________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0201. Monday, 6 May 1991. Subj: 2.0201 Linguistic Communities and their Rights Total: 196 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: 6 May 91 22:52 +0800 From: Hurch Subject: banned languages (2) Date: Mon, 6 May 91 11:56 MET From: Koenraad De Smedt Subject: standard Dutch (3) Date: Mon, 6 May 91 09:37 +0200 From: "Hartmut Haberland, Roskilde University" Subject: RE: What rights do language communities have? (4) Date: Mon, 06 May 91 08:47:43 CST From: RYATES%CMSUVMB.bitnet@UMRVMB.UMR.EDU Subject: Re: What rights do language communities have? (5) Date: Mon, 6 May 1991 10:51:03 EDT From: Sarah Thomason Subject: Native American languages taught (6) Date: Mon, 6 May 91 06:39:09 CDT From: John Goldsmith Subject: languages without orthographies (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 6 May 91 22:52 +0800 From: Hurch Subject: banned languages I have been following the ongoing discussion just for the last few days. Let me add one remark and one more example. To Rick Wojcik's comment on Itziar Laka: The economic situation of the Basque country, especially the provinces in Spain, is of extreme importance for the language. There was a strong Basque speaking nationalist bourgeoisie in the last century who enourmously contributed to the industrialization of the Basque provinces and who enormously contributed to the cultural status of Basque, to its standardization, the foundation of the Basque Academy, etc. The Euskal Herria is, together with Catalunya, the richest part of Spain. All this (among, no doubt, reasons of political opposition) has to be taken into account when analyzing the Basque situation. Another example: German was a "banned language" in South Tyrol from about 1940 to the end of World War II (at least till the breakdown of Italian fascism). The history is a bit more intricate. South Tyrol formely was part of the K.u.K. monarchy. It came to Italy as a consequence of World War I, and the reperssion of German started immediatly after 1919 and got stronger after 1922 (beginning of fascism). It was progressivly banned from all domains of public life. This, obviously, led to absurd tensions between Hitler and Mussolini. The result was a referendum in which the German speaking population voted for being transferred to "other German speaking parts" of the Reich, they (between 30 and 40% of the German speaking population) left South Tyrol for being settled in Poland, receiving houses, businesses etc. which formerly were owned by jews. Aftern the war about 80% of those "emmigrants" came back. The struggle for the rights of the German speaking minority in South Tyrol was heavily backed by the Austrian and the German (esp. Bavarian) governments. The "pacchetto" (bundle of laws regulating the autonomy of South Tyrol within the Italian Republic) nowadays produces a neat superiority for the German speaking population. Every inhabitant of the autonomous privince has to declare his/her ethnic affiliation and Italians tend to affiliate themselves among the German speakers. According to the affiliation,e.g., the jobs in the public domains are distributed. In a district like Bressanone/Brixen, where the distribution of the ethnic groups is about equal, the public jobs have to be distributed according to the percentage of the affiliations. But the German speaking population does not need these jobs, as they traditionally own the whole economy of the country. The result is that the rate of unemployed people among Italians is very high, but they can't take the jobs which are reserved for the German speaking population. These jobs remain vacant. The mail, which already works badly in Italy is nearly collapsing in South Tyrol. There are many (true) anecdotes like that. The German speaking regional government opposes to the plans of the Italian government to build a new university in Bolzano/Bozen, as they prefer to send their children to Austria/Germany, etc. The historical situation is quite reversed, in the sense that the German speaking minority simply dominates the Italians. And sociologists speak about a new apartheid in Europe. Thus, one of the main points which has to be taken into account with such situations is the linguistic/economic/cultural background of the minority language. South Tyrol has never been forgotten by Austrian/ German chrstian-democrates/industry etc. Bernhard Hurch (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 6 May 91 11:56 MET From: Koenraad De Smedt Subject: standard Dutch In a recent posting, W De Reuse (WDEREUSE@ccit.arizona.edu) writes, among other things: %% So the official language of Flanders and the Netherlands is one and the %% same, call it whatever you like, there is less difference in grammar, %% spelling, and pronunciation tolerated, between Belgian Dutch and %% Netherlands Dutch, than there is between American English and British %% English; we use the same reference dictionaries and grammars. This is basically true, but it should not be concluded from this that there is no standard 'Flemish'. As a Fleming living in the Netherlands, I dare say that there is a language variant which is accepted as standard in all of Flanders, but which is subtly different from the standard in the Netherlands. There may be 'less difference in grammar, spelling and pronunciation', but there are differences in the lexicon and intonation patterns. The standard language spoken on Flemish radio and TV exhibits these differences, yet will never be characterized as dialectal or regional by Flemings. Until they cross the border, Flemings will often think some kind of phrase is standard Dutch because it is understood in all Flanders. When they use that phrase in the Netherlands, they are actually surprised the alleged 'standard' is not understood. This happened to me quite often. Koenraad De Smedt (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 6 May 91 09:37 +0200 From: "Hartmut Haberland, Roskilde University" Subject: RE: What rights do language communities have? Perhaps the following publication is of interest for the ongoing discussion: Tove Skutnabb-Kangas and Robert Phillipson, Wanted! Linguistic Human Rights. ROLIG paper 44 (1989), Roskilde University (Denmark) Orders by e-mail to tarzan@jane.ruc.dk Orders by FAX: +45 4675 4410 (att. ROLIG) snail mail: ROLIG (The linguistic circle of Roskilde), POB 260, DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark ROLIG papers are distributed free of charge as long as our stock lasts. (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 06 May 91 08:47:43 CST From: RYATES%CMSUVMB.bitnet@UMRVMB.UMR.EDU Subject: Re: What rights do language communities have? An issue that has not been considered about banning languages is how the language will be written. Richard West, writing in the most recent issue of the New York Review of Books, observes that when the French arrived in Vietnam about 80% knew the Chinese ideographs for writing Vietnamese. The French prohibited Chinese characters and required the use of a Latin alphabet devised by a missionary in the 17th Century. Many Vietnamese protested so that by the end of the 1930s 80% of the boys of school age were not attending classes. (5) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 6 May 1991 10:51:03 EDT From: Sarah Thomason Subject: Native American languages taught In response to Karen Christie's query about what Native American languages are taught formally in schools: Flathead (a.k.a. [Montana] Salish) classes are offered in a few elementary schools and high schools and at the Salish-Kootenai Community College by the Salish-Kootenai Confederated Tribes on their reservation in northwestern Montana. The classes are well attended, though White parents occasionally prevent their interested children from enrolling in the language classes. At the elementary-school level, the classes have to compete with art and music classes -- that is, they are classified among elective "non-central-academic" classes, and this of course has a negative effect on enrollments. When I meet annually with community elders to work on teaching and analytic materials, local teenagers frequently drop by to listen; there's a lot of interest in the language among young people on the reservation. But only a few school systems on the reservation (where 80% of the land is owned by Whites, and where there is much anti-Indian prejudice) have a large enough Native American population to offer the classes. And even in schools where Native Americans constitute a majority, the White principal is likely to refer to them as minority students...so official support of the language classes is not very good. Tribal elders estimate that there are no more than 70 really fluent speakers of Montana Salish remaining; and almost all of them are now over 60. The tribe now operates a Language Camp in the summer, where children go for ordinary camp activities (including Salish cultural activities and games) and language instruction -- this is for very young children, toddlers to age 5 or so. -- Sally Thomason (6) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 6 May 91 06:39:09 CDT From: John Goldsmith Subject: languages without orthographies A flood of notes from linguists will arrive pointing out that ASL (and other sign languages) are languages used in authorized teaching situations with no available orthography. John Goldsmith [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0201] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0202. Monday, 6 May 1991. Subj: 2.0202 Programming Course and European TEI Total: 179 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Mon, 6 May 91 15:18 EDT From: "NANCY M. IDE (914) 437 5988" Subject: Electronic Programming Course (2) Date: Mon, 6 May 91 09:19 EDT From: "NANCY M. IDE (914) 437 5988" Subject: TEI European Workshop Announcement (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 6 May 91 15:18 EDT From: "NANCY M. IDE (914) 437 5988" Subject: Electronic Programming Course * * * PLEASE POST * * * * * * PLEASE POST * * * * * * PLEASE POST * * * Following is a description of a three-credit graduate course in programming for the humanities offered by Dakota State University via BITNET this summer. If you are interested in enrolling, please respond with a brief message sent to me as ERIC@SDNET.BITNET, and I will send you an electronic registration form. CHUM 650 COMPUTER PROGRAMMING FOR THE HUMANITIES. An introduction to programming using SNOBOL4 for applications in the humanities such as analysis of texts, arranging data from research, and formatting for printing and desktop publishing. Prerequisites: a baccalaureate degree in the humanities or a baccalaureate degree in another field and a minimum of 24 semester hours course work in the humanities, access to and familiarity with BITNET, and an understanding of MS-DOS commands. Three semester hours credit. The course will start approximately June 1, and it will end approximately August 1. The total cost of the course is $228.45. No textbook is required. Students will be sent a disk containing a public- domain SNOBOL4 compiler and a text editor. Students may audit the course or enroll for credit and receive a grade of Pass or Fail. The cost to audit the course is the same as enrolling for credit. The course will teach academic humanists to write useful computer programs to produce word frequency listings, concordances, and indexes. The language of choice for this course is SNOBOL4 because it is a powerful language designed for non-numeric computing; humanists can write useful programs in SNOBOL4 almost from the start. The course will begin with an introduction to programming, then cover techniques of structuring SNOBOL4 programs, and it will finish with students completing individual projects of their own creation. The programming assignments will be designed for MS-DOS microcomputers. Although most assignments can be modified for Macintosh users, the Mac users would have to purchase MaxSPITBOL, and they would need some understanding of Macintosh file structure. Students must have the ability to upload and download programs from the mainframe that runs BITNET mail to the microcomputer used for the programming assignments. -- Eric Johnson ERIC@SDNET.BITNET (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 6 May 91 09:19 EDT From: "NANCY M. IDE (914) 437 5988" Subject: TEI European Workshop Announcement An announcement for a TEI workshop to be held in North American was posted earlier. The following is for a similar TEI workshop, to be held in Europe. Living with the Guidelines The European TEI Workshop Oxford University Computing Service 1-2 July 1991 What is it? The TEI Workshop is an opportunity for you to learn more about the thinking behind the TEI's draft Guidelines for the Encoding and Interchange of Machine-Readable Texts, and to see for yourselves how the principles they describe can be used in a practical situation. The Workshop will be a mixture of group discussion work, detailed presentations and hands-on experience. Topics covered will include * nature and purpose of descriptive markup * basic features of SGML * essential components of the TEI Guidelines * TEI conformance -- what it is and why it matters * an overview of SGML aware software * using TEI texts with standard software packages Who can attend? The numbers attending will be limited to ensure that everyone has both a chance to be heard and the opportunity to try for him or herself the full variety of software tools we will be demonstrating. Places will be allocated on a first come, first served basis, with a degree of priority given to members of existing TEI Workgroups, Committees and Affiliated Project representatives based in Europe who have not previously attended a TEI Workshop. Who will be there? The Workshop is being organised by the TEI Editors, Lou Burnard and Michael Sperberg-McQueen, with additional support from Elaine Brennan and Harry Gaylord, who also ran the TEI Workshop at the recent highly successful ACH/ALLC conference in Tempe, Arizona. The European Workshop is being run back to back with the first TEI Affiliated Projects Workshop, which means that a number of important major research projects planning to use the TEI recommendations will also be in attendance. The Workshop is therefore likely to provide an unusual opportunity for SGML experts, TEI experts and just plain text hackers to get together. Where and when? The Workshop will be hosted by Oxford University Computing Service, which is located in the centre of Oxford, one of the most beautiful cities of Europe, (even in the middle of summer when it is traditionally over-run by tourists), an hour's journey from London and within easy reach of the Midlands. Overnight accommodation will be arranged for delegates requesting it on the application form. The Workshop will begin at 0900 on Monday 1st July and finish around 1500 on Tuesday 2nd July. How much? There will be a fixed charge of #80 per head for workshop participants, reduced to #60 for members of ACH, ALLC or ACL. This covers attendance fees and a manual and other illustrative material, together with refreshments and lunch on Monday and Tuesday. Attendants will be expected to pay their own travel, accommodation and dinner, but we will do our best to make hotel reservations for anyone requesting this on the application form. All expenses of members of official TEI Working Groups and Working Committees and of one representative from any TEI Affiliated Project will be refunded, subject to the usual limits, provided that they have not previously attended any TEI Workshop. TEI European Workshop RESERVATION FORM Oxford July 1-2 1991 Please reserve a place at the workshop for: Name Address e-mail: FAX: telephone: * I enclose payment of #80 (British sterling) * I am a member of ACH/ALLC/ACL and enclose payment of #60 (British sterling) * I am a member of TEI Workgroup/Committee .... * I am the official representative of Affiliated Project ... Cheques must be made payable to Oxford University Computing Service. Please note that places will not be reserved unless payment is enclosed with this form, except for TEI-funded attendants. * Please reserve overnight accomodation for me on Sunday and Monday, in the price range [ #30-#50 [ #50-#70 This form should be returned as soon as possible to: TEI Euro-Workshop Oxford University Computing Service 13 Banbury Road Oxford OX2 6NN tel +44 865 273200 fax +44 865 273275 email TEI@VAX.OXFORD.AC.UK Please note that reservations cannot be accepted after 1 June 91 [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0202] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0203. Monday, 6 May 1991. Subj: 2.0203 Queries and Responses Total: 128 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Mon, 6 May 91 12:12:18 GMT+0100 From: macrakis@dupuis.gr.osf.org Subject: Bilingualism in Belgium (2) Date: Mon, 6 May 91 09:28:08 EDT From: Gene_M._Schramm@ub.cc.umich.edu Subject: Hebrew for Wordperfect (3) Date: 6-MAY-1991 15:41:23.69 From: YITO@EAGLE.WESLEYAN.EDU Subject: intro to linguistics (4) Date: Mon, 6 May 91 13:01 MET From: "Norval Smith (UVAALF::NSMITH)" Subject: RE: English Dialects (5) Date: Mon, 6 May 1991 20:01 EDT From: BELMORE%Vax2.Concordia.CA@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU Subject: Phonetic fonts for MacIntosh (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 6 May 91 12:12:18 GMT+0100 From: macrakis@dupuis.gr.osf.org Subject: Bilingualism in Belgium Thanks to those more competent than myself in the ins and outs of Belgian linguistic policy for the added information. I should know better than to quickly gloss over such issues as the relative importance of dialect vs. standard among Walloons vs. Flemings, the names of languages, the spelling of universities' names, etc. Perhaps I was rushing too fast to my central query, which so far has not been addressed: Is there any place with true bilingualism in schools? that is, where two languages are dealt with on a more or less equal basis, with subjects other than language and literature in each. My main point about Belgium was that there are parents who want their children to master <> languages, but are forced to choose between one and the other school system. It appears that the situation is similar in Canada. I do know that this exists in some private schools, in the case of local + international/colonial/missionary language: for instance, Athens College in Greece (English and Greek) or Roberts College in Turkey (English and Turkish -- but this has perhaps changed?). (There have also been French, German, and Italian equivalents of these schools.) It certainly has existed in post-colonial countries -- although Algeria recently decided to drop French-Arabic bilingualism in favor of Arabic monolingualism (Kabyle as far as I know has no place at all in the school system, although it is widely spoken). And of course there are special schools for expatriates' and diplomats' children. But are there any areas where two local languages are taught on an equal basis? Does this work as a way of producing native bilinguals? Stavros Macrakis (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 6 May 91 09:28:08 EDT From: Gene_M._Schramm@ub.cc.umich.edu Subject: Hebrew for Wordperfect Good stuff! I'm saving it for posterity. Now, enlighten me. H^Aaving recently installed WordPerfect 5.1, mouse and all, on IBM clone, I'd like some information in re rumors that said powerful word processor has a Hebrew capability. What do you know about it and what help can you (pr)offer? Love. (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 6-MAY-1991 15:41:23.69 From: YITO@EAGLE.WESLEYAN.EDU Subject: intro to linguistics A friend of mine who is currently teaching a foreign language at a univ. was asked by his students to give them a tutorial sessions on linguistics. He studied linguistics at a graduate school but has been teaching language courses only, and he wants to know what kind of books would be good for those who have no previous knowledge of linguistics. He will be tutoring them for the whole semester this coming fall, and if the session goes well, he might have another session in the spring semester, the following year. Is there anyone who would give me a list of books which cover the basics of all the core areas of linguistics and with which one can get a holistic view of linguistics for my friend? Thank you in advance. yito@eagle.wesleyan.edu (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 6 May 91 13:01 MET From: "Norval Smith (UVAALF::NSMITH)" Subject: RE: English Dialects To Margaret Fleck (on differences between "English" dialects) Hoo's it gaun Meg? Gin ye can unnerstaund the hauf o this, ye micht realise at there are conseederable differences atween English an some dialeks o whit some folks hae chuisen tae ca' Scots. Thir same folks micht say at there wiz no sae muckle intercomprehensabeelity atween thae forms o language. An this is me gaun oot ma wey tae no uiz fremd words! Not that you'ld find many people speaking like this nowadays. Norval Smith (5) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 6 May 1991 20:01 EDT From: BELMORE%Vax2.Concordia.CA@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU Subject: Phonetic fonts for MacIntosh Mac the Linguist should be adequate. You can get these fonts from Megatherium Enterprises, P.O. Box 7000-417, Redondo Beach, CA 90277 (at least I hope that's still a viable address: the fonts have been around since '84). Mac the Linguist was used to produce the excellent Phonetic Symbol Guide by Geoffrey K. Pullum and William A. Ladusaw (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1986). N. Belmore [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0203] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0204. Tuesday, 7 May 1991. Subj: 2.0204 Responses: Comparatives, Schools, Orthographies, Glottal Stop Total: 151 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Mon, 06 May 91 12:36:36 +0200 From: Guido Vanden Wyngaerd Subject: Response: Comparatives (2) Date: Mon, 6 May 91 09:52:33 PDT From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com Subject: Phonology and Orthography (3) Date: Tue, 7 May 91 10:08 MST From: WDEREUSE@ccit.arizona.edu Subject: Re: Queries (4) Date: Tue, 7 May 91 16:13:10 +0200 (MET) From: garof@sixcom.sixcom.it (Joe Giampapa) Subject: Re: macrakis; vol.2,no.0203 (5) Date: Tue, 7 May 91 10:17 MST From: WDEREUSE@ccit.arizona.edu Subject: Re: Glottal Stop (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 06 May 91 12:36:36 +0200 From: Guido Vanden Wyngaerd Subject: Response: Comparatives Bert Peeters writes: >1) "la voiture plus grosse" is not unacceptable if it means "the larger car" > in a sentence such as "Les voitures plus grosses sont aussi inevitablement > plus cheres" (Bigger cars are also inevitably more expensive) The French determiner "les" is ambiguous between definite and indefinite. For instance, (1) may be translated as either (2) or (3) in English: (1) Les chats aiment le chocolat (2) The cats like choclate (3) Cats like choclate In the example Bert gives, "les" is not the plural of the definite article "la" (as in "*la voiture plus grosse") but the plural of the indefinite article "une" (as in "une voiture plus grosse"). Guido Vanden Wyngaerd (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 6 May 91 09:52:33 PDT From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com Subject: Phonology and Orthography David (Birnbaum?) writes: >... I agree that orthography may the >perceptions of literate speakers, but orthography may not change to keep up >with phonological change. Yes and no. Obviously, a standardized orthography seldom changes, whereas phonology is in constant flux. If we accept that the prototypical alphabet is in 1-to-1 correspondence with phonemes, then it is inevitable that this primitive correspondence will disappear. However, the regularity of sound change guarantees that some correspondence will always remain. So it is important to distinguish between "graphemes" (another term going back to Baudouin) and "phonemes". The spelling rules that exist for current modern Russian would be very difficult to explain if Russian phonology were as Lightner proposed in the 60's or as Lunt seemed to propose in the 1978 article. English spelling is probably about as bad as it can get for an alphabet. Nevertheless, there are still rules that tie letters to pronunciation. It is still possible to "sound out" unfamiliar words. So I would say that even English is very much tied to the phonemic principle. Writers of the language expect letters and combinations of letters to correspond to phonological intuitions. Therefore, spelling should be a primary issue for *theoretical* linguists to talk about. If your phonological theory doesn't have much to say about spelling, then it probably doesn't have much to say about phonology either. -Rick Wojcik (rwojcik@atc.boeing.com) (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 7 May 91 10:08 MST From: WDEREUSE@ccit.arizona.edu Subject: Re: Queries To respnond to Karen Christie's query on Natve American languages; quite a bunch of Native American languages are being formally taught at U.S. colleges and Universities. The problem is to find out when and where, since these programs don't always go on for a long time. Best places to ask are the University of New Mexico, and the University of Alaska, Fairbanks (Alaska Native Language Center). There must be several others in Alaska, South Dakota, and Oklahoma. At the University of Arizona this summer, there will be the American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI), where a course on The structure of a non-Western language (Navajo) will be taught by Irene Silentman. For more information on AILDI, contact Ofelia Zepeda, Dept. of Linguistics, University of Arizona, AZ 85721. Also, Ofelia regularly teaches a course in O'odham (Papago) at that Dept. Other good contact people are Pamela Munro, Dept. of Linguistics, UCLA; also it's a good idea to read the newsletter of the Society of the Study for the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, to subscribe, contact Victor Golla, Dept. of Ethnic Studies, Humboldt State University, Arcata CA 95521. (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 7 May 91 16:13:10 +0200 (MET) From: garof@sixcom.sixcom.it (Joe Giampapa) Subject: Re: macrakis; vol.2,no.0203 In response to Stavros Macrakis' query: Is there any place with true bilingualism in schools? that is, where two languages are dealt with on a more or less equal basis, with subjects other than language and literature in each. Yes, there is. A friend who is a part of the Boston (Massachusetts, USA) Chinese Community, attended a bilingual high school. I believe it was Boston Ringe Latin(??), in the Back Bay, which is a public school. To quote from the memory of a conversation, "The Chinese part of the school was the better part. We had all the high grades in science, history, mathematics, etc., and were the majority of the National Honor Society members." They studied english as an ESL (English as a Second Language) course. I have also heard of international-oriented legal and business universities in Italy, in which the students study all their subjects in (typically) English. Unable to remember names, however. -Joe Giampapa garof@sixcom.sixcom.it garof@helios.sixcom.it (5) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 7 May 91 10:17 MST From: WDEREUSE@ccit.arizona.edu Subject: Re: Glottal Stop to Rob Hoberman: I am not sure this is surfacy enough for your purposes, but many Yuman lan- guages such as Mojave contrast. #?V... with #V... To be sure, #V... often shows up as #hV... in absolute initial position, but when preceded by any other word, this h will not show up. The initial /?/ is always there. This is as closest asI've actually heard. I think Polynesian languages might have such surface contrast (maybe Tahitian), but Polynesian specialists can better comment on that. [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0204] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0205. Tuesday, 7 May 1991. Subj: 2.0205 Last Word on Quebec Total: 198 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Tue, 07 May 91 10:18:59 -0400 Subject: Language in Quebec From: auger@linc.cis.upenn.edu (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 07 May 91 10:18:59 -0400 Subject: Language in Quebec From: auger@linc.cis.upenn.edu While I would be happy in personal exchanges to discuss language in Quebec at whatever length anyone desires, I fear that this debate may seem to have gone on too long for those with no personal involvement in the matter. I will therefore make just this reply to an earlier posting addressed largely to me but will then try to let others carry on the discussion publicly. An observation: It seems to me that most of those express- ing unhappiness with the official language-policy in Quebec have been either (i) anglophone former residents of Quebec or (ii) an- glophones who have never resided in Quebec. The first group obviously knows what they're talking about, but I can't help wondering how much the second group really knows about Quebec. For example, Mr. Hoequist responds to a comment that francophone Quebecois seem to be succeeding in gaining control of their own destiny by saying, "I would hope they're successful; they don't have any competition". But there certainly is competition. First, while "many" anglophones have indeed left Quebec (although we don't know that language was the reason for all of these people), there remain quite a few of them at the head of some of the most important businesses in Quebec. This fact is well known to anglophones in Quebec; for example, an English- speaking student at Penn recently stated that Quebec would never become independent because "English-speakers control all the big businesses". Because of the socio-religious reasons I mentioned in my previous message, these anglophones have a big head-start in running Quebec's economy. Second, Quebec does not exist in a vacuum and, if its products and services were not competitive, anglophones who did not mind learning French could easily put themselves in a position to play a major role in and even domi- nate Quebec's economy (just as, e.g., many Japanese and Saudi Arabian businesspeople have learned English well enough to dominate certain aspects of trade in some Western countries). In this regard, the francophone business community of Quebec already has extensive contacts with English speakers all over the world, and these contacts will by no means diminish, whatever happens in the future. This kind of interaction is one of the sources that encourages francophone Quebecois to learn English well (Mr. Hoequist had asked what kind of contact the present pro-French linguistic policy of Quebec makes possible with English). But there are many others: the many scientific books and journals published only in English, the English-language TV, radio, and newspaper and magazine media in Canada (including Quebec) and the United States, tourism in the rest of Canada, the U.S., and the rest of the world (except francophone Europe and Africa). Strange as it may seem to some, the desire to make French dominant for official domestic purposes in Quebec does not exclude the desire to be competent in English for external purposes. Some discussants seemed to be upset by the fact that "many" English-speakers left Quebec because they did not want to learn French. This is not a new phenomenon; one ex-Quebec resident pointed out that there are small towns where almost no one has learned French in the 200 years or more that their inhabitants have been in Quebec. But it must not be forgotten that there are relatively large communities of French-speakers in many parts of both western and eastern Canada outside of Quebec. I'm curious why Hoequist and some others have not spoken out in favor of protecting the linguistic rights of these French-speakers. For example, Sault Ste-Marie (notice the name), a town in Ontario, recently voted itself "monolingual English-speaking", implying that it would make no concessions to any French speakers who also live or visit there. Worse, the French-speaking population of Northern Maine retained a flourishing educational and literary (journalistic) system until approximately 1960, when state laws abolished French schools. Since that time, there has been a drastic reduction in the number of young people who speak French. It is precisely such examples of the linguistic "benevolence" shown by the United States toward French that makes francophone Quebecois feel they need to enact measures like the law requiring the official use of French. Concerning certain statements about Quebec French: I'm sorry if I gave anyone the impression that I believe Quebec French and French French to be two distinct languages; I thought I had said explicitly that I consider them to be closely related dialects of one language (although, as I and others have ob- served, dialect vs. language is more than a linguistic question). Mr. Hoequist states that he too believes the Quebec and France varieties of French to be such related dialects and also rejects the implication of having said that "Paris should dictate to the whole world what French should be". But Hoequist still maintains that it is illegitimate for Quebec to choose not to use "stop" on its traffic signs. His rationale is that, if France French happens to use a borrowed English word for a certain purpose, then Quebec cannot legitimately deny anyone the use of that word on signs in Quebec. This is admittedly a masterful trick of logic: all that supporters of the use of English in Quebec have to do in order to get English words on signs is to find cases where people in another country use that word when speaking or writing French. However, this is a little like saying that an American who is injured because he doesn't understand a sign saying "Mind the lorries" in an Englishman's trucking company in New York isn't entitled to accuse that Englishman of negligence, just because it happens that, in another country, "mind" is used for "watch out for" or "beware of" and "lorry" is used for "truck". To tell Quebecois that they have to accept France French borrowings from English on their signs feels to me like saying: if Paris accepts "stop", then who are we, several million of Quebec French speak- ers, to reject it? I don't know if the European French can "stopper leur voiture a une intersection", but all the (other) Quebecois that I know "arretent leur auto", they cannot "stopper" it. The word exists in Quebec French, but only in other usages, like for stopping hemorrhages: "stopper une hemorragie". One could say that "stop" instead of "arret" is no more acceptable than it would be to label a sign warning against snow banks with the French word "congere" (virtually unknown in Quebec; e.g. not found in the Dictionnaire canadien) instead of Quebecois "banc de neige". As the latter shows, Quebec doesn't automatically reject loan translations. (It should be noted, however, that this dis- cussion of "stop" may be misleading, since, on most traffic signs, the problem of understanding a particular word(s) used is made moot by the fact that 90% of Quebec's traffic signs now use iconic pictograms (source: "L'actualite", April 15, 1991, p. 61).) The acceptance of borrowings in a language is mostly NOT a linguistic question but rather a social one. If the French are comfortable using English words like "weekend", "shopping", and "software", good for them. That they should dislike English borrowings into French less than Quebecois do is easily under- standable, given that English does not threaten their language in their own country. The general feeling in Quebec is that we have perfectly acceptable French words to refer to the same realities ( "fin de semaine", "magasinage", and "logiciel", respectively) and that it is therefore preferable to use them. Where official decisions have to be made by the government as to, for example, what should be used in official public signs and in correspon- dence, why can't we make our own decision? Would anyone ever think of forcing the French to use "magasinage" for "shopping"? Finally, there is the issue of fairness and consistency outside of the competition between French and English in Quebec. Several postings (e.g., by Paul Chapin and Vicki Fromkin) have asked how one can oppose the U.S. English (only) movement and support the Quebec French language policy without being inconsis- tent or at least going through some pretty elaborate ethical contortions. First of all, I believe John Goldsmith's posting has already addressed this issue squarely: the U.S. English movement appears to be quite hostile to immigration; many sup- porters of the movement would apparently like to prevent immigra- tion to the U.S. by non-English speakers. Quebec, on the other hand encourages immigration and imposes only the reasonable requirement that immigrants' children will be schooled in French, the dominant language in their new homeland. I would only add that, even in French-speaking schools, there is compulsory second-language instruction in English starting in about grade 5 and continuing through grade 11. Furthermore, there are no restrictions against anyone attending weekend or nighttime classes in English. From this, I hope it is obvious that the goal of the Quebec language policy is to make all immigrants to Quebec fluent in French for general purposes of life in the province, not to discourage English. As for myself, I don't see how anyone can compare this to the absence of Spanish-speaking schools in most of the American Southwest, which is--to the best of my knowledge--at least an indirect violation of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo by which the U.S. took from Mexico what is now CA, AZ, NM, and several other states or parts of states. Perhaps we can now turn this debate in Linguist to a discus- sion of what linguistic rights were legally promised to Hispanics in the United States in 1848, especially as regards schools and public use of language for official purposes. I would be inter- ested in learning the facts of this situation from anyone who has real expertise in it. --Julie Auger P.S. Margaret Fleck has asked why not compare academic Parisian French and working-class Quebec French. Well, one could of course make that comparison, but there is no non-arbitrary reason to choose those two particular varieties than there is to compare academic Montreal French with working-class Marseille French. The point is that, in any serious linguistic study, one wants to control as much as one can for potential interfering variables. If the object of study is geographical variation, for example, one wants to make sure that the differences observed are really attributable to geography and not to social-class. If, however, the goal is to identify both social and geographical differences, then one wants to make sure that the sample of speakers contains representatives from a comparable range of socio-economic classes in each geographical variety. In short, you can always compare any two things, but certain conditions have to be met in order for the comparison to be revealing. [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0205] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0206. Thursday, 9 May 1991. Subj: 2.0206 Queries Total: 96 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Tue, 07 May 91 14:13:04 EDT From: Michael Covington Subject: Tongue-twisters (2) Date: Tue, 7 May 1991 13:01 MST From: KAMPRATH@CC.UTAH.EDU Subject: a linguist's address (3) Date: Wed, 8 May 91 09:09 CDT From: Harriet Ottenheimer Subject: field schools in linguistics? (4) Date: Wed, 8 May 1991 14:39:00 -0400 From: Charles (C.A.) Hoequist Subject: query and Breton (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 07 May 91 14:13:04 EDT From: Michael Covington Subject: Tongue-twisters Since humorous postings are fairly frequent here, I propose that we put together a collection of tongue-twisters in as many languages as possible. Right now the only ones I know in languages other than English are "Fischers Fritz fischt frische Fische" (which was meant to be a tongue- twister) and "Seminar fuer natuerlich-sprachliche Systeme" (which was not). (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 7 May 1991 13:01 MST From: KAMPRATH@CC.UTAH.EDU Subject: a linguist's address I am trying to get in touch with Maria Elena Zorriqueta, a Spanish linguist from Bilbao. I met her a decade ago at the Summer Linguistic Institute in Albuquerque and lost track of her several years ago. If anyone knows how I might get ahold of her, I'd appreciate their telling me. Thanks, Christine Kamprath (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 8 May 91 09:09 CDT From: Harriet Ottenheimer Subject: field schools in linguistics? Does anyone know of any field schools (summer or semester-long) which focus primarily on linguistics, ethnosemantics, or related areas? I have a student who is particularly interested in doing some advanced work in linguistics next year, preferably in the Spring semester. Working with Polynesian languages would be a preference but not a requirement. Historical linguistics would also be a possibility. It's easy to find information on archaeology field schools but not about linguistic ones. Any suggestions would be appreciated. (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 8 May 1991 14:39:00 -0400 From: Charles (C.A.) Hoequist Subject: query and Breton I am looking for citations concerning children's language play. Any type is fine, but best of all are games involving puns or phonologically-oriented play (e.g. Pig Latin). The younger the children, the better. thanks. ------------- to add to the anecdotes on French naming laws: the list of saints' names, though it hit Bretagne the hardest, did apply to all. My wife was born in the Vosges mountains, and her name (Muriel) wasn't on the list. Her parents claimed (straight-faced) that it was a derivative of Marie, and the civil servant who kept the village records, not having any evidence against the claim, accepted it. BTW, Germany still has a naming law. Children's names must be approved in order for them to be baptized. However, interpretation of the law is fairly liberal: the name must merely be considered 'typical', and if one parent is a non-German, 'typical' can include that parent's country of origin. -charles hoequist [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0206] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0207. Thursday, 9 May 1991. Subj: 2.0207 Responses: WP, Comparatives, Glottal Stop Total: 163 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Tue, 07 May 91 18:23:28 EDT From: Lesli LaRocco Subject: Hebrew for WordPerfect 5.1 (2) Date: Wed, 8 May 1991 09:20:44 -0400 From: jomeara@THUNDER.LAKEHEADU.CA Subject: macintosh fonts (3) Date: Wed, 8 May 91 15:33:32 EDT From: feit@cs.Buffalo.EDU (Elissa Feit) Subject: Re: Comparatives (4) Date: Wed, 8 May 91 19:11:24 +1000 From: bert peeters Subject: Comparatives/superlatives in French (5) Date: Wed, 08 May 91 09:37:22 MEZ From: John Rennison Subject: Glottal stops (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 07 May 91 18:23:28 EDT From: Lesli LaRocco Subject: Hebrew for WordPerfect 5.1 I've tried many Hebrew programs for WP, but which to choose depends on your needs. Scripture Fonts is an excellent, and relatively cheap, program, and it includes Greek as well (as the name indicates, it is geared toward those in biblical studies). The Hebrew font (as well as the Greek) is quite beautiful on both laser and dot matrix printers, but the font is the old fashioned Bible font, not the modern Israeli standard. Fontmax also has a good product, but it has only a modern Israeli font which looks good on my laser printer, but not great (some of the letters have a tende ncy to print very close together). Both programs do pointed text. So if you work in the Bible field, and want to prepare camera-ready copy, Scripture Fonts might be a better choice (though even works on the Bible seem to use the modern script). Fontmax, however, has a number of fonts besides Hebrew (Polish, Japanese, Russian, Turkish...), and if you simply want to type letters to friends or insert text, Fontmax might be the way to go. The third alternative is to wait: I have heard rumors that WP will be coming out with a Hebrew version in the not-too-distant future. This will solve the wrap-around text problem, which neither of the above deal with all th at well. But it means buying a whole program. And the present WP Hebrew font (in the character set) is terrible. If you are interested in either, I can dig up the info on how to get them. Lesli LaRocco (OZVY@CORNELLA) (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 8 May 1991 09:20:44 -0400 From: jomeara@THUNDER.LAKEHEADU.CA Subject: macintosh fonts Linguists Software sells a variety of phonetic fonts for the Macintosh. Their RLaser IPAS series (actually three separate IPA fonts) sells for about $100 U.S. (itUs also available from mail-order outfits). These are PostScript font, which means they looks very good if you are using a laser printer such as the Apple IINT. Laser IPA is o.k., but doesnUt have any capital letters. The address is: LinguistsU Software, P.O. Box 580, EDMONDS, WA, 98020-0580, Phone 206-775-1130. In the preceding, RLaser IPAS should be Laser IPA (sorry). John O'Meara Lakehead University Thunder Bay, Ontario (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 8 May 91 15:33:32 EDT From: feit@cs.Buffalo.EDU (Elissa Feit) Subject: Re: Comparatives Guido Vanden Wyngaerd writes: >The French determiner "les" is ambiguous between definite and indefinite. >For instance, (1) may be translated as either (2) or (3) in English: > >(1) Les chats aiment le chocolat >(2) The cats like choclate >(3) Cats like choclate > >In the example Bert gives, "les" is not the plural of the >definite article "la" (as in "*la voiture plus grosse") but the >plural of the indefinite article "une" (as in "une voiture plus >grosse"). Couldn't one just as well analyze (1) as a generic, with the understanding that generics sometimes use the definite article: The dog is a friendly animal. The lion is brave. The main difference between English and French here would be that generics with a definite article use a singular noun in English. Elissa Feit (feit@cs.buffalo.edu) (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 8 May 91 19:11:24 +1000 From: bert peeters Subject: Comparatives/superlatives in French A rejoinder to Guido Vanden Wyngaerd. Mea culpa: my example was ill-chosen. However, I maintain that "la voiture plus grosse" should not be starred. It IS correct if it means "the larger car", and "les" in my original example (repeated as (1) below) becomes the plural of a definite article in (2). (1) Les voitures plus grosses sont aussi inevitablement plus cheres. (Larger cars are also inevitably more expensive) (2) Les voitures plus grosses se trouvent dans l'autre salle d'exposition; elles sont malheureusement plus cheres. (THE larger cars are to be found in the other showroom; unfortunately, they are more expensive) Similarly, if the comparative is part of a singular NP: (3) La voiture plus grosse que je vois la n'est quand meme pas un modele recent? (That bigger car over there isn't a recent model, is it?) Hence, "la voiture plus grosse" and "une voiture plus grosse" (a larger cad) are equally acceptable comparatives. "Une voiture plus grosse" can be rephrased as "une plus grosse voiture". Is this possible with the definite article as well? It seems to me it is: "la plus grosse voiture" is ambiguous, at least in print and out of context, and may therefore be a case in point of the phenomenon of a formally identical comparative and superlative construction. However, the ambiguity does not arise in speech: (4) The largest car = la "plus grosse voi'ture (5) The larger car = la plus "grosse voi'ture (" indicates a secondary stress used only to place proper emphasis where otherwise ambiguity would arise; I can't remember what it's usually calledi: is it an instance of the "accent d'insistance"? PS A quick look at Fouche, Traite de prononciation francaise, tells me my guess was correct. It is more particularly the "accent intellectif" (as opposed to the "accent affectif" - both being instances of the "accent d'insistance") I am referring to. Bert Peeters (5) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 08 May 91 09:37:22 MEZ From: John Rennison Subject: Glottal stops Closer to home... Phonologically (though obviously not morphologically) there are word- initial contrasts of [?V] ~ [V] in glottaling dialects of English, e.g. my native Yorkshire (Bradford) has [o:m] `home' vs. [?o:m] `the home'. (I only mention this because the enquiry specifically stresses the a surfacey phonemic level.) [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0207] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0208. Thursday, 9 May 1991. Subj: 2.0208 Language and Culture (Part 1) Total: 200 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Wed, 08 May 91 12:20:25 SET From: BILL ELDRIDGE Subject: Re: What stand should linguists take? (2) From: molsen@astrid.ling.nwu.edu (Mari Olsen) Subject: Re: Language, Law and Ideology Date: Tue, 7 May 91 16:48:02 EDT (3) Date: Tue, 7 May 91 19:38:16 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: English-only laws and individual rights (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 08 May 91 12:20:25 SET From: BILL ELDRIDGE Subject: Re: What stand should linguists take? Comments on various culture/language debates. 1) Despite the United States' professed preference for personal freedom, the matter is similar to the liberty/equality tradeoff: you have to meet the boundary somewhere. Debates on public smoking, drug use and increased police intervention, drug tests, English-only bills, abortion issues, "racist comment" backlash and so on reflect a whole lot of restrictions on individual rights in either the name of the public good or in the name of someone elses individual rights. Either way, the process works about the same. I include the racist comment backlash item because it reflects a reversal of the times when every good ole boy politician had a few tasty racist/sexist jokes, and now every one of them (except I think the governor of Texas) has to practice self-censorship to the extreme, since even small time unelected public officials or private employees are subject to firing or reprimand for perceived racist statements. Of course, the Japanese and the Arabic-Iranian sectors aren't covered by this blanket. Similar over-reaction can be witnessed with statements "soft on crime", "pro-drug", "pro-abortion" or "anti-choice" (the constituencies seem about equal there), "liberal" (remember Dukakis backing away from the "L" word), "anti-flag" and "anti-American". The result of all this sensitivity seems to be that any policy debate gets couched in very grandiose, iconoclastic terms, and more likely shades of opinion get shoved to the edge of believability just so no sign of weakness is displayed in front of the enemy (the teaching of Socratic methods in high school debate classes tends to heighten the temper of "destroy your enemy at all costs" tactic, and the idea of working out effective compromise is overshadowed in the winner-take-all battle of two extremes. 2) This said, I think that part of the English-only debate in the U.S. rests on a situation where public funds are being decreased for everybody, and carrying out dual language programs is largely seen as a waste (this would be undoubtedly true in Alabama, where there is a very very small non-English speaking population, and one would have to wonder why they went to the trouble of even passing a law for English only). Part of the debate probably rests on the formation of the United States, which was a contract of independence from an English rule by a principally English-speaking people (I'm not sure of the percentages of other-language speakers at the time), and when new territory was taken, the attitude was less of assimilating the new population, but of expelling or exterminating the population. Thanks to this measure, language issues have been largely dormant for most of the U.S. history, since until recently the idea of providing public services in non-English languages was pretty well unheard of. Of course the naturalization requirement of English knowledge effectively "encourages" language homogeneity, but widespread illegal immigration, as well as the steady buildup of non-English barrios from pre-annexation populations and immigrant culture bubbles have finally made the English-only facade pretty thin in spots. It's interesting that the black slaves (3/5 of a person each under the Constitution) were originally forbidden to study, and I'm not sure why their original languages did not survive at all in the U.S., since I don't think they were banned in speech (?). 3) I'm sympathetic towards the French population in Canada wanting their culture to survive in the face of the the English population that has swallowed up most everything north of the Rio Grande. I'm also sympathetic to the fact that English is by far the most valuable language in international affairs (i.e. the "lingua franca" has now become the "lingua anglica" or some such pun), and it's probably a great disservice in a more and more interacting world not to educate a country's population in more than one language, especially those that are used more frequently. Of course English speakers get spoiled, but there are still many places where practically no one speaks English. An interesting related case was that the Afrikaans-controlled government in South Africa wanted to educate the black population in Afrikaans, which would be internationally almost useless, as opposed to in English, for which there does exist a large and somewhat neglected English-speaking population there. 4) Does the French Academy's trying to restrict foreign words entering the language offend people as much as Quebec's trying to weed out English? If the Basques used the same tactics as Quebec, would we commend them? In India it seems the English language and rail system had a largely unifying effect on the country, while not eliminating the large array of sub-cultures existant there. Latin America was unified at the expense of large indigenous populations. If the people in Eastern Europe had actually learned Russian, it might have eased their passage into the world economy (also holds for the Mongolians). Instead, it was forced in school, but not in real life, so no one learned it and so now there is still a wide diversity of language, culture and dissent, as Czecho--Slovakia and Yugoslavia can attest to. It seems like only the Swiss are comfortable with a multi-lingual setting, and maybe dissent will rear its head (or already has - I'm quite ignorant of their situation) still. 5) William S. Burroughs claims that language is a virus, and various invading armies throughout history can vouch for it being a great weapon. In public debate, if you can get the other party to use your terminology and scenarios, you're halfway to victory. In a society, if you get people using your language, your ideas and culture are quite a bit more survivable. This is truly a war, just as encroaching as military and economic movements. Of course lots of once sound economies go belly up and no one thinks of it as unjust, and lots of languages have gone virtually extinct, which we tend to think of as a shame. Whatever the case, there is always pressure of change on language, and even though there's more reduction in diversity,and media more and more effectively ensures some large degree of consistency, there's still outward pressure from young speakers coming up with slang as well as immigrants and various minorities creating new dialects until finally an observer will have to admit that these have become new languages. In a different direction, terminology in different studies and endeavours has become so extensive such that the typical language during the day of an American scientist might be more understandable to a Chinese scientist than to an American real estate agent. Of course the English grammar would be understandable, but the vocabulary is growing rapidly, so that the average person knows a smaller and smaller subset (percentage) of his language. This phenomenon of exponential (or some such function) information growth is reflected in the anecdote that up till about 1910 or 1920, every top mathematician knew all of the mathematical theorems, but since that time this feat has become quite impossible. I suggest that this trend might alter the way we look at language a little bit. 6) Thanks for putting up with a long-winded message, and I hope this provides some entertainment. Bill Eldridge ext28@cspgcs11.bitnet Czechoslovak Academy of Science (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- From: molsen@astrid.ling.nwu.edu (Mari Olsen) Subject: Re: Language, Law and Ideology Date: Tue, 7 May 91 16:48:02 EDT Frank Anshen states a minority of English speakers may explain why the Puerto Rican legislature made Spanish the only official language. This bothers me vaguely on at least two issues: 1: The United State has no such official language act, despite the predominance of English speakers. 2: The `alternative' is worded as a cause, when in fact it appears to be an effect of the last couple decades. From my unofficial observation, people age 50+ were more likely to be more competent in English than those younger, even with parents who spoke both English and Spanish, because of the lack of school reinforcement. Puerto Ricans are justifiably proud of their Spanish heritage, but monolingualism should be no source of pride. (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 7 May 91 19:38:16 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: English-only laws and individual rights In reply to Geoff Nunberg's recent posting: I don't doubt that the grassroots sentiment for English-only legislation is very broad, but the same could have been said about de jure racial segregation prior to the Brown decision. Without knowing a lot about the specifics of the various English- only laws that exist around the country, I nonetheless have the impression (correct me if I'm wrong) that people are not being fined and/or sent to jail for such things as having restaurants with names like La Caban~a identified by signs visible to passersby on the street, and that while English-only laws have led to harrassment of non-English speakers in the workplace using their native languages privately, such use is not literally prohibited by the laws in question. Further, if such people were to find themselves in court, I think it likely that someone somewhere would try to make a test case in which individual rights -- in particular, First Amendment rights -- would loom very large. Michael Kac PS Has there yet been a court challenge anywhere to English-only legislation? I haven't heard of any, but one would think it inevitable. Can Geoff or anyone else provide information? [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0208] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0209. Thursday, 9 May 1991. Subj: 2.0209 Language and Culture (Part 2) Total: 198 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Tue, 7 May 91 11:03 MST From: WDEREUSE@ccit.arizona.edu Subject: Re: Linguistic Communities and their rights (2) Date: 8 May 91 12:56:00 EST From: "STEVE SEEGMILLER" Subject: RE: Banned Languages (3) Date: Wed, 8 May 91 10:09:02 PDT From: marks%neuro.usc.edu@usc.edu (Mark Seidenberg) Subject: finis (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 7 May 91 11:03 MST From: WDEREUSE@ccit.arizona.edu Subject: Re: Linguistic Communities and their rights This is in response to Koenraad De Smedt note on Standard Flemish. I agree that there are subtle differences between standard Dutch in the Netherlands, and standard Dutch in Belgium, but I'm still not convinced that talking about "standard Flemish" is a good idea. That is mainly because something should be called standard when it is considered standard by the majority of the population and considered as such by the grammarians. If we Flemings often believe that something is standard but no one has explicitly said so, maybe this is not evidence that there is a "Flemish" standard, but rather that we don't control the standard in all its subtleties. This would be the view of many good prescriptive Dutch grammarians widely read in Belgium, such P.C. Paardekoper. I am not sure I really want to be prescriptivist to this extent (after all I'm a linguist!!!), but having a Flemish standard in the absence of a very explicit definition of it makes me somewhat uneasy. Note by the way that the French speakers in Belgium have a very similar problem; they want to speak perfect standard French, but can't get themselves to use certain Parisian phrases (and this goes beyond the septante/soixante-dix shibboleth). In Belgian Dutch, there are certain things explicitly considered standard however, even though not considered standard in the North. One, considered quite subtle by most Flemings, but interestingly not considered subtle by some Dutch linguists in the North, and by French and English speakers, is the bilabial vs. labiodental pronunciation of the phoneme /w/. Most Flemings have bilabial, and are not willing to part with it, even though at least some speakers, like myself, very easily accommodate to the labio-dental pronunciation when speaking to someone from the Netherlands; I feel I'm willing to accommodate because it doesn't matter to me, since the pronunciations are so close phonetically, a lot closer than e.g.English /v/ and English /w/. Of course, there are also bilabial speakers in the North. So would agree with you that at least the bilabial /w/ is feature of this standard Flemish, because it is explicitly recognized as such. Sorry for being so convoluted about all this, but I feel the status of "standard Flemish" is a topic of some general interest. Willem J. de Reuse (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 8 May 91 12:56:00 EST From: "STEVE SEEGMILLER" Subject: RE: Banned Languages This is a belated (but I hope not outdated) reply to the query about banned languages, as well as to some previous replies to that query. There was, indeed, a movement during the 1960's and 70's to teach speakers of Black English Vernacular to read intheir own dialect. Milton Baxter, now of the Borough of Manhattan Community College of the City University of New York, was involved in such a program at Brooklyn College. He might be able to provide more information. I also believe that the Center for Applied Linguistics produced teaching materials for such programs. On policies toward minority languages in Turkey, it is my understanding that there are three different categories. A condition of the Treaty of Sevres, which recognized the legitimacy of the Turkish Republic, was that three specific groups be granted legal protection, including the right to maintain their own languages, religions, and schools. These three groups were the Greeks, the Armenians, and the Jews. The second category includes, I believe, all languages other than Kurdish and the three mentioned earlier. The majority of these, for practical purposes, are the languages of immigrant groups, both Turkic and non-Turkic. The general policy toward these is that the languages are not languages, but rather are "dialects" of Turkish. (A colleague from Haceteppe University in Ankara once confided to me, in regard to the Turkic language Karachay, "You and I both know that it's a separate language, bu I can't say or write that in Turkey; I have to call it a dialect.") language, bu I can't say or write that in Turkey; I have to call it a dialect.")Kurdish occupies a special position (perhaps along with Arabic, although I'm not sure): the official position is both that it doesn't exist, because it is just like Karachay and Turkmen, i.e. it is a dialect of Turkish; but at the same time, it is banned from public use. As far as I know, no attempt has been made to resolve the obvious contradiction. At any rate, Kurdish is different because it is specifically banned; other languages, like Tatar, Karachay, and probably 30 others, are ignored, or their existence as separate languages denied. I hopoe this information is useful. I know of no published source dealing with language policy in Turkey. I once tried to persuade a linguist in Ankara to write a paper with me on the topic, but the response was a p[olite refusal, I think because the whole issue is too politically touchy. Steve Seegmiller Linguistics Montclair State College (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 8 May 91 10:09:02 PDT From: marks%neuro.usc.edu@usc.edu (Mark Seidenberg) Subject: finis I too am quite happy to let the language in Quebec issue fade from the list. I think we ended up seeing quite an interesting array of viewpoints, the net effect of which was to indicate something of the complexity of the issues, which I consider to be a good thing. Some people think that Quebec doesn't need language laws because the language and culture are dominant in the province and don't need protection. Some people think that the province is so overwhelmingly Francophone that the rights of minority Anglophones don't need any protection. The problem, of course, is that the Quebecois are BOTH an overwhelming majority (relative to the Anglophones in the province) AND a tiny minority (relative to the rest of North America). That's the source of the tension. It can simultaneously be true that the language and culture are in need of protection AND that the protective measures infringe on the rights of the linguistic minority. That the situation is quite intractable is indicated by the fact that the country is effectively breaking up over it. I think that the issues that Julie Auger raised in her very informative notes are central to the debate and have to be understood. I told stories about the inanities of the language law; the Quebecois can tell stories about how language was used to oppress the community economically and politically (and those stories aren't real funny). My view of the language laws is that their purpose is to get the size of the Anglophone population down to the point where it can be argued that they need no more special consideration than the native Italian or Chinese speakers. The rest of Canada seems ready to go along with this. For one thing, it will allow them to ignore the concerns of Francophone speakers in places like Manitoba. For another, there doesn't seem to be any other solution. At least, no one has figured one out. Leaving aside the intricacies of Canada politics, I was surprised by the ethnocentrism of many of the original postings. The language laws do not make the people in Quebec "Fascists." Moreover, peoples' willingness to make pronouncements about the attitudes and desires of another people without really knowing much about them reminded me of racial insensitivities in America. You know, "I don't understand why you people are so sensitive about perceived slights," etc. In fact, the parallels between racial conflicts in the States and language conflicts in Canada are worth pursuing (though not on this list!). Think of the language laws as "affirmative action" on a large scale. That makes Anglophones in Quebec the white males whose "rights" are infringed upon in the service of a policy that serves the "greater good" of the society as a whole. With regard to Frank Anshen's comments, let me see if I understand his point. I write a message saying something about the oppression of the linguistic minority in Quebec and end, in best liberal tradition, with a suggestion that people try to understand something about the Quebecois political and cultural background that provides the basis for these policies. Frank Anshen suggests that this kind of INsensitivity to other peoples resulted in the bombing of Viet Nam and Iraq. Yo, Frank: wake up! What then, about the original question, "What stand should linguists take?" It seems to me that the answer depends on whether one is Francophone or Anglophone, Quebecois or American, etc. It probably depends on whether you were born and raised in English in Quebec or live in California. What I would like to know is what, if anything, we have learned from the study of language that informs this debate. I mean this as a serious question. Is there something that we as linguists (or, in my case, psycholinguist) can contribute above and beyond our more or less informed political opinions? Mark Seidenberg [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0209] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0210. Thursday, 9 May 1991. Subj: 2.0210 Phonology and Orthography Total: 131 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Tue, 07 May 91 12:26:45 -0500 Subject: Rules and generalizations From: Harry Bochner (2) Date: Wed, 8 May 91 13:51 GMT From: Richard Ogden Subject: orthography (3) Date: Wed, 08 May 91 11:35:17 EDT From: Lesli LaRocco Subject: Orthography and Phonology (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 07 May 91 12:26:45 -0500 Subject: Rules and generalizations From: Harry Bochner Mike Hammond responds to my remarks on the unproductivity of -ity: > I think it would be a mistake to incorporate this notion of > productivity into our formal theory of morphology. Specifically, I > think that determining what the "possible words" of a language are is > a linguistic question and determining what the occurring words are > is largely a nonlinguistic question, hinging on history, technology, etc. Two responses, one morphological, the other more general: 1) A full discussion of the methodological issue of whether the theory of Morphology should be concerned with 'possible words' would take us even farther from the original topic of this thread: I'll try to stick to the basics. Mike presumably thinks that *ridiculosity should be treated as a 'possible word', cf. Lieber(80). By this logic, **succinction is also demonstrably a possible word, since -ion _does_ attach to adjectives in a handful of cases (precision, distinction, etc.). Thus in a theory of 'possible words', **succinction, *ridiculosity and conclusiveness all have the same status. I argue that this is emprically inadequate, and that an adequate model of the grammar must contain the information that -ness is productive, -ity is common but unproductive (except after -able, etc), and that the attachment of -ion to adjectives is marginal (though possible). Note that this does not mean that I'm interested in 'occurring words', in the sense of a fixed corpus such as a dictionary, which would be subject to the practical complications that Mike mentions. I'm interesting in what I call 'acceptable words': i.e. words that speakers accept. For instance, speakers accept unfamiliar words in -ness (subject to complications like Blocking); they do not generally accept unfamiliar words in -osity. I take this to reflect a fact about the grammar; as I see it, such acceptability judgements have the same status as grammaticality judgements in syntax, and it is impossible to build an adequate theory without them. 2) Returning to the conception that there is a complete dichotomy between 'generated by rule' and 'completely idiosyncratic', I used a morphological example because that's where I know the facts best, but the same point can be made in other ways. 'Rules' that apply to single lexical items have been proposed for semantics by Lieber(80) and Pesetsky(85). Something similar might be needed for phonology: arguably the vowel alternation of say/says, and the voicing of the fricative in American pronunciations of equation are cases, although it depends on the details of the analysis. Any such phenomenon where the analysis is forced to state a 'rule' that applies in only one case, and thus is not a statement of a generalization, constitutes a breakdown of the dichotomy as I understand it. wrt John Coleman's remarks: The approach I would take to such alternations is fairly different, but I certainly agree that we're dealing with regularities that have to be stated in the grammar. It's worth emphasizing that I _do_ believe in rules, and in fact I believe these phenomena are rule-governed. It's just that this means something rather different in a lexical theory than it does in the SPE model, or any model that accepts the dichotomy I've been arguing with Mike about. -- Harry Bochner -- bochner@das.harvard.edu (2) --------------------------------------------------------------------From RAO1@vaxb.york.ac.uk Thu May 9 07:51:22 1991 Date: Wed, 8 May 91 13:51 GMT From: Richard Ogden Subject: orthography Rick Woycik writes: If your phonological theory doesn't have much to say about spelling, then it probably doesn't have much to say about phonology either. Two points: Phonology needn't have anything at all to say about spelling. It is there as an abstraction from the phonetics - and the spoken language should be the prime source of enquiry, not the written one. Which means good phonetic observation and ignoring spelling conventions etc. which can hamper one's hearing and prejudice it. The connection with spelling is by-the-by. Perhaps phonemics has something to say about spelling but phonemics is certainly not the whole of phonology (despite the impression one might get from reading most books on phonology). Many linguists abandoned the phoneme long ago - is Rick WOycik seriously saying that non-segmental, non-phonemic phonological theories don't say much about phonology just because they are independent of the writing system? Richard Ogden University of York England rao1@uk.ac.york.vaxb (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 08 May 91 11:35:17 EDT From: Lesli LaRocco Subject: Orthography and Phonology Rick Wojcik writes: >If we accept that the prototypical alphabet is in one-to-one corespondence >to phonemes... It should be kept in mind that alphabets are often borrowed rather than created by those who use them. Such is the case with some of the earliest forms of writing we have, i.e. Akkadian, who borrowed their syllabic cuneiform from speakers of Sumerian, a sui generis language. The Hebrew alphabet also was derived from the Aramaic, and Greek from Phoenecian. Often, changes were not made to these syllabic or alphabetic system, e.g. Hebrew has one letter for both /sh/ and /s/. In short, I think that the term "prototypical alphabet" might be misleading, and a one-to-one correspondence unlikely in the event of borrowing, and unlikely except within a very narrow range of speakers even in the event of a created alphabet. Lesli LaRocco (OZVY@CORNELLA) ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0211. Thursday, 9 May 1991. Subj: 2.0211 FYI: Greek Parser, MIT Publications, IJCAI, Workshop Total: 195 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: 07 May 91 15:57:54 bst From: D.Mealand@edinburgh.ac.uk Subject: Re: Syntactic Parser for Greek (2) Date: Wed, 08 May 91 17:51:26 EDT From: jdbobalj@ATHENA.MIT.EDU Subject: MIT Working Papers in Linguistics / Dissertations (3) Date: Thu, 9 May 1991 10:44:51 -0400 From: Kimberlee Pietrzak-Smith Subject: IJCAI-91 Programme Schedule (4) Date: Thu, 09 May 91 11:50:46 -0400 Subject: FYI - Informal Computing Workshop Program From: Jon Shultis (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 07 May 91 15:57:54 bst From: D.Mealand@edinburgh.ac.uk Subject: Re: Syntactic Parser for Greek [From Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 5, No. 0003. Tuesday, 7 May 1991.] --- Forwarded message: Subject: Syntactic Parser for Greek Date: Fri, 3 May 91 11:47:27 GMT An Automatic Parser for New Testament Greek Generalised Phrase Structure Grammar(GPSG) is a way of analysing natural language in terms of feature-value pairs. Six years ago a partial GPSG analysis of classical Greek was written as a PhD thesis by Ronnie Cann. I attempted to implement this analysis on a sun3 using the Grammar Development Environment(GDE), a Lisp tool developed by the Alvey project. AIM: The original motivation came from the New Testament Department at Edinburgh University, who suggested an automatic parser for teaching purposes. The emphasis of the project was on syntactic analysis. The Fribergs' tagged text was used to provide morphological information about each word. RESULT: Given a sentence of NT Greek a parse tree is produced showing the structure of the sentence ie what is the direct or indirect object of the verb, which adjective agrees with which noun etc. The work was done as a 5-month MSc project and so is incomplete. Only basic grammatical constructions can be coped with and the display needs improving to be comprehensible to any but linguists. If anyone is interested in hearing more about this work, please contact me on raw%uk.ac.edinburgh.aipna@ukacrl (or D.Mealand%uk.ac.edinburgh@ukacrl) or write to: Rachel Weiss Department of Artificial Intelligence 80 South Bridge Edinburgh EH15 1LP Scotland UK (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 08 May 91 17:51:26 EDT From: jdbobalj@ATHENA.MIT.EDU Subject: MIT Working Papers in Linguistics / Dissertations Apologies to all, but it has come to my attention that I neglected to give our physical mail address for ordering theses and working papers. Here it is: MITWPL Department of Linguistics and Philosophy Room 20D-219, MIT, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA Also of note. We are now distributing two theses which were not on the Publication List: Levin, B (1983) On the Nature of Ergativity. & Kearns, K (1991) The Semantics of the English Progressive (available May 17 1991) (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 9 May 1991 10:44:51 -0400 From: Kimberlee Pietrzak-Smith Subject: IJCAI-91 Programme Schedule The program of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 1991, (IJCAI) is available on the server. To obtain this program, send: listserv@uniwa.uwa.oz.au the message: get ijcai-91 (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 09 May 91 11:50:46 -0400 Subject: FYI - Informal Computing Workshop Program From: Jon Shultis Workshop on Informal Computing 29-31 May 1991 Santa Cruz, California Program Wednesday 29 May Conversational Computing and Adaptive Languages 8:15 Opening Remarks, Jon Shultis, Incremental Systems 8:30 Natural Language Techniques in Formal Languages, David Mundie, Incremental Systems 9:30 Building and Exploiting a User Model In Natural Language Information Systems, Sandra Carberry, University of Delaware 10:30 Break 10:45 Informalism in Interfaces, Larry Reeker, Institutes for Defense Analyses 11:45 Natural Language Programming in Solving Problems of Search, Alan Biermann, Duke University 12:30 Lunch 13:45 Linguistic Structure from a Cognitive Grammar Perspective, Karen van Hoek, University of California at San Diego 14:45 Notational Formalisms, Computational Mechanisms: Models or Metaphors? A Linguistic Perspective, Catherine Harris, University of California at San Diego 15:45 Break 16:00 Discussion 18:00 Break for dinner Thursday 30 May Informal Knowledge and Reasoning 8:15 What is Informalism?, David Fisher, Incremental Systems 9:15 Reaction in Real-Time Decision Making, Bruce D'Ambrosio, Oregon State University 10:15 Break 10:30 Decision Making with Informal, Plausible Reasoning, David Littman, George Mason University 11:15 Title to be announced, Tim Standish, University of California at Irvine 12:15 Lunch 13:30 Intensional Logic and the Metaphysics of Intensionality, Edward Zalta, Stanford University 14:30 Connecting Object to Symbol in Modeling Cognition, Stevan Harnad, Princeton University 15:30 Break 15:45 Discussion 17:45 Break 19:00 Banquet Friday 31 May Modeling and Interpretation 8:15 A Model of Modeling Based on Reference, Purpose and Cost-effectiveness, Jeff Rothenberg, RAND 9:15 Mathematical Modeling of Digital Systems, Donald Good, Computational Logic, Inc. 10:15 Break 10:30 Ideographs, Epistemic Types, and Interpretive Semantics, Jon Shultis, Incremental Systems 11:30 Discussion 12:30 Lunch and End of the Workshop 13:45 Steering Committee Meeting for Informalism '92 Conference, all interested participants are invited. Jon Shultis Incremental Systems Corp. 319 S. Craig St. Pittsburgh, PA 15213 (412) 621-8888 (412) 621-0259 (FAX) [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0211] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0212. Saturday, 11 May 1991. Subj: 2.0212 Tongue Twisters; More info on Shoebox Total: 140 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: 9 May 91 11:37 -0600 From: David Leip Subject: Mandarin Tongue Twister (2) Date: Fri, 10 May 91 10:40:26 +0200 (MET) From: garof@sixcom.sixcom.it (Joe Giampapa) Subject: tongue twisters/naming anecdote (3) Date: Fri, 10 May 91 09:53:00 MDT From: koontz@alpha (John E. Koontz) Subject: Shoebox Workaround (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 9 May 91 11:37 -0600 From: David Leip Subject: Mandarin Tongue Twister I'm not a native speaker of mandarin, there might well be more difficult tongue twisters than the following. It is difficult, of course, to write the tongue twister in a concise manner, since I obviously can't transmit wenzi (chinese characters) over e-mail networks, and am therefore limited to pinyin (mandarin phonetic spellings), but again I can't show tone. (In mandarin any syllable can have up to four different tone, each conveying a different meaning). I will therefore show the second tone or raising tone as: / and the forth or falling tone as: \ si\ shi/ shi\ si\ shi/ shi/ si\ shi\ shi/ si\ The translation is: Forty is forty. Fourteen is Fourteen. It is interesting to note that four (si\) and ten (shi/) are so phonetically similar, since they typically can't be differentiated according to context. I have heard that native mandarin speakers sometimes confuse the two. - David Leip; Brock University (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 10 May 91 10:40:26 +0200 (MET) From: garof@sixcom.sixcom.it (Joe Giampapa) Subject: tongue twisters/naming anecdote In response to Michael Covington's request for various language tongue twisters, here are three popular Italian "scioglilingua": 1. Sopra la panca la capra campa. Sotto la panca la capra crepa. (Above the bench the goat lives. Under the bench the goat dies.) 2. Trentatre Trentini entrarono in Trento trotterellando allegramente. (Thirtythree Trentini enter Trento trotting happily.) 3. for (i=0; i<30; i++) say("Tigre contro tigre"); (Tiger against tiger.) ------------- To add to Charles Hoequist's anecdotes about naming laws: Some government offices in Italy have been having difficulties keeping track of all the middle names of people. Apparently it has been a convention that children are given the names of their grandparents as middle names. In the region of Liguria, this has been such a problem that (at least) the Comune di Savono decided to unilaterally delete all middle names of people. Unfortunately, this caused problems of confused identities and incompatibilities among government documents. I believe that now they accept at most one middle name (if you can prove that you have used it, which would be difficult because all your new government documents no longer have the middle name you have used, etc. But this is another story.) On the compression of names, one university roommate I had claimed that his surname was an acronym: "Ritvo", for "Rabbi ... etc." (I forgot the rest.) Before him, I have never heard of such instances. -Joe Giampapa garof@sixcom.sixcom.it garof%sixcom.sixcom.it@uunet.uu.net (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 10 May 91 09:53:00 MDT From: koontz@alpha (John E. Koontz) Subject: Shoebox Workaround Subscribers interested in Shoebox may recall that Tom Payne was experiencing an odd behavior of the next and previous record functions. After he located a record with a search, next and previous seemed to work with respect to the point from which he began the search, not with respect to the record located. On the other hand, in my work I had found next and previous to work with respect to the record located in the search. Tom and I have looked into this odd difference in observations, and it appears that the problem occurs because Tom's database has more than one blank between the key field name (marker) and the contents of the key field. That is, he had his database set up in the format: \key stuff \fld1 stuff \fld2 stuff \x stuff etc. This results in his keys having leading blanks. The manual recommends only one space between field name and field contents, in order to avoid this, but has examples in this format on the very page where the recommendation occurs, and it is easy enough to set up a database this way withoput thinking if you format it yourself with a text editor or some other tool separate from Shoebox. However, if there is more than one blank between the key field name (marker) and the contents of the key field, next and previous will work as Tom described them to work for him, and not as they should. I suspect this is some side effect of having leading blanks in the keys, perhaps even a bug, but I haven't tried to figure out the details. The solution is to make sure that there is only one blank between the key field name (or marker) and the contents of the field, in the format: \key stuff \fld1 stuff \fld2 stuff \x stuff etc. As illustrated with the x field in the example, the number of blanks between non key names (markers) and text [probably] doesn't matter. John Wimbish has explained to me that users have differed in their preferences for the treatment of leading blanks in keys, and that he will see what he can do to resolve the problem and eliminate the ambush in future versions of Shoebox. [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0212] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0213. Saturday, 11 May 1991. Subj: 2.0213 Queries; Help Wanted Total: 79 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: 9 May 91 23:07 +0800 From: Hurch Subject: Gallo-Romance Dialects of Italy (2) Date: Fri, 10 May 1991 13:51 EDT From: Robert D Hoberman Subject: Phonology of letter-names (3) Date: Fri, 10 May 91 22:17:11 CDT From: GA5123%SIUCVMB.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU Subject: Help wanted: Bibliographer for Rumanian linguistics (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 9 May 91 23:07 +0800 From: Hurch Subject: Gallo-Romance Dialects of Italy In the gallo-romance dialects of northern Italy the subject pronoun is obligatorily "doubled", i.e., expressed by an accented and an unaccented (proclitic?) pronoun. These two pronouns are different from each other (not in all persons, and this differs somewhat from dialect to dialect). We thus have constructions like: piedmontese: mi a gh'o rasun, which would be in French: j'ai raison "I am right". But whereas a French construction like moi j'ai raison would express a focus, the analogous galloitalian construction is obligatory. Does anyone know of parallel examples to the obligatory "double" construction from other languages or of proposals for their description and/or explanation? Bernhard Hurch Bergische Universitaet D-56 Wuppertal, FRG Fax: 0202.439.2901 e-mail: hurch@mvax2.urz.uni-wuppertal.dbp.de (or under "queries") Thank you! (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 10 May 1991 13:51 EDT From: Robert D Hoberman Subject: Phonology of letter-names In the discussion of whether Russian [y] is a phoneme distinct from /i/ several writers have adduced the name of the letter "y", pronounced by some as [y]. Names of alphabet letters can sometimes have phonological properties outside of the general system of a language. The Turkish letter that looks like a "g" with a breve on top is normally called /yumushak ge/ 'soft g'. However, some Turkish speakers (my informant is a Turkish Cypriot), in reciting the alphabet, call this letter /Ge/, where G stands for a voiced velar fricative, although the sound [G] otherwise does not occur in their speech! (It does in some other dialects of Turkish, low-prestige dialects, but that's another matter.) Does anyone know of other such instances? Bob Hoberman (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 10 May 91 22:17:11 CDT From: GA5123%SIUCVMB.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU Subject: Help wanted: Bibliographer for Rumanian linguistics The Comparative Romance Linguistics Newsletter is expecting to need the services of a bibliographer for the Rumanian (Romanian?) section of its annual bibliography. Should know Rumanian of course, and have access to a good library and/or other sources of information about recent linguistic publications on Rumanian. Contact me for details... ----------------------------------- Lee Hartman, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, ga5123@siucvmb.bitnet [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0213] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0214. Saturday, 11 May 1991. Subj: 2.0214 Educational Opportunities Total: 234 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Thu, 09 May 91 11:44 PDT From: Anna Szabolcsi Subject: Linguistics Summer School in Budapest (2) Date: 10 May 91 11:36:07 U From: "Mark Durie" Subject: Asian Linguistics at Melbourne (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 09 May 91 11:44 PDT From: Anna Szabolcsi Subject: Linguistics Summer School in Budapest LINGUISTICS IN HUNGARY Summer Course 1991 July 5 -- August 4 The course will cover four distinct topics: Hungarian Generative Syntax, Finno-Ugric Linguistics, Speech Science; Phonetics Phonology, and Linguistic Socialization. Information: h1060str%ella@relay.eu.net (from the US) h1060str@ella.uucp (from Europe) Lectures to be held: Hungarian Generative Syntax: Katalin E. Kiss: The Structure of the Hungarian Sentence Operator Movement (Topicalization, Focusing, Syntactic Q-Raising) Arguments for a Nonconfigurational Propositional Component Anna Szabolcsi: On the Syntax of NP in Hungarian (4 lectures) Michael Brody: Focus in Hungarian Sentence Structure Istvan Kenesei: Syntactic Problems of Subordination in Hungarian Zoltan Banreti: Coordination and Ellipsis in Hungarian Finno-Ugric Linguistics: I. Introduction to Finno-Ugric Linguistics: Sandor Csucs: Uralic Peoples and Languages Marianne Bakro Nagy & Janos Pusztai: The Uralic Language Family (Phonology, Phonetics, Morphology, Syntax \& Semantics Marianne Bakro Nagy & Janos Pusztai: Proto-Language Reconstruction (Phonology, Phonetics, Morphology, Syntax \& Semantics) and its Theoretical and Practical Implications and its Connections with the North Eurasian Linguistics Continuum. II Finno-Ugric Languages: Janos Pusztai: Volgaic (Cheremiss, Mordvin) Sandor Csucs: Permic (Votyac, Zyrien) Marianne Nagy Bakro: Ob-Ugric (Ostyak, Vogul) Janos Pusztai: Samoyedic (Yurak) Speech Science Peter Siptar & Tamas Szende: Current Phonological Theories Gabor Olaszy & Maria Gosy: Acoustic Theory of Speech Production; Acoustics of Speech Sounds, Sound Combination and Continuous Speech Signal Gabor Olaszy & Maria Gosy: Sound Spectography and Spectogram Reading Gabor Olaszy: Acoustic Properties of Intonation: Theory, Measuring Methods and Synthesis Gabor Olaszy & Peter Siptar: Temporal Factors of Speech, Time Structure of Speech Sounds; Sound Combinations, Words, Sentences and Longer Texts Maria Gosy: Speech Perception and Comprehension; Models; Invariance; Identification of Speech Sounds Gabor Olaszy: Speech Synthesis; Theories, Methods, Experiments, Work Station, Text-to-Speech System on Six Languages Maria Gosy & Gabor Olaszy: Perception of Suprasegmental Features of Speech, Word Recognition \& Lexical Access; Development of Speech Perception. Linguistic Socialization Zita Reger: Socialization and Linguistics Socialization Child-centered and Situation-centered Adult-Child Communication in Different Ethnic Groups Theories and Investigations on Linguistic Disadvantage Pre-school Literacy Experiences and Achievements Establishing Bridges All lectures will be held in English. Optional: For an additional sum of \$ 80 US, students can attend intensive Hungarian and/or Russian language courses. (N.B. If you wish to partake in one or both of these courses, please specify it on your application form.) Credits: HAS Institute of Linguistics} will provide all participants with a transcript describing the lectures they have taken. For those whose home institutions so require, it is possible to receive a grade from one or more of the four topics covered. (Please advise us in advance if your home institution requires special certification for outside credit courses.) Programs -- Non-Academic During their stay, participants will be taken on sightseeing tours of Budapest, including visits to museums, art galleries, etc. A weekend excursion has been organized to Holl\'ok\H o, one of the most picturesque rural spots in Hungary, part of the UNESCO world heritage. Furthermore, all students will be provided with some tickets to open-air concerts and operas. Accomodation, Living Expenses: Accommodation has been arranged for participants from July 3 till August 5 on a two/three per room basis at a university campus, not far from the city center. By Western standards the cost of living in Budapest is extremely low. E.g. a monthly pass permitting the use of all public transport facilities costs less than \$ 10, a three-mile taxi drive costs around \$ 1.50. A three course meal in one of the city's finest restaurant is no more than \$ 8, but one can have a fine and rich meal at a less expensive place for only \$ 3. Supermarket prices are, of course, even lower: \$ 15 will cover about a week's food and drinks. Transportation to and from Budapest} Budapest can be reached by air, railroad or, from Vienna, by hydrofoil. PAN AM, KLM, MALEV, Lufthansa, Swissair, Sabena and other major airlines offer regular flights to Budapest. You might wish to use the opportunity to visit other European cities while staying in Budapest. Vienna is only four hours away by hydrofoil (the trip costs \$ 10 - \$ 20) and Paris, London or Hamburg are also less than two hours away by air or a day's trip by train. Please notify us at least ten days in advance about the date and mode of your arrival, so that arrangement can be made to pick you up upon disembarking. Passport, Visa} Citizens of Western Europe or the United States do NOT require a visa to How to Apply a. Complete the Application Form. b. Obtain a letter of recommendation. c. Obtain a copy of your transcript. d. Send the completed Application Form with documents (b.) and (c.) enclosed to Hungarian Academy of Sciences Institute of Linguistics Budapest I. Szentharomsag u. 2. Hungary H--1014 Please enclose a self-addressed envelope. The deadline for application is June 3, 1991. Applicants will be notified about their admission not later than three weeks after their Application Forms are received by the institute. Participation fee The participation fee for the course is \$ 780 US, which covers tuition, accommodation from July 3 till August 5, cultural programs and a weekend excursion. The fee is to be paid on the spot in Budapest in cash or TC's. Further information For further information, write to the above addres or call (361)-175-8285 h1060str%ella@relay.eu.net (from the US) h1060str@ella.uucp (fro Europe) (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 10 May 91 11:36:07 U From: "Mark Durie" Subject: Asian Linguistics at Melbourne REGARDING Asian Linguistics MA/PHD in LINGUISTICS INVOLVING FIELD WORK IN ASIA Department of Linguistics and Language Studies University of Melbourne Expressions of interest are invited from Australian citizens and Australian residents to undertake a postgraduate research degree in linguistics at the University of Melbourne involving field work in Asia in 1992. The Department of Linguistics and Language Studies has good resources to support such projects. Competitive funding is available to support postgraduate field work projects, and the Department of Linguistics and Language Studies is seeking to help develop and support suitable applications for post-graduate research scholarships and field work grants. There are different possible sources of funding, involving varying application deadlines. In order for us to provide the best support to applicants, and to maximize the possibility of obtaining funding, those who are interested should send a statement of interest to the address below by May 30, 1991, together with an outline of your educational history, and a brief thesis and field work project outline. Include a telephone number, and where possible a fax number and e-mail address. Expressions of interest may be mailed, faxed or e-mailed. Snail-Mail: M. Durie Linguistics and Language Studies University of Melbourne Parkville 3052 Australia E-mail: Mark_Durie@muwayf.unimelb.edu.au Phone: (03) 344-5191 Fax: (03) 344-5163 [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0214] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0215. Sunday, 12 May 1991. Subj: 2.0215 For Your Information Total: 183 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Thu, 9 May 91 14:07:29 EDT From: rapaport@cs.Buffalo.EDU (William J. Rapaport) Subject: posting (2) Date: 10 May 91 11:54:01 U From: "Mark Durie" Subject: Announcement (3) Date: Thu, 9 May 91 09:42 MST From: OEHRLE@ccit.arizona.edu Subject: Conference on Logic and Linguistics (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 9 May 91 14:07:29 EDT From: rapaport@cs.Buffalo.EDU (William J. Rapaport) Subject: posting Announcing a New Professional Society THE SOCIETY FOR MACHINES AND MENTALITY We are pleased to announce the formation of a new cognitive science society, the Society for Machines and Mentality, whose purpose is to advance philosophical understanding of machines and mentality, including such issues as whether machines are able to think, whether machines could have minds, and related matters. Details on the activities of the Society are described in the Constitution, appended to this message. The Society's first meeting will be held in conjunction with the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association meetings in December 1991, to honor the launching of the journal MINDS AND MACHINES: JOURNAL FOR ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, PHILOSOPHY, AND COGNITIVE SCIENCE by Kluwer Academic Publishers. The guest speaker will be: William Bechtel, Department of Philosophy, Georgia State University speaking on current issues in connectionism. Details will be announced when they become available. An election has been held in accordance with Article 4, Sections 2 to 4 of the Constitution. James H. Fetzer, the Editor of MINDS AND MACHINES, has informed me that the final results of the election were as follows: President: William J. Rapaport Department of Computer Science & Center for Cognitive Science SUNY Buffalo Buffalo, NY 14260 Vice President: David J. Cole Department of Philosophy University of Minnesota Duluth, MN 55812 Treasurer: James H. Moor Department of Philosophy Dartmouth College Hanover, NH 03755 Anyone requesting further information about the election may contact Fetzer by email at jfetzer@ub.d.umn.edu. The Constitution defines the terms of office and the responsibilities of the officers in Article 3 (see below). Those who cast ballots in this election and anyone else who wishes to be- come a member of the Society for Machines and Mentality should send their dues (currently $5.00 per year) to the Treasurer, James H. Moor, at the above address. Please provide the following information for membership records: name, position, affiliation, address, email address, and phone number. Please identify any information which is not to be made public. [The full constitution of the society is obtainable from the LINGUIST listserv. To get this file, send listserv@uniwa.uwa.oz.au the message: get smm and it will be sent to you.] (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 10 May 91 11:54:01 U From: "Mark Durie" Subject: Announcement REGARDING Announcement >From July 22 - August 23, 1991, Professor Mel'cuk, a leading international figure in lexical semantics and lexicography will be presenting an 5-week long workshop on an English Explanatory Combinatorial Dictionary in the Department of Linguistics and Language Studies at the University of Melbourne. It will focus on the the structure of lexical entries in general, and on developing specific lexical entries for English lexeme, including decompositions, semantic networks and lexical functions, a tool devised to lexical cooccurrence restrictions. Professor Melcuk, author of well over 200 publications, has undertaken research into the Russian and French lexicon over many years, resulting in publications of his Explanatory-Combinatorial Dictionaries on these languages. These are some of the most detailed and rigorously presented major bodies of lexical descriptions yet available for any language. He is now engaged in developing similar work on English. This course will be particularly suitable for undergraduate and graduate students in linguistics, those working in a professional capacity in English lexicography, and those working in areas of computational linguistics where lexical representation is an important issue." (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 9 May 91 09:42 MST From: OEHRLE@ccit.arizona.edu Subject: Conference on Logic and Linguistics Please post the following information concerning the program of the Conference on Logic and Linguistics sponsored by the Association for Symbolic Logic and the Linguistic Society of America, which is to be held this summer, July 19-21, in conjunction with the 1991 LSA Linguistic Institute. Thank you, Richard Oehrle (for the program committee) [The complete program is available on the LINGUIST listserv. To obtain the program, send the message "get asl" to listserv@uniwa.uwa.oz.au.] Conference on Logic and Linguistics Registration: $20 general; $15 ASL or LSA members; open to Institute participants Tutorial Registration: $35 general; $25 ASL or LSA members; $15 if registered for ASL/LSA meeting $7.50 for Institute students (includes tutorial materials). Enrollment is limited to 50 participants and presupposes familiarity with Montague Grammar. To reserve a place, notify R. Oehrle, Department of Linguistics, Douglass 200E, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA (oehrle@ccit.arizona.edu). LSA Institute information: institute@ling.ucsc.edu or lsa@ucscc.bitnet or write to 1991 Linguistic Institute, Board of Studies in Linguistics, UCSC, Santa Cruz, CA 95064. phone: (408) 459-4594. Accommodations: Visitors to the LSA Institute for periods shorter than four weeks who want on-campus housing should submit the following information as soon as arrangements are firm. Space in guest housing is limited and is reserved on a space-available basis with priority given to early applicants. Provide this information as soon as possible along with a check for US$35 payable to "Linguistic Institute" as a non-refundable fee to: Linguistic Institute Housing, Board of Studies in Linguistics, UCSC, Santa Cruz, CA 95064. Name: Address: Email address: Telephone: Male v Female Date of Birth I request short-term housing for the period: Arrival date: Departure date: __ I request a single room with meals ($62/night) __ I request a double room (two beds) with meals for myself and the person named below: ($52/night per person) Name of roommate: I plan to attend the following institute activities: Special needs if any: [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0215] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0216. Sunday, 12 May 1991. Subj: 2.0216 Language, Rights and Law Total: 214 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Thu, 09 May 91 13:17:29 EDT From: FANSHEN@ccvm.sunysb.edu Subject: Re: Language and Culture (Part 1) (2) Date: Thu, 09 May 91 13:35:29 EDT From: FANSHEN@ccvm.sunysb.edu Subject: Re: Language and Culture (Part 1) (3) Date: Thu, 9 May 1991 16:17:00 -0400 From: Charles (C.A.) Hoequist Subject: reponses (4) Date: Thu, 09 May 91 15:26 PDT From: connie gergen Subject: Re: What stand should linguists take? (5) Date: Fri, 10 May 91 00:56:59 PDT From: sp299-ad@violet.berkeley.edu (Celso Alvarez) Subject: Re: Banned Languages (6) Date: 9 May 91 12:36:00 EST From: "STEVE SEEGMILLER" Subject: RE: Banned Languages (7) Date: Sun, 12 May 91 17:08:18 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Banned Languages (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 09 May 91 13:17:29 EDT From: FANSHEN@ccvm.sunysb.edu Subject: Re: Language and Culture (Part 1) With regards to Eldridge's message, I (being the non-confrontational sort that I am) feel I must take issue with some factual statements. First, although there certainly was an English speaking majority at the time of independence, the number of non-English speakers in the original colonies was not insignificant, especially Germans. There were units of the continental army whose language of command was English and the continental congress found it wise to issue some of its procedings in German as well as English. Benjamin Franklin was heard to complain that it was nearly impossible for an English language printer to make a living in Philadelphia. Neither is it so simple that the goal with non-English speakers was to "expel or exterminate" them, although a good case for that can be made with respect to Native Americans. However, the treaties with which the Louisiana treaties and Norther Mexico were acquired by the US had specific clauses guaranteeing language rights for their residents aNd in fact both law and custom in both areas recognized French or Spanish for numerous official functions for a period of, at least, decades. A couple of more random comments on Eldridge's message. 1) It is not clear to me that extensive learning of Russian would have done wonders for the Eastern European nations' economies, it doesn't seem to have done a great deal for that of the Soviet Union. 2) I am not certain about the Basque situation, but my understanding of the language situation in Catalonia is that it parallels that of Quebec in a number of ways without generating much heat either among Americans or American linguists. 3) To argue that forced learning of Russian in Yugoslavia would have helped unite the country, even if we ignore the widespread repression which would be necessary to implement such a policy, is not obvious. The forced learning of English in Ireland did not do a great deal to limit friction between the Irish and the English. (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 09 May 91 13:35:29 EDT From: FANSHEN@ccvm.sunysb.edu Subject: Re: Language and Culture (Part 1) Mari Olsen is correct that the US has no law making English the only xDofficial language, however neither does it have a law imposed by a colonial power making it officially bilingual in English and, say, French. I am not particularly in favor of monolingualism (even though I am) but neither am I in favor laws which attempt to artificially impose bilingualism. Would anybody seriously propose that the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, and Mexico should become officially bilingual in Spanish and English? They have linguistic demographics roughly the same as Puerto Rico's. (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 9 May 1991 16:17:00 -0400 From: Charles (C.A.) Hoequist Subject: reponses Bill Eldridge writes: > ... I'm not sure why their [slaves'] original > languages did not survive at all in the U.S., since I don't think > they were banned in speech (?). There is a claim that a bit did survive, as Gullah. More generally, given that captives were thrown together from separate language communities, it was probably rare that enough speakers of a single language were together in a single place to keep that language going. All were forced to fall back on some lingua franca or creole. Michael Kac writes: >Without knowing a lot about the specifics of the various English-only >laws that exist around the country, I nonetheless have the impression > (correct me if I'm wrong) that people are not being fined and/or > sent to jail for such things as having restaurants with names like >Caban~a identified by signs visible to passersby on the street, and >that while English-only laws have led to harrassment of >non-English speakers in the workplace using their native languages > such use is not literally prohibited by the laws in question. >Further, if such people were to find themselves in court, I think >it likely that someone somewhere would try to make a test case in > which individual rights -- in particular, First Amendment rights -- would loom very large. > PS Has there yet been a court challenge anywhere >to English-only legislation? >I haven't heard of any, but one would think it inevitable. > Can Geoff or anyone else provide information? I can only speak regarding Florida's English-only resolution, but I suspect this is applicable to other states as well. The text declares English to be the official state language. What this means is not defined (e.g. no prohibition on other lgs., no mandating of English in particular situations), nor is there any enforcement methodology (not surprising, since there's nothing to enforce), nor are any penalties prescribed, since there's nothing to violate. My guess is that other states have done about the same thing, because (as MK notes) any genuine attempt to mandate English will violate the First Amendment, as well as colliding with existing federal regulations requiring Spanish-English signs in some situations. This would account for the lack of court challenges: there's nothing to challenge. Thus, politicians can say to their english-only consituents, look, we passed this here LAW! (probably such constituents are not real rocket scientists themselves, and will be happy) and to everyone else, look, we haven't done anything to anyone, it's harmless. (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 09 May 91 15:26 PDT From: connie gergen Subject: Re: What stand should linguists take? Status: RO The issue of "minority"-oriented language legislation reminds me in one sense of South African language policy and the Afrikaaner goverment's attempts to impose their will on a majority population. While the balance of power may be different in Quebec (i.e. the minority is politically marginalized) than in South Africa (where the minority enjoys full power), linguistic hegemony seems common to both situations. I don't support either situation and find it ironic that those opposed to English only in the U.S. can support attempts to make Quebec "French-only" in Canada. Constance Gergen, Department of Linguistics, University of Southern California (5) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 10 May 91 00:56:59 PDT From: sp299-ad@violet.berkeley.edu (Celso Alvarez) Subject: Re: Banned Languages I haven't been following the thread on "banned" languages from the beginning, but it appears to me that something is missing. Most contributors seem to suggest that it is the intention of multilingual states to effectively ban the use of minoritized languages. I just want to point out that, while language legislation and policies work at the ideological level to promote or undermine feelings of nationhood, it is the actual preservation of the language in restricted social domains which renders such policies meaningful or effective for maintaining social boundaries. As an example, the "ban" on Basque, Galician, or Catalan in Spain was accompanied by an implicit policy not to interfere too much in, for instance, language use in family life. Minority "idiomas" were supposed to be the remnants of a "folkloric" way of life, together with other customs such as music or food. In this way, the political and economic elites could control upward mobility by selectively recruiting those individuals who had disidentified sufficiently from their native background so as to have abandoned their linguistic allegiances by speaking Spanish exclusively in public life. Now, francophone language policies in Quebec point in a similar direction, don't they?: constructing the selfness in opposition to the otherness. The francophone elites need the anglophones as the "historical enemy" necessary for the articulation of nationalist discourse. That is, if language-in-use is such a visible marker of identity, what could be more effective than the minoritization (not total eradication) of the "other's" language? Social stereotyping and control, of course, are similarly based on accent. But, could political and economic elites in monolingual states articulate discursively this differentiality by legislating, for instance, "Accents such and such are banned in public life"? Instead, the political power in monolingual states is left with the most unsophisticated piece of democratic machinery: the ideology of equality and "equal opportunities", expressed, among other things, in the supposed equal access to the standard. Celso Alvarez (sp299-ad@violet.berkeley.edu) Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese University of California, Berkeley, 94720, USA (6) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 9 May 91 12:36:00 EST From: "STEVE SEEGMILLER" Subject: RE: Banned Languages Another note on banned languages: I don't know what the present situation in Mexico is, but when I was there more than 20 years ago, I was told that all native (i.e. Indian) languages were banned from print and from the school system. The only published material I ever saw in Mayan, during four months in Yucatan, was a set of three readers intended for primary schools; after the children learned Spanish (by the first or second grade, presumably) all books and instruction were in Spanish. However, I observed no attempts to prohibit or limit any speech in Mayan. Steve Seegmiller (7) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 12 May 91 17:08:18 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Banned Languages (1) I would submit that, while there are many unclear situations, it IS clear that no political entity should forbid the use of a particular language and that linguists should oppose any such legislation. It is perhaps less clear, but rather clear, that, in situations where more than one language is usable, people should be allowed to choose freely rather than having to prove suitable ancestry or whatever it is. Thus, while it is debatable whether Quebec is morally obliged to provide English-language public schools at all, once it does, it should be up to the individual to select the language of instruction. Likewise, Quebec could perhaps be morally justified in REQUIRING that all public signs be AT LEAST in French, but I can see no justification for banning signs in other languages. (2) I don't believe anyone has mentioned the fact that at least one American state banned the teaching of foreign languages in the schools between the world wars. I don't have the details, but I would like any contributions on this. [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0216] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0217. Sunday, 12 May 1991. Subj: 2.0217 Phonology and Orthography Total: 203 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Thu, 9 May 91 09:46 MST From: Mike Hammond Subject: Possible Words of a Language (2) Date: Thu, 9 May 91 12:02:06 PDT From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com Subject: Re: Phonology and Orthography (3) Date: Thu, 09 May 91 14:58:17 CDT From: GA3662%SIUCVMB.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU Subject: rule/list dichotomy (4) Date: Fri, 10 May 91 10:18 GMT From: John Coleman Subject: RE: Phonology and Orthography (5) Date: Sun, 12 May 91 11:49:22 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Letter names (6) Date: Sun, 12 May 91 17:15:54 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Data in Linguistics (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 9 May 91 09:46 MST From: Mike Hammond Subject: Possible Words of a Language Harry Bochner responds to my contention that "determining what the 'possible words' of a language are is a linguistic question and determining what the occurring words are is largely a nonlinguistic question, hinging on history, technology, etc." He maintains that he is interested in characterizing the class of "acceptable" words, not the set of "occurring" words. I think we may be agreeing here, but we may not. If by "acceptable", we mean words that the grammar accepts as well-formed, then we agree. If by "acceptable", we mean what syntacticians mean by "acceptable", as opposed to "grammatical", then we're interested in different things. I take the syntactic use of "acceptable" to refer to sentences that are parsable, though not necessarily well-formed with respect to the grammar. As a linguist, I am more interested in the words that the grammar says are well-formed, rather in the words that the parser can figure out. Harry's second point that the distinction between "rule-generated" and "completely idiosyncratic" breaks down if we allow rules to apply to only a single form is well-taken I think. I think we gotta eschew that kind of analysis. mike hammond (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 9 May 91 12:02:06 PDT From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com Subject: Re: Phonology and Orthography Richard Ogden writes: > Phonology needn't have anything at all to say about spelling. It is there > as an abstraction from the phonetics - and the spoken language should > be the prime source of enquiry, not the written one... I did not say that orthography should be a prime source of enquiry, although there is no obvious reason why it should be unimportant. After all, Ogden himself sees a