There is an alternative. Some of the features of concordance programs can be gotten by using a simple text searching program instead. I've actually used MKS's Unix grep for PCs, the Norton Commander's VIEW function, and Vern Buerg's LIST on linguistic databases in this way, not though not always on Shoebox databases. The main problem with this that none of these programs are easily made aware of the structure of the database - its records and fields. As a matter of fact, Tom Payne does the same thing in working with his Panare database. He interlinearizes with IT and searches the result with a public domain text searching tool called lookfor. He then uses Sidekick to paste the material he finds into his word processor file. Lookfor also ignores structure, but, on the other hand, it is very fast (much faster than searching in Shoebox), and it doesn't require reindexing when the database is changed, so the main problem with combining easy access and easy maintenance is that the tools for access and maintenance are separate. There are any number of such tools around, commercial and otherwise, and you can easily find the combination that suits you. So far you can't find them all under one software roof, unfortunately. The question of searching brings me to Tom's second objection to Shoebox, which was that searching in Shoebox does not work as he things it should. (He accidentally used the term jumping, which has another meaning in Shoebox.) Here he and I have a conundrum. Searching seems to work one way for him, and another way for me. I can't figure out why. For example, we are both using version 1.2a, so it is not a difference of versions. When I first search for a record with key X, and then move the next record or the preceding record, the move is with respect to the new record with key X, and within the alphabetized sequence of the keys. For him the move is with respect to the record he was in before he conducted the search. I speculate that this problem may be a bug related to the size of the database he has, a collection of 2700-odd interlinearized Cebuano clauses occupying over a megabyte. However, we have not conducted any experiments to lay out the parameters of the phenomenon. All I know is that I have never experienced it on any file, and have never used a file much above 600KB. For example, I don't have the problem in a tiny five record sample file created to test the search command, or in a 4500 entry 370 KB Omaha lexical file in which I also tested search/previous/next. Tom experiences some other problems with his database that may, hypothetically, reflect a difficulty with large files, and certainly seem to reflect at least a corrupted index file. (I will omit the details I have, because I do not have all of them.) On the other hand, at the University of Colorado's Center for the Study of the native Languages of the Plains and Southwest (CeSNaLPS), we have not experienced any of the problems of this sort that Tom experiences in our use of a collection of lexical database files each under c. 300K in size. Proceding, Tom's main objection on searching is to the metaphor that Shoebox uses for search non-key material in the database. Shoebox has two normal enough searches. One operates over the database as a whole and searches for any key in the database, i.e., it ignores non-key fields. The other operates within a particular record, and searches for particular text within the record. Unfortunately, there is no search (per se) that operates over the entire database and searches for any text. What one can do instead is to use an operation called filtering. Filtering means restricting the database to only those records which match some filtering predicate - those that pass the filter. Filtering is very powerful and the least of the things it can do is find all records with a particular piece of text in them. However, in some contexts it is an awkward metaphor for searching. As Tom puts it, "I never filter my sock drawer in the morning for a suitable pair of socks." While one can always do an honest search of a Shoebox database by using some other tool to search it, as suggested above, or even by loading it into Box 9 as text and searching it there, if it is small enough, it would nicer if there were simply a generalized database search facility in Shoebox. In addition to metaphorical difficulties, filtering seems to have some problems with bugs, too. Tom reports that after a few filtering operations one starts finding that filtering fails to find records that are definitely in the file. I had not noticed this before, but I was quickly able to find a two filter sequence with the same problem, and it looks like there is a bug in filtering such that, after some set of filters not easily characterized, all (or most?) filtering operations fail. Where do we go from here? Tom is rather down on Keyswap, and wouldn't recommend it for the "average linguist," who wants computer products to work immediately, in the obvious way, doing precisely what the linguists wants without any experimentation or searching for work-arounds. He feels that I should make more of a point of the problems with Shoebox than I do. Well, he's right - I haven't gone to any length at all in my contributions to Linguist in pointing out the problems that exist with Shoebox, and I should have. I hope that this posting helps to counteract that tendency on my part. In spite of this, the fact of the matter is, there is very little micro-computer software that does things useful for linguists in particular. What exists or can be pressed into service is mostly limited in power, cranky, limping, and user-unsympathetic, if not actually user-hostile. I think that Shoebox is a significant step forward from this state of affairs in the sense that it is a purpose-made linguistic application with a fairly good user interface. In fact, I prefer its interface to that of the commercial package AskSAM, even though there are various major changes to the Shoebox interface that I'd be happy to see. In the course of my work I look at a fair amount of DOS/Non-DOS software - retail, shareware, and public domain - for generalists and specialists - and Shoebox is a very creditable job in this department. In spite of this, I can think of dozens of major and minor improvements to Shoebox myself, as John Wimbish can attest, and this is without taking into account fixing the bugs that Tom and others have been uncovering. Many of the additions I'd like to see are like Tom's - changes that expand the scope of the package by making it easier to use with tasks peripheral to its central function of building and maintaining lexical slip files. However, as I have said before, Shoebox has this effect on users. It raises their expectations. And there's nothing wrong with asking for more, but you can't reject Shoebox because it isn't perfect or universal. For the moment Shoebox is one essential tool for the computerized language data worker. I would still recommend Shoebox for use in linguistics classes, but I see that I should qualify this by saying that you would be advised to get some hands on experience with it in a real project of your own before casually adding it to the required text list. John E. Koontz All views represented are my own, for which I bear sole responsibility. {End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0137] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0138. Monday, 15 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0138 Queries Total: 104 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 91 20:28:00 -0400 From: Fintel@LINGUIST.umass.edu Subject: unless-clauses & compound pronouns (2) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 91 16:10:56 CDT From: evan@txsil.lonestar.org (Evan Antworth) Subject: want IPA font for Windows (3) Date: Mon, 15 Apr 91 13:18:51 +0100 Subject: Teaching/studying non-standard dialects From: R.Hudson (4) Date: Mon, 15 Apr 91 9:35 GMT From: Richard Ogden Subject: intuition (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 12 Apr 91 20:28:00 -0400 From: Fintel@LINGUIST.umass.edu Subject: unless-clauses & compound pronouns I would like to ask the people on this net for references on two different topics. If you think that your reply is of general interest you may want to post it, else you could send me personal e-mail. 1. s IS '-I think there was a debate at some point about whether 'unless' is just another way to say 'if not', but has any of that ever surfaced? Is there work on corresponding items/constructions in other languages? 2. Is there any (especially recent) work on the proper analysis of compound pronouns (or portmanteau quantifiers) like 'everyone', 'somebody', 'anywhere', etc.? I have found old-style analyses that posit a transformation of ARTICLE ATTACHMENT and there are short remarks by Abney who suggest a head-to-head movement analysis. Is there anything else out there? Anything about 'else' maybe, which is one of the things that make these items special? Any help would be much appreciated. Kai von Fintel, UMass Amherst, fintel@linguist.umass.edu (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 12 Apr 91 16:10:56 CDT From: evan@txsil.lonestar.org (Evan Antworth) Subject: want IPA font for Windows A colleague is looking for an IPA font to use under MS Windows, specifically MS Word for Windows. Other postings have mentioned an IPA font for WordPerfect, but I assume that is no help. Does such a font exist (yet)? Evan Antworth evan@txsil.lonestar.org (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 15 Apr 91 13:18:51 +0100 Subject: Teaching/studying non-standard dialects From: R.Hudson Does anyone know of any school system in which speakers of non-standard dialects are taught about their own non-standard dialect, as well as about the standard one? I'm just finishing a book on grammar for English teachers in the UK, in which I advocate this, and I'd be interested to know of any precedents. Dick Hudson Dept of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT (071) 387 7050 ext 3152 home: (081) 340 1253 (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 15 Apr 91 9:35 GMT From: Richard Ogden Subject: intuition I would like to ask why 'intuitively' is a good way to present one's opinion (as Rick Woycik did in his message about his discussion with John Coleman). Isn't 'intuition' something that prejudices our opinions before we start, something which might just be a hindrance to our ability to find the most useful analysis? Isn't it just a way of avoiding a more rational approach? --- I'm not saying that imagination and hunches don't have a place in linguists' arguments, just that they are not enough in themselves to explain a position. Also what is intuitive to someone else is not necessarily intuitive to me, so I can't be convinced by 'intuitive' arguments. Please, someone, explain this to me! Richard Ogden [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0138] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0139. Tuesday, 16 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0139 Conferences Total: 176 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 91 11:51:30 BST From: E.S.Atwell Subject: ICAME '91 Open Day (2) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 91 14:57:01 EDT From: A. Zukowski (CUNY Coordinator) Subject: Language Sciences Conference Weekend (3) Date: Mon, 15 Apr 91 10:23-0400 From: Marie.E.Surridge@QueensU.CA Subject: XVth International Conf. of Linguists (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 12 Apr 91 11:51:30 BST From: E.S.Atwell Subject: ICAME '91 Open Day Please circulate the following flier on the ICAME'91 Open Day to anyone who may wish to attend. The principles apply to Corpora of other languages, not just English, so linguists working on other languages might well be interested as well; I realise that not many people are likely to travel overseas just for a one-day gathering, but perhaps the Open Day might be of interest to anyone who plans to be in England at the time on other business. Eric Steven Atwell National Coordinator, UFC Knowledge Based Systems Initiative Centre for Computer Analysis of Language And Speech (CCALAS) Artificial Intelligence Division, School of Computer Studies phone: +44 532 335761 Leeds University FAX: +44 532 335468 Leeds LS2 9JT JANET: eric@uk.ac.leeds.ai England EARN/BITNET/ARPA: eric%leeds.ai@ac.uk -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ICAME'91 Corpus Research Open Day Thursday May 9th 1991, Craiglands Hotel, Ilkley, Yorkshire The International Computer Archive of Modern English (ICAME) annual conference is the principal meeting place for linguists and computer scientists using English language Corpora in their research. Recently there has been a surge of interest in Corpus-based research in the wider speech and language technology community. For the benefit of this wider community, the 12th ICAME Conference will include an Open Day, when leading ICAME researchers will give overviews of the stages in the "Corpus life cycle": 10.30 Arrival and registration 11.00 An Overview of ICAME (Stig Johansson, Oslo University, ICAME Committee Chairman) 11.30 Corpus Collection (Antoinette Renouf, Birmingham University) 12.00 Corpus Annotation (Sidney Greenbaum, University College London) 12.30 Corpus-based Parsing (Eric Atwell, Leeds University) 1.00 Lunch 2.00 Tools for Using Corpora (Jan Aarts, Nijmegen University) 2.30 Corpora for Lexicography and English Language Teaching (John Sinclair, Birmingham University) 3.00 Using Spoken Corpora (Gerry Knowles, Lancaster University) 3.30 The ICAME Storehouse: Corpus Availability and Distribution (Knut Hofland, Bergen University) 4.00 Departure All are welcome to attend this Open Day; in addition to seeing the above presentations, Open Day participants will be able to meet other ICAME'91 conference delegates to discuss specialist needs, applications, etc. The conference language will be English. The Craiglands Hotel, Cowpasture Road, Ilkley (0943 607676) is c5 minutes walk from the station, and is on the edge of Ilkley Moor (hats not required). Ilkley is about half an hour by rail or road from Leeds, which in turn has good rail and road links to the rest of the UK. Leeds/Bradford Airport, mid-way between Leeds and Ilkley, has regular flights to several UK and European cities. Attendance at the ICAME'91 Open Day costs 50 pounds, which covers lunch and ICAME'91 documentation including a full list of ICAME'91 conference delegates. To attend, please return the booking form below a.s.a.p. (not later than 1st May) to: Eric Atwell, School of Computer Studies, Leeds University, Leeds LS2 9JT; tel: +44 (0532) 335761 email: eric@uk.ac.leeds.ai -----------------------------cut here------------------------------------ ICAME'91 CORPUS RESEARCH OPEN DAY: May 9th 1991, 10.30-4.00, Craiglands Hotel, Ilkley, Yorkshire, England. I would like to register for the ICAME'91 Corpus Research Open Day. NAME: ADDRESS: EMAIL ADDRESS: PHONE: FAX: SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS (eg vegetarian; disabled access): DELETE ONE OF: I enclose a cheque/bankers draft for fifty pounds sterling made payable to the University of Leeds. OR: I have arranged for a bank to bank transfer of fifty pounds sterling to National Westminster Bank, Leeds City Office, 8 Park Row, Leeds LS1 1QS A/c name: University of Leeds; A/c no: 86577220; Sort-code: 60-60-05 NB PLEASE QUOTE REFERENCE: "ICAME91 Conference a/c 334320/0618". (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 12 Apr 91 14:57:01 EDT From: A. Zukowski (CUNY Coordinator) Subject: Language Sciences Conference Weekend ANNOUNCEMENT Language Sciences Conference Weekend at the University of Rochester May 9 - 12, 1991 There will be three overlapping conferences: The 1991 CUNY Sentence Processing Conference May 9-11 Workshop on Japanese Linguistics May 10-12 "Belief and Belief Attribution" Philosophy Conference May 11-12 ==> Conference fares are available from USAIR. <== ==> Travel scholarships are available for students. <== We will arrange group vans from nearby cities. **** If you are interested in more information about schedule **** or registration details, please forward a simple YES to: cuny91@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu **** If you plan to attend ANY events please let us know. **** This is the second of three messages sent to newsgroups; a final conference schedule will be posted next week. (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 15 Apr 91 10:23-0400 From: Marie.E.Surridge@QueensU.CA Subject: XVth International Conf. of Linguists Do you have a proposal for a symposium for the XVth International Congress of Linguists at Laval University Quebec City 9-14 August 1992? Please send your name and full address with the title of ther proposed symposium and the names of other interested persons known to you. We need these immediately for successful proposals to appear in the next circular. Others interested would be invited to contact you. We want all types of linguistics and theoretical viewpoints to be represented. Marie Surridge, Chair, Program Committee (Fax: 613 545-6300) Tel: 613 545-2083. [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0139] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0140. Tuesday, 16 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0140 (Morpho)phonology Total: 245 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Date: Fri, 12 Apr 91 09:09:00 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: (Morpho)phonology (2) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 91 08:19:00 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Re: Halle on the Phoneme (3) Date: Sat, 13 Apr 1991 5:54:26 GMT From: ADA612@CSC.ANU.EDU.AU (AVERY ANDREWS) Subject: (morpho)phonemics; Halle's argument (4) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 91 13:17:42 PDT From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com Subject: Russian i/y controversy (5) Date: Mon, 15 Apr 91 16:24:58 -0500 Subject: Re: Hades and Ulysses From: Harry Bochner (6) Date: Mon, 15 Apr 91 18:41:36 CDT From: "M. Sokolik" Subject: Re: (Morpho)phonology (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 12 Apr 91 09:09:00 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: (Morpho)phonology Re: Hammond on English stress. (1) I quite agree that the stress pattern of canasta vs. that of orchestra is unpredictable, if that is what we mean by saying that the former is due to exception marking. For, exception marking is simply, in reality, a device for indicating that something is unpredictable but not not quite admitting it. My own position is that exception marking makes sense if there is factual evidence for the special status of the exceptions. I know of two kinds of evidence of this kind, but there may be others. One, the exceptional forms form a closed, unproductive set. Two, the exceptional forms are perceived as foreign. In the cases, we are discussing, I think there is no such evidence, and hence to claim that English stress is predictable is similar to saying that Mandarin has only three tones (the fourth being due to exception marking), or that there is no /s/ in English, it is really, say, /m/ but with exception marking. (2) Hades IS a personal name. And Ulysses, even though there is nothing to flap in it, has the same (unstressed) last syllable that Hades does, i.e., it rhymes with missies (at least, I think it does). (3) I object to an underlying final /y/ instead of /I/ in industry, Ogilvie, and so on (the SPE analysis) not because I object to underlying representations in general (although I do) but because, even assuming that URs are kosher, these particular ones are bizarre for the following reasons: (a) the resulting consonant clusters are highly unusual (b) there is no basis in alternations for such a contrast between /y/ and /I/, i.e., it is not true that words with /y/ resp. /I/ show up with these as phonetic values before some suffix (for example). (c) there is also no basis in analogy to other alternations. For example, it has been suggested (but I forget whether this is SPE or someone else, maybe McCawley??) that final -er can be derived from either /r/ or /Vr/, that this can be used to account for the stress pattern of mInister (cf. ministr-y, so underlyingly /mInIstr/, or carpenter (cf. carpentr-y). However, this won't work either because of examples like pilAster (cf. pilastr-ade). (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 12 Apr 91 08:19:00 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Re: Halle on the Phoneme Bruce Nevin's criticism of Halle's argument against the phoneme misses the point, I believe. Halle quite correctly noted the implausibility of any theory of phonology which had to claim that the voicing in Russian [zhejhby] had to be due to a different process than that in [mogby]. Simplicity metrics and such may not have stood the test of time, but there ARE compelling reasons for accepting this point anyway. For example, as Kiparsky pointed out in 1968 (if not earlier), we do not find languages in which the two parts of such a process (the allophonic and the neutralizing) have a different diachrony. Likewise, I would add that synchronically we do not seem to find languages in which automatic (natural, whatever) processes crucially apply in just the allophonic or just the neutralizing cases (and indeed this could not be the case if the diachronic generalization is valid!). Schane, of course, had an argument to the contrary, where phonemic status (or lack thereof) was a determinant of sound change, but a recent article shows that all his own examples are misanalyzed and that control cases to his claims show no effect of phonemic status. I would be interested to know if anybody else has any purported counterexamples to the Kiparsky generalization. On the other hand, as I have pointed out both here and in print, there is some evidence (first noted by Henryk Ulaszyn many years before Halle) that native speakers perceive the allophonic effects of a process differently from the neutralizing ones. Based on this (correct) insight, Ulaszyn introduced precisely the phonemic theory that Halle later attacked, again quite correctly, since all the indications are that the PROCESS is the same. I am right, and you are right, and everything's quite correct (as a better lyricist than I once wrote)... (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 13 Apr 1991 5:54:26 GMT From: ADA612@CSC.ANU.EDU.AU (AVERY ANDREWS) Subject: (morpho)phonemics; Halle's argument Some recent contributors to this newsletter have claimed to be satisfied with Halle's argument against the autonomous phoneme (the one reported in Chomsky (1966:88-89, Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, Mouton). But I would claim that this argument rests on an incomplete understanding of why arguments from simplicity are convincing, in those cases where they actually are. The force of simplicity arguments derives from the fact that significant generalizations need explanations, and, in many cases, the most plausible explanation for a linguistic generalization is that the various cases that it covers are all consequences of some single facet of mental structure. E.g. `Det ... N ...' sequences have the same internal structure in the various places where they occur because these sequences are all organized by a common factor, which we used to call the NP rule (now usually regarded as being an assortment of parameter settings). Simplicity arguments usually seem compelling in syntax, and in autosegmental & metrical phonology, but not in this case of Halle's, basically because of the way in which historical development is involved in the phenomenon. What the argument does show is that people are capable of initiating and propagating a sound change that sometimes has (observationally) allophonic effects, sometimes phonemic ones. But the acquisitional problem posed by a sound-change in progress is obviously quite different from that posed by the alternations that the sound-change leaves behind when it is completed, since only in the former case does the learner have both the input and the output of the rule available in the data, (whether the learner is a child learning it all at once, or an adult acquiring only the change). So it remains possible that the phonemic and morphophonemic branches of the obstruent-voicing rule might be treated differently by learners, once the rule has become obligatory & universal in the speech community. For evidence that this isn't happening, one would need evidence of both branches of the rule undergoing some further change in common, such as loss or generalization. Avery Andrews (ada612@csc.anu.edu.au) (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 12 Apr 91 13:17:42 PDT From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com Subject: Russian i/y controversy Alexis Manaster-Ramer brought up the question of the orthographic distinction between 'i' and 'y' (yerih) in Russian. This distinction has led to a great amount of debate among Russian linguists, because of Baudouin's original analysis that the letters represent variant pronunciations of the same phoneme. Alexis wrote: >...Moreover, Baudouin himself >was forced in later years to realize that there is something wrong, >because (despite the rhyming facts!) his Polish and Russian colleagues >etc. kept refusing to admit that 'i' and 'y' were intuitively the >same sound. This also continues into the present: it is quite clear >that Polish and Russian linguistics students have a lot of difficulty >believing that these are the same sound. But, of course, the "psychophonetic" >theory of the phoneme predicts that native speakers should not be able to >distinguish the allophones of the same phoneme! I did not know that Baudouin ever retreated an iota from his original position, but his Moscow school descendants kept the controversy alive. It is worth noting that the issue is not so simple as Alexis states. All words beginning with 'i' (high front vowel) are pronounced with 'y' (high back unrounded) when preceded by nonpalatalized consonants. Thus, 'with Ivan' is pronounced 's yvanom' rather than 's ivanom' (although the spelling is still with 'i'). I believe that the ability of Russians to perceive the i/y distinction better than other allophonic distinctions derives mainly from their having been taught to spell--in just the same way that linguistic students can be taught to perceive and write phonetic transcriptions. So the allophony of i/y may be perceived differently because its orthographic representation is exceptional. And it should also be pointed out that, while many native linguists disagreed with Baudouin, many agreed (and still do). So Baudouin's admission that 'something was wrong' was not necessarily an admission that his critics were right. -Rick Wojcik (rwojcik@atc.boeing.com) (5) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 15 Apr 91 16:24:58 -0500 Subject: Re: Hades and Ulysses From: Harry Bochner David Pesetsky (pesetsk@ATHENA.MIT.EDU) writes: > Mike Hammond (HAMMOND@ccit.arizona.edu) writes: > >If Hades is pronounced [heDiz] then we're committed to a similar > >analysis: /hadi+s/. (Frankly, I have no clear intuition about whether > >that word is plural or singular.)... > ... This suggests that Hades, Ulysses etc. are indeed > pluralia tantum in English. Cf. "I need to buy three pants", which is > worse than "three pairs of pants", but better than "three pantses". > Thus, Hammond's suggestion might be right. Consider: (1) Hades _is_ (*are) the abode of the dead. (2) Ulysses _is_ (*are) the hero of the Odyssey. (3) The pants _are_ (*is) lying on the chair. Thus I don't see how "Hades" and "pants" can be lumped together. Note that presence of a plural marker is not the only possible cause of infelicity of a plural form. "I know three Ulysses's." doesn't sound great to me, but neither does it sound much worse than "I know three Francis's.", and if I understand Hammond correctly, "Francis" cannot contain /+s/ in his analysis because that would force the second vowel to be tense. More generally, this strikes me as the sort of "Diacritic use of Juncture" that a constrained theory of Morphology would have to rule out. -- Harry Bochner -- bochner@das.harvard.edu (6) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 15 Apr 91 18:41:36 CDT From: "M. Sokolik" Subject: Re: (Morpho)phonology Consider also 'kudos' [kuDos] listed recently in the Scrabble dictionary as singular 'kudo'; I have seen this "singular form" used elsewhere in print as well. In addition, just recently two students on two separate occasions referred to Hade (apparently there are more than one of them, thus Hades)--context made it clear that they weren't talking about Haiti. I think we're onto something here. [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0140] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0141. Tuesday, 16 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0141 Responses Total: 192 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Sat, 13 Apr 91 09:09:09 CST From: GA5123%SIUCVMB.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU Subject: re: "mis-course" (2) Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 09:14:37 BST From: John Phillips Subject: Re: Non-Standard Languages, Banned Languages (3) Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 11:19:38 BST From: "Ron W. P. Brasington" Subject: Re: Polynesian phonotactics query (4) Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 15:49 GMT From: Julie Coleman Subject: Banned Languages (5) Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 10:09 EST From: Herb Stahlke <00HFSTAHLKE%BSUVAX1.BITNET@UICVM.uic.edu> Subject: Bantu pragmatics (6) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 91 15:01 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: Structuralism (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 13 Apr 91 09:09:09 CST From: GA5123%SIUCVMB.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU Subject: re: "mis-course" Misunderstandings on the net brought Tom Wachtel to ask (Apr. 8) -- "What are the rules that work in non-net dialog but apparently fail on the net?" Briefly, I suppose, limiting non-net dialog for the present to face-to-face and print-publication, we might explain as follows: In face-to-face discussion we have non-verbal cues and opportunities for customized feedback to keep understanding on the track. And in writing for print-publication, we have a tradition of careful rhetorical signals _available_ (if not always used) and vigilance for clarity. Meanwhile, writing on the net resembles oral conversation in so many ways that we may let our guard down (our "guard" being those rhetorical signs, redundancies, and care that we use in writing -- and revising and polishing! -- language for print. However: the net is not the only place where these misunderstandings occur, as I have been observing recently with regard to a published article of mine. In the article (in _Hispanic Linguistics_, 1 (1984), 97-114), I make some (I believe) empirical observations about a phenomenon and, toward the end, cite some efforts that have been made to explain it. The paragraph in question is fairly peppered with expressions of tentativeness: "alleged borrowing", "possible explanation, as suggested by", "interpolated, not documented", "tempting to speculate--though difficult to confirm", etc. And yet two commentators, well separated in time and geography, have chosen to take issue with this "explanatory" material, as if it had been stated with conviction as a main point of the article. I don't see this as an isolated instance. So apparently something additional is at work here. I think it may be (please note, I didn't say "is") that property of the human mind that seeks closure and definiteness. Specificity is much easier to deal with, consciously or unconsciously, than "maybe". Probably Eric Burdon (1964?) sang in vain "Please don't let me be misunderstood!" Next question? -------------------------- Lee Hartman, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, ga5123@siucvmb.bitnet (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 09:14:37 BST From: John Phillips Subject: Re: Non-Standard Languages, Banned Languages Re: Teaching/studying non-standard dialects Dick Hudson asks "Does anyone know of any school system in which speakers of non-standard dialects are taught about their own non-standard dialect." 1. Swiss schools use and teach both standard high German and the local variant of Swiss German. 2. The situation is much the same, socially and educationally, in Wales, though the dialects there are much closer to the literary language. There is a continuum between broad dialect and literary Welsh, and teachers' speech, children's essays, etc., are likely to be part way along this continuum, depending on the subject matter, and degree of formality. Re: Banned languages Michael Kac notes that Irish was once banned in Ireland. The use of Welsh was restricted for several centuries in Wales. The Act of Union of 1536, whereby Wales was annexed to England, declared the government's intention of 'extirpating' the Welsh language, and barred habitual users of Welsh from holding public office. The education acts at the end of the last century continued this policy, specifying compulsory English- medium education for all Welsh children. The older generation in Wales still remember being punished if caught speaking Welsh at school. None of this holds any more of course. Indeed Welsh now has a limited amount of official status, since the Welsh Language Act of 1967. John Phillips (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 11:19:38 BST From: "Ron W. P. Brasington" Subject: Re: Polynesian phonotactics query Articles you may find useful are: Krupa. T. (1971) The phonotactic structure of the morph in Polynesian languages. Language 47. 668-684. Chretien, D. (1965) The statistical structure of the Proto-Austronesian morph. Lingua 14. 243-270. Ron Brasington, Department of Linguistic Science, University of Reading, Whiteknights, Reading, UK. (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 15:49 GMT From: Julie Coleman Subject: Banned Languages Come to think of it my great-uncle (born c1909) used to be beaten at school for using Irish. His parents were supposed to report him to the teacher if he used Irish at home. Julie Coleman (5) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 10:09 EST From: Herb Stahlke <00HFSTAHLKE%BSUVAX1.BITNET@UICVM.uic.edu> Subject: Bantu pragmatics Someone wrote last week asking about work on pragmatics in Bantu languages, and I seem to have deleted the message in a fit of digital housecleaning. We have a candidate, Mulamba Kashama, who successfully defended his dissertation last week on the topic "Apologizing, Complaining, and Complimenting in Ciluba, French, and English: Speech Act Performance by Trilingual Speakers in Zaire." This is an unabashedly functionalist approach that even uses social sciences experimental design methods. He did a very nice job of it, both methodologically and pragmatically. I'm not sure he is one BitNet (it's not automatic here), but I'd be happy to pass a message on to him. Herb Stahlke Ball State University (6) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 12 Apr 91 15:01 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: Structuralism Dear Michael -- "Taxonomy" is not a pejorative term unless it is used as a term for "theory". D'Abro's "The Rise of the New Physics" has an exdellent introductory chapter on the development of any science -- observation as first stage, classification as second, and theory as third. Re empiricism -- Bloomfield as one of many during that period in linguistics and psychology -- turned against his earlier views (e.g. he states in LANGUAGE --" in 1914 I based this phase of the exposition on the psychologic system of Wilhelm Wundt (a mentalist, vaf)" and supplanted this with an anti-mentalist and mechanistic and empiricist and behaviorist view (transplanting Wundt with Watson as his psychological mentor). And it is interesting to note the similarities between the mechanism of Laplace formulated in the early part of the 19th century and destined to live a few scant years in physics (with the developments of the theory of relativity and quantum theory) which was resu rrected by Bloomfield in language. In a recent paper which appears in THE CHOMSKYAN TURN (Asa Kasher, editor - 1990 - Blackwell) I include a quote from Laplace and one from Bloomfield. My husband is convinced that LB's is plagiarized but we know that's not so. I have my fingers on all this stuff right now because I just finished teaching a course in the history of linguistics. Oh yes -- another thing -- evidence to support a theory is not proof in the sense of a mathematical proof -- and of course there is no such proof in an empirical science. In addition, and you know all this much better than I do Michael, a mathematical proof is a deductive procedure not an inductive one. And therefore should not be seen as a parallel to a discovery procedure. Noone can deny the importance of rigor -- but that is not the question. VAF [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0141] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0142. Wednesday, 17 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0142 Job Total: 142 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 13:29:37 WST From: harrison@bilby.cs.uwa.oz.au (Sheldon Harrison) Subject: Job Advertisement (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 13:29:37 WST From: harrison@bilby.cs.uwa.oz.au (Sheldon Harrison) Subject: Job Advertisement UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA LECTURER (A23/91) DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY Applications are invited for a three year fixed term (renewable) lectureship in a small but growing Linguistics programme within the Department. The appointee will be expected to take up duties as early as possible in 1992. He/she must be prepared to teach and develop a broad range of courses at all levels of the undergraduate curriculum, including Honours, to supervise postgraduate students, and to undertake research. Applicants with any specialisation will be considered for this post, though special consideration will be given to applicants with a background in (first or second) language acquisition or computational linguistics/natural language processing. The appointee must have a PhD in Linguistics (or in a cognate discipline). University teaching experience is an asset. For further information, contact Dr. S.P. Harrison, Head, Department of Anthropology: phone 81-9-380-2859 fax 81-9-380-1062 email harrison@cs.uwa.oz.au SALARY RANGE: AUD$33,163 - $43,043 p.a. CLOSING DATE: 31 August, 1991 Benefits include superannuation, fares to Perth for appointee and dependent family, removal allowance, study leave, and long service leave. Conditions of appointment will be specified in any offer of appointment which may be made as a result of this advertisement. (In some circumstances salary loadings may be negotiated.) Written applications quoting reference number, telephone number, qualifications and experience, and the names and addresses of three referees should reach the Director, Personnel Services, University of Western Australia, Nedlands 6009, Australia, by the closing date. EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY IS UNIVERSITY POLICY ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0143. Wednesday, 17 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0143 Responses Total: 179 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 13:10:50 PDT From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com Subject: Re: intuition (2) Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 21:25:46 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: The Truth About Everything (3) Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1991 13:19:14 SET From: Bill Eldridge Subject: Intuition (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 13:10:50 PDT From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com Subject: Re: intuition Richard Ogden challenges my use of 'intuitively' in connection with defending a linguistic claim. I did make some effort to describe the basis for that intuition--even going so far as to provide an external 'litmus test' for it. I did not wish to propose the use of intuition as a sound basis for claims in linguistic argumentation. So I fully agree with Dr. Ogden's qualification of his own remarks: --- I'm not saying that imagination and hunches don't have a place in linguists' arguments, just that they are not enough in themselves to explain a position. I felt that I had inserted the word 'intuitive' at the appropriate place in the argument, and I apologize if I presumed too much. -Rick Wojcik (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 21:25:46 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: The Truth About Everything Some reactions -- brief, I promise -- to a variety of recent postings. Alexis Manaster-Ramer takes issue with the SPE analysis of words like *industry* in part because it leads to underlying representations containing unusual consonant clusters. That's a common enough kind of criticism of UR's and my inclination is to think that it's valid. Ironically, however, Chomsky in *Current Issues* used just such an argument to try to subvert the Invariance Principle by arguing that one is forced by this principle to e.g. analyze the [D] in an English word like *throw* as phonemic /t/, thus leading to phonemic analyses in which initial /theta-t/ clusters occur 'counter not only to the speaker's intuition but also to the OTHERWISE VALID RULES OF CONSONANT DISTRIBUTION [my emphasis -- MK]'. I have always been troubled by this case because it seems impossible to have nontrivial phonemic or underlying representations at all unless they violate just such valid rules -- as SPE-style UR's do routinely. My question is really this: what are the rules of evidence here? I think that this is a relevant question in the context of the animated discussion now going on regarding the history of phonology. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Richard Ogden says 'Isn't [intuition] just a way of avoiding a more rational approach? --- I'm not saying that imagination and hunches don't have a place in linguists' arguments, just that they are not enough in themselves to explain a position.' Part of the problem here I think is that linguists use the word 'intuition' in two different ways. On the one hand, they mean the native speaker's 'feel' for the language -- e.g. the feeling that there's something wrong with *She are here* or that the initial sound in *pin* and in *spin* are the same. Exercising intuition in that sense is taken to be the way by which we generate data. The second way in which linguists use the word 'intuition' is as a synonym for 'common sense'. I agree absolutely that it is no defense of an analysis that it is 'intuitive' in the latter sense, nor an argument against an analysis that it is 'counterintuitive' (in the same sense). The whole reason that we have science in the first place is precisely because common sense isn't a reliable guide to the way things really work. It is possible, however, to accept what I've just said and still believe that it's legitimate to rely on intuition in the first sense. Granted, there's controversy on this score too (Bill Labov having made some of the more provocative statements for one side of the question). I won't take a position on that matter here (though I do have one!); I'll just say that I think it's easy to get led up the garden path by not keeping straight which kind of intuition is being referred to. By the way, the question of just what kinds of intuitions native speakers do an don't have is itself one that I think is interesting and not nearly as straightforward as some discussions would suggest. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Vicki Fromkin writes: '"Taxonomy" is not a pejorative term unless it is used as a term for "theory". D'Abro's "The Rise of the New Physics" has an exdellent introductory chapter on the development of any science -- observation as first stage, classification as second, and theor assume that classification isn't a theoretical activity (as D'Abro's trichotomy seems to suggest?) 'Evidence to support a theory is not proof in the sense of a mathematical proof -- and of course there is no such proof in an empirical science. In addition, and you know all this much better than I do Michael, a mathematical proof is a deductive procedure not an inductive one. And therefore should not be seen as a parallel to a discovery procedure. Noone can deny the importance of rigor -- but that is no Yes, of course. The parallel I meant to draw between discovery procedures and the formalization of the notion of 'proof' was intended to go only this far: Both were intended to increase the level of rigor within the relevant disciplines, and in both cases it's recognized that this level of rigor is seldom adhered to in practice. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Adam Kilgarriff alludes to the mothers that bore us. I don't know about his mother, but mine is quite interesting! Michael Kac (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1991 13:19:14 SET From: Bill Eldridge Subject: Intuition In response to Richard Ogden on Intuition: Intuition is a hypothesis to test and support or refute. Obviously intuition is a personal experience - Einstein's intuition that "time" varied according to personal viewpoint was greatly at odds with the majority intuition in his (and maybe our) day. However, intuitions are quite often completely invalid, and that's why it's important to stamp our concepts as "proven", "refuted" or "speculative", to whatever degree it's possible to be certain in a non-digital world. A good intuition can provide the starting point for a good theory (or a bad one), and in a very practical world, the theory is often derived from a functioning system or notion. The current popularity of neural networks seems to be a wonderful example of this, since there seems to be little to explain why the technique works so well (counter to sequential methodologies). More times than not, we are unable to completely explain phenomena, and expecting people to wait at the starting gate until everything is solved is unrealistic and counter to a pioneering spirit (we made a lot of progress while presuming Euclid's fifth postulate was always true). On the other hand, intuitions should not be accorded the sanctity of a proven or supported concept (and accepted and "proven" ideas need to be reviewed periodically as well in light of new developments). Many things are done in the name of expediency or convenience, and part of the purpose of theory work is to find the more useful and generally applicable aspects of this. Even in theory work, it seems easier and more productive to build up straw men to knock down than to continually struggle against a void (and sometimes these straw men are a lot tougher to knock down than one would suppose). The bottom line is that one should try to be aware of underlying assumptions in any endeavor. As a possible explanation of why there are so many misinterpretations of network postings, I can say that right now I'm unable to call up the orginal message I'm responding to so that I can verify several points, or at least not conveniently. I'm reminded of the old Saturday Night Live routine in which a slightly deaf Gilda Radner would lambast an idea for five minutes before Chevy Chase would inform her that someone was contemplating a "trade embargo", not "trading Garbo", or some such misinterpretation (I can't provide any actual examples from the show). I hope all of this is of some use, even if it's irrelevant to the original point raised. Bill Eldridge Czech Academy of Science ext28@cspgcs11.bitnet [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0143] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0144. Wednesday, 17 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0144 Queries Total: 137 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Tue, 16 Apr 1991 9:57:38 EDT From: SEGUIN@VAXR.SSCL.UWO.CA Subject: Text-Encoding (2) Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 13:03:19 -0500 From: phall@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (David Perelman-Hall) Subject: CL algorithms wanted (3) Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 08:39:38 +0100 From: "Mr.A.Wilson" Subject: 'Revue' address (4) Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 13:04 EST From: JOHN BRO Subject: William Frawley's address is wrong (e-dictionaries) (5) Date: 17 Apr 91 20:32:01 MET-1DST From: JOSEF@let.rug.nl Subject: Wh-movement & COMP-position (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 16 Apr 1991 9:57:38 EDT From: SEGUIN@VAXR.SSCL.UWO.CA Subject: Text-Encoding I would appreciate any information regarding the current status of the initiative on text-encoding standards, sponsored by the LSA, etc. Any chance there will be something as straight-forward as a manual for the standards? Margaret Seguin Dept. Anthropology, University of Western Ontario (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 13:03:19 -0500 From: phall@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (David Perelman-Hall) Subject: CL algorithms wanted To all Linguist readers: I am developing an English sentence parser in object oriented C++. At present I have a working chart parser which derives all rules from a PSG, including the part of speech of the terminal symbols. I want to push several features into the lexicon, including part of speech, case, number, etc...,and then garner from the lexicon the frame arguments or verb valencies. I am seeking references, algorithms, code (in any language from Lisp to C) which shows how to cull features from a lexicon and percolate them up through a parse to eventually be used as grammaticality test frames. Any help would be much appreciated. More private responses may be e-mailed me at phall@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu. Thanks, David Perelman-Hall. (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 08:39:38 +0100 From: "Mr.A.Wilson" Subject: 'Revue' address Could anyone on the list oblige me with an email or land-mail address for the journal "Revue de l'organisation internationale pour l'etude des langues anciennes par ordinateur"? Many thanks, Andrew Wilson Dept. of Linguistics Lancaster University, UK email: A.Wilson@uk.ac.lancaster (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 13:04 EST From: JOHN BRO Subject: William Frawley's address is wrong (e-dictionaries) ====================================================================== We've got a little address problem: >Return-Path: >Subject: Re: e-dictionaries >Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 09:14:34 -0400 >From: Bill 'Beeil' Tsai >> I'd like to see your list of machine-readable dictionaries, >Several people have written to me about some machine-readable >dictionary. However, I do not recall me posting anything on >the net of that nature (I assume you are replying from news). >Can you shed some light to me? Maybe send me the original >message? Thanks a lot. >bill -- >Bill Tsai bill@brahms.udel.edu Univ. of Delaware (302) 738-1735 Will the *real Bill* please stand up? :) [Bill Frawley's correct address is billf@brahms.udel.edu. An easy mistake to make. Anthony Aristar] (5) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 17 Apr 91 20:32:01 MET-1DST From: JOSEF@let.rug.nl Subject: Wh-movement & COMP-position Who knows details (or literature) about SOV-languages with either of the following properties: (i) clause initial COMP, clausal complement unextraposed, overt long Wh- extraction (either to the left or to the right) (ii) clause final COMP, clausal complement unextraposed, overt Wh- extraction (either to the left or to the right) Pullum,G. (1980), "Languages in which movement does not parallel bound anaphora", LINGUISTIC INQUIRY 11. 613-620. mentions the Bzheduk dialect of West Circissian as a language of type (ii), with Wh-movement to the right. Pullum's source then was an unpublished paper by John Colarusso ["An instance of unbounded rightward movement: Wh-movement in Circissian", 1976, Univ. of Vienna]. I would be grateful if anyone could tell me where this paper is published or otherwise available. Finally, does anyone know about SVO-languages with clause final complementizers (and long Wh-movement to the left)? Thank you. - Josef Bayer - e-mail: JOSEF@LET.RUG.NL [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0144] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0145. Thursday, 18 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0145 Banned Languages Total: 161 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 17:27:03 +0100 Subject: teaching about non-standard dialects From: R.Hudson (2) Date: Tue, 16 Apr 1991 11:54 CDT From: 6160LACYA@VMS.CSD.MU.EDU Subject: Banned Languages (3) Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 16:05:47 MDT From: yorick@NMSU.Edu Subject: Banned Languages (4) Date: 16 Apr 91 23:14:00 EST From: "ELISE EMERSON MORSE-GAGNE" Subject: Banned languages (5) Date: Tue, 16 Apr 1991 18:41:48 -0400 From: chambers@HG.ULeth.CA Subject: RE: Queries (6) Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 13:51 CDT From: Murvet Enc Subject: Re: Kurdish (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 17:27:03 +0100 Subject: teaching about non-standard dialects From: R.Hudson I issued a general inquiry about school systems where children are taught about non-standard dialects/languages, and John Phillips kindly suggested Swiss German and Welsh. He may be right, but I'm doubtful, so let me make it clear what I'm after: any school system where children are not only allowed to use local dialect, and perhaps even encouraged to do so in some situations, but where they learn some of the rules of the local dialect even (perhaps especially) when these depart from the standard language. As I understand it, German-speaking Switzerland and Welsh-speaking Wales are diglossic, meaning that everyone speaks non-standard at home but only the standard dialect/language is sufficiently respectable to be taught the rules of in school. E.g. Swiss speakers can't necessarily tell you how many cases they have, though they may be able to tell you about the cases of High German. Dick Hudson Dept of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT (071) 387 7050 ext 3152 home: (081) 340 1253 (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 16 Apr 1991 11:54 CDT From: 6160LACYA@VMS.CSD.MU.EDU Subject: Banned Languages The case of German and French in the Alsace-Lorraine (or Elsass-Lothringen) area is an interesting one. The area was annexed by Germany in 1871, and German became the language of the schools. Prior to WWI many German speakers moved to this area. During the war French was banned "even in pubs and on the street." After WWI the area was returned to France, when a 're-frenchification' took place. During the war years 1941-45 the area was reoccupied by Germany. After the war German was banned in the schools. While German is not now "banned" in this area, it has no official recognition, and is considered a foreign language, and stigmatized. The situation will probably change again because of the EC, with many German speaking people moving into the area, and many French working across the border in the more developed area of Germany. [All information in the first two paragraphs taken from: _Variation_in_German_, by Stephen Barbour and Patrick Stevenson. Cambridge U. P., 1990. Pages 234-235] Alan F. Lacy 6160lacya@vmsf.csd.mu.edu (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 16:05:47 MDT From: yorick@NMSU.Edu Subject: Banned Languages Re: John Phillips on banned languages. Good to see UK language policy across the centuries getting an airing; it stops me feeling homesick or bored. John Phillips refers to the late Nineteenth Century laws requiring compulsory English-medium education in Wales, and adds "None of this applies any more of course". Is this really true? Are Welsh children the only ones in the EC being sent out into the world crippled, without an education in a major, or even an EC, language? If he's right, this is worse than the worst Ive heard for years about the British education system. Yorick Wilks (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 16 Apr 91 23:14:00 EST From: "ELISE EMERSON MORSE-GAGNE" Subject: Banned languages I believe that in some schools for deaf children in this country, one or another sign language is banned--either because a different sign language is being used or because the school is committed to teaching the children to speak aloud in English. Anyone who specializes in sign languages--Judy Kegl springs to mind; Ceil Lucas or Clayton Valli also (try Gallaudet U.)-- would know infinitely more about this than I do. --Elise Morse-Gagne (UPenn Linguistics Dept.) (5) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 16 Apr 1991 18:41:48 -0400 From: chambers@HG.ULeth.CA Subject: RE: Queries Reply to R. Hudson uclyrah%uk.ac.ucl@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU You requested info about school systems where students are learning about their own non-standard dialect. I recall there was a movement in the United States in the late 1960s early 1970s where African Americna children were being taught to read IN their own "dialect" (not necessarily learning ABOUT that dialect in contrast to standard forms). It seems that there were schools in the state of Michagan trying this. I can't recall specifics at the moment. i'd suggest you contact Lisa Delpit who wrote "The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in the Educating other peoples children" and "Skills and other dilemmasof a progressive Black educator. both published in Harvard Educat. Review (1988) and (1986). Delpit was at Univ. of Alaska but I'm not sure now. Good luck, Cynthia Chambers, Faculty of Education University of Lethbridge Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada (6) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 13:51 CDT From: Murvet Enc Subject: Re: Kurdish A short note on Kurdish. I found out that the ban on Kurdish has NOT been rescinded. The proposal came to the parliament, and the only part of it that was passed was allowing Kurdish to be spoken at home and perhaps in songs. I'm saying 'perhaps' because the news I got was garbled. As for the information that the ban in Turkey was against all languages which are not official languages of some state, this was news to me, and I'm not sure how many peole in Turkey are aware of it. Unquestionably, Kurdish was targeted. You can bet that noone is going to get prosecuted for speaking Welsh or Basque. [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0145] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0146. Thursday, 18 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0146 Phonology Total: 296 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 16:51:46 PDT From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com Subject: Re: Halle on the Phoneme (2) Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 22:47:46 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Halle and Baudouin (3) Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1991 10:20 MST From: KAMPRATH@CC.UTAH.EDU Subject: Re: (Morpho)phonology (4) Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 09:06 MST From: Mike Hammond Subject: Phonology (5) Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 12:00:57 -0500 From: "Larry G. Hutchinson" Subject: Re: (Morpho)phonology (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 16:51:46 PDT From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com Subject: Re: Halle on the Phoneme I sometimes think that Halle's argument is difficult to follow because most of the arguers do not share Russian intuitions about how to pronounce things. First of all, let us note that the voice assimilation process applies to Russian-accented English. "Nice boy" is pronounced 'ni[z]e boy'. This does not mean that the Russian speaker thinks that the English word 'nice' ends in /z/. Baudouin's phonological level (called "phonemic" by him) would allow him to analyze 'nice' with an /s/ phoneme (=Ulaszyn's morphophoneme) without giving up the claim that the [z] derivative had some kind of perceptual autonomy. The whole point was that phonemes are supposed to be "janus-like" in character--able to serve the speaker and hearer alike. So he didn't use the term consistently to represent cases of neutralization, since the neutralization issue only addresses the listener's viewpoint, not the speaker's. But it is extremely important to compare voice assimilation alternations with those connected to Russian allomorphy--fleeting vowels, consonant shifts involving historical waves of palatalization, other alternations connected to historical loss of the yers, etc. None (zero) of those phenomena play any role in the pronunciation of English, because they are not phonological (physiophonetic) operations that govern Russian pronunciation. They involve operations that govern how Russians relate morphemes to each other. This fact lends a certain compelling plausibility-- and I dare to call it "intuitive" even--to the alternational dichotomy that Halle did not address with his argument. He struck down the wrong concept of the phoneme--the one that was shorn of its speaker-based functionality. One last remark: most of my knowledge of Ulaszyn comes from Alexis. So I don't challenge what he has said about this late Polish student of Baudouin's. But my impression is that his work was closer to Moscow than Leningrad. My reasoning is that the Leningraders really did confuse the physiophonetic/ psychophonetic alternations when it came to cases of automatic neutralization. I seem to recall that Ulaszyn did not confuse his morphophonemes with cases of psychophonetic alternations. This puts him closer to Moscow, which distinguished allophonic cases as 'varijatsija' and neutralizing cases as 'varianty' without giving up Baudouin's essential level of abstractness. -Rick Wojcik (rwojcik@atc.boeing.com) (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 22:47:46 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Halle and Baudouin (1) Avery Andrews writes that he finds Halle's argument against (Leningrad) phonemics uncompelling because, unlike other simplicity arguments, he does not see the single mental structure behind the phenomena which the L-phonemic theory separates and which Halle saw as being a single phenomenon. Am I missing something? The The point, although Halle did not originally make it explicit (I think), is that we do find strong evidence that allophonic and neutralizing processes are the same, viz., they never appear (or disappear) one without the other. It is true, of course, that there is some (more or less anecdotal) evidence that speakers' minds find some difference between the effects of these processes, and indeed that is precisely what made Ulaszyn introduce the L-phonemic theory in the first place. However, the argument for L-phonemics based on speaker perceptions of sameness and difference is not very strong, I feel, because there are many cases on record of speakers perceiving subphonemic distinctions (e.g., Polish and Russian i vs. y in the days when they were in complementary distribution) and there is some (much less) evidence of cases where phonemic distinctions are not perceived by speakers (Labov's work on the vowels of saw vs. soar in NYC r-less speech, for example). It seems to me entirely possible that what speakers are conscious of is something orthogonal to the whole issue. (2) Rick Wojcik takes some exception to my statements about Polish and Russian i and y and their relevance to the fundamental questions of phonology. The facts that he alludes to regarding the disputes among Russian linguists about the phonemic status of this distinction only confirm my original point that this is case where native speaker perceptions are at odds with (many) linguistic theories. His contention that speakers perceive these as different because of the spelling can easily be refuted by the following arguments: (a) In Russian, [y] is sometimes spelled 'i', specifically after 'c', 'sh', and 'zh'. Speakers find no difficulty realizing that these are cases of [y]. (b) If spelling were enough to help speakers identify allophones as different, then teaching a speaker a phonetic alphabet in which other allophones are also spelled differently should have the same effect, yet Russian speakers have enormous difficulties perceiving the fronted allophones of back vowels after palatal(ized) consonants even after extensive training in phonetics. (c) In the Middle Ages, the Latin-based Slavic writing systems did not have a consistent distinction between [i] and [y], and this was deliberately introduced by reformers (including Jan Hus for Czech, I seem to recall, since Czech had the distinction too at one time) who were bent on reflecting the "pronunciation" (i.e., their mental image of the pronunciation). I would add that the fact that initial [i] goes to [y] in Russian (but not Polish) after a word ending in a non-palatal[ized] consonant, while perfectly true, does not have any bearing on the question of whether these are allophones or phonemes. For the question is precisely whether this alternation is allophonic or neutralizing. (3) Bringing the two points I just made together, it seems to me that instead of arguing about the "correct" phonemic analysis (as the Moscow and Leningrad phonologists have all these years), we might reasonably ask whether the notion of phoneme is all that wonderful. The point is that the examples under discussion, far from being some exotic recent find, were precisely the examples that PHONOLOGY WAS INVENTED TO ACCOUNT FOR. It seems to at least equally plausible that the right theory of what speakers perceive as same or different has to do with some notion of salience and phonetic similarity rather than with distribution. Stampe's natural phonology would be the KIND of theory that we would then want, since it claims, for example, that only alternants created by LENITING natural processes are perceived as the same as the things they come from, whereas sounds derived by FORTITION are not. If we knew exactly what lenitions and fortitions were, we might then find that Polish and Russian [i] and [y] cannot be derived from each other by any possible lenitions and this is why they are perceived as different. I said "KIND of theory", however, because (a) I am not sure that we are told clearly enough what lenitions and fortitions are and (b) I am not sure that this is enough. As to (b), I think American speakers perceive flaps as quite different from t's, and yet the former would appear to be lenitions of the latter. But, even if I am right, Stampe's is perhaps the ONLY model of phonology which is of this KIND. Finally, it is absolutely vital not to confuse various kinds of evidence for sameness or difference of two sounds. As the i/y business shows, sounds can rhyme w/o being perceived by speakers as the same. Incidentally, the names of the letters in Polish and (recent) Russian are [i] and [y], a minimal pair that several Leningrad phonologists have noted. Yet to my ear the following doggerel is perfectly rhymed in Polish (perhaps other speakers will comment?): Pokazesz mi 'You will show me' Litere y 'The letter y' and Pokazesz ty 'You will show (to someone unspecified)' Litere i 'The letter i' (Please do not cite these w/o due care, because I have omitted the diacritics.) (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1991 10:20 MST From: KAMPRATH@CC.UTAH.EDU Subject: Re: (Morpho)phonology While we're considering 'kudo' and 'Hade', let's also consider 'bicep' and 'quadricep', as in My left bicep is stronger than my right one. My quadriceps are getting stronger. (The person who gave me this told me that we have four quadriceps, and, of course, two biceps.) I've also heard mention of 'quads' (and 'gluts' and 'abs') but I don't know whether I can say that I have a left 'quad', but this is an aside. Hmm. Do we have 6 ceps altogether? I don't think so. We also have triceps, but I don't think many people know where they are. In fact, I suspect more people know where quads are than where quadriceps are. Christine Kamprath (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 09:06 MST From: Mike Hammond Subject: Phonology Alexis Manaster-Ramer has recently objected to treating words like _canasta_ as exceptions to the English stress rules. He maintains: "For, exception marking is simply, in reality, a device for indicating that something is unpredictable but not not quite admitting it. My own position is that exception marking makes sense if there is factual evidence for the special status of the exceptions. I know of two kinds of evidence of this kind, but there may be others. One, the exceptional forms form a closed, unproductive set. Two, the exceptional forms are perceived as foreign. In the cases, we are discussing, I think there is no such evidence, and hence to claim that English stress is predictable is similar to saying that Mandarin has only three tones (the fourth being due to exception marking), or that there is no /s/ in English, it is really, say, /m/ but with exception marking." In fact, words like _canasta_ are exceptions in Manaster-Ramer's first sense. That is, while it is possible to exceptionally assign stress to a light penult of a noun, it is not possible, for example, to exceptionally assign stress to a preantepenult of a noun. Hence, it makes sense to treat words like _canasta_ as exceptions, rather than treat stress in the entire English lexicon as lexically marked. He goes on to argue against treating words like _industry_ as containing a final /y/ because: (a) "the resulting consonant clusters are highly unusual (b) there is no basis in alternations for such a contrast between /y/ and /I/, i.e., it is not true that words with /y/ resp. /I/ show up with these as phonetic values before some suffix (for example). (c) there is also no basis in analogy to other alternations. For example, it has been suggested (but I forget whether this is SPE or someone else, maybe McCawley??) that final -er can be derived from either /r/ or /Vr/, that this can be used to account for the stress pattern of mInister (cf. ministr-y, so underlyingly /mInIstr/, or carpenter (cf. carpentr-y). However, this won't work either because of examples like pilAster (cf. pilastr-ade)." I don't think any of these objections go through. First, it's not clear what the underlying naturalness of these clusters has to do with anything. There are other examples in English where underlyingly unnatural clusters have to be posited as well, as evidenced by the following alternations: hymn hymnal paradigm paradigmatic syntagm syntagmatic gnostic agnostic knowledge acknowledge Second, the absence of surface alternations is also not to be taken as criterial for positing underlying representations. For example, the fact the the initial aspirated /t/ of doesn't alternate doesn't prevent us from positing a rule of aspiration. Third, the other alternations involving syllabicity do seem to go through. Manaster-Ramer cites alternations involving orthographic -er. minister ministry carpenter carpentry pilaster pilastrade He cites _pilaster_ with penult stress as a problem for the claim that the word is underlyingly /pilastr/. This is not a problem at all, however, as nothing prevents us from treating _pilaster_ like _canasta_, as being marked to attract stress. In /pilastr/, it would be the ultima that's marked to attract stress, but that option must be open in any event to account for contrasts like the following: _narthex_ vs. _helix_. mike hammond (5) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 12:00:57 -0500 From: "Larry G. Hutchinson" Subject: Re: (Morpho)phonology Halle's argument against the phonemic level of representation can can very easily be seen rather as an argument against the sequential application of phonological rules. Chomsky's argument is logically flawed, given his own definitions. This is independent of the question of whether or not these definitions actually fit the linguistics of any real phonologists. An elderly paper of mine on these two topics has recently been reprinted (not updated and slightly garbled typographically) in Linguistic Research, Vol. 9, 1988. This is the "Mr. Chomsky on the Phoneme" paper reviewed in Hymes and Fought, starting on page 199 (contrary to what the index says). [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0146] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0147. Thursday, 18 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0147 Conference and Software Total: 193 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 10:18:54 EST From: mccray@nlm.nih.gov (Alexa T. McCray) Subject: Reminder: Workshop on Language and Information Processing (2) Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 11:22:53 EDT From: "Patrick W. Conner" Subject: COLLATE (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 10:18:54 EST From: mccray@nlm.nih.gov (Alexa T. McCray) Subject: Reminder: Workshop on Language and Information Processing ** REMINDER ** CALL FOR PAPERS PAPERS DUE: May 31, 1991 WORKSHOP ON LANGUAGE AND INFORMATION PROCESSING October 27, 1991 Washington, D.C. The American Society for Information Science (ASIS) invites sub- missions for a Language and Information Processing Workshop, to be held on October 27, 1991 at the ASIS '91 meeting in Washington, D.C. The theme of ASIS '91 is "Systems Understanding People, People Understanding Systems". The purpose of the workshop is to bring together researchers who are concerned with the potentially significant role of sophisticated natural language processing (NLP) in intelligent information retrieval (IR). The workshop will focus on the progress that has been made to date on the application of NLP methods to the IR problem and will provide a forum for discussing some promising areas for future research. Submitted papers must reflect substantive work done at the intersection of NLP and IR. Papers should emphasize completed work rather than future plans. PROGRAM COMMITTEE: Alexa T. McCray, National Library of Medicine Elizabeth Liddy, Syracuse University Carl Weir, Unisys David Lewis, University of Massachusetts FORMAT FOR SUBMISSIONS: Submit 5 copies of a draft paper, not exceeding 10 single-spaced pages (exclusive of references) to arrive no later than May 31, 1991. A cover page should include the title, full names of all authors, the address of the primary author, including an e-mail address if possible, and a short abstract. Send submissions to the workshop chair: Alexa T. McCray National Library of Medicine Bldg. 38A/9N905, Mail Stop 54 Bethesda, Md. 20894 Phone: (301) 496-9300 Internet: mccray@nlm.nih.gov SCHEDULE: Submissions should be sent to arrive by May 31, 1991. Notification of acceptance will be made by July 15, 1991. Camera-ready papers will be due on September 16, 1991. Workshop will be held on October 27, 1991. WORKSHOP INFORMATION: The workshop will be held in conjunction with the 54th annual meeting of the American Society for Information Science (October 27-31, 1991). A full proceedings of the workshop will be made available to those attend. The workshop will be open to all interested researchers, but presentations will be limited to accepted papers. There will be a $30.00 workshop registration fee which will be used to cover the cost of preparing the proceedings and providing refreshments. Lunch will not be provided. (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 11:22:53 EDT From: "Patrick W. Conner" Subject: COLLATE [This notice is posted as a service to subscribers, and the LINGUIST editors make no guarantee as to the quality or efficacy of the software in question.] ***** ****** * * * ******* ***** * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *** * * * * * ******* * * ***** ****** ***** ***** * * * ***** Version 1.0 of Collate -- a new program for the collation of large textual traditions -- is now available. About Collate ---------------- Collate aims to help scholars in the preparation of a critical edition based on many sources. It can collate simultaneously up to a hundred texts at once. It can deal with richly marked-up texts (with special treatment for editorial comments embedded in the text, location markers, editorial expansions and separate collation of punctuation). It provides powerful facilities to allow the scholar to tailor the collation and it can output in many different formats. Collate works interactively with the collation being written to a window as the scholar watches. The scholar may intervene at any point to alter the collation, using either of the tools RSet VariantS or RRegulariseS. RSet VariantS allows the scholar to over-rule the collation offered by Collate and impose his own collation, even writing a variant that does not appear in the sources into the collation. RRegulariseS enables the scholar to intervene to regularise any word or phrase in any source at any point. The regularisation can be set for a particular word at every point in every source, or for that word only at that place in that source, or various other combinations. Collate will record all variants set and every regularisation made and remember them next time it runs. The scholar can adjust the collation in other ways, switching the base text, suppressing agreements with the base text and collating punctuation tokens separately. The collation may be output in various critical apparatus forms (including several formats recommended by the Text Encoding Initiative), or scholars may dictate their own format. Through an interface to the EDMAC macros, developed by John Lavagnino of Brandeis University and Dominik Wujastyk of the Wellcome Institute for the production of complex critical editions with the typesetting language TeX, editions with up to five levels of apparatus can be created direct from the output of Collate. The EDMAC macros and an implementation of TeX (OzTeX) are provided with the program. Automatic generation of hypertext electronic editions from the output is also possible. Texts Collate can Process ----------------------------- The length of texts Collate can process is limited only by the storage capacity of the computer. The only requirement is that the text be divided into blocks containing no more than 32768 words each. Collate works on both prose and verse and has been tested successfully on texts in many languages (including Malay, Sanskrit, Latin, Middle English and Old Norse). A set of Guidelines for Transcription, provided with the program, explains the format transcription files should have so that they can be processed by Collate. The transcription files must be plain ASCII files and can be prepared on any computer. A simple word-processor, Transcribe, is also provided with Collate: this includes various functions specially designed to help transcription. The History of Collate -------------------------- Collate has been developed as part of the Computers and Manuscripts Project, funded for three years from 1st September 1989 by the Leverhulme Trust at the Oxford University Computing Service with support from Apple Computer. Collate has been written by the Research Officer for the Project, Peter Robinson (PETERR@AC.UK.OX.VAX). The Project Director is Susan Hockey. Program Availability and Requirements ---------------------------------------------- Collate 1.0 runs only on Macintosh computers (Classic or higher) and requires one megabyte of memory to operate. A hard disc is recommended. It can be ordered from: The Computers and Manuscripts Project Oxford University Computing Service 13 Banbury Road Oxford OX2 6NN England. (Phone: 0865 273200; fax 0865 273275; email PETERR@AC.UK.OX.VAX). The program costs 20 pounds UK, 40 dollars US. Cheques should be made payable to the Oxford University Computing Service; cheques in pounds must be drawn on a British bank. Documentation, sample files, Transcribe (version 1.1) and the OzTeX implementation of TeX for the Macintosh, together with the EDMAC macros, are provided with the program. [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0147] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0148. Friday, 19 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0148 Responses Total: 180 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 12:56 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: Intuition (2) Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 16:25:34 -0500 From: louden@ix1.cc.utexas.edu (mark l louden) Subject: Dialect/Standard Pedagogical Programs (3) Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 12:42 GMT From: FEHN23%UJVAX.ULSTER.AC.UK@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU Subject: Subject-verb agreement (4) Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 13:00 GMT From: FEHN23%UJVAX.ULSTER.AC.UK@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU Subject: formal/functional linguistics (5) Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 17:04:43 GMT+0100 From: macrakis@gr.osf.org Subject: "Flaming" (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 12:56 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: Intuition Michael Kac is right on re the two uses of 'intuition'. Substitute 'native speaker's judgments re grammaticality of sentences etc' and one can see that such 'intuitions' are data to be used as evidence in support of a particular hypotheses or perhaps even more important data to be accounted for by the theory. VAF (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 16:25:34 -0500 From: louden@ix1.cc.utexas.edu (mark l louden) Subject: Dialect/Standard Pedagogical Programs This is in response to Dick Hudson's request for information on dialect/ standard pedagogical programs. There is a series for teachers of German (to Germans) entitled Dialekt:Hochsprache kontrastiv which is basically a series of contrastive grammars (albeit very bare bones ones) which are intended to make teachers more aware of dialect-speaking childrens' errors in Std. German. The publisher is Paedagogischer Verlag Schwann in Duesseldorf. Each volume deals with one general dialect area (e.g. Bavarian, Hessian, etc.) It's a very progressive way of thinking about teaching German, but I have no idea to what extent these and similar materials are actually used in Germany. Ideas such as these seem almost trivially self-evident to linguists when thinking about teaching, especially sociolinguists, but the educational establishment as a whole is often not so enlightened. Despite the considerable body of excellent work here in the US on Black English, much of it has remained unused by elementary and secondary school teachers of English. I for one would recommend a course in socioling. for *every* teacher. The 'inconvenience' (to put it mildly) of linguistic prescriptivism in education is as present today as it was way when Saussure was teaching beginning linguistics. Mark L. Louden Dept. of Germanic Languages EPS3.102 U of Texas at Austin Austin, TX 78712 (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 12:42 GMT From: FEHN23%UJVAX.ULSTER.AC.UK@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU Subject: Subject-verb agreement Thank you to everyone who has sent me information on subject verb agreement in Arabic and elsewhere, both through Linguist and directly. I have responses to a couple of the messages: For Steve Harlow, I was aware of the Irish/Welsh/Breton facts; Irish is not a particularly good example of the pronoun/full NP distinction in agreement because, whereas null subjects have obligatory agreement, both overt pronouns and full NPs do not. The Welsh and Breton cases however are very similar to Belfast English. I have a few questions about Welsh&Breton which you (or someone else) may be able to give me some information on What happens with co-ordinated pronouns? In Belfast English, co-ordinated pronouns need not have agreement, whereas in general pronouns must (1) *They is always fighting (2) Us and them is always fighting However, if the pronouns have nominative case they must have agreement (3) *We and they is always fighting Secondly, what happens where the pronoun is part of a larger NP? The Belfast facts are (4) Us students is definitely going (5)*We students is definitely going Thirdly, what about demonstratives? In Belfast English these don't have obligatory agreement (6) These is cracked --------------------------------------------------------------------- For those who commented on 'There is + plural NP' in various varieties of English. This also occurs in Belfast English. I suspect however that it is a different phenomenon from the type of example discussed above because (a) it allows inversion, whereas other cases of non-agreement do not (7) Is there any eggs? (8)*Is the eggs cracked? and it allows non-agreement with personal pronouns, which otherwise is ungrammatical (8) There was only us (9)*We is going Many thanks again for all the messages received - further comments most welcome Alison Henry (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 13:00 GMT From: FEHN23%UJVAX.ULSTER.AC.UK@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU Subject: formal/functional linguistics I have been following the debates in Linguist between proponents of different approaches to linguistic theory, and have been wondering why some of this debate makes me uneasy. I have decided that the reason is as follows. This kind of debate often seems to impy that there is only one proper way to do linguistics. If this were accepted, it seems to me that we would have created in our discipline exactly the king of situation which Chomsky and others have criticised in society in general - where people are allowed to question issues within a given framework, but not the underlying assumptions of the framework itself. Thus whereas I am convince that the 'formal' approach provides the best theoretical approach, I think linguistics would be a lot poorer if people weren't free to pursue possible alternative theories which question its basic assumptions - does anybody agree? (5) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 17:04:43 GMT+0100 From: macrakis@gr.osf.org Subject: "Flaming" Lee Hartman suggests that net dialog on newsgroups fails (degenerates into "flaming") because it lacks the immediate and non-verbal feedback of oral discussion and the tradition of rhetorical signals of written publication. No doubt true, but I suggest that a deeper problem is the lack of a real `discourse community'. Unlike informal conversation or print publication, newsgroup contributers are not acculturated or selected, and cannot be excluded or punished. High turnover doesn't help: flaming seems to peak at the beginning of the academic year, when new users join.... And those who are unhappy with the flaming can either try to discourage it (participating in and incurring further flaming), or ignore it (which doesn't help), or leave the group (which reduces the number of `reasonable' people). In brief, none of the mechanisms which tend to stabilize a discourse community appear to be present. The above is valid for newsgroups. But even private E-mail seems to have more than its share of misunderstandings. I hypothesize that this is particularly true for those who have never met in person. In person, they would perhaps have decided that the other's `style' was so foreign that there was no point in trying to talk at all.... -s Stavros Macrakis Open Software Foundation Research Institute Mail: 2 av de Vignate, 38610 Gieres (Grenoble), France Net: macrakis@gr.osf.org or @osf.org or @ri.osf.fr Phone: +33/76.63.48.82 Fax: +33/76.51.05.32 [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0148] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0149. Sunday, 21 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0149 Linguistic Software and Queries Total: 126 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 10:30:46 CDT From: evan@txsil.lonestar.org (Evan Antworth) Subject: SIL software catalog (2) Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 20:37:11 CST From: Michael Henderson Subject: Queries, Windows IPA (3) Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 09:33:14 EDT From: Gregory Bloomquist Subject: Intensive Language Study (4) Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 16:23:40 CDT From: evan@txsil.lonestar.org (Evan Antworth) Subject: want on-line English dictionary (5) Date: Sat, 20 Apr 91 00:18:14 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Query re: transitive constructions with dummy 'there' (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 10:30:46 CDT From: evan@txsil.lonestar.org (Evan Antworth) Subject: SIL software catalog I have uploaded to the LINGUIST archive server a catalog of some of the major computer publications of SIL (Summer Institute of Linguistics). Evan Antworth Academic Computing Department Summer Institute of Linguistics 7500 W. Camp Wisdom Road Dallas, TX 75236 U.S.A. phone: 214/709-2418 internet: evan@txsil.lonestar.org (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 20:37:11 CST From: Michael Henderson Subject: Queries, Windows IPA 1. My colleague Ken Miner asks whether anyone knows of a language that uses tone grammatically but _not_ lexically. 2. Someone asked about IPA for Word for Windows. Not yet, but it will be available soon. Watch this space. (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 09:33:14 EDT From: Gregory Bloomquist Subject: Intensive Language Study I am considering participating in a programme that is seeking to teach ancient languages in an intensive - accelerated fashion (during the Northern Hemisphere summer -- one month, actually! -- immediately prior to a new academic year). Does anyone have any information on other such programmes? Can anyone give me any insight into the viability of such a programme -- in other words, can it (i.e. learning of ancient languages) be done in an introductory fashion in such a brief space of time? The point is to provide students with a sufficient back ground in the language that they will be able to start using the texts, not that they would be proficient in the language by the end. Thanks for any help. Greetings. L. Gregory Bloomquist Saint Paul University Faculty of Theology (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 16:23:40 CDT From: evan@txsil.lonestar.org (Evan Antworth) Subject: want on-line English dictionary I am trying to answer a query from someone in Thailand who has been assigned the task of writing a program to transliterate English text from roman script into Thai script (this does *not* mean translate from English to Thai). Don't ask me why anyone wants to do this; perhaps as an aid to teaching English. Anyway, he want to use a pronouncing dictionary of English as a starting point. I assume what he wants is each English word represented both in orthographic form and in phonetic (phonemic) transcription. Such a dictionary of course must be in machine- readable form and available for non-commercial use. I know that machine- readable English dictionaries exist, and presumably one can retrieve the pronounciation field from each entry. If some knowledgable person could provide information on how to obtain such a dictionary, I'm sure many people besides me would be very interested. Please either post directly to the list or e-mail me and I will summarize. --Evan Evan Antworth Academic Computing Department Summer Institute of Linguistics 7500 W. Camp Wisdom Road Dallas, TX 75236 U.S.A. phone: 214/709-2418 internet: evan@txsil.lonestar.org (5) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 20 Apr 91 00:18:14 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Query re: transitive constructions with dummy 'there' I have recently come across examples of dummy 'there' in transitive clauses, contrary to the old idea (recently reiterated in McCawley's book on English syntax for ex.) that "there insertion" is only found with intransitives (allowing us to claim that in 'There are no unicorns", "no unicorns" occupies the object position, I guess). I am wondering if this is indeed a new fact, or something well known to English syntax mavens. [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0149] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0150. Sunday, 21 Apr 1991. Subj: 2.0150 Phonology Total: 171 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 13:05:04 MDT From: Richard Hacken Subject: Canasta/canaster brouHAha (2) Date: Fri, 19 Apr 1991 15:26:32 GMT From: ADA612@CSC.ANU.EDU.AU (AVERY ANDREWS) Subject: halle's argument (3) Date: Sat, 20 Apr 91 00:12:00 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Phonology (Replies to Wojcik, Hammond, and Hutchinson) (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 13:05:04 MDT From: Richard Hacken Subject: Canasta/canaster brouHAha The statement is made that exceptions such as "canasta" are often "perceived as foreign." In fact, the Oxford English Dictionary places stress on the penult for both caNASta and caNASter, which may not sound right to ears west of the caNARy Islands, but is British preference (for the latter) since the mid Nineteenth-Century. The "foreign" origin for both was from the Spanish word "canastra" for bucket -- Uruguay being the homeland of canasta. Meanwhile our friend "canister" was apparently of older origins and derived from the ultimate Latin from which "canastra" was also derived. In any case, since Canasta as a game didn't sweep the English world before 1948, logic dictates its Uruguayan stress pattern would have been adopted along with the name, much as the stress for the word comPUTer is carried into other tongues not only as a lone stress, but also as a loan-stress. (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 19 Apr 1991 15:26:32 GMT From: ADA612@CSC.ANU.EDU.AU (AVERY ANDREWS) Subject: halle's argument Re Halle's argument, I'm not claiming that there isn't a single mental structure between the (observationally) allophonic and morphophonemic branches of the rule, but only that the argument *as originally given* doesn't demonstrate it (for the minds of contemporary Russian speakers), because of the possibility of an alternative, historical, explanation (which, however, does require that we assume that people can initiate & pick up sound changes that cut across the allophonic/morphophonemic boundary). Where simplicity arguments are convincing is where there isn't some alternative explanation to that offered by synchronic mental structure (at what is essentially Christopher Peacocke's `level 1.5' (Language and Mind, 1986)). I agree that evidence for a common mental representation does come from cases where both (observational) branches of such a process undergo a common subsequent fate (by the way, how many such cases are actually known?). But I'd deny that Halle & Chomsky just failed to be explicit about this relevance of kind of evidence - I see no evidence that they saw any need for it at all. I think the point is worth fussing over, because it seems to me that oversimplified simplicity arguments have had a very destructive effect in the recent history of linguistics, since lots of people have been clever enough to perceive the flaws in invalid ones, but have been unable to perceive the force of the ones that actually work. And the resulting confusion tends to cast discredit on the entire field. Avery Andrews (ada612@csc.anu.edu.au) (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 20 Apr 91 00:12:00 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Phonology (Replies to Wojcik, Hammond, and Hutchinson) Ad Wojcik: It is important to remember that Ulaszyn, the Leningrad phonologists, and the American structuralists of the 1930's (but not earlier!!) all agreed in placing the phonemic level exactly where Halle found it--and found it wanting, that is, AFTER all neutralizing rules and before all allophonic ones. Halle's argument, of course, boils down to saying that automatic neutralization rules and allophonic rules are, invariably, one and the same, and that this is what is wrong with this level of phonological representation. It might help to use an English example, viz. cats' (the possessive plural of cat): Morphophonemic kaetzz Moscow-phonemic kaetz Leningrad-phonemic kaets As noted earlier, what I call Moscow-phonemic is the level called phonemic by Baudouin, by the Moscow phonologists, and by Stampe. Halle's argument, as I think has often been pointed out, does not say anything about the validity of THIS level of representation. ---------------------------------------------------- Ad Hutchinson: It is important to point out, as I do whenever I get the chance, that Larry Hutchinson essentially discovered lexical phonology many years before it became official. That is, both he and the lexical phonologists seem to want to have their cake and eat it too by allowing a phonemic level (which seems to be close to the Leningrad-phonemic one) but allowing phonological rules to apply in complicated ways, so that the same rule can apply in some cases before this level and in other cases after it. Yet, while formally this can indeed be assured, it seems to me that Halle's point can be strengthened by saying that no one has yet shown the factual differences between the cases at issue which would justify such a distinction. The fact that speakers are SOMETIMES more keenly aware of neutralizations than of allophonic variation (which was Ulaszyn's SOLE reason for introducing this level of analysis into phonology) cannot be taken as such evidence for the reason I tried to make clear recently: there are too many cases where speakers are UNaware of phonemic contrasts and where they ARE aware of subphonemic differences to make it possible to glibly identify the level (if it IS a unique level, which I doubt) at which naive identifications of sounds are made with the Leningrad- phonemic level or anything close to it. -------------------------------------------------------- Ad Hammond: There seems to be some confusion regarding my position on exception marking. I said that canAsta, KentUcky, and so on are not exceptions because they are neither perceived as foreign nor as forming an unproductive class. I still say this. Second point: when I contend that English stress is lexical in nature, I am not obliged to admit that EVERY logical possibility must be allowed. Greek only allows stress on the last three syllables of a word, but within that span it is lexical. If Mike is right in saying that English never allows preantepenultimate stress, then perhaps English is like Greek. However, I am not convinced that this is so, as a matter of fact. Words such as ROckefeller, sAlamander, and so on (as opposed to AlexAnder and its ilk) do have the primary stress on the preantepenultimate syllable. The question arises why there are no words with preantepenultimate stress that have three completely unstressed syllables thereafter. As far as I know, the only such words are derivates such as Admiralty. If this is a genuine generalization, then it is a constraint on the freedom of lexical stress, but not proof that English stress is predictable. Finally, I think my point about the final /y/ postulated by SPE for words like industry was not well expressed. I object to this because this is completely arbitrary: you can do anything you want once you are allowed to take impossible sound sequences and put them in your URs. If there are alternations, that is one thing. But in this case there are not. Furthermore, in the case where there could be analogous alternations (between syllabic and nonsyllabic r), they do not work out as one would want. It is NOT the case that syllabic r appears before suffixes in morphemes which take penultimate stress and nonsyllabic in those with antepenultimate stress. If such WERE the case, we could argue that it is reasonable to postulate a connection between the syllabicity or otherwise of a final vocoid in English words and the stress pattern. Then, by parity of reasoning, one COULD extend to the case of final [i] (or [I], depending on dialect), by saying that where necessary we write this as /y/. That is, if there were a relevant contrast between syllabic and nonsyllabic [r], one MIGHT reasonably extend it to the case of syllabic and nonsyllabic [i]/[I]/[y], but there is no such contrast. Thus, there is no direct support for a [y] in words like industry, and there is no PATTERN (as in Sound Pattern) in English that the final /y/ here would fit into. Additionally, if we admit that words like Orchestra exist and are stressed as marked, then there is no reason to even want to analyze Industry and its ilk differently. That is, whatever rule gives orchestra its initial stress should also work for industry. Remember, it is Mike who wants orchestra to count as having the regular stress pattern and canasta as being the exception. I, of course, do not believe in anything like URs, but my point is that even if you do, you SHOULD not want to postulate a final /y/ in words like industry and you SHOULD almost certainly not want to claim that English stress is predictable. [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0150]