________________________________________________________________ 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 connection between spelling and phonetics. We could explore that issue further--e.g. what he thinks about the question of representing so-called allophonic variation such as aspiration and vowel nasalization in an idealized English orthography. I like to think that such questions might drive him to think more highly of a phonemic-orthographic correspondence. And, although Ogden didn't use the "I-word", I do believe that most of his objections to my position have been based solely on his intuitions about the nature of phonological theory. (Touche, Richard! :-) > 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? I agree that phonemics is not the whole of phonology and disagree that most books on phonology say as much. In fact, that would be rather strange in a linguistic milieu where phonemic theory is essentially dead. In fact, I was not aware that there was such a thing as a phonological theory that denied the existence of segments. Proponents of such a theory would indeed find the existence of alphabetic writing to be a puzzle! (Well, maybe they are not very curious folks. Who knows? :-) BTW, I would be interested to know what explanation Richard would give for his consistent misspelling of my name. As a phonemicist, I offer the following explanation: He knows enough about Polish spelling to realize that the "j" letter corresponds to the /y/ phoneme. This phonemic correspondence causes him to substitute the English "y" letter, which corresponds to the /y/ phoneme in English spelling. How would a non-segmental theory explain the phenomenon? Or would it even bother? (My name is pronounced /wojIk/ in English and /vuyCik/ in Polish.) Lesli LaRocco questions my use of the expression "prototypical alphabet" on the grounds that most alphabets are, in fact, borrowed. I was using the term "prototypical" more in the sense of so-called prototype theory, but a better term might have been "ideal alphabet". I think that most speakers would like their alphabetic writing to have that primitive correspondence. We have all met English speakers who ponder whether or not they should pronounce the "w" in "sword" or the "p" in "psychology". Discussions of spelling reform tend to bring out the ugly truth about our orthographic ideals. Such discussions only make sense in the context of an implicit phonemic theory--under the mistaken assumption that we all can agree on the ideal phonemic inventory for English. -Rick Wojcik (rwojcik@atc.boeing.com) (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 09 May 91 14:58:17 CDT From: GA3662%SIUCVMB.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU Subject: rule/list dichotomy Let me further reply to Mike Hammond in re rule vs. list. In a paper delivered at the recent phonology conference at the University of Illinois, Morris Halle argued for the non-exclusivity of rule vs. list representation. He noted that, at least for morphology, there are suffixes whose addition (and effect on words) are totally rule-governed, but that words with those suffixes must nevertheless be listed in the lexicon *with* the words. Thus, although -ian is a regular adjective-forming suffix (cf Bostonian), it must also somehow be blocked from applying to London (*Londonian). Similarly for *Shakespearic (cf existing Homeric). His suggestion was that speakers extract rules, but nonetheless store the existing forms separately. Similarly, notice that `homicide' is the *act* of killing a man, but `insecticide' is the *substance* used for killing insects. Thus, both by distribution and by semantic considerations, derivational morphology must, at least in part, be both listed in the lexicon (to account for these problems) and represented as rule-governed (to account for (partial) productivity.) Geoff Nathan Southern Illinois University at Carbondale (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 10 May 91 10:18 GMT From: John Coleman Subject: RE: Phonology and Orthography Rick Wojcik writes: > If we accept that the prototypical alphabet is in one-to-one corespondence > to phonemes... I would endorse Lesli LaRocco's remark about alphabets often being borrowed, and add that given the non-uniqueness of phonemic analyses of a language, any one-to-one correspondence between THE "prototypical alphabet" and some set of phonemes is going to be rather elusive, isn't it? --- John Coleman (5) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 12 May 91 11:49:22 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Letter names Bob Hoberman's remark about the Turkish letter name with a velar fricative (a voiced one) is interesting, but it is interesting to note that this is NOT the sound that is represented by the letter in question in so-called standard Turkish. Hence, I suspect dialect interference. More important perhaps is the point is that in the context of discussing Baudouin's theory of the phoneme, it does not make sense to dismiss certain examples as "outside the system", since he believed that all of automatic phonology was anatomically determined! (6) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 12 May 91 17:15:54 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Data in Linguistics Those who have been following the recent discussions of the history and present state of phonology may have been puzzled by the recent exchanges regarding the name of the Russian letter commonly transliterated as 'y'. In particular, by the fact that Rick Wojcik, who is an old friend of mine and knows perfectly well that I know Russian rather well, would not accept my statement about the name being 'y', until he had received independent confirmation. However, what Rick was doing was in fact exactly the right sort of thing, and I would like to commend him for this, since it is something that we do all too rarely. Unlike many other sciences, linguistics almost never bothers about reproducibility of results, and all of us know the consequences. Rather than relying on your recollection of what someone told you a year ago in the men's room at the LSA about a language they may or may not know much about (or on one's so-calle d intuitions, which is perhaps worse), we should all do as Wojcik has done, and demand independent expert testimony on every point of fact. [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0217] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0218. Sunday, 12 May 1991. Subj: 2.0218 Queries and Responses Total: 56 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Sun, 12 May 91 10:51:21 +1000 From: bert peeters Subject: Colourless green ideas / D'incolores idees vertes (2) Date: Sat, 11 May 91 23:04:57 -0400 From: Ellen Prince Subject: Re: Acronyms (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 12 May 91 10:51:21 +1000 From: bert peeters Subject: Colourless green ideas / D'incolores idees vertes Who has said what about Chomsky's example in (1) and its French equivalent in (2)? I'm trying to compile a list of references to discussions of both. Please send your reply to the list or to myself. (1) Colourless green ideas sleep furiously (2) D'incolores idees vertes dorment furieusement If anyone has the text of Dell Hymes' poem om the matter, I'd like him or her to come forward. (Or isn't there such a poem?) Bert Peeters (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 11 May 91 23:04:57 -0400 From: Ellen Prince Subject: Re: Acronyms joe giampapa writes: >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. acronyms are very well entrenched in jewish tradition. one very common example is the jewish surname 'katz', an acronym for koph-tsade 'k-ts', the first letters of 'kohen-tsadik' 'righteous priest'. the family name 'asch' is likewise an acronym, aleph-shin, for the town/name 'eisenstadt' (written in yiddish ALEPH-yod-yod-zayin-nun-SHIN-tav-aleph-tav'). max weinreich discusses many more in his 'history of the yiddish language' (univ. of chicago press, 1980). of course, this is not restricted to yiddish-origin terms. the spanish jewish philosopher maimonides (1135-1204) was known as the 'rambam', an acronym for 'rabbi moses ben maimon'. [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0218] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0219. Monday, 13 May 1991. Subj: 2.0219 Responses: Pronoun Doubling Total: 142 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Mon, 13 May 91 09:34:53 +1000 From: bert peeters Subject: Double pronouns (2) Date: Mon, 13 May 91 07:58:03 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: apparent obligatory pleonasm (3) Date: Mon, 13 May 91 14:19 MET From: Koenraad De Smedt Subject: pronoun doubling (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 May 91 09:34:53 +1000 From: bert peeters Subject: Double pronouns A phenomenon similar to the one investigated by Bernhard Hurch can be found in certain Flemish dialects (Leuven region). The following sentences are perfectly possible: Ik kan ekik da ni doen I can I that not do I cannot do that Gij zingt gij goed gij You sing you well you You sing well Wij hebbe wij niks gezien We have we nothing seen We didn't see anything There is a paper on this, published in the first half of the eighties, by Pierre Swiggers. Sorry, but I have no full reference. Maybe someone else can help? Bert Peeters (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 May 91 07:58:03 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: apparent obligatory pleonasm In Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0213. Saturday, 11 May 1991, Bernhard Hurch asks about corollaries to apparently pleonastic "doubling" of pronouns in the Gallo-Romance Dialects of Italy. Something like this, not restricted to pronouns, recurs in the historical development of at least some indigenous languages of North America. Shirley Silver's contribution to the Proceedings of the 1970 conference on Hokan languages calls this "morphemization" (Langdon and Silver, eds., _Hokan Studies_, Mouton 1976). This complicates comparative reconstruction of Hokan because morphemization of affixes often proceeds differently in related languages, resulting in "half-cognate" forms. This mandates internal reconstruction before comparison. (These are polysynthetic languages.) In partial explanation, we might consider the prevalence of "frozen expressions" in perhaps all languages. (The only reference I have handy to Maurice Gross's work on frozen expressions is his (1982) Une classification des phrases fige's du francais, _Revue Que'be'coise de linguistique_ 11.2. There is some reference to this in his 1979 On the failure of generative grammar in _Language_.) It appears that the simplex construction becomes frozen (analyzable only etymologically), whereupon language users turn to other resources to carry out the grammatical/semantic function whose original mark is thereby no longer "alive" for them. In such cases, the pleonasm is only apparent, e.g. the "original" gallo-romance subject pronoun may have lost its function, so that the second pronoun was felt to be required basically and not pleonastically. It could happen that an originally pleonastic construction expressing something like topic or focus (as in romance) becomes instead a marker of sociolinguistic differentiation and thence frozen. The development of frozen expressions provides an interesting perspective on historical processes. In an article in Romance Philology whose citation escapes me now, Gross mentions close word-for-word parallels of the expression rendered in English "take the bull by the horns" in a number of Indo-European languages (nine if I remember rightly). Images of ancient Indo-European cowboys wrestling steers? Reference to some oath-taking ceremony diffused with the spread of Mithraism? Are there others who have looked into the development from stylistically optional if unimaginative cliche' to obligatory frozen expression? Bruce Nevin BBN Communications 150 CambridgePark Drive Cambridge, MA 02140 bn@bbn.com (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 May 91 14:19 MET From: Koenraad De Smedt Subject: pronoun doubling In response to Bernhard Hurch's query: %% 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 %% ... %% Does anyone know of parallel examples to the obligatory "double" %% construction from other languages ...? Yes, in my own dialect of Dutch (Antwerpen), there is a similar double pronoun construction, e.g. "He de gij da gezien?" = Have you seen that? (Have you you that seen?) The unaccented prounoun is "de" (related to German "du" I suppose), the accented pronoun is "gij". In contrast to what is claimed about piedmontese, it is possible to omit the accented pronoun here, i.e. "He de da gezien?" = Have you seen that? but it is equally important to note that the double form is not neccesarily emphasized or focussed. However, in main clauses, doubling seems to occur only in clauses with Subject-Verb inversion, such as questions and modifier-initiated sentences (Dutch main clauses are verb-second). In any case, when the subject pronoun is the initial element, only the accented pronoun is possible: "Gij he da gezien." = You have seen that *"De gij he da gezien." This seems different from piedmontese. So what's your theory, Bernhard? Koenraad de Smedt NICI [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0219] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0220. Monday, 13 May 1991. Subj: 2.0220 Queries Total: 155 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Sun, 12 May 91 23:41:42 -0700 From: Bill Poser Subject: "stable" words (2) Date: Mon, 13 May 1991 20:23:09 +0800 From: Bill Eldridge Subject: Re: Barcelona (3) Date: Mon, 13 May 91 16:38:53 IST From: David Gil Subject: Cross-linguistic Quantification (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 12 May 91 23:41:42 -0700 From: Bill Poser Subject: "stable" words I notice that in the discussion a little while back (I've been way behind on reading this list, I'm afraid) there was yet another reference to work by Aharon Dolgopolsky that is supposed to establish the extreme rarity of borrowing of so-called "stable" words. I have been unable to find any actual publication of such data, and therefore enquire whether anyone can provide a reference to such work. The only paper that I have seen cited (not on this list) is the paper published in English translation as: "A probabilistic hypothesis concerning the oldest relationships among the language families in Northern Eurasia," in Vitaly Shevoroshkin and Thomas Markey (eds.) _Typology, Relationship, and Time_. Ann Arbor: Karoma. pp. 27-50. (1986). The original publication is: "Gipoteza drevnejshego rodstva jazykovyx semej Severnoj Eurazii s verojatnostnoj tochki zvenija," Voprosy jazykoznanija 2.53-63. (1964) (The English translation omits the table of Nostratic correspondences.) As one might guess from the title of the paper, the bulk of it is devoted to Nostratic. Only a small portion of the paper is devoted to methodological preliminaries. That is the part that deals with the rarity of borrowing of "stable" words. The entire treatment of stability is to be found on pp. 32-35 of the English version, pp. 55-56 of the Russian original. This alone should make it clear that this article contains no demonstration of stability - there simply isn't room for it. In point of fact, all there is is a list of how many languages from which language family Dolgopolsky looked at and a summary of his results. The languages do not constitute a truly global sample but are pretty much restricted to Eurasia. They do not include any from the Americas, Australia, New Guinea, Africa (except for Afroasiatic), or East or Southeast Asia (except for Tungusic). The data are not listed, nor is there any discussion of the particular cases, that is, how D. decided that a particular pair was cognate or that a word was a loan. There is no reference to another publication containing these necessary details. In other words, this paper does NOT provide the evidence of resistance of "stable" words to borrowing that it has been claimed to provide. It contains nothing but an abstract. So I ask, is there a REAL study of borrowing available somewhere? Bill Poser (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 May 1991 20:23:09 +0800 From: Bill Eldridge Subject: Re: Queries I'm moving to Barcelona at the end of May, and I'm interested in finding groups working on cognition/language processing concepts (both academic and industry). I have a Master's in Computer Science and bachelor's degrees in Electrical Engineering and Spanish Literature. My current focus is on the development of hybrid systems - expert systems mixed with neural networks, but I'm interested in other topics as well. I have a CV on line that I can send to any interested parties. Thanks, Bill Eldridge ext28@cspgcs11.bitnet Inst. of Computer Science Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 May 91 16:38:53 IST From: David Gil Subject: Cross-linguistic Quantification I am interested in quantification from a cross-linguistic perspective; specifically, in the ways various notions pertaining to quantification are expressed in the lexicon, morphology, and syntax of typologically diverse languages. I have a number of questions which are addressed to linguists familiar with lesser-known and lesser-studied languages. Any information--first-hand or bibliographical--on the following topics, however partial or tentative, would be greatly appreciated: Is anybody familiar with a language ... (1) In which the word for "all" enters into two constructions with its head noun: (a) a singular construction, with distributive meaning, and (b) a plural construction, unmarked for distributivity? (Eg. Spanish "todo hombre" vs. "todos los hombres", also Hebrew.) (2) In which the words for "all" and "every" are morphologically related? (Eg. Russian "vsjakij" ("every") apparently derived from "vse" ("all"), though the relationship is probably diachronic rather than synchronic.) (3) In which there are two distinct words resembling English "every" and "each"? (Eg. Italian "ogni" and "ciascuno", Russian "vsjakij" and "kazhdij".) (4) In which a single word, corresponding to English "any", is ambiguous between the following two interpretations: (a) "free choice", as in "Any person can do that"; and (b) "negative polarity", as in "John didn't eat any apple/s". (5) In which there are two distinct words resembling English "two" and "both"? If there are, does this distinction extend to other numerals? (6) In which there are collective numerals? My address: SNAILMAIL Department of English University of Haifa Haifa, 31999, Israel EMAIL rhle813@haifauvm.bitnet Thank you very much. [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0220] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0221. Monday, 13 May 1991. Subj: 2.0221 Responses: Children's Language Games, Green Ideas Total: 105 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Mon, 13 May 1991 00:50 EST From: "Hi, 'lo" Subject: Re: Children's Language Games (2) Date: Mon, 13 May 91 05:47 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: Children's Language Games (3) Date: Mon, 13 May 91 09:58:17 +0100 From: Arnfinn Muruvik Vonen Subject: Re: Colorless Green (4) Date: Mon, 13 May 91 10:23:10 EMT From: Helge Dyvik Subject: Colourless green ideas (5) Date: Mon, 13 May 91 10:37:59 EDT From: rapaport@cs.Buffalo.EDU (William J. Rapaport) Subject: Colorless green ideas (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 May 1991 00:50 EST From: "Hi, 'lo" Subject: Re: Children's Language Games Regarding children's language games, Moira Yip (Brandeis) did at least one paper on them, presented at NELS about 10 years ago. Susan Fischer (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 May 91 05:47 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: Children's Language Games Re Children's Language Games. There is a mimeographed book witch a compila- tion of such games from all over which was put out about 25 years ago. I have it somewhere and when I can get to my books which are in storage since the linguistic dept at ucla is being remodelled I will send it on. Also I think you might write to Joel Sherzer at U of Texas, Austin -- his article on the Cuna INdian language game does, if my memory holds, include a number of references. VAF (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 May 91 09:58:17 +0100 From: Arnfinn Muruvik Vonen Subject: Re: Colorless Green Bert Peeters writes: > Who has said what about Chomsky's example in (1) and its French equivalent in > (2)? I'm trying to compile a list of references to discussions of both. Please > send your reply to the list or to myself. > > (1) Colourless green ideas sleep furiously > (2) D'incolores idees vertes dorment furieusement Ali Aydin (University of Trondheim) has written a squib called "A Far-Fetched Context" in "SKY 1990" (The 1990 Yearbook of the Linguistic Association of Finland, Helsinki 1990), constructing just that, a far-fetched context in which (1) "might" be uttered. Arnfinn M. Vonen. (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 May 91 10:23:10 EMT From: Helge Dyvik Subject: Colourless green ideas For Bert Peeters' collection of allusions to "colourless green ideas", here is a little poem by John Hollander (from THE NIGHT MIRROR, 1971), reprinted from G. Harman (ed.): On Noam Chomsky: Critical Essays, Anchor Books, New York 1974, p. 1: Coiled Alizarine for Noam Chomsky Curiously deep, the slumber of crimson thoughts: While breathless, in stodgy viridian, Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. H. Dyvik (5) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 May 91 10:37:59 EDT From: rapaport@cs.Buffalo.EDU (William J. Rapaport) Subject: Colorless green ideas Hymes's poem was published in the G. Harman anthology on Chomsky published by Doubleday Anchor; I don't have the reference with me. There's also a poem containing the line, "furiously sleep ideas green colorless", which I can dig up if anyone's interested. William J. Rapaport Associate Professor of Computer Science Center for Cognitive Science [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0221] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0222. Monday, 13 May 1991. Subj: 2.0222 More Tongue Twisters Total: 65 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Mon, 13 May 1991 11:19:36 +0200 From: Dominique Estival Subject: French Tongue Twisters (2) Date: Mon, 13 May 1991 20:23:39 +0800 From: Bill Eldridge Subject: Czech Tongue Twisters (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 May 1991 11:19:36 +0200 From: Dominique Estival Subject: French Tongue Twisters Here are a few : (1) Un chasseur sachant chasser doit savoir chasser sans son chien. (a hunter who knows how to hunt must know how to hunt without his dog) (2) Si six scies scient six cypres, six cent scies scient six cent six cypres. (if six saws saw six cypress trees, six hundred and six saws saw six hundred and six cypress trees) (3) Les chaussettes de l'archi-duchesse sont-elles seches, archi-seches? (are the archi-duchess' socks dry, extra-dry?) (4) Tonton, ton the t'a-t-i(l) ote ta toux? (uncle, has your tea stopped your coughing?) (5) Ta tante t'attend dans ta tente. (your aunt is witing for you in your tent) (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 May 1991 20:23:39 +0800 From: Bill Eldridge Subject: Czech Tongue Twisters Here's a Czech tongue twister: "Tristatricettri stribrnych strikacek strikalo pres tristatricettri stribrnych strech." This translates as: "Three hundred and thirty three silver firehoses sprayed over three hundred and thirty three silver roofs." Unfortunately I can't print the "r with carat" mark, because all the r's in this sentence (except the second r in "stribrnych") are this second kind of r pronounced more like "rdz". The c is pronounced "ts" and the ch is pronounced like in the Scottish "loch". There is another cute one: "Marenko, rekni "r"|" -- "Nereknu, ty by se me rechtala|" which means: "Marenko, say "r" (with carat)" -- "I won't say it, you'll laugh at me|" This sound is very hard for children to say, but Marenka uses it twice in saying she won't say it. There are many words that children do avoid so as not to say this letter, and apparently even Vaclav Havel doesn't pronounce it quite correctly. Bill Eldridge Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0222] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0223. Monday, 13 May 1991. Subj: 2.0223 Phonology and Orthography Total: 71 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Sun, 12 May 91 19:41:03 CDT From: John Goldsmith Subject: Re: phonology of letter names (2) Date: Mon, 13 May 91 15:20 GMT From: John Coleman Subject: Phonology and Orthography (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 12 May 91 19:41:03 CDT From: John Goldsmith Subject: Re: phonology of letter names In many dialects of Spanish (e.g., in Latin America), there is no [lambda], except in the name of the letter spelled "ll", called [elye], so to speak (it's hard to phrase this within the constraints of email). John Goldsmith (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 May 91 15:20 GMT From: John Coleman Subject: Phonology and Orthography Since Richard Ogden's criticisms of R. Wojcik's remarks about phonology and spelling arise from a phonological perspective which I share, perhaps I can respond to what I think are a number of misunderstandings by Wojcik of Ogden's statements. To begin with, Wojcik says > Ogden himself sees a connection between spelling and phonetics. I am fairly certain that this is a misreading of Ogden's remark that > Phonology needn't have anything at all to say about spelling. It is there > as an abstraction from the phonetics ^^ I take Ogden to mean that *phonology* is an abstraction from phonetics, and that there is no obvious place for spelling in this. > I like to think that such questions might > drive him to think more highly of a phonemic-orthographic correspondence. Ogden doesn't deny the relationship between phonemic theory and alphabetic orthography. What he questions is whether phonemic theory has anything to do with natural language phonology. In fact Ogden did say: > 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 Wojcik's admission that > In fact, I was not aware that there was such a thing as a phonological > theory that denied the existence of segments simply betrays a profound ignorance of phonological theory. > Proponents of such a theory would indeed find the > existence of alphabetic writing to be a puzzle! (Well, maybe they are not very > curious folks. Who knows? :-) Not at all. Alphabetic writing is a historical development from mora-based semitic syllabaries, in which vowel distinctions were written concatenatively. It is worth pointing out here that the extensive spread of alphabetic writing in subsequent millenia owes more to nonlinguistic factors such as religious and political considerations than to any linguistic motivation. Indeed in light of the origins of phonemic theory in spelling reform, I would question whether alphabetic orthographies are usually very phonemic anyway? --- John Coleman [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0223] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0224. Wednesday, 15 May 1991. Subj: 2.0224 Language and Law Total: 201 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Mon, 13 May 91 02:49:02 PDT From: enric%mizar.usc.edu@usc.edu (Enric Vallduvi) Subject: catalonia like quebec? (2) Date: Mon, 13 May 91 10:40:00 EDT From: William_Baxter@um.cc.umich.edu Subject: Approved names (3) Date: Mon, 13 May 1991 11:57:58 PDT From: Geoffrey Nunberg Subject: US English-only measures (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 May 91 02:49:02 PDT From: enric%mizar.usc.edu@usc.edu (Enric Vallduvi) Subject: catalonia like quebec? On Thu, 09 May 91 13:17:29 EDT FANSHEN@ccvm.sunysb.edu writes on the subject Re: Language and Culture (Part 1): >A couple of more random comments on Eldridge's message. [...] 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. I haven't followed this thread with enough zeal to know if the situation in Catalonia is parallel to the Quebec case. I think, though, that there are some important differences. I'll describe the situation in Catalonia and I'll let readers decide for themselves. With this message I don't intend to take a stance in the Quebec issue, just inform readers about a putatively equatable case. In Catalonia there's no sign law. Strolling around in Barcelona anyone can see fifty times more ads and signs in Spanish than in Catalan. What you have is (a) some discount in your local tax for your business in some towns if your store signs are in Catalan, and (b) competitive loans through the government to redo all your signs and labeling if you do it in Catalan (plus free linguistic consulting). There are also *special* funds (i.e. there are regular funds that are blind to language) from the Catalan government to promote publishing, movie-making, song-writing, and other stuff in Catalan. As far as schooling goes, the only thing the law requires is that all kids be taught some Catalan (except for those that can show they are in Catalonia only temporarily). This results in a range that goes from schools where everything is taught in Spanish except for a few weekly hours of Catalan to schools where everything is taught in Catalan except for a few weekly hours of Spanish. Most schools fall somewhere in between. You can send your kid to any school you like. Immersion is put into practice in some schools with parental consent. There's no law regulating the use of any language in the university. Finally, all teachers working in Catalonia and the employees of the Catalan government must show they have at least a passive knowledge of Catalan (in the case of teachers they have a couple years after they start working to show they've acquired that knowledge). Other employers might require knowledge of Catalan at their discretion. Having an official language seems like an oddity in the U.S. but it is commonplace in Europe. Catalonia, Spain, and the EEC all have official languages. Catalonia has two official languages: Catalan and Spanish. According to the Spanish constitution, though, Spain's Catalans have a *right* to know Catalan, but the *duty* to know Spanish (France's Catalans may have other duties, I guess...). (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 May 91 10:40:00 EDT From: William_Baxter@um.cc.umich.edu Subject: Approved names There are evidently restrictions in Taiwan on what personal names can be given, or at least officially registered. I was told that there was recently a case mentioned in the Taiwan press where a boy's parents wanted to name him "Zhu1shi3" ("pig shit")--in order to fool evil spirits into leaving him alone--but that the government refused to allow it. I also heard of a case in the late '40s when the Kuomintang government refused to allow registration of a name which, when read in Japanese, was a common Japanese name also. It is possible that some Taiwanese under the Japanese occupation found it convenient to choose personal names which sounded appropriate in both Chinese and Japanese. Perhaps someone more familiar with the situation can fill in more details. (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 May 1991 11:57:58 PDT From: Geoffrey Nunberg Subject: US English-only measures Frank Anshen and Charles Hoequist have made a number of sound observations about the history and current status of English-only laws in this country. A couple of elaborations may help. 1. By-the-by: Franklin's remark about the difficulty of making a living as an English-language printer in Philadelphia was made after a German-language printer established himself in that city in 1750, and deprived Franklin of a lot of the German custom that he had hitherto enjoyed. It was around that time that Franklin's views about the use of German began to change, and that he made his famous remarks about the "Palatine Boors" who were "swarming into our settlements [and establishing] their manners and customs at the expense of ours." 2. Charles Hoequist is right when he observes that there were laws in a number of states in the period between the wars that limited instruction in languages other than English. At a best estimate, such laws were passed in more than 30 states. The most famous of these was the Nebraska law of 1919, which banned the teaching of languages other than English in all schools, public and private, until the ninth grade. (That same year, the Nebraska legislature made an attempt to abolish private schooling entirely, a policy that was briefly adopted in Oregon at around the same time.) The law was upheld by the state supreme court, which warned against the "baneful effects" of educating children in foreign languages, which must "naturally inculcate in them the ideas and sentiments foreign to the best interests of their country." The law was overturned in 1923 by the Meyer v Nebraska decision of the Supreme Court, but on the basis of Fourteenth Amendment protections, which were held to extend to the right (eg., of foreign-language teachers) to earn a living and of parents to determine the education of their children. (At the time, the decision was regarded as bearing more directly on religious freedom, since many of these state laws were aimed at foreign-langauge religious instruction.) That decision did not question the reasonableness of the goals of the law; it maintained only that "a desirable end cannot be promoted by prohibited means." Justice Holmes dissented, by the way, arguing that the English-only law "is not an undue restriction on the liberty of either teacher of scholar." The First Amendment was not raised in the debate over the law. 3. This takes us to the present state of affairs. The Arizona English-only initiative passed in 1988 was unusually specific; it stipulated that "The state... shall act in English and no other language," with exceptions only for certain educational purposes, to protect health and safety, and in situations where the use of another language is required by Federal law. A challenge was brought by Maria Kelly-Yniguez, an insurance claims manager for the state, and by Jaime Guiterrez, a state senator from Tuscon, on the grounds that it infringed their first-Amendemnet rights to use Spanish in talking to clients and constituents. The state attorney general issued an opinion saying that the law did not prohibit the use of a language other than eng to facilitate the delivery of government service. But on February 2, 1990, U.S. District Judge Paul G. Rosenblatt struck down the amendment on the grounds that its wording was "unnecessarily broad" for the purposes for which it was intended. He thus did not rule directly on the question of whether a more restrictively worded amendment would have violated free-speech guarantees. Nor is it likely that his decision would have a bearing on the constitutionality of measures in other states, which are generally much more vaguely worded. The California amendment, for example, merely declares English the official language and requires the legislature and public officials to take such steps as are necessary to "ensure that the status of English as the common languageIis preserved and enhanced." Another relevant decision is in Asian-American Business Group v City of Pomona, where the Central District Court of California ruled that a Pomona English-only signage ordinance violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments, saying that it not only prohibited but coerced speech. The court noted also that the rule had been selectively enforced, since it was applied only to signs written in non-Latin characters (eg. on Asian businesses); French restaurants had not been required to change "Chez Pierre" to "Pete's Place." As for workplace laws, however, the courts have generally, but unsystematically, adhered to EEOC guidelines that permit restrictions on hiring and language use only when a case of business neccessity can be made. There have been no rulings that bear on the Constitutional status of such laws. Finally, it is worth noting that English-only laws may affect not only free-speech rights, but also the right to petition for redress of grievances, and the right of due process. It is my impression, however, that legal opponents of English-only measures are not particularly sanguine that the current Supreme Court would rule in their favor, and that they are being careful about when and how they bring test cases. As for the practical effects of such measures: it is true that nobody is being thrown in jail for speaking a foreign language (though I would not be so sure that no one has been fined, say for posting a foreign-language business sign in Pomona, Lowell MA, or Monterey Park CA). At worst, a few employees have been fired for using languages other than English on the job, some junior high school students in Dade County have been subjected to the humiliation of regulations that prohibited speaking Spanish in the halls, people who have called in to state agencies requesting help in other languages have been rudely hung up on, and so forth. And of course the measures have encouraged states and adminsitrators to neglect bilingual education programs; California Governor Deukmajian cited the state's English-only law in vetoing a reauthorization of the bilingual education bill in 1988. Still, most of the effects have been primarily symbolic. But if US official-language measures are less draconian than analogous laws passed in Canada, their symbolic effects may be more invidious, since they are directed at culturally and economically disadvantaged minorities, not at the language of an established majority culture. As Siobhan Nicolau and Rafael Valdivieso put it, the English-only movement seems to be saying to Hispanics: "We don't trust you -- we don't like you -- we don't think you can fit in -- you are too different -- and there seem to be far too many of you." It seems to me that this is not a cause for self-congratulation about American solicitude about the civil rights of language minorities. [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0224] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0225. Wednesday, 15 May 1991 Subj: 2.0225 Phonology and Orthography Total: 125 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Mon, 13 May 91 12:17 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: Phonology and Orthography (2) Date: Mon, 13 May 91 14:48:07 PDT From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com Subject: Re: Phonology and Orthography (3) Date: Mon, 13 May 91 18:50:08 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Letter names (4) Date: 13 May 91 19:33 +0800 From: Hurch Subject: re: Phonology and Orthography re: Coleman (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 May 91 12:17 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: Phonology and Orthography to Bochner etal. Interesting that -ity and -tion show up in morphological speech errors quite a lot. In fact, ridiculosity actually was produced. Don't know how you want to treat that re productivity and I do not refer to it as evidence for what is the correct phonological theory -- but if there is other evidence that is strong, I would think such errors provide some additional evidence re the productivity of rules (which are because of such errors actually used in performance). VAF (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 May 91 14:48:07 PDT From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com Subject: Re: Phonology and Orthography John Coleman has criticized my interpretation of Richard Ogden's remarks, and he may well have a point. I'll wait for Richard's comments before trying to defend (or retract) my interpretation. John also charged me with "profound ignorance" of phonological theory on the grounds that I claimed lack of awareness of any theory that denied the existence of segments (of phonetic or phonemic flavor). Well, I meant no offense to anyone. It may be true that some phonologists believe they can get away without segments. I sense that I will have made progress with John if he someday accuses me of having only a shallow level of ignorance. ;-) So, John, please clarify your following remark: > Alphabetic writing is a historical development from mora-based > semitic syllabaries, in which vowel distinctions were written > concatenatively... This term "vowel", is that a technical term or what? -Rick (rwojcik@atc.boeing.com) (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 May 91 18:50:08 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Letter names It is true that some letter names in some languages contain unique phonemes (or perhaps unique phoneme combinations). Hoberman cites a voiced velar fricative in the speech of a Turkish speaker and Goldsmith cites an example from some Latin American varieties of Spanish. I can add to this initial velar nasals in many Indo-Aryan languages. Of course, the whole thing started when I pointed out that Russian has an initial high nonfront unrounded vowel (conventionally written 'y') in the name of the letter 'y', though I did not say that that was the ONLY such item (and indeed Wojcik has cited some others, though the clearest examples are borrowings). But there is a crucial point here, which Hoberman has made explicit but which I suspect many more of you out there accept, namely, that THEREFORE letter names should not be counted as evidence for phonological contrasts in a language. But this I think would be wrong and indeed illogical. In order to have a case for treating letter name phonology as a separate system, you would at the very least want also to show that instances of phonemes appearing in just one word are restricted to such putatives separate systems. Otherwise, there is no noncircular way of distinguishing letter name phonology from "normal" phonology. And, as a matter of fact, there are plenty of cases of unique phonemes or phoneme combinations in "normal" phonology. The classic example is perhaps the velarized l in the Standard Arabic name of God 'Allah' (or on my analysis a distinctively velarized /a/). Another example is the palatovelar in the Polish verb meaning 'to bend' (spelled giac, with a cedilla on the 'a' and an acute on the 'c'). (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 13 May 91 19:33 +0800 From: Hurch Subject: re: Phonology and Orthography re: Coleman Let me add in defense of Rick Wojcik's prototypical alphabet the historical examples of the adaption of the Greek alphabet for Latin (and old Latin was written with Greeik letters); there is much of phonemic analysis in what for quite some time has been considered erroneous. Another (a little bit more) recent example can be found by the adaption of the Latin alphabet through the mostly anonymous "writers" and translators in the European middle ages. The most "well known" is the anonymous Icelander, translated various times (the most remarkable one probably by Haugen 1972). This anonymous writer explicitly argues for the elimination of the notc necessary consonants like X, Z, Y, K and Q, for the introduction of new symbols, like for the front round vowels (high and mid), for the orthographic marking of quantity (majuscules for long segments), the use of diacritics, etc. The whole Latin alphabet was adapted (not only adopted) to the phonemics of Old/Middle Icelandic. And the phonemic analysis was taken out quite detailed, even for "modern" standards. Bernhard Hurch (hurch@mvax2.urz.uni-wuppertal.dbp.de) [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0225] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0226. Wednesday, 15 May 1991 Subj: 2.0226 Queries Total: 200 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Mon, 13 May 1991 16:13:49 PDT From: Diane_L._Olsen.osbu_north@xerox.com Subject: IPA Reference Query (2) Date: Tue, 14 May 91 12:18:53 BST From: Margaret Fleck Subject: Phonology and Orthography (3) Date: Tue, 14 May 91 11:22 CDT From: Subject: summer schools (4) Date: Tue, 14 May 91 16:29 MET From: Koenraad De Smedt Subject: reference to John A. Hawkins (5) Date: Wed, 15 May 1991 14:36:54 GMT+0800 From: A_DENCH@FENNEL.CC.UWA.OZ.AU Subject: Teo Chew Tone Sandhi (6) Date: Tuesday, May 14 1991 From: Peter Gingiss Subject: Houston and words like it (7) Date: Wed, 15 May 91 13:50:46 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: V-3 (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 May 1991 16:13:49 PDT From: Diane_L._Olsen.osbu_north@xerox.com Subject: IPA Reference Query I would like to purchase a copy of the latest edition of "Principles of the International Phonetics Association." Can someone give me the relevant bibliographic information? Is 1967 the latest edition? I have been told that there may be a 1989 or 1990 version. Also, where can I purchase back issues of the Journal of the International Phonetics Association? Many thanks, Diane L. Olsen Multilingual Development Xerox Corporation dolsen.osbu_north@xerox.com (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 14 May 91 12:18:53 BST From: Margaret Fleck Subject: Phonology and Orthography ... Alphabetic writing is a historical development from mora-based semitic syllabaries, in which vowel distinctions were written concatenatively. It is worth pointing out here that the extensive spread of alphabetic writing in subsequent millenia owes more to nonlinguistic factors such as religious and political considerations than to any linguistic motivation. -- John Coleman I can see how you might make a case that syllabaries came earlier than alphabets and probably not just in the Mediterranean basin. However, there are several aspects of your specific claim that I don't understand: -- Exactly which syllabaries and descendent alphabets are you referring to? -- On what basis do you believe them to be mora-based? It has been an awfully long time since I last looked at Akkadian (the only semitic syllabary that comes immediately to mind), but I thought that spellings such as bat and ba-at were in free variation. Or, at least, that no firm connection with vowel length had been established. Is this a new development? -- Why do you believe that greatly reducing the number of characters to learn (by a factor of 10 or so) and easier extension to new languages (fewer new characters to be improvised) played little or no role in the spread of alphabets? Margaret Fleck (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 14 May 91 11:22 CDT From: Subject: summer schools Information about summer schools would also be welcome, as well as about field schools. e.g., SIL and other such summer programs. We are expecially interested in knowing about undergraduate-level programs. Thanks. (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 14 May 91 16:29 MET From: Koenraad De Smedt Subject: reference to John A. Hawkins Can anybody give me a reference to published work by John A. Hawkins (USC) on syntactic weight versus information structure in word order variation? Koenraad de Smedt (5) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 15 May 1991 14:36:54 GMT+0800 From: A_DENCH@FENNEL.CC.UWA.OZ.AU Subject: Teo Chew Tone Sandhi Teo Chew Tone Sandhi I have an Honours undergraduate student investigating tone sandhi in her own dialect of Teo Chew (Chao-Chou, etc.), a near relative of Hokkien. As a first step we need some basic description of the tones and where to find them. Apart from a few somewhat less than edifying primers, we have tracked down the following dissertation references which may (or may not) be worth looking at. While I collected these references from the University of California catalogue I am loathe to shell out the cash having them shipped in microfilm to the wilds of Western Australia (we might be the centre of the email universe, but sadly not smail) unless critically valuable. Lin, Jocelyn Su-Fung Tone sandhi in the Chinese dialects April 1988 Shih, Chi-Lin The prosodic domain of tone sandhi in Chinese September 1986 Lien, Chinfa Coexistent tone systems in Chinese dialects March 1988 Hung, Tony T.N. Syntactic and semantic aspects of Chines tone sandhi October 1988 Wright, Martha A metrical approach to tone sandhi in Chinese dialects 1983 (U.Mass.) If anyone out there knows any of the authors and how I can best contact them for the relevant pages (in hard copy or electronic form) I would be most grateful for your assistance. And of course any other info on Teo Chew (like how many contrasting tones am I supposed to be hearing - we seem to be staring down the barrel of 8 contrasting tones) would be welcome too. Thanks, Alan Dench A_DENCH@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au Department of Anthropology (but we're really linguists) University of Western Australia Nedlands, WA 6009 (6) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tuesday, May 14 1991 From: Peter Gingiss Subject: Houston and words like it I am interested in the pronunciaton of words like "huge" and "humid." I plan to get down to serious research this summer. In "Youston," Texas there are a few natives who pronounce these words with just the /y/(at least some of the time), but I have yet to discern a pattern. Seems to be around 10% or so. I know that in the East, one hears these words with just the /y/ sometimes. I would appreciate folks keeping their ears open, and giving me their impressions. (7) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 15 May 91 13:50:46 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: V-3 I would be interested in any discussion, examples, or references on the subject of V-3 constructions. Peter Hook and I have written on V-3 in Kashmiri, and I just encountered a kind of V-3 in Dutch during a recent trip there that I had not noticed before, e.g. Al is de leugen nog zo snel, de waarheid achterhaalt haar wel. Although is the lie still so fast, the truth overtakes her indeed. 'No matter how fast the lie, the truth catches up with it' While this is some kind of proverb, I encountered several normal examples in the newspapers. [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0226] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0227. Wednesday, 15 May 1991. Subj: 2.0227 Tongue Twisters Total: 167 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Mon, 13 May 91 10:05:34 -1000 From: David Stampe Subject: Tongue Twisters (2) Date: Tue, 14 May 91 11:45:38 +1000 From: bert peeters Subject: French tongue twisters (3) Date: Tue, 14 May 91 14:11:00 WST From: harrison@bilby.cs.uwa.oz.au (Sheldon Harrison) Subject: Gilbertese tongue twisters (4) Date: Tue, 14 May 91 07:55 EST From: Herb Stahlke <00HFSTAHLKE%BSUVAX1.BITNET@UICVM.uic.edu> Subject: RE: Yoruba Tongue Twisters (5) Date: Tue, 14 May 1991 12:57 EST From: GODDEN%RCSMPB@gmr.com Subject: German tongue-twisters (6) Date: Tue, 14 May 91 10:14:34 PDT From: ctlntt@violet.berkeley.edu Subject: Re: Portuguese Tongue Twisters (7) Date: 14 May 91 11:16 EST From: pchapin@nsf.gov Subject: French Tongue Twisters (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 May 91 10:05:34 -1000 From: David Stampe Subject: Tongue Twisters The state of the art paper is still Larry Schourup's "Unique New York Unique New York Unique New York", CLS 9.587-596 (1973, ed. C. Corum et al.), complete with typological sampler (even the Hari Krishna mantra!), bibliography, and a prosodic/phonological theory of tongue twisters almost general enough to predict the torque implicit in *any* utterance. David Stampe , Dept. of Linguistics, Univ. of Hawaii/Manoa, Honolulu HI 96822 (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 14 May 91 11:45:38 +1000 From: bert peeters Subject: French tongue twisters Here is a variant of Dominique Estival's first tongue-twister: Un chasseur sachant chasser sans son chien de chasse est un bon chasseur (a hunter who knows how to hunt without his hunting dog is a good hunter) In Dominique's second tongue twister, one word was inadvertently left out. It should read as follows: Si six scies scient six cypres, six cent six scies scient six cent six cypres (If 6 saws saw 6 cypress treesd, 606 saws saw 606 cypress trees) Bert Peeters (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 14 May 91 14:11:00 WST From: harrison@bilby.cs.uwa.oz.au (Sheldon Harrison) Subject: Gilbertese tongue twisters A Gilbertese tongue twister first reported by an oceanographer names Gordon Groves a number of years ago: Iai aia aia aiaia iaaia. 'Their enemies have their firewood under them.' morpheme-by-morpheme gloss can be supplied on request. shelly harrison university of western australia (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 14 May 91 07:55 EST From: Herb Stahlke <00HFSTAHLKE%BSUVAX1.BITNET@UICVM.uic.edu> Subject: RE: Yoruba Tongue Twisters There's a Yoruba tongue-twister that I know only the first clause of. In ASCII notation I'm using the following symbols: O open o kp coarticulated labio-velar stop with light velar suction V` low-tone vowel V mid-tone vowel V' high-tone vowel O`kpO`lO'O`kpO` O`kpO`lO' ko` l O`kpO`lO'O`kpO` OkpOlO Many toads neg have many brains "Many toads do not have many brains." Maybe someone can finish this one for me. Herb Stahlke (5) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 14 May 1991 12:57 EST From: GODDEN%RCSMPB@gmr.com Subject: German tongue-twisters An expansion of the previously posted German tongue twister is: Fischers Fritze fischte frische Fische in der Fruehe. Here are some others: Ein Student mit Stulpenstiefeln stolperte ueber einen spitzen Stein. A student with topboots stumbled over a pointed stone. In Ulm, um Ulm und um Ulm herum. In Ulm (a city), around Ulm, and all around Ulm. (loose translation) My favorite: Ob er ueber Oberammergau oder aber ueber Unterammergau oder aber Whether he via Oberamm. or however via Unteramm. or however ueber Oberhalb kommt, ist ungewiB. via Oberh. is coming, (now you can breathe) is not known. -Kurt Godden (6) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 14 May 91 10:14:34 PDT From: ctlntt@violet.berkeley.edu Subject: Re: Portuguese Tongue Twisters >From Portuguese: O tempo perguntou ao tempo quanto tempo o tempo tem; e o tempo respondeu ao tempo que o tempo tem tanto tempo quanto tempo o tempo tem. Time asked Time how much time Time has; and Time replied to Time that Time has as much time as Time has time. Works best with final voiceless vowels in [te'mpu]. Milton Azevedo UC Berkeley PS - By the way, is there anyone out there working with Portuguese or Catalan? (7) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 14 May 91 11:16 EST From: pchapin@nsf.gov Subject: French Tongue Twisters My wife (almost) remembers this one from her days studying French: Cinq capucins portaient sur la Seine le sang du Saint-P`ere. 'Five monks carried on the Seine the blood of the Pope.' When I say "almost", I mean that she's not certain that the ending was not, rather, le sang de son p`ere, 'the blood of his father'. But the first choice above seems more coherent. Paul Chapin [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0227] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0228. Wednesday, 15 May 1991. Subj: 2.0228 Job Total: 63 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Wed, 15 May 91 09:44:20 BST From: Paul Warren Subject: Experimental Psycholinguist / Computational Linguist (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 15 May 91 09:44:20 BST From: Paul Warren Subject: Experimental Psycholinguist / Computational Linguist please bring this to the attention of any potential applicants, etc. --------------------------------------------------------------------- University of Cambridge Department of Linguistics / Computer Laboratory Experimental Psycholinguist / Computational Linguist Applications are invited for two Research Assistant positions on a Joint Research Council Cognitive Science / HCI Initiative project to be housed in the Department of Linguistics and directed by Dr. P. Warren and Dr. F.J. Nolan of that department and Dr. E.J. Briscoe of the Computer Laboratory. The project, entitled "Post-lexical and Prosodic Phonological Processing", will commence on 1st October 1991 and has a duration of 3 years. The proposed research will investigate the regularity of post- lexical phonological processes and their function in human speech comprehension, integrating work on 1) the phonetic realisation of such processes in fluent speech, 2) the recognition and representation of information associated with these processes and 3) its integration with syntactic and interpretative aspects of comprehension. The aim is, firstly, to understand which phonetic phenomena are recognised during phonological processing and how the information extracted is represented and integrated with other aspects of processing, and secondly, to develop a computational model of such processing, testing it using experimental phonetic and psycholinguistic techniques. Applicants should be computer literate and have research experience in one or more of the following areas: experimental phonetics, experimental psycholinguistics, computational linguistics. The appointment will be made on the Research Grade 1 scale (#11399 - #16755 depending on age and qualifications). Please send applications, including curriculum vitae and the names and addresses of three referees, to Dr Paul Warren, Department of Linguistics, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge CB3 9DA (tel. 0223 335004 / 335026) or via e-mail to pw25@uk.ac.cam.phx. Further details are available from the same address. Applications should be received by June 15th 1991. [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0228] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0229. Thursday, 16 May 1991 Subj: 2.0229 Pronoun Doubling Total: 147 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Tue, 14 May 91 12:09:24 +1000 From: bert peeters Subject: Pronoun doubling in Dutch dialects (2) Date: Tue, 14 May 1991 15:31:05 GMT From: MCCONVELL_P@DARWIN.NTU.EDU.AU Subject: Pronoun doubling/copula doubling (3) Date: Tue, 14 May 91 14:16:41 +0200 From: "GEERAERTS DIRK, Beeken Jeannine" Subject: Re: Responses: Pronoun Doubling (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 14 May 91 12:09:24 +1000 From: bert peeters Subject: Pronoun doubling in Dutch dialects Koenraad De Smedt writes: "in my own dialect of Dutch (Antwerpen), there is a similar double pronoun construction, e.g. "He de gij da gezien?" = Have you seen that? (Have you you that seen?) The unaccented pronoun is "de" (related to German "du" I suppose), the accented pronoun is "gij"." I have another explanation on "de" (which makes a parallel with postverbal "ekik"). Contrast: (1) Hed egij da gezien? (notice the change in word boundary) (2) Heb ekik da gezien? Have I seen that? It seems to me one could see in "egij" a contraction of "gij gij", with deletion of the first consonant absorbed by the verb ending. The same is true, mutatis mutandis, for "ekik" = "ik ik". Koenraad's shorter version of (1) would then have to be rendered as follows (3) Hed e da gezien? On the other hand, we now have a case of triple pronoun use in positive sentences: (4) Ik eb ekik da gezien "I have I I that seen" But this is definitely not possible with all pronouns, and may even be limited to first person singular. I haven't had the time to find out. As to the doubling in questions, it seems to be restricted to first and second person singular, for no obvious reason that I can think of right away. By the way, does Koenraad have the Swiggers reference I mentioned in my own first posting? Bert Peeters (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 14 May 1991 15:31:05 GMT From: MCCONVELL_P@DARWIN.NTU.EDU.AU Subject: Pronoun doubling/copula doubling With reference to Bert Peeters and Bruce Nevin on pronoun doubling, there is a bit of pronominal enclitic doubling in some combinations in the Australian Aboriginal (Pama-Nyungan) language Mudbura that I've worked on, so you get two occurrences of the 2nd person subject -n in e.g. pa - n - jina - n AUX 2ss 3plo 2ss "You-them" In some other combinations, and in other closely related languages, you get only one enclitic per argument. This behaviour seems to relate to the fact that there are competing principles of clitic ordering which show up in variations of orders in different dialects, and in this case in a doubling, which may be considered a morphological blend. Bruce Nevin raises more generally the question of doubling resulting from "frozen expressions". This would seem to me the origin of another interesting kind of doubling in current English - copula doubling e.g. The important point is is that ... I've written about that in a paper "To be or double be: current change in the English copula" in Australian Journal of Linguistics 8.2 287-306 (1988). Dwight Bolinger has also discussed it in an article in English Today, and in his recent Intonation books. Our data (his American, mine mostly Australian) are closely similar and we both adopt a syntactic blend analysis. I also point out that this kind of construction is hard to handle for most current theories of grammar which don't recognise rule competition or contradiction except as an aspect of performance. The version with high tone copula following the epistemic introductory phrase has become blended with the alternative with low tone copula to yield the doubling. Another way of looking at it would be that one of the copulas has become frozen in a non-copular function (marking subordinate clauses as semantically main) causing a second genuine copula to be added. Mentioning this also gives me the opportunity to ask for contributions to my database of double copula contructions from actual speech. I have plenty of the common variety like the above example, but am looking for more esoteric variations now e.g. with copulas with different tense/agreement, with material intervening between the two. I was working at one time on the assumption that the speaker is asserting the subordinate clause as true, but counter-examples have caused me to ditch that. Any examples relating to the force/evidentiality etc. of the subordinate clause would be welcome. If you do send examples, please include details of age, gender, occupation, and native dialect of speaker, and where and when the sentence was said. Thanks. Patrick McConvell, Anthropology, Northern Territory University, PO Box 40146, Casuarina, NT O811, Australia (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 14 May 91 14:16:41 +0200 From: "GEERAERTS DIRK, Beeken Jeannine" Subject: Re: Responses: Pronoun Doubling In his response to Bernhard Hurch's question about double pronouns, Bert Peeters refers to an article by Pierre Swiggers on double subject pronouns in the Brabantish dialects of Dutch. The article was published (in Dutch) in Leuvense Bijdragen 1987. Swiggers concentrates on the dialect of Leuven, but as K. De Smedts' reply suggests, there are similar constructions in other dialects of Dutch. As far as I can see, the phenomenon really wide-spread in the Belgian dialects of Dutch. Apart from Swiggers' article, other dialectological studies on the topic exist (for instance, one by Magda Devos in the Festschrift Vanacker). There is no overall study on the subject, but if I am not mistaken, Jan Goossens is working on a synthesis, including the historical dimension. Dirk Geeraerts [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0229] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0230. Thursday, 16 May 1991 Subj: 2.0230 Summary of Banned Languages Discussion; Language and Law Total: 154 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Thu, 16 May 91 13:03:28 IST From: Bernard Spolsky Subject: Summary of banned languages discussion (2) Date: Thu, 16 May 91 13:04 MET From: "Norval Smith (UVAALF::NSMITH)" Subject: RE: Language and Law (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 16 May 91 13:03:28 IST From: Bernard Spolsky Subject: Summary of banned languages discussion My original question, posted on MULTI-L and repeated on LINGUIST, came from having read a news item about a relaxation of the Turkish ban on Kurdish. The ban has been described by Tove Skutnabb-Kangas and Robert Phillipson in a posting on MULTI-L: a constitutional and penal code prohibition of the use of languages "which are not official first languages in states recognized by the Turkish state." They report arrests of people breaking this ban, but the cases have not been decided. In the meantime, there have been newspaper reports, as I said, of relaxation of the ban on speaking Kurdish. Other similar political and official bans (outside of school contexts) have been reported: Ainu (perhaps), Berber (perhaps), Chinese characters in Indonesia (also in Tahiti), Chinese dialects in Singapore, English signs in Quebec, Esperanto in Iraq, various languages in Ethiopia, Faroese in the Faroese Islands, Hebrew teaching in the Soviet Union, Japanese movies and songs in Korea, Scots Gaelic after Culloden, Taiwanese in Taiwan after Nationalist control (reported to be unsuccessful). There have also been also reports of bans of various kinds and levels (some legally imposed and some not) on the use of various languages in educational settings: American Indian Languages in Federal and state schools, American Sign Language and other Sign Languages in many systems, Basque in Franco Spain, Breton, and I assume Occitan in French schools, Cajun English (and later Cajun French) in Louisiana, French and German (at different times) in Alsace, Irish under British rule, Welsh in the nineteenth century, Spanish in the Southwestern US. Three broad types of case have emerged in the correspondence: 1. The first is the prejudice shown in an educational system towards a non-standard or otherwise disfavored variety. I think it is reasonable to include the Sign Language cases here. This kind of policy is usually associated with a (misguided) desire to improve the lot of minority students by having them use the standard or otherwise desired variety. Replacive language teaching, well-meaning though it may be, is a common method of linguicide. In practice, as Tove Skutnabb-Kangas documents in her book BILINGUALISM OR NOT (Multilingual Matters 1981), these policies were once enforced with physical violence (there are graphic descriptions in the letters), replaced now more generally by "symbolic or structural violence." 2. The second are cases of political suppression of minority languages: this may include a ban on a language in schools, in media, and even (seemingly rarer), on any use of the language. It is likely to be in the form of a requirement of use one or more named languages only, implicitly barring the use of others. There is wide range of treatments possible, ranging from legal penalties to malign neglect. The Kurdish case fits here clearly. The Official English movement is an attempt to go this way. There do not seem to be many formal and legal bans on specific languages still in effect (most reports were of earlier bans). Most arose from attempts to encourage national standard languages, suppress minorities, deny former political and linguistic associations. Some arose out of attempts to maintain another language. 3. The third type then are the attempts at language maintenance. The case of French in Quebec is of this last type; it is an attempt to slow down or reverse the shift from French to English that was starting to occur in the Province. Thus, its motivation is language maintenance rather than shift, or even reversing shift. But of course, from the point of view of speakers of other languages in Quebec, it is potentially a threat to maintenance. The Official English movement is sometimes presented in this way: a fear that other languages might somehow weaken the grasp of English. The correspondents found this the most challenging question: is the desire to maintain a threatened language justification for banning the source of the threat? Overall, the main damage of linguicide appears to be done not by specific laws banning a language, but by the existence of instrumental and economic incentives to learn a standard language, backed by an educational policy that suggests that this can be done by giving up on any other language. This last suggests the most useful steps that linguists can take: 1. publicising findings of research that show that bilingualism is harmful neither to a society nor to an individual; 2. supporting additive language teaching and opposing replacive language teaching; 3. continuing to express respect for the value of all languages as records of their cultures and methods of maintaining group identity; 4. supporting a double set of linguistic rights - the right to learn the standard language, and the right to maintain the home or community or ethnic language. I have sorted the postings to date (10 May 1991) into seven files, which are available from the LINGUIST archive: LGBAN-AMERIND American Indian languages LGBAN-BASQUE Basque in Franco Spain and German in South Tyrol LGBAN-BRETON Breton in France and French naming policy LGBAN-FLEMISH Flemish in Belgium and Netherlands LGBAN-KURDISH Turkish ban on Kurdish LGBAN-QUEBEC1 French-only laws in Quebec LGBAN-QUEBEC2 " LGBAN-QUEBEC3 " LGBAN-SIGN Sign languages LGBAN-TAIWAN Taiwanese in Taiwan LGBAN-OTHERLGS Ainu, Alsace, Australian Aboriginal, Berber, Cajun English, Chinese, Esperanto, Ethiopian languages, Faroese, German, Hebrew, Icelandic names, Irish, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Puerto Rico, Scots Gaelic, Sorbian, Spanish, Turkish, Welsh LGBAN-GENERAL General comments on banned languages To get any of the above files, send the message: get (e.g. get lgban-sign) to: listserv@uniwa.uwa.oz.au ------------------------------------------------------------------ Bernard Spolsky Department of English Telephone: +972-3-531-8239 Bar-Ilan University Home: +972-2-282-044 52 100 Ramat-Gan Fax: (office) +972-3-347-601 Israel =================================================================== (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 16 May 91 13:04 MET From: "Norval Smith (UVAALF::NSMITH)" Subject: RE: Language and Law What a pity. Glancing through Vallduvi's contribution on the legal status of Catalan I thought I saw a reference to special funds being available to promote love-making in Catalan! A pity that on reading it properly, it turned out to be movie-making in Catalan. Maybe a useful pointer for the Quebecois! Norval Smith [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0230] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0231. Friday, 17 May 1991 Subj: 2.0231 Queries Total: 147 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Fri, 17 May 91 From: "Anthony Aristar" Subject: Hierarchically Oriented Non-grammatical Case-systems (2) Date: Fri, 17 May 91 07:37:23 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: pronoun singling (3) Date: Fri, 17 May 1991 22:06:10 GMT+0800 From: A_DENCH@FENNEL.CC.UWA.OZ.AU Subject: Teochew (4) Date: Fri, 17 May 1991 9:25:34 CDT From: 1ECBKL@UTSA86.UTSA.EDU Subject: Contacts in Barcelona (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 17 May 91 From: "Anthony Aristar" Subject: Hierarchically Oriented Non-grammatical Case-systems I'm trying to collect examples of non-grammatical case-systems which seem to be sensitive to nominal hierarchies of one sort or another. I'm not interested in systems where the GRAMMATICAL cases act this way--split-ergative systems, for example, where only nominals low in hierarchical status may be marked as ergative, or systems where certain kinds of objects get marked, for example Spanish. The kind of systems I'm more interested in are ones where either: (a) some case is simply disallowed for nominals of a particular value (e.g. in Basque animate nouns don't seem to take the instrumental) or (b) the morphology of cases which appear on nominals of certain hierarchical values is clearly and distinctly marked (e.g. Yidiny where the ablative affix -mu can only appear on a nominal of high hierarchical status if the nominal is in the genitive case.) My thanks! Anthony Aristar (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 17 May 91 07:37:23 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: pronoun singling The discussion of pronoun doubling leads me to wonder about the use of reflexive pronouns in e.g. Irish English: And there's himself coming in at the door, now. Is there ground for supposing an antecedent "him himself", "I myself", etc. becoming so customary as to lose the force of the reflexive, and then the non-reflexive being zeroed in the presence of the vitiated reflexive? He himself was coming in --> Himself was coming in Is there some substrate in Gaelic? Bruce Nevin bn@bbn.com (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 17 May 1991 22:06:10 GMT+0800 From: A_DENCH@FENNEL.CC.UWA.OZ.AU Subject: Teochew Teo Chew Tone Sandhi I have an Honours undergraduate student investigating tone sandhi in her own dialect of Teo Chew (Chao-Chou, etc.), a near relative of Hokkien. As a first step we need some basic description of the tones and where to find them. Apart from a few somewhat less than edifying primers, we have tracked down the following dissertation references which may (or may not) be worth looking at. While I collected these references from the University of California catalogue I am loathe to shell out the cash having them shipped in microfilm to the wilds of Western Australia (we might be the centre of the email universe, but sadly not smail) unless critically valuable. Lin, Jocelyn Su-Fung Tone sandhi in the Chinese dialects April 1988 Shih, Chi-Lin The prosodic domain of tone sandhi in Chinese September 1986 Lien, Chinfa Coexistent tone systems in Chinese dialects March 1988 Hung, Tony T.N. Syntactic and semantic aspects of Chines tone sandhi October 1988 Wright, Martha A metrical approach to tone sandhi in Chinese dialects 1983 (U.Mass.) If anyone out there knows any of the authors and how I can best contact them for the relevant pages (in hard copy or electronic form) I would be most grateful for your assistance. And of course any other info on Teo Chew (like how many contrasting tones am I supposed to be hearing - we seem to be staring down the barrel of 8 contrasting tones) would be welcome too. Thanks, Alan Dench A_DENCH@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au Department of Anthropology (but we're really linguists) University of Western Australia Nedlands, WA 6009 (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 17 May 1991 9:25:34 CDT From: 1ECBKL@UTSA86.UTSA.EDU Subject: Contacts in Barcelona I'm going on a Fulbright next year to the Autonomous University at Barcelona. Does anyone know of any contacts there who might be able to answer some of my questions? Bonnie Lyons [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0231] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0232. Friday, 17 May 1991 Subj: 2.0232 Responses: Pronoun Doubling, Word Games Total: 113 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Fri, 17 May 91 13:44:06 +0200 From: Jan Olsen Subject: Re: Pronoun doubling (2) Date: Mon, 13 May 91 20:37:58 PDT From: John_Gilbert@mtsg.ubc.ca Subject: Responses: Children's Language Games, Green Ideas (3) Date: Tue, 14 May 91 4:47:48 CDT From: dale@txsil.sil.org (Dale Savage) Subject: children's speech play (4) Date: Mon, 13 May 91 13:13:21 PDT From: gasser@bend.UCSD.EDU (Michael Gasser) Subject: Language games (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 17 May 91 13:44:06 +0200 From: Jan Olsen Subject: Re: Pronoun doubling Joe Bayer (Linguistic Review 3:1984) discusses a couple of facts from Bavarian, especially lower Bavarian, which somehow resemble the Dutch pronound doubling data, e.g. dass-ma mia noch Minga fahrn that-1pl we to Munich go-1pl fahr-ma mir noch Minga go-1pl we to Munich mir fahr-ma noch Minga # we go-1pl to Munich Notice the difference between the 1pl-ending on the verb in final position (/n/) and the morpheme that shows up on COMP, and the verb in first or second position /ma/. Since noch Minga fahr-ma to Munich go-1pl is okay as well, one might think that /ma/ is a clitic pronoun. Bayer, however, argues against this; he sees it as sort of a pro-drop phenomenon. One would have to see if his arguments go through for Dutch as well. G. Fanselow (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 May 91 20:37:58 PDT From: John_Gilbert@mtsg.ubc.ca Subject: Responses: Children's Language Games, Green Ideas The Opies might have called all playground games "language games". But see Chp 14 "Some Curiosities" in the Lore and Language of Schoolchildren (Oxford, 1959) for ... some curiosities. John Gilbert (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 14 May 91 4:47:48 CDT From: dale@txsil.sil.org (Dale Savage) Subject: children's speech play >From: Charles (C.A.) Hoequist >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.> A very good general volume is: Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara, ed. _Speech Play: Research and Resources for Studying Linguistic Creativity_. University of Pennsylvania Publications in Conduct and Communication. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1976. Several of the articles in _Speech Play_ deal directly with childrenUs language play, and the volume has a good bibliographic survey. . I have one older volume that seems relevant to the issue: Opie, Iona and Peter Opie. _The Language and Lore of Schoolchildren_. Oxford: Oxford University Press (at the Clarendon Press), 1959. It is literally filled with rhymes, tongue twisters, puns, jibes, riddles, etc. of school children from the length and breadth of Britain. There is a wealth of data in Opie & Opie. I also understand that the duo (or perhaps, dual-O) published another book with Oxford Univ Press about 10 years later that had to do with childrenUs playground games. IUve never seen it, though, and so do not know whether it involves speech play or just nonlinguistic play. Dale Savage (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 May 91 13:13:21 PDT From: gasser@bend.UCSD.EDU (Michael Gasser) Subject: Language games See also two papers in the book _Experimental Phonology_ (eds. John J. Ohala, Jeri J. Jaeger), Academic Press, 1986: Lyle Campbell, "Testing phonology in the field" Jean-Marie Hombert, "Word games: Some implications for analysis of tone and other phonological contrasts" Mike Gasser [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0232] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0233. Friday, 17 May 1991 Subj: 2.0233 Responses: African, Analogy, Acronyms, Colourless, Hyouston Total: ^?184 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: 9 May 91 22:36:00 EST From: "ELISE EMERSON MORSE-GAGNE" Subject: survival or not of African languages among slaves (2) Date: Mon, 13 May 91 14:43:09 CST From: Subject: analogy (3) Date: Mon, 13 May 91 11:53 EST From: NMILLER@vax1.trincoll.edu Subject: Ritvo (4) Date: Wed, 15 May 91 07:57:26 -0400 Subject: correction: parse of the family name 'katz' From: Ellen Prince (5) Date: Wed, 15 May 91 09:53:32 EDT From: rapaport@cs.Buffalo.EDU (William J. Rapaport) Subject: Colourless green ideas (6) Date: Thu, 16 May 91 08:15:08 -0400 Subject: Re: Queries From: Ellen Prince (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 9 May 91 22:36:00 EST From: "ELISE EMERSON MORSE-GAGNE" Subject: survival or not of African languages among slaves Bill Eldridge wonders why no African languages survived in view of the policy against slaves studying English. I am certainly no expert on this and I hope someone who is will enlighten me further, but a few comments-- First, it is not quite safe to say there wsa NO survival, in view of the continuing debate over whether Gullah is an African/English creole, and also over what features of modern (especially Southern) American-as-spoken- by-white-people are the result of influence from African phonological systems, lexicon, and even morphological systems. Second, the lack of a surviving explicit policy forbidding the speaking of African languages does not necessarily mean that it would have been per- mitted, although it is true that it suggests the issue perhaps had not arisen. Third, if by "survival" you mean "survival to the present", I don't know of any other immigrant groups which have maintained their original languages for as much as three or four generations, let alone for 150-200 years. But perhaps you mean that no records of survival even into the second generation exist? Finally, I believe that it's crucial to remember that the slaves (a) did not allsome from the same area and speak the same language (and to speak of "African" as a cover term for all the languages they did speak, as I did above, is misleading), and (b) did not all come directly to the States from Africa. The entire process was a long and tortuous one, rather than a simple carting of boatloads of people straight from point A to point B, and one result was that people with widely differing backgrounds and languages ended up together-- and maybe no one African language would serve them, whereas English was more or less equally available to everyone as a lingua franca or a model for --or lexical warehouse for--a pidgin, which would then converge more and more on English as the only consistently available language, even if slaves weren't supposed to learn English. This, coming from a non-creolist and a non-Black English specialist, is offered in hopes that someone else will have more to say, as I mentioned. --Elise Morse-Gagne (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 May 91 14:43:09 CST From: Subject: analogy In reply to Uwe Hauck's query of April 25: a useful starting point might be Gary A. Klein, "Applications of Analaogical Reasoning" in *Metaphor and Symbolic Activity*, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 201-218 (1987). (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 May 91 11:53 EST From: NMILLER@vax1.trincoll.edu Subject: Ritvo As an addendum to Ellen Prince's general remarks about Jewish acrostic names, Ritvo is short for resh yod tet bet aleph (-aleph) and stands for Rabbi Yom Tov Ben Avraham-Ishvili, an early 14th century commentator born in the Spanish city of Shvil and known to us as Seville. (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 15 May 91 07:57:26 -0400 Subject: correction: parse of the family name 'katz' From: Ellen Prince ------- Forwarded Message Date: Wed, 15 May 91 00:57:57 -0500 From: daniel@drew.cog.brown.edu (Daniel Radzinski) To: ellen@central.cis.upenn.edu Subject: yr. message in LINGUIST As far as I know, "Katz" stands for 'kohen tzedek' in the construct form (smixut) "a priest of justice", rather than 'kohen tzadik' (N + Modifier) as you indicated in your recent posting. - -- Daniel ------- End of Forwarded Message (5) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 15 May 91 09:53:32 EDT From: rapaport@cs.Buffalo.EDU (William J. Rapaport) Subject: Colourless green ideas Two poems: COILED ALIZARINE for Noam Chomsky Curiously deep, the slumber of crimson thoughts: While breathless, in stodgy viridian, Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. - John Hollander, _The Night Mirror_ (Atheneum Publishers, 1971) (reprinted in G. Harman, _Noam Chomsky_ (NY: Doubleday Anchor) YOU, NOAM CHOMSKY Colorless green ideas sleep furiously in the fan-shaped eyes, that welcomed only the color of the relevant world, wearing a face of man, their green (in violent sleep, the nightmare day) draining to white or vagueness in a stretch of fear. Address yourself, Ideas, to sleep. Furiously sleep, Ideas, green, colorless, involved in green, careless of responsibility. Let all fury, entangled with your grammar, be a colorless green. - Sister Mary Jonathan, O.P., in _College English_ 26(1965) ("Sister Jonathan teaches senior English at Dominican High School in Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin") (6) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 16 May 91 08:15:08 -0400 Subject: Re: Queries From: Ellen Prince >From: Peter Gingiss >Subject: Houston and words like it > >I am interested in the pronunciaton of words like "huge" and "humid." I plan >to get down to serious research this summer. In "Youston," Texas there are a >few natives who pronounce these words with just the /y/(at least some of the >time i'm not a phonologist, only a native brooklynite, so here are a few esoteric facts known only to 8+ million people: in ny, i grew up saying /yusten/ texas but /hawsten/ street (a street in manhattan). other items i pronounced with /yu/ (no h) were: humid(ity), humor(ous), huge, human, humane, humanity, humiliate. but usually with an h (hyu...): hue and cry, lake huron. for all the above, there was in fact variation. however, there was a brand of ice cream, sold from little white trucks, called 'good humor'. this was categorically /yumer/. (the /r/ of course was not pronounced unless there was a following vowel.) to me, 'good hyumer', WITH an h, can only mean 'good cheer', NEVER the ice cream. hope this is useful. [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0233] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0234. Friday, 17 May 1991 Subj: 2.0234 Phonology and Orthography Total: 142 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Thu, 16 May 91 14:37 GMT From: John Coleman Subject: RE: Phonology and Orthography (2) Date: Thu, 16 May 91 14:59 GMT From: John Coleman Subject: Phonology and Orthography (3) Date: Thu, 16 May 1991 14:09 EDT From: Robert D Hoberman Subject: Letter names "outside the system"? (4) Date: Thu, 16 May 1991 13:34 EDT From: Robert D Hoberman Subject: Putative syllabaries in Semitic (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 16 May 91 14:37 GMT From: John Coleman Subject: RE: Phonology and Orthography Bernard Hurch (hurch@mvax2.urz.uni-wuppertal.dbp.de) says > The whole Latin alphabet was adapted (not only adopted) > to the phonemics of Old/Middle Icelandic. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > And the phonemic analysis was taken out quite detailed, even for "modern" standards.^^^^^^^^^^^^ (My emphasis.) What is this "THE phonemics"? There is rarely if ever a unique phonemic analysis for any language, Icelandic included. Of course the orthography may fit some particular phonemic analysis, namely thoes analyses which hypostatize the orthography! The reasoning behind the argument that orthographic practises support phonemic theory seems to be blind to the fact that phonemic theory is historically based on alphabetic orthographies. So it's no surprise they are similar? --- John (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 16 May 91 14:59 GMT From: John Coleman Subject: Phonology and Orthography To Fleck: -- Exactly which syllabaries and descendent alphabets are you referring to? Phoenician -> Greek -- On what basis do you believe them to be mora-based? ... By mora-based I was referring to CV units. In the modern semitic writing systems (Hebrew, Arabic, maybe are others I don't know) about and derivatives of earlier semitic writing systems, such as Devanagari and other Indian and Asian scripts, the "letters" are consonants. Special diacritics may be added to denote vowel qualities, or absence of a vowel from the CV, as in syllable -final consonants. So the analysis of syllables assumed by such objects can be represented Cv.C(v), where v denotes `prosodic' marking of the vowel, () denotes possible omission, and the . denotes a mora-division. -- Why do you believe that greatly reducing the number of characters to learn (by a factor of 10 or so) and easier extension to new languages (fewer new characters to be improvised) played little or no role in the spread of alphabets? Is that indeed what happened? Compare the number of symbols that need to be learned in mora-based Hebrew or Arabic with, say, the Cyrillic alphabet. There's not a lot of difference. Many mora-based writing systems have some degree of compositionality to the symbols, though that doesn't make them alphabets (a requirement of which, I take it, is that the primitive orthographic elements be concatenative). Why is non-alphabetic writing so successful? How many non-semitic languages has, say, the Arabic writing system been applied to? (Turkish, Iranian, Swahili ...) Or how many languages have borrowed/adopted Indian writing systems (themselves adopted from Semitic)? (Malayalam, Mongolian ... ) Quite a few, and just as with the spread of alphabets, for political and religious, rather than linguistic reasons, I suggest. --- John Coleman (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 16 May 1991 14:09 EDT From: Robert D Hoberman Subject: Letter names "outside the system"? Alexis writes, "But there is a crucial point here, which Hoberman has made explicit but which I suspect many more of you out there accept, namely, that THEREFORE letter names should not be counted as evidence for phonological contrasts in a language. But this I think would be wrong and indeed illogical." No, I didn't say that letter names couldn't be used as evidence about the phonemic system of a language. Phonemicity is not an all-or-nothing proposition. Russian /i/ and /y/ are MARGINALLY distinct phonemes. The opposition has a very low functional load. In the vast majority of instances, the selection of [i] or [y] is conditioned, but not always -- and the "not always" cases include a letter name, foreign names, onomatopoeia, and words in a particular junctural situation, all of them special cases of one sort or another. (What counts is the disproportion; the fact that these are special cases is icing on the cake, or, if you prefer, independent confirmation.) Because of these, you have to say /y/ is a phoneme, but the opposition /i/ vs. /y/ is not at all of the same order as that of /i/ vs. /a/ or /u/. Any phonological theory that can't handle such a distinction is missing something big and pervasive in language. Bob Hoberman (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 16 May 1991 13:34 EDT From: Robert D Hoberman Subject: Putative syllabaries in Semitic The notion that West Semitic writing systems such as Hebrew and Arabic are syllabaries has been persuasively refuted. The syllabary idea was proposed by Gelb in 1952. Since then the idea has been taken as authoritative by popularizers and some linguists, though, I think, mainly by those whose knowledge of these systems is second-hand. Recently, Peter Daniels has reexamined Gelb's statement, showing that "Virtually every statement in [Gelb's] paragraph is untrue; yet it can be understood as the outcome of Gelb's method of scholarship in general" ("Fundamentals of Grammatology", Journal of the American Oriental Society 110 (1990) 727-731). Daniels also proposes a typology of writing system that makes precise some additional, useful distinctions. In his view, the West Semitic writing systems "constitute a third fundamental type of script", the "ABJAD". My own opinion is that these systems are in fact a kind of alphabet that happens not to represent some or most of the vowels (only the very oldest show no vowels at all). Daniels and I agree that the major conceptual distinction (and the major historical breakthrough) "is not the addition of vowel symbols to a consonantal abjad, but the development of the abjad itself--the isolation of the phonological segment." Bob Hoberman [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0234] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0235. Friday, 17 May 1991 Subj: 2.0235 Conferences Total: 308 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Wed, 15 May 91 15:20:37 EDT From: Andreas Kathol Subject: Workshop on German & HPSG (2) Date: Mon, 13 May 91 12:28:24 EDT From: Peter Cole Subject: Conference on language, Language Policy and Education in the Andes (3) Date: Tue, 14 May 91 15:48:58 +0200 From: ai-vie!paolo@relay.EU.net (paolo petta) Subject: *** ECAI'92 *** CALL FOR PAPERS (plain text version) (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 15 May 91 15:20:37 EDT From: Andreas Kathol Subject: Workshop on German & HPSG Workshop on German & HPSG 8-9.Aug DFKI Saarbruecken The DISCO project will hold an informal workshop on HPSG and German on Aug. 8th and 9th in Saarbruecken (immediately before the Summer School in Logic, Language and Information - 12-23.Aug. also in Saarbruecken). Focus: the linguistic description of German in HPSG. Talks on related topics (e.g. processing, alternative models in comparison to HPSG) are also welcome, but the primary focus will be on linguistic description---including syntax, semantics, and lexicon. Format: small, informal workshop. Participants limited to 40 (but we don't expect this to exclude interested participants). We suggest talks of 40 min, followed by 20 min discussions. (Please indicate in an abstract if your contribution would require different scheduling.) Preliminary schedule: The following researchers have promised talks on HPSG and German: Carl Pollard, The Ohio State University Tibor Kiss, IBM Corporation Klaus Netter, DFKI (German AI Center) John Nerbonne, DFKI Financing: This is a low-budget operation. We hope that researchers planning to attend the summer school will try to include this workshop. Publication: No definite plans here, but we will investigate modes of fairly quick (and unrefereed) publication, which can be decided on at the workshop. To deliver a talk: please submit an abstract of 200-500 wd. Indicate your time requirements should they differ from the suggested 40 min. To attend (otherwise): please sketch your interest briefly, including reference to work on HPSG and/or German grammar. All potential attendees: Please send abstracts or expressions of interest by 15.June. We shall try to respond by 1.July. Abstracts per email are hugely preferred; please include a return (email) address in any case. (We shall accept non email submissions, but your cooperation will be greatly appreciated.) With salutations from the {\it in statu nascendi} program committee, John Nerbonne, DFKI Universitaet des Saarlandes Stuhlsatzenhausweg 3 D-66 Saarbruecken 11 GERMANY nerbonne@dfki.uni-sb.de phone (0681) 302 5300 fax 5341 (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 May 91 12:28:24 EDT From: Peter Cole Subject: Conference on language, Language Policy and Education in the Andes Reminder Please Print Out and Post, and Pass on Electronically Call For Papers The conference will be held October 28, 29 and 30, 1991. The themes will be 1) the structure of the indigenous languages of the region, especially Quechua and Aymara; 2) the structure of the Spanish of the Andean region; 3) the sociolinguistics of language use in the region; 4) national language policy in the region. The officical languages of the conference will be Spanish and English. Papers will be either 20 or 45 minutes. Please indicate the time you need. A volume will be published with selected papers from the conference. The conference will be held in conjunction with the North East Linguistic Society (NELS) meeting at the University of Delaware (Oct. 25-27, 1991). ABSTRACTS ARE DUE JUNE 1. SEND ONE PAGE ABSTRACTS TO: INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON LANGUAGE, LANGUAGE POLICY AND EDICATION IN THE ANDES, Department of Linguistics, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19711-2551, USA. (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 14 May 91 15:48:58 +0200 From: ai-vie!paolo@relay.EU.net (paolo petta) Subject: *** ECAI'92 *** CALL FOR PAPERS (plain text version) ======================================================================= CALL FOR PAPERS - ECAI92 - CALL FOR PAPERS - ECAI92 - CALL FOR PAPERS ======================================================================= CALL FOR PAPERS 10th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 92) August 3-7, 1992, Vienna, Austria The European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI) is the European forum for scientific exchange and presentation of AI research. The aim of the conference is to cover all aspects of AI research and to bring together basic research and applied research. The Technical Programme will include paper presentations, invited talks, panels, workshops, and tutorials. The conference is designed to cover all subfields of AI, including non-symbolic methods. ECAIs are held in alternate years and are organized by the European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence (ECCAI). The 10th ECAI in 1992 will be hosted by the Austrian Society for Artificial Intelligence (OGAI). The conference will take place at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration. TOPICS OF INTEREST You are invited to submit an original research paper on any of the following subjects: - Automated Reasoning (e.g. automatic programming, reasoning with uncertainty, theorem proving, constraint satisfaction, logic programming, search) - Cognitive Modeling (e.g. models for human problem solving and information processing, memory models, computational theories in psychology) - Connectionist and PDP Models for AI (e.g. connectionist architectures, connectionist learning, neural networks applications) - Distributed AI and Multiagent Systems (e.g. distributed problem solving, distributed resource allocation, communication, cooperation) - Enabling Technology and Systems (e.g. machine architectures, AI computer languages, tools for AI system development) - Integrated Systems (e.g. integrating several AI components, embedded AI, integrating AI and conventional systems) - Knowledge Representation (e.g. terminological knowledge, nonmonotonic logic, foundations of temporal, causal and spatial reasoning, abduction, common sense, complexity of reasoning) - Machine Learning (e.g. inductive learning, knowledge intensive learning, discovery, concept formation) - Natural Language (e.g. text generation and understanding, speech understanding, syntax, semantics, discourse, representation issues, NL system architecture) - Philosophical Foundations (e.g. philosophy of mind, functionalism and AI, epistemological foundations) - Planning, Scheduling, and Reasoning about Actions (e.g. temporal and causal reasoning for planning, task scheduling, plan recognition, resource allocation) - Principles of AI Applications (e.g. generic applications, expert system design, tutoring systems, knowledge acquisition, case-based reasoning) - Reasoning about Physical Systems (e.g. modeling, model-based simulation, qualitative reasoning, diagnosis, design, monitoring, applications of causal, temporal and spatial reasoning for engineering, scientific, medical, economic problems) - Robotics (e.g. connecting perception to action, sensor-motor systems, kinematics, navigation, grasping) - Social, Economic, Legal, and Artistic Implications (e.g. AI scenarios, ethical issues, legal issues and responsibility, AI and music) - User Interfaces (e.g. intelligent graphical interfaces, natural language front ends, user models, knowledge-based information presentation, artificial reality) - Verification, Validation & Test of Knowledge-Based Systems (e.g. improving and securing consistency, completeness, reliability) - Vision and Signal Understanding (e.g. vision and perception in biological and technical systems, sensor interpretation, intelligent signal interpretation) SUBMISSION OF PAPERS Authors are requested to submit to the Programme Chairperson 5 copies of papers written in English in hardcopy format (electronic and fax submissions will not be accepted). Submitted papers must be unpublished, original work and substantially different from papers currently under review. They must not be submitted elsewhere before notification date. This restriction does not apply to workshops and similar specialized presentations with a limited audience. Papers can be either long papers (completed research: maximum 5000 words / 10 single-spaced pages) or short papers (ongoing research: maximum 2000 words / 4 pages). Each full page of figures counts as 500 words. Each paper should contain an abstract (maximum 200 words). A separate title page should include the title, the name(s) of the author(s), complete address(es), the specification of one of the above topics, and the category long or short. Papers should be printed on A4 or 8.5"x11" sized paper in letter quality print, with 12 point type (10 chars/inch on typewriter). Work described in an accepted paper may also be illustrated with a videotape or a demo. Special sessions will be scheduled for video presentations and demos. Authors wishing to show a videotape or a demo should specify the duration and the requirements of the videotape/demo when submitting their paper for review. TIMETABLE Papers must be received by the Programme Chairperson before January 17, 1992. Authors will be notified of acceptance or rejection by April 1, 1992. Final camera-ready papers must be received by May 15, 1992. WORKSHOPS Workshops are welcome at ECAI 92. They will give participants the opportunity to discuss specific technical topics in a small, informal environment, which encourages interaction and exchange of ideas. Workshop proposals should be sent to the Programme Chairperson as soon as possible, but not later than January 17, 1992. Workshop proposals should contain a brief description of the workshop and the technical issues addressed, a preliminary schedule, and the names and addresses (postal, phone, fax, e-mail) of the Organizing Committee of the workshop. The proposals will be reviewed and the organizers will be notified not later than February 28, 1992. The organizers are responsible for producing a call for participation, for reviewing requests to participate and for scheduling the workshop activities within the constraints set by the conference organizers. Workshops will be scheduled outside the main technical programme. ECAI PRIZE A prize for the best paper as determined by the Programme Committee will be awarded; the Digital Equipment Prize will also be awarded at ECAI 92. PROGRAMME CHAIRPERSON Papers, workshop proposals and all inquiries regarding the programme should be sent to the Programme Chairperson: Prof. Bernd Neumann FB Informatik University of Hamburg Bodenstedtstr.16 D-W-2000 Hamburg 50 Germany PROGRAMME COMMITTEE Luigia Carlucci Aiello, Italy Ramon Lopez de Mantaras, Spain Giuseppe Attardi, Italy David Makinson, France Wolfgang Bibel, Germany Robert Milne, United Kingdom Mike Brady, United Kingdom Katharina Morik, Germany Ivan Bratko, Yugoslavia Bernhard Nebel, Germany Alan R. Bundy, United Kingdom Wolfgang Nejdl, Austria Stephan Busemann, Germany Erkki Oja, Finland Rolf Eckmiller, Germany Eugenio Oliveira, Portugal Jan-Olof Eklundh, Sweden Domenico Parisi, Italy Boi Faltings, Switzerland Radoslav Pavlov, Bulgaria Olivier Faugeras, France Henri Prade, France Francoise Fogelman-Soulie, France Peter Raulefs, USA Christian Freksa, Germany Graeme D. Ritchie, United Kingdom Peter Gardenfors, Sweden Lorenza Saitta, Italy Volker Haarslev, Germany Erik Sandewall, Sweden Eva Hajicova, Czechoslovakia Aaron Sloman, United Kingdom Werner Horn, Austria Karen Sparck-Jones, United Kingdom Gerard Kempen, The Netherlands Sam Steel, United Kingdom Dietrich Koch, Germany Luc Steels, Belgium Yves Kodratoff, France Pietro Torasso, Italy Jan Koenderink, The Netherlands Robert Trappl, Austria Jean-Pierre Laurent, France Enn Tyugu, USSR Maurizio Lenzerini, Italy OTHER ACTIVITIES AND INQUIRIES ECAI 92 will present a set of tutorials which will focus both on AI topics from the practical perspective and on topics about emerging AI technologies. All inquiries regarding tutorials should be directed to the Tutorial Chairperson, Werner Horn, Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Schottengasse 3, A-1010 Vienna, Austria (tel: +43-1-53532810, fax: +43-1-630652, email: werner@ai-vie.uucp). For inquiries about registration (scientific programme and tutorials), accommodation and other local arrangements you should contact the ECAI92 Conference Office, ADV, Trattnerhof 2, A-1010 Vienna, Austria (tel: +43-1-5330913-74, fax: +43-1-5330913-77, telex: 75311178 adv a). All inquiries regarding other activities should be directed to the Local Arrangements Chairperson, Johannes Retti, Siemens AG, Abt.EK4, Goellnergasse 15, A-1030 Vienna, Austria (tel: +43-1-71711-5030, fax: +43-1-71711-5120, email: retti%siewien.uucp@relay.eu.net). [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0235] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0236. Friday, 17 May 1991 Subj: 2.0236 For Your Information Total: 307 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Mon, 13 May 91 12:41:57 CDT From: Chicago Linguistic Society Subject: CLS 27 (1991) volumes (2) Date: Tue, 14 May 91 08:36:47 MST From: "don l. f. nilsen" Subject: INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR HUMOR STUDIES (3) Date: Wed, 15 May 91 13:25:44 EDT From: John_M._Lawler@ub.cc.umich.edu Subject: Revisions in the LINGUIST archive files (4) Date: Wed, 15 May 1991 11:25:06 -0400 From: Kimberlee Pietrzak-Smith Subject: REVISED IJCAI-91 Programme Schedule: 01/15/91 (5) Date: Mon, 13 May 91 17:02:20 EDT From: "Garrett H. Riggs" Subject: Article on biology of language (6) Date: Thu, 16 May 91 09:24:24 MDT From: koontz@alpha (John E. Koontz) Subject: 5.0062 Fonts; Soviet Keyboard Layout; Cyrillic (3/186) (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 May 91 12:41:57 CDT From: Chicago Linguistic Society Subject: CLS 27 (1991) volumes The CLS 27 (1991) volumes may be pre-ordered (due to come out in Sept.) Main session $13 Invited speakers: Sandra Chung Elan Dresher Jerry Fodor Robin Lakoff Howard Lasnik Parasession on Negation $13 Invited speakers: Laurence R. Horn Paul Kay Marcia Linebarger James D. McCawley send orders, pre-paid by check (including $4 shipping for 1st volume, $2 any volume after that) to: Chicago Linguistic Society 1050 E.59th Street Chicago, IL 60637 (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 14 May 91 08:36:47 MST From: "don l. f. nilsen" Subject: INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR HUMOR STUDIES LINGUIST SUBSCRIBERS: The Ninth International Humor Conference will be held at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada from June 26-30, 1991. A list of presenters is available from Don Nilsen. WHIMSY VII is now available for $10.00 per volume. This is the proceedings of the Seventh International Humor Conference. Contact Victor Raskin, Linguistics Chair, English Department, Purdue University, Heavilon Hall, West Lafayette, IN 47907. If you are seriously thinking of becoming a member of ISHS and subscribing to HUMOR: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMOR RESEARCH, I can send you a free copy of Volume 1, Number 4. If your library is seriously considering an institutional subscription I can send your library a free copy of the same issue for their consideration. Membership in ISHS with a subscription to our quarterly journal is $45.00. Institutional subscriptions to HUMOR are $104.20. If you have information about humor-related scholarly events please send information to Don Nilsen for inclusion in the HUMOR NEWSLETTER, but please send news items six-months in advance since our JOURNAL/NEWSLETTER is published by Mouton Publishers in Germany. =-) :-) ;-> Don L. F. Nilsen, (602) 965-7592 Executive Secretary International Society for Humor Studies Arizona State University Tempe, AZ 85287-0302 (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 15 May 91 13:25:44 EDT From: John_M._Lawler@ub.cc.umich.edu Subject: Revisions in the LINGUIST archive files Due to the spectacular growth of the LINGUIST archive file LINGUIST.LST (it was approaching 2 MBytes) that I've been maintaining for anonymous ftp in the LING directory on um.cc.umich.edu, and by request of users, I have segmented the LINGUIST.LST file into 50-issue chunks. The file LINGUIST.LST is no more; it has been replaced by 5 files labeled from with Volume and Issue numbers as V?.???.LST. The cryptic names are necessitated by the facts that file names are limited to 11 characters, and it is not possible to put archive filesin a subdirectory, since our OS does not provide for those. My apologies. Herewith the relevant statistics about the archive files, from the file "CONTENTS" on the LING directory at um.cc.umich.edu: The files V?.???.LST are the collected back issues of the first and second volumes of the LINGUIST mail list (linguist@uniwa.uwa.oz.au), grouped 50 issues to a file and averaging about 400 KBytes per file. The file name indicates the last issue contained in that file; the name of the latest file always reflects the number of the last issue archived. Thus the current last file contains the issues of LINGUIST from Volume 2, No. 201 to Volume 2, No. 223 (May 14, 1991). V1.006.LST has 34,642 bytes in 986 data lines (Volume 1, 35,628 on Unix, including 986 newlines #1-6) 36,614 on MS-DOS, including 986 CR/LF pairs Dates: 13 - 23 December 1990 V2.050.LST has 309,921 bytes in 7624 data lines (Volume 2, 317,545 on Unix, including 7624 newlines #1-50) 325,169 on MS-DOS, including 7624 CR/LF pairs Dates: 9 January - 23 February 1991 V2.100.LST has 432,896 bytes in 10,058 data lines (Volume 2, 442,954 on Unix, including 10,058 newlines #51-100) 453,012 on MS-DOS, including 10,058 CR/LF pairs Dates: 23 February - 28 March 1991 V2.150.LST has 408,669 bytes in 8933 data lines (Volume 2, 417,602 on Unix, including 8933 newlines #100-150) 426,535 on MS-DOS, including 8933 CR/LF pairs Dates: 29 March - 21 April 1991 V2.200.LST has 371,246 bytes in 8024 data lines (Volume 2, 379,270 on Unix, including 8024 newlines #150-200) 387,294 on MS-DOS, including 8024 CR/LF pairs Dates: 21 April - 5 May 1991 ------------------------------------------------------------ V2.223.LST has 159,691 bytes in 3558 data lines (Volume 2, 163,249 on Unix, including 3558 newlines #120-223) 166,807 on MS-DOS, including 3558 CR/LF pairs Dates: 6 - 14 May 1991 Note, incidentally, the steady rate of increase in frequency and size of the content (luckily, these statistics say nothing about coherence or value) with time. As Alice Davidson put it, "Talking is the consuming vice of linguists." John Lawler Internet: jlawler@ub.cc.umich.edu University of Michigan Bitnet: USERGB4N@UMICHUB (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 15 May 1991 11:25:06 -0400 From: Kimberlee Pietrzak-Smith Subject: REVISED IJCAI-91 Programme Schedule: 01/15/91 A new, REVISED IJCAI-91 Programme Schedule, now exists on the LINGUIST server. To get this program, send: listserv@uniwa.uwa.oz.au the message: get ijcai-91 (5) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 May 91 17:02:20 EDT From: "Garrett H. Riggs" Subject: Article on biology of language Hello, everyone. I'm not sure how many people on the list might be interested in neurolinguistics, but on the off chance that there are a few neurolinguists out there, I offer the following reference for your consideration as an interesting and timely review of an intruiging topic. For the record, I am in no way connected with the authors, their academic institutions or the publisher. Poizner, H., U. Bellugi and E. S. Klima. 1990. Biological foundations of language: clues from sign language. *Annual Review of Neuroscience* 13: 283-307. Garrett Riggs Dept. of Anatomical Sciences and Neurobiology University of Louisville School of Medicine Louisville, Kentucky 40292 USA GHRIGG01@ULKYVM.BITNET (6) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 16 May 91 09:24:24 MDT From: koontz@alpha (John E. Koontz) Subject: 5.0062 Fonts; Soviet Keyboard Layout; Cyrillic (3/186) Reposted from Humanist. Forwarded message follows: ----------------- Date: Wed, 15 May 91 10:26:29 CDT From: Claudia Lynch Subject: Foreign Fonts The following was posted to Desk Top Publishing (DTP-L, Volume 1: Issue 22 Tue, 14 May 91). I thought it might be of interest to this group. Date: Mon, 6 May 91 22:12:59 pdt From: ari@well.sf.ca.us (Ari Davidow) Subject: Foreign fonts For Sanskrit, as well as an amazing selection of other languages, there are two good sources for fonts on the Mac: Linguists Software, PO Box 580, Edmonds, WA 98020-0580 (206) 775-1130 Ecological Linguistics, PO Box 15156, Washington, DC 20003 (202) 546-5862; Internet: ECOLING@APPLELINK.APPLE.COM Both specialize in fonts that serve the academic community. This means that both companies provide fonts with all possible imaginable characters, but that neither company produces fonts that are necessarily exciting. Of the two, Philip Payne at Linguists Software tends to be more thorough about creating a complete set of characters, but has a smaller catalog of languages, whereas Lloyd Anderson of Ecological Linguistics has a broader range of selections and, has spent a lot more time creating customized systems with multiple foreign languages. I have had nothing but good experiences with both vendors. There is also a company called Snow Lion that does the most beautiful Tibetan (related to Devanagari). They are in Toronto, but I have misplaced the particulars. (If memory serves me correctly, both EL and LS also make IPA fonts modeled on the Linotype Times Roman 12pt master built into most postscript printers. Another source for IPA, I believe, is NeoScribe International, although I don't recall if it is likwise based on Times. Neoscribe can be reached as (of course) neoscribe@applelink.apple.com. You can also send mail to: NeoScribe International Inc., PO Bo 469, Middletown, CT 06457. [Michael Ross, an excellent colleague & reader of this digest, is the proprietor of NeoScribe, by the way. - - gf] * * * * * * I second the recommendation of FontMonger. It did, indeed, ship last month. I was a beta tester for the program. It is sort of a cross between ParaFont (in that it can create small caps, small shilling and nut fractions, and some composite characters) and Metamorphosis (in that it can convert fonts, in single or batch mode, from just about all formats to just about all formats). The interface can be confusing (although I don't know of a better one), but the basic metaphor is an actual keyboard that you see on your screen, which makes placing the characters where you want them (and finding the ones you want) incredibly simple and straightforward. Given a choice, I would have to recommend FontMonger over Metamorphosis, if only because it is a more useful all-around tool. On the other hand, if all you want to do is to convert between type 1, type 3, true type, etc., Metamorphosis is easier to use. As Dave Martin noted, FontMonger is available from Ares (Foster City, Calif. (415) 578-9090). It retails for $99, with street prices around $60-$65. Ares is also the company that does Font Studio for LetraSet, and the long-delayed version 2.0 of that product is also about to ship (it's now finished and moving through the Letraset release bureaucracy). Font Studio is a font design program competing with Fontographer and the new ATF product. I find Fontographer's user interface easier to use until I get to the actual character shaping tools, where Font Studio is several orders of magnitude (imho) much easier and saner. I should also note that in my specialty (non-Latin alphabets) Font Studio actually supports FOND IDs outside the range for English, whereas Fontographer does not (leading to some tedious workarounds). In short, it's easier to set up a font with Fontographer, but far, far easier to actually design or modify the font with Font Studio (imho). * * * * * * Those interested in Hebrew may be interested to know that my own e-mail newsletter (which focuses on all aspects of using Hebrew on micros) is now based at a listserv @ Dartmouth. To subscribe, send e-mail to LISTSERV@DARTCMS1 with the one-line message, SUB E-HUG Your_first_name Your_last_name For more information, send me e-mail, or send a message to the listserv with the message: REVIEW E-HUG (E-HUG stands for "Electronic Hebrew Users Group".) * * * * * * People interested in Russian may be interested in the following blurb: The Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union at Columbia University publishes an annual report entitled: "Teaching Your Computer Russian: A Guide to Cyrillic Software." It costs $8.00 postpaid and covers mainly word processors and add-ons for IBMs, but also has a small Mac section. It can be obtained from: Publications Office Harriman Institute 420 W. 118th St., New York, NY 10027 (212) 854-6218. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0237. Friday, 17 May 1991 Subj: 2.0237 Tongue Twisters Total: 114 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Thu, 16 May 91 09:48:42 PDT From: ctlntt@violet.berkeley.edu Subject: Re: Catalan Tongue Twisters (2) Date: Thu, 16 May 1991 14:02:00 -0400 From: Charles (C.A.) Hoequist Subject: German tongue twisters (3) Date: Thu, 16 May 91 17:38:18 EDT From: Wayles Browne Subject: Re: French Tongue Twisters (4) Date: Fri, 17 May 91 10:37:40 +1000 From: bert peeters Subject: Dutch tongue twisters (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 16 May 91 09:48:42 PDT From: ctlntt@violet.berkeley.edu Subject: Re: Catalan Tongue Twisters >From Catalan: Setze jutges d'un jutjat menjen el fetge d'un penjat. Sixteen judges from a tribunal eat the liver of a hanged person. Milton Azevedo UC Berkeley (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 16 May 1991 14:02:00 -0400 From: Charles (C.A.) Hoequist Subject: German tongue twisters I have a variant of one of the German examples, which I think works a little better rhythmically. I heard as part of a song, which went, Bald kommt der Hans nach Haus', Soon Hans is coming home, freut sich die Lies'. Liese (or Liesl) is pleased. Ob er aber ueber Oberammergau, but whether he's (coming) via Oberammergau, Oder aber ueber Unterammergau, or rather via Unterammergau, Oder aber ueberhaupt nicht kommt, or not at all, ist nicht gewiss. isn't certain. -charles hoequist (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 16 May 91 17:38:18 EDT From: Wayles Browne Subject: Re: French Tongue Twisters A literary use of the tongue-twister format is Jacques Pre'vert's line "La pipe au papa du pape Pie pue." 'The pipe of the papa of Pope Pius stinks.' (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 17 May 91 10:37:40 +1000 From: bert peeters Subject: Dutch tongue twisters As a native speaker of Dutch, I can hardly forgive myself for not having shared with other readers of LINGUIST these tongue twisters BEFORE quoting the French ones in an earlier posting. 1) De kat krabt de krollen van de trap. The cat scratches the curls from the steps. Sorry... I have no idea what this is supposed to mean (even in Dutch!) 2) De meid sneed zeven scheve sneden brood. The maidservant cut seven crooked slices of bread (And thanks to Tony Evenhuis for suggesting an acceptable translation for the adjectif scheef) 3) Wie niets weet en weet dat hij niets weet The one who doesn't know anything and knows that he doesn't know anything weet veel meer dan iemand knows a lot more than the one die niets weet en weet dat hij niets weet who doesn't know anything and knows that he doesn't know anything (The English translation is much more long-winded than the Dutch one, and that makes the latter into a tongue-twister - I should say the Dutch version) Bert Peeters [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0237] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0238. Friday, 17 May 1991 Subj: 2.0238 Phonology and Orthography Total: 102 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Fri, 17 May 91 12:00:52 PDT From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com Subject: Re: Phonology and Orthography (2) Date: Fri, 17 May 91 14:54 CDT From: Joe Stemberger Subject: Re: Queries (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 17 May 91 12:00:52 PDT From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com Subject: Re: Phonology and Orthograpyh John Coleman writes: >...The reasoning behind the argument >that orthographic practises support phonemic theory seems to be blind to the >fact that phonemic theory is historically based on alphabetic orthographies. Actually, this is begging the question. Historically, linguists have assumed that alphabetic orthographies were based on the phonemic analysis of a dialect of a language. The reverse hypothesis is hardly a fact. Linguists have also felt that phonemic theory was necessary in order to capture generalizations about allomorphy, not just spelling. Baudouin de Courtenay, the primogenitor of phonology, analyzed psychophonetic alternations as involving two distinct phonemes and physiophonetic alternations as involving one. That is the histor- ical basis for all subsequent theories of phonology and morphonology. Far from being the basis of phonemic theory, phonemic theory served to explain the evolution of writing into an alphabetic stage. John Coleman's point about there not being a unique phonemic analysis for a language is correct but irrelevant. Phonemic theory was originally grounded in psychological function, and then (under Saussure's influence) it came to be grounded in social function. The fact is that constructing an alphabet is a practical matter, which dictates that social convention force a single phonemic system on a group, even if the individuals comprising the group don't all share the same psychological system. It would simply be impractical for a society to adopt graphological conventions on a dialect-by-dialect (or individual-by-individual) basis. Finally, John has argued, confusingly I think, about the efficiency of alphabetic vs. morabetic writing. He fails to notice that radically different phonologies require radically different alphabetic conventions. You can't compare the number of symbols needed for Hebrew with the number of symbols needed for Greek, and claim that that tells you anything about the efficiency of morabetic vs. alphabetic writing. For any given language, the number of morabetic symbols required to represent that language will always be greater than the number of alphabetic symbols needed. This is so because moras are always describable in terms of combinations of segments. In a pure CV language you need enough symbols to cover all possible CV combinations. (BTW, devanagari is not purely syllabic or morabetic. It has vowel symbols for cases where vowels begin words.) -Rick Wojcik (rwojcik@atc.boeing.com) (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 17 May 91 14:54 CDT From: Joe Stemberger Subject: Re: Queries Two comments on orthography and phonology. 1) Cambodian has an orthographic distinction between velar /k/ and uvular /q/. The consultant we had for a field methods class swore up and down that they were still distinct, but they were clearly all pronounced as velars in his speech (by ear, by spectrograph, and by looking into his mouth when he talked). However, the letter of the alphabet still had a clear /q/. (Interestingly, the letter name had the /q/ word-initially, but all examples of words spelled with it had it in word-final position.) I have no idea whether the two sounds are still distinct in other dialects of Cambodian. 2) As far as letter names being outside the normal phonology... In Slovene, all consonant letter names are the phoneme followed by shwa, as in /b^, d^, z^/, etc. As I understand it (and my familiarity with the language is from pedogogical grammars and a brief visit to the country after high school), shwa occurs only as an epenthetic vowel, where it is inserted BEFORE unsyllabifiable word-final consonants (so you get alternations like nom. /p^s/ 'dog' vs. gen. /ps-a/, and nom.masc.sg. /slad^k/ 'sweet' vs. fem. /slatka/). And the shwa is otherwise unstressed. So, the shwa is in entirely the wrong place in letter names. Interestingly, when my children (monolingual English speakers, other than two words of Swedish and three of Slovene) were first figuring out how to segment words into parts, they gave the sound as [b^], with a stressed shwa, and my wife and I helped them out with exactly the same sort of pronunciation. But stressed shwa doesn't otherwise occur in English, either (even in the kids' speech at the time). These examples are probably rare across languages, but it's not clear that letter names are always well integrated into the phonology of the language. ---joe stemberger [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0238] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0239. Friday, 17 May 1991 Subj: 2.0239 Responses Total: 211 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Fri, 17 May 91 17:35:45 +0200 From: Jan Olsen Subject: V/3 in West Germanic (2) Date: Fri, 17 May 91 15:11:57 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: Black English (3) Date: Fri, 17 May 91 14:34 CDT From: Joe Stemberger Subject: Re: Hyouston (4) Date: Fri, 17 May 91 09:44:42 MDT From: koontz@alpha (John E. Koontz) Subject: Pronoun Doubling in Siouan (5) Date: 17 May 91 11:39:24 EST Subject: cognitive linguistics revisited (sorry) From: JASKE@bat.bates.edu (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 17 May 91 17:35:45 +0200 From: Jan Olsen Subject: V/3 in West Germanic There are quite a number of articles that discuss cases of V/3 clauses in German comparable to the one cited in Alexis Manaster Ramer's posting - there are also further types of V/3 construction. The most recent article I know of is Christiane Thim-Mabrey, Satzadverbien und andere Ausdruecke im Vorvorfeld, DEUTSCHE SPRACHE 1988: 52-67. Gisbert fanselow@unipas.fmi.uni-passau.de (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 17 May 91 15:11:57 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: Black English Last I heard, the basis of Black English was in a trade language widely used in W. Africa, associated with Manding Empire (sp? cf. Mande presumably), and also basis of Black Portugeuse, Black French, etc. Don't know about affiliation with Swahili. This is old information, and I would welcome new. It was, then, a standard of inter-group communication prior to slavery in these continents. Bruce (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 17 May 91 14:34 CDT From: Joe Stemberger Subject: Re: Hyouston Peter Gingiss asks about the loss of /h/ in words like HOUSTON. I grew up in an area (Central Pennsylvania) where the /h/ is always absent. As is often the case with dialect speakers, I find pronunciations WITH the /h/ very odd-sounding. The usual treatment of the loss of /h/ is that it is the tail-end of a series of changes going back hundreds of years. Old English had /hl/, /hr/, /hw/, and /hy/. The /hl/ was first simplified to /l/, then /hr/ was simplified to /r/. As far as I know, no English dialect has either /hl/ or /hr/ anymore. The simplification of /hw/ to /w/ is more recent, so that a few dialects still have the /h/. The simplification of /hy/ to /y/ is even more recent and much less widespread. Unfortunately, I can't give any references to all that, since I'm not in historical linguistics or dialectology. But it's a well-known phenomenon, and it shouldn't be hard to track down the research on it. Interestingly, there's hardly ever any communication difficulty resulting from the loss of /h/. I've had the most difficulties with HUMAN LANGUAGES vs. YUMAN LANGUAGES. ---joe stemberger (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 17 May 91 09:44:42 MDT From: koontz@alpha (John E. Koontz) Subject: Pronoun Doubling in Siouan Many of the Central Siouan languages have some paradigms in which pronouns are doubled. The doubled material is all part of the inflectional prefix string. (Note that I am not counting multiple prefixes that result from the presence of two separately inflected stems in a single form, but only true double inflection of the main verb.) All of the examples that I can think of involve adding a more transparent element to a form in which the existing or more "inner" pronominal elements is relatively obscure, i.e., it does not pattern like the "regular" paradigm. As this should make clear, double inflection is not general, or general within particular syntactic contexts. It is morphologically (lexically) conditioned. In some cases it is possible that the doubling came into existence in a period in which the inflectional string was "proclitic" and the pronominals "independent." However, in other cases the double inflection plainly results from recent reanalysis of the inflectional strings. An Omaha-Ponca (Central Siouan/Mississippi Valley/Dhegiha) example that is old: Regular Pattern Irregular Pattern Irregular Pattern wi/Doubling Simple Dative Simple Dative a- e- ppaghe `I make it' eppaghe `I ... for him' ra- re- shkaghe `you make it' reshkaghe `you ... for him' gi- gagha `he makes it' giagha `he ... for him' There are other paradigms with similar characteristics, e.g., the reflexive and reflexive possessive, and the phenomenon is not restricted to this class of g-(initial) stem. Other "irregular" stem types are affected analogously. One that has developed since c. 1880: Regular Pattern Older Form Newer Form a- tta~be `I see it' atta~be ra- shta~be `you see it' rashta~be da~ba `he sees it' da~ba Note that V~ is a nasal vowel; r = edh; gh = voiced (nonstrident) velar fricative; sh = esh; accent is not marked; (to simplfy) the dative transitive stem (regularly in gi-) is used obligatorily in contexts where a better object exists than the object assumed by the simple transitive stem. Doubling does not affect the independent pronominals, which are used for focus only (e.g., for wi `I', wi tta~be is `it was I who saw it; I (emph.) saw it'; (to answer your question,) I saw it'). (5) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 17 May 91 11:39:24 EST Subject: cognitive linguistics revisited (sorry) From: JASKE@bat.bates.edu A while back there were some postings about the rightful or wrongful appropriation of the term 'cognitive' by some linguists. At the risk of resurrecting the issue (which is not what i hope to do), i would like to post a passage from an article of Ron Langacker's in the Center for Research in Language (CRL) (Vol. 1, No. 3, 1987) which i just came across and which attempts to explain why he and others like him use the term 'cognitive linguistics' for the kind of work they do. I have the whole article on disk, so if anyone would like to see it, please ask me and i'll send it to you (it's entitled "The Cognitive Perspective"). There is also a way to get these electronic files from the CRL but i can't find their e-mail address right now. -------------- ... "The term "cognitive perspective" is adopted mainly for lack of a better option. Since generative grammarians loudly proclaim the psychological relevance of their work, concern with cognitive issues is not per se what distin- guishes the two outlooks. Rather they differ in their con- ceptions of the nature of linguistic knowledge, how it relates to other facets of cognitive organization, and what kinds of theoretical models are appropriate for language and for cognition in general. Thus, in speaking of the cogni- tive perspective, I am referring to one of two broadly- contrasting approaches to these issues. It does however imply a far more immediate and intimate connection between linguistic investigation and specific developments in other branches of cognitive science than is suggested by the gen- erative world view." "This is most obvious in the case of semantics, for the whole point of truth-conditional semantics is to avoid any postulation of mental constructs in the characterization of semantic structure. In accordance with its origin in logic and empiricism, truth-conditional semantics is by nature objectivist; the meaning of an expression is taken to be the set of conditions under which it is true--it is specifically not equated with any kind of conceptualization or cognitive processing. This outlook places stringent limitations on both the phenomena examined and how they are treated. Excluded, for example, are figurative language, any semantic contrasts that do not reduce to differences in truth condi- tions, and those aspects of the meaning of complex expres- sions that are not strictly compositional (e.g. anything contributed by appreciation of the context or by "extra- linguistic" knowledge)." "Whether these restrictions are justifiable, and whether truth-conditional semantics is revelatory within its chosen domain, are issues that we need not address. What does con- cern us is the emergence and rapid growth, within the last decade, of a movement known variously as "subjectivist", "conceptualist", or "cognitive semantics". Many different theories and approaches can be subsumed under these rubrics; what they share is the notion that meaning is a mental phenomenon which must ultimately be described as such, and that natural-language semantics is far richer than logic- based models would lead us to suspect. Here, of course, I can offer only the briefest description of the scope of cog- nitive semantics and some of its basic ideas and results." ... [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0239] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0240. Friday, 17 May 1991 Subj: 2.0240 Notice to Subscribers Total: 31 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Friday, 17 May 1991 From: The LINGUIST Moderators Subject: Notice to All Subscribers (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Friday, 17 May 1991 From: The LINGUIST Moderators Subject: Notice to All Subscribers Please note that: 1. There will be a hiatus in LINGUIST postings of one week. Both moderators will be away from their homes, and thus from their Internet connections. 2. Sometime in the past week a gateway machine to our site failed, and some mail intended for LINGUIST may have gotten lost. If you made a posting earlier this week, and have not yet seen the posting appear, please re-send it, for we have posted all mail we have already received. [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0240] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0241. Monday, 27 May 1991 Subj: 2.0241 Conferences: NELS, Linguistics and Literary Theory Total: 84 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Tue, 21 May 91 13:17:29 EDT From: Peter Cole Subject: NELS 1991 (2) Date: Thu, 23 May 1991 15:55 CST From: "DONALD E. HARDY" Subject: Call for papers (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 21 May 91 13:17:29 EDT From: Peter Cole Subject: NELS 1991 The 22nd meeting of NELS will be organized by the Linguistics Department at the University of Delaware from October 25th through 27th, 1991. A call for papers has been mailed out; the deadline for abstracts is August 1st, 1991. Please submit three copies of a one-page abstract (without name) and a 3"X5" card giving name, title of paper, affiliation, address, phone number, and e-mail if applicable: Katrien Christie Linguistics Department University of Delaware Newark, DE 19716 phone: (302) 451 6806 e-mail: katrien@brahms.udel.edu NELS will be followed by the conference on Language, Language Policy and Education in the Andes, at the University of Delaware from October 28th through 30th, 1991. Deadline for abstracts: June 1st, 1991. z katrien brahms 5/20/91 'katrien@brahms.udel pcole@udel.edu 5/20/91 nels (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 23 May 1991 15:55 CST From: "DONALD E. HARDY" Subject: Call for papers CALL FOR PAPERS SPECIAL ISSUE OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE LINGUISTICS AND LITERARY THEORY: CROSSCURRENTS OF INFLUENCE A 1992 special issue of LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE will be devoted to crosscurrents of influence between linguistic theory and literary theory/criticism. Ideal papers would critically explore one particular interface between linguistics and literary theory or criticism, such as orality/literacy, ordinary/literary language, translation, stylistics, narratology, dialogue, discourse analysis, pragmatics, etc. Papers which are accepted for publication must be in final form and to the guest editor by December 15, 1991. Please send inquiries, abstracts or completed papers for review to the address below: Professor Donald E. Hardy English Department University of North Texas P.O. Box 13827 Denton, Texas 76203-3827 [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0241] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0242. Monday, 27 May 1991 Subj: 2.0242 For Your Information Total: 89 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Thu, 23 May 91 10:34 EDT From: Jim Wilderotter -- Georgetown Center for Text and Technology Subject: Electronic Text Projects (2) Date: 23 May 91 11:30 -0600 From: David Leip Subject: ECTL e-mail forum (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 23 May 91 10:34 EDT From: Jim Wilderotter -- Georgetown Center for Text and Technology Subject: Electronic Text Projects Dear Linguists: The following two postings I am about to make are two-parts of a large file, which detail information about electronic text projects from around the globe which have centered their efforts on Linguistic studies. The information gathered here has been retrieved from Georgetown University Center for Text and Technology's on-line catalogue of electronic text projects. This catalogue will be open for public logins, telnet, and modem logins soon, so watch LINGUIST for further details. Sincerely, James A. Wilderotter II [The listing of linguistically-oriented text projects is available from the server, and is found in two files, "text-project-list-1" and "text-project-list-2". If you wish to see these files, send listserv@uniwa.uwa.oz.au two SEPARATE messages, one with the single line: get text-project-list-1 and the other with the single line: get text-project-list-2 The files will then be sent to you.] (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 23 May 91 11:30 -0600 From: David Leip Subject: ECTL e-mail forum Speech Interface Enthusiasts, There is a real need in the field of speech interface research for stronger links between researchers, between industry and academia, between Europe, North America and Asia. This need is already partially addressed by ESCA. However, there is still a need for fast and convenient exchange between speech interface researchers, around the world. In an attempt to address this need a special electronic mailing list has been started. This list is now known as "Electronic Communal Temporal Lobe" or ECTL. This list has been growing fast in the last month. ECTL is to act as a forum in which members can post queries and announcements, debate issues, or just follow along. This ongoing forum is being moderated by myself (David Leip) to ensure relevence to speech interface research, and to ensure proper formatting (subject labels, etc.) This is to keep some of the problems associated with heavy e-mail traffic to a minimum. If you would like to be added to this list please send a message to me at: dsleip@brocku.ca Please include the following information. Name, Institution, Department, Daytime Phone Number and Electronic Mail Address. David Leip Brock University Dept. of Computer Science St. Catharines, Ontario Canada L2S 3A1 (416) 688-5550 ext. 3810 [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0242] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0243. Monday, 27 May 1991 Subj: 2.0243 Responses Total: 114 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: 22 May 91 15:14:00 EST From: "STEVE SEEGMILLER" Subject: RE: Reflexives (2) Date: Mon, 20 May 91 14:55 +0800 From: MATTHEWS%HKUCC.BITNET@YALEVM.YCC.Yale.Edu Subject: Reference for John A. Hawkins (3) Date: Sat, 18 May 91 16:35 MET From: Roland Noske Subject: phonetic fonts for Signum!2 (4) Date: Tue, 21 May 1991 16:12 EDT From: Robert D Hoberman Subject: Acronymic names (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 22 May 91 15:14:00 EST From: "STEVE SEEGMILLER" Subject: RE: Reflexives In reply to Bruce Nevin's query about reflexives without antecedents: Mike Helke dealt with these in his MIT dissertation (circa 1973) and argued that, indeed, such constructions are analogous to emphatic reflexives (e.g. "He did it himself") with the non-reflexive zeroed. The main evidence comes from the stress patterns: ordinary reflexives are unstresses, while the emphatics are stressed. The Irish English type ("Himself will be home any minute") have stressed reflexives like th emphatics. Steve Seegmiller (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 20 May 91 14:55 +0800 From: MATTHEWS%HKUCC.BITNET@YALEVM.YCC.Yale.Edu Subject: Reference for John A. Hawkins Re. Koenraad de Smedt's query: a paper on syntactic weight versus information structure in word order patterns by John a. Hawkins will appear in a special issue of "Linguistische Berichte" shortly. Prof. Hawkins is currently a guest lecturer at the Universitaet des Saarlandes, Saarbruecken. Stephen Matthews, University of Hong Kong (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 18 May 91 16:35 MET From: Roland Noske Subject: phonetic fonts for Signum!2 Phonetic and other linguistic fonts for the document processor Signum!2, (and the word processors Script and Tempus-Word) (all programs for the ATARI-ST Series) are obtainable from: Semiotic Soft Richildenstrasse 24 D-8000 Muenchen / Germany Tel. 089/174587 Price : 298 DM. The set includes 27 fonts each for screen, 24 pin and laser printers. They include phonetic, Indoeuropeanist, Cyrillic and Greek fonts, in various sizes. For a change, these sets are based on not on the Times font type, but on Bodoni. This information comes from the the German language STmagazin 2/91, pp.6-7, and 3/91, pp. 119-123. By the way, is there any linguist (especially a phonologist/phonetician) working with an Atari-ST and Signum outside of Germany? I would like to hear from her/him. I seem to be the only one here in the Netherlands. People usually laugh when you tell them you're working with an ST. It is usually seen as game machine (an image for which Atari itself is responsible). Only in Germany the machine is taken seriously, helped by the fact that until quite recently, Macintoshes were shamelessly expensive here in Europe. However, even compared to the word processing and DTP packages for the MAC, Signum!2 is quite nice. This concerns especially the fact that is is possible to position signs extremely precisely, simply during the process of writing (not exclusively in some later layout phase, as in DTP packages), and the fact that it is possible to alter and adapt the fonts very easily. Also, on a 24 pin printer the output is much better than on a MAC image writer. (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 21 May 1991 16:12 EDT From: Robert D Hoberman Subject: Acronymic names Another Jewish acronymic family name found in America is Rashbaum. The spelling of this one is particularly interesting. The name derives from Hebrew Rashbam (without the "u") for Rabbi Shmuel ben Me'ir The English spelling obviously mimics all the other Jewish and German names ending in "-baum", pronounced /boym/ or /beym/ in Yiddish. Because these names are pronounced /-ba:m/ by some in English, "-baum" must have been seen by someone (an immigration official?) as a good way to write /-bam/ in a Jewish name. But now many people (including me) use a spelling-pronounciation of Rashbaum with /-bawm/. Other Jewish names known in America derived from acronyms are Schub for SHoxet U-Bodek '[meat] slaughterer and inspector' (because of the necessity of observing the kosher-food laws this is a religious official, not a mere butcher), and Brill for Ben ('son of') Rabbi Yomtov Lipmann (who lived in 15th century Bohemia). Bob Hoberman [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0243] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0244. Monday, 27 May 1991 Subj: 2.0244 Phonology and Orthography (Part 1) Total: 178 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: 18 May 91 23:48 +0800 From: Hurch Subject: phonology and orthography (2) Date: Sun, 19 May 91 18:21:28 PDT From: scobbie@csli.Stanford.EDU (Jim Scobbie) Subject: Rules and representations (3) Date: Mon, 20 May 91 11:08 GMT From: John Coleman Subject: Putative syllabaries in Semitic (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 18 May 91 23:48 +0800 From: Hurch Subject: phonology and orthography Thanks to John Coleman for explaining me that there might be more than one phonemic analysis for a given language. Maybe the Anonymous Icelanderr did not know that in the Middle Ages and thus he just adapted the Latin alphabet to his own language. But could you also explain to me why this should not be a phonemic analysis then. Moreover, maybe we should open a query on the use of the definite article in English (which is, as anybody might guess, my mother tongue) but still I think that my text "the phonemic analysis was taken out quite detailed..." ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ (emphasis John Coleman's) does not imply that other phonemic analyses of Old/Middle Icelandic are excluded/impossible or whatever. How definite is the definite article then in English, John Coleman? Bernhard (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 19 May 91 18:21:28 PDT From: scobbie@csli.Stanford.EDU (Jim Scobbie) Subject: Rules and representations Rick Wojcik writes:**************************(rwojcik@atc.boeing.com)******** The issue between Harry Bochner and Mike Hammond on listing vs. rule-governed behavior recalls Langacker's warnings about the "rule/list" fallacy that ties linguists in knots from time to time (cf. p. 42 of Foundations_of_Cognitive_ Grammar). Langacker points out that there is no reason why speakers can't memorize some plural forms as fixed units and still have a rule that derives plurals. Why not have both lists and rules? **************************************************************************** In constraint-based approaches to grammar, the rule/representation distinction is irrelevant. A highly specific constraint might describe a single lexical entry --- it therefore expresses no generalisations over the lexicon of the language. A highly general constraint might force every representation to have a certain characteristic --- a universal principle would take this form. In the middle, of course, there are a very large number of partial generalisations. This means speakers need not learn two types of ontological category. They must assign only the appropriate degree of a single category. >From: John Coleman ********************************* Mike Hammond statement that > Rules are rules. What else is there? is too glib. There are different kinds of rules and rule-systems, of different generative power. "Rules" in phonology no longer means simply "productive generalisation" or "licensor of a step in a derivation". It means something more like the Hallean kind of A --> B / C ___ E, even in theories like Autosegmental Phonology. D There are types of rules that are much less powerful than this, such as structure-building and redundancy rules, which, being monotonic, need not be extrinsically ordered. ********************************************************************** So, in a 'declarative' or 'constraint-based' approach to phonology,[like C's] *some familar rules* from procedural, derivation-based phonology are permitted, recast as conditional constraints on possible representations. The generative rule A-->B/C is allowed as a logical constraint meaning: 'if some structure is C+A then it must also be B', just in case it is monotonic. C+A must not be altered. Moreover, the order in which the rule is applied must not be significant. The rule will more typically be a redundancy than a rewrite rule, though in SPE at least there is no formal distinction between em. The original worry and its solution were that: phonologists (linguists in general) get het up over the rule/representation choice as the means to describe data when it is perfectly possible for both rules *and* representations to be used in an analysis of a phenomenon. An alternative solution is that: it is perfectly possible to do without the rule/representation altogether. Sane-sanity can be learned for what it is: a highly restricted yet relatively regular phenomenon. (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 20 May 91 11:08 GMT From: John Coleman Subject: Putative syllabaries in Semitic > The notion that West Semitic writing systems such as Hebrew and Arabic > are syllabaries has been persuasively refuted. The syllabary idea was > proposed by Gelb in 1952. Perhaps Firth's (1948) discussion (in "Sounds and Prosodies") is more convincing. > Since then the idea has been taken as authoritative by > popularizers and some linguists, though, I think, mainly by those whose > knowledge of these systems is second-hand. I don't think you could accuse Firth of that. > My own opinion is that these systems are in fact a kind of alphabet that > happens not to represent some or most of the vowels By the same logic you could argue that Japanese kana represent CVC syllables, but happen to leave off the final C! To Rick Wojcik: > Historically, linguists have assumed that alphabetic orthographies were > based on the phonemic analysis of a dialect of a language. > The reverse hypothesis is hardly a fact. If the "reverse hypothesis" (that phonemic analysis developed out of the study of alphabetic orthography) is not "a fact", then a number of things need to be explained, like how come phonemic analysis is alphabetic (concatenative, segmental ...), why were the originators of phonemic analysis also often into spelling reform, why did phonemic phonology originate in alphabetic cultures etc. On the basis of such considerations, I maintain that phonemic analysis is a product of alphabetic literacy, not that the existence of alphabets is evidence for the reality of phonemes (or, more generally, segmental phonology.) > John Coleman's point about there not being a unique phonemic analysis for a > language is correct but irrelevant. It is relevant if alphabet-phoneme correspondences are proposed as support for segmental phonology, as a number of LINGUIST contributors have done. > The fact is that constructing an alphabet is a practical matter Isn't phonemic analysis also a practical matter? What point are you making? > about the efficiency of alphabetic vs. morabetic writing. ... You can't > compare the number of symbols needed for Hebrew with the number of symbols > needed for Greek, and claim that that tells you anything about the efficiency > of morabetic vs. alphabetic writing. It does if you want to make the sweeping claim that mora-based writing systems are (all) less efficient than alphabetic writing systems. I would suggest that writing systems of different kinds are suitable for phonological systems of different kinds i.e. there is nothing distinguished about alphabetic writing or segmental phonological analysis. > For any given language, the number of > morabetic symbols required to represent that language will always be greater > than the number of alphabetic symbols needed. The number of symbolic distinctions (bits of information) needed to encode a set of CV moras using mora-symbols may be less than if alphabetic symbols are used. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, non-occuring CV combinations are simply not listed in the mora-set, whereas the alphabetic representation encodes non-occuring combinations as readily as occuring combinations. Another reason is that the order of C and V elements is usually redundant information, which is encoded by an alphabetic representation, but not in a mora-based representation. > In a pure CV language you need enough symbols to cover all possible CV > combinations. In such a language the use of separate consonant and vowel symbols would be best. But that would still not make it an alphabet, necessarily, because the most efficient representation would be one in which the order of C and V were non-distinctive. C-over-V or V-over-C notation might be most suitable in such cases. Would this be an alphabet? It depends on your definition. Whatever your definition, though, such a system would not be an alphabet of the *usual* sort (not concatenative, for instance). --- John Coleman [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0244] ________________________________________________________________ 245Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0245. Monday, 27 May 1991 245 245Subj: 2.0245 Phonology and Orthography (Part 2) 245 245Total: 148 lines 245 245Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) 245 Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) 245 245(1) Date: Mon, 20 May 91 14:19:22 +0100 245 From: Dr M Sebba 245 Subject: letter names 245 245(2) Date: Mon, 20 May 91 18:27:23 BST 245 From: Margaret Fleck 245 Subject: Syllabaries and "syllabaries" 245 245(3) Date: Tue, 21 May 91 11:05:26 -0700 245 From: saka@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Paul Saka) 245 Subject: formalism, 2d try 245 245(1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- 245Date: Mon, 20 May 91 14:19:22 +0100 245From: Dr M Sebba 245Subject: letter names 245 245I have two observations to add on English letter names - just to add to 245the database, as I'm not sure what all this may prove. 245 2451. 245Reading out the English alphabet, for non-rhotic speakers like me, 245/r/ always ends in /r/ (the linking /r/): /a:r es ti:/ etc.; but when 245referring to the letter, e.g. in spelling out my own name, I can 245include the /r/ in the letter name for emphasis: /em ei a:r kei/; 245otherwise, the letter name is /a:/. Normally, of course, I wouldn't 245pronounce an /r/ before a /k/ or a word boundary. 245 2452. 245For many speakers of English in the North of England, the name of /h/ 245is "haitch", with initial /h/. I suspect that for these same speakers, 245word-initial /h/ is rare or absent, and that the letter name may be 245the only word with initial /h/ for them. Since word initial /h/ is a 245famous linguistic variable in Britain, I think this shows, if it shows 245nothing else, that phonology is not free of sociolinguistic 245considerations - as if it weren't complicated enough already! 245 245Mark Sebba 245Dept. of Linguistics 245University of Lancaster, Lancaster LA1 4YT, England 245Telephone (0524) 65201 ext. 2241 (W) (0524) 69223 (H) 245Fax: (0524) 843085 245e-mail: eia023@uk.ac.lancaster.central1 245 245(2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- 245Date: Mon, 20 May 91 18:27:23 BST 245From: Margaret Fleck 245Subject: Syllabaries and "syllabaries" 245 245 245To John Coleman: 245 245Having had personal experience with writing systems that are largely 245ideographic and largely syllabic, making a big fuss about the 245difference between the Arabic and Latin alphabets looks like 245nit-picking. I don't see that it matters much whether you put the 245vowel symbols on top of the consonants, between them, or merged with 245them in a (semi-)regular way. It's still about 30 distinct symbols to 245memorize and a lot easier to learn than the alternatives. 245 245In real syllable or demi-syllable based systems, like Akkadian, 245Japanese, and (I believe) Cherokee, there is a distinct symbol for 245each syllable or half-syllable and there are few regularities in the 245structure of these symbols. If the language allows all (C)V(C) 245syllables and has 5 vowels and 20 consonants, that means 2205 symbols 245in a pure syllabary and 205 if you represent CVC syllables as CV-VC. 245If you assume some CVC symbols (as in Akkadian), 300 symbols might be 245a good back-of-the-envelope figure for a syllabary for an average 245language. It is a major pain in the neck to learn such writing 245systems. 245 245In the Near East, the main trend seems to be replacement of 245ideographic (e.g. Egyptian and Sumerian) and syllabic (e.g. Akkadian, 245Hittite) systems by alphabetic or near-alphabetic ones (e.g. Greek, 245Arabic). This pattern holds within both the Semitic languages 245(Akkadian dead, replaced by e.g. Arabic) and the Indo-European ones 245(Hittite dead, replaced by e.g. Greek). 245 245Near-total deletion of vowel indications is a rather different matter. 245It is made possible in some Semitic languages because much of the main 245root structure is consonantal. Dltng vwls n nglsh mks t dffclt t 245ndrstnd. I would be surprized to find (does anyone know?) the same 245wholesale omission of vowel indications in non-Semitic languages that 245have borrowed e.g. the Arabic alphabet. Even within the Semitic 245family, users of Akkadian felt it necessary to indicate vowel type on 245an obligatory basis. I don't see that deleting vowel indications 245makes an alphabet into a syllabary. 245 245Margaret Fleck (fleck@robots.oxford.ac.uk) 245 245(3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- 245Date: Tue, 21 May 91 11:05:26 -0700 245From: saka@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Paul Saka) 245Subject: formalism, 2d try 245 245 In LINGUIST 2.0191, John Coleman quotes my earlier message: 245> If [an] algortihm is formal in Manaster-Ramer's "form" sense 245> (in the sense that its operations are defined over shapes), 245> then the algorithm is [or tends to be] also formal in the "rigorous" 245> sense: there is much less room for disagreement about the SHAPE of 245> an object than there is about the INTERPRETATION of an object. 245 245 With this Coleman takes issue. Some of his remarks are unclear 245to me, but the nub seems to be this: 245> in the absence of agreement about the interpretation of the forms 245> which a formal theory proposes, there is plenty of room for disagreement 245> about what the shape of objects in the theory should be. 245This, to my mind, contains a couple of related misunderstandings. 245 245 First, I was describing what the relation IS between rigor and 245attention to shape. I had absolutely nothing prescriptive to say about 245SHOULDS or SHOULD NOTS. 245 My second point is best understood by means of an example. 245Let's consider formal rule 1 and informal rule 2: 245 (1) [+nasal] --> [alpha velar]/___[alpha velar] 245 (2) Nasals assimilate to the succeeding sound. 245Rule (1) is nothing more than an abbreviation for the following: 245 Replace every sequence of "[+nasal][+velar]" with "[+nasal][+velar]". 245 [+velar] 245 Replace every sequence of "[+nasal][-velar]" with "[+nasal][-velar]". 245 [-velar] 245 245Granted, in order for theory (1) to have any empirical significance, 245shapes like "[+nasal]" need ultimately to be interpreted. BUT, in order to 245calculate the logical consequences of theory (1), you can simply push the 245symbol "[+nasal]" around, as if it had no meaning, in accordance 245with the given rules. In contrast, you cannot draw consequences from 245(2) by means of purely syntactic manipulation. 245 245 (For more on algorithms and their interpretation, I highly 245recommend: 245 Lewis Carroll's "What the Tortoise Said to Achilles", Mind 1897. 245 John Haugeland's _Artifical Intelligence_, MIT, 1985.) 245 245 It is important to distinguish what a theory IS 245from what a theory is ABOUT. I have been talking about the former; 245it would seem that Coleman was sometimes talking 245about the latter. 245 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0246. Monday, 27 May 1991 Subj: 2.0246 Pronoun Doubling Total: 95 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Sat, 18 May 91 10:36 MST From: WDEREUSE@ccit.arizona.edu Subject: Re: Pronoun Doubling (2) Date: Tue, 21 May 91 10:16:08 +0200 From: "GEERAERTS DIRK, Beeken Jeannine" Subject: Re: Pronoun Doubling (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 18 May 91 10:36 MST From: WDEREUSE@ccit.arizona.edu Subject: Re: Pronoun Doubling Concerning the Swiggers article mentioned by Bert Peeters and Dirk Geeraerts earlier, on Pronoun doubling in Flemish dialects. Like Bert Peeters and Koenraad De Smedt, I also have Pronoun doubling ina similar fashion in my own dialect (Teralfene, Brabant, Dender Valley, between Aalst and Ninove). I sent a message of data which got lost in the mail, but it turns out, on reading Swiggers that his is a very neatly laid-out account of the same facts. For those poor souls who don't read Dutch, I thought it would be nice to very briefly summarize the contents of Swiggers' article (Leuvense Bijdragen, 76 (1987), 159-170): the title is: Voornaamwoorden met onderwerpsfunctie in Brabantse dialecten (Pronouns with subject function in Brabant dialects). I will give examples with the first person singular pronoun only, but the principles remain the same with other persons and numbers. I am putting Swiggers' phonetic spelling of the Leuven dialect in some standard spelling version: I PREVERBAL (SUBJECT PRONOUN) a Unstressed kem gewacht 'I have waited' (k is the pronoun) b Stressed: ik em gewacht 'I have waited' (ik is the pron.) II POSTVERBAL a Unstressed emek da gezegd? 'Have I that said' (i.e. have I said that?), always interrogative (ek is the pron.) b Stressed: emekik da gezegd? 'Have I I that said' (i.e. have I said that?), always interrogative, (ek and ik are both prons. first case of pron. doubling) III COMBINED SYSTEM a Unstressed kemekik gewacht 'I have I I waited' (i.e. I have waited) a combination of Ia and IIb, but it's not interrogative b. Stressed ik emekik da gezegd 'I have I I that said' (i.e. I have said that) a combination of Ib and IIb, not interrogative either This is the way Swiggers presents things. One thing he does not do is tell us the semantic/pragmatic differences between these forms. Clearly II is interrogative, but the postverbal clitics also occur when there is an adverb in preverbal position, thus gisteren emekik da gezegd 'yesterday I said that'. The stressed forms clearly have soem focus or contrast on ik. The problem is then to distinguish pragmatically between I and III, does anyone have any ideas?Also, Does anyone know whether Pierre Swiggers has an E-mail address? I think he is the only other Belgian interested in Flemish dialects and in Native American languages. Willem J. de Reuse Dept. of Anthropology University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721 (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 21 May 91 10:16:08 +0200 From: "GEERAERTS DIRK, Beeken Jeannine" Subject: Re: Pronoun Doubling Two short points in connection with pronoun doubling in Dutch: - Bert Peeters assumes that the clitic/unaccented 'de' in 'hedde gij' is a reduction of 'gij gij'. This is historically incorrect: the unaccented form is a reduction of the Middle Dutch 2 sg pronoun 'du', which is related to Germa n 'du', and which has been replaced in the standard language by 'jij'. The 'gij ' form is historically 2 pl, but was later used for the singular as well. Now, 'gij' mostly occurs in the dialects, and in archaic/religious standard language (although there is a tendency in Belgian Dutch to use 'gij' in standard speech) . Notice that the 'de/gij' sequence in cases of dialect pronoun doubling is not general in the dialects: in the province of West Flanders, for instance, the unaccented form is 'ji' rather than 'de': Ga-je gi mee ? Come-2sg you along ? - Dutch also exhibits the clitic use of the unaccented pronoun forms as noted by G. Fanselow in Bavarian, specifically as attached to comps. This is, however, geographically rather restricted. To my knowledge, it occurs mostly in the province of East Flanders. One gets sentences like: Da-ze zij nog ziek zijn That-3sg they still ill are. D. Geeraerts [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0246] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0247. Monday, 27 May 1991 Subj: 2.0247 Jobs Total: 86 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Sat, 18 May 91 12:02:06 EDT From: Peter Cole Subject: Position at the Univ of Delaware 2 Lg. Acquisition (2) Date: Sun, 26 May 91 14:41:26 BST Subject: Job Ad. -- Computational Phonology (Edinburgh) From: Steven Bird (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 18 May 91 12:02:06 EDT From: Peter Cole Subject: Position at the Univ of Delaware 2 Lg. Acquisition The Department of Linguistics expects to have a one year position in psycholinguistics/second language acquisition for 1991-92. We also expect to have a search for a permanent search which will include these areas for a 1992-93 hire (pending final authorization and funding). Since time is very short for the temporary position, if you are interested, please send your CV, a short letter describing your background and interests to us immediately. Please also arrange for three or four letters of recommendation to reach us as soon as possible: Psycholinguistics Search Committee Dept. of Linguistics University of Delaware 46 E. Delaware Newark, DE 19716 Tel. 302-451-6806 email: linguistics@udel.edu If there will be a delay in receiving your material, please let us know by email that it is one the way. (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 26 May 91 14:41:26 BST Subject: Job Ad. -- Computational Phonology (Edinburgh) From: Steven Bird The University of Edinburgh Centre for Cognitive Science Research Post in Computational Phonology Applications are invited for a research post on the project Computational Phonology: A Constraint-Based Approach", which will be be funded by the SERC, and will be carried out in the Centre for Cognitive Science. Can- didates should be well acquainted with the theoretical foundations of non- linear phonology and with the linguistic applications of unification-based formalisms. They should be proficient in Prolog programming, and famil- iarity with one or more of the following areas would also be advantageous: morphology, formal semantics, categorial grammar, instrumental phonetics, C programming. The appointment will be for three years, commencing on 1st October 1991, and salary will be within the range L11,399-13,495 on the AR1A scale, with appointment subject to age and experience. Applications (two copies), including a curriculum vitae and the names of three referees, should be sent to The Personnel Office, The University of Edinburgh, 1 Roxburgh Street, Edinburgh EH8 9TB Tel: 031 650 2260 quoting reference no. X91005. The closing date for applications is 1 July 1991. For further information, please contact Dr. Steven Bird The University of Edinburgh, Centre for Cognitive Science 2 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LW Tel: 031 650 4421/4432, Email: steven@uk.ac.ed.cogsci ---- [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0247] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0248. Monday, 27 May 1991 Subj: 2.0248 PC-Kimmo Morphological Processor Total: 256 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Mon, 20 May 91 8:29:51 CDT From: txsil!evan@txsil@utafll.uta.edu (Evan Antworth) Subject: PC-KIMMO News (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 20 May 91 8:29:51 CDT From: txsil!evan@txsil@utafll.uta.edu (Evan Antworth) Subject: PC-KIMMO News PC-KIMMO News ============= May 20, 1991 This announcement describes recent developments related to PC-KIMMO (an implementation for personal computers of Kimmo Koskenniemi's two-level model of word production and recognition). (1) PC-KIMMO version 1.0.5 update (2) KGEN - a rule compiler (table generator) for PC-KIMMO (3) KTEXT - a text-processing application using the PC-KIMMO parser (4) recent articles related to PC-KIMMO The software described below is made freely available to the academic community for non-commercial use and redistribution. We invite your feedback on these programs. Please note that the software is packaged in compressed archives: Zip files for MS-DOS and Stuffit files for Macintosh. In addition, if you obtain the files by e-mail, they will arrive in encoded form: uu-encoding for MS-DOS and Binhex format for Macintosh. Utility programs for handling archives and encoded files are available from computer bulletin boards or from your university computing center. (Hint for MS-DOS users: when you unzip a file, use the -d option to preserve the subdirectories.) Finally, it is possible that the files may not yet be available in some of the places listed below. Just wait a few days and try again. (1) PC-KIMMO 1.0.5 update PC-KIMMO version 1.0.5 has been available since the end of February. It fixes a problem with loading very large lexicons (more than 100 sublexicons). Thanks to Elizabeth Hinkelman and her colleagues for finding this bug. This version also fixes a couple things that caused crashes on the Macintosh. There are no functional changes in version 1.0.5. If you want to upgrade to version 1.0.5, you can obtain it as follows: 1. Obtain it via anonymous FTP from the following sources. (I am advised that it is best to use the symbolic names rather than the numeric addresses. Also, the directory structure is subject to change.) MS-DOS version: msdos.archive.umich.edu [141.211.165.34] msdos/linguistics/pckim105.zip Macintosh version: mac.archive.umich.edu [141.211.165.34] mac/etc/linguistics/pckim105.sit 2. Request it from us via e-mail. Be *sure* to specify which version you want (DOS, Mac, UNIX). 3. Send a diskette and a self-addressed, stamped diskette mailer to the address below. Be *sure* to specify which version you want (DOS, Mac, UNIX) and the disk format. (2) KGEN KGEN, a rule compiler for PC-KIMMO, is now available for beta testing. KGEN was written by Nathan Miles of Ohio State University. All rights and responsibilities pertaining to the program presently belong to Nathan Miles (not to the Summer Institute of Linguistics). He can be reached by e-mail at miles@cis.ohio-state.edu. Nathan has done a great job at developing this program and he deserves our thanks. KGEN takes a two-level rule like this: y:i => @:C___+:0 and translates it into a finite state table like this: @ y + @ C i 0 @ 1: 2 0 1 1 2: 2 3 2 1 3. 0 0 1 0 KGEN accepts as input a file of two-level rules and produces as output a file of state tables that is identical in format to PC-KIMMO's rules file. Anything that KGEN does not correctly handle can be easily fixed by hand in its output file. Everyone who uses PC-KIMMO (or who doesn't use it because they don't want to write tables by hand) is welcome to try out KGEN. But what we really need are some beta testers who can compare KGEN's output to tables they have written by hand. Let us know if you are willing to beta test KGEN for us. Presently KGEN runs only under MS-DOS and UNIX, but we hope to get it compiled for the Macintosh soon (any Think C experts out there?). You can obtain KGEN as follows. 1. The MS-DOS version of KGEN is available via anonymous FTP from SIMTEL20: wsmr-simtel20.army.mil [192.88.110.20] pd1:kgen02.zip SIMTEL20 can also be accessed using LISTSERV commands from BITNET via LISTSERV@NDSUVM1, LISTSERV@RPIECS and in Europe from EARN TRICKLE servers (for example, FRMOP11 in France). You can also obtain files from SIMTEL20 by e-mail. Send this line as the only message to listserv@vm1.nodak.edu (1 = one) (this may not work outside the U.S.): /PDGET MAIL PD1:KGEN02.ZIP UUENCODE The MS-DOS version of KGEN is also available by anonymous FTP from: msdos.archive.umich.edu [141.211.165.34] (symbolic name recommended) msdos/linguistics/kgen02.zip 2. The UNIX version (consisting of the source files which you must compile on your own machine) is available by anonymous FTP from the machine TUT: cis.ohio-state.edu [128.146.8.60] pub/kgen/kgen03.tar.Z 3. Request KGEN from us via e-mail. Be *sure* to specify which version you want (DOS, UNIX). 4. If all else fails, send a diskette and a self-addressed, stamped diskette mailer to the address below. Be *sure* to specify which version you want (DOS, UNIX) and the disk format. (3) KTEXT KTEXT is a new text-processing application that uses the PC-KIMMO parser. It accepts as input a text in orthographic form, tokenizes it into words, strips off and saves punctuation, capitalization, white space, and formatting codes, parses each word, and outputs the result to a quasi-database file with a record for each word. Its output data structures are suitable for further processing by other programs, such as a text interlinearizer, a syntactic parser, or a machine translation system. KTEXT is a beta test release that is distributed and supported by the Summer Institute of Linguistics. It is available for MS-DOS, Macintosh, and UNIX. You can obtain it as follows. 1. The MS-DOS version of KTEXT is available from SIMTEL20 as (see above on how to access SIMTEL20 by FTP or e-mail): pd1:ktext093.zip It is also available via anonymous FTP from: msdos.archive.umich.edu [141.211.165.34] (symbolic name recommended) msdos/linguistics/kgen02.zip 2. The Macintosh version of KTEXT is available via anonymous FTP from: mac.archive.umich.edu [141.211.165.34] (symbolic name recommended) mac/etc/linguistics/ktext094.sit It is also available via anonymous FTP from: sumex-aim.stanford.edu [36.44.0.6] /info-mac/app/ktext094.hqx You can also obtain files from SUMEX-AIM by e-mail. Send this line as the only message to listserv@ricevm1.rice.edu (1 = one) (this may not work outside the U.S.): $MACARCH GET /info-mac/app/ktext094.hqx 3. Request KTEXT from us via e-mail. Be *sure* to specify which version you want (DOS, UNIX). 4. If all else fails, send a diskette and a self-addressed, stamped diskette mailer to the address below. Be *sure* to specify which version you want (DOS, UNIX) and the disk format. 5. To obtain the UNIX sources, please contact us at the address below. (4) Recent articles related to PC-KIMMO: Antworth, Evan L. 1991. Introduction to two-level phonology. Notes on Linguistics, 53:4P18. Dallas, TX: Summer Institute of Linguistics. Antworth, Evan L. 1991. Glossing text with the PC-KIMMO morphological parser. (Manuscript submitted for publication) Simons, Gary F. 1991. A two-level processor for morphological analysis. Notes on Linguistics, 53:19P27. Dallas, TX: Summer Institute of Linguistics. Vanni, Michelle. 1990. Abstract of "PC-KIMMO: a two-level processor for morphological analysis." Georgetown Journal of Languages & Linguistics 1.4:498-500. Special requests for any of the software or articles described above and/or requests for more information should be sent to: Evan Antworth Academic Computing Department Summer Institute of Linguistics 7500 W. Camp Wisdom Road Dallas, TX 75236 U.S.A. Internet: evan@txsil.sil.org <-------- new address as of May 1991 UUCP: ...!uunet!convex!txsil!evan phone: 214/709-2418 fax: 214/709-3387 From @utafll.uta.edu:txsil!evan@utafll.uta.edu Mon May 20 22:56:49 1991 Received: from ns.uta.edu by uniwa.uwa.oz.au with SMTP (5.61+IDA+MU) id AA00365; Mon, 20 May 1991 22:56:33 +0800 Received-Date: Mon, 20 May 1991 22:56:33 +0800 Received: from utafll.uta.edu by ns.uta.edu with SMTP; Mon, 20 May 1991 9:56:24 CDT Received: from txsil.UUCP by utafll.uta.edu with UUCP (4.1/25-eef) id AA28944; Mon, 20 May 91 10:57:07 CDT From: txsil!evan@txsil@utafll.uta.edu (Evan Antworth) X-Mailer: SCO System V Mail (version 3.2) To: linguist Subject: new linguistics directory on SIMTEL20 Date: Mon, 20 May 91 8:55:15 CDT Message-Id: <9105200855.aa18036@txsil.sil.org> Status: RO There is a new directory on SIMTEL20 called PD1:. Two programs that previously were in the education subdirectory have now been moved to this new linguistics subdirectory; these are fonol400.zip and pckimmo.zip. The directory also contains a couple new programs related to PC-KIMMO. I hope that others will submit programs useful to linguists to this new directory. (File can be downloaded from SIMTEL20 by anonymous FTP from wsmr-simtel20.army.mil [192.88.110.20]). Evan Antworth evan@txsil.sil.org <------- new address as of May 1991 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0249. Monday, 27 May 1991 Subj: 2.0249 Queries Total: 135 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Sat, 18 May 91 12:58:16 -0400 From: Fintel@LINGUIST.umass.edu Subject: Apartment Sharing at LSA Summer Institute (2) Date: Mon, 20 May 91 08:12:06 -0400 From: William J Frawley Subject: Re: Anna Wierzbicka (3) Date: Mon, 20 May 91 12:26:50 PDT From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com Subject: Pseudo-oblique Subjects and Objects (4) Date: 21 May 91 14:06:17 EDT From: Subject: Information on PSDN databases (5) Date: Tue, 21 May 91 15:05:31 -0500 From: louden@ix1.cc.utexas.edu (mark l louden) Subject: Sociolinguistics Query (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 18 May 91 12:58:16 -0400 From: Fintel@LINGUIST.umass.edu Subject: Apartment Sharing at LSA Summer Institute We are looking for a single person (male/female) or a couple to fill up the last room (a single) in an on-campus apartment that we are renting for the LSA Summer Institute at UC Santa Cruz. The room is a single but if you are a couple that really likes each other you should be able to live in it. Some of us are going to be doing that too. So far there are five of us, all grad students at Umass Amherst. If we find one more person the share for each will be $717.50, if we find a couple it will be $615. In any case, a lot less than the outrageous prices charged by the Institute if you request housing on your own. Please respond as soon as possible if you are interested since some of us are going to be taking off pretty soon. E-mail to: fintel@linguist.umass.edu or stunstall@hampvms.bitnet Phone: (413) 584-8765 Kai von Fintel / Sue Tunstall (UMass Amherst) (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 20 May 91 08:12:06 -0400 From: William J Frawley Subject: Re: Anna Wierzbicka I am trying to contact Anna Wierzbicka. The only address I have for her yields no reply. If she is on this list, could she contact me directly? Or does anyone know her e-mail address? Thanks. Bill Frawley (3) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 20 May 91 12:26:50 PDT From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com Subject: Pseudo-oblique Subjects and Objects I am currently working with a GPSG-based parser to produce analyses of sentences that engineers use to describe engine tests. This brought a rather curious phenomenon to my attention--the need to use prepositional phrases as modifiers (specifiers ?) of nominal phrases. It follows from the engineers' need to describe ranges, but the constructions in question are quite common: _ _ | Between 5 and 10 | angry people responded to the query. | From 5 to 10 | |_Up to 10 _| (The engineers have a propensity for saying things like "between 5 to 10 volts", which grates on my linguistic nerves, but it is unprofessional to argue with informants. :-) These things look like a reduced structure of some sort, but you do get the following data as well: Between 5 volts and 10 volts were applied to the connector. Perhaps it is best to ignore data like that last one. Pretend it isn't there. ;-) So, can anyone point me to interesting literature on this kind of construction? You can imagine the fun that a parser has in trying to distinguish these things from normal prepositional phrases. Rick Wojcik (rwojcik@atc.boeing.com) (4) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 21 May 91 14:06:17 EDT From: Subject: Information on PSDN databases Could anyone tell me what databases and other services of interest to linguistic researchers are available through the X25 (PSDN) european network? Having just aquired access to this network, I am not sure what resourses are available. Thank you Christopher Brewster ________________________________________________________ Wire Communications Laboratory, University of Patras, Patras, Greece. 30 61 991722 FAX 991855 email brewster@grpatvx1.bitnet ________________________________________________________ (5) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 21 May 91 15:05:31 -0500 From: louden@ix1.cc.utexas.edu (mark l louden) Subject: Sociolinguistics Query Greeting to all-- I am at present working on an article on sociolinguistic stereotypes of the Old Order Amish and am looking for references to similar work on other minority groups (in North America, or elsewhere). More specifically, I'm looking for material which deals with the question of the 'over-exoticization' of the verbal behavior of social/ethnic groups, e.g. the assumption by many that all Afr.-Americans speak Black English, all Asian-Americans speak 'broken' English and that for them English must be a second language, etc. Any references anybody might be able to provide will be greatly appreciated! Thanks, Mark L. Louden Dept. of Germanic Languages EPS 3.102 U of Texas, Austin Austin, TX 78712 e-mail: louden@ix1.cc.utexas.edu [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0249] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0250. Monday, 27 May 1991 Subj: 2.0250 The Survival of African Languages among Slaves Total: 80 lines Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) (1) Date: Mon, 20 May 91 15:42:27 BST From: Margaret Fleck Subject: survival or not of African languages among slaves (2) Date: Tue, 21 May 1991 00:16:18 +0800 From: BILL ELDRIDGE Subject: Re: Responses: African, Analogy, Acronyms, Hyouston (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 20 May 91 15:42:27 BST From: Margaret Fleck Subject: survival or not of African languages among slaves From: "ELISE EMERSON MORSE-GAGNE" Subject: >>Third, if by "survival" you mean "survival to the present", I don't know >>of any other immigrant groups which have maintained their original languages >>for as much as three or four generations, ... Aren't the Amish communities that old? Margaret (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 21 May 1991 00:16:18 +0800 From: BILL ELDRIDGE Subject: Re: Responses: African, Analogy, Acronyms, Hyouston A few comments on responses to my letter. First, I agree that the diversity of African languages amongst slaves probably forced the use of English as lingua franca. I don't think I stated that there was such a thing as "African", but the chance that many Africans speaking the same or similar language would be thrown together was probably slim. I don't think of the modern black dialects as reflecting enough African language to think of the language having survived. Perhaps the "Gullah" example offered has enough evidence of this. The Spanish spoken in southern Colorado has survived in that it still is closer to Spanish Castilian of the 16th Century than to the modern Latin American Spanish dialects (which contain a large amount of native american influences as well - I may be overstating this point a little bit). I think the slave situation was quite different from other immigrant situations, especially when much of the free immigration was to the cities, where assimilation over several generations may be faster, while slaves were kept together (of course social shunning of various ethnic groups has created large barriers even in cities, and so on...). And I still don't know if there was a Catch-22 that said slaves had to speak English but couldn't study anything. I suppose a good comparison would be with the slave situation in Haiti and various countries in Latin America. On a different note, I mentioned that I thought the Russian language would have been useful for Eastern bloc countries. This is probably quite questionable, but I thought that 1) it would provide an obvious language for regional cooperation, and 2) Russian has occasionally been studied by businessmen and scientists in the west, whereas Czech and Hungarian have not. The situation in Prague is now leaning towards English as the lingua franca in professional situations, despite or because of past connections with Germany (there's also the possibility that Germany has its hands full in rebuilding its eastern sector and doesn't have the time or resources to spread its influence elsewhere). Unfortunately the average person here speaks no foreign language, so that the reunification with the rest of the world will take a bit more time than many had hoped. At the same time, language and race differences are causing many groups to fight amongst one another when cooperation would be more helpful. Bill Eldridge Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0250]