________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-301. Tuesday, 18 June 1991. 67 lines. Subject: Queries Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- (1) Date: Mon, 17 Jun 91 15:34:17 BST From: David Denison Subject: Reference wanted (2) Date: Mon, 17 Jun 91 19:30:19 +0200 From: dings%et.kuleuven.ac.be@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: Prolog Programming (3) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 91 14:31:53 +1000 From: mdr412%coombs.anu.edu.au@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Malcolm Ross) Subject: Query re Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- (1) Date: Mon, 17 Jun 91 15:34:17 BST From: David Denison Subject: Reference wanted Can anyone help me trace a fairly recent published paper (within last two years or so) on the basis of the following, deplorably scrappy recollection? The paper was either in English or in Dutch, and it included a footnote which poured scorn on the idea that modal verb + directional adverbial (as in Modern German, Dutch, and earlier English, e.g. Murder will out) should be analysed as involving ellipsis of a verb of motion. Belatedly I would like to reread the piece - but what the heck was it? Thanks if you can help. David Denison (Dept of English, Manchester) ______________________________________________________________________ (2) Date: Mon, 17 Jun 91 19:30:19 +0200 From: dings%et.kuleuven.ac.be@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: Prolog Programming I just read that the main public domain collection of Prolog programming tricks is the PROLOG LIBRARY on the Arpanet at Stanford. Can someone tell me how I can get at it from a site which has no internet ftp facility? Many thanks, Jan Dings Eurotra-B Maria-Theresiastraat, 21 B-3000 Leuven (Belgium) Tel: +32-16-285084 E-mail: dings@et.kuleuven.ac.be Fax: +32-16-285025 ______________________________________________________________________ (3) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 91 14:31:53 +1000 From: mdr412%coombs.anu.edu.au@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Malcolm Ross) Subject: Query re Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing I would like to obtain an address and maybe some information about the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing. Can anyone help? Malcolm Ross mdr412@coombs.anu.edu.au [Linguist List: Vol-2-301] ________________________________________________________________ Subject: For Your Information Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- (1) Date: Sat, 15 Jun 91 00:18 MET From: "Norval Smith (UVAALF::NSMITH)" Subject: news from the nameserver (2) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 91 01:13:04 -0700 From: edwards%cogsci.BERKELEY.EDU@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Jane Edwards) Subject: ALLC and ACH (3) Date: Mon, 17 Jun 91 13:57:00 BST From: STUART%VAX.OXFORD.AC.UK@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU Subject: Computers and Language conference -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- (1) Date: Sat, 15 Jun 91 00:18 MET From: "Norval Smith (UVAALF::NSMITH)" Subject: news from the nameserver NEWS from the NAMESERVER (linguists@alf.let.uva.nl) 1) We have added several hundred new e-mail addresses of linguists, culled from various sources. 2) We have performed an extensive weeding operation to remove dated, duplicate and erroneous addresses from the list. 3) The HELP message has undergone a steady growth over the last couple of months - we hope that it continues to grow in usefulness. 4) LIST commands: list list* provides a list of lists (electronic discussion groups) list ling* provides a list of linguistics departments list conf* provides a list of conferences with e-mail addresses list press provides a list of publishers with e-mail addresses list ftp provides a list of hosts with linguistic stuff list soft* provides a (meagre) list of software contacts list usenet provides a list of interesting usenet newslists and of course list SURNAME provides a list of e-mail addresses of people with that name list STRING* provides a list of entries beginning with the string 5) all commands: list ..., add ..., remove ..., help should be sent on a separate line, starting immediately at the left margin. Norval Smith ______________________________________________________________________ (2) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 91 01:13:04 -0700 From: edwards%cogsci.BERKELEY.EDU@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Jane Edwards) Subject: ALLC and ACH description of both. Hope this helps. - Jane Edwards -------------------------- (7) The ACH (Association for Computers and the Humanities) is an international organization devoted to computer-aided research in literature and language, history, philosophy, anthropology, and related social sciences as well as computer use in the creation and study of art, music and dance. It publishes the Bits and Bytes Review of software in the humanities and social sciences, with a subscription fee to ACH members of $40 for nine issues. Jointly with the ALLC (below), it sponsors an annual meeting held in North America in odd-numbered years and in Europe in even-numbered years, to bring together scholars from around the world to report on research activities and software and hardward developments in the field. To join ACH, send $55 to: Joseph Rudman, Treasurer Association for Computers and the Humanities Department of English Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213 (8) The ALLC (Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing) has representatives in over 30 countries, including advisors in the following areas: Machine Translation, Computer-Assisted Learning, Lexicography, Software, Structured Databases. It produces the journal ``Literary and Linguistic Computing'' four times per year, with papers on all aspects of computing applied to literature and language, ranging from computing techniques to results of research projects. To join ALLC and obtain the journal, send $27 (individual subscription) to: Journals Marketing Oxford University Press 200 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10016 or 16 pounds to: Journals Subscriptions Oxford University Press Walton Street Oxford OX2 6DP United Kingdom ______________________________________________________________________ (3) Date: Mon, 17 Jun 91 13:57:00 BST From: STUART%VAX.OXFORD.AC.UK@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU Subject: Computers and Language conference COMPUTERS AND LANGUAGE 2 TOWARDS 1992 25-27 September 1991 Sheffield City Polytechnic Sponsored by the CTI Centres for Modern Languages and Textual Studies Computers and Language 2 follows on the highly successful conference of September 1989. As previously, we are interested in language as studied at all levels of education: primary, secondary, higher and further. Plenary sessions will be of general interest and workshops/papers will be given in parallel sessions focussing on the classroom or the higher education sectors. ]IClearly the teaching and learning of modern European languages will be of particular significance as we approach 1991, the year of the single European market. Sessions will also be concerned with non-European languages, computers and literary topics, linguistics and writing. Concerns to be addressed: * What provisions are we making for IT? * Does IT have any effect on the language capabilities of our pupils/students? * Do we have to alter our teaching methods if we use IT? * Are computer applications for first and second language acquisition and development necessarily separate? * How do we keep up with the latest developments of IT? Keynote speakers include: HMI Peter Seaborne, Staff Inspector: Learning resources Professor Steve Heppell, Anglia Polytechnic Professor Graham Chesters, University of Hull Dr Diana Laurilard, Open University Fee: Full cost #120 sterling (residential). Daily registration available. UK academics should note that they may be eligible for financial support from their institution's Staff Training and Development Office. Deadline for registration: 5 September 1991 For further details contact: Moira Monteith Sheffield City Polytechnic 36 Collegiate Crescent Sheffield S10 2BP UK [Linguist List: Vol-2-302] ________________________________________________________________ Subject: Responses: Indirect Objects, Mood Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- (1) Date: Fri, 14 Jun 91 10:29:25 SET From: Aleksander Murzaku Subject: Re: Indirect Object Agreement (2) Date: Fri, 14 Jun 91 19:38:28 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: IO Agreement (3) Date: Sun, 16 Jun 91 16:59:36 CDT From: GA3704%SIUCVMB.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU Subject: Mood (4) Date: Mon, 17 Jun 91 10:01:15 MDT From: koontz@alpha (John E. Koontz) Subject: Re: Moods -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- (1) Date: Fri, 14 Jun 91 10:29:25 SET From: Aleksander Murzaku Subject: Re: Indirect Object Agreement I have not read the original query on this subject but looking at the answers I think that Albanian language presents some interest (bulgare and macedonian as other Balkan languages too). The indirect object requires always a clitic which agree with the object before the verb. The use is already obligatory and is pronounced as part of the verb. The same phenomena can be observed with the direct object but there, the clitic can be omitted for the 3d person. The rest is grammaticalised. Examples: Indirect Object mE jep mua 'CL(=to me) give to me' - Without the clitic the construction is ungrammatical. (the same for all persons) Direct Object mE merr mua 'CL(=me) take me' tE merr ty 'CL(=you[sing]) take you[sing]' na merr ne 'CL(=us) take us' ju merr ju 'CL(=you[plur]) take you[plur]' In all these examples the use of the clitic is obligatory. But not yet in this: e merr atE 'Cl(=him) take him' but also merr atE 'take him' (plural also) /* the letter 'E' stays for 'e dieresis'=schwa */ AleksandEr Murzaku Scuola Normale Superiore Piazza dei Cavalieri, 7 I-56126 PISA internet: murzaku@vaxsns.infn.it _________________________________________________________________________ (2) Date: Fri, 14 Jun 91 19:38:28 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: IO Agreement Some dialects of Spanish are reliably reported to require what is traditionally called a dative clitic whenever there is an IO, su ch that you can only say le di a Juan un regalo, but not *di a Juan un regalo. But the same is not the case for DO, so that you can still say vi a Juan and do not have to say le vi a Juan. This would be a very straightforward case of IO, but not DO, agreement, it seems to me. However, I cannot at the moment identify the relevant dialects or the best references to this phenomenon. Can someone more up on Spanish help? _________________________________________________________________________ (3) Date: Sun, 16 Jun 91 16:59:36 CDT From: GA3704%SIUCVMB.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU Subject: Mood In response to the queries about mood: there is no taxonomic terminology agreed upon for mood in general that I am aware of; just in French alone there are disagreements about whether there is a conditional mood or whether one should talk simply about the conditional as tense. I am also not comfortable with statements that the subjunctive is only found in dependent clauses - this too is open to debate and depends in part on whether we accept what look like independent clauses as having a deleted complementizer (my examples are from French and English where it is easy to argue that _God bless you_ and _vive le roi_ are frozen expressions - I believe Italian is more productive). It might help to think about the difference between mood and modality where the former is morpho- logical and the latter semantic. I'd be interested in hearing why the questions are being asked: I've been struggling with the semantics of mood in Old and modern French for a while. Margaret Winters Southern Illinois Univ. _________________________________________________________________________ (4) Date: Mon, 17 Jun 91 10:01:15 MDT From: koontz@alpha (John E. Koontz) Subject: Re: Moods In addition to Bert Peeters' response to ffjal1's query: A term which unambiguously refers to moods that express a desire for something to happen would be desiderative, or possibly optative. I agree that subjunctive is not appropriate for this. It refers to a mood used in subordinate clauses, often under a verb expressing desire, but not necessarily so. [Linguist List: Vol-2-303] ________________________________________________________________ Subject: Responses Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- (1) Date: Sat, 15 Jun 91 10:39:41 ITA From: sergio scalise Subject: Re: For Your Information (2) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 91 10:01:09 +1000 From: bert peeters Subject: Double articulation (3) Date: Fri, 14 Jun 91 15:46:30 est From: sr_willing%vaxa.mqcc.mq.oz.au@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: old flames can't hold a candle to you (4) Date: Fri, 14 Jun 91 12:59:37 EDT From: Sheila Hogg Subject: Re: Responses: Voice, V2, address, Tongue Twisters -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- (1) Date: Sat, 15 Jun 91 10:39:41 ITA From: sergio scalise Subject: Re: For Your Information Answer to Ken Willing: you say that you have a list of some 1500 people work ing in the area of linguistics and that you hesitate about render this list public. I think that here there is a real issue in the sense that soon or later I am afraid that unwelcomeads will reach us (I mean commecials such as: buy this modem, a real linguist should have a real car such as... , why do not change your old computer and so on). I already sweared that as soon as will receive such an ad I will quit the Linguist net. But maybe we can deliberately and strongly opppose this possibility: in the meantime I think that lists can be rendered public: as a matter of fact they are already public such as the on of Amsterdam of Norval Smith which can be obtained writing to a server! Best wishes - Sergio Scalise ______________________________________________________________________ (2) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 91 10:01:09 +1000 From: bert peeters Subject: Double articulation Double articulation came into being as a purely linguistic concept, and was subsequently used by semioticians in a great deal of different contexts. If anyone out there is interested in the original concept and reads French, please do get in touch. A paper titled "Les articulations du langage: combien y en a-t-il?" is now in the process of being updated. I had sub- mitted it for publication in Andre Martinet's stronghold journal La linguis- tique, but it was turned down (incidentally, may I say, against Martinet's own advise). The reason for this, I guess, is that I'm claiming there are four articulations, not two. Now, I'm not the first one to say that, and I guess I won't be the last either. The paper is full of bibliographic material about what others have said about this too. Bert Peeters ______________________________________________________________________ (3) Date: Fri, 14 Jun 91 15:46:30 est From: sr_willing%vaxa.mqcc.mq.oz.au@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: old flames can't hold a candle to you [from Ken Willing] For anyone wishing to explore fire further, may I most warmly suggest... Gaston Bachelard's brilliant _la Psychanalyse du feu_ (1965; and his (1988) _Fragments d'une poetique du feu_ . [Both available in translation.] ______________________________________________________________________ (4) Date: Fri, 14 Jun 91 12:59:37 EDT From: Sheila Hogg Subject: Re: Responses: Voice, V2, address, Tongue Twisters Re: Tongue twisters (one in Irish) Here is one in the Irish language that appeared not too long ago on the GAELIC-L network: (acute accents appear as slash/) An bhfacha tu/ an bacach, no/ an bhfacha tu/ a mhac? Ni/ fhaca me/ a n bacach is ni/ fhacha me/ a mhac, ach da/ bhfeicfinnse an bacach no/ da/ bhfei cfinnse a mhac, ni/ bhacfainn leis an bacach is ni/ bhacfainn lena mhac! (translation very rough): Did you see the oaf or did you see his son ? I didn't see the oaf nor did I see his son, but if I should see the oaf or sh ould I see his son, I'd ignore the oaf and I'd ignore his son! Sheila Hogg. [Linguist List: Vol-2-304] ________________________________________________________________ Subject: Pronoun Borrowing Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- (1) Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1991 09:52 PDT From: Scott Delancey Subject: Re: Borrowed Pronouns (2) Date: Mon, 17 Jun 91 09:28 +0100 From: "Hartmut Haberland, Roskilde University" Subject: RE: Borrowed Pronouns -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- (1) Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1991 09:52 PDT From: Scott Delancey Subject: Re: Borrowed Pronouns The relatively famous Thai "borrowed pronoun" case has to be handled with some caution. The first caveat is that the borrowing of English /ay/ and /yu/ was not into Thai per se, but into the speech of a particular age group of educated speakers in Bangkok. They are not part of the pronominal repertoire of most speakers. The second is that, like the Malay languages mentioned by other respondents, Thai has a large, and potentially open, class of morphemes used for direct address and pronominal reference. This includes kin terms, words for occupational status, a number of semi-opaque pronoun-like morphemes with fairly shallow noun etymologies, a number with still transparent noun etymoloties (e.g. /nuu/ 'mouse', used for first person reference by young or teenage girls speaking formally to social superiors), and even some of the old Proto-Tai pronominal roots (with restricted synchronic sociolinguistic function -- e.g. Thai /mUng/, a reflex of the reconstructed PT 2nd person pronoun, is likely to be heard only among young, generally somewhat drunk, males in contexts of affirming solidarity or picking fights). In contrast to the Malay case described by Suzanna Cumming, in Thai there are no very firm syntactic grounds for recognizing a distinct pronominal category at all. Thus any borrowing into this set is quite a different phenomenon from borrowing into a closed paradigmatic system with its own defining morphosyntax, which is what the idea of borrowing pronouns implies to most linguists. Scott DeLancey ______________________________________________________________________ (2) Date: Mon, 17 Jun 91 09:28 +0100 From: "Hartmut Haberland, Roskilde University" Subject: RE: Borrowed Pronouns I was very surprised to read Suzanne Fleischman's comment on french _on_ borrowed from Germn(ic) _man_. I always thaought it was the other way 'round. I would really appreciate references to sources about this 'general belief'. My evidence (which I exploited in a little article in the festschrift for Jacob Mey, ed. by Bent Rosenbaum and Harly Sonne, Odense University Press 1986) is mainly 1. that Jacob Grimm believed so, 2. that German (and Danish etc.) _man_ clearly is an innovation. (That it is an innovation doesn't prove, of course, that it is a loan from French - al- though this makes sense both historically and sociolinguistically.) The original way of expressing generic reference in German and Danish was by the second person singular of the personal pronoun, a usage still alive in German dialects and in colloquial German (although many people believe that this cis due to English influence - I'm not convinced. Also since English 'you' is not singular, but - at least historically - a polite plural). Hartmut Haberland [Linguist List: Vol-2-305] ________________________________________________________________ Subject: Orthography Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- (1) Date: Sat, 15 Jun 91 08:28:28 -0700 From: ervin-tr@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Susan Ervin-Tripp) Subject: Re: Responses (2) Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1991 14:36 EDT From: Robert D Hoberman Subject: Vowel-omitting writing systems -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- (1) Date: Sat, 15 Jun 91 08:28:28 -0700 From: ervin-tr@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Susan Ervin-Tripp) Subject: Re: Responses In reply to John Coleman re orthography: > The comment about not being > able to read Arabic aloud until you know what it means is equally true > of alphabetic scripts, yes even Finnish. Those of us who have had the experience of reading aloud to illiterates letters in languages we don't speak or understand can attest that we can then get translations. Obviously won't work when relevant features (e.g. prosody) are inferred rather than systematically represented. Susan Ervin-Tripp ______________________________________________________________________ (2) Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1991 14:36 EDT From: Robert D Hoberman Subject: Vowel-omitting writing systems Margaret Fleck asked (LL 2.275) about the functionality of writing systems like those of Arabic and Hebrew and those, including Persian and Urdu, which borrowed the Arabic writing system; all of these omit any indication of a subset of the vowels. She wrote, "Is it just masochism, or are there particular features of the phonology of these languages that makes it more plausible than it sounds?" One answer has been suggested over and over in the Semiticist literature: that the "particular feature" is Semitic discontinous or nonconcatenative morphology, in which a word root is normally just a sequence of consonants, and the vowels which are interdigitated with it are separate inflectional or derivational morphemes. Here is a typical statement of this idea, from the authoritative handbook SEMITIC WRITING: FROM PICTOGRAPH TO ALPHABET, by G.R. Driver, revised ed., 1976, p. 178: "The Greeks, when they took over the Semitic alphabet, at the same time adapted it to the needs of an Indo-European language and so made it to all intents and purposes universal. "In the Semitic languages the fundamental element in the root of a word is the consonants, while the vowels are accidental [=inflectional, RH]; they are, of course, essential to its pronunciation but they serve merely to modify its basic sense: for instance, while the idea of killing was inherent in Q-T-L as the root, the distinction between QATAL(A) 'he killed' and QUTIL(A) 'he was killed' was shown only by the changed vocalization.... Consequently, the Semites could write only the consonants and leave the reader to supply the vowels as the context and his own sense suggested. In the Greek language the vowels were of equal value with the consonants and had therefore to be represented in the written word...." The trouble with this explanation is that it can easily be turned on its head. QATALA and QUTILA can easily fit into the same syntactic and semantic slot, so it could be argued that they MUST be distinguished in writing; in an Indo-European language, on the other hand, while there might be sets like lid, leed, led, lead, load, lad, lewd, laid, laud, it would be rare to find a pair that could be mistaken in context. This is because a pair of words sharing the same consonants would, in an IE language, usually belong to entirely different semantic domains. Though READ (past and present) is one such, ambiguity like that of READ is, in a Semitic language, built into the system. Consequently, it should be easier to omit vowels in writing an Indo-European language than a Semitic one; specifically, the Arabic-origin writing system should work better for Persian than for Arabic! I don't know how to test this hypothesis. One one hand, though in adopting and adapting the Arabic script Persian and Urdu writers invented several letters for consonants absent in Arabic, they did not abandon the principle of omitting certain vowels. On the other hand, Yiddish writing, using the Hebrew alphabet, has seen fit to represent all the vowels unambiguously. Is there anyone out there who knows both Arabic and Persian or Urdu and can offer at least a subjective judgment? Is there data about children's learning of reading and writing in different linguistic communities? Bob Hoberman [Linguist List: Vol-2-306] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-307. Wednesday, 19 June 1991. 236 lines. Subject: Call for Software at Annual Meeting of LSA Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- (1) Date: Mon, 17 Jun 91 12:20:44 EDT From: John_M._Lawler@ub.cc.umich.edu Subject: LSA: Call for Software at Annual Meeting -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- (1) Date: Mon, 17 Jun 91 12:20:44 EDT From: John_M._Lawler@ub.cc.umich.edu Subject: LSA: Call for Software at Annual Meeting * CALL FOR SOFTWARE * The LSA Committee on Information and Communication Technology (i.e, the Computer Committee) is aiming to sponsor a Software Exhibit at the LSA annual meeting in Philadelphia, Jan. 1992. Therefore, we need software to exhibit. And help in staging the exhibit. The size and structure of the exhibit depend on the response to this call, so we can't provide details right now, but we tentatively plan on a schedule of individual dem- onstrations lasting a half hour each. If time and the amount of software permits, we would like to allow each participant who is willing to give their demonstration twice (once each day), in order to allow our colleagues to plan their meeting schedule as flexibly as possible. Our intention is to make this a professional event, suitable for the usual institutional support for participant's travel. To this end, we will try to get the schedule printed and dis- tributed in advance of the meeting, so participants will have something in hand to show their institutions. Software dev- elopment has not been a traditional scholarly activity, but if there is to be software for linguists to use, it will have to be linguists that develop it. Preliminary reports of the LSA membership survey indicate that there are plenty of ling- uists who have been doing just that; it's time for us to stop reinventing the wheel, to get together and see just what al- ready exists. All software should meet the following criteria: 1) Only software developed by or for linguists should be submitted to this exhibit. We are attempting to represent software linguists should know about and would have trouble finding out about without this. While not intending to discourage commercial exhib- itors, we are targeting user-developed programs in this event. I.e, the model is more like a poster session than a book exhibit. This means that more general-purpose programs, like wordprocessors, are inappropriate, unless they have been specifically designed with linguistic (and NOT merely polyglot) uses in mind. Add-ons to general software, like fonts, wordpro- cessor style sheets, example numbering programs, spreadsheet templates, and so on, ARE appropriate; however, the submitter must take responsibility for providing whatever software is necessary for demonstrating them. Commercial software developers with programs they wish to demonstrate at LSA are urged to contact the Committee. Ideally, we'd like to have a good commercial exhibit along the lines of the Book Ex- hibit, but that will have to wait. 2) For practical purposes, we are limited to DOS and Macintosh software this year. Any non-standard hardware needs are the responsibility of the sub- mitter. Next year we hope to do better. 3) Software must be submitted for review. Submitters may suggest reviewers. Reviews will be displayed along with the software at the exhibit and will be available at the copy service. Submission is not a guarantee of acceptance, though the first time a new event is organized, it is reasonable to expect that most software submitted will be accepted, un- less we see an unanticipated flood of submissions. 4) Prototypically, the software author (or copyright holder) should be the submitter. However, anyone willing to perform a demonstration of the software at LSA may submit it for review. In the event of multiple submissions of the same software, the au- thor or copyright holder has precedence unless the software is commercial. The Committee may request a joint demonstration by all parties. The submitter is responsible for providing a copy of the software and documentation to the reviewer in a timely manner. "Commercial Software" is defined for the purpose of of this exhibit as any program for which payment is requested, beyond media charges. This includes shareware. 5) Like the privilege of presenting papers at the an- nual meeting, the privilege of exhibiting software is reserved for LSA members. Therefore, at least one of: the author of the software, OR its copyright holder, OR its submitter MUST be a member of the LSA. ______________________________________________________________________ * PROCEDURE FOR SUBMISSION * PLEASE DO NOT SEND SOFTWARE. Instead, fill out the form below and send it (electronically by preference; by paper post if you must) BY SEPTEMBER 1 to: -------------- Internet: jlawler@ub.cc.umich.edu John Lawler Linguistics Program BITNet: USERGB4N@UMICHUB 1095 Frieze Bldg. University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285 We will select a reviewer and ask you to furnish them with a copy of the software (if they don't already have it). The earlier you sub- mit your application, the more time the reviewer will have to write the review. This procedure should indicate, incidentally, that the reviews and the reviewers will NOT be anonymous. If you are interested in volunteering to be a reviewer, please send your e-mail and paper post addresses to the address above and indi- cate your preferences and experience. REVIEWS ARE DUE OCTOBER 1; please don't volunteer if you can't make that deadline. Finally, we can definitely use assistance at the meeting, though it is too early to say how or how much. If you're interested in help- ing us with the exhibit, please let us know. PLEASE DO NOT SEND SOFTWARE. ------ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ 1992 LSA SOFTWARE EXHIBIT - * - SUBMISSION FORM 1) Name __________________________________________________________ 2) Institutional affiliation _____________________________________ 3) Postal address ________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ 4) E-mail address ________________________________________________ 5) Software name _________________________________________________ 6) Brief description of what the software does ___________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ 7) Author or copyright holder of software, if not you ____________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ 8) Please fill in all of the following that apply: Runs on Macintosh __ Runs on DOS __ Runs on other OS ________ Freeware __ Shareware __ Other Commercial __ Price of the software, if any $__________________ Desirable Accessories, if any, and their prices _____________ _____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ Available for downloading from ________________________________ Source code available ___ Price, if any: $__________ From whom? _________________________________________________ Language and compiler ______________________________________ 9) What is the minimum system configuration it can run usefully on? Please include information about video displays, auxiliary soft- ware, or anything else that is necessary to run it. _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ 10) You may suggest a reviewer if you like. Please include e-mail and paper post addresses. _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ 11) Are you willing to give two demonstrations (on successive days) if asked? _______________________________________________________________ 12) Other information we didn't think to ask about ________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ [Linguist List: Vol-2-307] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-308. Thursday, 20 June 1991. 109 lines. Subject: Character Encodings Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- (1) Date: Mon, 17 Jun 91 12:43 EST From: Herb Stahlke <00HFSTAHLKE%BSUVAX1.BITNET@UICVM.uic.edu> Subject: RE: Diacritics (2) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 91 15:34 EDT From: DJBPITT%PITTVMS.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU Subject: Unicode ListServ Subscriptions (3) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 91 23:45:42 +0100 From: Paul Hackney Subject: Character encodings: A reply. -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- (1) Date: Mon, 17 Jun 91 12:43 EST From: Herb Stahlke <00HFSTAHLKE%BSUVAX1.BITNET@UICVM.uic.edu> Subject: RE: Diacritics I missed part of the discussion on diacritics last week, so this may be redundant. My apologies if it is. An issue that seems not to have been addressed is sorting. A symbol code with multi-character representation for diacritics is almost a must for languages in which tone must be marked on each vowel for the orthography to be readable. (The Smalley-Gudschinsky sort of orthography, like Hmong, in which tones are marked by final consonants works only if there are no actual final consonants.) Whether a sort needs to be sensitive to tone or not depends on the reason for the sort, but that control needs to be in the hands of the user, not the code designer. Allowing for separate representation of diacritics would permit this. As I understand it, Unicode will allow both, which will lead inevitably to problems of determining which representation is being used. A utility for converting from one representation to another would be useful. Herb Stahlke ___________________________________________________________________________ (2) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 91 15:34 EDT From: DJBPITT%PITTVMS.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU Subject: Unicode ListServ Subscriptions In response to my suggesting that linguists interested in character set issues subscribe to the unicode@sun.com ListServ, one reader tried and reported that this ListServ does not support automated subscriptions. A member of the Unicode Technical Committee (UTC) reminds me that there are three ways to subscribe: >1. write a note to "unicode@sun.com" and publicly ask to be > added...sometimes embarrassing... >2. write to "tut@sun.com" (Bill Tuthill) who maintains the list and > ask to be added >3. try writing to "unicode-request@sun.com". "Something dash > request" is frequently the method of talking to a list maintainer. He suggested trying #2 first. Apologies for the earlier confusion. --David __________________________________________________________________________ (3) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 91 23:45:42 +0100 From: Paul Hackney Subject: Character encodings: A reply. > Date: Fri. 14 Jun 91 16:43:15 EDT > From: macrakis@osf.org > Subject: Character encodings > > Mr. Hackney: May I suggest you read the (extensive) discussions on > multilingual character coding... I am new to this discussion, so please bear with me. > ...before speculating,... Am I not allowed to speculate? > ...and before asserting... I fear I did not assert: "I am really convinced that this system should be adopted in preference to the fixed length encoding..." > ...that ``the answer''... Aha quotes! Perchance to misquote is to slander. > ...is a variable-length encoding? > > > PS Your `inferred explanation' of `floating diacritics' is incorrect. It is? May I be so bold as to expect and explanation? Yours, humbly, Paul. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-309. Thursday, 20 June 1991. 90 lines. Subject: Jobs Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- (1) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 91 14:32:02 METDST From: Gosse Bouma Subject: job (2) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 91 14:51:46 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: positions in Gaelic in Gaelic -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- (1) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 91 14:32:02 METDST From: Gosse Bouma Subject: job ******************************************************* Full Professor in Computational Linguistics Faculty of Arts Groningen University ****************************** Applications are invited from individuals who hold a PhD in Computational Linguistics or a related area and whose scientific qualities are reflected in a series of publications. Applicants must have both teaching and research experience and must be able to supervise and stimulate scientific research. The applicant will be appointed as head of the department "Alfa-informatica". The department offers courses in computational linguistics, cognitive science, literary computing and historical databases. Current research is concentrated on these and related subjects, with special emphasis on cognitive science and computational linguistics. The applicant is expected to be active in teaching and research activities in the latter two fields. The successful applicant will participate in the faculty research program Grammatical Theory and Knowledge Representation. Furthermore, the position will be closely related to the Centre for Behavioural, Cognitive and Neurosciences (BCN), a multidisciplinary research initiative at the University of Groningen. Details can be obtained by contacting Prof. J. Koster (tel (0)50-635974) or Prof. F. Zwarts (tel (0)50-635857, e-mail:frans@let.rug.nl). Applications, including a curriculum vitae, publication list, referees, and quoting reference number 910528, must be directed to Rijksuniversiteit Groningen afdeling Personele Zaken Postbus 72 9700 AB Groningen The Netherlands before July 6, 1991. __________________________________________________________________________ (2) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 91 14:51:46 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: positions in Gaelic in Gaelic Any takers? Cross-posted from: | NL-KR Digest (Tue Jun 18 18:21:51 1991) Volume 8 No. 34 | From: NL-KR Moderator Chris Welty | | [ . . . I have recieved details of | some job vacancies in Scotland involving the Gaelic language. The job | ads are in Gaelic and no English translation is available. If anyone is | interested in seeing them let me know and I'll send them individually. | None of the jobs have anything to do with NLP or CL as far as I can | tell. - CW ] Bruce Nevin bn@ccb.bbn.com [Linguist List: Vol-2-309] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-310. Thursday, 20 June 1991. 128 lines. Subject: Orthography Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- (1) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 91 14:12:32 CDT From: Richard Goerwitz Subject: eek, no vowels (Semitic orthography) (2) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 91 13:41:45 BST From: John Phillips Subject: Re: Orthography -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- (1) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 91 14:12:32 CDT From: Richard Goerwitz Subject: eek, no vowels (Semitic orthography) Semitic writing was originally logographic and syllabic. In Akkadian, for instance (and also Sumerian, from which it is derived), a sign could stand for a whole word, or just for a syllable, such as ba, bi, bu, dam, gar, nim, etc. The West Semites apparently found this system too complex, because they replaced it with an orthography where ba/bi/bu, ma/mi/mu, etc. were all represented with the same sign. The same sign was also used for syllable-closing consonants (with no V). This system was also felt to be inadequate, and was modified so that certain (primarily long) vowels could be represented. Long a, for instance, was represented with either the sign for /h/ or with the sign for a glottal stop. This is how Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic are all written. For liturgical purposes (and also in certain literature, and for disambiguation) scribes evolved a set of diacritics which indicate all vowels in these languages. Naturally, there are interesting exceptions. Ethiopic permutates the base alphabetic forms to indicate the vowel that is present. Phoenician actually resisted the trend towards representing vowels and even of put- ting any sort of divider between words (in other languages, you get a space, dot, slash, or wedge of some kind). Ugaritic (a second millennium BC dialect) arose before use of consonants to represent long vowels had come into practice. It is odd because it represents the vowels only after a glottal stop (for which there are three signs, 'a 'i/e 'u/o). Akkadian has only one sign for the glottal stop, so scholars have pondered where the Ugaritic practice came from. In effect, the history of Semitic is one of evolution from logographic and syllabic signs to a consonantal orthography, to a modified consonantal orthography which could represent some vowels, to a full system of dia- critics which are used today mainly in restricted literary contexts. The Tiberian Hebrew text of the Bible is probably the most complete or- thography ever actually put into practice. -Richard __________________________________________________________________________ (2) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 91 13:41:45 BST From: John Phillips Subject: Re: Orthography Most of the discussion of orthography and writing systems has assumed that an alphabetic writing system is self-evidently superior to any other. There seem to be two disputable ideas underlying this assumption: that an alphabet uses a small number of characters, and so is easier to learn, write, and read; and that an alphabet gives the right level of detail in representing a language. Because of the first, the Chinese writing system is ridiculous because it has so many characters; because of the second, the Arabic script is difficult since it does not represent most vowels. I don't think either can be maintained in general. One would, for instance, think that a featural system, encoding phonetic features rather than phonemes, would be better than an alphabet. It would have fewer characters than an alphabet, representing voicing, labial articulation, etc. And for completeness, it should mark lexical stress, emphasis, and perhaps intonation contour. But few writing systems do any of this. Characters of the Korean Hangul script and Pitman's shorthand can be decomposed into elements representing articulatory features. Some written languages sometimes mark stress, and italics or underlining sometimes mark emphasis in English, but none of these are regular and widespread. It seems to me that the two important factors about a writing system are learnability and readability. A logographic or syllabic system will have more characters to learn than an alphabetic system, but an alphabetic system requires more linguistic awareness of its users. It is easy for an untrained speaker to segment sentences into words, rather less easy to segment them into syllables, and quite hard to segment them into phonemes. There is a considerable body of evidence suggesting that, in the initial stages, learning a logographic script is very much easier than learning an alphabetic script. The difficulty comes later because of the number of logographic signs which must eventually be learnt. Once learnt though, logographic writing is easier to read than alphabetic writing - I believe this has been demonstrated for both Chinese and Japanese. This is because fluent readers read logographically anyway - English readers do not read letter by letter, they recognise and interpret whole words at once. Since the shapes of Chinese characters are more compact and distinctive than the shapes of English words, they are easier to read. There is an anecdote about the Chinese (a couple of centuries ago) comparing printed English text to pictures of rows of worms and wondering how it could be read. Different languages are best suited by different writing systems. Chinese can get away with a fairly small number of characters because of its simple concatenative morphology and comparatively small number of basic morphemes (because it has borrowed little from other languages). Other factors are the amount of homophony in a language, and the predictability of pronunciation of a morpheme in different contexts (so that pronunciation can be predicted from spelling). Linguistic factors sometimes come into play, alongside political and religious factors, when a writing system is adopted, e.g. Vietnamese was until recently written logographically rather than phonetically like most of its neighbours; on the other hand Mongol and other east Siberian languages settled on an alphabetic script rather than the rival Chinese-derived script, since these languages have a complex inflectional system. The Arabic script is interesting in that it combines advantages of both phonetic and logographic writing. It is made up of a small number of basic signs and so is easy to learn and remember, but the shapes of individual words written in the script are very distinctive and can be easily read as logographs. Compare the Morse code - alphabetic but with minimal distinctiveness and so very difficult to read when printed. John Phillips [Linguist List: Vol-2-310] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-311. Thursday, 20 June 1991. 67 lines. Subject: Queries Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- (1) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 91 11:48:19 GMT From: hoski@rhi.hi.is (Hoskuldur Thrainsson) Subject: Re: Indirect Object Agreement (2) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 91 19:07:37 +0200 From: Jan Olsen Subject: Query: CTP-Phenomena -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- (1) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 91 11:48:19 GMT From: hoski@rhi.hi.is (Hoskuldur Thrainsson) Subject: Re: Indirect Object Agreement Just a quick question to those of you who have been spreading this interesting information on indirect object agreement: How do you know an indirect object when you see one? Do you use semantic criteria only (indirect object being some sort of benefactive, recipient or whatever) or do you consider syntactic properties like passivization possibilities, word order, case marking or what? I'm just curious because it is not always clear to me what people mean by "indirect object". Hoeskuldur Thrainsson ________________________________________________________________________ (2) Date: Tue, 18 Jun 91 19:07:37 +0200 From: Jan Olsen Subject: Query: CTP-Phenomena In a number of (dialects of) languages, structures such as the following are well-formed: I wonder who that you will meet Examples are Modern Hebrew (cf., e.g., papers by Shlonsky in LI & NLLT), varieties of French (cf. e.g, fn. 8 in Pesetsky's 1981 TLR-paper on CTP- effects), dialects of Dutch (cf., e.g. Koster's Foris book), and dialects of German (cf., e.g.. my own _Konfigurationalitaet_). In one or the other way, a number of theories of complementizer-trace phenomena predict that these languages/dialects should allow the subject to be extracted from complement clauses with an overt complementizer, and for the languages just mentioned, this prediction appears to be borne out. Andrew Radford (Syntactic Theory and the Acquisition...,, 1990, p.118) states that I wonder what kind of party that he has in mind is "acceptable to a certain percentage of English speakers". I'm wondering if these speakers would also find who do you think that will win the next elections grammatical (which is fine, e.g., for speakers of Texan English, cf. Sobin's 1987 NLLT paper). Gisbert Fanselow (not Jan Olsen) fanselow@unipas.fmi.uni-passau.de [Linguist List: Vol-2-311] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-312. Saturday, 22 June 1991. 199 lines. Subject: For Your Information Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- (1) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 91 16:00:32 IST From: David Gil Subject: THE ISRAEL ASSOCIATION FOR THEORETICAL LINGUISTICS (2) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 91 12:45:43 EDT From: Eastern States Conference on Linguistics '91 Subject: ESCOL '91 Deadline and Mailing Address (3) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 91 09:45:04 MDT From: Randy Allen Harris Subject: Update on Quebec language law (4) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 91 20:49 PDT From: "Audrey Li" Subject: Lecture Series on Chinese lx -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- (1) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 91 16:00:32 IST From: David Gil Subject: THE ISRAEL ASSOCIATION FOR THEORETICAL LINGUISTICS THE ISRAEL ASSOCIATION FOR THEORETICAL LINGUISTICS Preliminary Announcements: ***** Workshop on Language and Cognition Monday, 30 December 1991, Haifa University, Haifa (call for abstracts to be circulated next month) ***** Eighth Annual Conference Tuesday & Wednesday, 2-3 June 1992, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan (near Tel Aviv) ***** for further information on IATL activities, please contact: Anita Mittwoch (president, IATL) Department of English Hebrew University Jerusalem, 91095, Israel hcuma@hujivm1.bitnet David Gil (secretary, IATL) [after 10.10.1991] Department of English University of Haifa Haifa, 31999, Israel rhle813@haifauvm.bitnet __________________________________________________________________________ (2) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 91 12:45:43 EDT From: Eastern States Conference on Linguistics '91 Subject: ESCOL '91 Deadline and Mailing Address The deadline for receipt of abstracts for ESCOL '91 is June 30, 1991 Some people may have received an e-mail notice with an incorrect zip code on the mailing address. The correct address is below: ESCOL 91 Dept. of Modern Languages and Linguistics University of Maryland, Baltimore Campus Baltimore MD 21228 Further details can be obtained by e-mail at or _____________________________________________________________________ (3) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 91 09:45:04 MDT From: Randy Allen Harris Subject: Update on Quebec language law The UN Human Rights Commission is now investigating the case of an undertaker who was fined for posting a sign in English. Also (I don't think this point was made earlier), the notorious "notwithstanding clause" of the Canadian constitution, which allows deliberate violations of human rights, and which was invoked by Quebec to pass the sign law after an earlier version was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada, has a time limit. Any bill passed under the clause has to come up for renewed debate five years after passage. The minister responsible is promising an extension; the principal opposition (a separatist party) says it doesn't go far enough and is calling for broader application. __________________________________________________________________________ (4) Date: Thu, 20 Jun 91 20:49 PDT From: "Audrey Li" Subject: Lecture Series on Chinese lx *****FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT ANNOUNCING A LECTURE SERIES ON CHINESE LINGUISTICS: STATE OF THE ART Saturday, July 13, 1991 The University of California at Santa Cruz In Conjunction with the Summer Institute of Chinese Linguistics and the 56th Linguistic Institute of the LSA The past decade has witnessed several giant steps, as well as a great deal of new and revived interests and activities, in the study of Chinese linguistics, not only in its traditional areas of philological studies and in theoretically oriented studies of synchronic grammar and language change, but also in the cultivation of new frontiers in related areas of cognitive sciences. The increasing study and research activities have resulted in a number of regularly held national and international conferences in the past years, and have culminated at the Summer Institute of Chinese Linguistics, to be held in conjunction with the LSA's 56th Linguistic Institute on the campus of UC Santa Cruz. Given the large number of scholars and students of Chinese linguistics who will be at the Institute, we plan to hold a one- day series of lectures, to be presented by leading scholars of the field. Each lecture will reflect on important recent accomplishments in a major area of Chinese linguistics, and discuss current issues and new problems awaiting future research. The lectures will each also serve as a summary of the state of the art in the areas represented by the courses of study offered at the Institute. The public is cordially invited to attend these lectures and the reception that follows. The preliminary schedule is as follows: 1. 9:00 - 9:50 Chin-Chuan Cheng University of Illinois at Urbana "On Quantification and Dialect Affinity" 2. 10:00 - 10:50 Pang-Hsin Ting University of California at Berkeley "Development of Chinese Tones" 3. 11:00 - 11:50 Matthew Chen University of California at San Diego "Recent Advances in Tone Sandhi Studies" 4. 2:00 - 2:50 William S.-Y. Wang University of California at Berkeley "Language and Evolution, with special reference to Chinese" 5. 3:00 - 3:50 Dah-an Ho Academia Sinica "Studies on Chinese Dialects: Past, Present and Future" 6. 4:00 - 4:50 C.-T. James Huang University of California at Irvine Yen-hui Audrey Li University of Southern California "Recent Advances in the Generative Grammatical Studies of the Chinese Language" 7. 5:00 - 5:50 Ovid J.-L. Tseng University of California at Riverside TBA, (Chinese Neurolinguistics) Reception: 6:00 ***************************************************************** Further information and the finalized schedule will be posted at the Linguistic Institute and announced in the classes. ***************************************************************** For abstracts or any further information, please contact Audrey Li (University of Southern California) at AUDREYL@MVSA.USC.EDU or Shi-Zhe Huang whose Institute address is Linguistic Institute, College 8, UCSC, Red Building, SC, CA 95064 e-mail through the institute: INSTITUTE@LING.UCSC.EDU [Linguist List: Vol-2-312] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-313. Saturday, 22 June 1991. 194 lines. Subject: Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- (1) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 91 15:43 BST From: MICHELE%VAX.OXFORD.AC.UK@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU Subject: allc-ach92 -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- (1) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 91 15:43 BST From: MICHELE%VAX.OXFORD.AC.UK@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU Subject: allc-ach92 ASSOCIATION FOR LITERARY AND LINGUISTIC COMPUTING ASSOCIATION FOR COMPUTERS AND THE HUMANITIES 1992 JOINT CONFERENCE ALLC-ACH92 5-9 April 1992 Christ Church, Oxford, England CALL FOR PAPERS This conference is the major annual forum for literary, linguistic and humanities computing. Its focus is on the development of new computing methodologies for research and teaching in the humanities, on the development of significant new materials and tools for humanities research, and on the application and evaluation of computing techniques in humanities subjects. TOPICS: Submissions are invited on all areas of literary, linguistic and humanities computing, including, but not limited to: text encoding; hypertext; text corpora; computational lexicography; statistical models; syntactic, semantic and other forms of text analysis; also computer applications in history, philosophy, music and other humanities disciplines. The deadline for submissions is 1 OCTOBER 1991. Electronic submissions are strongly encouraged. Please pay particular attention to the format given below. Submissions which do not conform to this format will be returned to the authors for reformatting, or may not be considered if they arrive very close to the deadline. REQUIREMENTS: Proposals should describe substantial and original work. Those which concentrate on the development of new computing methodologies should make clear how the methodologies are applied to research and/or teaching in the humanities, and should include some critical assessment of the application of those methodologies in the humanities. Those which concentrate on a particular application in the humanities (e.g. a study of the style of an author) should cite traditional as well as computer-based approaches to the problem and should include some critical assessment of the computing methodologies used. All proposals should include conclusions and references to important previous related work. INDIVIDUAL PAPERS: Abstracts for individual papers should be 1500-2000 words in length. Thirty minutes will normally be allowed for the presentation of each paper including questions. SESSIONS: Proposals for sessions (90 minutes) are also invited. These should take the form of either: (a) Three papers. The proposer of the session should submit a statement of approximately 500 words describing the topic of the session. Abstracts of 1000-1500 words should be submitted for each of the papers, together with an indication that the author of each paper is willing to participate in the session. or (b) A panel of up to 6 speakers. The proposer of the panel should submit an abstract of 1500 words describing the topic of the panel and how it will be organized, together with the names of all the speakers, and an indication that each of the speakers is willing to participate in the session. FORMAT OF SUBMISSIONS All submissions should begin with the following information: TITLE: title of paper AUTHOR(S): names of authors AFFILIATION: of author(s) CONTACT ADDRESS: full postal address E-MAIL: electronic mail address of main author (for contact), followed by other authors (if any) FAX NUMBER: of main author PHONE NUMBER: of main author (1) Electronic submissions These should be plain ASCII files, not wordprocessor files, and should not contain TAB characters or soft hyphens. Paragraphs should be separated by blank lines. Headings and subheadings should be on separate lines and be numbered. Footnotes should not be included and endnotes only where absolutely necessary. References should be given at the end. Choose a simple markup scheme for accents and other characters which cannot be transmitted by electronic mail and include an explanation of the scheme after the title information and before the start of the text. Electronic submissions should be sent to ALLCACH@VAX.OX.AC.UK with the subject line " Submission for ALLCACH92". If diagrams are necessary for the evaluation of electronic submissions, they should be faxed to 44-865-273275 (international, or 0865-273275 (from within UK) and a note to indicate the presence of diagrams put at the beginning of the abstract. (2) Paper submissions Submissions should be typed or printed on one side of the paper only, with ample margins. Six copies should be sent to ALLC-ACH92 (Paper submission) Centre for Humanities Computing Oxford University Computing Service 13 Banbury Road Oxford OX2 6NN England DEADLINES Proposals for papers and sessions 1 October 1991 Notification of acceptance 15 December 1991 Advance registration 8 February 1992 There will be a substantial increase in the registration fee for registrations received after 8 February 1992. PUBLICATION A selection of papers presented at the conference will be published in the series Research in Humanities Computing edited by Susan Hockey and Nancy Ide and published by Oxford University Press. INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMME COMMITTEE Proposals will be evaluated by panel of reviewers who will make recommendations to the Programme Committee which consists of: Chair: Thomas Corns, University of Wales (ALLC) Gordon Dixon, Manchester Polytechnic (ALLC) Paul Fortier, University of Manitoba (ACH) Jacqueline Hamesse, Universite Catholique Louvain-la-Neuve (ALLC) Nancy Ide, Vassar College (ACH) Randall Jones, Brigham Young University (ACH) Donald Ross, University of Minnesota (ACH) Antonio Zampolli, University of Pisa (ALLC) Local organiser: Susan Hockey, Oxford University (ALLC) ACCOMMODATION Accommodation has been reserved for the conference in Christ Church which is one of Oxford University's oldest and best-known colleges. It is situated in the centre of the city, but overlooks Christ Church Meadow and the River Thames. The conference will run from dinner on Sunday 5 April until lunch on Thursday 9 April. There will be a banquet in Christ Church's Tudor hall on the evening of 8 April. LOCATION Oxford is an hour from London and from Heathrow Airport and is also close to Stratford-on-Avon and the Cotswolds, a beautiful area of English countryside. There is a frequent bus service from Heathrow to Oxford and good transport arrangements from Gatwick airport. ENQUIRIES Please address all enquiries to ALLC-ACH92 Centre for Humanities Computing Oxford University Computing Service 13 Banbury Road Oxford OX2 6NN England Telephone: 44-865-273200 or (from within UK) 0865-273200 Fax: 44-865-273275 or (from within UK) 0865-273275 E-mail: ALLCACH@VAX.OX.AC.UK Please make sure that you give your name, full mailing address, telephone and fax numbers, and e-mail address with any enquiry. [End Linguist List: Vol-2-313] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-314. Saturday, 22 June 1991. 64 lines. Subject: Mood Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- (1) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 1991 9:19:04 EDT From: SULLIVAN%MARIE.MIT.EDU@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Jim Sullivan (617)253-7537 :FAX -0700) Subject: General term for moods. (2) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 91 09:30:27 -0900 From: "ACAD3A::FFJAL1" Subject: Clarification on term "mood" -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- (1) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 1991 9:19:04 EDT From: SULLIVAN%MARIE.MIT.EDU@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Jim Sullivan (617)253-7537 :FAX -0700) Subject: General term for moods. is looking for a term which unambiguously refers to moods that express a desire for something to happen. Perhaps a new term -- why not just "hopeful" or the somewhat awful "expective" __________________________________________________________________________ (2) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 91 09:30:27 -0900 From: "ACAD3A::FFJAL1" Subject: Clarification on term "mood" >From Jeff Leer Thanks to those who have answered my question about moods; perhaps I should clarify a bit. I'm writing a dissertation on the schetic (i.e. TMA) categories of Tlingit, a Pacific Northwest Coast Amerind language, and am constantly running into difficulties with terminology. I was originally using the term "Desiderative" for the superordinate category of modal categories semantically characterizable as requesting or desiring. In Tlingit, these are Imperative (2nd pers. subj. only), Hortative (which is not inherently a dependent-clause mood), and the Prohibitive-Optative (the Prohibitive is the negative counterpart of the Imperative and Hortative; the Optative is optative, and they use --share the same form). Obviously I don't want to use "optative" as a cover term for these categories, because "Optative" is one of the member categories. "Desiderative" might be OK, except that many linguists understand this term to refer to constructions meaning literally "want", like Japanese INFINITIVE+tai. I'm now thinking about using "Requestive" (or the more highbrow "Requisitive") as a cover term. By the way, I am not sure I want to equate (morphological) "mood" with (semantic) "modality". The reason is that Tlingit (and maybe other languages) has two formally distinct schetic supercategories that would seem both to be subsumed under what logicians call modality. One is mood (Declarative vs. Requestive) and the other is what I've been calling status (Realis vs. Irrealis). The status distinction has to do logically with proximity in terms of possible-worlds: Irrealis is used for negative, dubitative, and presumptive sentences. Does anyone know of a better name than "status" for this superordinate category? [Linguist List: Vol-2-314] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-315. Saturday, 22 June 1991. 82 lines. Subject: Queries Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- (1) Date: FRI, 21 JUN 1991 00:39:43 EDT From: Katherine Emblom Subject: The Philosophy of Language and Old English (2) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 91 17:01:38 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Query re: Austronesian (esp. Philippine) syntax (3) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 91 17:00:20 CDT From: Barbara Johnstone Subject: query -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- (1) Date: FRI, 21 JUN 1991 00:39:43 EDT From: Katherine Emblom Subject: The Philosophy of Language and Old English I'm interested in the application of philosophy of language theories to Old English poetry. I've done some work in speech act theory, and find it useful in helping to delineate interpretive boundaries in difficult passages, especially in elegies. The dynamics of time and space, as well as narrator and audience tend to become more clear. The limitation, of course, is that speech act theory is really only useful when there is either a clearly defined or strongly implicit speaker/audience relationship. Is anyone aware of research on similar applications of philosophy of language to Old English? I'm pretty familiar with the speech act applications, but if anyone knows of other types of language theories, I'd be grateful. I'd also be interested in knowing if anyone has done similar work in Old Norse, or has done comparative research in Old Norse and Old English. Well, at least this is a change from the weather. The above research project will help keep me in the airconditioned library during the heat and humidity of a Midwest summer. Thanks, Kate Emblom kemblom@iubacs __________________________________________________________________________ (2) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 91 17:01:38 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Query re: Austronesian (esp. Philippine) syntax I am finishing up a paper on the notion of topic in Austronesian linguistics and I would be interested in references to any theories designed to elucidate the difference between 'topics' in Philippine languages and 'subjects' in other languages that people may be familiar with. I am familiar with the theories of McKaughan (1957, 1958), Pike (1963), Bowen (1965), Hidalgo (1970), and Schachter (1976, 1977). I have also heard (and would appreciate any references to this) about an 'absolutive- ergative' analysis of Philippine languages. __________________________________________________________________________ (3) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 91 17:00:20 CDT From: Barbara Johnstone Subject: query Why is a polite threat more threatening than an impolite one? Why is "If I were you, I don't know as I'd ..." more ominous than "Don't"? Any ideas? [Linguist List: Vol-2-315] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-316. Sunday 23 June 1991. 40 lines. Subject: Job Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- (1) Date: Sun, 23 Jun 91 12:19:06 EST From: Ronnie Wilbur Subject: Postdoc at Purdue -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- (1) Date: Sun, 23 Jun 91 12:19:06 EST From: Ronnie Wilbur Subject: Postdoc at Purdue **** PURDUE UNIVERSITY **** POSTDOCTORAL POSITION. The Department of Audiology and Speech Sciences has an opening for a post-doctoral fellow to work in one of the following areas: language acquisition (L. Leonard, R. Stark), sign language linguistics (R. Wilbur), phonetics/neurolinguistics (J. Gandour), hearing science (G. Long), or speech motor control/stuttering (A. Smith). Position is available for Fall/91 and is renewable for a total period of three years. Send curriculum vitae, statement of purpose, and telephone numbers of three references to: Dr. Rachel E. Stark Chair Department of Audiology and Speech Sciences Purdue University W. Lafayette, Indiana 47907 (Fax: 317-494-0771, Telephone: 317-494-3788) [Linguist List: Vol-2-316] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-317. Sunday 23 June 1991. Lines: 83. Subject: IO-agreement Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 91 11:09:41 EDT From: Montserrat Sanz Subject: Re: Responses: Indirect Objects, Mood 2) Date: Sat, 22 Jun 91 08:54:39 +1000 From: bert peeters Subject: Indirect objects -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 91 11:09:41 EDT From: Montserrat Sanz Subject: Re: Responses: Indirect Objects, Mood In response to Alexis Manaster Ramer's question about Spanish IO: Although I don't know of any dialects of Spanish in which the phenomenon about IO agreement as you state it does not happen, I can certainly mention two of them in which it does: Castilian and Andalusian. Although the Spanish constitution refers to Castilian as a general term for the official language of Spain, I'm using it to refer strictly to the language spoken in Castilla (the central part of the country, which includes the regions of Castilla-Leon, Castilla-La Mancha and Comunidad de Madrid, roughly speaking.) In this dialect, as well as in Andalusian (Southern part of the country), a sentence like (1) Le di a Juan un regalo ( to him I gave John a present) is acceptable, whereas (2) *Di a Juan un regalo ( I gave John a present) is not, as an answer to a question like "Que le diste a Juan? (What did you give John?) or "A quien le diste el regalo?"(Whom did you give the present to?). However, it seems to me that a sentence like (3) Di un regalo a Juan (I gave a present to John) is possible, when answering a question such as "Que hiciste?" (What did you do?), in which no allusion is made to a possible IO. (Note that the order of the elements is different, though: DO-IO). Let me add something to this answer to your message. When talking about the OD, ("Vi a Juan" I saw John), you say that it is not possible to add the clitic le (*Le vi a Juan- to him I saw John). The phenomenon is correct, but the * in this example should be there for a different reason: the clitic for OD is not "le", but "lo", and, if someone uttered this sentence, (s)he would be incurring in a case of "leismo", which is another problem I assume you know of. Therefore, your example should read "* Lo vi a Juan". I will be happy to discuss this issue further with you, or any other topics related to Spanish. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Sat, 22 Jun 91 08:54:39 +1000 From: bert peeters Subject: Indirect objects In reply to Hoskuldur Thrainsson's query about how one recognizes indirect objects, I might refer interested colleagues to Michael Herslund's *Le datif en francais* (Louvain: Peeters, 1988) (for a review, see Canadian journal of linguistics 36:1, 1991). Bert Peeters [Linguist: vol-2-317] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-318. Sunday 23 June 1991. Lines: 66. Subject: Responses Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 91 11:43:32 BST From: fleck%robots.oxford.ac.uk@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Margaret Fleck) Subject: Jargon Dictionary 2) Date: Thurs, 20 Jun 91 From: Lars Henrik Mathiesen Subject: Tongue Twisters (Danish) -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 91 11:43:32 BST From: fleck%robots.oxford.ac.uk@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Margaret Fleck) Subject: Jargon Dictionary Is the MIT/Stanford/WPI jargon dictionary available online?--Boyd Davis The version I quoted from used to live on ai.ai.mit.edu under the name gls;jargon > [> is part of the file name]. That machine ceased to exist for a few years but it is now back and it would be in the character of the people responsible for the machine to have put that file back in the same place. It was published by Guy L. Steele as `The Hacker's Dictionary' (Harper & Row CN 1082, ISBN 0-06-091082-8, 1983), but is apparently out of print. There is a new (and VERY large) online version making the rounds, apparently produced by Eric S. Raymond (eric@snark.thyrsus.com) and Guy L. Steele (GLS@think.com). They suggest correspondence be sent to jargon@thyrsus.com. Margaret Fleck __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Thurs, 20 Jun 91 From: Lars Henrik Mathiesen Subject: Tongue Twisters (Danish) Two traditional Danish tongue twisters: Bissens gipsbisps gipsgebis (Tr: the plaster denture of the plaster bishop of Bissen (a sculptor)). Only one voiced consonant in it! Stativ, stakit, kasket (Tr: stand/rack, fence, cap) Very hard to repeat quickly. A newer one, not quite clean: Plaeneklipper Knudsens knortekaep knaekker naeppe (Tr: The walking stick of lawnmower Knudsen probably won't break.) The word to avoid is knaep/knaeppe = f***. -- Lars Mathiesen, DIKU, U of Copenhagen, Denmark [uunet!]mcsun!diku!thorinn Warning: This article may contain unmarked humour. thorinn@diku.dk [lINGUIST: VOL-2-318] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-319. Sunday 23 June 1991. Lines: 50. Subject: Queries Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 22 Jun 91 22:14 MET From: Roland Noske Subject: query on bulgarian corpus 2) Date: Sun, 23 Jun 91 16:00:07 +1000 From: bert peeters Subject: Andre Martinet -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 22 Jun 91 22:14 MET From: Roland Noske Subject: query on bulgarian corpus (repeated query; the previous one apparently got lost) Is there somewhere a machine readable corpus of Bulgarian? Roland Noske (noske@alf.let.uva.nl) __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Sun, 23 Jun 91 16:00:07 +1000 From: bert peeters Subject: Andre Martinet I'm about to finish a book-length manuscript, and suddenly realize that two essential quotes in my text are incomplete. The source materials where I am right now are unavailable. Can anyone help out with the following? 1) Enciclopedia del novecento, vol. 3, p. 1030 (Part of an entry on linguistics by Martinet) 2) Scientia (a scientific journal) vol. 106 (1971), p. 8 (Part of an article on function and structure in linguistics) or Martinet, Etudes de syntaxe fonctionnelle/Studies in functional syntax Munchen, Fink, 1975, p. 40 If you can help, please get in touch. I'd like to have this out of the way. Bert Peeters [Linguist: vol-2-319] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-320. Sunday 23 June 1991. Lines: 68. Subject: Mood Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 22 Jun 91 9:34:06 CDT From: david@wubios.wustl.edu (David J. Camp) Subject: Desirative Mood 2) Date: Sun, 23 Jun 91 17:03:12 -0500 From: macaulay@j.cc.purdue.edu (Monica Macaulay) Subject: Mood -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) From: david@wubios.wustl.edu (David J. Camp) Subject: Desirative Mood Date: Sat, 22 Jun 91 9:34:06 CDT In Reply to this Note From: >Date: Wed, 19 Jun 1991 9:19:04 EDT >From: SULLIVAN%MARIE.MIT.EDU@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Jim Sullivan (617)253-7537 :FAX > -0700) >Subject: General term for moods. > > is looking for a term which unambiguously refers >to moods that express a desire for something to happen. > >Perhaps a new term -- why not just "hopeful" or the somewhat awful "expective" I like "wanton" for this category. -David- ________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Sun, 23 Jun 91 17:03:12 -0500 From: macaulay@j.cc.purdue.edu (Monica Macaulay) Subject: Mood This is a belated response to the discussion of mood initiated by Jeff Leer some weeks ago... I've been working with a student of mine on almost identical issues in Dangme (a Kwa language of Ghana), and I've got a question and a reference for you. First, you used the term "schetic," and said "i.e. TMA" -- this is a term I'm unfamiliar with -- could you give us a more extensive definition and/or some references? Second, someone just referred us to a very useful and illuminating chapter from Shopen's Language Typology and Syntactic Description, vol 3. It's Chung and Timberlake's article, "Tense, Aspect, and Mood" (pp. 202-258). What you call "status" (realis vs. irrealis) they call "mood." Incidentally, what we're finding in Dangme is a subcategory of irrealis mood which contains imperative, optative, hortative, and "obligative" ("must/should/ought") -- almost exactly the list of categories you gave for Tlingit. Drawing from Chung & Timberlake, it looks like a group of deontic categories (in the obligation, rather than permission, sense). How does "deontic" seem to you as a term for your data? Monica Macaulay (macaulay@j.cc.purdue.edu) [Linguist: vol-2-320] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-321. Tuesday, 25 June 1991. Lines: 121 Subject: Character Encoding Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 91 10:04 EDT From: DJBPITT%PITTVMS.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU Subject: Re: Character Encodings 2) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 91 13:16:12 EDT From: macrakis@osf.org Subject: Character Encodings -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 91 10:04 EDT From: DJBPITT%PITTVMS.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU Subject: Re: Character Encodings In Linguist List Vol-2-308 (Thursday, 20 June 1991) Herb Stahlke <00HFSTAHLKE%BSUVAX1.BITNET@UICVM.uic.edu> writes: >An issue that seems not to have been addressed is sorting. A symbol code with >multi-character representation for diacritics is almost a must for languages in >which tone must be marked on each vowel for the orthography to be readable. >(The Smalley-Gudschinsky sort of orthography, like Hmong, in which tones are >marked by final consonants works only if there are no actual final consonants.) >Whether a sort needs to be sensitive to tone or not depends on the reason for >the sort, but that control needs to be in the hands of the user, not the code >designer. Allowing for separate representation of diacritics would permit >this. I suggested in an earlier posting that there are two basic criteria for resolving the "precomposed" vs "separable" approach to encoding productive orthographic units with fixed semantic content like tone marks. I agree with HS that separable diacritics are convenient or necessary. Nonetheless, I think his discussion of sorting is misleading. In my earlier posting, I suggested as self-evident that adequacy of representation should be the primary criterion. HS's wording of the sorting issue ("Allowing for separate representaiton of diacritics would permit this.") might lead to a conclusion that this is a question of adequacy (i.e., it might imply that "only allowing for separate representation of diacritics would permit this."). I think this conclusion, which HS doesn't draw but which is easily inferred from his wording, would be wrong. One issue that has been very well documented on the ISO10646 ListServ is that sorting cannot be done on the script level (Latin, Cyrillic, etc.), because different languages that share a script may sort differently. This effectively means that sorting cannot be implemented as bitwise operations on characters in machine order. Additionally, the same ListServ has documented that sorting cannot even be done on the language level, because different applications within a single language may have different sorting algorithms. Most frequently it is the precomposed camp that argues that sorting _requires_ a precomposed architecture. Otherwise, accented and unaccented letters quickly get out of sync; e.g., re'sume' is not the same length as resume and it becomes more difficult to compare the two esses, etc. On the other hand, HS seems to suggest that sorting that is sensitive to tone marks _requires_ a separable system. In fact, neither precomposed nor separable architecture forces or prohibits one type of sorting or the other. Whichever architecture we select, we _can_ use or ignore accent or tone mark information. There may be extremely serious differences in implementation efficiency, differences that may ultimately play a role in our decision (although they may not prove decisive, since they may be balanced by equally serious differences in other areas of efficiency). But the bottom line is that the ability to sort is not an adequacy issue. >As I understand it, Unicode will allow both, which will lead inevitably >to problems of determining which representation is being used. A utility for >converting from one representation to another would be useful. There are several layers between the user and the character set. Input devices may allow accent or tone marks to be input separately, but that doesn't require that they be stored that way by the application that receives them. This issue has also been discussed on the Unicode ListServ. --David __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 91 13:16:12 EDT From: macrakis@osf.org Subject: Character Encodings First, let me apologize to Hackney for my testiness. I trust that some of the more recent postings have filled him in and pointed him to more complete sources on character encoding issues. Stahlke brings up the issue of sorting. Sorting rules should certainly be controlled by the user: it is now generally accepted by the computing community that one cannot expect to treat natural language data as uninterpreted bitstrings for sorting or many other operations--some sort of preprocessing is inevitable, even for English. Alain LaBonte/ has performed extensive analyses of sorting rules in many languages, reported in part on the ISO10646 mailing list. Some of the complications are summed up by the ordering used by the best French dictionaries: cote < Cote < co^te < Co^te < cote/ < Cote/ < co^te/ < Co^te/ (May I suggest that those interested in the details of this analysis contact LaBonte/ directly (ALB%SEAS@liverpool.ac.uk) rather than start a discussion on this list?) Thus, the particular character encoding used will have little effect on the ease of sorting, since _no_ encoding will work without preprocessing. Of course, existing programs using naive algorithms which ignore language-specific rules cannot hope to be correct in general, since rules differ in different languages (consider `ch', which is treated as a single letter for sorting in Spanish). -s [Linguist List: Vol-2-321] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-322. Tuesday, 25 June 1991. Lines: 218 Subject: Orthography Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 91 02:32:31 PDT From: marks%neuro.usc.edu%usc.edu@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Mark Seidenberg) Subject: orthography and reading 2) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 91 01:38:47 EDT From: Scott Horne Subject: Writing systems -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 91 02:32:31 PDT From: marks%neuro.usc.edu%usc.edu@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Mark Seidenberg) Subject: orthography and reading John Phillips has raised the important point that it can't simply be assumed that alphabetic writing systems are easier to learn to read and to process. However, I don't think that psycholinguistic research on reading supports several of his other assertions. He writes, >There is a considerable body of evidence >suggesting that, in the initial stages, learning a logographic script is >very much easier than learning an alphabetic script. The difficulty >comes later because of the number of logographic signs which must >eventually be learnt. I'd be interested to know what evidence he has in mind, because my own reading of the literature is quite different. It has been asserted at various times that one or another writing system is easier to master. Phillips thinks that Chinese is easier in the initial stages of learning to read. The writing systems for Serbo-Croatian (there are two, Cyrillic and Roman) are said by others to confer an advantage because of the simple and consistent correspondences between graphemes and phonemes. There are Japanese authors who have argued the merits of their orthography. One way to turn this into an empirical question would be to ask whether there are differences in the incidence of dyslexia associated with different types of writing systems. In about 1968 there was a paper (rather notorious among reading researchers) asserting that there is no dyslexia in Japanese because of the ideal organization of the writing system. However, a very impressive, large scale study of children learning Japanse, Chinese or English did not support the claim that type of orthography has a big impact on reading achievement or incidence of dyslexia. (I don't have the reference handy, but could find it on request. The principal investigator was Stevenson from the University of Michigan and the study was published in the journal Child Development. There _were_ important differences between the groups in terms of learning arithmetic, but that is another story.) There was one study by Rozin and colleagues, published in Science some years ago, suggesting that some children who were dyslexic readers of English did somewhat better when taught to read some Chinese. This was an interesting and surprising finding (that's what psychology articles in Science always are) but it would not be valid to conclude from the study that Chinese is easier to learn to read. (Born without a leg, I might find it easier to learn to ski than to walk, but ....) It should also be noted that some reading researchers (Uta Frith in the UK, Linnea Ehri in the US) think that children initially approach written English as a logographic system, and only later figure out that it is alphabetic. This would also tend to suggest that there are greater similarities in the early acquisition process than the differences between the writing systems might otherwise imply. In general, I know of no compelling evidence indicating that there are substantive differences between writing systems in terms of ease of acquisition. There may be very local differences in learning rate (e.g., Japanese children seem to get going pretty quickly with Kana) but these quickly wash out over the first couple of years of reading instruction. John Phillips continued: >Once learnt though, logographic writing is easier to read than >alphabetic writing - I believe this has been demonstrated for both Chinese >and Japanese. This is because fluent readers read logographically >anyway - English readers do not read letter by letter, they recognise >and interpret whole words at once. Since the shapes of Chinese >characters are more compact and distinctive than the shapes of English >words, they are easier to read. There is an anecdote about >the Chinese (a couple of centuries ago) comparing printed English text >to pictures of rows of worms and wondering how it could be read. Well, all that Chinese stuff just looks like squiggles to me, too. Again, there has been a lot of empirical research on how orthography affects the reading process, and it does not support Phillips' assertions. There is no basis for concluding that Chinese is "easier to read," and it is a gross oversimplification to assert that "English readers... recognize and interpret whole words at once." It is quite difficult to draw broad conclusions about the processing, of, say, alphabetic and logographic scripts because differences between the writing systems are confounded with differences between the languages they represent. For example, it is a fact that latencies to recognize and pronounce words in Chinese are considerably longer than for comparable words in English (see, e.g., my paper in the journal Cognition, 1985). It would be an obvious mistake to conclude that Chinese is necessarily "harder to read" because of other differences between the languages (e.g., there are also fewer words in the average Chinese sentence). In terms of who reads "logographically" ("whole words at once"), the "whole word" process Phillips attributes to skilled readers of English seems to apply rather better to the behavior of very young, unskilled readers (cf. the Ehri and Frith research mentioned above). They are the ones who seem to use pattern recognition processes like those used in recognizing non-linguistic stimuli, such as objects or faces. It's the skilled readers who are sensitive to the structure of words (and of the orthography), as indicated in numerous experimental studies of actual reading performance (see,e.g., the Rayner and Pollatsek textbook on the Psychology of Reading for review). These studies also suggest that there are very striking similarities in the basic processes used in reading different scripts. For example, the characterization of the Chinese script as "logographic" tends to obscure the fact that many words contain systematic cues to pronunciation. Empirical studies suggest that these cues are exploited by skilled readers, but they are more helpful in reading words that occur relatively infrequently in texts. A similar effect occurs in the skilled reading of English, the alphabetic orthography. There are systematic correspondences between the written and spoken forms of the language; this is supposed to confer an advantage (in terms of both ease of acquisition and ease of processing) over the logographic script. These regular correspondences are violated in words such as HAVE, SAID, GIVE, DONE, etc. What numerous studies show, however, is that for skilled readers, the regularity or irregularity of these correspondences only has an impact on the processing of relatively infrequent words. Thus, in both Chinese and English, common words are recognized on a visual basis. For less common words, readers exploit the cues to pronunciation each writing system provides. Note that, to the extent that words are recognized on a "visual" basis, this would tend to minimize the effects of differences among orthographies in terms of how simply or directly they encode phonological information. Thus, one of the principal dimensions along which writing systems differ seems to be IRRELEVANT to much of skilled reading. Bottom line: it's hard to sustain the claim that a particular type of orthography is either easier to learn to read or to process. The writing systems that have survived represent various solutions to the problem of representing spoken language in a cipher. They all seem to be learnable and processible (sic) at roughly the same rate. I would say that this is because the writing systems that exist reflect some pretty obvious tradeoffs among a variety of constraints (number of symbols, complexity of symbols, bandwidth, ease of production vs. ease of perception, ease of acquisition vs. ease of processing, etc.). There are universal aspects of reading and learning to read, dictated by facts about our common cognitive, linguistic, and perceptual capacities. There are language- and orthography-specific factors, but they don't seem to have resulted in big differences in terms of acquisition or processing. A lot like grammar, I would say. Finally, I would stress that the issues about acquisition and processing can't be resolved by intuition. They require careful and systematic research on peoples' actual performance. John Phillips thinks that Chinese words are more distinctive and therefore easier to recognize than English words in their respective written forms). Well, one could try to quantify distinctiveness in some way and maybe it would turn out that Chinese characters are more distinctive than English letters or words. The consequences for acquisition or performance are not obvious, however. The characters being more distinctive from one another might facilitate identification because less information would be needed in order to discriminate any given character from all of the others. However, we also know that human perception exploits redundancy, which reflects similarities across exemplars. The fact that a word is structurally similar to other words might facilitate perception (it certainly does in many domains, including word recognition). If that is the case, the putative distinctiveness of Chinese characters would be a disadvantage. People interested in current research on these topics might look at Marilyn Adams' book Beginning to Read (MIT Press, 1990). Lots of interesting things about the controversies over how to teach people to read, too. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 91 01:38:47 EDT From: Scott Horne Subject: Writing systems I agree with John Phillips's claim that learning a logographic writing system is much easier at first than learning an alphabetic one. The biggest difficulty with learning alphabetic writing systems is learning to form a word from its constituent phonemes (and, when writing, to determine which phonemes make up a word). As a volunteer literacy tutor, I've found that this is what most troubles adults learning to read English. A colleague who used to teach English as a second language (ESL) to Chinese immigrants once claimed that teaching adults to read English by showing them how to use a dictionary to look up the phonetic respellings of words is a trivial matter. In other words, he regards the irregular English orthography as the biggest hindrance to acquiring literacy: according to him, substituting the (alphabetic) writing system which dictionaries use in respellings would trivialise the task of learning to read. I disagreed, of course, on the grounds given above, and suggested that a Chinese-speaker could learn to read his language much more quickly with the help of a dictionary. (Both this colleague and I speak Chinese, but I'm the only one of us who reads and writes Chinese.) A Chinese-speaking adult can, after his very first literacy class, read and write entire sentences and paragraphs (granted, they're simple and of limited subject matter); the English-speaking adults I teach don't start doing this until after a month or two of lessons. My colleague responded that his ESL students learn to read and write English words very quickly; to this I said that they are already familiar with one writing system (that of Chinese) and thus have acquired most of the skills needed for learning another. (Indeed, many Chinese have even been exposed to the IPA.) --Scott [Linguist List: Vol-2-322] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-323. Tuesday, 25 June 1991. Lines: 85 Subject: Responses Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 1991 11:21:47 +0200 From: Kjetil R} Hauge Subject: Bulgarian corpus 2) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 91 12:09 MET From: Koenraad De Smedt Subject: lexitron 3) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 1991 08:45 MST From: CAROLG@CC.UTAH.EDU Subject: Re: Indirect Object Agreement -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 1991 11:21:47 +0200 From: Kjetil R} Hauge Subject: Bulgarian corpus Roland Noske was looking for a Bulgarian corpus - I have a rather smallish one, consisting of dialogues and reading passages from two Bulgarian textbooks. It all amounts to about 170 Kbytes. The last time I asked someone who could be expected to know (two years ago), no corpora of Bulgarian machine-readable text were available in Bulgaria. I will ask again later this summer. -Kjetil Ra Hauge, U. of Oslo, P.O. Box 1030 Blindern, N-0315 Oslo 3, Norway -E-mail: kjetilrh@hedda.uio.no -Fax: +472-454310 -Phone: +472-456710 __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 91 12:09 MET From: Koenraad De Smedt Subject: lexitron This is a belated response to a query about electronic dictionaries. A few years ago, Van Dale Lexicografie published LEXITRON, an encyclopedic dictionary of Dutch. This CD-rom offers more than just a 'printed' dictionary put on a disc. Rather, it is a full lexicographic database containing all (well, almost all) inflectional and derivational forms. Smart spelling correction based on sound similarity is provided. Trivia collectors can search the large number of encyclopedic entries, while linguists and crossword puzzle freaks can search the dictionary using patterns, categories and labels. Several of LEXITRON's components were designed by Stichting Cognitieve Technologie. Koenraad de Smedt __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 1991 08:45 MST From: CAROLG@CC.UTAH.EDU Subject: Re: Indirect Object Agreement I know it's late replying to the question (from Jan Olsen) about indirect object agreement, but here's another bit of information. It's already been noted that languages that have object agreement marking opt to agree with the IO rather than the DO with double- object verbs. (Many of these languages also have an alternative in which agreement with both is possible by using serial or embedding constructions.) Palauan (Western Austronesian) has both. The object agreement phenomena can be analyzed (if one wishes to) as specifier- head agreement: agreement with the IO when a DO is present is agreement with the specifier of VP; agreement with the DO when there's no IO involves movement to specifier. This also accounts for the lack of agreement with unaccusatives and other intransitives, agreement in causatives and other "clause-union" constructions, and probably exceptional case marking phenomena. Sandy Chung and I have (separately) used this device to analyze "long-distance" agreement in WH constructions, in Chamorro and Palauan, respectively. For details on the DO/IO agreement analysis in Palauan, the paper is forthcoming in Lingua. Carol Georgopoulos [Linguist List: Vol-2-323] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-324. Tuesday, 25 June 1991. Lines: 81 Subject: Responses: Threats Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 1991 14:57 PDT From: Scott Delancey Subject: Re: Queries 2) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 91 20:54:39 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Re: Queries 3) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 91 20:15:02 -0700 From: ervin-tr@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Susan Ervin-Tripp) Subject: Re: Queries -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 1991 14:57 PDT From: Scott Delancey Subject: Re: Queries A partial suggestion re Barbara Johnstone's query: I don't know that it's generally true that a polite threat is more threatening than an impolite one, but I can see an explanation for the difference in the pair you cite. "Don't V!" is a command, but not necessarily a threat--it doesn't imply any negative consequences for the addressee if the command is ignored. (I could very well not want you to V because of possible consequences to ME, for example). But "If I were you, I wouldn't V" carries a clear message of entailed negative consequences--I know that if I V-ed I'd be sorry, so I wouldn't, and I am hereby suggesting that the same is true for you ... __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 91 20:54:39 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Re: Queries I don't have an answer to Barbara Johnstone's question, but would point out that there may be a broader phenomenon here. Consider the difference between e.g. 'That's interesting' and 'That's not uninteresting' -- the first damns with faint praise while the second is clearly a strong ex- pression of interest. Similarly, 'What are you doing?' can be a mere ex- pression of curiosity while 'What do you think you're doing?' is extremely hostile. Michael Kac __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 91 20:15:02 -0700 From: ervin-tr@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Susan Ervin-Tripp) Subject: Re: Queries About the Barbara Johnstone query regarding polite threats. The reason "If I were you, I don't know as I'd..." more threatening than "don't" is first of all that "don't" is not a threat. The real test would be between two threats, one polite and one not. It is hard to think of a direct or explicit threat, except a very trivial one, which is less threatening than the example. e.g. "If I were you, I don't know as I'd,..." vs. "I'll cough if you ...." vs. "I'll be forced to call the police if you..." As a matter of experience, polite threats are useless in real life. Susan Ervin-Tripp [Linguist List: Vol-2-324] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-325. Tuesday, 25 June 1991. Lines: 120 Subject: Queries Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 91 16:02:30 pdt From: Kingsley Morse Subject: Conversation 2) Date: 24 Jun 91 12:09:21 EST From: Brian Teaman Subject: Ian Thompson article on Japanese and English intonation 3) Date: Tue, 25 Jun 91 09:10 M From: "NAME \"Laurie Bauer\"" Subject: Query for LINGUIST -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 91 16:02:30 pdt From: Kingsley Morse Subject: Conversation I've developed an algorithm which learns by example, and I'd like to train it to translate a conversation between two people. So, I'm looking for a text file that contains a dialog between two people, with everything each person says in two languages. See Appendix A for an example. If you don't have such a file, can you direct me to someone who does? Also, I'm looking for a file that contains a dialog between two people, but with the entire conversation in English. Again, If you don't have such a file, can you direct me to someone who does? Or, I've seen similar work by Eiichiro Sumita at Kyoto University in Japan, and Hitoshi Iida at the ATR Interpreting Telephony Research Labs. Does anyone have their email addresses? (I would like to ask them for a copy of ATR's linguistic database of spoken Japanese with English translations.) Finally, does anyone have email addresses for anyone at: ATR Interpreting Telephony Research Labs or Center for Machine Translation at Carnagie Mellon University ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Appendix A. This is a translation between English and Filipino-Tagalog. Any pair of languages will do, but I would prefer it if one were English. Ideally the file will be from 10,000 to 100,000 bytes long. Speaker # 1 in English: "Hello". Speaker # 1 in Filipino : "Kumusta." Speaker # 2 in Filipino: "Anong oras na?" Speaker # 2 in English: "What time is it?" Speaker # 1 in English: "Noon". Speaker # 1 in Filipino: "Tanghali" Thanks, Kingsley __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: 24 Jun 91 12:09:21 EST From: Brian Teaman Subject: Ian Thompson article on Japanese and English intonation I'm looking for the following paper: Thompson, Ian (1982). Japanese lexical tone and intonation, and correspondence between Japanese particles and English sentence-stress and intonation. Presented at the BAAL seminar on intonatin and discourse, April 5-7, 1982. Universty of Aston in Birmingham. Thanks for any help you can give me in tracking this down. Brian Teaman Linguistics, Univ. of Penn. __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Tue, 25 Jun 91 09:10 M From: "NAME \"Laurie Bauer\"" Subject: Query for LINGUIST Can anybody provide me with an accurate source for the quotation which says something like 'If we can't spell the way we pronounce then we will have to pronounce the way we spell'? It's the sort of thing someone ought to have said pithily, and sounds vaguely Shavian, but I can't trace it. While we're on the subject, does anyone have a precise source for the line from (?) Voltaire about etymology being the science where the consonants count for very little and the vowels for nothing at all? Thank you! Laurie Bauer BauerL@matai.vuw.ac.nz Wellington, New Zealand [Linguist List: Vol-2-325] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-326. Tuesday, 25 June 1991. Lines: 104 Subject: Conferences: Stylistics and Scandinavian Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) From: J K Perkiomaki OH6BG Subject: CALL FOR PAPERS -- STYLISTICS SYMPOSIUM Date: Tue, 25 Jun 91 12:09:14 EET DST 2) Date: Tue, 25 Jun 91 12:35 +0100 From: 13SCANLING%jane.ruc.dk@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: 13th Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) From: J K Perkiomaki OH6BG Subject: CALL FOR PAPERS -- STYLISTICS SYMPOSIUM Date: Tue, 25 Jun 91 12:09:14 EET DST Association Internationale de Linguistique Appliquee (AILA) Scientific Commission on Rhetoric and Stylistics CALL FOR PAPERS Symposium Stylistics in Written Subject-Oriented Texts - Verbal, Paraverbal and Nonverbal Aspects. Stylistique de l'ecrit dans les langues de specialite - Aspects verbaux, paraverbaux et nonverbaux. Stilanalyse schriftlicher Fachtextsorten - Verbale, paraverbale und nonverbale Aspekte. 23.-24. M{rz 1992, Universit{t Heidelberg. Abstracts (up to one page) should be submitted no later than October 15, 1991, to: Prof. Hartmut Schr|der Huvilakatu 6 SF-65200 VAASA FINLAND The contributions should have a length of 30 minutes and can be given in English, French or German. Chairmen of the Scientific Commission: Prof. Dr. Bernd Spillner Dr. Peder Skyum Nielsen Universit{t Duisburg The Royal Danish School Fachbereich Romanistik for Educational Studies Lotharstr. 65 Emdrupvej 101 D-4100 DUISBURG DK-2400 COPENHAGEN NV Local Organizing Committee: Prof. Dr. Klaus Mattheier Universit{t Heidelberg Germanistisches Seminar Karlsstr. 2 D-6900 HEIDELBERG relayed by: -- Jari K Perkiomaki, U of Vaasa, fk00133r@uwasa.fi, perkioma@jyu.fi, jpe@brando.uwasa.fi, jpe@garbo.uwasa.fi, Jari.Perkiomaki@macpost.uwasa.fi __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Tue, 25 Jun 91 12:35 +0100 From: 13SCANLING%jane.ruc.dk@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: 13th Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics The 13th scandinavian Conference of Linguistics will take place from January 9 to January 11, 1992, at the University of Roskilde, denmark. The programme will comprise a number of thematic sections. There will be the usual section on grammar, possibly with a syntax bias, and one on pragmatics and discourse analysis. Several sections or workshops have also been suggested within neurolinguistics, semantics, spoken language, anthropological linguist- ics and intercultural communication. The organizing commitee welcomes further sugegstions. Please send an e-mail message to the organizing committee c/o Lars Heltoft, Roskilde University, 03.2.4, P.O. Box 260, DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark FAX: +45 4675 4410 e-mail: 13scanling@jane.ruc.dk if you want to register. The final deadline for abstracts is November 1, 1991. [Linguist List: Vol-2-326] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-327. Thursday, 27 June 1991. Lines: 104 Subject: Research on Computational Linguistics Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 24 Jun 91 13:55:11 BST From: Arnold D J Subject: Research Studentships in Computational Linguistics -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 24 Jun 91 13:55:11 BST From: Arnold D J Subject: Research Studentships in Computational Linguistics University of Essex Department of Language and Linguistics RESEARCH STUDENTSHIPS in COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS Applications are invited for TWO EEC funded Research Studentships leading to PhDs in Computational Linguistics in the Department of Language and Linguistics. These student- ships will be funded at the same level as Research Council awards for such research (approx 4,125 p.a. for the academic year 1990-1). Applicants should have, or expect to obtain, a first or upper-second class Bachelor's degree, and/or a Master's degree in a related discipline (e.g. Computational Linguis- tics, Linguistics, Computer Science, Artificial Intelli- gence, Cognitive Science, Philosophy). Application forms, and further particulars can be obtained from The Graduate Secretary, Department of Language and Linguistics, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Col- chester, CO4 3SQ, tel (+44) (0)206 872199. Informal enquiries can be directed to Dr. D.J.Arnold (tel: (+44)(0)206 872084, email: doug@uk.ac.essex.), or Dr. L.Sadler (tel: (+44)(0)206 872082, email: louisa@uk.ac.essex.), at the same address. The closing date for applications is July 15 1991. FURTHER PARTICULARS As part of the current phase of the CEC's programme in Machine Translation and general Linguistics Research and Engineering, funds have been provided for training in Compu- tational Linguistics at various research centres throughout Europe. It has been decided to use some of these funds to support two research studentships, at the standard appropri- ate UK Research Council rates, for study leading to PhDs in the Department of Language and Linguistics. Applicants will be expected to pursue a programme of research in one of the following areas: + Machine Translation; + application of Unification and Constraint based formalisms in Syntax, Semantics, and Discourse; + Formal and Computational Theories of Discourse and Pragmatics; + Formal theories of the Lexicon; There is a booklet giving a general description of gra- duate study in the Department of Language and Linguistics, which can be obtained from the address above. The successful applicants will become part of the Com- putational Linguistics and Machine Translation Research workshop, whose activities are described below, and will be closely associated with the Computational Linguistic and Machine Translation Group, (more information on request). Via the activities of the Cognitive Science Centre, there is considerable scope for interaction with other researchers working on Natural Language, and related topics in other departments, notably Computer Science. It is also intended that at least a small part (1-2 months) of the overall period of study will be spent in one of the other European Centres participating in the above mentioned Programme. Extra funds are available to support this. (These centres include Universities and Research Institutes in each of the EEC countries: Holland (RUU Utrecht), Belgium (Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven), Paris (LISH), Denmark (Kobenhavns Universitet, Copenhagen), Greece (EUROTRA, Athens), Spain (University of Barcellona), Portu- gal (EUROTRA, Lisboa), UK (UMIST, Manchester), Ireland (N.I.H.E., Dublin), Luxembourg (CRETA,Luxembourg)). [Linguist List: Vol-2-327] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-328. Sunday, 30 June 1991. Lines: 69 Subject: Queries Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: 26 Jun 91 18:00:46 U From: "Yen Ketty" Subject: Query 2) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 91 17:38 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Circumfixes 3) Date: Thu, 27 Jun 91 10:37:26 EDT From: M. A. Browning Subject: emphatic reflexives -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: 26 Jun 91 18:00:46 U From: "Yen Ketty" Subject: Query I just came back from the 29th ACL (Association of Computational Linguistics), and would like to know the affiliation of Sue Atkins who delivered an invited talk with Charles Fillmore in "Word Meaning: Starting where the MRDs Stop". If anyone know that, please send e-mail directly to yen_ketty@po.gis.prc.com thank you! Ketty Yen __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 91 17:38 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Circumfixes Can anyone give me a few simple examples of circumfixing? from Indonesian or any other language with this morphological process? Working on the morphology chapter revisions for Fromkin & Rodman's 5th edition and realize I didn't include this in the earlier editions. Any other suggestions for any part of the book would be more than welcome from any of you who have read it. In fact, even from those who haven't. Vicki Fromkin ________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Thu, 27 Jun 91 10:37:26 EDT From: M. A. Browning Subject: emphatic reflexives Is anyone aware of discussions of emphatic reflexives other than those in Barbara Partee's dissertation, Bickerton (1987), and McKay (1991)? Please send replies to me via email. Thanks. Maggie Browning maggie@clarity.princeton.edu [Linguist List: Vol-2-328] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-329. Sunday, 30 June 1991. Lines: 55 Subject: Job Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 91 10:48:01 BST From: cooper%cogsci.edinburgh.ac.uk@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: Job -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 91 10:48:01 BST From: cooper%cogsci.edinburgh.ac.uk@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: Job THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH HUMAN COMMUNICATION RESEARCH CENTRE An ESRC funded Interdisciplinary Research Centre Applications are invited for the post of Research Assistant. Salary on scale: #11,969 - #19,073 depending on age and qualifications at the Human Communication Research Centre (HCRC), University of Edinburgh. The post is available from 1st October 1991 for an initial period of three years, with the possibility of extension. The successful candidate would be expected to interact with one or more of the following research groups at HCRC and the Centre for Cognitive Science, University of Edinburgh: Semantic Processing; Situation Theory and Grammar; Applied Logic; Parsing; Grammar and Processing; Language Technology Group. Ideally the successful candidate will have research interests in situation theory and/or situation semantics. An interest in psychological or computational aspects of semantic processing would be helpful. Further particulars available from the Personnel Office, address as below, for further information please contact either Dr Robin Cooper (cooper@cogsci.ed.ac.uk, or 031-650-4407/2707) or from Professor Keith Stenning(keith@cogsci.ed.ac.uk, or 031-650-4444). Application forms including curriculum vitae, and the names of at least three referees and samples of current relevant work should be sent to: THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, PERSONNEL OFFICE, 1 ROXBURGH STREET, EDINBURGH EH8 9TB. TELEPHONE: 031-650-2260 The closing date for applications is 15th July 1991. Applications after that date may or may not be considered. REF: GU 910028 [Linguist List: Vol-2-329] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-330. Sunday, 30 June 1991. Lines: 157 Subject: Responses Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 25 Jun 91 11:34:15 EDT From: Geoffrey Russom Subject: Re: Responses: Threats 2) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 91 15:12:07 CDT From: stan kulikowski ii Subject: re: orthography and reading 3) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 91 11:32:37 CST From: txsil!huttar@dallas%utafll.uta.edu@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: voice quality in tone languages; writing triple letters 4) Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1991 00:55:46 -0400 From: Ian Smith Subject: Re: Bilingual Dialogues 5) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 91 09:43:17 +1000 From: bert peeters Subject: Indirect object agreement -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 25 Jun 91 11:34:15 EDT From: Geoffrey Russom Subject: Re: Responses: Threats It seems to me that politeness adds weight to a threat only to the extent that a sudden shift to "good manners" indicates seriousness of purpose -- a break out of a casual or friendly mode indicating that the relationship has become adversarial. Such a maneuver is less useful when there is a severe time constraint and the adversarial nature of the relationship needs no special emphasis. On the cop shows, somebody trying to get an antagonist to drop the gun tends to shout a curt command or threat. I don't think even bobbies would be laid-back enough to say, "please drop the gun, sir" if the issue were in doubt. On the home front, when a child is just on the point of making a move that a parent doesn't like, the parent is more likely to shriek "Don't you DARE ..." than to try on glacial civility of the sort that can be quite intimidating in, say, negotiations between labor and management. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 91 15:12:07 CDT From: stan kulikowski ii Subject: re: orthography and reading mark seidenberg (and linguist readership), i was interested in your comments about orthography and reading in the linguist list. i have been developing software for teachers to use in evaluating student text in networks. although i have been mainly working on measures of textual complexity in alphabetic writing systems, i have given a little thought to how measurement should handle whole-word characters. i have assumed that the difficulty of such text is directly based on the reading experience of the reader with that char... perhaps indirectly measured by the statistical frequency of the character in general text of that language. i would not like to be the one who writes a program to do a logographic analysis of any chinese char to estimate its general ease of processing. we have such whole-word chars in english too ($,#,%,& and so forth) and i have been evaluating these as words without syllables. arabic numbers also present nonsyllabic constructs-- reading and writing '435' is easier than 'four hundred thirty five'. most algorithmic measures of text complexity (those that do not use lookup tables of exceptional words) use some constructs like words-per-sentence and syllables-per-word to derive estimates of readability. i have been naively processing the whole-word chars as incrementing the word counters without incrementing the syllable counters. i guess i will find out about the usefulness of such assumptions when i have a large enough sample of text read and written by known-age children from the networks. i would appreciate any further bibliographic reference you might give me on research results in this area. it has been a while since i have done much what could be called psycholinguistics. i did throw some crude realtime measures into a reading task recently and got indication that some kids were switching to different reading strategies as text complexity increased beyond their apparent comprehension threshold, while other kids had a flatline reading rate no matter what the level of text. i had assumed that the kids with hills and valleys in their reading were multiple processing text on different levels at input time while the flatliners were straight phonic-syllable reading with comprehension either paralleled, delayed or decoupled from the serial process of text input. i have just joined the linguist reading list so forgive me if all this seems too simple to you. i will be looking into your archives soon. i would appreciate any pointers, particulary references, you can give me. i have become pretty much a network scholar, but i will dig into hardcopy when i have to. __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 91 11:32:37 CST From: txsil!huttar@dallas%utafll.uta.edu@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: voice quality in tone languages; writing triple letters In response to recent queries: (1) On voice quality in tone languages, try contacting William S.-Y. Wang at UC Berkeley. Another possibility is Mary Beckman at Ohio State. (2) On writing systems that use "triple letters": Saramaccan, a creole of Suriname, writes 3 like vowels in a row in words like beie 'bread' and buzu 'blood'. (The acute accents indicate high tone; the other vowels are low tone. The practical orthography does not mark tone in these words, so they come out beee and buuu.) huttar@sil.org __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1991 00:55:46 -0400 From: Ian Smith Subject: Re: Bilingual Dialogues This is a reply to Kingsley Morse's query (24 jun 91) on bilingual dialogues. I am developing a corpus of Sourashtra/Tamil texts as part of a research project on convergence and could send you half an hour's worth (about 100-150K) The texts began as recorded Sourashtra conversations, which have been transcribed and translated into Tamil. There are no English glosses. Most of the conversations involve more than two people; a couple with only three participants are available. The texts are encoded with PC-Write, which doesn't have a large number of control characters. There is, however, a considerable amount of parenthetical remarks and other junk embedded in the text, but you should be able to clean it up fairly easily. Please contact me directly if you are interested. -IS __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Wed, 26 Jun 91 09:43:17 +1000 From: bert peeters Subject: Indirect object agreement There may be something useful (although I don't feel competent to make a judgment) in Edith A. Moravcsik (1988), "Agreement and Markedness", in _Agreement in Natural Language: approaches, theories, descriptions_ edited by Michael Barlow and Charles A. Ferguson, CSLI, pp.89-106. The entire work was reviewed in Canadian Journal of Linguistics 35 (1990), pp. 99-102. Bert Peeters [Linguist List: Vol-2-330] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-331. Sunday, 30 June 1991. Lines: 273 Subject: For Your Information: Fonts, International Congress of Linguists Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 27 Jun 91 13:53:51 PDT From: jDo%polaris.sjc.MENTORG.COM@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: Re: Diacritics, orthography, type design, font format 2) Date: Thu, 27 Jun 91 14:30:33 HAE From: BELCOURT belcourt Subject: CIL92 -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 27 Jun 91 13:53:51 PDT From: jDo%polaris.sjc.MENTORG.COM@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: Re: Diacritics, orthography, type design, font format I have delved some more into PostScript's specifications for kerning and composing, and would like to share the things I have found, continuing the thread which Charles Bigelow had started in [Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0295] from Mon, 10 Jun 91 22:16:36 PDT. 1/ The basic rendering mechanism takes a character, abbreviated c , and performs the following transformation: c --> code(c) --> name(c) --> glyph(c) (1) where code(c) is the character code value for c ; name(c) is the PostScript name (from the Encoding dictionary); glyph(c) is the rendering of c (from the CharStrings dictionary). 2/ The Adobe Font Metric (AFM) file for each font specifies kerning and composite font information so that, for a given set of characters (two characters in this example), we get: c1 c2 --> ... ? ... --> kerned_glyph(c1,c2) (2) or c1 c2 --> ... ? ... --> composite_glyph(c1,c2) (3) through some internal [?] transformation, where: kerned_glyph(c1,c2) "kerns" c1 and c2 ; composite_glyph(c1,c2) "composes" c1 and c2 . It turns out that relative positions in x- and y-directions can be specified in both kerning and composing, according to the AFM 3.0 specs. Relative sizes may *not* be specified, however. 3/ Finally -- this is the crucial point why character encoding in precomposed or separable architectures really does *depend* on rendering technology, but does *not* matter for PostScript -- the AFM file allows ligatures to be specified, so that: c1 c2 --> ... ? ... --> ligature_name(c1,c2) (4) and thus can be fed into the latter part of formula (1). This methodology allows for high fidelity in rendering, especially when relative positioning of the components is inadequate. I hope that the above does not contain any glaring error(s), because it is based only on a reading of PostScript documentation, and not on any real implementation. I would, therefore, really appreciate any correction(s) and/or clarification(s) to this posting. ____________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Thu, 27 Jun 91 14:30:33 HAE From: BELCOURT belcourt Subject: CIL92 [The following is an abridged version of the CIL circular. A complete version may be obtained from listserv@uniwa.uwa.oz.au by sending the following message: get cil92 Please ensure that your message is in lower case. DO NOT attempt to obtain this file from listserv@TAMVM1.] UNIVERSITE LAVAL XVth International Congress of Linguists Quebec, Canada, August 9-14, 1992 2nd circular (This is the final version of the second circular that will be sent to all who have already completed the answer card of the first circular. It will be mailed by the beginning of July) General information Special topic of the Congress: "Endangered Languages" Canadian Linguistic Association (CLA) Permanent International Committee of Linguists (PICL) CIL 92 Departement de langues et linguistique Universite Laval Quebec (Que.) G1K 7P4 Canada Telephone: (418) 656-2625 or 656-5323 Fax: (418) 656-2019 E-Mail: CIPL92@LAVALVM1.BITNET XVth International Congress of Linguists Quebec, August 9-14, 1992 Organized by Universite Laval in collaboration with the Canadian Linguistic Association (CLA) Under the auspices of the Permanent International Committee of Linguists (PICL) GENERAL INFORMATION DATE AND LOCATION August 9-14, 1992, Universite Laval Quebec, Canada PASSPORTS AND VISAS All visitors to Canada, except residents of the United States, are required to have a valid passport. Citizens of some countries are also required to have a visa. All enquiries should be addressed to the closest Canadian embassy, consulate or high commission. ACCOMMODATIONS AND SIGHTSEEING Please refer to pages 13 and 14 of this brochure and return forms #3 and #4. REGISTRATION FEES participants accompanying students* guests >From 91/05/01 214.00 (U.S.) 107.00 (U.S.) 160.50 (U.S.) to 91/12/31 251.45 (Can.) 133.75 (Can.) 187.25 (Can.) >From 92/01/01 285.00 (U.S.) 142.50 (U.S.) 171.00 (U.S.) to 92/08/09 342.00 (Can.) 171.00 (Can.) 199.00 (Can.) Congress fees may be paid by credit card (American Express, MasterCard, Visa) or by Money order or Bank cheque to CIL 92. In the event of cancellation, part of the registration fee will be refunded (75% before February 28, 1992, 50% from March 1, 1992 to May 31, 1992). There will be no reimbursement for cancellations received at the Congress office after May 31, 1992. However, those concerned will be sent Congress registration packages, including publications. * Only participants with an official letter from their university certifying their student status will pay the student registration fee. ** All taxes included in the registration fees. PAPERS SECTIONS 1. Sounds, phonemes and intonation 2. The word (morphology, lexicology, lexicography, terminology) 3. The sentence (syntax, function, etc.) 4. Meaning (semantics, lexical meaning, grammatical meaning, etc.) 5. Spoken or written text (pragmatics, discourse analysis, etc.) 6. Language and society (sociolinguistics, linguistic variation, language and culture, etc.) 7. Language and the individual (psycho-linguistics, neurolinguistics, language acquisition, etc.) 8. The history of language 9. Language planning 10. Language learning 11. Endangered languages 12. Theoretical positions in current linguistics 13. Language and the computer 14. Pidgins and creoles 15. The history of linguistics 16. Methodology (data collection, corpora gathering and processing, experimentation, etc.) 17. Other (language and women, sign language, etc.) The Program Committee hopes that linguists of all theoretical persuasions and in all branches of the discipline will participate. If the sections do not include a title which accomodates the subject you would like to present, please send your abstract nevertheless, indicating section 17. Conference papers may take the form of oral presentations or poster sessions. Oral presentations and discussion are scheduled to last thirty minutes. Each poster session will last two hours. The schedule of papers will be announced in the third circular. ABSTRACTS Participants wishing to present a paper are requested to send an abstract before October 1, 1991. Abstracts (maximum one page, i.e. 400 words) should conform to following specifications: - Proposals should be submitted on a 8 1/2 x 11" (21.6 x 27.9 cm) or A4 typewritten single-spaced page; - An electric typewriter or good quality printer with black ribbon should be used; - Any special character that cannot be typed or printed should be inserted in black ink; - Five copies are required; - Abstracts should contain: . title and section for which the paper is intended; . name of author; . a clear and explicit statement of the theory or hypothesis to be examined; . an indication of the main arguments or studies involved, including key examples, if applicable; . a statement of conclusions reached and an assessment of their significance. Abstracts which, on account of their subject matter, cannot conform to above requirements must contain a clear statement of the subject to be discussed, its relationship to previous studies in the same discipline, and its general relevance. If the material is more appropriate for poster display than oral presentation, please indicate this both in the abstract and on the Abstract submission form (form # 2). However, the final decision concerning the type of presentation will be made by the Program Committee. Furthermore, participants are asked to provide a condensed version of their abstract in photo-ready copy within the frame on the middle page of this circular. It is this version which will be included in the abstracts to be distributed to congress participants. [Linguist List: Vol-2-331] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-332. Wednesday, 3 July 1991. Lines: 78 Subject: Queries: Gender-Based Language, Weather Verbs Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 1 Jul 91 12:06:20 +0200 From: Jan Olsen Subject: Weather-verbs 2) Date: Wed, 3 Jul 1991 12:49:38 +0800 From: discuss@uniwa.uwa.oz.au Subject: Gender-Based Language? -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 1 Jul 91 12:06:20 +0200 From: Jan Olsen Subject: Weather-verbs In colloquial German, (1) alternates with (2): (1) es regnet schon wieder it rains already again (2) das regnet schon wieder! this rains already again (1) is the neutral way of talking about the weather; the subject _es_ is the standard German expletive pronoun that also shows up in constructions such as _es gibt Probleme_ (it gives problems; there are problems) or _es wird getanzt_ (it is danced, one dances). In (2), _es_ is replaced by the demonstrative pronoun _das_. (2) expresses strong negative feelings about the weather (and those living in Central Europe will know why I encountered lots of tokens of (2) in the last two months) and cannot be used as a neutral statement. The construction is restricted to atmospheric predicates. It may also express surprise: (3) das regnet ja nicht mehr! this rains particle no longer (yesterday's standard utterance) Are there comparable alternations in other languages? Gisbert Fanselow (fanselow@unipas.fmi.uni-passau.de) __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Wed, 3 Jul 1991 12:49:38 +0800 From: discuss@uniwa.uwa.oz.au Subject: Gender-Based Language? I've just been reading Deborah Tannen's popularization _You just don't understand_, and I found myself both enjoying it for what it was, and being repelled by it too. I'm bothered by the idea that we can deal with different verbal interactions on the basis of sex. Yes, I think men and women do talk differently; but is this difference best dealt with in terms of sexual difference, or simply in terms of differing registers? After all, some men use "feminine" interaction styles, and some women use "masculine." So what do we gain by talking of sexual differences? I realize as I'm writing this that part of my problem here may be ideological--i.e. I'm scared of women losing what they've gained in the current emphasis on sexual differences--and not linguistic. But I'd be interested in people think of this question. By the way, please post your replies to the list: my account is probably going to become defunct shortly. Mary-Lynn Cosgrave [Linguist List: Vol-2-332] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-333. Thursday, 4 July 1991. Lines: 78 Subject: Responses Moderators: Anthony Aristar (a_aristar@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 1 Jul 1991 10:06-0400 From: Allan C. Wechsler Subject: Circumfixing 2) Date: Tue, 02 Jul 91 11:54 PDT From: Tim Stowell Subject: IO Agreement -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 1 Jul 1991 10:06-0400 From: Allan C. Wechsler Subject: Circumfixing In Israeli Hebrew, the potential tense verb affixes are Sg. Pl. m. both f. 1 'a- ne- 2 te- te--i te--u 3 ye- te- ye--u Were it not for one anomaly, it would be easy to assign glosses to the prefixes and suffixes individually as: 'a- 1sg. ne- 1pl. te- 2 ye- 3 -i f. -u pl. But this scheme would predict *ye--i "3fsg." where we in fact see te-. In a very conservative account, the anomaly would forbid us from "factoring" the affix te--i, forcing us to treat it as a circumfix. Most would prefer to regard the affix as a prefix and a suffix acting together. This example from a "gray area" prompts me to ask Dr. Fromkin for a careful definition of a circumfix. How can you distinguish a circumfix from a prefix/suffix pair? Arabists may disconfirm me, but I believe there are less gray examples in Classical Arabic. _____________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Tue, 02 Jul 91 11:54 PDT From: Tim Stowell Subject: IO Agreement RE A. Manaster Ramer's question about references for IO clitics in Romance, the classical GB literature has several important dissertations that deal with this subject. They include Osvaldo Jaeggli's MIT disserta- tion (1980) later publixhed by Foris, Hagit Borer's MIT diss. (also by Foris), and (a pre-GB source) Judith Strozer's UCLA dissertation from 1977. A large number of papers and dissertations by a variety of other authors in the early 1980's addressed theoretical questions involving these clitics, many of them concerned with R. Kayne's generalization that clitic doubling is possible only with an NP argument that is governed by a preposition (given a Case-theoretic treatment by Jaeggli). One of the main dialects of interest was that of River Plate Spanish, which also allows clitic doubling of a human direct object (also preceded by "a" in Spanish). --Tim Stowell [Linguist List: Vol-2-333] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-334. Thursday, 4 July 1991. Lines: 50 Subject: The IJCAI-91 Program Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 2 Jul 1991 11:15:55 -0400 From: Kimberlee Pietrzak-Smith Subject: Announcement for IJCAI-91 -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 2 Jul 1991 11:15:55 -0400 From: Kimberlee Pietrzak-Smith Subject: Announcement for IJCAI-91 We would like to post the following Programme Schedule for IJCAI-91 as it is being widely requested by members of the AI community. We would also like to post some (much shorter) additional items over the next few weeks to further advertise events and speakers for IJCAI. Thanks you, Kim Smith, Administrator IJCAI-91 Programme Schedule ****************************************** IJCAI-91: 12TH INTERNATIONAL JOINT CONFERENCE on ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Darling Harbour, Sydney, Australia, 24-30 August 1991 Programme Schedule [The IJCAI program is too long to be posted in its entirety. To obtain a copy of it, send the message: get ijcai-91 to the address: listserv@uniwa.uwa.oz.au DO NOT send requests for the program to Listserv@TAMVM1. The program does not exist at that site.] [Linguist List: Vol-2-334] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-335. Thursday, 4 July 1991. Lines: 131 Subject: Jobs Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 03 Jul 91 10:22:13 BST From: Peter Greenfield Subject: POSTE DE MAITRE DE CONFERENCES 2) Date: Thu, 4 Jul 91 13:29:29 BST From: Arnold D J Subject: Computational Linguistics and Machine Translation -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 03 Jul 91 10:22:13 BST From: Peter Greenfield Subject: POSTE DE MAITRE DE CONFERENCES The following post is available at the Faculte' des Lettres, Universite' de Besanc,on, France. There is an URGENT need to fill it. --------------------------------------------------------- POSTE DE MAITRE DE CONFERENCES - C.N.U. 7e SECTION Ce poste est oriente' principalement vers la lingusitique the'orique et ge'nerale. Le titulaire devra connaitre une autre langue en plus du franc,ais et avoir une large vue des the'ories linguistiques. Il saura, entre autres, en montrer les applications dans le domaine de l'enseignement ainsi que lors de la description des langues. Ces traveaux devront porter sur ce type d'applications ou sur des recherches en linguistique the'orique. En mati`ere d'enseignement, il devra suivre les e'tudiants jusqu'en maitrise et assure un enseignement en lingusitique ge'ne'rale essentiellement. The candidate is required to have a PhD. ---------------------------------------------------------- Apply either directly to Professeur Cardey: Professeur S. CARDEY, Faculte' des Lettres, 30 rue Me'gevand, 25030 BESANCON, FRANCE. Fax: +33 81 66 53 00 or, if you prefer email and in view of the urgency, email me (Peter Greenfield) and I will forward your application to Professeur Cardey. Peter Greenfield ------------------------------------------------------------------ Peter Greenfield E-Mail: GreenfieldPG@cs.bham.ac.uk School of Computer Science Tel: +44 21 414 4772 The University of Birmingham Fax: +44 21 414 3971 Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, England Telex: 333762 UOBHAM G ------------------------------------------------------------------ __________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Thu, 4 Jul 91 13:29:29 BST From: Arnold D J Subject: Computational Linguistics and Machine Translation UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS RESARCH POSTS IN COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS AND MACHINE TRANSLATION Applications are invited to join a group working on various topics in Computational Linguistics and Machine Translation. Applicants would normally have a solid (i.e. post-graduate) background in Linguistics, Computational Linguistics, or Computer Science. Some knowledge of German, Dutch or Spanish is desirable. Members of the group are expected to play a full role in the research activities of the group, as well as working on some aspect of grammar development for Machine Translation (developing either monolingual or bilingual grammars or lexica). We are especially interested in applicants with exper- tise or interests in one or more of the following areas: + stochastic methods in NLP; + migration of linguistic descriptions between for- malisms; + collocations; + discourse; + formal semantics; + grammatical descriptions in unification based for- malisms. The appointment will be at an appropriate point on the RA(1A)/RA(1B) scales, depending on age and experience (currently approx 11,339-18,165, pa) The initial period of appointment will be until October 1992 with good prospects for renewal. Applicants should send a full CV, including the names of two referees, to one of the following, from whom further particulars are also available. Closing date is 20th July 1991. Email applications are welcome. Doug Arnold or Louisa Sadler Department of Language and Linguistics, University of Essex,Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, CO4 3SQ, Essex, UK. doug@uk.ac.essex; louisa@uk.ac.essex Tel: +44 206 872082/3/4; Fax: +44 206 873598 ...%essex.ac.uk@ean-relay.ac.uk (ean) ...%essex.ac.uk@cunyvm.cuny.edu (arpa) ...%essex.ac.uk@ac.uk (earn) ...!ukc!essex.ac.uk!doug (uucp) [Linguist List: Vol-2-335] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-336. Friday, 5 July 1991. Lines: 82 Subject: Queries Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 04 Jul 91 16:18:33 +0800 Subject: Style info for linguistics journals (LI in particular) From: marke@cs.uwa.oz.au 2) Date: Thu, 4 Jul 91 15:24:13 +0200 From: dings%et.kuleuven.ac.be@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: Compound nouns. -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 04 Jul 91 16:18:33 +0800 Subject: Style info for linguistics journals (LI in particular) From: marke@cs.uwa.oz.au Specific question: Does anyone have in emailable form the style information for submissions to Linguistic Inquiry? Our library seems to have discarded in binding the information published in volume 15(1), and I'm in a hurry to get a manuscript sent off. Proposal: it would be handy if on-line information on style requirements of linguistics journals was made available electronically. This would save prospective authors hunting down elusive style sheets, which libraries generously discard. An ideal place for such information would be in the archive files made available in association with the `linguist' mailing list. Any editors have this information on-line? If so, send it to me, and I'll organise with the editors of `Linguist' to make it available. marke. _________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Thu, 4 Jul 91 15:24:13 +0200 From: dings%et.kuleuven.ac.be@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: Compound nouns. Is there somebody among the readers of 'Linguist' who can give us some bibliographic information about the computational, cognitivist, or psycholinguistic treatment of compound nouns? Information about ongoing research is especially welcome. We are trying to set up a system that is able to analyze compound words in the sense that it returns -the morphological decomposition (which is rather straightforward), -an educated guess at the semantic relations between these morphemes (especially difficult with new compounds, for which no information about the global meaning can be present in the lexicon). Although were are especially interested in Dutch compounds, information on English compounds and Romance compounds (both fundamentally different in the sense that they are not written as one new word) will certainly be useful. To give you the flavour of our interests: the ultimate goal of such a system is to be able 1) to guess the semantics of totally new compounds, distinguishing grass specialist (some professor of botany), from grass specialist (a tennis player who is more likely to win in Wimbledon than in Flushing Meadow), and 2) to decompose electrical shock protection into (electrical shock) protection instead of electrical (shock protection). Please send replies both to Jan Dings and Lieve De Wachter dings@et.kuleuven.ac.be lieve@et.kuleuven.ac.be [Linguist List: Vol-2-336] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-337. Friday, 5 July 1991. Lines: 77 Subject: Responses: Gender-Based Language Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 3 Jul 91 22:35 CDT From: ASHELDON@vx.acs.umn.edu Subject: Re: Queries: Gender-based Language 2) Date: Fri, 5 Jul 91 03:13:32 PDT From: sp299-ad@violet.berkeley.edu (Celso Alvarez-Caccamo) Subject: Re: Gender-based Language -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 3 Jul 91 22:35 CDT From: ASHELDON@vx.acs.umn.edu Subject: Re: Queries: Gender-based Language In regard to the idea that what Tannen (and others) call "sexual" (actually gender) differences in talk can better be described as "register differences, my question is: "What factors determine the register?" Amy Sheldon _____________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 5 Jul 91 03:13:32 PDT From: sp299-ad@violet.berkeley.edu (Celso Alvarez-Caccamo) Subject: Re: Gender-based Language Mary-Lynn Cosgrave asks, with respect to Deborah Tannen's work, "I'm bothered by the idea that we can deal with different verbal interactions on the basis of sex. Yes, I think men and women do talk differently; but is this difference best dealt with in terms of sexual difference, or simply in terms of differing registers?" Tannen's and others' work deals with language and gender as a social category. Insofar as socialization patterns for men and women differ in all societies I know of, I don't know why we can't deal with gender-based linguistic differences as we deal with ethnic- or class- based differences. Treating such differences in terms of registers doesn't really take us in another direction -- unless we assume, of course, that registers don't have a socio-interactional basis, in which case we wouldn't be doing sociolinguistics, but stylistics... in which case it doesn't really matter whether we focus on gender, class, or hair color. In other words, registers, as part of a repertoire, do have a social distribution, along gender, class, ethnic, etc. lines. Talk produced by women appears to differ in some aspects from that produced by men under comparable circumstances. The problem is, of course, to isolate the most relevant identity (gender, ethnic, etc.) invoked through the use of a given marker, or, viceversa, to assign a given social meaning to a cluster of markers. It is not legitimate for me to say whether women gain or lose something by looking at what appears to be gender-based variation in talk. There may be an ample margin of uncertainty in determining *what* specific features or overall forms of talk can be said to mark gender, etc. A more crucial question, in my view, is the treatment of interactional power and powerlessness as a *direct* function of the display of a given form of talk, which is what some research (e.g. on interruptions) has done. But, in principle, I personally see no sociolinguistic rationale for treating gender differently, or for leaving it untreated. Celso Alvarez-Caccamo U.C. Berkeley sp299-ad@violet.berkeley.edu [Linguist List: Vol-2-337] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-338. Friday, 5 July 1991. Lines: 82 Subject: Impersonal Verbs: Dutch, Icelandic Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 4 Jul 91 14:06 MET From: Koenraad De Smedt Subject: impersonal verbs 2) Date: Fri, 5 Jul 91 13:34:22 GMT From: hoski@rhi.hi.is (Hoskuldur Thrainsson) Subject: weather subjects -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 4 Jul 91 14:06 MET From: Koenraad De Smedt Subject: impersonal verbs With respect to Jan Olsen's query: >> (1) es regnet schon wieder >> it rains already again >> (2) das regnet schon wieder! >> this rains already again In Dutch, there is a DAT/HET alternation very similar to the German examples and with a similar connotation, i.e. DAT is used for emphasis. I have two additional points here: (1) this phenomenon not only holds for weather verbs, but also for other impersonal verbs such as SPOKEN, ECHOEN, TOCHTEN, etc.; and (2) the emphasis is not necessarily negative (not everyone is as negative about the weather as you are ;-). These two remarks hold for Dutch; I invite you to check if they also hold for German. Koenraad de Smedt __________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 5 Jul 91 13:34:22 GMT From: hoski@rhi.hi.is (Hoskuldur Thrainsson) Subject: weather subjects Gisbert Fanselow asked about the possibility of having different subjects with weather verbs - such as an expletive subject vs. a demonstrative pronoun as in his German examples. - In Icelandic one can either have the regular dummy "thadh" (where "th" is a transcription of the Icelandic letter "thorn" and "dh" a transcription for "edh") - or a non-dummy "hann" 'he'. The "dummy" (or the expletive "thadh") can only precede the finite verb and not follow it as regular subjects can but the "hann" can: (1) Thadh rigndi mikidh 'i gaer it rained much yesterday (2) Rigndi (*thadh) mikidh 'i gaer? rained (*it) much yesterday (3) Hann rigndi mikidh 'i gaer he rained much yesterday (4) Rigndi (hann) mikidh 'i gaer? rained (he) much yesterday So, in a direct yes/no question the subject normally follows the finite verb. An expletive (or dummy) "thadh" cannot do so, as shown in (2) buth the "weather-he" can, as shown in (4) - but direct questions with weather verbs are just fine without any subject at all, as these examples also indicate. There is a slight difference in style at least between the regular expletive and this weather-he, the latter being somewhat more colloquial. But the syntactic difference is very clear. Hoeskuldur Thrainsson ("hoski@rhi.hi.is") [Linguist List: Vol-2-338] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-339. Wednesday, 10 July 1991. Lines: 140 Subject: Gender-Related Language Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 6 Jul 91 15:22:36 PDT From: ctlntt@violet.berkeley.edu Subject: About gender-related language 2) Date: Fri, 5 Jul 91 14:34 CDT From: ASHELDON%UMNACVX.bitnet@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: gender 3) Date: 9 Jul 91 13:19:00 EST From: "ALICE FREED" Subject: Language and gender -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 6 Jul 91 15:22:36 PDT From: ctlntt@violet.berkeley.edu Subject: About gender-related language Differences between male talk and female talk are not *register* differences, and treating them as such would obscure the fundamental issue of gender-related contrasts. It would be as if a linguist ideologically opposed to the notion of socio-economic classes decided to treat class-related language differences (in pronunciation, for example) as differences in (for example) registers, in order to avoid dealing with the class issue. Not that this approach has not been tried in the social sciences --but the results are not likely to be the clarification of the question. Further, I'm at a loss to see how women would stand to lose from using an appropriate focus on the question. M. Azevedo ctlntt@violet.berkeley.edu ________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 5 Jul 91 14:34 CDT From: ASHELDON%UMNACVX.bitnet@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: gender In reply to Cosgarve's concern that the style differences that Tannen discusses are linked to sex differences, and how this interpretation has the potential to deterministically interpret female and male behaviors, I would like to make the following remarks: 1. Let's not confuse "sex differences" with "gender differences". "sex" refers to physical, biological characteristics. "Gender" refers to socially constructed and historically changing interpretations of what the physycal differences between the sexes MEAN and how they should be reflected in behaviors. 2. The words "male" and "female" are used when discussing biological differences, and the words "feminine" and "masculine" are used to discuss cultural, social, historically changing definitions and interpretations of what the physical differences mean. Thus, it is concievable that a behavior can be labeled "feminine" but still be enacted by males, and vis-versa. 3. I am investigating gender differences in preschoolers' conversations. In a soon-to-be-published paper I have characterized the differences in preschoolers' conflict talk as due to social norms in same sex groups that shape social interaction. I describe girls' groups as "solidarity- based" and boys' groups as "dominance-based". Solidarity-based groups have certain norms, or styles of verbal interaction based on certain principles, for example, not violating face. They are highly relational in certain ways. Dominance-based groups have other norms, or styles of interaction, based on turf-building and competition for dominance. It is the style of the interaction that is important, not the gender of the group. In other words, one can describe a group as "dominance-based" or "solidarity-based" independently of their physical sex. Thus, girls' groups could indeed be dominance-based, and boys' groups can be solidarity-based. In fact, there are dominance-based exchanges in both boys' and girls' groups, as well as solidarity-based exchanges in both groups. By using this theoretical approach, I intend to avoid the deterministic linking of behaviors to one's sex. One could, I suppose, call the dominance-based and solidarity-based verbal styles of conflict management "different registers" as Cosgrave proposes. The paper I refer to is: "Conflict Talk: Sociolinguistic Challenges to Self-Assertion and How Young Girls Meet Them. MERRILL-PALMER QUARTERLY, vol. 38, no. 1, January 1992. Special issue on child language research approaches, edited by Catherine Garvey. Correction in # 3 above: "It is the style of the interaction that is important, not the *gender* of the group" -- should read "...not the *sex* of the group.." Amy Sheldon ________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: 9 Jul 91 13:19:00 EST From: "ALICE FREED" Subject: Language and gender I, too, am uncomfortable with Deborah Tannen's book. I object to speaking of language characteristics as being strictly defined by sex (or gender) and I find the book to be a dangerous over-simplification of a very complex subject. If there are identifiable language styles to speak of, used by some men and some women, these are not registers based on sex. What we are dealing with are language characteristics based on socialization and power differentials. The problem with Tannen's approach to gender differences in language (and also that of others following Maltz and Borker, 1982), is that it focuses only on socialization, assumes that all girls and all boys are socialized the same way, and it ignores the effects of power differences on verbal interaction. This is where it does women a disservice. Tannen makes it sound like all women and all men automatically talk a particular way. Secondly, such work appears to justify language behavior in conversation that many women and some men experience as rude inattention and explains it away as a natural extension of being male. The fact is, most generalizations about language differences and gender are based on decontextualized quantitative studies, a limited amount of cross-sex conversations and a great deal of anecdotal evidence. In the hopes of correcting this, Alice Greenwood and I have undertaken a study of the precise linguistic features involved in conversations between pairs of women in casual friendly contexts. This should provide us with the beginnings of an understanding of the specific linguistic factors which one group of women makes use of in a particular context. Until such specifics are known from studies of a wide range of social contexts and from a variety of different populations, it is premature to make definitive claims about women's style. If anyone else is working on conversational analysis between same sex pairs, please reply to this list or to : Alice F. Freed Linguistics Department Montclair State College Upper Montclair, New Jersey 07043 [Linguist List: Vol-2-339] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-340. Wednesday, 10 July 1991. Lines: 118 Subject: Impersonal Verbs Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 6 Jul 91 13:24:07 GMT From: eirikur%rhi.hi.is@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Eirikur Rognvaldsson) Subject: weather verbs 2) Date: Mon, 8 Jul 91 13:34:30 +1000 From: bert peeters Subject: weather verbs in Dutch 3) Date: Mon, 8 Jul 91 14:59 MET From: Koenraad De Smedt Subject: impersonal verbs - Dutch 4) Date: Mon, 8 Jul 91 17:50 EDT From: Stephen G. Rowley Subject: Impersonal Verbs: Scottish Gaelic -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 6 Jul 91 13:24:07 GMT From: eirikur%rhi.hi.is@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Eirikur Rognvaldsson) Subject: weather verbs In his reply to Gisbert Fanselow's question about the possibility of having different subject with weather verbs, Hoeskuldur Thrainsson points out that in Icelandic, one can either have the regular dummy "thadh" 'it, there' or "hann" 'he'. As Hoeskuldur mentions, > There is a slight difference in style at least between the regular > expletive and this weather-he, the latter being somewhat more > colloquial. But the syntactic difference is very clear. I might add that for some speakers at least, there seems to be some difference in meaning or use between these two possibilities - somewhat similar to the difference between the use of "es" and "das" in impersonal constructions that Gisbert reports for German. That is, a sentence like (1) would be more neutral than (2), the latter expressing "negative feelings about the weather". (1) Thadh er faridh adh rigna it is started to rain 'It's raining' (2) Hann er farinn adh rigna he is started to rain 'Oh, sh*t, it's raining again!' One might perhaps say that when the rain (snow, etc) bothers people, they need someone to get angry with. By using the personal pronoun "hann" 'he' instead of "thadh", they make up an enemy (God?). However, I must emphasize that the difference in meaning is not clear; (1) can also have a negative meaning, and (2) can be a neutral statement. But insofar as there is any difference, "hann" is more negative than "thadh" in weather constructions. Eirikur Roegnvaldsson (eirikur@rhi.hi.is) ________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Mon, 8 Jul 91 13:34:30 +1000 From: bert peeters Subject: weather verbs in Dutch A rejoinder to Koenraad De Smedt who claims that Dutch has a system similar to German in that HET and DAT can alternate (both being translations for English 'it' as in 'it rains', but the latter being emphatic). It seems to me that De Smedt is talking about Dutch dialects here rather than about the standard. The use of DAT is absolutely impossible in the standard language (ABN = Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands). Bert Peeters ________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Mon, 8 Jul 91 14:59 MET From: Koenraad De Smedt Subject: impersonal verbs - Dutch Koen Versmissen and others pointed out to me that my claim about DAT (that) as an alternative for HET (it) as subject of impersonal verbs in Dutch is not standard. The phenomenon does occur, but is confined to (some?) Flemish dialects. In addition, it seems to be marked as informal. Koenraad de Smedt ________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Mon, 8 Jul 91 17:50 EDT From: Stephen G. Rowley Subject: Impersonal Verbs: Scottish Gaelic Date: Fri, 5 Jul 91 13:34:22 GMT From: hoski@rhi.hi.is (Hoskuldur Thrainsson) Subject: weather subjects Gisbert Fanselow asked about the possibility of having different subjects with weather verbs - such as an expletive subject vs. a demonstrative pronoun as in his German examples. - In Icelandic [...] In Scottish Gaelic, one can say, rather impersonally: Tha an t-uisge ann an diugh. Is the water in it today. ... or "It is raining today." This holds for other kinds of weather, not just rain. [Linguist List: Vol-2-340] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-341. Wednesday, 10 July 1991. Lines: 114 Subject: Queries Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 8 Jul 91 18:57:07 PDT From: hiromi%psych@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU (Hiromi Morikawa) Subject: Utterance segmentation in Mandarin 2) Date: Tue, 9 Jul 91 10:28:34 +0100 From: Richard Coates Subject: Carleton University 3) Date: Wed, 10 Jul 1991 6:05:23 GMT From: ADA612%csc1.anu.edu.au@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (AVERY D ANDREWS) Subject: Query on English Vowel Tensing 4) Date: Tue, 09 Jul 91 00:17:06 EST From: Ralf Thiede Subject: MacSpeech Lab II -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 8 Jul 91 18:57:07 PDT From: hiromi%psych@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU (Hiromi Morikawa) Subject: Utterance segmentation in Mandarin We'd like some help from anyone who has transcribed strings of speech and/or conversations in Mandarin. What criteria did you use to identify utterance boundaries? Rising/falling intonations and pauses of certain length are commonly used for segmenting English speech into utterances. But we are not sure if that can be applied to Mandarin as well. Our language samples in Mandarin are maternal speech to infants, and they include plenty of incomplete sentences, words in isolation, interjections, etc. We'd appreciate any suggestions. Hiromi Morikawa hiromi@psych.stanford.edu __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Tue, 9 Jul 91 10:28:34 +0100 From: Richard Coates Subject: Carleton University Does anyone have an email address for anyone in the Dept of Anthropology and Sociology at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada? Thanks if so. Richard Coates (richardc@uk.ac.susx.syma) __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Wed, 10 Jul 1991 6:05:23 GMT From: ADA612%csc1.anu.edu.au@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (AVERY D ANDREWS) Subject: Query on English Vowel Tensing I'd be very appreciating to be told of any work that has been done since SPE on the history of the vowel tesing rule in `vary'~`variety', `iran'~iranian', etc. Thanks. Avery Andrews (ada612@csc.anu.edu.au) __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Tue, 09 Jul 91 00:17:06 EST From: Ralf Thiede Subject: MacSpeech Lab II In response to Espen Ore : I am currently trying to sur- vey what hardware / sortware packages are available for analyzing speech on computers. (This got started when I applied for a grant and realized how difficult it was to make an informed choice since I did not know all the products, and neither did anyone else I asked.) I received a gener- ous demo package from GW Instruments including digitized sample record- ings on disk and manuals. The demo plotted all the analyses on screen which the manual mentioned, so I do not know what trouble your colleague ran into "plotting... basic frequencies in spoken words." If the prob- lem was using the printer as a plotter for the spectographs: I was told when I called the company for a chat that the program is not compatible with SC-series Apple Laserwriters. GW Instruments' address is: 35 Medford St., Sommerville MA 02143. Tel: (617) 625-4096 Fax: (617) 625-1322 This brings up an idea: so far, I have or can get information on: SpeechViewer (IBM) [MS-DOS] CI-500 Speech Analysis System (SIL) [MS-DOS] MacSpeech Lab (GW Instruments) [MacIntosh] Voice Navigator (Articulate Systems) [MacIntosh] MacRecorder (Farallon) [MacIntosh] waves+ (Entropic Speech) [SPARC] Digital Ears (Metaresearch) [NeXT] What else is there? I would like to compile that information, write a survey and publish it somewhere, and make a short survey available on LINGUIST some time after the next LSA meeting. Ralf Thiede U of NC Charlotte [Linguist List: Vol-2-341] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-342. Wednesday, 10 July 1991. Lines: 99 Subject: Queries Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: 5 JUL 1991 10:50:00 JST From: Subject: traditional English pronouncing diacritics 2) Date: Fri, 05 Jul 91 22:57 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: Phonological Rules 3) Date: Fri, 05 Jul 91 23:15 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: more queries -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: 5 JUL 1991 10:50:00 JST From: Subject: traditional English pronouncing diacritics I need software to display/edit macron & breve (long- & short-signs) with A,E,I,O,U,Y (capitals too if possible) & a macron on a W -- for a PC preferably, but would buy a Mac if only it could do. A kludge would do, but I then need camera ready copy that looks 'right'. Journal editors on Mac's have drawn them in by hand (ugly) or tugged & nudged its graphic capabilities (time-consuming & never quite alligned), & both methods are out for a big project. Also need circumflex & diaeresis, but they are fairly standard. WORST, I also need macron & breve that stretch over 2 letters, as long-OO, &c. Why? It is possible to make a multi-dialectal phonological represent- ation that makes good linguistic sense, & collapses into superficial phonemic representations of most dialects. It is nearly isomorphic to the traditional system (see Concise English Dict), so I don't want to use an entire new set of symbols. Ron Hofmann __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 05 Jul 91 22:57 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: Phonological Rules Sorry I can't help out with answers to these queries but I do have one of my own. QUERY: First a big thank you to all of you out there who responded so magnificently to my request for examples of circumfixing in languages. You will see many of the languages and examples in Intro to Ling 5th edition in text or exercises. You were so responsive that I now have another request. (See what happens when you are all so helpful!) I need language examples of synchronic dissimilation phonological rules. I will be eternally grateful for any you can provide. This LINGUIST NET is fantastic!!!! My delight in our field has been enhanced manifold by seeing how committed we all are and involved and helpful and amusing and concerned. Thnak you again and especially to Anthony Aristar and Helen Dry. Vicki Fromkin __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Fri, 05 Jul 91 23:15 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: more queries This is an addendum to my last request for information and more importantly examples of dissimilation from any languages anyone knows to help the students using or who will be using the revised Intro text. Other kinds of phonological processes -- assimilation, metathesis, insertion, deletion, -- from any languages would be most welcome. Enough examples for exercises if you have them handy. Please don't go to any serious trouble -- after all you won't be getting any royalties. But you will get your name in print. (which won't even buy you a cup of coffee) And you will have my everlasting gratitude, for whatever that is worth. I would like to include more languages. I think that is very important for students being introduced to the study of language, languages, and linguistics. And the first four editions used up what languages I know anything about. So another thank you -- whether or not I get any response. I still feel grateful to know you are all out there filled with all this great knowledge about human language(s). Vicki Fromkin [Linguist List: Vol-2-342] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-343. Wednesday, 10 July 1991. Lines: 101 Subject: Responses Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 7 Jul 1991 22:22 +0100 From: Nicholas Ostler TRMC Subject: Responses: Indirect Objects, Mood 2) Date: Sat, 06 Jul 91 16:25:00 EST From: "John A. Rea" Subject: CTP-Phenomena & Varia 3) Date: Sat, 06 Jul 91 12:40:23 EST From: "John A. Rea" Subject: Circumfixes etc -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 7 Jul 1991 22:22 +0100 From: Nicholas Ostler TRMC Subject: Responses: Indirect Objects, Mood Two appropriate terms used in Sanskrit grammar (e.g. Whitney) are "Benedictive" and "Precative". __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Sat, 06 Jul 91 16:25:00 EST From: "John A. Rea" Subject: CTP-Phenomena & Varia I jotted down the following Kentucky utterances a few years back. There were more, but I don't have them at hand. Since Kentucky is not my native woodsong, I can only mention them, not play around with them: I found where that he was buried. I don't know who that it was. He was telling me how that his father went to x.... .....the period in which that they were made. I don't know what that their grandfather did. __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Sat, 06 Jul 91 12:40:23 EST From: "John A. Rea" Subject: Circumfixes etc I hand not before run across the term 'circumfix' and my example may not be appropriate, since I have also lost the query which contained it. Bergamask, a dialect spoken in northern Italy has, as do a number of other northern Italian dialects (I do not speak here of Rhaeto-Romance), the following type of verb conjugation. (Note: I use capitalization to indicate placement of stress, and the verbs in question are 'first conjugation', that is they correspond to Latin -are, Spanish -ar, and French -er types). Infinitives: tirA 'to pull' skaA 'to dig, excavate' tIre antIra skAe miskAa tetIret tirI teskAet skaI altIra itIra liskAa iskAa The imperfect shows some results not only of the loss of final /t/, but also of intervocalic Latin /b/ and /v/ (or /w/ if you prefer, yielding some nice three vowel sequences that someone was asking about. Thus 'we were washing' comes out milaAa, and 'he was digging' yields liskaAa. (for third singular the development will be clearer if we keep in mind Latin lavabat, minus its v, b, and t. It is worth mentioning that /laAa/ is three distinct syllables, with no 'sinalefa' as in Spanish, and no glottal stops. Phonologically the /a/ on /altIra/, /alkAnta/ 'he sings', etc. is a prothetic vowel, the third singular prefix being simply /l/: thus when an impure s (initial s+cons) requires a prothetic /i/ (think about Spanish /e/ in escuela), the /a/ is not needed. Some of you will remember Fellini's movie /m rkord/ = I remember = je me rappelle = mi ricordo, which in his Rimini dialect also required a prothetic /a/ for /m/ --> [am], and another /a/ for /rkord/ to become [arkord], hence the American title 'Amarcord'. I should probably say that Bergamask is a pro-drop (term I don't really like) dialect. Thus any of the utterances I used as an example would be unchanged if an overt subject were added, noun or (emphatic) pronoun. Thus /alkanta/ 'he is singing, = Spanish or Italian 'canta'; /pier alkanta/ 'Pier (Peter, Pedro) is singing; /lylkanta/ 'he (contrastive, or emphatic) is singing; /oter kantI/ 'you (contrastive) are singing'; /tetekAntet/ 'you informal (contrastive) are singing'. (Sorry to h have left out indications of strss in a couple of these.) The /liskaAa/ would serve as an example of three vowels in a row in reference to another question: this would be written, "'L iscaaa" in what passes for standard orthography, with or without a grave accent on the middle 'a'. [Linguist List: Vol-2-343] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-344. Wednesday, 10 July 1991. Lines: Subject: Character Encoding Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (1echad@utsa86.utsa.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 5 Jul 91 15:29:09 PDT From: whistler@zarasun.Metaphor.COM (Ken Whistler) Subject: Unicode and character encoding issues -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 5 Jul 91 15:29:09 PDT From: whistler@zarasun.Metaphor.COM (Ken Whistler) Subject: Unicode and character encoding issues I am compiling together my comments and responses on a number of items posted on LINGUIST over the last several weeks. I'm sorry about the temporal disconnect on this--maybe some of the items are getting stale, but they do deserve some answers. Re Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0295. Friday, 14 June 1991 Charles Bigelow's discussion of Diacritics, type design, and font format is a wholly commendable introduction to modern font technology. It clearly distinguishes the issue of character encoding from the issues of type design and font technology. As Bigelow points out, modern font technology already handles productively applied marks (e.g. floating diacritics in the Latin script) as separable pieces. But the details of that are all hidden away in the font rendering engines and the fonts themselves. A character encoding is *mapped* to glyphs in the fonts, and there is no particular reason why that relationship has to be a simple one. The Unicode standard takes the position that non-spacing marks (including Latin floating diacritics) must be encoded as characters primarily for information sufficiency. Diacritics are productively applied to Latin letters--this goes well beyond the relatively small set of accented letters considered to be part of the standard alphabets of most European languages. In order to be able to encode the textual information of any usage of the Latin script (including various kinds of ad hoc transcriptions published over hundreds of years), we have to do one of the following: A. Research every baseform + diacritic(s) combination ever used in the history of the Latin (and other) script(s) and assign a character encoding number to each combination; B. Collect the set of productively applied diacritic(s) and encode them as non-spacing marks which can compose with any baseform a user chooses for them. I believe alternative (A) to be a hopeless approach. It is almost, though not quite, as absurd as trying to catalog all the sentences of a language. Position (B) builds a well-defined productive rule into the encoding which allows for unambiguous character encoding of any combination which has to be encoded. Also Re Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0295. Friday, 14 June 1991 Paul Hackney objected to the Unicode proposal for a fixed-width character encoding: >However one thing is certain: it is not compatible with >our present system. Furthermore you will need twice as much space to store >text using the current character set, and transmission times will be doubled. >I have come across another system that does not suffer from these limitations, >and is in my opinion a winner by lengths. He then goes on to summarize Joe Becker's discussion of the Xerox Coded Character Set (XCCS), cited in the Scientific American article on "Multilingual Word Processing." Hackney goes on to praise the notion of a character set which uses a signal to indicate that the next byte in a character stream is an "alphabet" identifier which indicates a particular set of 255 codes to be used (a byte at a time) in subsequent text. Extension of the scheme would allow for two byte encodings (e.g. for Chinese) or for three byte encodings if required. What Hackney has done is reinvent the "compaction forms" of ISO DIS 10646, which has just such a signal for supporting 1-, 2-, 3-, or 4-byte encoding forms, as well as variable length. The irony of this argument is that in citing Becker's article about software based on the XCCS, he seems unaware that Becker is the principle architect of the Unicode fixed-length character encoding architecture which Hackney objects to! It is precisely Xerox's long experience with building multilingual software on a mixed one- or two-byte character encoding which has convinced most of the software implementors in the industry that such encoding schemes are inefficient, buggy, and not even close to being worth the savings in space for text storage which was their main reason for being. Keep in mind that the mixed-width character encodings were designed in an era when 16K was a LOT of RAM and hard disks were something that mainframe computers had. Nowadays a minimal PC or workstation has at least 1 megabyte of RAM and a 40 megabyte hard disk, and the standards are rapidly expanding to 8 megabytes of RAM and even bigger hard disks supplemented by removable cartridge hard disks and CD-ROM's. The growth in the size of text by moving to a 16-bit fixed-width character encoding is insignificant in this context--especially when you take into account that interspersing formatting and graphics with the text means that non-text quickly comes to dominate over the text itself for most storage requirements. When it comes to transmission times, once again the technology is outracing any problem caused by doubling the character size. Modems have moved from 120 baud to 300 to 1200 to 2400 to 9600 baud. Furthermore, if a lot of text has to be transmitted across a phone line, it can be easily compressed and decompressed at each end with well-known algorithms already in use. This is a problem which can be confined to a clear point of appropriate application. It would be inappropriate, however, to force the character encoding to carry around the compression--that would simply make *all* software have to deal with compressed or compacted text just to make characters go down a telephone line faster. For all other network communication protocols, the transmission rates are so high (multiple megabits per second) that the one- versus two-byte character size is completely irrelevant to any perceived behavior for textual transmission. In summary, mixed-width character encoding has been discredited among those who have actually tried to implement software which uses it. And moving from a 8-bit to a 16-bit character encoding is *not* going to suddenly make everything twice as inefficient in dealing with text. (Among other things, note that most systems and software that require moving to the new Unicode standard because they need a large, multilingual character set are already having to deal with Japanese--which means they already have provisions for two-byte characters. They just do so now in a mixed- width and *less* efficient way!) Re Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 0296. Friday, 14 June 1991 I wish to second David Birnbaum's comments about the importance of the participation of linguists in the character encoding process. It is extremely important that we get the international character encoding to be complete and correct. This will allow for an interchange standard for linguistic data, even in those instances where individual linguists with their own independently developed ad hoc encodings for PC's and Macs have no need to change the software they are using locally. Note that the major current initiative aimed at providing a universal text content interchange format (the Text Encoding Initiative, sponsored by ACL, et al.) is deficient precisely in the area of character encoding. Getting involved to encourage the building of a Text Encoding protocol on top of a *Universal* character set would greatly improve the possibilities that linguists will be able to exchange data freely in the future. Re Linguist List: Vol-2-308. Thursday, 20 June 1991. Herb Stahlke raised the issue of sorting. While it is true that diacritics (among other things) have to be taken into account to produce correct sortings in various languages, the way sorts are implemented is generally by weighted multiple keys generated from tables. The relation between an and its appropriate sorting key for a particular language in a particular orthography is independent of whether that was encoded as a precomposed single character or a baseform character plus non-spacing mark character. (One scheme for encoding characters may be more efficiently mappable to multiple keys than another scheme, but the multiple keys themselves are not *determined* by the character encoding.) The table has to be correct to produce the correct sort. When we want to put control over the sort "in the hands of the user," what we really mean is finding a way to allow a user to define their own collation tables or to modify those provided by the system or application software. I see that David Birnbaum (in Linguist List: Vol-2-321. Tuesday, 25 June 1991) has also responded to this contribution, and I concur completely with his analysis of the distinction between precomposed vs. "separable" architecture in the character encoding versus any issues of how to produce a correct sort. [Linguist List: Vol-2-344] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-345. Thursday, 18 July 1991. Lines: 64 Subject: For Your information Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thurs, 18 Jul 91 From: The LINGUIST Editors Subject: No Postings between Jul 11 and Jul 17 2) Date: Fri, 12 Jul 91 15:39 BST From: Susan Hockey Subject: Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thurs, 18 Jul 91 From: The LINGUIST Editors Subject: No Postings between Jul 11 and Jul 17 Our apologies for the lack of postings this past week, but both moderators were away from their home institutions, and thus had no computer access. Even we get our occasional (brief) vacations in summer... _______________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 12 Jul 91 15:39 BST From: Susan Hockey Subject: Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing Thanks to Jane Edwards to responding to the query about the ALLC whilst I was away (Linguist Vol-2-302 18 June). Current individual subscription is 18 pounds (UK and Europe) or $35 (Rest of the World) which includes four issues of the journal 'Literary and Linguistic Computing'. Send to Journals Marketing Oxford University Press 2001 Evans Road Cary, NC 27513 USA or Journals Marketing Oxford University Press Pinkhill House Southfield Road Eynsham Oxford OX8 1JJ Susan Hockey ALLC Chairman Oxford University Centre for Humanities Computing [Linguist List: Vol-2-345] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-346. Thursday, 18 July 1991. Lines: 62 Subject: Impersonal Verbs Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 10 Jul 91 14:52:17 -0400 Subject: Re: Impersonal Verbs From: Ellen Prince 2) Date: 12 Jul 91 11:26 EST From: pchapin@nsf.gov Subject: Impersonal Verbs -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 10 Jul 91 14:52:17 -0400 Subject: Re: Impersonal Verbs From: Ellen Prince re the weather verbs in german, yiddish has only es 'it' in weather expressions and as the general initial position place-holder when there's no subject or the subject has been postposed with nothing topicalized, e.g.: es geyt a regn/shney 'it goes a rain/snow = it's raining/snowing' es iz mir kalt/umetik 'it is me cold/lonesome = i'm cold/lonesome' es dakht zikh mir az er iz alt 'it seems self me that he is old = it seems to me that he's old' es iz geshtorbn der kabstn 'it is died the pauper = the pauper died' however, there is also a construction with the demonstrative neuter 'dos = this/that' as expletive and with the subject in middle field, but with a very different understanding: dos iz der kabstn geshtorbn 'this is the pauper died =it's the pauper who died' that is, dos-sentences have the understanding (but not the syntax) of english it-clefts. (slavic also uses a demonstrative-initial simplex clause for the understanding of it-clefts.) __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: 12 Jul 91 11:26 EST From: pchapin@nsf.gov Subject: Impersonal Verbs The comments about the Icelandic impersonal use of "he" with weather verbs remind me that some colloquial varieties of American English can use "she" (never "he", it seems) as subject of some weather verbs. I have the impression that this works only with verbs describing some active, visible weather phenomenon. Thus "She's raining (snowing, blowing) hard out there", but not *"She's freezing cold out there". Does anyone have more accurate information about this? Paul Chapin [Linguist List: Vol-2-346] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-347. Thursday, 18 July 1991. Lines: 186 Subject: Scholarships and Jobs Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 10 Jul 91 17:26 GMT From: Steve Harlow Subject: Graduate scholarship/Chinese TA position 2) Date: Fri, 12 Jul 91 07:28:28 CDT From: GreenfieldPG@computer-science.birmingham.ac.uk Subject: POSTE DE MAITRE DE CONFERENCES 3) Date: Tue, 16 Jul 91 13:07:08 PDT From: corina@crl.ucsd.edu (David Corina) Subject: Cognitive Neuroscience 4) Date: Thu, 18 Jul 91 20:28:12 CDT From: ward%pico.ling.nwu.edu@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Gregory Ward) Subject: job announcement: text analysis -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 10 Jul 91 17:26 GMT From: Steve Harlow Subject: Graduate scholarship/Chinese TA position Department of Language and Linguistic Science University of York York Y01 5DD, UK Graduate Scholarship and Chinese Language Assistantship We have available from October this year a graduate scholarship worth 5,000 pounds (to cover living expenses and travel) plus all fees (currently also 5,000 pounds). The scholarship is open to fluent speakers of Standard Chinese (Putonghua) and requires the successful applicant to register for either a one year taught-course MA in Linguistics or a higher research degree in Linguistics (MPhil/PhD). The recipient of the scholarship is required to teach for up to 6 hours/week on the Department's undergraduate Chinese courses. Research specialisations of the Department cover syntax, semantics, phonetics, non-segmental approaches to phonology, history of phonetics/phonology, sociolinguistics, bilingualism, mutlilingualism, language acquisition, language and gender and historical linguistics. Applicants are not necessarily expected to have research interests in Chinese. Anyone interested in this scholarship should write, enclosing vita, details of proposed research and the names of 3 academic referees to: The Graduate Office University of York York Y01 5DD, UK Tel: +44 904 430000 Fax: +44 904 433433 Candidates from universities outside the UK should arrange for transcripts, degree certificates etc to be sent direct to the Graduate Office together with a formal certified translation into English if the originals are not in English. I am willing to respond to email inquiries, but will be out of the country until the middle of August. Anyone interested should start the ball rolling by contacting the Graduate Office without waiting for my return. Steve Harlow Head of Department SJH1@VAXA.YORK.AC.UK __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 12 Jul 91 07:28:28 CDT From: GreenfieldPG@computer-science.birmingham.ac.uk Subject: POSTE DE MAITRE DE CONFERENCES POSTE DE MAITRE DE CONFERENCES - C.N.U. 7e SECTION, Faculte' des Lettres, Universite' de Besanc,on, France. This post, recently advertised, is now closed. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Peter Greenfield E-Mail: GreenfieldPG@cs.bham.ac.uk School of Computer Science Tel: +44 21 414 4772 The University of Birmingham Fax: +44 21 414 3971 Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, England Telex: 333762 UOBHAM G _________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Tue, 16 Jul 91 13:07:08 PDT From: corina@crl.ucsd.edu (David Corina) Subject: Cognitive Neuroscience Dear Colleague: Please post this notice and/or give to any persons you believe would be appropriate candidates. Thank you for your assistance. THE SALK INSTITUTE FOR BIOLOGICAL STUDIES JOB NOTICE RESEARCH SCIENTIST Position: The Salk Institute has an immediate opening for a Research Scientist in the Laboratory for Cognitive Neuroscience to join a team of scientists investigating signed and spoken languages and their representation in the brain. Researcher to coordinate project on Brain Organization: Clues from Sign Aphasia. Candidates should have some knowledge of American Sign Language and background in neuropsychology, neurolinguistics, or cognitve science. Central research directions of the laboratory involve issues of brain organization for language and spatial cognition. Salary dependent on background and experience. Please send resume, letter of interest, and names of references to: Dr. Ursula Bellugi, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, 10010 North Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, California 92037. An affirmative action employer. __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Thu, 18 Jul 91 20:28:12 CDT From: ward%pico.ling.nwu.edu@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Gregory Ward) Subject: job announcement: text analysis C Programmer Positions Available Northwestern University, Evanston, IL We are looking for one full-time or two half-time C programmers with a strong background in UNIX. Experience is essential. The main application involves programming interfaces to text analysis programs that operate on large corpora of natural language. By 'large' we mean hundreds of millions of words of text (such as AP newswire reports or The Wall Street Journal). There are currently a number of software tools, some proprietary, that will perform various linguistic operations, such as tag words with their part of speech, produce grammatical trees representing the grammatical (surface) structure of the sentence, etc. We have copies of these tools available (licensed) as well as some public domain software. The task will be to use these programs to obtain statistics about cooccurrences of words, statistics about the number of times a word might be an adjective versus a noun, the number of times a word might participate in one grammatical construction over another, etc. The second application will involve the use of a NeXT machine and speech processing software. There currently is available a significant amount of public domain software for editing and analyzing speech; however it may be necessary to write some additional routines (from well-understood algorithms) in order to automate as much as possible some of the editing tasks. The final result and shape of these applications will be determined by the knowledge and expertise of the programmers. Much of the work will produce potentially publishable work (in terms of the algorithms used and the results that are obtained). Secondary tasks may involve adding new real time commands in C to our PC system and possibly adding some graphics to that system as well. These tasks will be undertaken only after the first two projects are advanced beyond the initial stages. The current lab uses 2 SUN 3 workstations, an IBM RS/6000 workstation, 2 NeXT stations; a SUN IPX (Sparcstation 2) machine will soon be added. There are 8 PCs to control real time experiments. We anticipate a full-time salary of approximately $34,000 (plus fringe benefits) or a half-time salary of approximately $16,000 (plus fringe benefits). Starting date should be early September. This is a joint project between Gail McKoon and Roger Ratcliff in the NU Psychology Department and Gregory Ward in the NU Linguistics Department. Funding for the project is for 4 years beginning September 1991. For more information, contact Roger Ratcliff at 708-491-7702 (email: roger@eccles.psych.nwu.edu) or Gregory Ward at 708-491-8055 (email: ward@pico.ling.nwu.edu). [Linguist List: Vol-2-347] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-348. Thursday, 18 July 1991. Lines: 170 Subject: Queries Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 11 Jul 91 01:53:16 -0400 From: PLUNKETT%LINGUIST.umass.edu@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: query on Case and resumptive pronouns 2) Date: Thu, 11 Jul 91 11:48:28 -0700 From: saka@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Paul Saka) Subject: ROOM-SHARING AT SANTA CRUZ 3) Date: Thu, 11 Jul 91 18:25:31 -0700 From: Yeshwant K Muthusamy Subject: Re: Your Language Identification Study 4) From: ward@pico.ling.nwu.edu (Gregory Ward) Subject: teaching load survey Date: Fri, 12 Jul 91 21:27:24 CDT 5) Date: Sun, 14 Jul 1991 18:20:06 +0200 From: fuchs@ifi.unizh.ch Subject: NL as specification language -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 11 Jul 91 01:53:16 -0400 From: PLUNKETT%LINGUIST.umass.edu@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: query on Case and resumptive pronouns Does anyone out there have any information or references about languages with overt Case marking where the resumptive pronoun and its antecedent bear different Cases? I know of some cases such left dislocations where the dislo- cated element always bears the same Case, regardless of the position of the resumptive pronoun but I'm especially interested in finding out about cases wher it looks as though the rp is of the kind that has been analysed as a trace spellout. If these occurred they would presumably involve movement from one Case-marked position to another and this is what intrigues me. To give you an idea of what I mean I have a putative example from Standard Arabic which involves a case of what looks like Qfloat xaraja al-awlaad*u* kull*u*-hum left the boys-nom all-nom-them "all of them" is a construct state NP and if movement of the subject out of this was involved (a la Sportiche analysis of Q float) we'd have to explain how "the boys" get's nominative as well as the head of the complex NP, while the pronoun must be getting oblique Case as any other NP in a construct state does. In this particular example the 'floated' Q is not far enough away from its putative source to be a case which unambiguously involves movement so I'd like to have better examples, if such exist. Thanks in advance Bernadette Plunkett __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Thu, 11 Jul 91 11:48:28 -0700 From: saka@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Paul Saka) Subject: ROOM-SHARING AT SANTA CRUZ I have reserved a room at the Travelodge for July 28 - Aug 2. If you would like to room-share for any portion of this period, please let me know. __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Thu, 11 Jul 91 18:25:31 -0700 From: Yeshwant K Muthusamy Subject: Re: Your Language Identification Study WE NEED YOUR VOICE!! at The Center for Spoken Language Oregon Graduate Institute If you are a NATIVE speaker of one of the following languages: (American or British) English Korean Farsi Mandarin Chinese French Spanish German Tamil Japanese Vietnamese we need your help in building a multi-language database of speech recorded over the TELEPHONE. This database is to be used for my PhD thesis research on automatic language identification. We have set up a TOLL-FREE line (for the US and Canada) that is open{round-the-clock: PLEASE CALL 1-800-441-1077 There is also a local area number for the Portland (Oregon) metropolitan area and other international sites where the toll-free number does not work: PLEASE CALL (503) 690-1012 You will need a touch-tone phone for this call. A pre-recorded message in your native language will guide you through a recording session. Please respond to the prompts in your native language only. The entire call will take about 5 minutes. The speech that you provide will be used for research purposes only. If you have any questions or comments, or would like more information about this project, call Yeshwant Muthusamy at (503) 690-1431. Please pass on this message to others at your site who do not have net access. THANK YOU FOR YOUR HELP! ----------------- Yeshwant Muthusamy Internet: yeshwant@cse.ogi.edu Center for Spoken Language UUCP: ...!ogicse!yeshwant Oregon Graduate Institute of Science and Technology 19600 NW Von Neumann Drive Beaverton, OR 97006-1999 USA __________________________________________________________________________ 4) From: ward@pico.ling.nwu.edu (Gregory Ward) Subject: teaching load survey Date: Fri, 12 Jul 91 21:27:24 CDT Our Department is collecting data on the standard teaching load for full-time faculty in linguistics departments that are on the *quarter* system. We would like to know what the average/unmarked/regular teaching load is (in terms of number of courses), not counting release time or buydowns for grants/administration/advising. Please send responses to: ward@pico.ling.nwu.edu (Gregory Ward) Thank you very much. __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Sun, 14 Jul 1991 18:20:06 +0200 From: fuchs@ifi.unizh.ch Subject: NL as specification language Organization: University of Zurich, Department of Computer Science I would appreciate pointers to publications which report on attempts to use as specification language a subset of natural language that can be translated into first-order predicate logic, or Horn clauses . Thank you. Norbert E. Fuchs Department of Computer Science University of Zurich CH-8057 Zurich Switzerland fuchs@ifi.unizh.ch [Linguist List: Vol-2-348] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-349. Thursday, 18 July 1991. Lines: 129 Subject: Speech Software Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 10 Jul 91 10:01 CDT From: Charles Read Subject: Re: Queries 2) Date: Wed, 10 Jul 91 15:14:04 EDT From: JBB@WATSON.acc.Virginia.EDU Subject: Re: Queries 3) Date: Wed, 10 Jul 91 20:49:33 CDT From: GA3662%SIUCVMB.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU Subject: Speech processors -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 10 Jul 91 10:01 CDT From: Charles Read Subject: Re: Queries In response to Ralf Thiede and others who have asked about software for the acoustic analysis of speech: we published a factual comparison of several programs, in relation to the traditional spectrographs, in the Journal of Speech and Hearing Research last June. Now a longer and more evaluative article is in press at the same journal. Our first article is: C. Read, E. Buder, & R. Kent. (1990). Speech analysis systems: a survey. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 33, 363-374. The second article will have the same authors, same journal, and will be titled: Speech analysis systems: an evaluation. We dealt with some of the systems that Ralf Thiede mentions for both MS-DOS and Macintosh, but did not deal with programs for Sun or NeXT machines. We would be delighted to send reprints upon request to: cread@macc.wisc.edu a.k.a. Charles Read, Dept. of Linguistics, 1220 Linden Drive, 1168 Van Hise Hall, Madison, WI 53706. ________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Wed, 10 Jul 91 15:14:04 EDT From: JBB@WATSON.acc.Virginia.EDU Subject: Re: Queries On Wed, 10 Jul 1991 21:44:39 +0800 you said: >4) >Date: Tue, 09 Jul 91 00:17:06 EST >From: Ralf Thiede >Subject: MacSpeech Lab II > >In response to Espen Ore : I am currently trying to sur- >vey what hardware / sortware packages are available for analyzing speech >on computers. ... so far, I have or can get information on: > > SpeechViewer (IBM) MS-DOS > CI-500 Speech Analysis System (SIL) MS-DOS > MacSpeech Lab (GW Instruments) MacIntosh > Voice Navigator (Articulate Systems) MacIntosh > MacRecorder (Farallon) MacIntosh > waves+ (Entropic Speech) SPARC > Digital Ears (Metaresearch) NeXT > >What else is there? I would like to compile that information, write a >survey and publish it somewhere, and make a short survey available on >LINGUIST some time after the next LSA meeting. > Ralf Thiede > U of NC Charlotte > Ralph - you also may wish to include: Ariel Corporation phone: (908) 249-2900 433 River Road fax: (908) 249-2123 Highland Park, NJ 08904 DSP BBS: (908) 249-2124 (300-9600 bps) They manufacture a sophisticated series of DSP (digital signal processing) products for the Next, IBM-AT compatables, HP, Sun and Macintosh computers. In addition to a variety of support systems for the DSPs above, they also offer the "SpeechStation", a complete speech analysis package for IBM-AT compatables and "SYSid", a full featured acoustic test system for IBM-PCs. Joe Burch bitnet: jbb@uva Academic Computing Center internet: jbb@virginia.edu University of Virginia phone: (804) 924-4547 __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Wed, 10 Jul 91 20:49:33 CDT From: GA3662%SIUCVMB.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU Subject: Speech processors There is an article in the June 1990 issue of the Journal of Speech and Hearing Research by Ray Kent and someone else which describes and rates a large number of DOS based speech analysis programs. I myself have experimented with two--one is DSPS, written by a guy in Ottawa. It runs on an XT with a Tecmar Graphics Board. It runs in real time, but has limited cursor movement--the cursors cannot come closer together than 72 ms., which makes it a little inconvenient for VOT measurements. Cursor movement is also a little slow, sometimes (for e.g. formant measurement) maddeningly slow. I have also worked with CSRE (done by a group at University of Western Ontario). It runs best on 386's and such, and the cursors are driven by a mouse. It is, however, somewhat slower than the much older and more primitive DSPS, and capturing the speech signal using the recommended Data Translation DT2801 board is erratic. Besides, the board itself is a kludge, and definitely not for the non-technical minded. The board is also at least $1200, on top of the (very reasonable) $350 for the program. Still, CSRE is in color and comes with pitch extraction, and a version of Klattalk. Since I am currently using someone else's computer for this program I haven't actually had much of a chance to really work with it, but it seems pretty good. I hope this is of some use to Ralf, and to anyone else interested in speech processing. I myself am also anxious to see what this survey turns up. Geoff Nathan Southern Illinois University at Carbondale [Linguist List: Vol-2-349] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-350. Friday, 19 July 1991. Lines: 124 Subject: Responses Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 11 Jul 91 20:34:42 EST From: "John A. Rea" Subject: Dissimilation exercise 2) Date: Mon, 15 Jul 1991 19:29 EET From: "Jouko Lindstedt, University of Helsinki" Subject: Re: synchronic dissimilation rules 3) Date: Thu, 11 Jul 1991 12:51 From: Robert D Hoberman Subject: Diacritics 4) Date: 15 JUL 1991 17:38:18 JST From: Subject: Gender -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 11 Jul 91 20:34:42 EST From: "John A. Rea" Subject: Dissimilation exercise I have used the following material for an exercise on dissimilation, based on the latin suffix -alis alternating with -aris. familiaris corporalis peculiaris mortalis consularis coronalis lunaris principalis militaris regalis singularis virginalis popularis dorsalis You can phrase your own questions to have the student specify when to expect -alis versus -aris, and to name the process involved. To make the underlying form (if I dare use the term) stand up and identify itself, one can add such additional items (probably only after the student has handled the above) as minimalis, capitalis, hospitalis, navalis, animalis, etc. For extra fun one can then see what additional information he can supply about liberalis, floralis, pluralis, lateralis, etc. The carry over into English borrowings is pleasing to students. Hard core Latinists will know about the few counter-examples and why they exist and why not to bother undergraduates about them, and may even suspect that not all adjectives in -alis / -aris are historically the same batch of kittens -- I interject this to avoid being preached at by those who claim to know more Latin than I because they are licensed Classicists.) There are more examples than the above if you want to impress students with your erudition. Jack __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Mon, 15 Jul 1991 19:29 EET From: "Jouko Lindstedt, University of Helsinki" Subject: Re: synchronic dissimilation rules When reading Vicki Fromkin's query, I came to think about the series dent-al / palat-al / ... / vel-ar (not *vel-al). I don't know if this is a synchonic rule in English, but there must be a synchronic Latin rule behind it; perhaps some Latinist reading this list can clarify the question. -- Jouko Lindstedt, U of Helsinki __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Thu, 11 Jul 1991 12:51 From: Robert D Hoberman Subject: Diacritics In response to Ron Hofmann's query about traditional English pronouncing diacritics, Nota Bene with its Special Language Supplement provides all those he asked for except the double-o with macron or breve. I find it much more convenient than Word Perfect for inserting, searching, and changing letters with diacritics and special characters like edh. It also supports various laser fonts. In a couple of months, the NB people say, their new product Lingua will be out, replacing the Special Language Supplement. They say it will make using the special characters and diacritics much easier and will have an expanded character set (700 Latin, plus Greek, Cyrillic, and right-to-left Hebrew). (It is planned eventually, but not right away, to include the IPA.) You can ask them whether the double o with diacritics is included; they are Dragonfly Software, 212-334-0445. Furthermore, NB is good at sorting (alphabetizing) and has some data-base capabilities, and it is very easy to set whatever sorting order you want, with any of the available diacritics. Bob Hoberman _____________________________________________________________ 4) Date: 15 JUL 1991 17:38:18 JST From: Subject: Gender My understanding of gender in linguistics is as a sub-classification of nouns, usually 2, possibly 3 genders in European languages -- & I extend this to include the 5 'genders' of some Bantu languages -- commonly reflected in the morphology of semantically related verbs & adjectives. If Amy Sheldon (or sociology) uses this same term for social roles, then we (& she) should speak of grammatical & sociological gender. Perhaps some were using sex-roles or simply sex for the latter, thinking that gender is a matter of syntax & morphology. Your results look exciting, Amy, would like to hear more, but beware that unmodified, 'gender' has a long history of use in linguistics in a different way that you use it. 'Register' I thought was a style in the repetoire of a speaker that he might use on appropriate occasions; so masculine/feminine registers are appropriate only for transvestites, no? Ron Hofmann [Linguist List: Vol-2-350]