________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-351. Saturday, 20 July 1991. Lines: 83 Subject: Conferences Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 11 Jul 91 09:08 U From: HSPHIL%TWNAS886.BITNET%CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: IsCLL 2) Date: Wed, 17 Jul 91 14:37 MET From: "Norval Smith (UVAALF::NSMITH)" Subject: call for papers on the acquisition of phonology -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 11 Jul 91 09:08 U From: HSPHIL%TWNAS886.BITNET%CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: IsCLL I. Tentative Program We received an extremely warm response to our call for papers. Our reviewers and program committee worked very hard to select 27 papers out of the 110 submissions. II. Registration The deadline for pre-registration is July 15. Please use the enclosed registration form. You can remit the fees either through Taiwan Post Office to Ho dah-an or by international money order to Chu-Ren Huang. Please take note that since the Academic Activity Center at Academia Sinica has just announced a price hike, conference participants who wish to stay there in addition to the four conference nights(i.e. August8-11) will have to pay the new price. The new price is N.T. $500/night(US $20) for a single room, and N.T. $800/night(US $30)for a double room. VI. Contact Address Please address any question regarding IsCLL II to: Email:hsphil@twnas886.bitnet or hschuren@twnas886.bitnet/FAX:886-2-7868834 __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Wed, 17 Jul 91 14:37 MET From: "Norval Smith (UVAALF::NSMITH)" Subject: call for papers on the acquisition of phonology CALL FOR PAPERS As a follow up to the NIAS project on the Logical Problem of Language Acquisition, and the GLOW workshop on the Acquisition of Phonology, we wish to put together a volume of papers. The volume is to be published by Kluwer. Our aim is to focus on learnability in phonology with an emphasis on the issues raised by current research on phonological theory. In this we are aiming for a synthesis of empirical and experimental studies and theoretical studies. We invite papers which address issues in the acquisition and learnability of phonology. In the process of putting the book together we will encourage discussion and commentary of papers between the authors. In order that we may assess interest please reply immediately to: Toni Borowsky: - SURF126@kub.nl (before 30/7/91) - genling@alf.let.uva.nl if you are interested in submitting a paper or have any questions, suggestions, ideas. Please pass this message on to anyone else you think may be interested. Sincerely, Toni Borowsky, Elan Dresher, Harry van der Hulst [Linguist List: Vol-2-351] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-352. Saturday, 20 July 1991. Lines: 59 Subject: Character Encoding Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: 17 Jul 91 11:13:47 EDT From: "Thomas R. Hofmann" <71721.2655%CompuServe.COM@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU> Subject: Whistler's characters & ISO representation -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: 17 Jul 91 11:13:47 EDT From: "Thomas R. Hofmann" <71721.2655%CompuServe.COM@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU> Subject: Whistler's characters & ISO representation Whistler (Jun10) makes a very good case for Unicode in pointing out that any collection of composite characters (character + diacritic) will inevitably miss the various kinds of ad-hoc transcriptions that have been based on Latin script, already published over hundreds of years, & I might add, the many more that textual annotators have employed but did not publish. It strikes me then that linguists, philologists, & even historians have a reason to make their needs known & that ISO draft DIS 10646 needs floating diacritics (& hence serious revision). I have 2 simple questions: 1st, I understand that ISO is a supra-national effort, & that a private person's input can only be through their national representative. If so, how do I find out who the representatives from Canada, USA & Japan are, to express my opinion? (& their e-addresses) 2nd, I have a need, & I believe that there will be a general need as long as English spelling is not revised, for diacritics that stretch over 2 characters, such as is found in the _Concise Oxford Dictionary_. Such a scheme, suitably revised, is not only a multidialectal phonology, but coordinates pronunciation with standard spelling, a vital requirement for ESL/EFL learners & native reading education -- it is like the ITA (initial teaching alphabet) but valid for many dialects & in addition, consistent with traditional spelling. Does Unicode have any provision for such long diacritics? Or, for a 1/2-measure, placing a diacritic between 2 characters? (Some elements of English spelling are longer than 2 characters, such as OUGH, or even IGH & EIGH) A 3rd question is whether anyone can advise me on software (preferably PC-compatable) that can do this last feat for camera-ready copy. How do publishers manage this? Ron Hofmann Ab0665@JpnKnzw1.Bitnet Please do NOT reply to the e-address that this was sent from. [Linguist List: Vol-2-352] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-353. Sunday, 21 July 1991. Lines: 190 Subject: Jobs Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 19 Jul 91 17:03:42 EST From: kwilling%suna.mqcc.mq.oz.au@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Ken Willing) Subject: Senior Lectureship in Linguistics: Australia 2) Date: Fri, 19 Jul 91 19:19:59 BST From: Jock McNaught Subject: posts at CCL-UMIST 3) Date: Fri Jul 19 18:22:55 PDT 1991 From: karenje%microsoft.COM@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: job opening at Microsoft -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 19 Jul 91 17:03:42 EST From: kwilling%suna.mqcc.mq.oz.au@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Ken Willing) Subject: Senior Lectureship in Linguistics: Australia Job Opening Kindly bring to the attention of colleagues. Position: Senior Lecturer in Linguistics School of English and Linguistics Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia [Ref. 880132] The appointee will work primarily within the National Centre for English Language Teaching and Research, which is a Commonwealth Key Centre for Teaching and Research, as Co-ordinator of its Language Teaching Section. This post involves responsibility for the management of special purpose language learning programs for a variety of clients, and collaboration with other Sections to fulfil the aims of the National Centre. In addition, the appointee will be expected to contribute to the design and delivery of the Discipline's postgraduate programs. Postgraduate qualifications in Applied Linguistics/TESOL are essential. Candidates should have extensive experience in the initiation, design and management of special purpose language learning programs for adults, and, in addition, have research and teaching interests relevant to the MA and research degree programs within the Linguistics Discipline. Particularly valuable qualifications would include a record of attracting outside funding, appropriate publications, and experience with the design and mangagement of overseas development programs with English Language Teaching components. The position is tenable as soon as possible until 31 December 1997 in the first instance, with the possibility of renewal, depending on the availability of funds. Enquiries: Professor Christopher N. Candlin telephone: [61] (02) 805-7673 or 805-8740 fax: [61] (02) 805-7849 e-mail: kwilling@suna.mqcc.mq.oz.au Salary scale: Senior Lecturer A$43,984 - A$51,015 per annum Further information about the University, conditions of appointment and the method of application can be obtained from the Recruitment Officer, Staff Services, Macquarie University, Sydney NSW 2109, Australia. Applications close 23 August, 1991. Equal Employment Opportunity is University Policy. Posted 19/7/91 by Ken Willing kwilling@suna.mqcc.mq.oz.au __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 19 Jul 91 19:19:59 BST From: Jock McNaught Subject: posts at CCL-UMIST UMIST Centre for Computational Linguistics RESEARCH ASSISTANTS (SEVERAL POSTS) We are seeking suitable candidates to fill several research posts in a variety of projects just started or about to start. We invite general applications for any of these posts, or specific applications for one or more of them. - a 3-year post, beginning in October 1991 and funded by the SERC, for a Research Assistant to work on a project in multilingual generation of mail messages using example-based techniques. Applicants should have a good first degree and/or post-graduate qualifications/experience in computer science, particularly programming in C, Lisp or Prolog in a UNIX environment. An interest in or familiarity with computational linguistics would be an advantage. Commencing salary will be in the region of 12086 per annum, depending on age and experience. Please quote reference LL/R//HS. - two 9-month posts, beginning as soon as possible and funded by ESPRIT, for two Research Assistants to work on the MULTILEX project, which is concerned with designing and implementing a multifunctional standardised lexicon for the European Community languages. Applicants should have a good first degree, and postgraduate qualifications/experience in computational linguistics (particularly typed feature logic), computational lexicography or theoretical linguistics. Salary will be between 11969 and 19073 per annum, depending on age and experience. Please quote reference LL/R//JM. - a 3-year post, beginning in October, 1991 and funded by Matsushita Electric Industry Ltd. (Panasonic), for a Research Assistant to work on a project in mutual conversion between verbal and visual presentations of information. Applicants should have a good first degree and/or post-graduate qualifications/experiences in one of Artificial Intelligence, computer science or information science. Commencing salary will be between 11969 and 13432 per annum. Please quote reference LL/R//JT. - a post initially for one year, but renewable, beginning as soon as possible, and funded in connection with the European Commission's Linguistic Research Framework Programme to work on various topics in Machine Translation. Part of the work will deal with aspects of syntax (clefting, topicalisation, sentential complements) in English and French. Applicants should have a good first degree and/or post-graduate qualifications/experiences in formal linguistics as well as knowledge of French and an interest in or familiarity with computational linguistics. Commencing salary will be between 11969 and 19073 per annum, depending on age and experience. Please quote reference LL/R//ET. Applications, including full curriculum vitae and the names of two referees, and indicating which posts are being applied for, should be sent to: R.A. Posts Centre for Computational Linguistics UMIST PO Box 88 Manchester, M60 1QD and must arrive not later than Saturday 31st August. Further information may be obtained from the above address or by phoning +44.61.200.3100. An equal opportunity employer. Salaries are expressed in Pounds Sterling. E-mail addresses for further details: LL/R//HS: harold@ccl.umist.ac.uk (after 31/7/91) LL/R//JM: jock@ccl.umist.ac.uk LL/R//JT: tsujii@ccl.umist.ac.uk (after 31/7/91) LL/R//ET: harold@ccl.umist.ac.uk (after 31/7/91) -- John McNaught jock%ccl.umist.ac.uk@ean-relay.ac.uk (ean) Centre for Computational jock%ccl.umist.ac.uk@cunyvm.cuny.edu (arpa) Linguistics jock%ccl.umist.ac.uk@ac.uk (earn) UMIST jock@cclsun.uucp PO Box 88 Sackville Street Manchester, UK +44.61.200.3098 (direct) M60 1QD __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Fri Jul 19 18:22:55 PDT 1991 From: karenje%microsoft.COM@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: job opening at Microsoft The Microsoft Natural Language Processing lab is looking for a COMPUTATIONAL LINGUIST/LEXICOGRAPHER with theoretical training, practical experience, and a yen for electronic adventure, to join a dedicated team of computational linguists in building a system for the analysis and generation of natural languages. Primary responsibilities include: (a) building large-scale computational lexicons; (b) interfacing the lexicons with various components of a broad-coverage natural language processing system; (c) designing and developing new lexicons and lexical components, making use of online knowledge bases such as dictionaries; (d) documenting the lexicon and lexical systems. Qualifications should include at least one year's experience with building large-scale computational lexicons, familiarity with lexical issues at various levels, and familiarity with popular linguistic theories and their implications for content and structure of the lexicon. An advanced degree in computer science, linguistics, or a related field is preferred -- either a PhD with 1+ years' experience with real NLP systems, or a master's degree with 3+ years' experience. [Linguist List: Vol-2-353] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-354. Sunday, 21 July 1991. Lines: 114 Subject: Character Encoding Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 20 Jul 91 11:21:08 EDT From: Wayles Browne Subject: Re: Character Encoding 2) Date: Sat, 20 Jul 91 14:09:17 -0500 From: Stephen P Spackman Subject: Re: Whistler's characters & ISO representation -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 20 Jul 91 11:21:08 EDT From: Wayles Browne Subject: Re: Character Encoding In (partial) answer to T.R. Hofmann's question, there is a mailing list devoted to discussion of the ISO10646 standard (and the Unicode one as well). One can subscribe by sending the message TELL LISTSERV AT JHUVM SUBSCRIBE your name or SEND LISTSERV@JHUVM SUBSCRIBE your name or variants thereof, depending on how your system can reach Bitnet addresses. _______________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Sat, 20 Jul 91 14:09:17 -0500 From: Stephen P Spackman Subject: Re: Whistler's characters & ISO representation Here at CILS, we've (somewhat tentatively, perhaps) adopted Unicode for our mulitlingual textual database projects. At present we're still actually using the ASCII/Latin-1 combination (and our main database, that of the ARTFL project, will probably remain that way for reasons of compression: as has rightly been pointed out, nai"ve storing of Unicode can cause space problems: in our case it'd push us off the end of a gigabyte disk). But since this is isomorphic to page zero of Unicode, the translation is completely trivial, and we have started writing code that can be compiled to use Unicode natively. In reply to "Thomas R. Hofmann" <71721.2655%CompuServe.COM@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU>'s (second) question about wide diacritics, yes, Unicode does in fact provide for these: a Unicode diacritic is a postfix operator that takes a fixed number of arguments determined by the diacritic itself; so you'd see internal representations like "oo-" (where "-" represents a two place macron, whatever). Speaking as a computer scientist with slight feet in mathematics and linguistics, the main problems with the Unicode approach are, to my mind: (1) the technical difficulty that it is not possible (as far as I know) to determine the argument structure of a diacritic by examination of its bitpattern: automatic processing would be a lot simpler if all the floating diacritics had, for example, been grouped together on pages by number of arguments, so that the character stream could at least be parsed into its linear components by "dumb" (i.e., non-language-aware) software. (2) mathematics (contrary to the belief of most printers, I sometimes suspect) uses font change and similar mechanisms as productive diacritics (font is frequently used just like circumflex or the vector accent to specify domain). This is demonstrably *not* the way "font" is usually used since (a) it typically applies to a single base letter, and (b) a uniform font substitution clearly changes the meaning of an expression; characteristics that are generally diagnostic of diacritics. Thus, for mathematics, diacritics like -fraktur and -shell are at least extremely desirable and to my mind quite necessary. (There are in fact other and more technically challenging instances of this phenomenon, since operator symbols are also productive; arguably the union symbol can be described as lessthan -roundify -rotate-90, for instance, and it would be a great relief to be able to type in a double-swung-shafted triple-open-headed NE arrow...). Now that linguistics is starting to sprout footnotes about combinators and domain equations, this may be a real concern for linguists as well. (3) a separate (and coordinated) standard (since Unicode has justifiably decided to punt on this) is needed NOW to specify how language switching is to be specified, and I don't know of one. What language a sequence of characters is in is the thing that actually determines collation sequence, rendition rules, and so forth, and how this is handled seems to be in danger of falling through the cracks between the character set and the markup notation. Clearly workable solutions to (2) and (3) are still possible within the Unicode framework, but the danger is that by postponing them the opportunity for standardisation will be lost. Despite these minor quibbles, Unicode does seem to be the best alternative from a technical perspective, whether I think about it as a computer scientist or as an amateur of linguistics: it's sufficiently flexible and sufficiently easy to process that where problems arise their solutions seem to be practical, something that it would be much harder to say of, for example, variable-width coding schemes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- stephen p spackman Center for Information and Language Studies systems analyst University of Chicago ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [Linguist List: Vol-2-354] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-355. Sunday, 21 July 1991. Lines: 166 Subject: For Your Information Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 20 Jul 91 16:11:06 CDT From: houlihn%ux.acs.umn.edu@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: Minnesota Conference on Language and linguistics 2) Date: Fri, 19 Jul 91 13:28:34 EDT From: denning@emunix.emich.edu (keith denning) Subject: Signalyze: a speech analysis program -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 20 Jul 91 16:11:06 CDT From: houlihn%ux.acs.umn.edu@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: Minnesota Conference on Language and linguistics Seventeenth Annual MINNESOTA CONFERENCE ON LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS October 24-26,1991 University of Minnesota Celebrating the 25th ANNIVERSARY OF THE DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS Hubert H. Humphrey Center 301 19th Avenue South Minneapolis, Minnesota SPONSORED BY: Departments of Linguistics, Anthropology, Classical and Near Eastern Studies, Communication Disorders, Computer Science, East Asian Languages and Literatures, English, French and Italian, Philosophy, Russian and East Asian Languages and Literatures, South Asian and Middle Eastern Languages and Literatures, Spanish and Portuguese, Speech Communication; by the Center for Research in Learning, Perception, and Cognition; and by the Institute for Child Development. [The full program, including registration details, is available by sending the message: get minneapolis-91 to: listserv@uniwa.uwa.oz.au This file is NOT available from listserv@TAMVM1] __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 19 Jul 91 13:28:34 EDT From: denning@emunix.emich.edu (keith denning) Subject: Signalyze: a speech analysis program [The following notice descibes a commercial product. Although we welcome such postings as a service to subscribers, the moderators wish to make clear that LINGUIST does not endorse specific products.] re: Acoustic analysis of speech on the Macintosh SIGNALYZE 2.0 from InfoSignal Signalyze is not produced by a large company and does not advertise in magazines, but it offers more features than any of the common Macintosh speech analysis programs. It is also *much* cheaper than the MacSpeech Lab package everyone knows about. Signalyze 1.0 first came out in January of last year (1990). Since then, a much more powerful Signalyze 2.0 has been in the works. Its beta version is about to be released and the official release of Signalyze 2.0 is slated for September. The program is about 620 k compiled at this point. I'll shortly describe Signalyze 2.0 here. Signalyze's basic conception revolves around up to 100 signals, displayed synchronously in HyperCard fashion on "cards". Everywhere it aims for top speed and ease of manipulation. Signalyze works entirely with the superior 16-bit standard (unlike SoundEdit which is an 8-bit environment). 8-bit signals are automatically converted to the 16-bit standard. Signalyze 2.0 will have an extensive help feature. For international customers, Signalyze can be switched instantaneously into French or German. The program offers a full complement of signal editing features, quite a few spectral analysis tools, manual scoring tools, pitch extraction routines, a good set of signal manipulation tools, and extensive input-output capacity. * Signal editing: Cut, copy, paste, clear, taper transitions, averaged transitions. * Spectral analysis tools: Spectra and spectrograms at narrow-band, wide-band and extra wide-band, frequency zoom, settable pre-emphasis, inverse filter, log scale. There are also cepstra and cepstrograms and there will be an LPC. Spectrograms adapt to the current color/grayscale environment (256/16 colors and grayscales, B/W dithering). 256-grayscale spectrograms can be converted into 3D displays through the freeware program "Image". Color/grayscale palettes are user-adjustable. * Manual scoring: You can easily obtain and store durations, frequencies, amplitude differences (dB), and amplitude differences from spectra. * Pitch extraction: There are three routines, FFT-comb, autocorrelation and temporal structure analysis. All three have been heavily tested and improved since version 1.0. * Signal manipulation: Arithmetic transformations, recoding (up-down sampling, differentiation), splining, amplitude and RMS envelopes, zero-crossing * Input/Output. --File formats directly in Signalyze: Signalyze, MacSpeech Lab, AudioMedia/SoundDesigner II, SoundEdit/MacRecorder, SoundWave, three sound resource formats, ASCII-text. File formats through freeware program FileConverter (runs in background, converts all files of a folder at once): Same as above, plus AIFF and ADF (BLISS, CSRE) formats. TEXT format for manual scoring results: compatible with most spreadsheet and statistics programs. PICT format for saved spectrograms and other graphs: compatible with most graphics programs. --Sound I/O: Direct sound input from MacRecorder and similar devices, AudioMedia and AD IN, MacADIOS boards and devices. Sound output via Macintosh internal sound and MacADIOS boards and devices as well as through AudioMedia's 8-bit audio driver. Price and ordering information for Signalyze 2.0: Individual licence US$350, site license US$500. In the U.S., Canada and Latin America, contact InfoSignal Inc., 3002 Belvidere S.W., SEATTLE, WA., 98126, USA, FAX/Answering machine: (206) 935-1618. Other countries contact InfoSignal Inc., Rue de la Dime 80, CH-2000 NEUCHATEL, Switzerland, FAX/Answering machine: +41 38 33.11.53, Email: 76357.1213@@COMPUSERVE.COM. Eric Keller (the developer of Signalyze) holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics and is professor for computer science at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. He's also published in the phonetic sciences for the last 12 years. Also, he is in constant contact with several major speech labs to verify improvements to the program. A preliminary version of Signalyze 2.0 was class-tested this spring in a phonetics class of final-year linguistics students. To obtain more information, send your postal address to the Neuchatel address, above. You'll be mailed some more material, so you can see for yourself. *************************** Best, Keith [Linguist List: Vol-2-355] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-356. Sunday, 21 July 1991. Lines: 46 Subject: Gender-Related Language Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 19 Jul 91 15:56:00 -0700 From: ervin-tr@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Susan Ervin-Tripp) Subject: Re: Responses 2) Date: Fri, 19 Jul 91 20:23 PDT From: "JIM WILCE, HOME PH. 213/458-2177. " Subject: Re: Responses: Gender-Based Language -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 19 Jul 91 15:56:00 -0700 From: ervin-tr@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Susan Ervin-Tripp) Subject: Re: Responses Re the comment about grammatical vs. sociological gender. They are not completely unrelated. cf. "The connotations of gender" in WORD, (1962) 18: 249-261 for experimental evidence. Susan Ervin-Tripp __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 19 Jul 91 20:23 PDT From: "JIM WILCE, HOME PH. 213/458-2177. " Subject: Re: Responses: Gender-Based Language Cosgrave and Sheldon would appreciate the notion of indirect indexing of gender proposed by E. Ochs in an unpublished MS. She lists Japanese examples which directly index "coarse intensity" and indirectly index male "voice". Lg-gender relations are seen as "distributional and probabilistic". Is that Cosgrave's point? [Linguist List: Vol-2-356] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-357. Monday, 22 July 1991. Lines: 102 Subject: Queries Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 19 Jul 91 18:53:56 EDT From: "Bruce Fraser" Subject: Putting People Down 2) Date: Sat, 20 Jul 1991 15:16 EDT From: Hilary Sachs Subject: looking for French speakers 3) Date: Mon, 22 Jul 91 15:21:57 MET From: ont%cphling.dk@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Ole N. Thomsen) Subject: John Ryalls 4) Date: Sun, 21 Jul 91 11:45:42 -1000 From: Phil Bralich Subject: Tree drawing software 5) Date: Sun, 21 Jul 91 20:01:11 CDT From: Barbara Johnstone Subject: request for bibliographic info -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 19 Jul 91 18:53:56 EDT From: "Bruce Fraser" Subject: Putting People Down By way of diversion I have been collecting ways in English of putting down someone: e.g., not playing with a full deck; has a screw loose; his/her elevator doesn't go to the top floor. Does anyone have examples in other languages? If the examples accumulate, I'll share them with everyone. Thanks. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Sat, 20 Jul 1991 15:16 EDT From: Hilary Sachs Subject: looking for French speakers Are there any native French speakers out there who would be willing to be informants by email? Send me a message if you are interested. Thanks in advance, Hilary Sachs sachs@utkvx.utk.edu __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Mon, 22 Jul 91 15:21:57 MET From: ont%cphling.dk@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Ole N. Thomsen) Subject: John Ryalls We are looking for Dr. John H. Ryalls, formerly Department of Linguistics, Brown University, R.I., USA. ???At present at Department of Linguistics, University of Montreal, Canada,??? Information requested about intrinsic fundamental frequency in aphasia, information to be used at the Phonetics Congress, Aix en Provence, August 1991. Niels Dyhr, IAAS, Copenhagen, Denmark; Ole Thomsen, IAAS, Copenhagen, Denmark (ont@cphling.dk) __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Sun, 21 Jul 91 11:45:42 -1000 From: Phil Bralich Subject: Tree drawing software Does anyone know if there are any programs available for drawing GB type tree structures. I am especially interested in tree drawing programs for the sun. __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Sun, 21 Jul 91 20:01:11 CDT From: Barbara Johnstone Subject: request for bibliographic info Can somebody tell me (1) the name(s) of the editor(s) of the 1984 Proceedings of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (the one with an article by A.L.Becker in it), and (2) the name(s) of the editor(s) of the 1973 CLS (9th Regional Meeting), with R. Lakoff's paper on politeness in it? Also, CLS is published by the Department of Linguistics, University of Chicago, isn't it? Thanks!! [Linguist List: Vol-2-357] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-358. Tuesday, 23 July 1991. Lines: 178 Subject: Gender-Related Language Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 21 Jul 91 15:53:47 EDT From: Michael Covington Subject: Use of term "gender" 2) Date: Sun, 21 Jul 91 17:34:20 PDT From: sp299-ad@violet.berkeley.edu (Celso Alvarez-Caccamo) Subject: Re: Gender-Related Language 3) Date: Sun, 21 Jul 91 18:13:26 PDT From: sp299-ad@violet.berkeley.edu (Celso Alvarez-Caccamo) Subject: Re: Responses 4) Date: Mon, 22 Jul 91 09:46 PDT From: "JIM WILCE, HOME PH. 213/458-2177. " Subject: Response to Hoffman on gender 5) Date: Mon, 22 Jul 91 18:28 CDT From: ASHELDON@vx.acs.umn.edu Subject: transvestites -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 21 Jul 91 15:53:47 EDT From: Michael Covington Subject: Use of term "gender" I do not think it's improper to use the term "gender" to refer to a person's sex (male or female). Traditionally the word "sex" conveyed this meaning very precisely, and "gender" was a term of grammar. Since the 1960s, however, many native speakers take "sex" to mean "sexual intercourse" and "gender" has become a clearer way of denoting the male-female distinction. Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur... __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Sun, 21 Jul 91 17:34:20 PDT From: sp299-ad@violet.berkeley.edu (Celso Alvarez-Caccamo) Subject: Re: Gender-Related Language Sue Ervin-Tripp writes: "Re the comment about grammatical vs. sociological gender. They are not completely unrelated. cf. "The connotations of gender" in WORD, (1962) 18: 249-261 for experimental evidence." How about: Fatemeh Khosroshahi (1989), "Penguins don't care, but women do: A social identity analysis of a Whorfian problem," Language_in_Society 18.4, 505-525. In a straightforward experiment, college students read "sex-indefinite" sentences containing the pronouns "he", "he or she", or "they", and they were asked to draw what they read (including male and/or female figures). Overwhelmingly, men tended to draw more male than female figures. Only women who used what the author calls "reformed language," prompted by ideological reasons (gender consciousness) drew proportionally more women than men. To me, the experiment simply points to the fact that ideology mediates behavior. For example, for one of the groups ("reformed-language women"), "even the HE-paragraphs were interpreted mostly in terms of female referents" (:517). This can mean only one of two things: either (a) HE is indeed a gender-neutral pronoun, and female-identified women read HE as `woman' while male-identified men read it as `man'; or (b) HE is markedly the masculine pronoun; female-identified women read HE as `man,' but resisted to its alleged, gender-neutral meanings, and marked gender identity by representing HE as `woman'. Celso Alvarez-Caccamo U.C. Berkeley sp299-ad@violet.berkeley.edu __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Sun, 21 Jul 91 18:13:26 PDT From: sp299-ad@violet.berkeley.edu (Celso Alvarez-Caccamo) Subject: Re: Responses I thought I could pass on some more comments on gender, but I can't. Sorry. Ron Hofmann writes: 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. I'm quite sure that people working on gender and language are aware of it. And they are dealing, incidentally, with gender roles, not sex roles. '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? I really don't think so. There you have a case of physiological male sex, but a culturally specific gender. Transvestites' speech, when displaying their gender identity, is not simply a "feminine" register: it would be, in any case, a "transvestite performance register". It is *possible* (I'm speculating) that some gender markers (e.g. prosodics, or vowel quality) in the speech of some gay and/or transvestite men is acquired through early socialization with/among women, through a sort of female-identification. But we (inclusive we, by the way) should be very cautious when speculating about this, particularly when we are not experts on the topic. It would no doubt be easier for our dualistic minds if there existed only "male" vs. "female" registers (and "formal" vs. "informal", "upper-class" vs. "lower-class" dialects, etc.). But, fortunately, this doesn't seem to be the case, no matter how hard we try to reduce the continua of social meanings to neat categories. Celso Alvarez-Caccamo U.C. Berkeley sp299-ad@violet.berkeley.edu __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Mon, 22 Jul 91 09:46 PDT From: "JIM WILCE, HOME PH. 213/458-2177. " Subject: Response to Hoffman on gender In response to Hoffman's piece on gender, specifically "male/female register" w hich he says must only apply to transvestite speech: First, transvestite speech is a topic which might bear further research. James Weinrich's book *Sexual Landscapes* might puts this in context for the reader as he explores homosexuality in an ethnographic way. But, if Hoffman thinks that only transvestites can switch registers which may i ndirectly index gender, he should consider Irvine's chapter in *Language and th e politics of emotion* (Cambridge 1990) on how griots and nobles have certain r egisters associated with them which are not limited to them. In the words of E . Ochs (unpublished MS "Indexing Gender"), the relation between gender (or, in the case of Irvine's study, class/caste) and language is "distributional and pr obabilistic". M. Bakhtin's notion of "heteroglossia" stresses how speech is al ways social, never completely owned by the speaker. If there is a way of speak ing gently in Japanese which "indirectly indexes feminine gender" as Ochs says, it is nonetheless possible for a male to speak in this "voice" (in Bakhtin's s ense). Ochs explores this in her ch. ("Indexicality and socialization") in *Cu ltural Psychology* (Stigler, Shweder, and Herdt eds., Cambridge 1990). To sum up, linguistic anthropologists influenced by Bakhtin approach lingu istic varieties (e.g. registers) as resources whose situational deployment inde xes "voice"(in the sense of echoing a socially embedded tradition of speech). To echo another's voice is to be in dialogue with them as well as with the imme diately co-present interlocutor. A view of registers as complementary voices ( Irvine-- ref. above) renders outdated any notion of one-to-one relations between biological sex or sociological gender iological gender on the one hand and linguistic form on the other. If "outdate d" is too strong, substitute something like "less useful". __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Mon, 22 Jul 91 18:28 CDT From: ASHELDON@vx.acs.umn.edu Subject: transvestites Ron Hofmann: 1. Yes. "gender", like many other formal linguistics terms (e.g. "subject", "agency") has different meanings in different contexts. 2. Sociolinguistics and anthropological linguistics has a long tradition of using "gender". 3. Well, I guess by that reasoning we are all transvestites. On the other hand, if one doesn't collapse the constructs of "sex (organs usually are the identifiers, but it gets muddy); sexual orientation, and gender, then we are not all transexuals. Amy Sheldon [Linguist List: Vol-2-358] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-359. Tuesday, 23 July 1991. Lines: 90 Subject: Conference and Job Information Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 22 Jul 91 18:55:40 -0400 From: langconf@louis-xiv.bu.edu (BU Conference on Language Development) Subject: B.U. Conference 2) Date: Sun Jul 21 16:59:50 PDT 1991 Subject: job opening From: karenje%microsoft.COM@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 22 Jul 91 18:55:40 -0400 From: langconf@louis-xiv.bu.edu (BU Conference on Language Development) Subject: B.U. Conference 16th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development October 18, 19, and 20, 1991 KEYNOTE ADDRESS: Steven Pinker, MIT, "Rules of Language" SATURDAY EVENING ADDRESS: Neil Smith, University College London, "Learning the Impossible: The Acquisition of Possible and Impossible Languages by a Polyglot Savant" *** Sessions ***************************************************************** * Functional Categories Classroom Discourse Phonology * * Romance Language Variation Written Language * * Binding Theory Input & Interaction Exceptional Language * * Logical Interpretation Narrative Morphology * * Wh-Movement Words Bootstrapping, * * Analysis of Variation in L2A Syntax & Semantics * * Bilingualism * * Processing & Memory * ****************************************************************************** For more information: A preliminary program, pre-registration form, and information about hotels, discounts on domestic air fares and car rentals, and child care arrangements, are available via e-mail. If you send a message to info@louis-xiv.bu.edu you will receive an automated reply that contains these materials. Early in August, these materials will also be sent by regular mail to those who are on our mailing list. (Speakers are urged to wait to pre- register until they receive that mailing.) Anyone who plans to attend the conference is advised to make hotel arrangements as soon as possible. If you have any questions that you would like answered, or if you would like to add your address to our regular mailing list or inform us of a change in address, please send e-mail to langconf@louis-xiv.bu.edu, or phone 617-353-3085, or write to: Boston University Conference on Language Development, 138 Mountfort Street, Boston, MA 02215. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Sun Jul 21 16:59:50 PDT 1991 Subject: job opening From: karenje%microsoft.COM@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU The posting for a job at Microsoft lacked any indication of where to send an application. Herewith apologies, plus the necessary address: ******************************** If you are interested in joining Microsoft's NLP lab as a COMPUTATIONAL LINGUIST/LEXICOGRAPHER, please send resume and any other appropriate information to: Kevin Shields Technical Recruiting The Microsoft Corporation One Microsoft Way Redmond, WA 98052 e-mail: kevinshi@microsoft.com ********************************* [Linguist List: Vol-2-359] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-360. Thursday, 25 July 1991. Lines: 47 Subject: Queries Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 23 Jul 91 18:20:09 EDT From: Michael Covington Subject: Feature percolation 2) Date: 24 Jul 91 11:58:00 EST From: "ALICE FREED" Subject: Language and Gender -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 23 Jul 91 18:20:09 EDT From: Michael Covington Subject: Feature percolation Who first introduced the term "feature percolation" and where? Was it Postal? __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: 24 Jul 91 11:58:00 EST From: "ALICE FREED" Subject: Language and Gender I am compiling a bibliography for an updated version of my "Women, Men and Language" course. My plan is to take a multicultural/global approach to the questions usually asked. Students need to be exposed to languages besides English and to diverse populations in and out of the United States and England. I am familiar with most of the work that has been published in recent years. If you know of work that has been done that investigates language and gender in little or under- studied groups that is not yet published, please let me know. I am interested in comparisons of male and female speech as well as the speech of same-sex groups. (Freed@apollo.msc.edu) [Linguist List: Vol-2-360] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-361. Thursday, 25 July 1991. Lines: 74 Subject: Responses Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 22 Jul 91 16:03:58 METDST From: Eric Hoekstra Subject: Re: Latin -aris 2) Date: Mon, 22 Jul 91 16:41:53 +0200 From: Ton.vanderWouden%let.ruu.nl@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU Subject: Re: Queries 3) Date: Mon, 22 Jul 91 13:54:42 EDT From: denning@emunix.emich.edu (keith denning) Subject: Submission for LINGUIST -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 22 Jul 91 16:03:58 METDST From: Eric Hoekstra Subject: Re: Latin -aris All forms conform to an interesting algerithm. I think it goes like this. From the end of the word you go stepwise (phoneme by phoneme) to the left. If you encounter an "r", the suffix will be "-alis". If you encounter an "l", the suffix will be "-aris". If you encounter neither, it will be "-alis", apparently the default. The algerithm goes through the complete word, hence you get "liminaris", where the "l" that triggers the "-aris" is pretty far away. However, I am not a Latinist and I just had a short look at it. Eric __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Mon, 22 Jul 91 16:41:53 +0200 From: Ton.vanderWouden%let.ruu.nl@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU Subject: Re: Queries >Date: Sun, 21 Jul 91 11:45:42 -1000 >From: Phil Bralich >Subject: Tree drawing software Try TreeTex (macro package belonging to LaTeX) Ton van der Wouden (vanderwouden@let.ruu.nl) __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Mon, 22 Jul 91 13:54:42 EDT From: denning@emunix.emich.edu (keith denning) Subject: Submission for LINGUIST re: Query from Bruce Fraser on "Putting People Down" You may wish to consult some of the vast literature on this topic which circulates around and often finds its way into the pages of MALEDICTA, The International Journal of Verbal Aggression. Keith Denning [Linguist List: Vol-2-361] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-362. Thursday, 25 July 1991. Lines: 134 Subject: Thanks Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 24 Jul 91 18:39:44 +0200 From: dings%et.kuleuven.ac.be@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: message 2) Date: Thu Jul 25 12:23:07 1991 From: "ELISE EMERSON MORSE-GAGNE" Subject: Thanksum: pronoun borrowing 3) Date: 24 Jul 91 21:21:00 EST From: "ELISE EMERSON MORSE-GAGNE" Subject: Thanksum: flaming -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 24 Jul 91 18:39:44 +0200 From: dings%et.kuleuven.ac.be@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: message Dear Colleagues, some weeks ago I launched a query on the net, asking for bibliographic data about compound nouns. Reactions came at such speed and in such quantities, that we were really overwhelmed. My colleague Lieve De Wachter and I want to thank all that have reacted to our query. We did not yet realize that the net was such a efficient source of information. I will attend the Cognitive Linguistics Conference in Santa Cruz next week, and the European Summer School (ESSLLI) in Saarbruecken next month. I hope to see some of you there, to exchange some ideas about how the problems of compound nouns could be tamed. Kind regards, and many thanks again. 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 __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Thu Jul 25 12:23:07 1991 From: "ELISE EMERSON MORSE-GAGNE" Subject: Thanksum: pronoun borrowing I would like to thank all those who responded, either privately or on this list, to my request for instances of pronoun borrowing. They were (in chronological order): Guido Vanden Wyngaerd, Ingo Plag, Ove Lorentz, David Gil, Joe Salmons, Suzanne Fleischman, Susan Fischer, Bill Poser, Susanna Cumming, Mark Sebba, Scott Delancey, and Hartmut Haberland. The principal examples given were from Indonesian Malay and Thai, and there seemed a consensus that the impetus was the desire to import forms which were "safer"--more noncommittal as to relative social status--than the already existing words. As I understand it, in these instances the new forms coexist and alternate with the old ones, rather than replacing them. David Gil pointed out that a word borrowed as a pronoun sometimes was the equivalent pronoun in the lender language, but sometimes it was a noun--such as "servant" or "slave". Scott Delancey clarified matters by distinguishing between two sorts of pronoun systems: Thai (and presumably at least some of the others cited) has "a large, and potentially open, class of morphemes used for direct address and pronominal reference" rather than "a closed paradigmatic system with its own defining morphosyntax". The implications of borrowing by the first kind of system are very different from the implications of a borrowing involving the latter type. Again, thanks to everyone and I apologize for being so slow to send this out! Oh yes--about my name. The fact that it appears in its entirety and all in capitals in the headers is not my choice, and it's not necessary to refer to me by the whole quadruple- barrelled appellation, or in uppercase. I am perfectly happy with many possible variants, including my favorite to date, "Elise M-G" (I've forgotten who used that). Margaret Fleck, this would solve the typographic problem of how to possessivize my name if the accent aigu is indicated already by an apostrophe after the word. Other possibilities for your consideration: haplography--collapse the two apostrophes into one; or using my first name alone, until another linguist named Elise joins the list. However, perhaps that is against the unspoken address-and- reference rules of this group. I've noticed we're a formal bunch. __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: 24 Jul 91 21:21:00 EST From: "ELISE EMERSON MORSE-GAGNE" Subject: Thanksum: flaming Many thanks to all those who slaked my thirst for knowledge concerning the terms "flame", "flaming" and other forms. Several people supplemented or expanded my tentative definition, and some referred me to a hackers' dictionary for the whole story. "Major" (further name unknown) won the prize for helpfulness by actually sending me the entries in question. They were (so we know what we have to work with): flamage, flame, flame bait, flame on ("The punning reference to Marvel Comics's Human Torch is no longer widely recognized"), flame war, flamer. Both WPI and Carleton College are reported to have seen early uses of some of these terms, and the dictionary file suggests that "The term may have been independently invented at several different places". In the spirit of this (now long-ago) discussion, I will explain the subject header above. "Thanksum" is a term I coined to mean a message of thanks for information received, incorporating a brief summary of the principal points. Note the 8-character filename format, not mirrored in the 5-3 division of the morphemes. Thanks...um would be a quite different kind of message, I feel. Goodbye to all until the fall. [Linguist List: Vol-2-362] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-363. Thursday, 25 July 1991. Lines: 286 Subject: Character Encoding Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 24 Jul 91 15:17:12 PDT From: whistler@zarasun.Metaphor.COM (Ken Whistler) Subject: Character Encoding 2) Date: Thu, 25 Jul 91 11:03:53 PDT From: whistler@zarasun.Metaphor.COM (Ken Whistler) Subject: Character Encoding -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 24 Jul 91 15:17:12 PDT From: whistler@zarasun.Metaphor.COM (Ken Whistler) Subject: Character Encoding In response to a question posted on Linguist List Vol-2-352, 20 July 1991, by Ron Hofmann. The way character encoding in ISO works is roughly as follows. The parent organization creates standing committees which work on various broad standards issues. SC2 is the standing committee which works on encoding, and in particular on character encoding. SC2 in turn creates working groups which have various specific projects that they work on. WG2 of SC2 is the working group designated to come up with a multi-byte international character encoding standard-- i.e. the group whose responsibility it is to "solve" the problem of international character encoding. The convenor of WG2 (currently Mike Ksar of Hewlett-Packard) is the person responsible for carrying that project to a conclusion and taking the WG2 recommendation to SC2 for final approval. The specific project that WG2 is working on is known as DIS (Draft International Standard) 10646. ISO standards become standards by being floated as official work items assigned to working groups. The drafts are then distributed to the ISO member bodies (which represent their national standards bodies) for comments and voting. Standards go through a couple of levels of draft (1st DP, 2nd DP), and then progress to DIS level for final voting. 10646 was taken to DIS level, and we currently have the information that it was NOT approved by the vote of the ISO member bodies which closed June 7. However, that is not the end of the story. WG2 meets in August (in Geneva) to attempt to resolve the voting. How could this be? Well, ISO voting is not really YES versus NO, but instead YES versus YES WITH COMMENTS versus NO WITH OBJECTIONS. Any NO WITH OBJECTIONS vote *must* explicitly state what it would take to change the vote into a YES. This give the convenor of WG2 the leeway to resolve enough details to convert the overall NO vote into a YES vote by tinkering with the structure of the standard to meet individual member bodies' objections. Thus, it is still possible that by tinkering and providing a justification, DIS 10646 can be carried to SC2 with a WG2 recommendation for progressing it to IS (International Standard) status. At that point it is carved in stone for all eternity. Or it may be recommended for revision and new voting at the DIS level. The SC2 plenary session that decides this meets in Paris, France in October. O.k., now how does U.S. input happen? The official body which represents the U.S. in this is ANSI, the American National Standards Institute. But the operative body is X3, a committee of ANSI which deals with information processing systems. The business of X3 is run out of an outfit called CBEMA (Computer Business Equipment Manufacturers Association), in Washington, DC. X3 designates subcommittees for various purposes. The standing subcommittee which deals with character encoding is X3L2. X3L2 basically has representatives of major computer companies on it (IBM, Apple, DEC, Unisys, Microsoft, Xerox, etc.). It has a fairly low fee to get on the committee (X3 itself is expensive), but also has strict rules for full voting memberships, as opposed to observer status. Basically, you have to be ready to fly around the country to attend a string of consecutive (boring) meetings before you can be promoted to voting status, so only large companies with people who have travel budgets and several weeks to burn each year retain voting status. But X3L2 is the committee which actually voted for the U.S. on ISO DIS 10646 and wrote the official U.S. position paper to accompany that vote. The only effective way to gain a voice at X3L2, other than to start a computer company and send an employee to 3 consecutive meetings, is to lobby existing representatives (e.g. me, representing Metaphor) or to send formal written contributions to the Chairman of X3L2. The current chairman is Jerry Andersen, of IBM. Jerry J. Andersen IBM Corporation C71/673 P.O. Box 12195 Research Triangle Park, NC 27709 email: Andersen@ralvmk.iinus1.ibm.com Before you spend a lot of time writing him, however, you should understand that the ISO process is an exceeding hidebound, rule-driven, bureaucratic, and historically-inert process. Academic contributions of the sort that get published in journals, or the more informal discussions which happen on LINGUIST or other email forums will bounce off X3L2 and ISO like so much water off a duck's back. They will be viewed generally as "off-the-wall" because they come from outsiders who are not plugged into the ISO process, don't understand the politics, do not have the requisite collection of paper with all the national standards bodies' votes and comments, etc, etc. Rather than sending out-of-the-blue comments, any linguist who seriously wants to take this up might first be advised to send me a request for an electronic copy of the official U.S. position paper on DIS 10646 and of the founding documents regarding the Unicode/10646 merger process now underway. (An ad hoc proposal for 10646M, as it is being called; plus the Unicode Consortium's official response to 10646M.) Responding to specific points in those documents would get you a better chance at a hearing, since those documents are either generated by or will have to be responded to by X3L2 and WG2, formally or informally, and any comments relating to a specific document become "real" in the ISO process--and may even get a registration number as an X3L2 or WG2 document! Now, if you are concerned about Canada, Japan, or some other country, you have to figure out the national standards structure for that particular country to find out who to contact. I can provide some pointers for people, but can't claim to be an expert about any of those bodies. --Ken Whistler Unicode Secretary __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Thu, 25 Jul 91 11:03:53 PDT From: whistler@zarasun.Metaphor.COM (Ken Whistler) Subject: Character Encoding In response to questions about coding of multiple-letter non-spacing marks, raised in: Linguist List: Vol-2-352. Saturday, 20 July 1991 Linguist List: Vol-2-354. Sunday, 21 July 1991 There are a number of obvious encoding requirements for multiple-letter non-spacing marks. Some instances occur in standard orthographies, such as a double-letter tilde in Tagalog. Others are really ligating ties, such as the IPA ligature bars (rendered above for ligated digraphs such as eng-g or below for mb, or indifferently above or below for coarticulations which mix ascenders and descenders: kp, gb, etc.) (Incidentally, it is not clear whether such things should be considered diacritics. In any case, the only real character encoding issue is how to encode non-spacing entities which are "applied" in the typography across two {or more} letters in Latin {or other} scripts.) There are at least three approaches to encoding such things: 1. glyph parts approach. Encode each part that goes over a single letter as a separate character. 2. unitary character approach, postfix. Encode the entire non-spacing mark as a single character, and postfix it in the text stream. 2a. same as 2, but prefix. 3. unitary character approach, infix. Encode the entire non-spacing mark as a single character, but specify that it occurs BETWEEN the two characters it modifies in the text stream. The December 1990 draft of Unicode 1.0 contained 5 non-spacing marks (we were calling them "non-spacing diacritics" at the time) of type 2: a tilde, a macron, a breve, an above-letter ligature tie, and a below-letter ligature tie. It ALSO contained, for compatibility with existing bibliographic standards for non-spacing characters, 4 non-spacing marks of type 1: a left- and right-half tilde, and a left- and right-half above-letter ligature tie. In long discussions during Unicode Technical Committee meetings this spring, the "double diacritics" problem was the subject of heated debate on at least two accounts. First, the draft contained two inconsistent models of how to encode them. Second, the type 2 postfix encoding causes potentially large processing problems for software supporting non-spacing marks. A compromise along the lines of the type 3 encoding outlined above almost resulted. However, there was a concern that rushing to judgement on this without further investigation of all the potential ramifications would be ill-advised. Instead, in the current version of Unicode 1.0 being published, all "double diacritics" were removed, and the entire issue was deferred for further discussion and resolution in the next additions to Unicode. It is my personal opinion that type 3 encoding will work just fine. In a way, it is a kind of Wackernagel's solution to finding a fixed position for something which may have an indefinite scope. Unicode can always specify that a non-spacing mark follows the FIRST item it modifies. This is exactly the current case with simply non-spacing marks such as a non-spacing acute accent, for example. If we then add back the five non-spacing marks which typically apply to two letters, they will occur between the letters in the text store, but logically they will be occurring AFTER the FIRST item, as for a "single diacritic". The rendering engines can handle the placement over two letters without too much trouble, and the parsing engines don't have to have special cases built in for the double diacritics. The glyph parts are still needed for building fonts which will be used to render "double diacritics" over Latin letters, but there will be no need for them in the character encoding. It will also be possible to build the translations which can convert accurately between existing bibiliographic encodings and Unicode for such things. As for instances of extending breves or macrons over 3 or more letters, I would be inclined to draw the line for plain text encoding at this point. Unicode includes a large number of mathematical symbols but does not make it possible to encode complete math formulas *in plain text* without a higher level protocol for formula syntax and layout. Similarly, Unicode supplies a large number of non-spacing marks, but does not make it possible to do things like extend a nasalization mark across an entire syllable or word, for example, without higher-level protocols for layout of such supra-character text content. (This is comparable to the difference between applying a non-spacing underline as a diacritic to a single letter, versus applying an underline style to a word.) In response to Spackman's discussion of the mathematical aspects of non-spacing mark handling in Unicode: I agree that specifying different numbers of "arguments" for the non-spacing marks causes trouble for processing. This was the basic argument (stated differently) that led to a reexamination and pulling of "double diacritics" from Unicode for now. As it stands, a "dumb" algorithm *can* parse Unicode for non-spacing marks, even without tables, for the Greek family of scripts, at least, since all non-spacing marks are confined to a small series of ranges within Unicode. (The issue for the Indian family of scripts is more complicated--but then, no "dumb" algorithm is going to be able to do correct parsing of Devanagari, anyway.) Moving to coding model #3 above for the double diacritics should leave the parsing algorithms unaffected for the Greek family of scripts, since all non-spacing marks, including the "double diacritics" would have only one argument. On other issues raised by Spackman: It has already been noted that mathematics uses type style (not font) variation as a meaningful semantic component. Unicode encoded some of the widely used style variants for particular letters as separate characters (e.g. black-letter I and R for imaginary and real). It clearly didn't make sense to encode style variants for every possible combination. (This is where 10646 goes wrong, for example, in encoding italic A-Z, a-z, 0-9 and underlined A-Z, a-z, 0-9 for APL as distinct characters.) However, when a mathematician starts using typeface or style as a productive semantic component, it is also not clear that that should be encoding *as a character* in plain text. This is one of those fuzzy edges which make character encoding difficult. Functionally the style shift may be equivalent to addition of a diacritic to a letter, but encoding it the same way in the text store may cause more problems than it solves. If we add or as characters to support such mathematical usage as semantic primitives, what is to prevent such characters from appearing in text in non-mathematical usage, resulting effectively in in-line character encoding of face and style information? That is just an invitation to open an enormous Pandora's Box of problems in plain text. Language identification clearly does *not* belong in a character encoding. However, I do agree with Spackman that it would be a good idea to create a standard scheme for identification of language. The lack of such is one of the things which drives people to attempt bizarre things in character encodings, for example. Also, language identification as currently implemented at the systems level in computers tends to get muddled with support for "country" standards for display of dates, times, and numbers. Right now every system vendor has its own idiosyncratic system of identifying languages (usually a small list of the commercially important European and Asian languages), and these differ from the idiosyncratic system of identifying languages used by each application vendor. And none of that helps much the linguist who wants a standard language identifier for tagging text for communication and interchange. --Ken Whistler [Linguist List: Vol-2-363] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-364. Thursday, 25 July 1991. Lines: 98 Subject: Jobs at Edinburgh Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 23 Jul 91 12:22:52 BST From: Keith Edwards Subject: 2 jobs -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 23 Jul 91 12:22:52 BST From: Keith Edwards Subject: 2 jobs UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH THE CENTRE FOR SPEECH TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH RESEARCH POSTS in CONVERSATIONAL MANAGEMENT and DIALOGUE ENGINEERING The Centre for Speech Technology Research is undertaking major new research projects in the field of speech based human-machine interaction, projects which will involve state-of-the-art speech recognition and synthesis technology. These new projects will address the key questions of how individuals can interact optimally with computer systems using voice, for applications in the home, the office and over the telephone. The research work will focus on the acoustic, phonetic, psycholinguistic and human factors aspects of human/computer interactions with spoken dialogue systems and will involve a wide range of large scale experimental surveys. Applicants are sought who hold (or expect to gain this year) a good Honours degree in Linguistics, Psychology, Mathematics or Statistics. Salary range : 11,969 - 14,170 For further details contact PROFESSOR MERVYN JACK, DIRECTOR, CSTR Tel. 031 650 2784 e-mail maj@uk.ac.ed.eusip University of Edinburgh Centre for Speech Technology Research Research Assistant OBJECTIVE SPEECH QUALITY ASSESSMENT IN PATIENTS WITH INTRA-ORAL CANCERS. Applications are invited for a Research Assistanship funded by the Cancer Research Campaign. The work will involve characterisations in acoustic- phonetic terms of how patient's speech has been effected by surgery leading to design of a workstation for use by speech therapists during post- operative monitoring and rehabilitaion. This is a collaborative project involving the University of Edinburgh and the West of Scotland Regional Plastic Surgery Unit at Canniesburn Hospital, Glasgow. Applicants should ideally have experience in the fields of acoustics, phonetics and signal processing. Salary will be at an appropriate point on the 1A Research Assistant scales (11,969 - 17,073) depending on qualifications and experience. The post is tenable for two years. Application forms are available from: Professor John Laver Chairman CSTR 80 South Bridge EDINBURGH EH1 1HN TEL 031 650 2784 FAX 031 226 2730 [Linguist List: Vol-2-364] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-365. Thursday, 25 July 1991. Lines: 204 Subject: Conferences: Humor and IJCAI Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 23 Jul 91 07:50:17 MST From: "don l. f. nilsen" Subject: HUMOR CONFERENCE IN PARIS 2) Date: Wed, 24 Jul 1991 11:01:18 -0400 From: Kimberlee Pietrzak-Smith Subject: IJCAI-91 PRE-REGISTRATION DEADLINE: JULY 31 -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 23 Jul 91 07:50:17 MST From: "don l. f. nilsen" Subject: HUMOR CONFERENCE IN PARIS July 6-9, 1992 are the dates of the next conference of the International Society for Humor Studies. Paper proposals must be submitted by October 31, 1991. Proposals must be submitted in a 6" X 9" box with the following information at the top: NAME: UNIVERSITY OR INSTITUTION: TITLE OF THE PAPER This is to be followed by your ABSTRACT. Your proposal must be accompanied by the $100 registration fee ($80 if you are a member of ISHS). Registration fees will be refunded if your paper is not accepted. Please send your proposal and registration fee to: Alleen Pace Nilsen President, ISHS Asst VP for Personnel Arizona State University Tempe, AZ 85287-2803 =-) ;-> 8*) {^_^} Don L. F. Nilsen, (602) 965-7592 Executive Secretary International Society for Humor Studies Arizona State University Tempe, AZ 85287-0302 __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Wed, 24 Jul 1991 11:01:18 -0400 From: Kimberlee Pietrzak-Smith Subject: IJCAI-91 PRE-REGISTRATION DEADLINE: JULY 31 ********************************************************************* * 12th INTERNATIONAL JOINT CONFERENCE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE * * * * 24 - 30 August, 1991 * * * * * Darling Harbour * Sydney * Australia * * * * * * * IJCAI-91 * * ======== * * * * ----- M A I N R E G I S T R A T I O N D E A D L I N E ----- * * * * ----- 3 1 J U L Y ----- * * * ********************************************************************* ========================================= | NB: EMAIL REGISTRATION NOW AVAILABLE! | | | | EMAIL REGISTRATION FORM APPENDED | ========================================= IJCAI-91 will be held at Darling Harbour, Sydney, Australia, 24-30 August, 1991. Professor Barbara Grosz of Harvard University is the Conference Chair; Professor John Mylopoulos and Professor Ray Reiter, both of the University of Toronto, are Program CoChairs; and Professor Michael McRobbie of the Australian National University is the Australian National Committee Chair. Dr. Donald Walker of Bellcore is Secretary-Treasurer for the Conference. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- !!!! The main registration deadline for IJCAI-91 is 31 July, 1991 !!!! !!!! The on-site registration fee may apply to registrations !!!! !!!! received after this date. !!!! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Registration Brochures and Forms have been widely distributed. However they can be obtained by post using email or directly by ftp. Details of how to do this are attached at the end of this message. HOW TO REGISTER FOR IJCAI-91 ============================ There are four ways to register for IJCAI-91 1. By Post 2. By Courier 3. By Fax 4. By Email 1. Registering by Post ---------------------- Completed Registrations Forms and appropriate payment should be sent to: IJCAI-91 Secretariat Parrish Conference Organisers PO Box 787 Potts Point NSW 2011 AUSTRALIA Telephone: 61 (Australia) 2 (Sydney) 3572600 2. Registering by Courier -------------------------- Completed Registrations Forms and payment being sent by international express courier such as DHL, to ensure they arrive at the IJCAI-91 Secretariat before 31 July, should be sent to the following street address: IJCAI-91 Secretariat Parrish Conference Organisers 120 Bourke Street Wooloomooloo Sydney NSW AUSTRALIA 3. Registering by Fax --------------------- Completed Registrations Forms should be faxed to either of the following phone numbers: 61 (Australia) 2 (Sydney) 3572950 61 2 3571498 Note that the fax on the second number has just been installed because of the volume of traffic IJCAI is causing on the first number. It will not be fully operational until 23 July. If you have difficulty faxing your Registration Form, please try BOTH numbers. 4. Registering by Email ----------------------- Email registration can be carried out by completing and emailing the appended registration form to: ijcai.registration@vulcan.anu.edu.au [Note from LINGUIST moderators: The IJCAI registration form is too long to post in its entirety. It may be obtained from listserv@uniwa.uwa.oz.au by sending the message: get ijcai-registration ] ********************************************************************* PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS AN EMAIL ADDRESS TO WHICH *ONLY* EMAIL REGISTRATIONS SHOULD BE SENT. IT IS *NOT* A GENERAL IJCAI CORRESPONDENCE ADDRESS. ********************************************************************* Please also note the following about email registration: - Email registrations must be accompanied by appropriate credit card details. - It is recommended that those registering by email should consult the Registration Brochure where possible. - In the email Registration Form, AUD$ = Australian Dollars. At the date of posting the exchange rate for some major international currencies and the Australian Dollar were as follows: AUD$1.00 = 0.77 US Dollars = 0.89 Canadian Dollars = 4.74 French Francs = 1.4 German Marks = 1041 Italian Lira = 106 Japanese Yen = 1.36 New Zealand Dollars = 0.47 UK Pounds [Linguist List: Vol-2-365] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-366. Friday, 26 July 1991. Lines: 104 Subject: Queries Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 25 Jul 91 22:54:46 EDT From: Alexis Manaster Ramer Subject: Stieber's Law 2) Date: Thu, 25 Jul 91 22:58:22 EDT From: Alexis Manaster Ramer Subject: A query regarding Mama and Dada 3) Date: Fri, 26 Jul 91 10:00:26 BST From: fleck%robots.oxford.ac.uk@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Margaret Fleck) Subject: X-gate 4) Date: Fri, 26 Jul 91 08:54:02 EDT From: Geoffrey Russom Subject: Re: Character Encoding -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 25 Jul 91 22:54:46 EDT From: Alexis Manaster Ramer Subject: Stieber's Law ---(Forwarded from: Alexis Manaster Ramer@WAYNEMTS.BITNET, Dated: Thu, 25 Jul 91 22:52:40 EDT)--- A query regarding the history of phonology: In the 1930's a Polish linguist named Stieber stated the principle that an analogical change could not produce a new phonemic contrast in a language. However, he does not claim any originality, so I wonder if anyone knows who first came up with this idea. Try as I might, I fail to find anything like it in the writings of Baudouin, Ulaszyn, etc. Also, if anyone has any comments on the validity of this law, I would be interested. In my 1981 dissertation "How abstruse is phonology?" I tried to debunk all the classic counterexamples to this law, and am thinking of publishing the relevant material soon. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Thu, 25 Jul 91 22:58:22 EDT From: Alexis Manaster Ramer Subject: A query regarding Mama and Dada I am preparing a brief article arguing that the well-known Kartvelian words mama 'father' and deda 'mother', celebrated for the way in which they reverse the expected sound-meaning mapping, are etymologically 'man' and 'woman', resp. I would be grateful for any information on the following: (a) Has anybody claimed this before? (b) Does anybody know other cases of mama-type words for 'father' or dada-type words for 'mother'? (c) Does anybody know of other cases where 'man' -> 'father' or 'woman' -> mother? __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Fri, 26 Jul 91 10:00:26 BST From: fleck%robots.oxford.ac.uk@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Margaret Fleck) Subject: X-gate So does English now have a suffix '-gate'? Watergate Irangate Contragate Muldergate (South African) Inkathagate Margaret __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Fri, 26 Jul 91 08:54:02 EDT From: Geoffrey Russom Subject: Re: Character Encoding Thanks to Ken Whistler for his information on the politics of the encoding debate. One question: who is representing the interests of scholars who work on dead languages? King Alfred can hardly be expected to send a representative on behalf of Old English. Wes hal, Rick Russom [Linguist List: Vol-2-366] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-367. Saturday, 27 July 1991. Lines: 82 Subject: Establishment of Linguistic Data Consortium Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 26 Jul 91 10:12:50 EDT From: epreston%aisun3.ai.uga.edu%uga.cc.uga.edu@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Beth Preston) Subject: Establishment of Linguistic Data Consortium -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 26 Jul 91 10:12:50 EDT From: epreston%aisun3.ai.uga.edu%uga.cc.uga.edu@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Beth Preston) Subject: Establishment of Linguistic Data Consortium The following is an announcement from the U.S. Government, published in the Commerce Business Daily: Commerce Business Daily _______________________________________________________________________________ 23-Jul-91 9052 A-- SPECIAL NOTICE), ESTABLISHMENT OF LINGUISTIC DATA CONSORTIUM ________________________________________________________________ A-- SPECIAL NOTICE), ESTABLISHMENT OF LINGUISTIC DATA CONSORTIUM SOL SA91-19 DUE 081991 POC Mr. Charles L. Wayne, DARPA/SISTO, (703)696-2259. The Government recognizes that large amounts of linguistic data (e.g., speech, text, lexicons, and grammars) are needed to produce effective speech and text processing systems. DARPA intends to support and stimulate the establishment of a consortium that will develop and distribute such data. Five million dollars has been earmarked for this purpose from funds recently provided by Congress to DARPA for Pre-Competitive Technology Development. MOTIVATION - Many groups are developing advanced technology for speech recognition, understanding, and synthesis. Others are developing advanced technology for text retrieval, understanding, generation, and translation. All are impeded by the daunting costs of acquiring the data needed to produce truly robust, powerful, scalable systems. The Linguistic Data Consortium will remedy this situation by providing much larger amounts of data than any one group can afford and by sharing those costs widely. The resulting data will be true national assets, enabling a great deal of valuable research and product development while simultaneously serving important Government needs. DATA - The data envisioned include large quantities of raw and annotated text and speech (billions of words of text and thousands of hours of speech), a large lexicon, and a broad coverage grammar of English. The data will also include whatever additional materials (including foreign language materials) the Consortium can obtain by exchange or on other reasonable terms. PROCEDURES - Where feasible, the Consortium will acquire existing data (such as naturally occurring text) and put it in a standard format. The Consortium will produce other data from scratch. The Consortium will also negotiate with foreign entities to make even larger and more varied amounts of data available to members. Although the Consortium does not need exclusive rights to donated data, DARPA does intend to make its growing holdings available exclusively through the Consortium. PARTICIPANTS - Broad participation is desired. Potential members include many companies and universities plus several government agencies. General membership fees will be set at affordable levels, and foreign members will be considered if access to foreign data can be assured. Senior Members (i.e., organizations willing to contribute significant sums of money) will have votes on the Consortium's governing board. The actual work will be done by various organizations (companies and universities) under contract to the Consortium. FORMATION - The Consortium may be established as a separate legal entity, such as a non-profit corporation, or other form of association. Government funds will be released upon execution of a suitable agreement. RESPONSES SOUGHT - Organizations interested in becoming Senior Members of the Consortium are urged to write to Mr. Charles L. Wayne, DARPA/SISTO, Virginia 3701 N. Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22203-1714. Organizations (especially academic and non-profit institutions) interested in hosting and aiding in the formation of the Consortium are asked to submit a written description of their capabilities for doing so by 4:00 PM, August 19, 1991. Future announcements will deal with general membership issues and with contracts for data production. (0200) Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Contracts Management (CMO), 3701 North Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22203-1714 [Linguist List: Vol-2-367] ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-368. Sunday, 28 July 1991. Lines: 150. Subject: Queries Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 26 Jul 91 19:28:14 MDT From: Randy Allen Harris Subject: Query: HLS's radio program 2) Date: Sat, 27 Jul 91 00:04:40 EDT From: Alexis Manaster Ramer Subject: The origin of the term "ergative" 3) Date: Fri, 26 Jul 91 11:38 CST From: Subject: IBM or Mac?? 4) Date: Fri, 26 Jul 91 11:35:57 CDT From: stan kulikowski ii Subject: distinctly english algorithm? -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 26 Jul 91 19:28:14 MDT From: Randy Allen Harris Subject: Query: HLS's radio program I'm looking for some information about Henry Lee Smith's radio program from the forties. Virtually anything will help ( all I know at the moment is that it existed, that it was fairly popular, and that it concerned, at least partially, American dialects), but specifically does anyone know (1) its name, (2) any particulars about its content and/or popularity, (3) if any tapes survive, and (4), if the tapes are available, where? Thanks. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Sat, 27 Jul 91 00:04:40 EDT From: Alexis Manaster Ramer Subject: The origin of the term "ergative" I would appreciate any information regarding the origin of the term "ergative" for an article I am preparing. __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Fri, 26 Jul 91 11:38 CST From: Subject: IBM or Mac?? I need your help. I am a doctoral student in New Testament and Greek and am writing a dissertation on linguistic method for studying the book of Revelation and apocalyptic literature. I hope to teach and/or work in text translation. Given these interests and needs, would you recommend the IBM or Macintosh, and which machine would you suggest from either category? My main concerns are: 1. word processing and database applications suitable for multilingual work, 2. educational software for my kids (ages 6 and 2.5). As far as the kids are concerned, is color essential? The Mac has superb screen graphics, which seem to me to make educational software quite appealing, even without color. Your advice is greatly appreciated. Steve Waechter Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary SWAECHTER@UTMEM2 (BITNET) __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Fri, 26 Jul 91 11:35:57 CDT From: stan kulikowski ii Subject: distinctly english algorithm? i have been collecting network sources of text in languages other than english, we have been collecting several samples of network text in various languages so we can test some software which measures textual complexity. here are some of the sample sizes to date. turkish 7498168 bytes polish 2342845 bytes spanish 1190638 bytes esperanto 1075657 bytes french 907609 bytes gaelic 888091 bytes croatian 403917 bytes german 390054 bytes in just about all network language sources of text, english is a fairly common contaminant. i would to screen samples like these for the presence of substantial inclusions of english. i am not concerned with borrowed words or phrases in which writers are using crossover terminology, like 'software' which appears commonly in spanish network text. what i want to identify is portions of text (a couple sentences or more) where english has been quoted from other other writers, often brought in by cut-and-paste file transfers. does anyone know of an algorithm which can identify english text as distinct from most other languages? here is what comes to mind... search for string occurrences of common uninflected english words like ' of ' ' with ' ' and ' ' it ' ' this ' but which of the most common words are most distinct for english? are there other approaches, such as syllable or character frequency searches which could help distinguish english within a few lines of text? eventually i am going to want to generalize the algorithm to a wider application, distinguishing file inclusions from other languages. once in a while we get a sample from an unidentified source and need to tell what language it is... the students i work with have developed a little game which produces a maybe-algorithm that says 'of' + 'with' + 'the' =?= english 'di' + 'per' + 'il' =?= italian 'de' + 'con' + 'el' =?= spanish 'auf' + 'mit' + 'das' =?= german 'du' + 'por' + 'le' =?= french 'od' + 'u' + 'iz' =?= croatian 'ag' + 'agus' + 'ach' =?= gaelic 'ke' + 'pri' + 'mi' =?= esperanto 'ze' + 'nie' + 'sie' =?= polish 'bu' + 'bir' =?= turkish if any of you know of this kind of work that has been done, or have suggestions what to try, i would appreciate any help. stan . stankuli@UWF.bitnet === | | close your eyes, my darling, or three of them at least --- -- old venusian lullaby __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-368 ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-369. Sunday, 28 July 1991. Lines: 158. Subject: Responses Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 27 Jul 91 10:31:51 EST From: Ralf Thiede Subject: Feature Percolation 2) Date: Fri, 26 Jul 91 9:24:45 PDT From: William McKellin Subject: Re: Mama Papa 3) Date: Sat, 27 Jul 91 15:19 PDT From: Pamela Munro Subject: Men's and Women's Speech 4) Date: Fri, 26 Jul 91 18:59:26 BST From: Jock McNaught Subject: RE: Compound nouns -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 27 Jul 91 10:31:51 EST From: Ralf Thiede Subject: Feature Percolation In "On Binding" [Linguistic Inquiry 11 (1980): 1-46], which started out as a draft written in January 1978, Noam Chomsky wrote: Assuming Case to be assigned to NP under (68), let us suppose further that the feature "percolates" to the head noun and its determiner and modifiers, in the sense of Dougherty (1969). (p. 25) His bibliographic reference is to: Dougherty, R.C. (1969) "An Interpretive Theory of Pronominal Reference," Foundations of Language 5, 488-519. That may not be who "first introduced" the term, but it could be a lead. Greetings, --Ralf-- __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 26 Jul 91 9:24:45 PDT From: William McKellin Subject: Re: Mama Papa I'm sorry I don't have the complete reference but E.R. Leach has a paper on "Mama and Papa" in Rethinking Kinship, R. Needham (ed.) (ASA Monograph Series) London:Tavistock. 1971. He discusses some of the implications of the distribution of phonologically based patterns like mama and papa for the study of kinship. Prof. Bill McKellin mcke@unixg.ubc.ca Department of Anthropology and Sociology University of British Columbia Vancouver, B.C. V6T 1Z1 __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Sat, 27 Jul 91 15:19 PDT From: Pamela Munro Subject: Men's and Women's Speech In response to Alice Freed's query (24 July), I could provide several references to grammaticized men's and women's forms of speech in American Indian languages (where for example men's forms of verbs might be required to include an extra morpheme or the like); this is not, however, related to "gender" in the sense that term has been used in LINGUIST discussions re- cently. If anyone would like these references, please let me know. However, I suspect someone out there knows of a larger bibliography on the subject, which I'd certainly appreciate a reference to. Pam Munro __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Fri, 26 Jul 91 18:59:26 BST From: Jock McNaught Subject: RE: Compound nouns Jan, I (and presumably others who read this bulletin) would be interested in seeing a compendium of the replies you received regarding compound nouns. Could you spare the time to post a list of the references? I am most interested to see how this compares with the references (and original research) already done within EUROTRA on compounds. I had thought we had covered the ground fairly well, and would like to see what we may have missed out on. Jock -- John McNaught jock%ccl.umist.ac.uk@ean-relay.ac.uk (ean) Centre for Computational jock%ccl.umist.ac.uk@cunyvm.cuny.edu (arpa) Linguistics jock%ccl.umist.ac.uk@ac.uk (earn) UMIST jock@cclsun.uucp PO Box 88 Sackville Street Manchester, UK +44.61.200.3098 (direct) M60 1QD __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Fri, 26 Jul 91 13:55:50 EST From: KGODDEN%CMSA.gmr.com@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: Re: -gate suffix From: Godden, Kurt S. CS Dept, GM Research Labs Subject: Re: -gate suffix fleck%robots.oxford.ac.uk@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Margaret Fleck) writes: >So does English now have a suffix '-gate'? > > Watergate > Irangate > Contragate > Muldergate (South African) > Inkathagate Obviously the answer is 'yes'. But of course, the first one 'Watergate' is the Mother of All '-gates'. -Kurt Godden __________________________________________________________________________ 6) Date: Fri, 26 Jul 91 15:28:15 -0500 From: louden@bongo.cc.utexas.edu (mark l louden) Subject: Re: Queries In response to Margaret Fleck's discussion of the '-gate' suffix in English to indicate a political scandal: one of the best I ever heard was 'Kachinagate' to describe former Arizona governor Rose Mofford's involvement with questionable political gifts. Best, Mark Louden __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-369 ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-370. Sunday, 28 July 1991. Lines: 74 Subject: Character Encoding Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 26 Jul 91 16:34:46 PDT From: whistler@zarasun.Metaphor.COM (Ken Whistler) Subject: Re: Queries 2) Date: Fri, 26 Jul 91 13:03:51 -0400 From: peter@sug.std.com (Peter Salus) Subject: Re: Queries -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 26 Jul 91 16:34:46 PDT From: whistler@zarasun.Metaphor.COM (Ken Whistler) Subject: Re: Queries In response to queries posted to: Linguist List: Vol-2-366. Friday, 26 July 1991. Re: Character encoding Linguists had better hope that the Unicode Consortium succeeds in getting general adoption of Unicode, together with some control over the continuing process of adding scripts and character to the standard. The people who work on Unicode care about dead languages (and even more radical--dead scripts), as well as obscure ones. In addition to working on Ethiopian, Mongolian, Sinhala, Khmer, and Burmese for the next edition, we have proposals in the hopper for Syriac, Lepcha, Egyptian hieroglyphics, Linear B, and lots else. I can guarantee you that the Danish national standards committee isn't going to care much about such things. Re: X-gate If the BCCI scandal keeps unfolding and intersects the latest nomination for Director of the CIA, we may also have a Gatesgate in the works. AbuDhabigate? --Ken Whistler __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 26 Jul 91 13:03:51 -0400 From: peter@sug.std.com (Peter Salus) Subject: Re: Queries Rick Russom's query is a good one. The answer is that no one is protecting quail-chicks, Mayan elephants, yogh, wyn, Assyrian, Babylonian, Sumerian, or Hittite cuneiform, etc. Nor, as far as I can tell from ISO DIS 10646, has digamma been included in Greek. I brought some of this up at an ISO meeting in 1989, but even the Swedish delegate thought I was extreme (though he admitted an interest in edh, thorn, and vowels with slashes through them, o over them [aa], and digraphs and umlauts). King Alfred, Hattusilis, etc., are dead. Peter H. Salus __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-370 ________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-2-371. Sunday, 28 July 1991. Lines: 62. Subject: Announcements Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 28 Jul 91 From: LINGUIST@TAMVM1.TAMU.EDU (The LINGUIST Moderators) Subject: The DARPA Linguistic Data Consortium 2) Date: Fri, 26 Jul 91 11:40:55 EDT From: denning@emunix.emich.edu (keith denning) Subject: put downs and other maledicta -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 28 Jul 91 From: LINGUIST@TAMVM1.TAMU.EDU (The LINGUIST Moderators) Subject: The DARPA Linguistic Data Consortium Has anyone heard more about the Linguistic Data Consortium that was announced in Linguist Vol-2-367? This is the first we--or anyone we talk to--has heard of it; and yet the deadline for membership application is August 19. We understand that even LSA did not have prior knowledge of this DARPA project. But perhaps we've been misinformed. Can someone offer more background on this (apparently) important project? What institutions are/intend to be Senior Members? Will there be a later enrollment period? What linguists, if any, are consultants? Thanks very much for the info. Helen Dry Anthony Aristar __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 26 Jul 91 11:40:55 EDT From: denning@emunix.emich.edu (keith denning) Subject: put downs and other maledicta For those who've expressed interest, the journal MALEDICTA The International Journal of Verbal Aggression is available from many university libraries but it can also be ordered directly by writing to Reinhold Aman, Editor Maledicta Press P.O. Box 14123 Santa Rosa, CA 95402-6123 USA and asking for a complete price list for the journal and other publications. Keith Denning __________________________________________________________________________ [Linguist List: Vol-2-371] ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-372. Tuesday, 31 July 1991. Lines: 190. Subject: DARPA Linguistic Data Consortium Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 31 Jul 91 10:39 CDT Subject: Linguistic Data Consortium From : myl@unagi.cis.upenn.edu 2) Date: Wed, 31 Jul 91 09:55 MET From: Koenraad De Smedt Subject: DARPA Linguistic Data Consortium -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 31 Jul 91 10:39 CDT Subject: Linguistic Data Consortium From : myl@unagi.cis.upenn.edu [Editors' note: we are grateful to Mark Liberman for the following informative response to our query. The DARPA project seems to us to have great potential benefit for many linguists who may not have seen the ACL announcements (e.g., discourse analysts, textlinguists, phonologists). Thus we appreciate this LINGUIST posting.] In what follows, I have tried to answer the questions that you raised in Linguist Vol-2-371 about the proposed Linguistic Data Consortium. Regards, Mark Liberman (myl@unagi.cis.upenn.edu) Department of Linguistics University of Pennsylvania >Has anyone heard more about the Linguistic Data Consortium that was >announced in Linguist Vol-2-367? I chaired the planning committee for this effort. The other committee members were: Janet Baker Dragon Systems dragon@a.isi.edu Ken Church AT&T Bell Laboratories (presently at USC/Information Sciences Institute) church@venera.isi.edu George Doddington Texas Instruments (presently at SRI) gd@speech.sri.com Paul Jacobs General Electric Central Research and Development Laboratories jacobs@sol.crd.ge.com Fred Jelinek IBM TJ Watson Research Center jelinek@ibm.com Mitch Marcus University of Pennsylvania mitch@linc.cis.upenn.edu Dave Pallett National Institute of Standards and Technologies dave@ssi.ncsl.nist.gov Patti Price Stanford Research International pprice@speech.sri.com Don Walker Bell Communications Research walker@flash.bellcore.com Yorick Wilks New Mexico State University yorick@nmsu.edu Victor Zue MIT zue@goldilocks.lcs.mit.edu >This is the first we--or anyone we >talk to--has heard of it; and yet the deadline for membership application >is August 19. We understand that even LSA did not have prior knowledge >of this DARPA project. But perhaps we've been misinformed. The LDC planning committee was formed in January of this year, following a request by Charles Wayne of DARPA. The announcement in the Commerce Business Daily formally solicits members for the initial establishment of the organization, but new members can be added at any later time. The plans for the LDC were announced at the DARPA Speech and Natural Language meeting in Asilomar in February, and discussed at the ACH/ALLC meeting in Tempe in March and the ACL meeting in Berkeley in June. Within the community of computational linguists and speech researchers, both in the US and abroad, the LDC has been widely discussed. >Can someone >offer more background on this (apparently) important project? Over the past decade, research in speech and natural language technology has come to depend more and more on models induced from very large amounts of text and speech. The needed data is expensive and troublesome to get, and it is also hard to compare results unless different groups can share the same data for training and testing. DARPA has funded the development of speech databases for several years, and has made them generally available through NIST. In 1989, the ACL formed an ad hoc committee to gather and distribute text and speech corpora, the ACL Data Collection Initiative. In the fall of 1990, the NSF sponsored a workshop, run by the ACL, on "Open Lexical and Textual Resources," which aimed to arrive at a consensus on needs and opportunities in this area, and was attended by representives of several government agencies, including DARPA. Large linguistic data projects, such as the British National Corpus, are underway in Europe and in Japan. The proposed formation of the LDC is thus another blossom in an already-vigorous flowering of efforts to create shared resources for resarch and development of natural language technology. The particular form in this case, a government-industry-university consortium, seems appropriate given the nature of the problem, but it also forms part of a larger picture. In response to a recent request from congress, DARPA has proposed six consortia intended to promote pre-competitive technology development: the Linguistic Data Consortium, a Ceramic Fiber Consortium, a Consortium for Optoelectronics and All-Optical Networks, a Superconducting Electronics Consortium, a Scalable Computing Systems Consortium, and an Advanced Static Random Access Memory Consortium. >What institutions are/intend to be Senior Members? The consortium has not been formed yet, nor have any companies committed to joining as "senior members." I would like to underline the fact that senior members do not have any privileged access to data, and that (as the announcement says) "broad participation is desired" and "general membership fees will be set at affordable levels." >Will there be a later enrollment period? The plans for the LDC have not included any notion of an "enrollment period." Applications for membership will be accepted at any time. >What linguists, if any, are consultants? All of the members of the planning committee are researchers who work on speech or text, and are thus linguists in some sense of the term. Patti Price and I have degrees in linguistics. Mitch Marcus has a secondary appointment as a member of the linguistics department at Penn. Several members of the committee are active in the Association for Computational Linguistics, notably Don Walker, its secretary-treasurer. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Wed, 31 Jul 91 09:55 MET From: Koenraad De Smedt Subject: DARPA Linguistic Data Consortium As a European, I am surprised that in the US, a lot of research money is apparently spent through Defense, and in particular through DARPA. After they have almost monopolized American AI research during the last decades, it seems that the army is now ready to invade linguistics (as announced in Linguist Vol. 2-367). Have academic institutions in the US never objected to this continuing militarization of research? Are American scientists not arguing for allocation of more government research funds through civilian channels? And in particular, should linguists not claim that any Linguistic Data Consortium be supervised by peaceful civilians rather the DOD? Koenraad De Smedt __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-372 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-373. Wednesday, 31 July 1991. Lines: 138 Subject: Queries Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 30 Jul 91 14:55 EST From: Vera Horvath <00V0HORVATH%BSUVAX1.BITNET@UICVM.uic.edu> Subject: Standard Language(s) - query 2) Date: Tue, 30 Jul 91 21:53:18 EST From: Ralf Thiede Subject: query: agreement in Achenese passive 3) Date: Tue, 30 Jul 91 18:15:50 BST From: Jock McNaught Subject: Help with Japanese CALL 4) Date: Mon, 29 Jul 91 13:33:48 CET From: Karl Dotzek Subject: Query, Prolog -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 30 Jul 91 14:55 EST From: Vera Horvath <00V0HORVATH%BSUVAX1.BITNET@UICVM.uic.edu> Subject: Standard Language(s) - query I am interested in the different ways one can define what is the/a "standard language", particularly, but not exclusively, what is Standard American English. I would be interested in any references to published works, as well as in personal opinions or reactions to my question. Vera Horvath 00V0HORVATH@BSUVAX1.BITNET __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Tue, 30 Jul 91 21:53:18 EST From: Ralf Thiede Subject: query: agreement in Achenese passive On the off chance that any of you know Achenese: In Studies in Relation- al Grammar 2 (U of Chicago P, 1984), pages 8 to 9, David M. Perlmutter used material provided by Iskandar and Hoekstra from Achenese to demons- trate the necessity of the notion of initial subjecthood (or "1-hood"). The argument is that the verb in Achenese passive constructions agrees with the nominal that was *originally* the subject and that RG therefore needs to represent passivization in two strata so that the original sub- ject is represented as "1". Here is one example [read ")" as the half- open "o"]: _ G)pnyan ka gi-c)m lon ^^^^^^^ ^^ she PERF AGR-kiss me _ Lon ka gi-c)m le-g)pnyan ^^ ^^^^^^^ I PERF AGR-kiss by-her The same (underlined) elements in both sentences agree. I know nothing of the language, but I did notice that "lon" was translated in the vari- ous examples as "I," "me," and "my," and it looks like there is no Case inflection on Achenese (pro?)nominals. If that is so, then my next sus- picion is that grammatical functions like subject and object are usually expressed positionally. At this point, I may already be well off the mark, but my question now is: are both above sentences active, with g)p- nyan as grammatical subject, and is "le" the marker of subjects in non- canonical positions or of a lower predication? Ralf Thiede UNCC Dept. of Engl. __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Tue, 30 Jul 91 18:15:50 BST From: Jock McNaught Subject: Help with Japanese CALL I wonder if anyone has experience of Computer Assisted Language Learning systems for Japanese (with English as the native language). We wish to offer Japanese CALL to our university undergraduate students ab initio and would be glad to learn about any packages available. Information sought: Name of package Particular features of package Supplier Cost Hardware and software requirements We run mainly SUN Unix systems, IBM PC and PS/2 clusters. Any help appreciated. JMcN -- John McNaught jock%ccl.umist.ac.uk@ean-relay.ac.uk (ean) Centre for Computational jock%ccl.umist.ac.uk@cunyvm.cuny.edu (arpa) Linguistics jock%ccl.umist.ac.uk@ac.uk (earn) UMIST jock@cclsun.uucp PO Box 88 Sackville Street Manchester, UK +44.61.200.3098 (direct) M60 1QD __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Mon, 29 Jul 91 13:33:48 CET From: Karl Dotzek Subject: Query, Prolog Dear all, I am planning to organize a Prolog crash course for linguist students, who (most of them) have never heard anything yet about Prolog. What I am interested in is to hear your experiences during your first contact with Prolog (those of you, having already tried to learn and maybe succeeded to manage Prolog). What ideas did you have about it first? What difficulties did you encounter? What principles in it seemed hard for you to understand? What went wrong (or right) during your lessons? Please, try to remember a little bit even if it might be long ago. Hints from experienced Prolog teachers are also welcome. Thanx, Karl Dotzek. __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-373 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-374. Wednesday, 31 July 1991. Lines: 180 Subject: Responses Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 29 Jul 1991 10:31 P1) From: Scott Delancey Subject: Re: Queries 2) Date: Mon, 29 Jul 91 11:07:17 PDT From: whistler@zarasun.Metaphor.COM (Ken Whistler) Subject: Character Encoding 3) Date: Sun, 28 Jul 91 18:21:11 -0400 From: Ellen Prince Subject: Re: Queries 4) Date: Mon, 29 Jul 91 12:22:30 +0200 From: Ton.vanderWouden%let.ruu.nl@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU Subject: Re: TreeTex -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 29 Jul 1991 10:31 P1) From: Scott Delancey Subject: Re: Queries I think I remember that the term >>ergatif<< (for the case form, of course; the use as a label for a language type is more recent) was introduced by Trubetskoy. The earliest citation I can come up with offhand, though, doesn't seem to be the first; in BSL 29 (1929), on p. 170, he uses the term in reference to Caucasian languages, but the passage doesn't read as though he intends it to be the first introduction of a novel term. Scott DeLancey __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Mon, 29 Jul 91 11:07:17 PDT From: whistler@zarasun.Metaphor.COM (Ken Whistler) Subject: Character Encoding In response to Peter Salus' comment on Linguist List: Vol-2-370 U+01BF LATIN LETTER WYNN U+0292 LATIN SMALL LETTER YOGH U+03DD GREEK SMALL LETTER DIGAMMA You see, Unicode does care! No cuneiform yet, but we'll get to it. --Ken Whistler __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Sun, 28 Jul 91 18:21:11 -0400 From: Ellen Prince Subject: Re: Queries >Date: Fri, 26 Jul 91 19:28:14 MDT >From: Randy Allen Harris >Subject: Query: HLS's radio program > >I'm looking for some information about Henry Lee Smith's >radio program from the forties. Virtually anything will >help ( all I know at the moment is that it existed, that it was >fairly popular, and that it concerned, at least partially, >American dialects), but specifically does anyone know > >(1) its name, (2) any particulars about its content and/or >popularity, (3) if any tapes survive, and (4), if the tapes are >available, where? > >Thanks. i may be inventing this or confusing it with something else, but something like 'ask dr. smith' sticks in my mind as the name of the show. the particulars that i remember is that people would come on the show and he'd guess where they were from, like within a few miles. (look, if you wanted excitement, there was always flash gordon...) at least from my perspective (a kid in brooklyn), it was very popular. and, more recently, when i got into linguistics in the '60s, i remember being very titillated to learn that the smith of trager and smith was the radio smith of my youth, so clearly twenty years later i still remembered him and thought he was pretty famous. __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Mon, 29 Jul 91 12:22:30 +0200 From: Ton.vanderWouden%let.ruu.nl@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU Subject: Re: TreeTex On Fri, 26 Jul 91 14:48:52 EDT Bob Kasper asked me (private mail) >> Ton, >> >> Where is TreeTex available? >> >> You mentioned on the LINGUIST list that it is a LaTeX macro package, >> but it is not in the macro libraries that were installed >> with our LaTex software (on a SUN UNIX system). >> >> I'm sure that other readers of LINGUIST would also like to know where >> it is available, so please any information you have about it there >> too. >> Actually, I'm afraid I don't know were to get the TexTree package. I have looked in a recent version of the TeX-FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) (FAQ.SUPPLEMENT_3OF3 Fri, 24 May 1991 10:35:52 CDT, From: FILESERV-Mgr@niord.shsu.edu) were I found: >> tree1 uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu linguist/tree1.1.tar.Z >> >> For drawing hierarchical tree diagrams. Very flexible. >> Can take advantage of Postscript capability. >> >> tree macros (posted to comp.text.tex) >> by hwb@texnix.stgt.sub.org >> >> tree.sty emr.cs.uiuc.edu by Ed Reingold >> /home/reingold/ftp/pub/tree.sty >> TreeTeX ? by Univ. Waterloo >> For drawing hierarchical trees. So, there seem to exist various tree drawing packages for \LaTeX and \Tex, and nobody seems to know the whereabouts of TreeTeX. In the pre-ambule of our TreeTex.Tex I found the following: >> % >> % TreeTeX is a public domain macro package for drawing >> % trees with TeX. It may be freely distributed, provided >> % that the following files are kept together: >> % >> % classes.tex, l_pic.tex, readme, tree_doc.aux, tree_doc.bbl >> % tree_doc.dvi, tree_doc.tex, treetex.tex >> % >> % Copyright is with Anne Brueggemann-Klein and Derick Wood. >> % Print tree_doc.dvi to get more information about TreeTeX. >> % >> % All remarks, bug reports etc. should be directed to >> % >> % Dr. Anne Brueggemann-Klein >> % Institut fuer Informatik >> % Rheinstr. 10--12 >> % 7800 Freiburg, West Germany >> % >> % email: abk@sun1.ruf.uni-freiburg.dbp.de >> % so that latter address is probably the place to ask for more information. I hope this helps a bit (I will crosspost to linguist and comp.text.tex). Kind regards, Ton van der Wouden vanderwouden@let.ruu.nl __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-374 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-375. Wednesday, 31 July 1991. Lines: 74 Subject: Mama and Papa Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 29 Jul 91 0:52:47 MET DST From: David Powers (AG Siekmann) Subject: Re: A query regarding Mama and Dada 2) Date: Tue, 30 Jul 91 02:29:06 PDT From: peg!iadlang%igc.org@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: Papa, mama 3) Date: Wed, 31 Jul 91 10:34 H From: Subject: Re: Queries -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 29 Jul 91 0:52:47 MET DST From: David Powers (AG Siekmann) Subject: Re: A query regarding Mama and Dada The Solomon Island language Maringi has Mama = Father. I forget the word for mother, but I am pretty sure it starts with P or F. (In August I'll be back in Sydney where I might be able to lay hands on my analysis of the language.) David Powers __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Tue, 30 Jul 91 02:29:06 PDT From: peg!iadlang%igc.org@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: Papa, mama In the Western Desert group of Australian Pama-Nyungan languages "mama" is the typical term for "father". "Papa" means 'dog' in some of these dialects. In many Pama-Nyungan languages, "ngama" or some reflex of it has the following range of meanings (not all attested in all languages): mother, woman, female, mature female (having given birth), applied to both human and non-human beings. In Warlpiri, terms for 'father' such as "kirda" or "warriwarri" can also refer to male genitalia. Mary Laughren __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Wed, 31 Jul 91 10:34 H From: Subject: Re: Queries RE: About mama for calling father I know that both Tibetan and Manchuria people call their father 'a ma' > lua kim teng (LUAKT@NUSDISCS.BITNET) > National University of Singapore > Department of Information Systems and Computer Science __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-375 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-377. Friday, 2 August 1991. Lines: 59 Subject: Queries Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 31 Jul 1991 15:28 EDT From: "MICHEL (MGRIMAUD@WELLCO.BITNET) GRIMAUD" Subject: Phonetic alphabet for French, English 2) Date: Thu, 1 Aug 91 11:51:30 EDT From: Ron Smyth Subject: Mac-based experiments -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 31 Jul 1991 15:28 EDT From: "MICHEL (MGRIMAUD@WELLCO.BITNET) GRIMAUD" Subject: Phonetic alphabet for French, English I started reading the character encoding exchange in the middle, so this question may have been answered at the very beginning. My need is rather simple. I would like to be able to use (while in Word- Perfect 5.1) a program that would enable me to type the phonetic alphabet symbols corresponding to FRENCH and hopefully (say) English and German... and then being able to print them from my IBM-PC to an HP Laserjet. I also want to do data analysis on the phonetic symbols once I've transcribed a significant amount of text. I've tried a couple of well-known companies and looked in the back pages of LANGUAGE but haven't been able to find anything. Surely, there must be something out there! Michel Grimaud Wellesley College __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Thu, 1 Aug 91 11:51:30 EDT From: Ron Smyth Subject: Mac-based experiments Is anyone familiar with Macintosh-based software for controlling psycholinguistic experiments (sentence reading time, word-by-word reading time in all its forms, cross-modal priming, etc.)? Do you have comments about the IBM-based MEL software (I have read reviews, but would like personal comments from users). Ron Smyth smyth@lake.scar.utoronto.ca __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-377 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-378. Friday, 2 August 1991. Lines: 64 Subject: The Linguistic Data Consortium Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 31 Jul 91 10:58:46 -0700 From: ervin-tr@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Susan Ervin-Tripp) Subject: Re: The Linguistic Data Consortium 2) Date: Thu, 01 Aug 91 09:19:58 MST From: Dan Brink Subject: Re: The Linguistic Data Consortium -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 31 Jul 91 10:58:46 -0700 From: ervin-tr@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Susan Ervin-Tripp) Subject: Re: The Linguistic Data Consortium Can anyone clarify what the military uses are for the linguistic texts, exactly? There is a long history of military support of linguistic research. Please give some examples even artificial which can account for this interest. Some linguists have argued that getting military funding is a good way to remove funds from more malign uses. There are many conversational analysts who have transcribed authentic conversations into computer databases. What is the nature of the oral data in the database already involved? is there enough contextual information to make it useful for the understanding of the texts? __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Thu, 01 Aug 91 09:19:58 MST From: Dan Brink Subject: Re: The Linguistic Data Consortium I knew of the consortium discussed at Tempe, but I never beofre heard of a DARPA connection. This is all closely related to the IBM dictionary project we discussed last year; Byrd was at the conference, as were most of the people listed above (Church, Wilks, etc.) Wilks program at NMSU was the "insider" evolution to our effort at an "open" project in cooperation with UofA, etc. It might be possible to get something started here, but, frankly, looking at the list, we would need a active, well-known researcher in the field to pull it off; we don't have one . . . Daniel Brink, Associate Dean for Technology Integration College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-1701 602/965-7748/1441 fax -1093 ATDXB@ASUVM.INRE.ASU.EDU __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-378 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-379. Friday, 2 August 1991. Lines: 122 Subject: Acehnese Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 1 Aug 91 16:36:08 EDT From: John.M.Lawler@um.cc.umich.edu Subject: Acehnese "Subject", "Object", "Passive", and other "Relations" 2) Date: Wed, 31 Jul 1991 16:57 PDT From: Scott Delancey Subject: Re: Queries 3) Date: Thu, 1 Aug 91 11:46:07 +1000 From: bert peeters Subject: Acehnese -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 1 Aug 91 16:36:08 EDT From: John.M.Lawler@um.cc.umich.edu Subject: Acehnese "Subject", "Object", "Passive", and other "Relations" In reply to Ralf Thiede's query about Acehnese (Ac, also called "Achenese"): (1) Correct, there is no case inflection in Ac; in fact, there is virtually no inflection at all. (2) However, the next suspicion, to the effect that "grammatical functions like subject and object are usually expressed positionally" contains a very strong presupposition (also present, but explicitly so, in Perlmutter's article), namely that there *are* such "grammatical functions" as "subject" and "object" in Ac. This is a matter of considerable dispute, as well as being a canon of Relational Grammar. Durie and I agree (though, I suspect, for different reasons) that the category "Subject", in particular, is effectively irrelevant in Ac; we both tend to refer instead to semantic case roles like "Agent" or "Patient" (Durie prefers "Undergoer" for the latter) instead of "Subject" in order to avoid the ideological impedimenta that obligatorily surrounds it. On the other hand, Abdul Gani Asyik, who is a native speaker, continues to apply the term "subject" to Ac grammar without feeling necessarily constrained by others' theoretical presuppositions. (3) In the light of (2), the question as to whether the cited sentences (which came originally from my 1977 and 1975 papers) are "active" depends considerably on your political orientation. My own answer is that calling a sentence or a construction "passive" is merely a naming convention, and says nothing empirical about the thing named. As to what "le" is a marker of, you pays your money and you takes your choice. References Asyik, Abdul Gani. 1987. _A Contextual Grammar of Acehnese Sentences_. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan. Mark Durie. 1985. _A Grammar of Acehnese on the Basis of a Dialect of North Aceh_. _Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde_ Nr. 112. Dordrecht: Foris. ----- 1988. "The So-Called Passive of Acehnese", _Language_ 64:1. John Lawler. 1977. "A Agrees with B in Achenese: A Problem for Relational Grammar", in Cole & Sadock (eds), _Syntax and Semantics_, Vol 8, _Grammatical Relations_, New York: Academic Press. ----- 1975. "On Coming to Terms in Achenese: The Function of Verbal Dis- Agreement", in Grossman, San, & Vance (eds), _Papers From the Parasession on Functionalism_, Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. ----- 1988. "On the Questions of Acehnese 'Passive'", _Language_ 64:1. ----- 1990. Review of Durie (1985), _Lingua_ 82:4. ____________________________________________________________________ John Lawler Program in Linguistics jlawler@um.cc.umich.edu University of Michigan USERLL3N@UMICHUM.BITNET __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Wed, 31 Jul 1991 16:57 PDT From: Scott Delancey Subject: Re: Queries RE: Acehnese query You need Mark Durie's grammar (A grammar of Acehnese ... Foris, 1985). See also his paper in Language 64:1 (1988). Scott DeLancey __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Thu, 1 Aug 91 11:46:07 +1000 From: bert peeters Subject: Acehnese Mark Durie is a specialist. He is at Mark_Durie@muwayf.unimelb.edu.au or durie@murdu.ucs.unimelb.edu.au and several other addresses at the University of Melbourne. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr Bert Peeters Tel: +61 02 202344 Department of Modern Languages 002 202344 University of Tasmania at Hobart Fax: 002 202186 GPO Box 252C peeters@tasman.cc.utas.edu.au Hobart TAS 7001 Australia __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-379 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-380. Friday, 2 August 1991. Lines: 94 Subject: Jobs Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 2 Aug 91 11:47:02 +0200 (MET) From: garof%sixcom.sixcom.it@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Joe Giampapa) Subject: fyi: Mead Data Central full-text databases -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 2 Aug 91 11:47:02 +0200 (MET) From: garof%sixcom.sixcom.it@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Joe Giampapa) Subject: fyi: Mead Data Central full-text databases Taken from Usenet, misc.jobs.offered, the description of Mead Data Central seemed of general interest to this group. My re-posting of this message is not intended as an endorsement of any kind. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Article 1845 of misc.jobs.offered: > From: srivasm@meaddata.com (M. C. Srivas) > Newsgroups: misc.jobs.offered,misc.jobs.contract > Subject: Transactions guru wanted > Keywords: transactions databases > Date: 22 Jul 91 13:23:37 GMT > Organization: Mead Data Central, Dayton OH Mead Data Central (MDC) is currently looking for [description of job candidate] ... Mead Corp is a $4.5 billion corporation, of which MDC is a subsidiary (about $400 million). MDC has the largest collection of full-text databases in the world. The databases contain legal material (from the US Constitution, all 50 State Statutes, all courts, all of English and French laws and cases), a large number of news reports and wires (for example, the entire NY Times published since 1960 is online), financial info, medical info, and a variety of other information. The databases are full-text searchable, and the searches retrieve documents that the user views. To give you an idea of the volume of data involved: the amount of disk space used is approx. 3 terra-bytes, comprised of some 3500-4000 databases. In a week, an average of 1.3 GB of data pours in. Every day, an average of 500 databases are updated and backed up. The average size of a database is 200 MB. There are about 14 giant mainframe computers connected over a very high-speed LAN that perform the searching for the users. Front end processors maintain sessions similar to "login"s to reduce the load on the search-engines. Just the logistics of connecting enough disks for 3000 gigabytes is a major achievement. MDC has its own wide-area network to make available their online services to users are all across the United States. Users may use dumb terminals or PCs essentially emulating dumb terminals to connect to MDC and use the online services for a fee. The MDC system is up 23 hrs and 55 mins a day. The reliability and availability is close to 99.1 per cent, but the management would like to see that figure closer to 99.7 per cent. Even when an external source like AT&T drops the leased lines that make MDC's WAN, it is counted as a failure here. Fault tolerance and replication for availability are bywords in anything that MDC does. They follow the usual motto that if N of something are sufficient for the projected capacity, they run with N+1 or N+2 to be able to continue at the same response level. The system that exists today in MDC was built with a character based terminal in mind, and is optimized for such. The major changes in technology that MDC wants to take advantage of is the advent of cheap workstations combined with very high-speed WANs, and yet cater to the low-end user who has a 2400 baud modem and a dumb terminal to dial in with. Real-time updates from digital feeds that carry information like news-wires, stock quotes, etc. are also being considered. If you are interested in joining MDC [personnel details] ... If you any further questions, you can call me at 513-865-6800 x5516, or send me email at srivasm@meaddata.com. [...] M. C. Srivas. -------- Mead Data Central srivasm@meaddata.com PO Box 933 ...!uunet!meaddata!com Dayton Ohio 45401 meadata!srivasm@uunet.uu.net __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-380 Linguist List: Vol-2-381. Friday, 2 August 1991. Lines: Subject: Responses Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 31 Jul 91 16:38 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: Queries: Standard Languages 2) Date: Thu, 1 Aug 91 12:33:27 +1000 From: mdr412%coombs.anu.edu.au@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Malcolm Ross) Subject: Re: A query regarding Mama and Dada 3) Date: Wed, 31 Jul 1991 16:52 PDT From: Scott Delancey Subject: Re: Mama and Papa 4) Date: Wed, 31 Jul 91 16:31:57 EDT From: stainton%ATHENA.MIT.EDU@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: -gate -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 31 Jul 91 16:38 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: Queries: Standard Languages to Vera Horvath: re 'standard language'. It is hard to find an agreed on definition. Have just been working on the revisions for the 5th edition of Fromkin and Rodman's Intro to Language and on the Language in Society chapter. I was looking for someone to quote re what is a standard language or dialect or.... can't find one much better than the one we have used in the first 4 editions: " The dominant or prestige dialect is often called the standard dialect. Standard American English (SAE) is a dialect of English that many Americans almost speak: divergencies from this 'norm' are labeled 'Philadelphia dialect'., "chicago dialect"...etc." p 261 It's not great but hope it helps a little. Vicki _____________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Thu, 1 Aug 91 12:33:27 +1000 From: mdr412%coombs.anu.edu.au@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Malcolm Ross) Subject: Re: A query regarding Mama and Dada David Powers writes, "The Solomon Island language Maringi has Mama = Father. I forget the word for mother, but I am pretty sure it starts with P or F." I have just checked White's Maringe Dictionary (Pacific Linguistics C-97) and my own materials. The vocative for father is indeed Mama. Mother is Ido. Mama as the 'Daddy' term is common in Melanesia, but not Papa etc for mother Malcolm Ross, Linguistics RSPacS ANU __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Wed, 31 Jul 1991 16:52 PDT From: Scott Delancey Subject: Re: Mama and Papa > I know that both Tibetan and Manchuria people call their father 'a ma' < I don't know the source of this information, but in Central Tibetan and the modern standard based on it /?a ma/ is definitely 'mother' (or better, 'Mom'), and /?a pha/ 'father' (or 'Dad'). Scott DeLancey __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Wed, 31 Jul 91 16:31:57 EDT From: stainton%ATHENA.MIT.EDU@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: -gate Canadian politics has its share of "gates" as well. My favourite is "tunagate": a scandal in which some conservative cabinet minister allowed tainted tuna to be distributed to Canadian consumers. (They'd been unable to sell it as cat food...) Believe it or not, Tunagate was frontpage news for weeks. -Rob Stainton __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-381 ________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-382. Sunday, 4 August 1991. Lines: 181. Subject: FYI: Smileys, ESCOL Registration Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 2 Aug 91 11:32:52 +0200 (MET) From: garof%sixcom.sixcom.it@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Joe Giampapa) Subject: Smile Face Orthography 2) Date: Sun, 4 Aug 91 16:55:30 EDT From: Eastern States Conference on Linguistics '91 Subject: Registration Information for ESCOL '91 -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 2 Aug 91 11:32:52 +0200 (MET) From: garof%sixcom.sixcom.it@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Joe Giampapa) Subject: Smile Face Orthography If anyone has ever been interested in conventions for conveying non-literal expressions and characatures in ASCII text, there is a great new program recently installed on our Suns, "smiley". usage: smiley [-V] [-e] [-l] [-f] [smiley ...] where: -V print program version -e explain the face in $SMILEY -l list all the smileys -f print a random smiley, face only smiley explain the given smileys (no args) print a random smiley Some Examples: (-: Australian Don Ellis from Tektronix left-handed :-) normal smiley face 4:-) George Washington 7:) Ronald Reagan 7:-) Fred Flintstone 7:^] Ronald Reagan 8-# death 8-) excited glasses sunglasses swimmer 8-O "Omigod!!" (done after "rm -rf *" ?) took too many nodoz to work on thesis 8-] "wow, maan" 8-| eyes wide with surprise suspense : ) leper :###) Jimmy Durante I can send the list of all smileys (13915 bytes) and possibly program sources to interested persons. -Joe Giampapa Sixcom, Olivetti Group Milano garof@sixcom.sixcom.it garof%sixcom.sixcom.it@uunet.uu.net __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Sun, 4 Aug 91 16:55:30 EDT From: Eastern States Conference on Linguistics '91 Subject: Registration Information for ESCOL '91 [Moderators' note: additional information relevant to this posting is available on the server. To get the file, send a message to: listserv@uniwa.uwa.oz.au The message should consist of the single line: get escol-prog You will then receive the complete ESCOL program.] ESCOL '91 HOTEL ACCOMODATIONS A block of rooms has been reserved for ESCOL '91 at the following hotel Inner Harbor Hallmark Hotel (Best Western) 8 North Howard Street Baltimore, MD 21201 Tel. (301) 539-1188 The following Special Corporate Rates apply to ESCOL '91 participants - Room with 1 queen size bed (1 or 2 people): $ 75.04 per night - Room with 2 beds (2 people): $ 87.36 per night These rates, which are the lowest available in downtown Baltimore, include all taxes and continental breakfast (Other hotels offered us similar rates, but with taxes (12%) & breakfast not included). The hotel is approximately 6 blocks away from the University of Maryland at Baltimore (UMAB), where the conference will be held (see conference program), and about 8 blocks from Baltimore's Inner Harbor. Rooms for ESCOL '91 will be held until September 10. Consequently you should make your reservations as soon as possible. To make your reservations you can either call: (301) 539-1188 (Mention: ESCOL '91) or (800) 528-1234 (Ask for the Special Corporate Rate) The 800 number serves all Best Western Hotels in the U.S.A., and the operator will not recognize ESCOL '91. Therefore you must ask for the Special Corporate Rate. The 301 number is the actual hotel number, and the operator will recognize ESCOL '91. AIRPORT TRANSPORTATION There is a bus that serves the local airport (Baltimore-Washington International) and the downtown hotels. It leaves from the BWI every 30 minutes on the hour & the half hour. The bus fare is $ 6.50 one way & $ 12.00 round trip. If you take the airport bus, ask the driver to stop at the Days Inn, which is one & a half block away from the Best Western Hotel, where you will be staying. (Sorry the airport bus does not directly serve the Best Western Hotel.) TRAIN & BUS SERVICE AMTRAK: (800) 872-7245 - BALTIMORE PENN STATION: (301) 291-4260 GREYHOUND DOWNTOWN STATION: 210 West Fayette St., Tel (301) 752-0868 PARKING Parking for Best Western guests is available at the Arrow Garage on Baltimore Street, between Howard Street and Park Avenue. Their all-day rates are: $ 6.00 (weekdays) and $ 4.00 (weekends). There are other parking garages closer to UMAB that ESCOL participants from the Baltimore-Washington area may use. ESCOL '91 PRE-REGISTRATION By September 1st: Students: $ 20.00 Regular: $ 30.00 After September 1st: Students: $ 25.00 Regular: $ 35.00 My pre-registration is enclosed: ____________ Name: __________________________________________________________________ Affiliation:____________________________________________________________ Please make check or money order payable to ESCOL '91 Mail to: Department of Modern Languages & Linguistics University of Maryland, Baltimore Campus Baltimore, MD 21228 ESCOL '91 PRE-REGISTRATION By September 1st: Students: $ 20.00 Regular: $ 30.00 After September 1st: Students: $ 25.00 Regular: $ 35.00 My pre-registration is enclosed: ____________ Name: __________________________________________________________________ Affiliation: ___________________________________________________________ Please make check or money order payable to ESCOL '91 Mail to: Department of Modern Languages & Linguistics University of Maryland, Baltimore Campus Baltimore, MD 21228 __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-382 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-383. Monday, 5 August 1991. Lines: 157 Subject: Queries Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 3 Aug 91 20:16:08 EDT From: Alexis Manaster Ramer Subject: Query on 1989 Moscow Conference 2) Date: Sat, 3 Aug 1991 20:29:10 GMT-10:00 From: Phil Bralich Subject: Richard Stanley 3) Date: Sun, 04 Aug 91 19:36:02 EDT From: Lesli LaRocco Subject: QUERY on Slavic Keyboards 4) Date: Mon, 5 Aug 1991 9:36:57 +0800 (SST) From: A_DENCH%FENNEL.CC.UWA.OZ.AU@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: English continuous perfect passives (?) 5) Date: Mon, 5 Aug 91 9:55 GMT From: CHANDLERJ@csovax.portsmouth.ac.uk Subject: Query re deaf babies' babbling in sign language -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 3 Aug 91 20:16:08 EDT From: Alexis Manaster Ramer Subject: Query on 1989 Moscow Conference Does anybody have a copy of the materials from the 1989 conference held in Moscow "Lingvisticheskaia rekonstruktsiia i drevneishaia istoriia vostoka" (May 29-June 2, 1989) and would be willing to let me use it for a brief period of time? Alexis Manaster Ramer __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Sat, 3 Aug 1991 20:29:10 GMT-10:00 From: Phil Bralich Subject: Richard Stanley Doe anyone know an email or standard mail address for Richard Stanley, the author of "Boundaries in Phonology" in _A Festshrift for Morris Halle_ editted by Anderson and Kiparsky? I have a couple of lists of email addresses of linguists but he is not on them. Thanks Phil Bralich University of Hawaii bralich@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.edu __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Sun, 04 Aug 91 19:36:02 EDT From: Lesli LaRocco Subject: QUERY on Slavic Keyboards Any information on keyboard layouts (computer or typewriter) for Slavic languages other than Russian would be greatly appreciated. Please respond to Slava Paperno at B47@CORNELLC.BITNET. Thanks __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Mon, 5 Aug 1991 9:36:57 +0800 (SST) From: A_DENCH%FENNEL.CC.UWA.OZ.AU@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: English continuous perfect passives (?) An enterprising student of mine (a non-native speaker of English) made the following observation in a lecture on the passive: "English does not appear to admit passives in the continuous perfect." So for example, there is no acceptable passive counterpart to the active: I had been giving a lecture to an unwashed horde. ??An unwashed horde had been being given a lecture. This seems quite unacceptable to me, but over the last few days I have perhaps been letting my linguist's intuitions overide my native-speaker intuitions. The following does not seem so bad: My car has been being cleaned all week. And, with BE as a main verb (copula), the following is not too bad at all: John has been being naughty since this morning. Mark Ellison tells me he finds the get passives a little easier to deal with: My car has been getting cleaned all week. Shelly Harrison suggested that the problem is quite simply a classic performance error. The sentences are grammatical but English speakers have a great deal of trouble processing them. He says he can accept such things as grammatical but can't give them an interpretation. He doesn't know what they mean! However, he suggests that if a frame is provided then they might be interpretable: "How's the research paper going?" "Oh, it's being finished." "Sure! It's been being finished all semester!" And then I stumbled upon this nice example in James Blish's (1964) "Doctor Mirabilis" (p193 in the (British) Arrow edition of 1984): "On the instant of recognition, Roger knew that he had been being followed." They are starting to sound better and better! My student threatens to write a research paper on this topic (against my fervent hope that he will not - him being a born again prescriptivist). If anyone has fanciful thoughts on this subject I'd be amused to hear them. Alan Dench Department of Anthropology University of Western Australia A_DENCH@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Mon, 5 Aug 91 9:55 GMT From: CHANDLERJ@csovax.portsmouth.ac.uk Subject: Query re deaf babies' babbling in sign language Can any one help? A recent newspaper article reported on some work by Dr Laura Petitto and Paula Marentette of McGill University observing deaf babies babbling in sign language and concluding that babbling is not tied to sppech production but to the way the brain organises itself to deal with the structure of language. Has any one any further information on this? or know of any papers on this? Jane Chandler __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-383 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-384. Monday, 5 August 1991. Lines: 31 Subject: FYI: E-mail Directory of LSA Members Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: July 31, 1991 From: John Moyne (moygc@cunyvm.cuny.edu) Subject: E-mail Directory of LSA Members -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: July 31, 1991 From: John Moyne (moygc@cunyvm.cuny.edu) Subject: E-mail Directory of LSA Members [Moderators' Note: Johy Moyne has kindly sent us the LSA e-mail directory, which we thought should be available through LINGUIST, To get the file, send a message to: listserv@uniwa.uwa.oz.au The message should consist of the single line: get lsa.lst You will then receive the complete directory of e-mail addresses for LSA members.] _________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-384 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-385. Monday, 5 August 1991. Lines: 146. Subject: Responses: Military uses of text and speech Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 03 Aug 91 19:25:14 -0500 Subject: military uses of text and speech From: Elizabeth A. Hinkelman 2) Date: Sat, 3 Aug 91 23:46:26 EDT From: reeker@ida.org (Larry Reeker) Subject: Ervin-Tripp's Query on Military Uses 3) Date: Mon, 5 Aug 91 13:05 MET From: Koenraad De Smedt Subject: DARPA LDC -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 03 Aug 91 19:25:14 -0500 Subject: military uses of text and speech From: Elizabeth A. Hinkelman >From: ervin-tr@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Susan Ervin-Tripp) >Subject: Re: The Linguistic Data Consortium >Can anyone clarify what the military uses are for the linguistic >texts, exactly? There is a long history of military support of linguistic >research. Please give some examples even artificial which can account >for this interest. Some linguists have argued that getting military >funding is a good way to remove funds from more malign uses. Intelligence. The NSA, CIA, and military intelligence groups would like to know what's happening in the world, in detail. They would like technology that could track the world's communication media, and locate threats, insurgents, potential instabilities. For instance, the DARPA-sponsored TIPSTER initiative, which is aimed at automation of labelling document topics and answering questions about their contents. It uses newspaper articles in English and Japanese as the texts. Another example would be the DARPA-sponsored message understanding workshops, the most recent of which used newspaper articles about terrorism and asked, for example, what the target of the attack was. Contact Beth Sundheim (sundheim@cod.nosc.mil) for reports on the message understanding workshops. Current problems include proper names and anaphora. The LDC in particular is part of Federal sponsorship of several (not sure if all ten are administered by DARPA) "precompetitive technologies" which will also be commercially sponsored. In this case, the technology is robust parsing and speech processing programs, which need to handle any word or construction that occurs & need many instances of each for training. So the data we're talking about might be, say, the entire Congressional Record and 40 million words of office memos from each corporate partner. Office automation is a major application area. For linguistics vresearchers, increased public funding will improve communication on these topics even as military and civilian information processing are furthered. Is my voicemail the property of my employer? Elizabeth Hinkelman Center for Information and Language Studies University of Chicago __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Sat, 3 Aug 91 23:46:26 EDT From: reeker@ida.org (Larry Reeker) Subject: Ervin-Tripp's Query on Military Uses Although I may not be privy to all military uses of linguistics, I have been involved in quite a few over the years, and my feeling is that they the usual areas of applied linguistics, with even a certain amount of theoretical work funded. As Susan commented, there is a long history of this interest. The outstanding work by famous linguists on language pedagogy that was done during and after in WWII is an example. In the early enthusiasm for mechanical translation during the early 60's, military and intelligence organizations were major funders of research; and to a certain extent, this funding was diverted to theoretical and computational linguistics after the ALPAC report of the mid-60's pointed in that direction. Both intelligence and military agencies find it necessary to translatee a good deal of material, and rapid throughput is more important than in, say, translating a novel, so their interest is natural. Aside from translation, the services and other military and intelligence agencies also handle enormous message traffic, so they, like other governemntal and business organizations, would like to be able to process them automatically for purposes of dissemination, database creation, summarization, etc. Beyond messages, they would like to do the same for, say, newspaper articles. An example is found in counter-terrorism, where the synthesis of material processed automatically may provide one way of preventing incidents. The services, in particular, are also interested in training applications and in improving documentation. All such applications that I know of are ones that many civilian organizations would find useful, too. As far as I am aware, there are no lethal applications of linguistics under consideration by the Department of Defense. The DoD, and particularly DARPA, are funding a number of things that will likely impact the civilian sector more than the military over the long term. As far as I am concerned, this support is entirely beneficial to the field. Larry Reeker Institute for Defense Analysis __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Mon, 5 Aug 91 13:05 MET From: Koenraad De Smedt Subject: DARPA LDC I have received some private responses to my comment on the military status of the DARPA Linguistic Data Consortium and of DARPA research in general, so I want to readjust what I wrote in an earlier posting. I did not want to imply that the net effect of funding research through DARPA is bad or dangerous. On the contrary, I know that much of the work funded by DARPA is fundamental rather than military research. I know that most of the results are very accessible (perhaps more than company-funded research), and I know that many of the applications are civilian. In fact, the proposed Linguistic Data Consortium is a good example of a research project that's primarily intended as pre-competitive research with litte military but high economic value. Fine. But that is precisely why I find it odd that it's done by a military agency. It's just odd for it to be somehow be associated with the military. I'm not saying it's bad, because in practice, it may well be better for the Linguistic Data Consortium to be run by DARPA than by some quibbling group of computer companies. Koenraad de Smedt __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-385 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-386. Monday, 5 August 1991. Lines: 134. Subject: Responses: tree-drawing, mama/papa, babbling Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 4 Aug 91 00:23 MST From: Andrew Barss Subject: tree drawing software 2) Date: Sat, 3 Aug 91 20:19:50 EDT From: Alexis Manaster Ramer Subject: Mama, Papa, and Dada 3) Date: Mon, 05 Aug 91 07:27 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: Queries: Babbling -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 4 Aug 91 00:23 MST From: Andrew Barss Subject: tree drawing software Philip Bralich recently asked about tree-drawing software. I have recently started using CorelDraw, a quite sophisticated graphics generating program, on a DOS machine with very pleasing results. I use the SPRINT text editing system (a descendant of FinalWord, published by Borland), and wanted a graphics program which met the following criteria: 1) It had to produce good looking trees which could be printed inside SPRINT text files, ideally sized to fit whatever amount of space was available on the page (to avoid large blank spaces between the end of text preceding the tree and the tree itself); 2) The trees had to be printed in such a way as to make it possible to print the lines in a variety of ways (dotted, thick or thin, etc.); 3) It had to be possible to draw additional characteristics like links (directed arrows) between nodes, boxes around portions of the tree, subscripts and superscripts, and the other diacritics used in syntactic trees; 4) the program had to be easy to use, and had to run on a 386-sx or similar computer, and print to a laser printer. CorelDraw meets all these criteria, and to the best of my knowledge is the only commercial program to do so. SPRINT has a graphics function which inserts a command to print an Encapsulated PostScript (.EPS) file anywhere in the text (wherever the command is positioned). CORELDRAW generates such files, and the tree can be sized to any height and width, either from with CorelDraw or SPRINT. Moving the tree around is simply a matter of repositioning the command. One can build up a library of standard trees and edit them to suit the purposes of each specific tree needed. CD can also incorporate and edit ASCII text, useful for incorporating complex examples and building a tree over them. CorelDraw by itself can print to any type of printer (including dot matrix), but is not very fast on a laser printer unless that printer is a Postscript printer (I use an insert cartridge which converts the LaserjetII to Postscript); incorporating trees into text requires Postscript. Postscript has the tremendous advantage of scaling fonts, which is useful for all text editing. CD is a very powerful program, and is about as easy to use as any of the regular drawing programs on the market (e.g. the kind that usually come with a mouse); it has a deceptively simple interface. Graphics programs in general require a fair amount of computing speed -- I do not recommend using CD on a 286 or lower machine. CD requires Windows 3.0, which also benefits from a reasonably fast computer (and which has a variety of quirks that have to be gotten used to). One bug: The second line of any Postscript graphics file contains four numbers which define the bounding box (what this is exactly I don't know). CD produces these numbers with decimal expansions (e.g. 45.78 546.91 56.23 765.43). SPRINT (and perhaps other word processors) wants rounded-off numbers, requiring one to pull the postscript file up into a word processor, round off the numbers, and rewrite the file. This is a pain in the neck, and the files can get VERY large (90,000 bytes for six lines of text, each on a different typeface), which takes time to read and write back to disk. I imagine EDLIN could do the job faster, but I don't know. A couple of weeks experience with CD makes typing in nodes (hoping, with proportionally spaced fonts, that they will end up somewhere near where you want them) and drawing in lines by hand seem as clunky as typing on a typewriter. It is (I assume) still not as easy as using a McIntosh, but there you go.^Z __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Sat, 3 Aug 91 20:19:50 EDT From: Alexis Manaster Ramer Subject: Mama, Papa, and Dada A number of people have responded with evidence of words for 'father' beginning with 'm' and some words for 'mother' beginning with 'd'. I appreciate these examples very much, and by all means, please keep it up! It is already apparent that the claim that I learned in grad school that Georgian was the ONLY language to do this sort of thing is just an old linguist's tale. I will wait for more citations before posting the results. Again, if anybody knows anything about the etymologies of any of these forms, please let me know. __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Mon, 05 Aug 91 07:27 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: Queries: Babbling Response to Jane Chandler: Petitto, Laura and Paula Marentette. 1991. Babbling in the manual mode: evidence for the ontogeny of lnguage. Sceince. Vol 251. pp 1493-96 V Fromkin __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-386 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-387. Tuesday, 6 August 1991. Lines: 208 Subject: Program for ESCOL Conference Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 4 Aug 91 16:54:56 EDT From: Eastern States Conference on Linguistics '91 Subject: Program for ESCOL '91 -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 4 Aug 91 16:54:56 EDT From: Eastern States Conference on Linguistics '91 Subject: Program for ESCOL '91 [Moderators' Note: As most of you know, we stopped posting full conference programs in response to complaints that the length of these submissions broke too many mailers. We're making an exception here because a miscommunication with Alan Munn left him in the position of posting an ESCOL announcement without the date. Our apologies, Alan. And, for a statement of current policy, as well as a request for suggestions, see the Moderators' Message in the next issue.] EIGHTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE EASTERN STATES CONFERENCE ON LINGUISTICS ESCOL '91 BALTIMORE, MARYLAND OCTOBER 11 - 13, 1991 All sessions will be held at the University of Maryland at Baltimore (UMAB), downtown Baltimore. PROGRAM FRIDAY, OCTOBER 11: School of Social Work Auditorium, University of Maryland at Baltimore (UMAB) 8:30 - 9:00 Registration Session I SYNTAX 9:00 - 9:30 Terzi Arhonto (CUNY): Governed PRO & Finiteness 9:30 - 10:00 Bernhard Rohrbacher (UMASS, Amherst): Crossing Coreference: No Evidence for Pronominalization. 10:00 - 10:30 Jan-Wouter Zwart (GRONINGEN): Expletive Replacement & Expletive Raising in Dutch. Session II SEMANTICS 10:45 - 11:15 Sara Inclan (UCLA): Temporal Adverbs & the X' Structure of the Reference & the Event Points. 11:15 - 11:45 Greg Carlson & Beverly Spejewski (ROCHESTER): Reference Time Relations. 11:45 - 12:15 Alesssandra Giorgi & Fabio Pianesi (IRST, Trento): Syntactic Constraints on Temporal Representations. 1:30 - 2:30 INVITED SPEAKER: Peter Culicover (OSU): Topicalization, Inversion & Complementizers in English Session III SYNTAX 2:45 - 3:15 Jai-Hyoung Cho (CONNECTICUT): Scrambling as Movement to Non-Operator A'-Position & WCO: Variable vs. Null Epithet. 3:15 - 3:45 James Gair & Lelwala Sumangala (CORNELL): What to Focus in Sinhala. 3:45 - 4:15 Alan Munn (UMCP): Clausal Adjuncts & Temporal Ambiguity. Session IV LANGUAGE LEARNABILITY 4:30 - 5:00 Sigridur Sigurjonsdottir (UCLA): The Subset Principle & the Acquisition of the "Long Distance" Reflexive 'sig' in Icelandic. 5:00 - 5:30 Karin Stromswold (MIT): Learnability & the Acquisition of Auxiliary & Copula 'be' 5:30 - 6:00 Robert Frank (PENNSYLVANIA): Formal Grammar & the Acquisition of Complex Sentences. 7:30 - 8:30 INVITED SPEAKER: Wayne O'Neil (MIT): How Does an Adult Know a Language? ALSO WELCOME REMARKS: Dean Arthur O. Pittenger (UMBC). SATURDAY, OCTOBER 12: Leavitt Hall, School of Pharmacy: University of Maryland at Baltimore (UMAB) Session V MORPHOLOGY 8:30 - 9:00 Martha Wright (SYRACUSE): Lexical/Functional Distinctions in Mohawk Verb Agreement Morphology. 9:00 - 9:30 George Fowler (INDIANA): Phrasal Input to Derivational Morphology in Slavic. 9:30 - 10:00 Richard Janda (CHICAGO) & Brian Joseph (OHIO STATE): Meta-Templates & the Underlying Unity of Reduplication in Sanscrit. Session VI PHONOLOGY 10:15 - 10:45 Rolf Noyer (MIT): Tone & Stress in the San Mateo Dialect of Huave. 10:45 - 11:15 David Kathman (CHICAGO): Stress & Accent in Abkhaz. 11:15 - 11:45 Seok Keun Kang (ILLINOIS): Compensatory Lengthening in Korean Revisited. 11:45 - 12:15 Caroline Wiltshire (CHICAGO): Appendices, Structure Preservation & the Strong Domain Hypothesis. 1:30 - 2:30 INVITED SPEAKER: Luigi Burzio (Hopkins): On the Metrical Unity of Latinate Affixes. Session VII SYNTAX 2:45 - 3:15 Thomas Bever, Itziar Laka & Montserrat Sanz (ROCHESTER): A Psycholinguistic Analysis of Unaccusativity in Spanish. 3:15 - 3:45 Deborah Mandelbaum (CUNY): When Nominals are Predicates. 3:45 - 4:15 Anna Cardinaletti (VENICE) & M. Teresa Guasti (GENEVA): Small Clauses & Null Subjects. Session VIII SYNTAX 4:30 - 5:00 Tami Kaplan (CORNELL): A Classification of VSO Languages. 5:00 - 5:30 Charles Jones (GEORGE MASON): Anti-Internalization: Suppression & Projectioon of External Theta Roles. 5:30 - 6:00 Brian Potter (ROCHESTER): Dative Compounding & the Prominence Theory of Theta Assignment. 7:30 - 8:30 INVITED SPEAKER: Ray Jackendoff (Brandeis): What Does Conceptual Sructure Have to Do with Syntactic Theory? 8:30 - 9:00 Business Meeting: Representatives from schools interested in hosting ESCOL '92 welcome. 8:30 - 11:30 Party SUNDAY, OCTOBER 13: Leavitt Hall, School of Pharmacy: University of Maryland at Baltimore (UMAB) Session IX LANGUAGE PROCESSING 9:00 - 9:30 Sungki Suh (UMCP): Constituent Structure Processing in Korean. 9:30 - 10:00 Raul Elias, Howard Kurtzman & Rocio Montalbetti (CORNELL): NP-Trace & Agreement Morphology in Spanish Sentence Processing. 10:00 - 10:30 Paola Merlo (UMCP): Information Structure, Parameters & Word Order. 10:30 - 11:00 Eric Ristad (PRINCETON): The Complexity of Anaphora. 11:15 - 12:15 INVITED SPEAKER: Alec Marantz (MIT) Licensing & Case. ESCOL '91 IS HOSTED BY: The Dept. of Cognitive Science, Johns Hopkins University The Dept. of Linguistics, University of Maryland at College Park The Dept. of Modern Languages & Linguistics, University of Maryland, Baltimore Campus MORE INFORMATION AVAILABLE FROM: ESCOL '91 Dept. of Modern Languages & Linguistics University of Maryland, Baltimore Campus Baltimore, MD 21228 E-mail: ESCOL91@umdd.umd.edu ESCOL91@umdd.bitnet VERB MOVEMENT WORKSHOP Immediately following ESCOL '91, there will be a workshop on verb movement at the University of Maryland, College Park, about 40 minutes south of Baltimore. The workshop will take place on October 13 - 15 at the Center for Adult Education and will feature papers by Adriana Belletti, Hans den Besten, Randall Hendrick, Hilda Koopman, Jamal Ouhalla, Ian Roberts, Beatrice Santorini, Esther Torrego, Sten Vikner, Ken Wexler and Edwin Williams; formal commentary will be given by Donna-Jo Napoli, Gert Webelhuth, Stephen Anderson, Peter Coopmans, Sabine Iatridou, Kjarttan Ottosson, Hoskuldur Thrainsson, Amy Weinberg and Tony Kroch. Details from: Department of Linguistics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742. ________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-387 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-388. Tuesday, 6 August 1991. Lines: 51 Subject: Moderators' Message Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tuesday, Aug. 6, 1991 From: Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Subject: Handling conference announcements -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tuesday, Aug. 6, 1991 From: Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Subject: Handling conference announcements In the past, we received a good deal of complaint about the posting of full conference programs, because most were extremely long and of interest only to a subgroup of subscribers. So we started putting the full program on the server and posting only the adjunct information, along with instructions for retrieving the complete program. But, in some cases (e.g. ESCOL), that has resulted in posting merely enigmatic registration forms. So we've decided to try the procedure used on Humanist Net: from now on, we'll put both the complete program and the registration forms on the server and post retrieval instructions with EITHER the first few lines of the program OR a short summary conference announcement. (Organizers are hereby encouraged to submit such announcements, giving title, time, place, and major topics or sessions of the conference.) Please let us know if you have comments or suggestions. Although we've benefited a lot from the suggestions of other net moderators (especially Willard McCarty of Humanist Net), most of our "policies" are being instituted piece by piece, after finding out from experience what DOESN'T work. And, a propos "feedback": John Lawler is proposing an LSA session on "Computers and the Working Linguist," which will offer--among other things--a chance for those of us interested in LINGUIST to discuss what the net could/should be doing. We hope to talk with some of you there. Helen Dry Anthony Aristar ______________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-388 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-389. Tuesday, 6 August 1991. Lines: 231 Subject: The Perfect Passive Continuous Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 05 Aug 91 11:37:10 EST From: Ralf Thiede Subject: English continuous perfect passives 2) Date: Mon, 5 Aug 91 13:40:39 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: English perfect passives 3) Date: Tue, 06 Aug 91 14:21:06 BST From: "(Dr) David Denison" Subject: Linguist vol. 2-383 4) Date: Tue, 06 Aug 91 10:51:41 EST From: Leslie Subject: passive perfect continuous in English -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 05 Aug 91 11:37:10 EST From: Ralf Thiede Subject: English continuous perfect passives In response to Alan Dench (Vol-2-383): Your examples illustrate to me that passivization of continuous perfects is not ungrammatical in English. You do get some very artificial-sound- ing sentences, though, so I think there is a contextual constraint. My guess is that one might want to explore what happens when aspects start accumulating [though I ask you to treat my suggestion below with a sound amount of skepticism]: Charles Beedham observed that "the passive sentence [in English, German and Russian] portrays both the occurrence of an event and the state which arises as a result of that event" (45; qtd. from Andersen 196). Paul Kent Andersen further alluded to his work in progress according to which a close analysis of the various morphemes employed in passive con- structions across languages show "that they can be classified as instan- ces not of a prototypical verbal category passive Voice, but rather of various other prototypical verbal categories such as Valence (i.e. caus- ative), Perfect and Agreement" (193). Suppose now that what we commonly call a passive construction in English contains a perfective aspect, and that aspects can be combined. Then we can construct verb phrases with the following aspects: The car was cleaned. | perfective The car was being cleaned. | continuous + perfective The car had been being cleaned. | perfective + continous + perfective The last combination will accordingly be restricted to contexts in which it is important to convey (in this case) that an event with a result was ongoing in the past but is completed now. Usually, we don't need to be quite that specific and we emphasize either that an event was ongoing or that it is completed. ^^^^^^ ^^ Of course, this all hinges on the presence of a perfective (or similar) aspect in passive that can be combined with other aspects. Discussion is open! Andersen, Paul Kent. "Typological Approaches to the Passives." Rev. of _Passive_and_Voice_, ed. Masayoshi Shibatani. _Journal_of_Linguist- ics_ 26 (1990): 189-202. Beedham, Charles. _The_Passive_Aspect_in_English,_German_and_Russian_. Tuebingen: Gunter Narr, 1982. Ralf Thiede __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Mon, 5 Aug 91 13:40:39 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: English perfect passives In Linguist List: Vol-2-383. Monday, 5 August 1991, (post 4) Alan Dench (Department of Anthropology University of Western Australia A_DENCH@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au) asks about a budding prescriptivist's speculation that >"English does not appear to admit passives in the continuous perfect." In operator grammar (Harris 1982, 1989, 1990, etc.), the -en of the passive and the -en of the perfect both have the same source, something like "a state of". Thus: (1) My car has been cleaned. My car has the state of one cleaning it. (2) I have been here before. I have the state of my being here before. (3) *George Washington has lived here (before). *George Washington has the state of his living here (before). The problem with (3) is pragmatic: you can't attribute a state to one who is dead. (Though you can to his remains: "GW has been in this tomb for years, but they moved him.") The problem with the combination is the underlying pleonasm. Thus, for the examples cited: (4) >My car has been being cleaned all week. My car has the state of its being in a state of one's cleaning it all week. (5) >My car has been getting cleaned all week. My car has the state of its getting a state of one's cleaning it all week. (6) >John has been being naughty since this morning. John has the state of his being naughty since this morning. (7) >"How's the research paper going?" >"Oh, it's being finished." >"Sure! It's been being finished all semester!" It has the state of its being in a state of your finishing it all semester. (8) >"On the instant of recognition, Roger knew that >he had been being followed." . . . that he had the state of being in a state of someone following him. Those that work better in the perfect form seem to me to work similarly better in the unreduced form. (5) may seem less pleonastic than (4) because of the use of "get". In the first example Alan Dench gave, we have a collective to which we are perhaps more uncomfortable attributing a state: (9) >??An unwashed horde had been being given a lecture [by me]. An unwashed horde had the state of their being in a state of my giving them a lecture. Note that some of this uncomfortableness adheres to simpler passives: (10) An unwashed horde had been given a lecture [by me]. An unwashed horde had the state of my giving them a lecture. (11) An unwashed horde was given a lecture [by me]. An unwashed horde was in a state of my giving them a lecture. This is related to the more obviously grandiose oddity of: (12) ??China was visited by me. China was in a state of my visiting it. References: Harris, Zellig S. 1982. _A Grammar of English on Mathematical Principles_. New York: Wiley. ____. 1989. _Language and Information_. New York: Columbia U. Press. ____. 1990. _A theory of language and information : a mathematical approach._ Oxford: Clarendon. __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Tue, 06 Aug 91 14:21:06 BST From: "(Dr) David Denison" Subject: Linguist vol. 2-383 Alan Dench asks about English combinations of perfect + progressive + passive like My car has been being serviced all week (attested by me). Such combinations are possible but clumsy, and grammars disagree about their grammaticality. The crucial combination is progressive + passive. When this first appeared (end of 18th century, early 19th century) it was strictly informal and when finally noticed by the old guard, the subject of scorn and vituperation right through to the end of the 19th century. (I'm talking about sentences like A man was being arrested. which seem quite innocuous now.) I have just completed a book on English Historical Syntax (Longman, 1992), in which the history of these combinations is discussed at some length. So far the earliest attestations I have for perf + prog + passive BE are 1858-9 for satirical references in discussions of English grammar, 1929 for 'real' use. For modal + progressive + passive the dates are respectively 1858-9 and 1915. If anyone has other early attestations I would be very grateful for the references. I also have quite a lot of data on precursors of these combinations - which go back a lot further - and reasons why certain combinations of auxiliaries remained unused long after the individual auxiliaries had become common. Alan Dench also mentions similar combinations with GET rather than BE as auxiliary of the passive. I have examples of perfect HAVE + passive GET going back to 1832 so far, Modal + perfect HAVE + passive GET only to the 1950s, progressive BE + passive GET from 1819. So far I have no examples of modal and/or perfect HAVE + progressive BE + passive GET, i.e. Jim might be getting treated about now Jim has been getting treated by a specialist Jim might have been getting treated by a specialist To me they are indeed perfectly grammatical, though sometimes you need to work at the contextualisation a bit. Has anyone out there got any real attestations, especially from the 19th or early 20th centuries? There are also some interesting combinations with BE (perfect or passive?) + past participle of following verb, in this case GET. Finally, in the OED I found a Berkshire dialect example from 1888: I be got rid o' the doctor, an' I be a-veelin' quite veatish ['healthy'] now. I toyed with the idea that this was a *triple* passive, but I leave you to figure out a more plausible analysis. David Denison (e-mail: d.denison @ uk.ac.man) __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Tue, 06 Aug 91 10:51:41 EST From: Leslie Subject: passive perfect continuous in English I have been teaching a course in English grammar for the last ten years, and ev ery semester, when I discuss the English tense/aspect/voice system, my students are flabbergasted by the passive perfect continuous. They universally reject it (prescriptivists that they are, especially at the beginning). They cannot b e convinced that a sentence like 'My car has been being cleaned all week' (Alan Dench's) or even 'My car has been being repaired all week' (which I find even better) is acceptable to anyone. The sentence 'John has been being naughty' is fine, but notice that this isn't passive. I also tell my students that I thin k the problem of the passive perfect continuous sentences is that they are difficult to process not that they are ungrammatical. __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-389 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-390. Tuesday, 6 August 1991. Lines: 111 Subject: Babbling Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 5 Aug 91 15:40:10 -0500 From: louden@bongo.cc.utexas.edu (mark l louden) Subject: Re: Queries 2) Date: Mon, 5 Aug 91 12:05:58 -1000 From: David Stampe Subject: Re: deaf babies' babbling in sign language 3) Date: Mon, 5 Aug 1991 18:26 MST From: CAROLG@CC.UTAH.EDU Subject: Re: Queries 4) Date: Tue, 06 Aug 91 11:13:00 CDT From: stan kulikowski ii Subject: deaf babbling -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 5 Aug 91 15:40:10 -0500 From: louden@bongo.cc.utexas.edu (mark l louden) Subject: Re: Queries In response to Jane Chandler's query on deaf infant babbling: the reference to the article I have is: Petitto, Laura Ann and Paula F. Marentette. 22 March 1991. "Babbling in the Manual Mode: Evidence for the Ontogeny of Lg." *Science* vol. 251, pp. 1493-1496. Best Wishes, Mark Louden __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Mon, 5 Aug 91 12:05:58 -1000 From: David Stampe Subject: Re: deaf babies' babbling in sign language Jane Chandler asks for more information on a newspaper report that Petitto and Marentette of McGill observed deaf babies babbling in sign language. I have no information on that, but isn't the phrase "babbling in X" (where X is any language, vocal or signed) self-contradictory? Once, at least, the technical term babbling was confined to vocal play which had no apparent intention of communicating or of imitating utterances in the language(s) of the child's environment. An argument for this was that vocal babbling occurs for while even in deaf children, who can hear nothing to imitate. This may or may not be a fact -- I don't know of published observations -- but it was once "common knowledge", cited at least in conversation by Roman Jakobson, Werner Leopold, Eric Lenneberg, and others knowledgeable about language development. Have usage or facts changed so that it now makes sense to speak of "babbling in X"? David Stampe , Dept. of Linguistics, Univ. of Hawaii/Manoa, Honolulu HI 96822 __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Mon, 5 Aug 1991 18:26 MST From: CAROLG@CC.UTAH.EDU Subject: Re: Queries For Jane Chandler on deaf babies' babbling: Petitto, Laura Ann and Paula F. Marentette, 'Babbling in the Manual Mode: Evidence for the Ontogeny of Language', in Science, Vol. 251, 22 March 1991. Carol Georgopoulos __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Tue, 06 Aug 91 11:13:00 CDT From: stan kulikowski ii Subject: deaf babbling jane chandler, yes, i read the article about deaf children babbling. it was in SCIENCE, probably within the last 2 months. the cover shows a hand superimposed in three positions-- an 'f' shape nodding forward, i believe. the point of the article was the documentation that deaf babbling includes hand shapes which do not have adult sign-equivalents. the kids are sampling a wider range of possible expressions which eventually get tuned into those which the matrix society uses. hence the argument that developing language skills are generic brain functions, not tied to developing vocal musculature nor auditory input nor imitating adult communication. let me know if you have trouble finding the exact issue, i can dig through my back issues at home and give you more exact reference. stan . stankuli@UWF.bitnet === | | close your eyes, my darling, or three of them at least --- -- old venusian lullaby __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-390 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-392. Friday, 9 August 1991. Lines: 92 Subject: Responses: Standard Languages, Trees Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 5 Aug 91 10:30:48 CDT From: nm1@Ra.MsState.Edu (Natalie Maynor) Subject: Re: Responses 2) Date: 6 AUG 1991 18:45:13 JST From: Subject: RE: standard language. 3) Date: Mon, 5 Aug 91 11:40:19 -0700 From: Bill Poser Subject: tree drawing and Postscript -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 5 Aug 91 10:30:48 CDT From: nm1@Ra.MsState.Edu (Natalie Maynor) Subject: Re: Responses I don't think an agreed-upon definition of "standard" (as in SAE) exists. One way to define it is a dialect based on the language used by the people in power in a particular country. That's pretty close to Vicki Fromkin's definition ("the dominant or prestige dialect"). I also like her use of the word "almost" in describing SAE as "a dialect of English that many Americans almost speak." But then I like most things about Fromkin and Rodman's -An Introduction to Language- -- which is why I use it when teaching Intro to Linguistics. For a somewhat extreme (in my opinion) but interesting discussion of "standard English," see Tony Crowley's -Standard English and the Politics of Language- (U of Illinois Press, 1989). Although I found some of the historical discussion tedious (because it was repetitious -- I kept thinking that the horse was already dead), the last chapter was quite interesting in its attacks on current (i.e., 1980s) attitudes in England. --Natalie (nm1@ra.msstate.edu) __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: 6 AUG 1991 18:45:13 JST From: Subject: RE: standard language. There was a provocative comment posted 7May (available from UNIWA as LgBan-Flemish) on whether there could be a std Flemish without some overt defining grammar or dictionary. Perhaps the notion 'standard language' is a classical *stereotype* combining broad(est) 1: comprehensibility, 2: acceptance as superior, 3: compatability with written language, 4: use in broadcast media & in cross-dialectal situations, 5: a definition &/or an academy, & maybe others? Any of these, but not all of them, can be lacking, & every one of them has problems if U take it as criterial. Best of luck, & please tell us your answer. ...Ron Hofmann __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Mon, 5 Aug 91 11:40:19 -0700 From: Bill Poser Subject: tree drawing and Postscript Andrew Barss says he doesn't know what the BoundingBox comment in Postscript files is for, so let me explain. This comment consists of the lower left x, lower left y, upper right x and upper right y coordinates of a box surrounding the image that the Postscript code will draw. The comment is not Postscript code, but is for the benefit of postprocessors that need to figure out how big the image is so that they can position it properly. It is required in standard-conforming Postscript code, and is essential if you want to embed Postscript in other documents. The coordinates are required by the language standard to be integers, so CorelDraw has a bug. A lot of PC and Mac drawing programs fail to produce standard-conforming Postscript, perhaps because of the tendancy toward vertical integration. This is something to watch out for if you want to embed one program's output in another's. I should add that the BoundingBox comment is required in Postscript intended to be embedded in other documents. Bill __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-392 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-393. Friday, 9 August 1991. Lines: 64 Subject: Military Funding of Linguistic Projects Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 05 Aug 91 16:21:12 EDT From: "Bruce Fraser" Subject: Military Money 2) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 91 17:15:55 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Re: Military Uses of Text and speech -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 05 Aug 91 16:21:12 EDT From: "Bruce Fraser" Subject: Military Money Back during the 1960/70s, the military was willing to give money to linguists to have them worry about organization of data bases, natural language retrieval systems, content analysis, command and control systems, and the like. As far as I know, linguists were permitted to work on their research and publish it as they wished and the military used whatever the results they could as best they could. Under these conditions, most linguists found nothing untoward about accepting military money: it was open, the results were available to all, and the work was scholarly. The attitude then was that the results might be used in areas not anticipated by the researchers, but that there was no responsibility to guard against this. I haven't followed military funding in the past 10 years, but I suspect the situation hasn't changed. There is a certain irony in the fact that the success of the MIT Linguistics Department in the early years--both research funding and graduate student support in and out of MIT--was directly related to military funding. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 91 17:15:55 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Re: Military Uses of Text and speech In re Koenraad de Smedt's perplexity as to why DARPA should be funding research of no obvious military value: Such support is not unprecedented. In the 1950's and early 60's, both the Navy and the Air Force supported a lot of basic research -- the latter being the underwriter, for example, of the UCLA Syntax Project that was ultimately written up as Partee, Schachter and Stockwell's The Major Syntactic Structuresw of English. One theory as to why these agencies were supporting research of no immediate value to them has it that their main purpose was to try to buy the goodwill of the scientific community. If that was indeed their purpose, the Vietnam experience would suggest that they didn't succeed. Michael Kac __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-393 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-394. Friday, 9 August 1991. Lines: 142 Subject: Responses: Gender, Passive Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: 06 Aug 91 11:42:38 EDT From: Ron Hofmann <71721.2655%CompuServe.COM@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU> Subject: Sex & Gender, & Register 2) Date: Wed, 07 Aug 91 10:00:00 EDT From: Geoffrey Russom Subject: Re: The Perfect Passive Continuous -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: 06 Aug 91 11:42:38 EDT From: Ron Hofmann <71721.2655%CompuServe.COM@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU> Subject: Sex & Gender, & Register Thank all for the comments on gender & sex. Although it is an innately interesting topic, the responses (vols 356 & 358) made me feel like I have been sleeping on an ant-hole & only now awoke; the silly computer here swallowed vol 358, & it raised some serious questions. I guess I betrayed my innocence by not knowing that 'gender' is used as Amy did in anthropology & socio-linguistics. I still have problems, however, that I'll get to shortly. And Michael C's comment rings true; sex in the popular language refers to intercourse, unless it is on an application or an income-tax form. I'll be more careful, at least when talking to students, but need we follow popular usage in technical discussions? Celso considers whether 'he' might be marked masculine, but in linguistic terms, I have trouble with this. "Will anyone who wants a baby please raise his hand?" does not (yet) preclude women from raising their hands, does it? But a man would be something else to raise his hand if 'his' were replaced by 'her'. I conclude that we still use the masculine pronouns for unspecified sex (ie groups of mixed sex & people whose sex is not known), though I admit that the relaxed rendition of this question would have 'anybody' & 'your' or 'their', suggesting an avoidance of masculine pronouns for indeterminant sex. We seem to be moving toward a state where 'he' is also marked for sex, but are we there yet? For most European languages, where grammatical gender is an everpresent fact of speaking, I find it hard even to try to use 'gender' for 'sex'; Fr"le/les professeur(s)" are nothing more or less than masculine (gender) when their referents are of mixed or unknown sex, or even female. The terminology used by Amy works fine for English, Chinese & Japanese, but what do les sociolinguistes on the continent do? Or their American counterparts when discussing those social structures? Celso objected to my (admittedly ad-hoc) labelling 2 gross variants of transvestite speech as masculine & feminine. We can expect (as external observers & linguists) that a constructed feminine style will probably miss minor points of true feminine speech, & may well include some markers of transvestism as well. Yet as labels for 2 grossly distinct registers [see below] of a transvestite, masculine/feminine seem more apt. There is, of course, no implication that the world is neatly divided into masculine & feminine speech, or even that there is any feature that all women (or men) share. Both appear obviously false. Simply that a particular person may have 2 registers aptly called their masculine & feminine registers. on 'register' Jim Willce (misspelled in retaliation), & Amy too, seem to suggest that because a human being can imitate a style of speech (often used in derision, in quoting or play-acting what the person might say), that it is a register. Doesn't that render the term almost useless? It appears to make every conceivable variation of language a register. I can imitate a nobleman, or even JF Kennedy's remark about what you can do for your country, & even in my *poor* rendition of his dialect, it carries better. Or if I imitate (& exaggerate) the ups & downs of my wife's angry intonations, that is a register? There is no doubt that human beings can imitate more or less well what they hear, even monkey cries, but I had assumed that a register was more than an imitation. Actually, I sympathesize with M-L Cosgrave's problem; sex doesn't determine the way one talks, but along with Azevedo, I would prefer not to call these register differences. His[sex-unmarked] expressions of 'male talk/female talk' are nice, but wouldn't it be better to get away from associations with sex which are only typical at best? Amy seems to be heading in that happy direction, isolating solidarity/dominance distinctions (which are usually but not always associated with female/male); I only objected to her use of 'gender', which she herself messed up (corrected at the end of vol 2-339.2). Alice Freed is also freeing herself of focus on sex (or "gender") & turning to the differences themselves. >From my observations of voice qualities in Japan, Jim, the 'coarse' voice quality that Ochs noted correlates with incomplete closure of consonants & is *not* common among professional classes, except if drunk or adolescent: it looks like a mark of masculinity. Moreover, there are several distinct feminine voice qualities, appropriate to different stations in life (bar-hostess, sales-clerk/telephone operator, mother, pre-marriage, schoolgirl, & maybe more -- no substitutions allowed without considerable wonderment). The bar-hostess usually has a throaty husky quality, not too different from Ochs's male voice, & because it seems to stay even in the day-time, I hesitate to call it a register. No doubt most Jp men can make a stab at imitating most of these, but I rather doubt that many men could make a convincing rendition of even one of them. Some can, especially the modern Japanese version of the story- teller, as it is his trade. In contrast, a housewife does have (at least) 2 clear registers, mother & formal (switched to instaneously, unconsciously on picking up a ringing telephone), complete with different voice qualities. If the term register has been devalued to mean 'a variation from one's "usual" style of speaking' (however one might try to define or to identify 'usual'), could you tell me what term I should be using for 'a distinct & stable style of speech used regularly by an individual (or group) on appropriate occasions'? ...Ron Hofmann Ab0665@JpnKnzw1.Bitnet __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Wed, 07 Aug 91 10:00:00 EDT From: Geoffrey Russom Subject: Re: The Perfect Passive Continuous I seem to have a stylistic constraint against two forms of the same "be" root in phrases like "the car had been being cleaned." On the other hand, "the car had been getting cleaned" seems perfectly felicitous to me. "The car was being cleaned" seems just fine, perhaps because "was" and "being" use different roots. Word choice doesn't seem to depend on aspectual features of "get" passives as opposed to "be" passives -- in fact, "get" passives are not too natural with cars, so the fact that I prefer "get" in the sentence above must have more to do with elegant variation. The least problematic constructions are of course those like "I had been getting injured on the ski slopes for years," where my irresponsible hot-dogging is implicated. -- Rick Russom __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-394 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-395. Saturday, 10 August 1991. Lines: 182 Subject: Queries (Part 1) Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 1991 11:31:36 +0800 (SST) From: A_DENCH@FENNEL.CC.UWA.OZ.AU Subject: Martuthunira Demonstratives --- Help? 2) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 91 17:13:09 PDT From: tdavis@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Tony Davis) Subject: Hausa informant wanted -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 1991 11:31:36 +0800 (SST) From: A_DENCH@FENNEL.CC.UWA.OZ.AU Subject: Martuthunira Demonstratives --- Help? Martuthunira Definite Demonstratives I am wrestling with a labelling problem in the description of the demonstrative system in Martuthunira, an Australian language. Demonstratives come in a number of flavours. The basic system is as follows. 1. There is a distinction between proximal (here) and distal (there) forms. 2. There is a distinction between adnominal (this/that) and adverbial (here/there) forms. Within these two categories there is some elaboration. 3. Adnominal forms either 'modify' a head nominal in an NP (there is no formal distinction between adjective and noun in this language - whether or not there's a semantic difference is a question of faith), or may be heads themselves. There is no class of third person pronouns (though there is an old plural third person pronoun which demands set identity between itself and some plural antecedent). Adnominal demonstratives inflect for case and number. 4. There are three different adnominal demonstrative classes. The plain vanilla demonstratives function like either 3rd pronouns or definite articles. 5. There are special 'topic-tracking' subject and object forms. The speaker selects some participant as central to the narrative and marks this by using the 'topic-tracking' forms. The selected participant may switch, either indicated by the use of a proximal (ie. foregrounding presentative) demonstrative or simply by the selection of 'topic-tracking' forms for a different participant. 6. There is another demonstrative which I have (tentatively) labelled 'definite demonstrative' and which is continuing to give me headaches. The *plain* demonstrative indicates that a referent fulfilling a description, or the syntactic role of the NP in which the form occurs, may be found by the addressee. The *topic- tracking* form adds the extra information that this referent is "the thing that the speaker is talking about". The *definite* demonstrative indicates the existence of a 'particular' referent which can be found in either the immediate linguistic context or in the immediate extra-linguistic context. In comparison with the other two demonstrative types, it reduces the set of possible demonstrative antecedents yet further. Some examples (by English gloss - for your protection) are: (the offending forms are indicated thus: *this/that*) a. You take *this* spear [offering it] for an emu. b. That [hill] saved not just a few people. Some poor fellows used to go frightened being chased by some other mob, frightened of getting stabbed, and climb *that* [the hill], and sit on top. c. The two fellows with us still aren't listening to us talking here. What are they thinking? That they're being abused? We won't insult *this-DUAL* [ie. them]. 7. The most commonly occurring form of the 'definite demonstrative' is the genitive distal form which bears a strong resemblance to the Latin possessive adjective suus, suum, "his own". The antecedent must be found in the immediate linguistic context and is most often an argument (typically subject) of the same clause. The following examples illustrate: d. That man(i) is waiting for *his(i)* clothes to dry. e. He(i) stayed for a while, got homesick. Then thought about returning to *his(i)* camp. f. My big brother(i) didn't eat any meat, too full. So I ate *his(i)* meat. g. The two of us(i) [1DLexclusive pronoun] sat side by side, *his(i)* children were shouting, keeping all of us awake. h. I chased that kangaroo(i). *Its(i)* little one was speared by the other man. i. They(i) didn't know that those(j) young men keeping *those things of theirs(j)* were going to kill them(k). In (d) and (e) the genitive demonstrative is part of a non-subject NP and the antecedent is the subject of the same clause. In (f) however, the 1sg subject of the clause is not a possible antecedent of the third person genitive and here the antecedent is the subject of the preceding clause. In (g) the genitive is part of the subject NP and the antecedent is the third person included within the reference set of the first person exclusive pronoun subject of the preceding clause. In (h), the 1sg subject of the preceding clause is not a possible antecedent and the object of that clause is the antecedent. In (i) the demonstrative is embedded within an adnominal (proprietive) modifier in a complex NP and the antecedent is the head of that NP. The following examples show the difficulty in writing any strict rule for seeking the antecedent: (j) That man(i) hit my dog. I never used to hit *his(i)* (k) That child was sneaking up on a parrot(i). *Its(i)* [nest hole] is in the top of the tree. For the moment my problem is not so much in understanding the nature of this beast as in finding a label for it. Much as they resemble the Latin suus, I hesitate to call these things reflexive - they are not. First, there is a separate reflexive nominal (glossed simply as "self"). Second, these demonstratives are not bound in their governing domain. But I would be interested in comments and suggestions. And in case anyone is tempted to ask, "Can you say ...", How would you say, ...", I should point out that my intuitions for this language are not that well developed, and the last fluent speaker is 80 years old and somewhere uncontactable in the outback of Western Australia. Alan Dench Department of Anthropology University of Western Australia Nedlands, WA 6009 A_DENCH@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 91 17:13:09 PDT From: tdavis@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Tony Davis) Subject: Hausa informant wanted I'm looking for a native speaker of Hausa, prefereably from the Kano area but others would be OK, who could serve as an informant. I have a fairly small number of questions that could probably be answered via e-mail. If you know of anyone who could help, please contact me at tdavis@csli.stanford.edu. Thanks, Tony Davis __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-395 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-396. Saturday, 10 August 1991. Lines: 112 Subject: Queries (Part 2) Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 1991 From: A_DENCH@FENNEL.CC.UWA.OZ.AU Subject: Latin Reflexives (?) 2) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 1991 14:13:45 +0200 From: fuchs@ifi.unizh.ch Subject: NL as specification language 3) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 91 17:12:11 CST From: txsil!huttar@dallas@utafll.uta.edu Subject: language & dialect -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 1991 From: A_DENCH@FENNEL.CC.UWA.OZ.AU Subject: Latin Reflexives (?) Latin Reflexives (?) In attempting to discover species of anaphor related to that in Martuthunira, an Australian language (see separate posting - if brave), I stumbled across an interesting example of the Latin reflexive possessive adjective 'suus' "his own": Ariovistus ad Caesarem legatos mittit uti ex suis (=Caesaris) aliquem ad se (=Ariovistum) mitteret "Ariovistus sent ambassadors to Caesar to ask that Caesar should send some one of his (Caesar's) men to him (Ariovitstus)." -- Mountford, J. (ed) (1938) Bradley's Arnold Latin Prose Composition. Paragraph 350. (And, incidentally, who is the pro in the bottom level clause? How do we know it's Caesar?) I approached a couple of classics scholars (who are not also linguists) and they were quite happy with the use of *se* in the example (the reflexive which here refers back to Ariovistus, the subject of some preceding clause), but were intrigued by the possessive *suis* referring back to a non-subject. I'm more interested (though having failed Latin at school) in the general properties of these so-called reflexives. As far as I can see, neither *se* or *suis* are anaphors under principle A of GB binding theory (given that they can generally find an antecedent outside their own (even finite) clause). My reading of orthodox Latin grammar suggests they both be "subjective", though perhaps not "nuclear" (in Bresnan's typology which also includes "logophoric" - eg. Icelandic long distance reflexive sig). I imagine someone(s) must have checked this out before. Any comments? Alan Dench Department of Linguistics University of Western Australia Nedlands, WA 6009 A_DENCH@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 1991 14:13:45 +0200 From: fuchs@ifi.unizh.ch Subject: NL as specification language 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 __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 91 17:12:11 CST From: txsil!huttar@dallas@utafll.uta.edu Subject: language & dialect Who first said when and where the oft-repeated "A language is a dialect with its own army and navy."? Thanks. George Huttar (huttar@txsil.sil.org) __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-396 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-397. Saturday, 10 August 1991. Lines: 84 Subject: Conferences Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 9 Aug 91 15:37:01 +1000 From: mdr412%coombs.anu.edu.au@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Malcolm Ross) Subject: Third International Conference on Papuan Linguistics 2) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 91 16:51:54 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Language in Prehistory at the 15th International Congress of Linguists -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 9 Aug 91 15:37:01 +1000 From: mdr412%coombs.anu.edu.au@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Malcolm Ross) Subject: Third International Conference on Papuan Linguistics The THIRD INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON PAPUAN LINGUISTICS will be held 15-18 September 1992 in Madang, Papua New Guinea. The tentative venue is the Divine Word Institute. PRELIMINARY CALL FOR PAPERS Papers are solicited dealing with any aspect of Papuan languages including (but not limited to): * Syntax * Semantics/Pragmatics * Phonology * Historical development/Reconstruction * Sociolinguistics/Language use * Papuan-based pidgins. The term 'Papuan languages' refers to the non-Austronesian languages of eastern Indonesia (Timor, Alor, Pantar, Halmahera, Irian Jaya), Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. Abstracts should be no longer than one page and should not include the author's name or institution. These should be included instead in a cover letter or on a card. All abstracts, as well as requests for further information, should be sent to: Carl Whitehead Third International Conference on Papuan Linguistics P.O. Box 418 Ukarumpa via Lae Papua New Guinea. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 91 16:51:54 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Language in Prehistory at the 15th International Congress of Linguists During the Congress (Quebec City, AUgust 9-14, 1992) there will be a panel on Language in Prehistory. Because of time constraints no more than four individual papers will given, to be followed by an hour of discussion. Those interested in participating in either part of the panel should contact me immediately, by email. Please note that the 2nd circular, which some of you may have, lists my affiliation incorrectly: I am in the Dept. of Computer Science, not of Linguistics, at Wayne SU, Detroit, MI 48202. Also, the deadline for abstracts to the plenary session is October 1, and I will forward any abstracts I receive to the organizers thereof if I cannot accept them for the panel. I would hope that this would be an opportunity to thrash out and settle some of the issues concerning the methodology and results of comparative linguistics. __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-397 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-398. Saturday, 10 August 1991. Lines: 156 Subject: Manual Babbling: A Response from Petitto Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 09 Aug 91 16:27:09 EDT From: INLO000 Subject: Manual Babbling -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 09 Aug 91 16:27:09 EDT From: INLO000 Subject: Manual Babbling To: Linguist Members Several requests for further information about a recent study of manual babbling have been forwarded to me. The reference is... Petitto, L.A. and Marentette, P.F. (1991) Babbling in the manual mode: Evidence for the ontogeny of language. Science, vol 251, pp. 1493-1496. (1) Re: Babbling in X, where X is any language. As can be seen from the title, this study is not about babbling IN any signed language, per se. As with spoken languages, infants (esp. in the early period) do not babble in specific signed languages. (2) Re: Vocal babbling in deaf children. Studies of the vocal productions of profoundly deaf infants have demonstrated that previous researchers' claims (e.g., Lenneberg) about the existence of vocal babbling in deaf infants were unfounded. While I will limit my comments here to syllabic babbling (definition below), my comments are true of the other vocalizations that are produced by deaf infants; that is, there are qualitative differences between hearing and profoundly deaf infants' vocalizations throughout early development. Although profoundly deaf infants may occasionally produce a well-formed syllabic vocalization, these forms are (1) infrequent relative to their other vocalizations, and (2) occur in unsystematic ways. Indeed, only those deaf children who can benefit from the use of hearing aids (i.e., they have some hearing) will produce syllabic babbling, but, here, too, other significant developmental anomalies characterize their babbling due to the absence of audition (e.g., Oller). However, deaf infants acquiring a natural signed language from birth, freely produce manual babbling on the identical time course and sequence observed for vocal babbling. (Both hearing infants acquiring a signed language, and bilingual hearing infants acquiring a spoken and a signed language, also achieve all linguistic milestones (e.g., babbling, first words, first combinations) within the same time period commonly observed in human language acquisition (see Petitto & Marentette for all relevant references.) Interestingly, hearing infants will occasionally produce well-formed syllabic manual babbling. As with deaf infants' vocal babbling, the hearing infants' manual babbling is (i) infrequent relative to their other manual productions, and (ii) occurs in unsystematic ways. In the Petitto & Marentette paper I offer an explanation for the existence of this phenomenon in hearing and deaf infants. Below is my response to another question that I received from a member of Linguist; he suggested that my answer may be of interest to other members of Linguist. Re: What do people NOW call what used to be called BABBLING? There is still controversy over definitions, per se. However, I think there would be general agreement regarding the following very ROUGH characterization: Babbling is the general term used to refer to the class of meaningless, but linguistically-related vocal (or manual) productions by children, which typically occurs both prior to and during early language development (more below). There is still controversy over whether children's early babbling inventories comprise a universal set of phonetic forms and controversy over WHY this may/may not be the case; there is still controversy over whether babbling is continuous with later later development, and the extent to which babbling is language-specific. My own studies of vocal and manual babbling support the following conclusions: babbling is a maturationally controlled, specifically-linguistic phenomenon. As in the literature, the single term babbling is used to refer to the following different, but related phenomena over time (the following is not intended to reflect strict stages, per se): In the early months, depending upon the modality of the language input, infants (4-7 months) produce a restricted set of phonetic forms (vocally, if exposed to spoken languages and manually if exposed to signed languages); the forms of infants acquiring spoken languages appear to be drawn from the set of possible sounds found in spoken languages and are typically not language-specific; the identical phenomenon is observed in children (hearing or deaf) who are acquiring signed languages. As such, the initial inventory of forms common to infants' acquiring spoken languages and infants acquiring signed languages (respectively) can be overlapping, although infants do exhibit individual form preferences. Around 7-9 months, infants begin the production of syllabic (reduplicated or canonical) babbling (e.g., Oller), for example, dadada, bababa. The child is still not producing actual words in her target language at this time; nonetheless, these forms obey the prosodic and phonological lawfulness (e.g., Stampe) of human Language. Syllabic (vocal or signed) babbling is characterized by (1) use of a reduced subset of possible sounds (phonetic units) found in language, (ii) syllabic organization (well-formed consonant-vowel clusters), and (iii) use without apparent meaning or reference; there are several other properties (e.g., see Petitto & Marentette for relevant references and other properties). Around ages 9-12 months, I have observed (like de Boysen-Bardies) that aspects of the child's babbling forms can take on language-specific characteristics, a phenomenon that I have observed in four different languages (2 spoken, 2 signed). Moreover, there is a continuity of phonetic form and syllabic type within an individual child's syllabic babbling and their first words. Around 12-14 months (and beyond in some children), hearing and deaf children produce jargon babbling (meaningless babbling sequences that maintain the timing, rhythm and duration of spoken and signed sentences, respectively). Jargon babbling can and typically does continue even during hearing and deaf children's production of first words and signs (respectively). Representational structures: I believe only one explanation of human language ontogeny fully accounts for these and other similarities in the time course and content of signed and spoken language acquisition: Humans are born with a predisposition to discover particular sized units with particular distributional patterns in the input, guided by innately-specified structural constraints. At birth, this nascent structure-seeking capacity is sensitive to the patterned organization of natural language phonology common to all world languages, be they spoken or signed (e.g., rhythmic, temporal, and hierarchical organization) and is particularly sensitive to structures in the input that correspond to the size and distributional patterns of the syllable in spoken and signed languages. --This is a mouthful. For relevant references and further explication, see Petitto, in press, and Petitto & Marentette, 1991. *** I'd be happy to send people reprints. Just send me your address. Laura Ann Petitto __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-398 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-399. Sunday, 11 August 1991. Lines: 96 Subject: Responses: Babbling Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 91 12:11 BST From: John Coleman Subject: RE: Babbling 2) Date: Tue, 6 Aug 1991 20:33 EST From: Fan mail from some flounder? Subject: Re: Babbling 3) Date: Wed, 07 Aug 91 08:41 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: Babbling 4) From: William McKellin Subject: Re: Manual Babbling: A Response from Petitto Date: Sun, 11 Aug 91 0:26:45 PDT -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 91 12:11 BST From: John Coleman Subject: RE: Babbling David Stampe asks: >Have usage or facts changed so that it now makes sense to speak of "babbling in X"? His question arises I think from a confusion about the term "sign language", which is used with several different meanings e.g. "the particular sign language spoken where I live", "sign language(s) in general", or (most relevant) to the babbling issue "the sign MODALITY", i.e. sign as opposed to speech or writing. So with this third sense it makes as much sense to say "babbling in sign language" as "babbling in the vocal modality" or (perish the thought, should it ever happen) "babbling in writing" (!). --- John Coleman __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Tue, 6 Aug 1991 20:33 EST From: Fan mail from some flounder? Subject: Re: Babbling David Stampe's point (that babbling in X, where X is a language, is a contradiction in terms) is well taken. However, I think the main point of Petitto's argument is that X is not a language but a modality, in which case gestural babbling would be no more a contradiction than vocal babbling. Susan Fischer __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Wed, 07 Aug 91 08:41 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: Babbling to David Stampe: See the Science article -- important point is that deaf children's gestures when exposed to sign immediately are qualitatively different from hearing children's, and are non-random, showing the linguistic elements. V ___________________________________________________________________ 4) From: William McKellin Subject: Re: Manual Babbling: A Response from Petitto Date: Sun, 11 Aug 91 0:26:45 PDT Has anyone looked at babbling in deaf-blind children? I would like a re-print of the article, but I couldn't make out the return address. Prof. Bill McKellin mcke@unixg.ubc.ca Department of Anthropology and Sociology University of British Columbia Vancouver, B.C. V6T 1Z1 __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-399 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-400. Sunday, 11 August 1991. Lines: 76 Subject: Linguistic Data Consortium Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) From: John.M.Lawler@um.cc.umich.edu Date: Thu, 8 Aug 91 12:50:24 EDT Subject: Linguistics Data Consortium -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) From: John.M.Lawler@um.cc.umich.edu Date: Thu, 8 Aug 91 12:50:24 EDT Subject: Linguistics Data Consortium Dear Colleagues, I have been following the discussion of the establishment of the Linguistic Data Consortium (Linguist Vol 2, #367, et seq) with considerable interest, and today I managed to talk to Mr. Charles Wayne (clwayne@darpa.mil), who is administering the project for DARPA. The most important thing I learned is that the proposed consortium is *NOT* intending to set up a server for (restricted) net access. This was the automatic inference that everybody (including me) drew from the initial announcement. The fact that DARPA is responsible for establishing and maintaining the Internet, which academics use daily and would feel lost without, led automatically to this assumption, and thence to considerable confusion and furor with regard to the restricted access to the data that was contained in the announcement, and even some speculation about military applications of linguistics. No, what they have in mind is rather different: * THE CONSORTIUM PROPOSES TO DISTRIBUTE ALL ITS DATA ON CD-ROM * ^^ ^^^ In my estimation, this puts a completely different construction on the enterprise. Rather than setting up a database and then restricting access to it (which seems to have heated at least some linguists' temperaments to the flash point), the proposed Consortium would be in the position of a software data publisher, putting out annual disk sets. Institutions could subscribe to these, rather like they already do with ERIC or Census data, and the disks could be used by the subscribing institution at their discretion; the model they have in mind is obviously library access. Since the Consortium would be engaged in physical distribution of data, the usual copyright restrictions would apply. You aren't allowed to copy and distribute software freely, after all, and applying this restriction to the Consortium data should be straightforward and uncontroversial. The subscription price would have to be set by the governing board, which has yet to be established, but the figures they're tossing around are between $1000 and $3000 annually, to cover *ALL* disks with annual updates. This price is certainly within the range of any university, and some departments; indeed, it's a great bargain. I hope this information may help clear up some of the confusion that has surrounded this issue on various news groups. There's a great deal more to be decided, and lots of administrative issues, but I thought I'd better get this out on the nets fast, to focus discussion on the real issues. +--------------------------------------------------------------+ | John Lawler Chair, Committee on Communication | | Linguistics Program and Information Technology | | University of Michigan Linguistic Society of America | | Ann Arbor MI 48109-1285 (313) 662-2149/H 763-9177/W | +--------------------------------------------------------------+ | jlawler@um.cc.umich.edu userll3n@umichub.bitnet | +--------------------------------------------------------------+ __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-400