________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-401. Sunday, 11 August 1991. Lines: 88 Subject: Responses: gender, reflexives, military spending Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 09 Aug 91 17:20:57 CDT From: Barbara Johnstone Subject: Pronouns and gender 2) From: Pesetsk@ATHENA.MIT.EDU Subject: Re: Latin Reflexives Date: Sun, 11 Aug 91 11:59:05 EDT 3) Date: Fri, 9 Aug 91 11:06:27 PDT From: marks%neuro.usc.edu%usc.edu@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Mark Seidenberg) Subject: Ironies of Military Funding -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 09 Aug 91 17:20:57 CDT From: Barbara Johnstone Subject: Pronouns and gender There's no question that "he" is marked for maleness: "He invited me to dinner" refers to a man, not to a woman. This fact about the meaning of "he" carries over into supposedly generic uses. There is lots of evidence for this. The first discussion of this, and still one of the most compelling, is Robin Lakoff, 1975, Language and Women's Place (Harper and Row). On another use of a gender-marked pronoun which people sometimes think is so idiomatic as to be meaningless: A recent New Yorker cartoon has a car salesman showing a sporty model to a women. He says, "You'll love how he handles." __________________________________________________________________________ 2) From: Pesetsk@ATHENA.MIT.EDU Subject: Re: Latin Reflexives Date: Sun, 11 Aug 91 11:59:05 EDT In reply to A_DENCH@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au's interesting Latin example: 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)." as far as I can tell 'suis' poses no problems as long as the subject of 'mitteret' is the antecedent of 'suis', i.e. pro bound by 'Caesar'. It is locally bound by the subject of its clause. 'Se' is apparently functioning as a long-distance reflexive bound by the subject of the higher clause, 'Ariovistus'. As Dench notes, Long Distance anaphora of this sort does not fall under Principle A of LGB's Binding Theory, but it has been a subject of intensive investigation. Among the many interesting places to look, I'd include Lars Hellan's book 'Anaphora in Norwegian and the Theory of Grammar' (Foris) and recent joint work by Eric Reuland Tanya Reinhart, which may by now have come out in a volume on LD anaphora edited by Reuland and Koster. -David Pesetsky __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Fri, 9 Aug 91 11:06:27 PDT From: marks%neuro.usc.edu%usc.edu@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Mark Seidenberg) Subject: Ironies of Military Funding I think it should be pointed out that the packet-switching technology that makes e-mail possible was developed as part of a DARPA project in the 60s. That makes this list an unintended application of military-funded research, no? Mark Seidenberg __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-401 __________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-402. Sunday, 11 August 1991. Lines: 75 Subject: FYI: Job, Cognitive Lx Association Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 1991 03:47:53 GMT From: jhs@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Jane Simpson) Subject: Phonology job in Australia 2) Date: Wed, 07 Aug 91 15:12:26 +0200 From: "GEERAERTS DIRK, Beeken Jeannine" Subject: Cognitive Linguistics Association -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 1991 03:47:53 GMT From: jhs@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Jane Simpson) Subject: Phonology job in Australia Lecturer (tenure-track) Department of Linguistics, University of Sydney Reference No. 31/03 The appointee will be expected to teach at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels and provide primary supervision for students undertaking research degrees in the field of phonology. A PhD is essential. Preference may en to applicants with a further specialisation in Asian, Australian, African or Pacific area languages. For further information contact Professor W.A. Foley on (02)692-4348. Salary: A$33,163 - $43,096 per annum (currently under review) Closing date: 30 September 1991 Applications (quoting reference number 31/03) to: Staff Office KO7, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, AUSTRALIA _______________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Wed, 07 Aug 91 15:12:26 +0200 From: "GEERAERTS DIRK, Beeken Jeannine" Subject: Cognitive Linguistics Association The INTERNATIONAL COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS ASSOCIATION (ICLA) is devoted to the stimulation of research and the dissemination of knowledge in the field of Cognitive Linguistics. Its activities include the circulation of a newsletter, the compilation of a bibliography, and the organization of conferences. The membership fee includes a subscription to the journal 'Cognitive Linguistics'. You may enter your application for membership by writing to Johan Vanparys Facult{s Universitaires Notre Dame de la Paix rue de Bruxelles 61 B-5000 Namur Belgium (E-mail: JVANPARYS at CC.FUNDNP.AC.BE) stating your name, address, and e-mail address, and the intended membership status (regular/supporting/sponsoring/student member). Membership dues for 1991 are: regular members: US $ 55 (DM 80) supporting members: US $ 70 (DM 100) sponsoring members: US $ 80 (DM 120) student members: US $ 25 (DM 35). Further information may be obtained from Johan Vanparys, from George Lakoff (lakoff at cogsci.berkeley.edu), who is currently President of ICLA, or from Dirk Geeraerts (ffaab01 at blekul11.earn), who is editor-in-chief of the journal 'Cognitive Linguistics'. _______________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-402 ___________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-403. Monday, 12 August 1991. Lines: 99 Subject: Responses: reflexives, standard language, dialect Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 11 Aug 91 15:34:06 -0700 From: ervin-tr@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Susan Ervin-Tripp) Subject: Re: Responses: Standard Languages, Trees 2) Date: Sun, 11 Aug 91 09:55:19 EDT From: Geoffrey Russom Subject: Re: Queries (Part 2) 3) Date: Sun, 11 Aug 91 01:03:29 -0400 From: Ellen Prince Subject: Language and dialect 4) Date: Mon, 12 Aug 91 13:23 GMT From: "MARTIN EVERAERT, LINGUISTICS DEPT. UNIVERSITY OF UTRECHT" Subject: RE:Latin reflexives (vol 2-396) -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 11 Aug 91 15:34:06 -0700 From: ervin-tr@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Susan Ervin-Tripp) Subject: Re: Responses: Standard Languages, Trees It is not correct to identify political power with prestige of language variety. An article by Laura Nader on Arabic in Fishman's sociolinguistics reader a few decades back discusses this issue, as does more recent work of Trudgill. A definition of standard should not pre-suppose this identity. Susan Ervin-Tripp __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Sun, 11 Aug 91 09:55:19 EDT From: Geoffrey Russom Subject: Re: Queries (Part 2) With regard to a language being a dialect with its own army and navy: when I first heard this, about 20 years ago, it was attributed to Paul Kiparsky by a student. Somehow, though, I suspect Kiparsky could have got it from Roman Jakobson, whose quips have received pretty wide currency (like his response to the suggestion that Harvard's linguistics department should hire Vladimir Nabokov as a linguist: "I have nothing against elephants, but I wouldn't hire one as a zoologist." -- Rick Russom __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Sun, 11 Aug 91 01:03:29 -0400 From: Ellen Prince Subject: Language and dialect >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) my understanding is that max weinreich said it, but i don't have a reference. if anyone has, i'd appreciate hearing it. thanks. __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Mon, 12 Aug 91 13:23 GMT From: "MARTIN EVERAERT, LINGUISTICS DEPT. UNIVERSITY OF UTRECHT" Subject: RE:Latin reflexives (vol 2-396) In reply to A. Dench's question. The following two articles might contain interesting discussion of the latin example you gave: Bertocchi, A. & C. Casadio (1980) Conditions on Anaphora: An Analysis of reflexive in Latin, in G. Calboli (ed.) Papers on Grammar, Bologna. Bertocchi, A. & C. Casadio (1983) Anaphoric Relations, pronouns and Latin Complementation, in H. Pinkster (ed.) Latin Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, Amsterdam, John Benjamins. Martin Everaert __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-403 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-404. Wednesday, 14 August 1991. Lines: 101 Subject: Babbling, Standard language Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 11 Aug 91 13:17:30 MDT From: Randy_Allen_Harris@mts.ucs.ualberta.ca Subject: babbling IN X 2) Date: Tue, 13 Aug 91 12:59 MST From: WDEREUSE@ccit.arizona.edu Subject: Re: Responses: Standard Languages, Trees -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 11 Aug 91 13:17:30 MDT From: Randy_Allen_Harris@mts.ucs.ualberta.ca Subject: babbling IN X In the specific (Stampe's) sense, rather than the general (Coleman's, Fischer's) sense of X, would it make more sense to talk about babbling TOWARD X? __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Tue, 13 Aug 91 12:59 MST From: WDEREUSE@ccit.arizona.edu Subject: Re: Responses: Standard Languages, Trees In reply to Ron Hofmann's comment about the notion of a standard language as a classical stereotype combining broad(est): (1) comprehensibility, (2) acceptance as superior, (3) compatibility with written language, (4) use in broadcast media & in cross-dialectal situations, (5) a definition &/or an academy, and that any of these, but not all of them, can be lacking, and everyone of them has problems if you take it as criterial. If I remember correctly, I think I am the one who in May made this comment on the possibility of a Standard Flemish without some overt defining grammar or dictionary. I suggested that one needed something like this, at least in the Belgian situation. I like Ron Hoffman's approach to the problem, and want to comment on how these five criteria would define standard Flemish. 1. Comprehensibility. Maybe. There is indeed an extent to which Flemish speakers from any area of Belgium can understand each other, with a little more ease than they would understand a speaker from the Netherlands. Then again, there are speakers from the east of Belgium, who, when thinking they speak something fairly standard, still would not be understood by a standard speaker from the far west, and vice versa, of course. 2. Acceptance as superior. For all the fun Flemings make of certain distinguishably northern accents and patterns of speech, I don't know many who want to claim that a standard Flemish would be superior to a standard Dutch. Rather, those who have something against standard Dutch are just as likely to prefer a particular prestigious Flemish dialect, such as the Antwerp dialect, for example. 3. Compatibility with written language. Ezcept for certain types of legal, administrative, or military jargon, it is real hard to distinguish Dutch written by an educated Belgian from Dutch written by an educated Dutchman. When a Dutchman can identify a Belgian, it is mostly because of his accent, not because of his/her writing. 4. Use in broadcast media & in cross-dialectal situations. These are two different cases. Belgian T.V. journalist (at least the last time I watched Belgian T.V., are alot stiffer than Dutch T.V. journalists, but they try very hard to rid their language of anything perceived as Flemish or regional. They certainly sound a lot more like Dutchman than the average Belgian, without becoming indistinguishable from them. So they don't have the strong uvular voiceless fricative for , or a labiodental , things the average educated Fleming feels are "overdoing" it. These things are not considered important enough to justify the existence of a separate Standard Dutch. Cross- dialectal situations. Most Flemings control a contimuum from something very close to a basilectal dialect to something very close to Standrad Dutch. Is that something very close to Standard Dutch used in cross-dialectal situations? Not consistently, only when talking to a job interviewer, a university professor, or when talking to a Dutch person, or a Belgian from an area real far away. If a Belgian talks with the average person from an area not so far away, but still with a different dialect, (dialects differ from one another markedly every to or three miles in the area, west of Brussels. where I am from), he/she will adapt to the dialect of the speaker to some extent, in order to avoid sounding stuck-up. So in the majority of cross-dialectal situations (if the dialects are not too far apart), something that could be construed as Standard Flemish is not used. 5. A definition &/or academy. There has never been to my knowledge, any attempt, by either Flemings or Dutch, to formally define a Standard Flemish opposed to a Standard Dutch. There has never been an academy or political body trying to rule what Standard Flemish should be like. When decision as to the gender of certain nouns or the spelling of words have to be made, they are made by a Dutch-Belgian commission who compromises on places where Dutch and Belgian usages vary somewhat. The prescription of that commission are laid out in a little green dictionary, called by insiders 'het groene boekje' (the little green book). Warning. Most of these comments are derived from my own personal experience, so other Flemings or Dutch people might disagree on some details, but I've tried to be as objective about it as possible. Willem J. de Reuse Dept. of Anthropology University of Arizona Tucson, AZ 85721 __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-404 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-405. Wednesday, 14 August 1991. Lines: 101 Subject: Queries Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 9 Aug 91 14:56 EDT From: Jim Wilderotter -- Georgetown Center for Text and Subject: Language Learning Programs 2) Date: Thu, 08 Aug 91 11:43:10 BST From: LNP6PJR%CMS1.LEEDS.AC.UK@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: Jones' Dictionary 3) Date: Fri, 9 Aug 91 13:13:37 -0400 From: peter@sug.std.com (Peter Salus) Subject: igpay atinlay 4) Date: Tue, 13 Aug 91 10:22:40 EDT From: "Robert N. Shull" Subject: ANAPOLIS CONTACT -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 9 Aug 91 14:56 EDT From: Jim Wilderotter -- Georgetown Center for Text and Subject: Language Learning Programs Recently, a member of the Georgetown community approached me searching for any on-going projects working on developing language learning programs (computer-aided language learning). He's not as interested in any specific language as he is in the development process. If anyone might be able to help me locate any such projects for him, I would be very grateful. Sincerely, James A. Wilderotter II Project Assistant Center for Text and Technology Academic Computer Center Reiss Science Building, Room 238 Georgetown University Washington, DC 20057 Tel. (202) 687-6096 BITNET: Wilder@Guvax Internet: Edu%"Wilder@Guvax.Georgetown.Edu" __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Thu, 08 Aug 91 11:43:10 BST From: LNP6PJR%CMS1.LEEDS.AC.UK@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: Jones' Dictionary I would be most grateful if anyone could put me in touch with a machine-readable version of the English Pronouncing Dictionary (by Daniel Jones, published by Dent), preferably the 14th. edn. revised by A.C.Gimson. Peter Roach email (JANET): p.j.roach @ uk.ac.leeds.cms1 __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Fri, 9 Aug 91 13:13:37 -0400 From: peter@sug.std.com (Peter Salus) Subject: igpay atinlay Jeff Haemer, of Interactive Systems in Boulder, CO, asked me about whether there were languages like Pig Latin based on natural languages other than English. He is also interested in bibliographical references to Pig Latin (and the other languages). His email address is: jsh@ico.isc.com Peter H. Salus __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Tue, 13 Aug 91 10:22:40 EDT From: "Robert N. Shull" Subject: ANAPOLIS CONTACT Can anyone give me the name annd network address of someone in the foreign language department at US Naval Academy, Anapolis? Robert Shull RNSHUL01@ULKYVM __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-405 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-406. Wednesday, 14 August 1991. Lines: 77 Subject: Igpay Atinlay Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 14 Aug 1991 17:16-0400 From: Allan C. Wechsler Subject: igpay atinlay 2) Date: Wed, 14 Aug 91 15:19 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: Queries -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 14 Aug 1991 17:16-0400 From: Allan C. Wechsler Subject: igpay atinlay Here is an article that presents a nice selection of play languages. Sherzer, Joel. "Play Languages: With a Note on Ritual Languages" in Exceptional Language and Linguistics, Obler, Loraine K., and Menn, Lise, eds., 1982, Academic Press, New York; pp. 175-199. Sections are titled: Five Kuna Play Languages Two Variants of a Complicated French Play Language Seven Javanese Play Languages of Increasing Complexity Some English Play Languages Play Languages in Spanish and Portuguese Significance and Implications A Note on Ritual Languages There is an extensive bibliography. Looks like a good place to get started. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Wed, 14 Aug 91 15:19 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: Queries Response to Peter Salus query on behalf of Jeff Haemer: There are thousands of languge games similar to Pig Latin. I don't think anyone has every studied a language community without finding one or more. I once had a non-published mimeographed monograph with listings of hundreds but I am not sure where it is. Ken Hale reported a game used by the Walbiri, natives of central Australia, in which the meanings o words are distorted rather than the phonological forms, e.g. Ns, Vs, Adj's are replaced by their semantic oposites -- man for woman, up for down etc. The game Ubby Dubby was used in a children's television program popular in the 1970's. King Tut was a popular game in English. In Thai, there is a game in which syllables are moved and like Pig Latin there are at least two varieties, in one, the tones remain as in the original with just the segments of syllables moved, and in another the tones move with the syllable. Wish I could give you some references and could do so in a while but right now am too busy working on book revisions of Intro Text and am not going into ucla office where I could put my hands on the references. Oh yes, Joel Sherzer at U of Texas describes a language game played by Cuna Indians. reference is Sherzer, Joel. Talking Backwards in CUna: the sociological reality of phonological descriptions. in Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 26: 343-353 1970. He has fuller descrfiptions in his book but I do not have the reference here. Hope this helps. Vicki Fromkin __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-406 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-407. Thursday, 15 August 1991. Lines: 223 Subject: New lists, newletters, calls for papers Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 91 01:36:15 PDT From: bkariger%dhw68k.cts.com@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Brian Kariger) Subject: California Linguistic Newsletter 2) Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1991 15:49:49 CDT From: David John Marotta Subject: NEW LIST: NT-GREEK (new Testament Greek Studies) Conference 3) Date: Fri, 09 Aug 91 19:47:15 BST From: Robert Dale Subject: REVISED CALL FOR PAPERS---INTERNATIONAL NLG WORKSHOP 1992 4) Date: Wed, 14 Aug 1991 12:25:13 +0800 From: onghiok%LIB.nthu.edu.tw%CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (H.Samual Wang (035)715131-4398) Subject: IsCLL3 -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 91 01:36:15 PDT From: bkariger%dhw68k.cts.com@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Brian Kariger) Subject: California Linguistic Newsletter *California Linguistic Newsletter* publishes essays, squibs, letters, and reviews on any linguistic topic; also past/future events sections, recent publications, jobs, and more. Recent contributors include Charles James Bailey, Lyle Campbell, Peter Daniels, Sheila Embleton, Ives Goddard, Joseph Greenberg, Eric Hamp, Carleton Hodge, and Mats-Peter Sundstro\"m. Subscription, $20.00 for USA subscribers; $30.00 overseas (airmail); $10.00 per additional copy sent to the same address. *We seek material for publication and new subscribers.* Free sample: Alan Kaye, Editor Department of Linguistics California State University, Fullerton Fullerton, CA 92634-9480 USA __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1991 15:49:49 CDT From: David John Marotta Subject: NEW LIST: NT-GREEK (new Testament Greek Studies) Conference NT-GREEK (New Testament Greek Studies) Conference NT-GREEK on NT-GREEK-REQUEST@VIRGINIA.EDU NT-GREEK is an electronic conference designed to foster communication concerning the scholarly study of the Greek New Testament. Anyone interested in New Testament Studies is invited to subscribe, but the list will assume at least a working knowledge of Biblical Greek. Subscription to this conference is open to anyone interested. You may subscribe by sending an e-mail message to NT-GREEK-REQUEST@VIRGINIA.EDU if your account is on the internet, with the following request as the text of the message. SUB NT-GREEK YourFirstname YourLastname This, the 'SUB ...,' must be part of the message; the subject line will be ignored. Remember two simple rules-of-thumb: If it's a request (SUBscribe, UNSUBscribe), send it to the list requester (NT-GREEK-REQUEST@VIRGINIA.EDU). If it's a message for general distribution to the members of the list, send it to the list (NT-GREEK@VIRGINIA.EDU). The list is supported by the University of Virginia. Our thanks to their management and staff for permission to use their system for the list and for assistance in setting it up. Questions about this conference may be directed to David John Marotta Internet: djm5g@virginia.edu Adjunct Faculty Bitnet: djm5g@virginia The Center for Christian Study IBM US Mail: USUVARG8 128 Chancellor Street voice: (804) 982-3718 Charlottesville, VA 22903 messages: (804) 924-5261 (804) 295-2471 fax: (804) 296-7209 __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Fri, 09 Aug 91 19:47:15 BST From: Robert Dale Subject: REVISED CALL FOR PAPERS---INTERNATIONAL NLG WORKSHOP 1992 Call for Papers The Sixth International Workshop on Natural Language Generation Castel Ivano, Trento, Italy, 5th--7th April 1992 *** NOTE---REVISED SUBMISSION DATE AND OTHER DETAILS **** PURPOSE AND SCOPE: Following on from the five previous International Workshops on Natural Language Generation, this workshop aims to bring together researchers in a rapidly consolidating field. We intend to structure the workshop around a number of emerging topic areas: Multi-modality: the practical and theoretical issues underlying the development of systems that integrate language generation with other media (such as graphics, maps, and forms). The representation and use of syntactic knowledge: we particularly welcome papers which attempt to bridge the gap between earlier phrase structure grammar based approaches, systemic approaches, and newer constraint-based approaches, and discussions of how these approaches address the motivation of syntactic choice. Approaches to text planning: a number of approaches to discourse structure (such as RST, DRT and schemas) have relevance to text planning. What are their respective strengths and, especially, weaknesses? In what areas do we need additional theories? Applications of NLG: the use of language generation techniques in, for example, expert system explanation, machine translation, dialogue systems, and report generation; their implications for more theoretical issues. Multi-linguality: the effects upon system architecture and underlying representation of building systems which generate text in more than one language. To what extent is it possible to build plug-and-play realization components for different languages for use with generic text planners? SUBMISSIONS: Contributors interested in participating in this workshop are initially requested to submit A PAPER OF 10 PAGES in length. Papers will be reviewed by an international programme committee. Accepted papers will be returned for polishing and revision into full length papers before inclusion into the workshop proceedings, which will be published as a book. The cover page of the draft paper should include the title, the name(s) of the author(s), complete addresses (including email address and fax number if available), a short (10 line) summary, and a specification of the topic area. Send to: Mail: Robert Dale Centre for Cognitive Science, University of Edinburgh 2 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LW, Scotland Tel: (+44) 31 650 4416 Fax: (+44) 31 662 4912 Email: R.Dale@uk.ac.ed SCHEDULE: Submissions are due at the above address NO LATER THAN 4TH NOVEMBER 1991, either by paper mail, email (in LaTeX form), or fax; notifications of acceptance should be received by authors BY 6TH JANUARY 1992; camera ready versions of the final papers are due 17TH FEBRUARY 1992. Approximately 15 papers will be accepted for presentation at the workshop and subsequent inclusion in the book. Note the change of submission date and change in length of paper required. WORKSHOP INFORMATION: Attendance at the workshop will be limited to around 50 people. The workshop has been timed to follow the Third Conference on Applied Natural Language Processing, being held in Trento, Italy from 1st--3rd April 1991. Details of this conference can be obtained from Oliviero Stock, IRST, 38050 Povo (Trento), Italy; Tel: (+39) 461 81444, email: stock@irst.it The cost of the workshop, including accommodation and meals, is expected to be in the region of $300 per person. Financial support for the workshop is being sought. The workshop is co-sponsored by the Esprit Basic Research Actions and the Special Interest Group on Generation of the Association for Computational Linguistics. Organising Committee: Robert Dale, Eduard Hovy, Dietmar Rosner and Oliviero Stock. __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Wed, 14 Aug 1991 12:25:13 +0800 From: onghiok%LIB.nthu.edu.tw%CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (H.Samual Wang (035)715131-4398) Subject: IsCLL3 Dear Sir, Could you please post the following conference notice on the LINGUIST network? Thank you. Conference Title: The Third International Symposium on Chinese Languages and Linguistics (IsCLL 3) Conference Date: July 1-3, 1992 Place: National Tsing Hua Univ, Hsin-chu, Taiwan Theme: Morphology and Lexicon CALL FOR PAPERS Papers concerning the study of languages in China are invited to present in the conference. The theme for this conference is on Morphology and Lexicon, but papers on other topics are also welcome. Abstracts of NO MORE THAN 2,000 WORDS should be received no later than FEBRUARY 15, 1992. As we will be subsidizing travel expenses, we expect that the papers to be presented will be written exclusively for this conference. For more detailed information please contact: H. Samuel Wang Graduate Institute of Linguistics National Tsing Hua University Hsin-chu, Taiwan 300 ROC E-mail: onghiok@ling.nthu.edu.tw __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-407 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-408. Thursday, 15 August 1991. Lines: 243 Subject: Bibliography on compound nouns Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 91 14:38:47 +0200 From: dings%et.kuleuven.ac.be@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: Compound Nouns -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 91 14:38:47 +0200 From: dings%et.kuleuven.ac.be@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: Compound Nouns Several people have asked me to share the results of a query on LINGUIST and LANGAGE NATUREL: a bibliography on compound nouns. I launched the query, and collected the data, but Lieve De Wachter did the job of organizing it in alphabetic order, and in a uniform format. Structure: two lists (the reason for this being of strictly local pragmatic nature). Question marks denote incomplete bibliographical information. Data has not been filtered out. Some items in this list might turn out to be {ir-, less }relevant. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jim Barnett and Inderjeet Mani, Using Bidirectional Semantic Rules for Generation, in: Proceedings of the Fifth International Workshop on NL Generation, June 1990). Bauer, L., 1979, On the need for pragmatics in the study of nominal compounding.Journal of Pragmatics 3, 45--50. Downing, P., 1977, On the creation and use of English compound nouns.Language 53, 810--842. Finin, T. W., 1980, The semantic interpretation of nominal compounds.Doctoral Dissertation, (Available as Technical Report T-96, Coordinated Science LaboratoryUrbana-Champaign, IL: Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois) (book) Finin, T. W., 1980b, The semantic interpretation of nominal compounds, AAAI-1, 310--312, Stanford, AAAI (American Association for Artificial Intelligence). (proceedings) Finin, T, 1986, Constraining the interpretation of nominal compounds in a limited context, in: Ralph Grishman and Richard Kittredge (Eds.), Analyzing language in restricted domains: Sublanguage description and processing, 163--173, Hillsdale, NJLawrenece Erlbaum (article in book). Gershman, A. (1977), Conceptual analysis of noun groups in English. in: IJCAI-77, pages 132--138. International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Hobbs, J., Stickel, M., Appelt, D., and Martin, P, 1990 (December), Interpretation as abduction.Technical note 499, Menlo Park, CASRI International Isabelle, P., 1984, Another look at nominal compounds. Proceedings of 22nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, COLING-10, 509--516, Stanford Association for Computational Linguistics (proceedings) Lees, R. B., 1960, The grammar of english nominalizations., The Hague Mouton. (book) Lees, R. B., 1970, Problems in the grammatical analysis of English nominal compounds., Manfred Bierwisch and K. Heidolph (Eds.), Progress in linguistics 174--186, The Hague Mouton (article in book) Lehnert, W. L., 1988, The analysis of nominal compounds, in: Umberto Eco, Marco Santambrogio, and Patrizia Violi (Eds.), Meaning and mental representations, 155--179, Bloomington, in: Indiana University Press (article in book) Leonard, R., 1984, The interpretation of English noun sequences on the computer., Amsterdam North-Holland (book) Levi, J. N., 1978, The syntax and semantics of nominal compounds.New YorkAcademic Press (book) McDonald, D. (1981), Compound: a program that understands noun compounds. in: IJCAI-81, page 1061. International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Marcus, M., 1980, A theory of syntactic recognition for natural language.Cambridge, MAMIT Press (book) Marsh, E., 1984, A computational analysis of complex noun phrases in Navy messages. Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, 505--508, Stanford ACL (proceedings) McDonald, D. B., 1982, Understanding noun compounds, Doctoral Dissertation, Pittsburgh, PA Department of Computer Science, Carnegie-Mellon University Murphy, G. L., 1988, Comprehending complex concepts, Cognitive Science 12, 529--562 Pun, K.~H. and Lum, B. (1989), Resolving ambiguities of complex noun phrases in a Chinese sentence by case grammar. Computer Processing of Chinese and Oriental Languages, 4:185--202. Rhyne, J. R., 1976, A lexical process model of nominal compounding in English.American Journal of Computational Linguistics,Fiche 33, 33--44 Mary Ellen Ryder, Ordered Chaos: A Cognitive Model for the Interpretation of English Noun-Noun Compounds, (Doctoral Dissertation), University of California, San Diego. Now: Faculty of the English Department, Boise State University, Boise, Idaho, USA. Mary Ellen Ryder, Not Compounding the Problem: Predictability in Noun-Noun Compounds, LSA (1987), San Francisco. Dominiek Sandra, Doctoral Dissertation (title ???), (1990), UFSIA. Sparck Jones, K., 1983, So what about parsing compound nouns., K. Sparck Jones and Y. Wilks (Eds.), Automatic natural language parsing, 164--168, Chichester, England, Ellis Horwood (book article) Sparck Jones, K., 1985, Compound noun interpretation problems, F. Fallside and W. A. Woods (Eds.), Computer speech processing, 363--380 Englewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice-Hall International (book article) Sproat, R. (1990), Stress assignment in complex nominals for english text-to-speech, in: Proceedings of the ESCA Workshop on Speech Synthesis, pages 129--132. Sproat, R. and Liberman, M. (1987), Toward treating English nominals correctly. in: ACL Proceedings, 25th Annual Meeting, pages 140--146, Morristown, NJ. Association for Computational Linguistics. Warren, B., 1978, Semantic patterns of noun-noun compounds. (Gothenburg Studies in English, 41), G\"oteborg, Sweden Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis (book) Warren, B., 1984, Classifying adjectives.(Gothenburg) Studies in English, 56), G\"oteborg, Sweden, Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis (book) Wojcik, R., Hoard, J., and Duncan-Lacoste, L. (1989). Lexical and phrasal issues in NP disambiguation. Presented at the LSA Annual Meeting, Washington DC. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Arens, Y., Granacki, J.J., and Parker, A.C., 1987, Phrasal analysis of long noun sequences, Proceedings of 25th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, 59--64, Stanford Association for Computational Linguistics (proceedings) Bartolic, L.1980Nominal compounds in technical English???AN 80-3-250, 257-- 277???? (book article) Crandall, P. E., 1990, Computer noun-noun interpretation, Master's Thesis; technical report 90-??, Moscow, IDComputer Science Departement, University of Idaho Dahl, D., Palmer, M. S., and Passoneau, R. J., 1987, Nominalizations in PUNDIT, Proceedings of 25th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics 131--139, Stanford Association for Computational Linguistics Dowty, D. R., 1979, Word meaning and Montague grammar: The semantics of verbs and times in generative semantics and in Montague's PTQ, Dordrecht, D. Reidel (book) Gershman, A.V., 1982, A framework for conceptual analyzers, Wendy G. Lehnert and Martin H. Ringle (Eds.)Strategies for natural language processing, 177--197, Hillsadale, NJ Lawrence Erlbaum (book article) Geurts, Bart, 1988, The structure of nominal concepts, Werner H\"ullen and Rainer Schulze (Eds.), Understanding the lexicon: Meaning, sense and world knowledge in lexical semantics, 97--109, T\"ubingenMax Niemeyer Verlag (article in book) Hietsch, O., 1984, Productive second elements in nominal compounds: The matching of English and German, Linguistica 24, 391--414 Hirst, G., 1987, Semantic interpretation and the resolution of ambiguity, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press Hullen, W., 1974, The analysis of English nominal compounds within the framework of cognitive language teaching, ITL, Review of Applied Linguistics25--26, 63--81 Jackendoff, R., 1975, Morphological and semantic regularities in the lexicon, Language51, 639--671 Jankovic, J. K., 1986, The N-V dichotomy in the structure of English noun compounds? Literary and Linguistic Computing1, 143--155 Jespersen, O., 1942, Modern English Grammar, Vol 6: Morphology??--Sorry, can't recall pub data now. But this is truly a CLASSIC! LaTorre, L. G., 1986 (May), The linguistics and pedagogy of complex nominals and complex noun phrases in computer manuals: An EST perspective, Dissertation Abstracts International46(11), 3336A Marchland, H., 1969, The categories and types of present-day English word-formation, 2nd ed., \ Munich C. H. Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung Olshtain, E., 1982, English nominal componds and the ESL/EFL reader, Mary Hines and William Rutherford (Eds.), On TESOL '81, 153--167, Washington, DCTESOL Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., and Svartvik, J., 1985, A comprehensive grammar of the English language, Longman,London Rohdenburg, G\"unter, 1988, Semantic fringe phenomena involving nominal compounds in English, Werner H\"ullen and Rainer Schulze (Eds.)Understanding the lexicon: Meaning, sense and world knowledge in lexical semantics, 204--215, T\"ubingen, Max Niemeyer Verlag Warren, B., 1985, Types, distribution and functions of covert semantic relations in complex lexical items and in combinations of lexical items, in: G.A.J. Hoppenbrouwers, P.A.M. Seuren, and A.J.M.M Weijters (Eds.), Meaning and the lexicon, 55--62, T\"ubingen, Max Neimeyer Verlag Wermter, S., 1989, Learning semantic relationships in compound nouns with connectionist networks, Proceedings of the 11th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Conference, 964--971, Hillsdale, N.J. Lawrence Erlbaum 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 __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-408 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-409. Thursday, 15 August 1991. Lines: 45 Subject: Conference program: Computers and Language 2 Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 91 17:16 BST From: STUART%VAX.OXFORD.AC.UK%VTVM2.CC.VT.EDU@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: Draft program for Sheffield Conference: Computers and language 2, 199 -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 91 17:16 BST From: STUART%VAX.OXFORD.AC.UK%VTVM2.CC.VT.EDU@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: Draft program for Sheffield Conference: Computers and language 2, 199 [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 computers2-prog You will then receive the complete program.] COMPUTERS AND LANGUAGE 2: TOWARDS 1992 Conference to be held at Sheffield City Polytechnic 25th-27th September 1991 DRAFT PROGRAMME Wednesday September 25th 2.00-3.30 Opening Session Implications of the new technologies Peter Seaborne, Staff Inspector, Learning Resources, DES. __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-409 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-410. Thursday, 15 August 1991. Lines: 50 Subject: Queries Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 14 Aug 91 13:45:11 PDT From: marks%neuro.usc.edu%usc.edu@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Mark Seidenberg) Subject: corpus query 2) Date: Thu, 15 Aug 1991 10:01:09 +0800 (SST) From: A_DENCH@FENNEL.CC.UWA.OZ.AU Subject: Address Query -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 14 Aug 91 13:45:11 PDT From: marks%neuro.usc.edu%usc.edu@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Mark Seidenberg) Subject: corpus query I would like to get a machine-readable copy of the Brown corpus--the actual texts that were used to generate the Kucera and Francis (1967) and Francis and Kucera (1982) frequency counts. People say that this corpus is easily available, but how? Hints would be greatly appreciated. Mark Seidenberg __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Thu, 15 Aug 1991 10:01:09 +0800 (SST) From: A_DENCH@FENNEL.CC.UWA.OZ.AU Subject: Address Query Can anyone provide me with an address for Daniele TROILLET, somewhere at l'universite de Bordeaux? Many thanks, Alan Dench. __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-410 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-411. Fri 16 Aug 1991 Lines: 110 Subject: Bladderslugs Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 14 Aug 1991 15:03:50 +0800 (SST) From: A_DENCH@FENNEL.CC.UWA.OZ.AU Subject: The Bladder Slugs of Yik -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 14 Aug 1991 15:03:50 +0800 (SST) From: A_DENCH@FENNEL.CC.UWA.OZ.AU Subject: The Bladder Slugs of Yik The Bladder Slugs of Yik. For the general entertainment of all you Metaphor fans out there, I am posting a first year undergraduate assignment which I conceived (maybe in a drug-crazed state but more likely commuting) some three years ago. Sadly it is often the only thing introductory linguistics students remember from their year of Linguistics 100. Should any of you be inclined to use this yourselves, be my guest. The assignment follows lectures on temporal metaphor for which the following sources provided the main inspiration and examples: Foley, W. (1980) "Functional grammar and cultural anthropology" Canberra Anthropology, 3:67-85. Geertz, C. (1975) "Person, time and conduct in Bali". in "The Interpretation of Cultures" London: Hutchinson. pp 360-411. Klein, H. (1987) "The future precedes the past: time in Toba" Word 38:173-185. Lakoff, G. & M. Johnson (1980) "Metaphors we live by" University of Chicago Press. (surprise, surprise). And I think my inspiration for the Bladder Slugs themselves was most likely James Tiptree's sci-fi novel "Up the Walls of the World", which I read years ago somewhere but have never seen since. Read on and have fun! Alan Dench Department of Anthropology University of Western Australia Nedlands, WA 6009 A_DENCH@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au _____________________________ University of Western Australia Department of Anthropology Linguistics 100 (UWA) Tutorial Assignment: Temporal Metaphors You are Chief Linguist aboard the starship Benjamin Lee Whorf orbiting the gaseous giant Arcturus IV. Your most pressing task is to compile an analysis of the temporal system of the Yik language of the freefalling Bladder Slugs. Given the following translations from Yik, what metaphor(s) seem to prevail in the Yik temporal system? Feel free to draw diagrams and offer explanations. a. I perceived a large glabbage upperday. b. The time for implosion is just below us. c. The pressure increases, the light is dimming, I'm plummeting old. d. How deep until we fall on dense times. e. Three days above I consumed a large splodj. f. In the rarified days of my youth, I set my life on a helical path. g. The foolish Yik lives like a falling space rock. h. At darkest bottom, we all meet at the centre. i. The aliens, who live for eternity high above the days of our youth, believe the universe is expanding. But according to the great physicist Alblort Einslug, it is merely moving up into its own "past". j. All lives converge. At impact we will share our common destiny. k. I hope our bladderlings will rise into the upper reaches of the brightest past. l. I believe the shadows of our downtime bladderlings fell across us upperday. _________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-411 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-412. Fri 16 Aug 1991 Lines: 124 Subject: Responses: perfect, LDC, igpay Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 15 Aug 91 08:12:35 From: "John Nerbonne" Subject: Re: The Perfect Passive Continuous 2) Date: Mon, 12 Aug 91 13:19:01 -0700 From: slobin@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Dan I. Slobin) Subject: Re: Responses: reflexives, standard language, dialect 3) Date: Sun, 11 Aug 91 17:54 EDT From: "Joyce Neu (814) 865-7365" Subject: Re: Linguistic Data Consortium 4) Date: Thursday, 15 August 1991 8:11am ET From: "Sue.Gass" <21003SMG@msu.edu> Subject: Igpay Atinlay -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 15 Aug 91 08:12:35 From: "John Nerbonne" Subject: Re: The Perfect Passive Continuous This doesn't focus on passives, but it probably has a discussion (I no longer have a copy at hand). At any rate, it has loads of examples of perfect continuous forms: Joachim Schmole "Die Expanded Form im Present Perfect: Eine Studie zum Verbalaspekt des Neuenglischen" Diss., Freiburg. 1975. I take the discussion to indicate that many find examples of these OK. Furthermore, Denison (previous note to this list) has many attestations; that suggests that we oughtn't try to explain their unacceptability on formal grounds. Instead, we ought to be looking for pragmatic explanations of why they're often awkward (I take it there's agreement here, too). --John Nerbonne __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Mon, 12 Aug 91 13:19:01 -0700 From: slobin@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Dan I. Slobin) Subject: Re: Responses: reflexives, standard language, dialect Re: Language and dialect I always thought this famous quip was due to Jespersen, and am amazed at the range of guesses. Now I'll have to check if my own firm belief is an illusion. Dan Slobin __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Sun, 11 Aug 91 17:54 EDT From: "Joyce Neu (814) 865-7365" Subject: Re: Linguistic Data Consortium In reply to John Lawler's posting, and having talked to Charles Wayne myself about the Consortium, I remain skeptical. Wayne was unfamiliar with the CHILDES database (Brian MacWhinney has organized this at Carnegie Mellon) which consists of corpera from many different sources available *free of charge*. Would the $1000-3000 be spent for access by 1 person, 1 dept, or 1 institution? Because linguists are frequently located in several depts (at Penn State, we are in 6 different depts.), this is an important question. Wayne was also unclear about where the data would come from, and why linguists would want to release their corpera to the consortium. I'd thought that perhaps the beginning of the consortium would be to use the data collected under previous military grants--data that I thought existed. Wayne did not know if such data existed nor if it would go into the Lx data consortium. My sense after our phone conversation was that either the consortium needs a great deal of planning or else Wayne is an ineffective spokesperson for it. It remains unclear what the consortium will do that CHILDES does not now do for free. Joyce Neu L1_________________________________________________________________L2 | Joyce Neu, Assistant Professor |_|_|_|_| | Center for English as a Second Language |_|_|_| | Department of Speech Communication |_|_| | 305 Sparks Building E-mail: jn0@psuvm.bitnet|_| | Penn State University jn0@psuvm.psu.edu | | University Park, PA 16802 Fax: (814) 863-7986 | | USA Phone: (814) 865-7365 | L2_________________________________________________________________L1 __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Thursday, 15 August 1991 8:11am ET From: "Sue.Gass" <21003SMG@msu.edu> Subject: Igpay Atinlay There is a new book about Verlan (a French language game) by Natalie Lefkowitz. I think it is published by Gunter Narr Verlag. Sue Gass __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-412 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-413. Sat 17 Aug 1991 Lines: 53 Subject: Language play Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 15 Aug 1991 13:43 EST From: Fan mail from some flounder? Subject: Re: Queries 2) Date: Thu, 15 Aug 91 21:29:53 CDT From: klaiman%ux.acs.umn.edu@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: 'Pig Latin' -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 15 Aug 1991 13:43 EST From: Fan mail from some flounder? Subject: Re: Queries Re Peter Salus' query -- Moira Yip at Brandeis has done a lot of stuff on Chinese children's language games, and there's also a lot of other literature on the subject -- I wonder if the Opies' work deals with any of that. Susan Fischer __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Thu, 15 Aug 91 21:29:53 CDT From: klaiman%ux.acs.umn.edu@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: 'Pig Latin' Apropos of the recent query on Pig Latin-type games, Indo-Aryan languages never seem to get mentioned when the subject arises. So I thought I would note having ob- served a couple of such games in Hindi, Bengali and Marathi; the rules seem more or less the same from one language to another, and one of the Bengali games sheds inter- esting light on syllabification rules in that language. (I can recall one morning spent interviewing an entire elementary school class on the 'Pig Latin' forms of various common words in order to put together something on Bengali phonology for a conference held Stateside later.) Anyone having a burning desire for specifics on Indo-Aryan 'Pig Latins' is welcome to get in touch. Mimi Klaiman __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-413 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-414. Sat 17 Aug 1991 Lines: 80 Subject: Responses: Brown corpus, being Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 91 15:54 MET From: RICHARD%CELEX.KUN.NL@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: Mark Seidenberg's request for the Brown corpus 2) Date: Thu, 15 Aug 91 20:51 EDT From: "Joyce Neu (814) 865-7365" Subject: Re: Queries 3) Date: Thu, 15 Aug 91 10:36:54 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: on being being something -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 91 15:54 MET From: RICHARD%CELEX.KUN.NL@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: Mark Seidenberg's request for the Brown corpus The Brown corpus, in various versions (untagged or tagged, KWIC concordance, WordCruncher), is available from the ICAME group (International Computer Archive of Modern English) at the: Norwegian Computing Centre for the humanities P.O. Box 53, Universitetet N-5027 Bergen Norway This is also the place to go to for copies of the LOB, London-Lund, Melbourne- Surrey, Kolhapur (Indian English), Lancaster/IBM (spoken), Polytechnic of Wales (child language) and Helsinki (diachronic) corpora. Richard Piepenbrock __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Thu, 15 Aug 91 20:51 EDT From: "Joyce Neu (814) 865-7365" Subject: Re: Queries Re: machine readable copy of Brown corpus (response to Mark Seidenberg) I believe this is available through the CHILDES database that is online at Carnegie Mellon. Contact Brian MacWhinney in the Psychology Dept. His ID is MACWHINNEY@MALLOW.PSY.CMU.EDU. You can ask for the CHAT manuals that explain how to access the CHILDES database. Joyce Neu Penn State __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Thu, 15 Aug 91 10:36:54 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: on being being something An interesting example from Harris's _A Grammar of English on Mathematical Principles_: The uncomfortableness of -ing on adjectives leads to occasional elisions of it: in _Don't be horrid. I'm not being horrid_ the retort shows that the first sentence can be taken as reduced from !Don't be being horrid. (Using ! here for Harris's dagger, quote from p. 297.) Bruce Nevin bn@bbn.com __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-414 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-415. Sat 17 Aug 1991 Lines: 88 Subject: Conferences Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 91 11:58-0400 From: Marie.E.Surridge@QueensU.CA Subject: XVth World Congress of Linguists: Deadline for abstracts 2) Date: 16 Aug 91 12:45:20+0800 From: Sten Vikner Subject: Reminder: 7th Comparative Germanic Syntax Workshop -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 91 11:58-0400 From: Marie.E.Surridge@QueensU.CA Subject: XVth World Congress of Linguists: Deadline for abstracts XVth World Congress of Linguists, Laval University, 9-14 August 1992. Please don't forget the October 1st deadline for abstracts. See page 6 of the second circular for the required format. If you have not yet received information about the conference, communicate with Pierre Auger (PIEROGER@LAVALVM1.BITNET). Marie Surridge, Chair of Program Committee SURRIDGM@QUCDN.QueensU.Ca Department of French Studies Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7L 3N6 1-613 545-2083 __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: 16 Aug 91 12:45:20+0800 From: Sten Vikner Subject: Reminder: 7th Comparative Germanic Syntax Workshop THE SEVENTH WORKSHOP ON COMPARATIVE GERMANIC SYNTAX University of Stuttgart, November 22 - 24, 1991. ***************************************************************** * Invited speakers: * * * * Teun HOEKSTRA, University of Leiden, The Netherlands. * * Richard KAYNE, City University of New York, USA. * * James MCCLOSKEY, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA. * * Christer PLATZACK, University of Lund, Sweden. * ***************************************************************** Hotel booking forms (the deadline for booking a hotel room is OCTOBER 11) and answers to any questions you might have can be obtained by writing to the address below or by sending an e-mail message to "vikner@rus.uni-stuttgart.dbp.de". Those who wish to present a paper (30 min. + discussion) are hereby reminded that they should submit an abstract no longer than 2 pages BEFORE SEPTEMBER 1, 1991. Preference will be given to presentations on parametric (and other) variation concerning/involving the Germanic languages, as this workshop will be sponsored by the University of Stuttgart Graduate Programme "Linguistic Foundations of Language Processing". We expect to be able to meet travel expenses of the speakers. Abstracts should be sent anonymously in tenfold, accompanied by a camera-ready original with name and address of the author(s), to Hubert Haider, Susan Olsen & Sten Vikner Institut fuer Linguistik/Germanistik Universitaet Stuttgart Postfach 10 60 37 D-7000 Stuttgart 10 Germany ================== __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-415 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-416. Sat 17 Aug 1991 Lines: 99 Subject: Help Needed: Language Identification Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 91 07:31:05 EDT From: Rick Broadhead Subject: Language Identification Study -- Help Needed -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 91 07:31:05 EDT From: Rick Broadhead Subject: Language Identification Study -- Help Needed Forwarding this to LINGUIST on behalf of Yeshwant Muthusamy, of the Center for Spoken Language. He does not subscribe to this list. Rick Broadhead ysar1111@VM1.YorkU.CA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: yeshwant@ogicse.cse.ogi.edu (Yeshwant K Muthusamy) Subject: We Need Your Voices! Date: 5 Aug 91 23:16:58 GMT Organization: Oregon Graduate Institute (formerly OGC), Beaverton, OR I had posted this request about a month ago on this group. I am posting again since I haven't reached my goal of at least 100 calls per language yet. The current tally stands at 50 calls per language on the average. Still a long ways to go. So, if you haven't called yet, PLEASE DO! (see notice below) For those of you who did call and record their voices, a big THANK YOU! I appreciate your help! If anyone has (had) any problems with the call or recording, please send e-mail to yeshwant@cse.ogi.edu, or call (503) 690-1431. Yeshwant WE NEED YOUR VOICE!! at The Center for Spoken Language Oregon Graduate Institute If you are a NATIVE speaker of one of the following languages: English Korean Farsi Mandarin Chinese French Spanish German Tamil Japanese Vietnamese We need your help in building a multi-language database of speech recorded over the TELEPHONE. This database is to be used for my PhD thesis research on automatic language identification. There is a local area number for the Portland (Oregon) metropolitan area: PLEASE CALL (503) 690-1012 For non-Portlanders, we have set up a TOLL-FREE line (for the US and Canada) that is open round-the-clock: PLEASE CALL 1-800-441-1077 You will need a touch-tone phone for this call. A pre-recorded message in your native language will guide you through a recording session. Please respond to the prompts in your native language only. The entire call will take about five minutes. The speech that you provide will be used for research purposes only. **ALL CALLERS REMAIN ANONYMOUS**. This research is not being funded by any agency or company. This database is public-domain and will be made available to any one interested in speech research. If you have any questions or comments, or would like more information about this project, call Yeshwant Muthusamy at (503) 690-1431. Please pass on this message to others at your site who do not have net access. THANK YOU FOR YOUR HELP! Yeshwant Muthusamy Internet: yeshwant@cse.ogi.edu Center for Spoken Language UUCP: ...!ogicse!yeshwant Oregon Graduate Institute of Science and Technology 19600 NW Von Neumann Drive Beaverton, OR 97006-1999 USA Vmail: (503) 690-1431 __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-416 ________________________________________________________________ [Moderators' note: We get so many questions about subscribing, unsubscribing, querying the listserv, etc, that we thought that a clear and simple summary might be helpful to you. The following is our attempt to provide one. Please let us know if you have suggestions or corrections. We intend to post this every few weeks, so that it will be available through the same channel as the messages--rather like a stylesheet in the cover of a journal. Those of you who don't need the information can just delete it--it will always appear with the heading "Linguist How-To's " and without a volume number.] HOW TO: 1) SUBSCRIBE TO LINGUIST: Send a message to: Listserv@tamvm1.tamu.edu (if you are on the Internet) or Listserv@tamvm1 (if you are on Bitnet) The message should consist of the following line only: subscribe linguist Ex: subscribe linguist Jane Doe 2) TEMPORARILY STOP RECEIVING LINGUIST: Send a message to the Listserv, at the address in (1) above. The message should consist of the following line only: set linguist nomail You might do this if, for example, you are going on vacation for a few weeks. When you return, simply do (3) below. 3) RESTART LINGUIST AFTER HAVING SET YOURSELF TO "NOMAIL": Send a message to the Listserv, at the address in (1) above. The message should consist of the following line only: set linguist mail 4) PERMANENTLY REMOVE YOURSELF FROM THE LIST: Send a message to the Listserv, as in (1) above. 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Be sure to use upper or lower case as indicated in the announcement. Usually the announcement will tell you to send a message consisting of the following line: get Ex: get lsa-lst.txt (This will retrieve the list of e-mail addresses for LSA members. Note that it is all lower-case.) 10) PUT A FILE (e.g. a conference announcement) ON THE LISTSERV: Head the material EITHER "For the Listserv" OR "For the Listserv--announcement follows" and send it to: Linguist@tamvm1.tamu.edu In other words, treat it exactly like a regular LINGUIST message. We will put it on the Listserv for you and announce to the list that it is available. Depending on your header, we will announce it in one of two ways: If you have headed it, " . . . announcement follows" we'll wait for your summary announcement and post that, after appending our standard header telling how to retrieve the complete file. THIS IS THE OPTION WHICH WE WOULD PREFER, since it ensures a coherent announcement. Please make your announcement brief and send it, as a second mail message, to the same address. If you have headed it simply "For the Listserv," we'll post the first few lines of the file, after appending our standard header telling how to retrieve the complete file. 11) GET THE LISTSERV TO COOPERATE WHEN IT HASN'T SO FAR: If you've been getting LINGUIST but haven't been able to get files, set nomail, etc., simply resubscribe, as in 1) above. (If you didn't resubscribe when LINGUIST moved from the U. of Western Australia to Texas A&M, the Listserv may have no record of your current address. The path used to reach you from Australia may differ from the one used to reach you from the USA; and the Listserv may still be using your "old" address.) 12) GET EXTRA HELP WITH ANY OF THE ABOVE: Send a message to either of us: e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu (Anthony Aristar) hdry@emunix.emich.edu (Helen Dry) We'll be happy to help if we can. --Helen & Anthony ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-417. Sat 17 Aug 1991 Lines: 289 Subject: Seeking Information about Lexical Resources Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 91 13:54:57 EDT From: ingria@BBN.COM Subject: Seeking Information About Lexical Resources -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 91 13:54:57 EDT From: ingria@BBN.COM Subject: Seeking Information About Lexical Resources [The following is the text of a message which has been sent to various natural language researchers throughout the world. If you know of any site not on the list and can provide a contact or if you are involved in a project that should be surveyed, we would like to hear from you. Thanks in advance.] Dear Colleague, We are writing to you as members of the Computational Lexicon Working Group of the Text Encoding Initiative. The overall goal of the Text Encoding Initiative is to produce standards for interchanging electronic documents of various types. The specific goal of the Lexicon Working Group is to propose standards for interchanging data stored in lexicons, i.e. lexical databases intended for use by natural language processing systems of all sorts. (Please note that we are not dealing with Machine-Readable Dictionaries, which are electronic versions of printed documents intended for human consumption. A distinct Dictionary Working Group is concerned with standards for MRDs.) In order to achieve this goal in a way that will satisfy the broadest community of lexicon users, we need to have the widest possible survey of currently existing lexicons. We will be presenting a preliminary report on the results of our survey to the TEI Steering Committee at Oxford on October 2, 1991. Therefore we are asking all those to whom we are sending this survey to respond to us within one month (i.e. by September 15). We will need the intervening time to compile responses, so any information received after this date will not be included in the October report. We appreciate that we may be imposing upon your research time with this request. However, your response will help create a more accurate standard for the community as a whole. All those who respond will receive a copy of the final standards proposal. We have already surveyed approximately 30 systems and we expect the final survey to include between 50 and 70 systems at a minimum. (We have included a list of centers to which we have sent this survey. If you notice any site we might have overlooked, we would be grateful if you informed us or passed on a copy of this survey to the appropriate person.) Thank you for your cooperation and quick response. Robert Ingria, Chair, BBN Systems and Technologies (ingria@bbn.com) Nicoletta Calzolari, CNR, Pisa (glottolo@icnucevm.cnuce.cnr.it) James Pustejovsky, Brandeis University (jamesp@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu) Susan Warwick-Armstrong, ISSCO (susan@divsun.unige.ch) ===================================Cut Here=================================== We would like to have example entries, including both syntax and semantics, for the following classes of lexical items from your system. (Please include the name of your system and the size(s) of the lexicon(s) you have developed). If you have developed bilingual or multilingual entries for your system, please also provide translation examples for the classes listed below. Note that all our examples are in English; please use the analogous classes for the language(s) handled by your system. (1) Nouns: entity nouns - apple, book, etc. relational nouns - speed, age, height, father, brother, etc. abstract nouns - courage, love, altruism, etc. mass nouns - wine, sand, etc. proper names - John, Europe, IBM, etc. Also please indicate whether complement-taking properties are represented: e.g. ``factive'' nouns like ``story'', ``transitive'' nouns, etc. (2) Pronouns (I, he, she, it, etc.) and bound anaphors (myself, himself, herself, each other, etc.) (3) Verbs: a wide variety of valency classes: intransitive transitive ditransitive clausal complement taking infinitival complement taking (raising and control) ``small-clause'' taking verbs including naked infinitives etc. If your verbal entries include an indication of variants of a basic valency class (e.g. whether a transitive verb passivizes, whether an indirect object-taking verb allows ``Dative movement'', etc.), please indicate this by example If your system deals with a language like German in which the nominal complements of a verb may appear in different Cases (e.g. helfen takes a dative object while sehen takes an accusative object), please show how this is represented. (4) Modals and auxiliaries (5) Prepositions - any indication of subclasses of prepositions e.g. ``case-marking'' prepositions vs. semantical contentful If English particles are a subset of prepositions in your system, please indicate this (6) Adjectives - please indicate whether complement-taking properties are represented; e.g. ``proud of'', ``likely to'', etc. please indicate what semantic classes of adjectives you distinguish: e.g. scalar vs. bi-polar, intersective vs. subsective, etc. Also, please include any other information you may represent, such as the position in which an adjective can appear (pre-nominal, post-nominal, predicate position, etc.) (7) Determiners and other similar nominal modifiers (e.g. articles, quantifiers, demonstratives, etc.) - Please indicate whether you indicate polarity, monotonicity, etc. If your lexicon includes multi-word lexical entries, please supply examples. If your lexicon uses an inheritance mechanism, please describe it and/or provide examples. For the inflected categories of noun, verb, and adjective, please indicate how irregular forms, inflectional paradigm, and other morphological information is stored. For translation entries, please indicate how they are interpreted or used in the system. Finally, if there are any other special characteristics of your lexicon or the system controlling it that are not adequately covered by the above categories, please provide a description and examples. We would also appreciate it if you could send us any documentation on your system that could help us to understand the examples, such as technical reports, coding guidelines, etc. Please send your EMail responses to: ingria@bbn.com If you have any trouble responding to this address, the following addresses may be used: jamesp@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu susan@divsun.unige.ch Hardcopy responses may be sent to: Robert Ingria BBN Systems and Technologies 10 Moulton Street Mailstop 6/4c Cambridge, MA 02139 USA or Susan Warwick-Armstrong ISSCO University of Geneva 54, Rte. des Acacias 1227 Geneva SWITZERLAND Again, thank you for your cooperation. ====================================================================== List of sites being surveyed, by country: U.K.: Alvey SRI-Cambridge Edinborough Sussex Manchester ET DATR UK-Eurotra France: LADL (Paris VII) IRIT Gsi-ERLI Eurotra-France The Netherlands: Utrecht: Lexic project Utrecht: Mimo University of Amsterdam BSO DLT Philips/Rosetta Finland: IBM Finland Switzerland: ISSCO: GB-Parsing ISSCO: ELU ISSCO: French unification grammar ISSCO: MT Avalanche report MT system Italy: Pisa Trento Venice Eurotra Italy Portugal: Israel: Belgium: Brussels: KRS Metal-Leuven Germany: Saarbruecken Stuttgart Bonn: IKP Center Tuebingen GMD Eurotra Germany Greece: Eurotra Greece Canada: METEO Toronto Simon Fraser USA: BBN Delphi BBN IRUS Brandeis/CTI lexicon MIT Spoken Language System MIT Fast Parser IBM Lexical Resources IBM Stochastic Grammar IBM MT NYU Proteus CMU Spoken Language System CMU MT Unisys AT&T Spoken Language System AT&T Fidditch Bellcore University of Maryland NMSU CRL NMSU MT ISI MT ISI Generation HP Labs SRI Xerox PARC LFG Xerox PARC MT Boeing (Washington) Japan: Kyoto University EDR __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-417 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-418. Sat 17 Aug 1991 Lines: 81 Subject: Queries: Pluperfect, PC Dictionary Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 91 13:59:14 EDT From: mwhite%saul.cis.upenn.edu@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Michael White) Subject: Query re the pluperfect 2) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 91 15:16:52 CDT From: Dennis Baron Subject: pc dictionary -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 91 13:59:14 EDT From: mwhite%saul.cis.upenn.edu@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Michael White) Subject: Query re the pluperfect I am told that it is ancient knowledge that the pluperfect in English covers two distinct senses, describable as the past of the past and the past of the perfect. Does anyone know where this ancient knowledge came from? Thanks, Michael White __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 91 15:16:52 CDT From: Dennis Baron Subject: pc dictionary I have just joined the LINGUIST discussion group after seeing a reference to it in our Linguistics Dept newsletter (U of Illinois, Urbana). Since I do not know yet what recent topics have been raised, let me by way of introduction raise an issue/ask a question concerning the new _Random House Webster's College Dictionary_, published last Spring, which is being touted by the publishers (and vigorously condemned in the popular press) as "the politically correct dictionary." This because it provides in a brief appendix a guide to nonsexist writing, and because many (though not all) of the sex-specific entries have usage notes advising the use of neutral terminology. The _RHWCD_ notes the spelling _womyn_, for example, has an entry for _waitron_ as an alternative to the gendered waiter/waitress pair, and so forth. One notable absence from this, or any dictionary, is the recording of the use of _Ms._ not as a marriage-neutral feminine honorific but as a synonym for _Miss_, a usage current among unmarried under- grad women here in the Midwest and, I gather, elsewhere as well. Ms., by the way, was coined as early as 1932 and seems to have served then as an abbreviation for _Miss_, which was advocated by some feminists in the early 20c as the universal female title to correspond to Mr. The initial pronunciation of _Ms._ was apparently with a voiceless /s/ rather than the current /z/, which reinforces this etymology. When I poll female undergrads here they often say they go by _Ms._ (if they are unmarried) and intend to switch to _Mrs._ if/when they marry. To what extent is this phenomenon repeated elsewhere? Has anyone else seen or thought about the pc phenomenon with regard to this new dictionary? Has anyone else noticed, as I have, that _no_ dictionary, including the _OED_, defines _Webster's_ as meaning `any (English) dictionary'? Even the _RHWCD_, which editor Sol Steinmetz explains has added _Web- ster's to the title because the term is synonymous with quality dictionary, does not define _Webster's_ this way in the body of the dictionary. -- __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-418 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-419. Mon 19 Aug 1991. Lines: 105 Subject: Queries: Searches for Data Corpora Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 91 17:29:57 EDT From: becky%division.cs.columbia.edu@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Becky Passonneau) Subject: Search for Data Corpus 2) Date: Sat, 17 Aug 91 13:41:32 -0700 From: ervin-tr@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Susan Ervin-Tripp) Subject: Re: Responses: Brown corpus, being -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 91 17:29:57 EDT From: becky%division.cs.columbia.edu@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Becky Passonneau) Subject: Search for Data Corpus Two collaborators and I are planning to analyze a variety of aspects of English conversational discourse, and are searching for an appropriate corpus. Since there seems to be a growing trend to collect and share such data, I thought I'd ask the linguist subscribers for suggestions as to where we might find a pre-existing corpus. If anyone would be interested in a trade, e.g., to enlarge their own corpus of conversational data, I have a set of transcribed interviews that turn out not to be ideal for the current study, but which I have distributed in the past and would certainly share again. The ideal corpus for my current purposes would have the following characteristics: naturalistic English discourse (e.g., not a restricted sub-language like sports or news journalism) oral, i.e., w/ audio or audio/video recordings accurately transcribed in some accessible transcription method machine readable format short, manageable discourses (e.g., 10-20 minutes) reasonable number of discourses to generalize from (e.g., a half dozen? a dozen?) preferably monologic, or if not, then as much like monologue as possible, e.g., dominated by one speaker; limited amount of 'meta-level' discussion (e.g., clarification dialogues, conversational repairs, etc.) independently motivated or transparent hierarchical action structure underlying the discourse (e.g., for establishing segment boundaries, for doing plan inference) significant role of temporal information (e.g., because of domain or genre or task structure) resulting in high frequency of temporal adverbial phrases or meaningful shifts and continuations of tense; variations in lexical and grammatical aspectual types possibly analyzed already w/ respect to prosodic cues; segmental structure; anything else that could provide a basis for drawing generalizations about distributional patterns Since this is my first posting to 'linguist', I'll use this opportunity to thank the moderators for their remarkable efforts, and the subscribers for their interesting discussions. Becky Passonneau __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Sat, 17 Aug 91 13:41:32 -0700 From: ervin-tr@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Susan Ervin-Tripp) Subject: Re: Responses: Brown corpus, being tHe examples from Harris in Nevin's letter seem a peculiar argument. Something is missing. An interesting example from Harris's _A Grammar of English on Mathematical Principles_: The uncomfortableness of -ing on adjectives leads to occasional elisions of it: in _Don't be horrid. I'm not being horrid_ the retort shows that the first sentence can be taken as reduced from !Don't be being horrid. Children in role play: A: I'm being the mommy B: Don't be the mommy, I'm gonna be the mommy. A: Well, I'm washing the dishes. B: No, don't wash the dishes. A: I'm being nice to the baby. B: Don't be nice to the baby. I'm the mommy. This is an invented example, but the A turns at least are consistent with the genre. The convenience for discussing use of -ing is that children often constitute roles by identifying what they are doing explicitly this way by the use of -ing. Could somebody explain why, given the parallelismss in these examples, there is some elision in Don't be horrid? __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-419. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-420. Mon 19 Aug 1991. Lines: 105 Subject: FYI: Arcling Report, Israeli Conference Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 18 Aug 1991 12:06:33 GMT From: MCCONVELL_P%DARWIN.NTU.EDU.AU@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: ARCLING conference report 2) Date: Sun, 18 Aug 91 09:29:58 IST From: wendy sandler Subject: Israel Assoc for Theoretical Linguistics -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 18 Aug 1991 12:06:33 GMT From: MCCONVELL_P%DARWIN.NTU.EDU.AU@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: ARCLING conference report I have just posted a report of the conference "Archaeology and Linguistics: Understanding Ancient Australia" which took place at the Northern Territory University, Darwin, Australia, July 8-12 1991, including the full final conference program, on the Listserv. Enquiries to : Patrick McConvell, Anthropology, NTU, PO Box 40146, Casuarina, NT 0811, Australia. [Moderators' note: The repport mentioned in 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 ancient-australia You will then receive the complete report.] __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Sun, 18 Aug 91 09:29:58 IST From: wendy sandler Subject: Israel Assoc. for Theoretical Linguistics PLEASE POST CALL FOR ABSTRACTS The Israel Association for Theoretical Linguistics Workshop on: LANGUAGE AND COGNITION December 30, 1991 The University of Haifa We encourage submission of abstracts in the following areas, or any other area dealing with language and cognition: Linguistic Theory and Cognition Modularity Language Acquisition Neurolinguistics Sign Language Artificial Intelligence Psycholinguistics Six copies of abstracts should be submitted anonymously, with an accompanying 3x5 card stating name, title of paper, affiliation, address, phone number, and email address to: Dr. Anita Mittwoch President and Program Chair Israel Association for Theoretical Linguistics Department of English Hebrew University Mt. Scopus Jerusalem, Israel tel: (02) 883582 email: HCUMA@HUJIVM1 deadline for receipt of abstracts: October 15, 1991 PARASESSION ON LANGUAGE AND DEAFNESS December 31, 1991 The main purpose of this parasession is to enable Israeli researchers working on sign language and other aspects of language and deafness to familiarize each other with their research. Interested researchers in other areas are encouraged to attend. Scholars working on other sign languages are also encouraged to participate. Among the participants will be Esther Dromi, Wendy Sandler, Amatzia Weisel, and an additional invited speaker (to be announced). Others interested in participating should contact: Dr. Wendy Sandler Department of English Language and Literature The University of Haifa 31999 Haifa, Israel tel: (04)240455/240065 email: RHLE702@HAIFAUVM.BITNET __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-420. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-421. Tue 20 Aug 1991. Lines: 66 Subject: Language games Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 91 16:21:14 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Re: Igpay Atinlay 2) Date: Sat, 17 Aug 91 00:54:47 EDT From: Karen Kay Subject: Igpay Atinlay 3) Date: Mon, 19 Aug 91 15:39 GMT From: Alida extn 4189 Subject: RE: Language play -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 91 16:21:14 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Re: Igpay Atinlay Jouko Seppanen has worked on language games in Finnish and Swedish, in- cluding a program which takes NL input and produces output in one of a number of these. I have the following addressa for him (which may not be current):TeKoLa Computing Centre, Helsinki University of Technology, 02150 Espoo, Finland. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Sat, 17 Aug 91 00:54:47 EDT From: Karen Kay Subject: Igpay Atinlay > Subject: Igpay Atinlay > I think Moira Yip wrote an article on something like this in a dialect of Chinese. It appeared in Linguistic Inquiry 5-8 years ago. Karen Kay __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Mon, 19 Aug 91 15:39 GMT From: Alida extn 4189 Subject: RE: Language play If someone can offer examples of Chinese games I'll have a go at cross-referencing with the Opies. Alida Bedford (bedforda at uk.ac.ports.cso - nb away in Finland from tues until next week) __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-421. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-422. Wed 21 Aug 1991. Lines: 90 Subject: Queries Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 19 Aug 1991 00:36 EST From: Vince Samar Subject: Historical change toward increased markedness 2) Date: Mon, 19 Aug 91 12:14 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: To UCLA Alums 3) Date: Tue, 20 Aug 1991 00:34:05 CST From: Chris Culy Subject: Linguistics in titles -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 19 Aug 1991 00:36 EST From: Vince Samar Subject: Historical change toward increased markedness I'm looking for some clear examples of changes in linguistic phenomena in the direction of INCREASED markedness over the course of hist rical development. I'm interested in hearing about diachronic changes at ANY level of representation (e.g., phonology, syntax, etc.). Vince Samar Communication Research Department National Technical Institute for the Deaf Rochester Institute of Technology P.O. Box 9887 Rochester, New York 14623-0887 VJSNCR@RITVAX.bitnet (716)-475-6338 (office) (716)-475-6500 (FAX) __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Mon, 19 Aug 91 12:14 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: To UCLA Alums The UCLA Department of Linguistics was founded in 1966. This coming year we are celebrating our 25th birthday. There will be a party on October 5th and all former (and present of course) grad students are invited. We are also trying to update our files of where you all are so please if you are a UCLA linguistic alum, send your mailing address, phone, affiliation, (and e-mail address) to me (via e- mail -- iyo1vaf@uclamvs.bitnet or to the department via snail mail: Chair Russ Schuh, Dept of Linguistics UCLA, LA CA 90024. Or call (213)825 0634. If you know of any alums who are not on the LINGUIST NET and you have their addresses, please do send those too. Come celebfrate with us. Would be nice to hear from you even if you can't make it. But if there is any chance, save the date -- OCTOBER 5, 1991. Vicki Fromkin for all of us at ucla. __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Tue, 20 Aug 1991 00:34:05 CST From: Chris Culy Subject: Linguistics in titles Hi all, I recently came across a book called _The Infinitive of Go_, and it made me wonder what other books might have linguistic terminology in the title. If people send mail to me directly, I can make a summary of the replies and post it here. Chris cculy@vaxa.weeg.uiowa.edu __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-422. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-423. Wed 21 Aug 1991. Lines: 80 Subject: Symposium on SGML, ODA, and Information Retrieval Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 20 Aug 91 12:58:25 -0400 From: walker%flash.bellcore.com@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Don Walker) Subject: Symposium on SGML, ODA, and Information Retrieval -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 20 Aug 91 12:58:25 -0400 From: walker%flash.bellcore.com@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Don Walker) Subject: Symposium on SGML, ODA, and Information Retrieval SYMPOSIUM APPLYING INFORMATION RETRIEVAL TO MARKED-UP OR STRUCTURED DOCUMENTS Rockfeller University, 1230 York Avenue, New York, NY 10021-6399 9am to 5:15pm, 18 October 1991 Organized by the Center for Advanced Study of Information Systems Inc. (CASIS) under the sponsorship of Dr. F. Seitz, President Emeritus, Rockfeller University PROGRAM Chaired by Pierre Aigrain, Former French Minister General Introduction: Bruce Merrifield >From overflow of documents to answering impredictable questions Norbert Paquel, CANOPE The Text Encoding Initiative Don Walker, Bellcore Linguistic analysis: exploiting structure and extracting structure Lisa Rau, General Electric R&D Semantic extension to text retrieval James Driscoll, University of Central Florida Utilization of a text algebra for retrieval of information from a hierarchical database, incorporating heterogeneous structured documents F. Burkowski, University of Waterloo Incorporating human aspects in human computer interaction in information retrieval Tefko Saracevic, Rutgers University Exploiting SGML information for document retrieval Yuri Rubinsky, SoftQuad, Inc. SGML, distinguishing Intelligence from formating Sam Wilmott, Software Exoterica Corporation Interaction with ODA structure Mark Bramhall, Digital Equipment Corp. PANEL SESSION: Practical evolution of retrieval techniques in enterprise-wide document databases Chaired by Joshua Lederberg, Past President, Rockfeller University and Nobel Prize Winner For more information and to register, contact: CASIS, Attention: Mrs M.T. Maurice 220 East 72nd Street New York, NY 10021, USA Phone: (+1-212) 879 4019 Fax: (+1-212) 879 4552 Linguist List: Vol-2-423. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-424. Wed 21 Aug 1991. Lines: 69 Subject: Responses: Data, Titles Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 19 Aug 91 10:57:53 EDT From: jules@nynexst.com (Julie Silverman) Subject: Re: Queries 2) Date: Sun, 18 Aug 1991 13:45:03 -0500 From: Dennis Baron Subject: Re: Queries: Searches for Data Corpora 3) Date: Tue, 20 Aug 1991 13:07:01 CST From: Chris Culy Subject: Clarification -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 19 Aug 91 10:57:53 EDT From: jules@nynexst.com (Julie Silverman) Subject: Re: Queries Dr. Francis handles the corpus matters for Text Research. Phone 603-539-6356, fax 603-539-5445, e-mail HENRY@BROWNVM.BITNET - Julie Silverman __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Sun, 18 Aug 1991 13:45:03 -0500 From: Dennis Baron Subject: Re: Queries: Searches for Data Corpora is it because _be being_ punches the role play rather than the more ambiguous simple durative of just plain _be_? `I'm being the mommy' is more explicit than `I'm the mommy' (which implies `I'm playing the role of the mommy' rather than actually being a mother). The thing is that am being, are being, is being are all very common, and so on, while _be being_, along with such constructions as _has been being_, will have been being, while grammatically possible, seem to many speakers to be stylistic violations and are therefore reduced. Be being does occur in speech and writing (I had some examples once but don't know where they've gone to) but it's decidedly rare. __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Tue, 20 Aug 1991 13:07:01 CST From: Chris Culy Subject: Clarification When I asked about linguistic terms in titles, I meant titles of novels. Sorry about the confusion. Chris cculy@vaxa.weeg.uiowa.edu __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-424. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-425. Wed 21 Aug 1991. Lines: 121 Subject: Publication of Research in Humanities Computing Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 91 10:41 BST From: Susan Hockey Subject: Re: Responses: data, titles 2) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 1991 09:44:11 From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz) Subject: Speedier Processing of Large Files -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 21 Aug 91 20:04:37 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Re: Responses: data, titles I can't contribute a title of a work of fiction making use of a linguistic term but I did read some (well, many) years ago a novel called 'Oh's Profit' about a signing gorilla and a plot to kill him by a linguist whose theory of 'genesis grammar' was incompatible with the gorilla's linguistic abili- ties. The novel, published in 1975 by William Morrow, is by John Goulet, identified on the jacket as a teacher of creative writing at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Michael Kac __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 1991 09:44:11 From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz) Subject: Speedier Processing of Large Files Michael: I can think of two or three things that might speed up your access to large files, short of getting a new system with a faster system clock and/or a wider data bus: - get a faster disk, though it can be a bit problematic installing anything current (or even contemporary) on an 8088 system, due to the way that one has to describe the disk to the controller - with jumper settings. For example, replace the 30 MB unit with a larger faster unit like a 25 ms 40 MB drive. Such a kit without controller is running c. $250 US. Note that with a program that uses the disk for swapping when accessing large files, the disk is really most of what is holding you up, not the processor. - use an in-RAM disk cache, especially a large one. There are several commercial disk caching programs, e.g., the disk cache program in the Norton Utilities, the one in PC Tools, and the PC-Kwik product, but to use them you will need more than 640 KB of RAM. For example, I have an older 286/12 with "1 MB." The 384 KB section that sits in the range 1 MB to 1 MB + 384 KB is devoted to a disk cache, and this definitely seems to speed up my disk accesses. I have used a cache of 1.5 MB on a 386/16, too, in the past, and it was very nice. Very little real disk access even with a 1 MB data file (in an AWK run, not WP). - An alternative to the cache, not as useful, is a large RAM disk (1-2 MB). You can tell WP to use a large enough RAM disk as a swap drive (see appendix K of the 5.1 manual). Too small an overflow disk would probably fill up and crash your editing session. - WP has some technique for splitting up large files into smaller ones, albeit what I remember of it is that it was very awkward. - If you don't have a current version of WP, get the current version. The newer versions of WP and MS Word are faster than the older ones. - Try a faster word processor like XyWrite (or, better, its academic variant Nota Bene). Nota Bene has a nicer scheme for working with split up files, too, for that matter. Note that I have virtually no experience with WP. John Koontz Disclaimer: All observations are supplied on my own authority. __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-426. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-427. Fri 23 Aug 1991. Lines: 84 Subject: Queries: clicks, why wh- Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 21 Aug 91 05:26:43 -0400 From: spore%acf5.NYU.EDU@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Stuart Spore) Subject: ! (click) 2) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 1991 15:09:30 +0000 From: Mark Sanderson Subject: Query -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 21 Aug 91 05:26:43 -0400 From: spore%acf5.NYU.EDU@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Stuart Spore) Subject: ! (click) A colleague who is not a subscriber to the LINGUIST List posed the following question. Is there anyone out there who can answer her? > In some African languages, the character ! is used to denote > a click. In such cases, it is being used as an alphabetic > character rather than as punctuation. > We are trying to decide how this usage of ! will be normalized for > searching [an online library catalog]. So far, the only > instances I have seen in our catalog have the ! as the first > character of a word (e.g. !Kung, !Osa, !Xu). Does anyone out > there know if the ! is ever used in the middle of words, or at > the end? ---------------------------------------------------------- Stuart Spore | Phone: 212-998-6333 Head of Cataloging & Automated | Fax: 212-998-6587 Systems | spore@acf5.nyu.edu New York University Law Library | 40 Washington Sq. So. | New York, N.Y. 10012 | -----------------------------------------------------------^Z __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 1991 15:09:30 +0000 From: Mark Sanderson Subject: Query This is a rather frivolous question as it is purly for interest and no academic pursuits. Does anyone know why in English words questioning words (I'm afraid I don't know the correct term) like Who, What, Why, When all begin with "wh" ? Is there a good reason ? Do other languages have this quirk ? If anyone knows, I would be interested to hear. Thanks, Mark S. +------------------------------------------------------------+ | Mail : Mark Sanderson, Department of Computing Science, | | The University, Glasgow G12 8QQ, Scotland, UK. | +------------------------------------------------------------+ | If yer no Scottish, away and throw shite at yourself | +-------------------------------------+----------------------+ | e-mail : sanderso@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk | Tel: +44 41 330 4264 | | | Fax: +44 41 330 4913 | +-------------------------------------+----------------------+ __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-427. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-428. Fri 23 Aug 1991. Lines: 48 Subject: Clicks Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 91 08:40 MET From: "Norval Smith (UVAALF::NSMITH)" Subject: RE: Queries: click, why wh- 2) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 91 19:35 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: Queries: click, why wh- -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 91 08:40 MET From: "Norval Smith (UVAALF::NSMITH)" Subject: RE: Queries: click, why wh- clicks In answer to the query about the phonotactic possibilities of clicks with reference to the use of ! (and other symbols like /) in titles, I can say that as far as my reasonably limited knowledge of the situation goes, it appears that clicks are restricted to the beginning of morphemes. This means that they can occur word-internally - in compounds for instance. Norval Smith __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 91 19:35 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: Queries: click, why wh- to: stuart spore The symbol ! is used to represent a post-alveolar click in the newly revised IPA chart. Of course it can occur in the middle of a word. __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-428. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-429. Fri 23 Aug 1991. Lines: 185 Subject: Why "wh-" Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 91 14:01:50 EDT From: John.M.Lawler@um.cc.umich.edu Subject: Why wh-? 2) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 91 15:12:59 EDT From: Geoffrey Russom Subject: Re: Queries: click, why wh- 3) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 91 12:14:36 PDT From: poser@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Bill Poser) Subject: wh words 4) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 91 12:57:07 PDT From: "Charles A. Bigelow" Subject: Re: Queries: click, why wh- -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 91 14:01:50 EDT From: John.M.Lawler@um.cc.umich.edu Subject: Why wh-? Mark Sanderson asks: >Does anyone know why in English words questioning words >(I'm afraid I don't know the correct term) like > > Who, What, Why, When > >all begin with "wh" ? >Is there a good reason ? Do other languages have this quirk ? Yes, Mark, there is a reason. As to whether it is a "good reason", opinions differ. And, yes, other languages have this quirk, though not all in the same way. The English interrogative and relative pronouns and adverbs are technically called "wh-words", even when they aren't spelled (like how) or pronounced (like who) that way, and even when not dealing with English, at least by some people. They come historically from the Indo-European forms, all of which began with a /kw-/ consonant, pronounced moreor less like "QU-" is in ordinary English. You can see this in Latin, which preserved the sound - the Latin forms all begin with "qu-" qui - who quis, quid - what quo - how, when, where ...et cetera. If you put a "wh" wherever you see a "qu" here it begins to look awfully familiar. How did that happen? Well, English is a Germanic language, and a particular kind of sound change happened to the Indo-European sounds as they mutated into the Germanic languages. It's called "Grimm's Law" because it was discovered by the brothers Grimm, who did other things besides collect fairy tales. Grimm's Law says that all the "stop" consonants (which includes /kw/) change to other consonants in various regular ways. In particular, what happens to an Indo-European /kw/ is that it changes to /hw/, which was probably pronounced like a German "ch" followed by an English "w". In English this sound got softer and softer over the years, so that many English speakers today don't distinguish between the first sound in (say) "where" and "wear", even though they're spelled differently. I said that opinions differed about whether Grimm's Law was a "good" reason in the sense you asked. It's certainly true, which is a benefit; and it does explain where the English forms came from. But it doesn't explain two things: 1) Why the Indo-European "wh-words" (more properly, "kw-words") all seemed to have this peculiarity; there are explanations for this, but Grimm's Law isn't one, since it merely says where they came from, not how they got that way to start; and 2) Why Grimm's Law happened the way it did. Grimm's Law is descriptive, not explanatory. In fact, nobody's got the foggiest idea *why* sound changes occur the way they do, though there are some theories as to why they should occur in general. This is approximately akin to a theory of evolution without a concept of natural selection. So when you hear linguists talking about languages and words being "genetically related", remember it's just a metaphor, and not a very good one at that. Good question. Thanks for asking. John Lawler jlawler@um.cc.umich.edu Linguistics Program jlawler@umichum.bitnet University of Michigan - Ann Arbor __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 91 15:12:59 EDT From: Geoffrey Russom Subject: Re: Queries: click, why wh- The "wh" words of English correspond to "kw" words in Latin (quis, quid, qui, quare, etc.). It's an Indo-European quirk. I don't know what IE constituent corresponds to the "kw" part, but I think it may be a separate word originally. A parallel case I do know about involves glitter, gleam, glisten, glow, and other words having to do with light. The "gl" in these words is zero grade of IE GHEL, the root of "gold" and "yellow." __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 91 12:14:36 PDT From: poser@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Bill Poser) Subject: wh words The reason that English "what", "who", etc. begin with "wh" is that in Proto-Indo-European the corresponding words began with "kw", of which "wh" is the regular English reflex. Compare Latin "quod", "qui", etc. This kind of regularity is not unknown in other languages. In Japanese, for example, we have: koko here doko where kore this dore which (pronoun) kono this dono which (adjective) kare him/her dare who konna this sort of donna what sort of kotira this of two dotira which of two ko: in this way do: in what way The k(o)- terms (here by me) have corresponding sets in s(o)- (there by you) and a- (there away from us both), with some exceptions and irregularities I won't go into here. However, some wh-words don't fit: "what" is "nani", "when" is "itsu". It looks like this is enough of a paradigm to induce analogy. Historically, the wh-words have initial /d/'s because they began with /i/, e.g. Old Japanese idoko/iduko "where". (Native Japanese morphemes almost never begin with voiced obstruents.) Howver, the old form of dare "who" is /tare/. The voicing of /tare/ to /dare/ is attributed to analogy with the other wh-words. __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 91 12:57:07 PDT From: "Charles A. Bigelow" Subject: Re: Queries: click, why wh- The historical linguists can tell the tale more competently and completely, but in case they don't reply, here is a non-expert account: Most of the English interrogative pronouns in "wh-" are, in some dialects pronounced like /hw-/. And this is the clue to their origin. (Though the "wh-" in "who" is an exception pronounced /h-/, and in some dialects, mine included, "wh-" is reduced to "w-", so that "when" is homophonous with "wen" and "where" with "wear". A great shame, I'm sure.) Anyway, the /hw-/ (or sometimes /w-/ or /h-/ is all that remains in English of the late great Proto-Indo-European interrogative labialized velar /kw-/. It is seen and heard in Latin "quo" ('whither'), "quis" ('who'), etc. and is still resoundingly popular in modern Italian and Spanish. It also appears in Hittite, which, however, isn't spoken much these days. By the series of sound changes known as "Grimm's Law", which maps P.I.E. consonants to their reflexes in Germanic languages, the /kw-/ becomes /hw-/ in modern English (as /k-/ -> /h-/, /p-/ -> /f-/, and so on. (I show them here as initials, but, subject to some more context sensitive rules, the sound shift also applies to the consonants in other positions.) The elucidation of such diachronic phonetic mappings was the pride and glory of 19th century linguistics. Standard textbooks of historical linguistics can provide full and frank discussions of Grimm's Law and other excitements, including laryngeals (sounds which, in an astonishing case of predictive linguistics, were hypothesized by Saussure as existing in P.I.E. even though none survived in any known language, until their discovery in Hittite, the cuneiform texts of which were not unearthed until several decades after Saussure publication.) __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-429. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-430. Fri 23 Aug 1991. Lines: 87 Subject: Responses: Linguistic novels, Radio program Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 1991 23:00 EDT From: BELMORE%Vax2.Concordia.CA@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU Subject: Henry Lee Smith's radio program 2) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 91 20:18:43 EDT From: Ron Smyth Subject: Re: Responses: titles, file-processing 3) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 91 20:40 EDT From: "Joyce Neu (814) 865-7365" Subject: Re: Linguistics novels -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 1991 23:00 EDT From: BELMORE%Vax2.Concordia.CA@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU Subject: Henry Lee Smith's radio program I think the program was called Where Are You From? He would ask a partici- pant to pronounce various words (say Mary, marry, Mary) and was said to be able to home in on the dialect or dialects to which that person had been exposed--something like, I can teel you were born in the Piedmon area of Virginia (Piedmont, i.e.) but have since spent time in Dallas... I don't know whether any of the tapes have been preserved. I took a course from Smith and Trager at Georgetown many years ago and asked Smith if there were recordings to go with the course. He said they weren't necessary be- cause it was always very easy to get numerous examples from people in the class. I didn't think to ask him about the radio program. Too bad!!! Would be most interested in hearing if you get better information than I've been able to give you. I fear most of those who might be able to answer your question have long since died. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 91 20:18:43 EDT From: Ron Smyth Subject: Re: Responses: titles, file-processing I recall a science fiction novel entitled "The Embedding". My memory is vague on this; it was by Ian something (don't ask me why I remember the first name only!), and had something to do with a top secret project having to do with communication with aliens. I think the idea was that children were being raised to be able to understand multiply centre-embedded sentences, and possibly other 'illegal' things in human language. I have forgotten most of it, but I think it would be interesting to see an updated version (made-for-television?) in which children are tutored in violations of GB constraints. What did you ask for titles and? Authors, I presume. Ron Smyth smyth@lake.scar.utoronto.ca p.s. I'm interested in hearing of novels with linguists as leading characters. Any suggestions? rs __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 91 20:40 EDT From: "Joyce Neu (814) 865-7365" Subject: Re: Linguistics novels This is not quite what was asked for, but David Carkeet has written at least two books that I know of that have a linguist as their central character. One is called _Double Negative_ and the other is _Full Catastrophe_. _Double Negative_ is a mystery with the linguist being a child language researcher. There are several references in both books that only linguists would probably enjoy (or understand?). Cheers, Joyce Neu __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-430. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-431. Sat 24 Aug 1991. Lines: 184 Subject: Linguistic novels Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 91 14:19:57 EDT From: Ron Smyth Subject: Re: Responses: Linguistic novels, Radio program 2) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 1991 11:57 EST From: Fan mail from some flounder? Subject: Re: Responses: Linguistic novels, Radio program 3) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 1991 09:22 PDT From: Scott Delancey Subject: Re: Responses: Linguistic novels, Radio program 4) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 91 12:26 PDT From: Jonathan Mead Subject: Re: Responses: Linguistic novels 5) Date: 23 Aug 91 17:17 EST From: pchapin@nsf.gov Subject: Responses: Linguistic novels, Radio program 6) Date: Sat, 24 Aug 1991 05:45:30 GMT From: jcj@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Jason Johnston) Subject: Re: Responses: Linguistic novels, Radio program 7) Date: Sat, 24 Aug 91 10:27:18 EDT From: hdry@emunix.emich.edu (helen dry) Subject: Linguistic novels 8) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 91 17:56:16 EDT From: elc9j@prime.acc.Virginia.EDU Subject: Responses: Linguistic novels, Radio program -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 91 14:19:57 EDT From: Ron Smyth Subject: Re: Responses: Linguistic novels, Radio program Thank you to Joyce Neu for giving me two leads on linguists starring in novels. Any other contributions? Ron Smyth smyth@lake.scar.utoronto.ca __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 1991 11:57 EST From: Fan mail from some flounder? Subject: Re: Responses: Linguistic novels, Radio program Some of SuzetteElgin's books, such as "Native Tongue", have both linguistic titles and linguistic protagonists. One of my favorite Sci-Fi stories is by Robert Sheckley, entitled "Shall We Have a Little Talk", whose protagonist is supposed to learn enough of the language to buy the planet. The new planet he goes to has a defense mechanism of rapid linguistic change. At one point the protagonist cries, "Stop agglutinating!" Samuel Delany's first novel (which contains a number, but I can't remember it) is based on the Whorfian hypothesis, and there's a book, "Aliens and Linguists" that talks about the role of linguists in sci-fi. Susan Fischer __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 1991 09:22 PDT From: Scott Delancey Subject: Re: Responses: Linguistic novels, Radio program There's a murder mystery by Guy Endore, Detour at Night (1959), whose central character is a linguist of sorts, who lectures on historical linguistics and etymology at a small college in Indiana (which my grandmother told me is supposed to be DePauw, Dan Quayle's alma mater). Scott DeLancey __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 91 12:26 PDT From: Jonathan Mead Subject: Re: Responses: Linguistic novels For what it's worth. A good source of information (up to the late seventies) on linguistics according to sci-fi is Walter Meyer's _Aliens and Linguists_ (1980). U of Georgia Press. ISBN 0-8203-0487 Jonathan Mead __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: 23 Aug 91 17:17 EST From: pchapin@nsf.gov Subject: Responses: Linguistic novels, Radio program Since the question about titles has been broadened to novels featuring linguists, let me mention _Native Intelligence_ by Raymond Sokolow. The protagonist is sort of a cross between Cal Watkins and Ken Hale. The book gets pretty surreal toward the end, but is fairly gripping. Also, Anthony Burgess (of _Clockwork Orange_ fame) -- himself with some training in linguistics -- wrote a book a few years back about a linguist, called _The Doctor is Sick_ (I think). I found it rather boring, don't think I ever finished it entirely. Good to hear that David Carkeet has written another book. I enjoyed _Double Negative_, and will look for _Full Catastrophe_. Paul Chapin __________________________________________________________________________ 6) Date: Sat, 24 Aug 1991 05:45:30 GMT From: jcj@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Jason Johnston) Subject: Re: Responses: Linguistic novels, Radio program Some science-fiction mnovels dealing with linguistic themes: 1) The Embedding, Ian Watson, 1973-75, London: Quartet Books. Linguists allowed to peform learnability experiments on children, and a crazy "self-engulfing" South American language in which an infinitely self- embedding construct threatens to bring about the end of the world. 2) The Languages of Pao, Jack Vance, 1974, Mayflower Books Ltd. Whorfian theme of the attempted take-over of a planet by designing and teaching special-purpose languages (Valiant for the military, Cogitant for philosophers and Technicant for technicians). Plot foiled when a hybrid language called Pastiche arises spontaneously and frees everyone from Whorfian constraints. 3) Babel 17, Samuel R. Delany, 1967, London: Gollancz. Super-linguist cum code-cracker has to decipher aliens' language to save humanity. The language is effectively a test for humankind. Deals quite intelligently with linguistic/semiotic issues such as contrast, markedness, redundancy, etc. Note that here in Australia we normally get British editions. There are no doubt corresponding North American ones. Jason Johnston, Dept of Linguistics, University of Sydney __________________________________________________________________________ 7) Date: Sat, 24 Aug 91 10:27:18 EDT From: hdry@emunix.emich.edu (helen dry) Subject: Linguistic novels Patricia Highsmith has a mystery novel--the name of which escapes me-- with a female grad. student in linguistics as the main character. She's also a young mother; and one of her best lines is "Six-year-olds don't make good dinner companions because they rarely discuss what you're interested in. I, for example, am interested in transformational grammar . . . ." Well, that dates the book to the 70's, doesn't it? Does anyone know the book I so vaguely remember? __________________________________________________________________________ 8) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 91 17:56:16 EDT From: elc9j@prime.acc.Virginia.EDU Subject: Responses: Linguistic novels, Radio program The novels of Suzette Hayden Elgin (herself a linguist). Ellen Contini-Morava and Jack Morava __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-431. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-432. Sat 24 Aug 1991. Lines: 117 Subject: Why 'wh-' Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 91 12:29:39 EST From: Ronnie Wilbur Subject: wh-words... 2) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 91 15:21:27 CDT From: bruce%utafll.uta.edu@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Bruce Samuelson bruce@ling.uta.edu) Subject: 'wh', 'gl', and 'th' words 3) Date: Sat, 24 Aug 91 12:21:54 +1000 From: bert peeters Subject: The reasons of sound change -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 91 12:29:39 EST From: Ronnie Wilbur Subject: wh-words... You may be interested to know that a group of wh-signs in ASL all use the same handshape (a fist with index finger extending "the pointing hand" or number 1 in some cultures). The signs WHO (index finger circles mouth) WHERE (hands moves side-to-side like the gesture for "no" in many cultures) WHAT (index finger moves downward across opposite palm), WHEN (index finger circles tip of opposite hand index finger and finally makes contact with it). Matters then get messy. There is an alternative form for WHAT made with full flat hands, palm up, moving side to side in front of the signer. The signs HOW and WHY seem to be independent. Curiously, the signs for WHY, THAT, and NOW (one variant) use the same handshape - thumb and pinky extended. (yes, that's NOW, not HOW). __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 91 15:21:27 CDT From: bruce%utafll.uta.edu@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Bruce Samuelson bruce@ling.uta.edu) Subject: 'wh', 'gl', and 'th' words In answer to Mark Sanderson's question of why so many English question words begin with 'wh', several people have given historical reconstructions back to Indo-European 'kw' words. But, as John Lawler pointed out, this doesn't answer why Indo-European 'kw' words "all seemed to have this peculiarity." He does say such an answer exists. A more general question is why non-onomatopoetic congruence between semantic groups and phonological groups exists at all. Geoffrey Russom gave a satisfying explanation for 'gl' words such as glitter, gleam, glisten, glow and "other words having to do with light". They derive from "GHEL, the root of "gold" and "yellow."" This is satisfying because it explains how this particular congruence got started. Another example of phonological-semantic congruence is 'th' words in English: phonological semantic phonological semantic 'th' is voiced functor word 'th' is voiceless content word the, this, that, these, then, think, thistle, thermal, thaw, three, there, their, therefore, thus, theory, thumb, throw, threw... thee, thou... through (a counter example) Any takers on how this congruence got started? --- Question: Why does an eagle have wings? Answer 1: It inherited them from its parents. Answer 2: It uses them to fly. __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Sat, 24 Aug 91 12:21:54 +1000 From: bert peeters Subject: The reasons of sound change In his reply to the query about wh-words, John Lawler remarks that nobody has the foggiest idea about why sounds change the way they do, although there are some theories around as to why sound change should occur in general. I'd like to point out that some linguists have an answer to both questions (I'm not saying those answers are necessarily correct, although I for one believe they are). It may no longer be the most fashionable theory around, but French functionalism (led by Andre Martinet) argues: 1) that sounds change the way they do because of the eternally unstable balance between man's communicative needs and his perceived need to reduce his mental and physical efforts to a minimum - this is known as the principle of economy (for an overview, see my paper in _La linguistique_ 19:2, 1983, pp.105-116); 2) that languages change (i.e. that language change occurs) because they function ("les langues changent parce qu'elles fonctionnent") (cf. my squib in _Folia linguistica_ 20, 1986, pp.539-543) Readers of LINGUIST who would like to exchange some of their own publications with a 200 page manuscript (in French) on "Diachronie, phonologie, et linguis- tique fonctionnelle" (pre-final draft; suggestions and criticisms welcome) are invited to get in touch. --------------------------------------------------------------------- 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-2-432. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-433. Sun 25 Aug 1991. Lines: 126 Subject: Queries Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 91 15:18:39 edt From: "Sabine Bergler" Subject: reported speech 2) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 91 09:11:03 CDT From: GA5123%SIUCVMB@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: Query: "on" this theory? 3) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 91 14:07 MET From: Roland Noske Subject: query on morphological vs. phonological syllable 4) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 91 11:30:06 EDT From: cball%cattell.psych.upenn.edu@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Catherine Ball) Subject: address query 5) Date: Sat, 24 Aug 91 12:55:30 +1000 From: bert peeters Subject: Translations of Colourless green ideas -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 91 15:18:39 edt From: "Sabine Bergler" Subject: reported speech I am looking for references to treatments of reported speech. I am especially interested in documentation of implemented systems that have dealt with indirect and direct reported speech, such as He said (that) he never mislead anyone. I would be grateful for any leads. ---------Sabine Bergler------------sabine@cs.brandeis.edu---------- __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 91 09:11:03 CDT From: GA5123%SIUCVMB@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: Query: "on" this theory? "on X's view" "on Y's interpretation" "on our theory" "on their account" (meaning 'according to them', not 'for their sake') In -- not on -- my opinion, these are all anomalous. But suddenly I'm hearing and reading "on" for "in" everywhere in linguistics discourse. Am I the only one who thinks this is weird? Has anyone witnessed this usage outside of linguistics? Do syntacticians use it as much as phonologists? How long has it been in use? (So far, my earliest documentation is Goldsmith, 1976.) I'd appreciate any insights you care to share on this. ----------------------------------- Lee Hartman, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, ga5123@siucvmb.bitnet __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 91 14:07 MET From: Roland Noske Subject: query on morphological vs. phonological syllable I am looking for a reference to an article (I think it was in the American structuralist tradition, but it may have been another school) where a principled distinction was made between the "morphological" and the "phonological"syllable. Does anyone has an idea? Roland Noske, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Email: noske@alf.let.uva.nl __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 91 11:30:06 EDT From: cball%cattell.psych.upenn.edu@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Catherine Ball) Subject: address query Does anyone have an address for Renaat Declerck? ('Studies on Copular Sentences, Clefts and Pseudo-clefts', Leuven Univ. Press, 1988) __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Sat, 24 Aug 91 12:55:30 +1000 From: bert peeters Subject: Translations of Colourless green ideas A fair while ago, I asked readers of LINGUIST for interpretations they had seen of Chomsky's so-called nonsensical utterance according to which Colourless green ideas sleep furiously I'd now like to find out how this sentence has been translated (not how YOU would translate it HERE and NOW) in the literature. Basically, I'd like to compile a list of references to textbooks, monographs, articles and the like in any language, with indication of the page where the translation occurs and how it goes. Here is an imaginary example: L(ouis) Inguiste, _La linguistique moderne_, Paris: Dupont. 1977. P. 132: "D'incolores ide'es vertes dorment furieusement". Thanks for going out of your way to help me out. --------------------------------------------------------------------- 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-2-433. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-434. Sun 25 Aug 1991. Lines: 67 Subject: Corpora Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 91 22:37:33 EDT From: Henry Kucera Subject: Re: Responses: Brown corpus, being 2) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 1991 00:18 EDT From: BELMORE%Vax2.Concordia.CA@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU Subject: Re: Queries: Searches for Data Corpora 3) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 1991 00:10 EDT From: BELMORE%Vax2.Concordia.CA@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU Subject: Re: Seeking Information about Lexical resources -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 91 22:37:33 EDT From: Henry Kucera Subject: Re: Responses: Brown corpus, being Addendum re Brown Corpus (to aid in further correspondence): The "untagged" Brown Corpus (text only, essentially) is indeed available from the Norwegian Centre for Humanistic Research, P.O. Box 53, Universitet Bergen, N-5027 Bergen, Norway. It is available in various formats (including diskettes) but only to non-profit institutions, such as universities. However, the "tagged" version of the Brown Corpus (which includes a tag for each of the one million+ words in terms of a set of 82-part-of-speech designations) is NOT available from Bergen (because the tagged version provides much more information and is protected by its own copyright). It is available on mag tape only, because of its size (1600 or 6250 bpi, ASCII or EBCDIC) from Text Research, 196 Bowen Street, Providence RI 02906. It can be purchased by non-profit organization at relatively low cost (but higher than the text only) and by commercial organizations under a license agreement. For further information, contact Henry Kucera, e-mail HENRY@BROWNVM.BITNET. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 1991 00:18 EDT From: BELMORE%Vax2.Concordia.CA@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU Subject: Re: Queries: Searches for Data Corpora Suggest you look into the London-Lund corpus described (most recently) in Svartvik, Jan, Ed. 1990. The London-LUnd Corpus of Spoken English. Lund University Press. The corpus is available from ICAME (International Computer Archive of Modern English, e-mail navfkh@nobergen.bitnet. Mailing address: Harald Harfagresgrf. 32, Postboks 53, Universitetet, N-5027, Bergen, Norway __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 1991 00:10 EDT From: BELMORE%Vax2.Concordia.CA@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU Subject: Re: Seeking Information about Lexical resources Suggest you send your message to wmeijs%uvaalf.surfnet@hasara5.bitnet __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-434. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-435. Sun 25 Aug 1991. Lines: 94 Subject: Responses: dialect, games, clicks Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 24 Aug 91 07:15:56 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Language = Dialect + Army/Navy 2) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 91 11:41:57 EDT From: Marjorie K M Chan Subject: Language Games 3) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 1991 10:38-0400 From: Allan C. Wechsler Subject: Clicks -- response -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 24 Aug 91 07:15:56 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Language = Dialect + Army/Navy This probably won't help clarify the issue much, but at the U. of Chicago, where I went to school, this equation is attributed to Edward Sapir. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 91 11:41:57 EDT From: Marjorie K M Chan Subject: Language Games For those interested, there have so far been very few sources on the so-called "fanqie spelling" language games in different Chinese dialects. These include the following, the most widely cited being Y.R. Chao's 1931 article written in Chinese: Chao, Yuen Ren. 1931. "Fanqie yu ba zhong" [Eight varieties of secret languages]. Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology 2.3:312-354. Li, P. 1985. "A secret language in Taiwanese." Journal of Chinese Linguistics 13.1:91-120. (In English) One or both of these sources are used for analyses within current theoretical frameworks in: Bao, Z. 1990. "Fanqie languages and reduplication." Linguistic Inquiry 21.3:317-397. Chan, Marjorie. (forthcoming) "Fuzhou glottal stop: floating segment or correlation of close contact?" Jialing Wang and Norval Smith (eds.). Studies in Chinese Phonology. Dordrecht: Foris Publication. (short bit on Fuzhou secret language) Duanmu, San. 1990. A formal study of syllable, tone, stress and domain in Chinese languages. MIT diss. Lin, Yen-hwei. 1989. Autosegmental treaatment of segmental processes in Chinese phonology. U. of Texas at Austin Ph.D. diss. (includes an entire chapter on Taiwanese secret language) Yip, Moira. 1982. "Reduplication and C-V skelta in Chinese secret languages." Linguistic Inquiry 13.4:637-661. Only Lin (1989) uses Paul Li's source on Taiwanese as well as Chao's source. The others concentrate on Chao's source for the different varieties of fanqie secret languages. marjorie_chan@osu.edu __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 1991 10:38-0400 From: Allan C. Wechsler Subject: Clicks -- response I can contribute one datum in response to Stuart Spore's query about clicks. In Nama, morpho-phonemic constraints confine clicks to word-initial position, with one exception that I can find. (The suffix -//'iiN converts a cardinal to an ordinal number, like E. "-th".) And clicks can ^F1never^F0 appear word-finally. __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-435. ________________________________________________________________ [Moderators' note: The following is a revised version of the "How-To's" we sent out last week, incorporating suggestions sent to us by David Sitman. David has advised us on Listserv matters in the past; and it's a pleasure to publicly acknowledge his help. Thanks, David.] HOW TO: 1) SUBSCRIBE TO LINGUIST: Send a message to: Listserv@tamvm1.tamu.edu (if you are on the Internet) or Listserv@tamvm1 (if you are on Bitnet) The message should consist of the following line only: subscribe linguist Ex: subscribe linguist Jane Doe 2) TEMPORARILY STOP RECEIVING LINGUIST: Send a message to the Listserv, at the address in (1) above. The message should consist of the following line only: set linguist nomail You might do this if, for example, you are going on vacation for a few weeks. When you return, simply do (3) below. 3) RESTART LINGUIST AFTER HAVING SET YOURSELF TO "NOMAIL": Send a message to the Listserv, at the address in (1) above. The message should consist of the following line only: set linguist mail 4) PERMANENTLY REMOVE YOURSELF FROM THE LIST: Send a message to the Listserv, as in (1) above. 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To be safe, use upper or lower case as indicated in the announcement. Usually the announcement will tell you to send a message consisting of the following line: get Ex: get lsa-lst.txt (This will retrieve the list of e-mail addresses for LSA members. Note that it is all lower-case.) 10) PUT A FILE ON THE LISTSERV: We ask that you put long messages (over 200 lines) on the Listserv, rather than posting them to the entire list. Files appropriate for the Listserv include conference programs and registration forms; linguistic surveys; long bibliographies; reports on projects directly relevant to linguistic research (e.g., the Text-Encoding Initiative); and other material of wide interest within the linguistcs community. If you have material to put on the Listserv: Head the material EITHER "For the Listserv" OR "For the Listserv--announcement follows" and send it to: Linguist@tamvm1.tamu.edu In other words, send it exactly like a regular LINGUIST message. We will put it on the Listserv for you and announce to the list that it is available. Depending on your header, we will announce it in one of two ways: If you have headed it, " . . . announcement follows" we'll wait for your summary announcement and post that, after appending our standard header telling how to retrieve the complete file. THIS IS THE OPTION WHICH WE WOULD PREFER, since it ensures a coherent announcement. Please make your announcement brief and send it, as a second mail message, to the same address. If you have headed it simply "For the Listserv," we'll post the first few lines of the file, after appending our standard header telling how to retrieve the complete file. 11) GET THE LISTSERV TO COOPERATE WHEN IT HASN'T SO FAR: If you've been getting LINGUIST but haven't been able to get files, set nomail, etc., simply resubscribe, as in (1) above. (If you didn't resubscribe when LINGUIST moved from the U. of Western Australia to Texas A&M, the Listserv may have no record of your current address, since the path used to reach you from Australia may differ from the one used to reach you from the USA.) 12) GET EXTRA HELP WITH ANY OF THE ABOVE: Send a message to either of us: e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu (Anthony Aristar) hdry@emunix.emich.edu (Helen Dry) We'll be happy to help if we can. --Helen & Anthony ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-436. Sun 25 Aug 1991. Lines: 249 Subject: LSA Software Exhibit Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 91 14:51:42 EDT From: John.M.Lawler@um.cc.umich.edu Subject: Repost of Call of Software for 1992 LSA Exhibit -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 91 14:51:42 EDT From: John.M.Lawler@um.cc.umich.edu Subject: Repost of Call of Software for 1992 LSA Exhibit Note: [This is a repeat of a posting that went out in late June. To date, we have received applications for only SEVEN pieces of software. In the hopes that this is due only to the slowness of academic life during the summer months, I am repeating the call for software once again. If you lost your copy the last time, or meant to pass it on to your colleague down the hall, or just plain forgot to fill it out, here's another chance. A copy of this call is available through the listserv. -John Lawler, for the Committee ________________________________________________________________ * (SECOND) CALL FOR SOFTWARE * The LSA Committee on Information and Communication Technology (i.e, the Computer Committee) is aiming to sponsor a Software Exhibit at the LSA annual meeting in Philadelphia, Jan. 1992. Therefore, we need software to exhibit. And help in staging the exhibit. The size and structure of the exhibit depend on the response to this call, so we can't provide details right now, but we tentatively plan on a schedule of individual dem- onstrations lasting a half hour each. If time and the amount of software permits, we would like to allow each participant who is willing to give their demonstration twice (once each day), in order to allow our colleagues to plan their meeting schedule as flexibly as possible. Our intention is to make this a professional event, suitable for the usual institutional support for participant's travel. To this end, we will try to get the schedule printed and dis- tributed in advance of the meeting, so participants will have something in hand to show their institutions. Software dev- elopment has not been a traditional scholarly activity, but if there is to be software for linguists to use, it will have to be linguists that develop it. Preliminary reports of the LSA membership survey indicate that there are plenty of ling- uists who have been doing just that; it's time for us to stop reinventing the wheel, to get together and see just what al- ready exists. All software should meet the following criteria: 1) Only software developed by or for linguists should be submitted to this exhibit. We are attempting to represent software linguists should know about and would have trouble finding out about without this. While not intending to discourage commercial exhib- itors, we are targeting user-developed programs in this event. I.e, the model is more like a poster session than a book exhibit. This means that more general-purpose programs, like wordprocessors, are inappropriate, unless they have been specifically designed with linguistic (and NOT merely polyglot) uses in mind. Add-ons to general software, like fonts, wordpro- cessor style sheets, example numbering programs, spreadsheet templates, and so on, ARE appropriate; however, the submitter must take responsibility for providing whatever software is necessary for demonstrating them. Commercial software developers with programs they wish to demonstrate at LSA are urged to contact the Committee. Ideally, we'd like to have a good commercial exhibit along the lines of the Book Ex- hibit, but that will have to wait. 2) For practical purposes, we are limited to DOS and Macintosh software this year. Any non-standard hardware needs are the responsibility of the sub- mitter. Next year we hope to do better. 3) Software must be submitted for review. Submitters may suggest reviewers. Reviews will be displayed along with the software at the exhibit and will be available at the copy service. Submission is not a guarantee of acceptance, though the first time a new event is organized, it is reasonable to expect that most software submitted will be accepted, un- less we see an unanticipated flood of submissions. 4) Prototypically, the software author (or copyright holder) should be the submitter. However, anyone willing to perform a demonstration of the software at LSA may submit it for review. In the event of multiple submissions of the same software, the au- thor or copyright holder has precedence unless the software is commercial. The Committee may request a joint demonstration by all parties. The submitter is responsible for providing a copy of the software and documentation to the reviewer in a timely manner. "Commercial Software" is defined for the purpose of of this exhibit as any program for which payment is requested, beyond media charges. This includes shareware. 5) Like the privilege of presenting papers at the an- nual meeting, the privilege of exhibiting software is reserved for LSA members. Therefore, at least one of: the author of the software, OR its copyright holder, OR its submitter MUST be a member of the LSA. ___________________________________________________________________ * PROCEDURE FOR SUBMISSION * PLEASE DO NOT SEND SOFTWARE. Instead, fill out the form below and send it (electronically by preference; by paper post if you must) BY SEPTEMBER 1 to: -------------- Internet: jlawler@ub.cc.umich.edu John Lawler Linguistics Program BITNet: USERGB4N@UMICHUB 1095 Frieze Bldg. University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285 We will select a reviewer and ask you to furnish them with a copy of the software (if they don't already have it). The earlier you sub- mit your application, the more time the reviewer will have to write the review. This procedure should indicate, incidentally, that the reviews and the reviewers will NOT be anonymous. If you are interested in volunteering to be a reviewer, please send your e-mail and paper post addresses to the address above and indi- cate your preferences and experience. REVIEWS ARE DUE OCTOBER 1; please don't volunteer if you can't make that deadline. Finally, we can definitely use assistance at the meeting, though it is too early to say how or how much. If you're interested in help- ing us with the exhibit, please let us know. PLEASE DO NOT SEND SOFTWARE. ------ ____________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________ 1992 LSA SOFTWARE EXHIBIT - * - SUBMISSION FORM 1) Name __________________________________________________________ 2) Institutional affiliation _____________________________________ 3) Postal address ________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ 4) E-mail address ________________________________________________ 5) Software name _________________________________________________ 6) Brief description of what the software does ___________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ 7) Author or copyright holder of software, if not you ____________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ 8) Please fill in all of the following that apply: Runs on Macintosh __ Runs on DOS __ Runs on other OS ________ Freeware __ Shareware __ Other Commercial __ Price of the software, if any $__________________ Desirable Accessories, if any, and their prices _____________ _____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ Available for downloading from ________________________________ Source code available ___ Price, if any: $__________ From whom? _________________________________________________ Language and compiler ______________________________________ 9) What is the minimum system configuration it can run usefully on? Please include information about video displays, auxiliary soft- ware, or anything else that is necessary to run it. _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ 10) You may suggest a reviewer if you like. Please include e-mail and paper post addresses. _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ 11) Are you willing to give two demonstrations (on successive days) if asked? _______________________________________________________________ 12) Other information we didn't think to ask about ________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-436. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-437. Mon 26 Aug 1991. Lines: 99 Subject: Responses: Software, Addresses, "On" Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 24 Aug 91 17:08:20 EDT From: hdry@emunix.emich.edu (helen dry) Subject: LSA Software Exhibit 2) Date: Sun, 25 Aug 91 12:02 MET From: KHENGEVELD@ALF.LET.UVA.NL Subject: RE: Queries 3) Date: Sun, 25 Aug 91 11:09:22 EDT From: Gilbert Harman Subject: "on" this theory -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 24 Aug 91 17:08:20 EDT From: hdry@emunix.emich.edu (helen dry) Subject: LSA Software Exhibit Re: John Lawler's recent announcement about the LSA Software Exhibit I'm a little surprised that only 7 pieces of software have been submitted for exhibition, given that lots of linguists use specialized software and lots of linguists develop it. I wonder if those of us who know of good software shouldn't mention it on the net, in the hope that the developer or a proxy will be encouraged to exhibit it. The exhibit that John and the LSA Computer Committee are putting together seems to me to have great potential benefit for both users and developers--I'd like to see it get off to a big start. In that vein: I'd like to "draft" Ken Whistler to exhibit his excellent concordance program, Kwik-Magic. Although many linguists are familiar with it, I suspect many still are not. At any rate, last year when I happened to praise it on the HUMANIST net, I got lots of interested queries. And it's definitely worth showing off. Does anyone know of other good software designed for linguists? Tell, tell . . . . -Helen Dry __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Sun, 25 Aug 91 12:02 MET From: KHENGEVELD@ALF.LET.UVA.NL Subject: RE: Queries In reply to Catherine Ball's query: The membership directory of the Belgian Linguistic Society has the following addresds for Renaat Declerck: Reigersvliet 11, 8500 Kortrijk, Belgium. Kees Hengeveld __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Sun, 25 Aug 91 11:09:22 EDT From: Gilbert Harman Subject: "on" this theory The use of "on" rather than "in" in this context has been common in philosophical writing (and probably elsewhere) for years. I still resent the first time a copy editor changed my "On X's view..." to "In X's view..." When I discussed this with colleagues, many of them thought that "On X's view..." was quite normal. This must have been 20 years ago. Opening books at random, I notice Donald Davidson writing: "On the analysis of indirect discourse just proposed, ..." (Donald Davidson, "On saying that," _Synthese_ 19 [1968-69] 130-145.) I believe there are many examples going back way before that. However, I tend to throw things away after a decade, so I can't easily check. Perhaps this use of "on" is related to its use in "On the assumption that ..." and "On the usual reading of quotation marks ..." (appearing in Grice's "Logic and Conversation" and Kaplan's "Quantifying In")? I have the sense that "On X's view, P" can be true even where P is an unwelcome consequence of X's view (unwelcome to X), whereas this is not so for "In X's view, P." Gilbert Harman, Princeton University Cognitive Science Lab 221 Nassau Street, Princeton, NJ 08542 ghh@clarity.princeton.edu __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-437. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-438. Mon 26 Aug 1991. Lines: 161 Subject: Linguistic Novels Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 24 Aug 91 12:50:33 -0700 From: saka%cogsci.Berkeley.EDU@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Paul Saka) Subject: RE: the novel _The Embedding_ (spoiler) 2) Date: Sat, 24 Aug 91 17:17:10 EDT From: Subject: Linguistics in titles 3) Date: Sat, 24 Aug 91 18:41:09 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Re: Responses: Linguistic novels, Radio program 4) Date: Sun, 25 Aug 91 00:22 EDT From: BREWERJ%UNCG.BITNET@ncsuvm.cc.ncsu.edu Subject: titles/linguists 5) Date: Sat, 24 Aug 1991 17:40 EDT From: Subject: Linguistic Novels -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 24 Aug 91 12:50:33 -0700 From: saka%cogsci.Berkeley.EDU@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Paul Saka) Subject: RE: the novel _The Embedding_ (spoiler) The novel in question is by Ian WATSON. In my opinion, it would be a waste of your time to read it. Although I like some of Watson's work, I disliked _The Embedding_ for at least three reasons. First, _The Embedding_ has too many disparate threads that do not tie together very well. There are two protagonists who are both doing research on the nature of language: one is an experimental psychologist who is trying to teach an artificial language to children who are kept locked up in a lab; and the other is an anthropologist who is trying to learn an exotic language in the Amazon. It turns out that the children and the Amazonians speak the same language or kind of language. At this stage I think that the story is already overly compli- cated; a complete novel could be based on either the children alone or the Amazonians alone. But wait! Watson adds yet more: the psychologist is feeding some kind of drug to the children. which contributes to their unique linguistic ability; aliens arrive on earth, interested in learning the language of the drugged children and Amazonians; and some sort of geological catastrophe leads to the flooding of the Amazon and the demise of its inhabitants. It has been a long time since I read the book, and I surely have some of the details wrong; however, my summary is correct in showing how Watson violates one of the basic rules of science fiction: an sf story should introduce at most a SINGLE hard-to-believe premise (and its natural conse- quences). My second objection to the book involves its use of "universal grammar". In this book, "UG" refers not to that portion of grammar that has a biological basis, but to grammar that TRANSCENDS biology. The aliens, believing in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, are collecting grammars from different species in order to get a triangulation on language- independent reality. This is an interesting idea, but Watson's unconventional use of "UG" makes the book sound very naive about Lx. Finally, _The Embedding_ -- like most sf -- is weak on characterization. The jejune rivalry between the protagonists over a woman was embarrassing. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Sat, 24 Aug 91 17:17:10 EDT From: Subject: Linguistics in titles I was once browsing in the Brattle bookstore in Boston and came across an ancient decaying leather-bound book called something like "The Adventures of Doctor Syntax". I don't remember the author or even what it was about, but the next time I looked for it it was gone. I'd be interested if anyone else knows anything about this book. -Tom Green __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Sat, 24 Aug 91 18:41:09 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Re: Responses: Linguistic novels, Radio program Ron Smyth inquires about books with linguists as principal characters. Suzette Haden Elgin's *Native Tongue* is one. But I wonder if the game shouldn't be subject to the following constraint: perhaps we should look for books with linguists as principal characters by people who aren'r (I mean aren't) linguists themselves. Michael Kac __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Sun, 25 Aug 91 00:22 EDT From: BREWERJ%UNCG.BITNET@ncsuvm.cc.ncsu.edu Subject: titles/linguists Although his titles do not use a linguistic term, many of Anthony Burgess' novels contain statements, descriptions, and characters of interest to linguists. In his earliest novels, published as "The Long Day Wanes" [as "The Malayan Trilogy" in the U.S.], he describes the phonemes used by characters. This reflects Burgess' earlier experience as a lecturer in linguistics. In "The Doctor is Sick" the main character is a linguist. In his autobiography, "Little Wilson and Big God," Burgess describes his experiences as a student studying linguistics in a traditional English Department at Manchester University. *************************************************************************** * Jeutonne P. Brewer brewerj@uncg * * Department of English brewerj@steffi.acc.uncg.edu * * University of North Carolina at Greensboro * * Greensboro, North Carolina 27412 * *************************************************************************** __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Sat, 24 Aug 1991 17:40 EDT From: Subject: Linguistic Novels RE: Fiction on linguistic themes You might want to check out "The Languages of Pao," a science fiction novel by Jack Vance (Ace Books, 1958). It's about a culturally stagnet planet, Pao, where scientist from another world artifically establish three languages, one each for technicians, warriors, and bureaucrats. The theme (more or less) is the language makes the culture (sort of sub-Sapir-Whorf thinking). I can't give you more of an evaluation; it's been years since I read the thing. ---------------------------------------------------------- Stuart Spore | Phone: 212-998-6333 Head of Cataloging & Automated | Fax: 212-998-6587 Systems | spore@acf5.nyu.edu New York University Law Library | 40 Washington Sq. So. | New York, N.Y. 10012 | ----------------------------------------------------------- __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-438. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-439. Mon 26 Aug 1991. Lines: 91 Subject: Wh- Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 25 Aug 91 10:22 +8 From: Tom Lai Subject: 'th' in English 2) Date: Sat, 24 Aug 91 18:53:39 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Re: Why 'wh-' 3) Date: Sun, 25 Aug 1991 05:51:18 GMT From: jcj@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Jason Johnston) Subject: Re: Why 'wh-' -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 25 Aug 91 10:22 +8 From: Tom Lai Subject: 'th' in English Bruce Samuelson writes: >Another example of phonological-semantic congruence is 'th' words in English: >phonological semantic phonological semantic >'th' is voiced functor word 'th' is voiceless content word >the, this, that, these, then, think, thistle, thermal, thaw, three, >there, their, therefore, thus, theory, thumb, throw, threw... >thee, thou... through (a counter example) The voiced functor words given above have heterogenous etymology. 'the', 'this', 'that', 'these' 'then' and 'there'(?) have German cognates all beginning with 'd'. 'thee' and 'thou' do have German counterparts, but they also correspond to second person pronouns (singular) in other IE languages (cf. Latin 'tu'). As for the voiceless 'th', 'thermal' and 'theory' are late borrowings while 'think', 'three' and 'through' again correspond to German words beginning with (voiced) 'd'. Tom Lai __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Sat, 24 Aug 91 18:53:39 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Re: Why 'wh-' In regard to the nascent discussion as to why sound change occurs, I wonder if the more perplexing question is why it DOESN'T occur. Why, for example, are there still languages (English, for one) in which you can get velars be- fore front vowels? Michael Kac __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Sun, 25 Aug 1991 05:51:18 GMT From: jcj@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Jason Johnston) Subject: Re: Why 'wh-' Bruce Samuelson asks how the congruence "voiced th- starts function word, voiceless th- starts content word" got started. Old English had both voiced and voiceless spirants, but they were positional variants. Subsequently, voicing (which is a form of weakening or lenition) was generalized in precisely those forms that are typically *unstressed*, i.e. function as opposed to content words. In a similar way, "of" and "off" are both reflexes of a single word (cognate with German "ab"), again with the voiced fricative appearing in the typically unstressed member of the pair. Of course now the distinction has become phonemic (minimal pairs "thy-thigh", "of-off") and is maintained regardless of stress. All this is the standard textbook explanation. Still, I'm not sure why the same process hasn't been generalized to voice the initial consonant of words like "for", "so" and "such", or the finals of "if" and "this". I imagine the functional/semantic coherence of the voiced th- words does have something to do with it. Jason Johnston Dept of Linguistics, F12 University of Sydney, NSW 2006 __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-439. ________________________________________________________________ [Moderators' note: The following is a revised version of the "How-To's" we sent out last week, incorporating suggestions sent to us by David Sitman. David has advised us on Listserv matters in the past; and it's a pleasure to publicly acknowledge his help. 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We will put it on the Listserv for you and announce to the list that it is available. Depending on your header, we will announce it in one of two ways: If you have headed it, " . . . announcement follows" we'll wait for your summary announcement and post that, after appending our standard header telling how to retrieve the complete file. THIS IS THE OPTION WHICH WE WOULD PREFER, since it ensures a coherent announcement. Please make your announcement brief and send it, as a second mail message, to the same address. If you have headed it simply "For the Listserv," we'll post the first few lines of the file, after appending our standard header telling how to retrieve the complete file. 11) GET THE LISTSERV TO COOPERATE WHEN IT HASN'T SO FAR: If you've been getting LINGUIST but haven't been able to get files, set nomail, etc., simply resubscribe, as in (1) above. (If you didn't resubscribe when LINGUIST moved from the U. of Western Australia to Texas A&M, the Listserv may have no record of your current address, since the path used to reach you from Australia may differ from the one used to reach you from the USA.) 12) GET EXTRA HELP WITH ANY OF THE ABOVE: Send a message to either of us: e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu (Anthony Aristar) hdry@emunix.emich.edu (Helen Dry) We'll be happy to help if we can. --Helen & Anthony ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-441. Mon 26 Aug 1991. Lines: 54 Subject: Software Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 25 Aug 1991 13:07 EST From: Fan mail from some flounder? Subject: Re: Responses: Software, Addresses, "On" 2) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 91 01:42:31 EDT From: Ron Smyth Subject: Re: Responses: Software, Addresses, "On" -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 25 Aug 1991 13:07 EST From: Fan mail from some flounder? Subject: Re: Responses: Software, Addresses, "On" Someone from Australia told me that there is software "out there" that lets you keep 2 lines together, as in word-for-word glosses. Does anyone know more about these programs, and could they be submitted to the software exhibit? Susan Fischer __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 91 01:42:31 EDT From: Ron Smyth Subject: Re: Responses: Software, Addresses, "On" Regarding software: Several weeks ago I asked for information regarding Mac based software for running psycholinguistic experiments. To summarize, there is none, yet. Brian MacWhinney is moving from one system to another, but the new version will not be available until next year. I wonder how many of you have home-made software, such as the sentence reading time programme SPART (Stimulus Presentation And Reaction Time) that I had developed by contract programmers, Luis Zegarra and Andrew Belle, a few years ago. This programme exploits the Mac's internal clock, so requires no external devices. The code is in TurboPascal, and the menu-driven interface is fairly limited, although you can go into the code and make quite a few simple changes. Does anyone else have experiences such as this to share? Ron Smyth smyth@lake.scar.utoronto.ca __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-441. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-442. Mon 26 Aug 1991. Lines: 73 Subject: Linguist Novels Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 25 Aug 91 15:38:06 EST From: Ralf Thiede Subject: Doctor Syntax 2) Date: Sun, 25 Aug 91 13:07 PDT From: Pamela Munro Subject: Re: Linguistic Novels -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 25 Aug 91 15:38:06 EST From: Ralf Thiede Subject: Doctor Syntax Tom Green recollected having come across an old book on "The Adventures of Doctor Syntax" in a Boston bookstore. The other day, I discovered a 1911 Emerald Deldare hand-painted wall plate in the Charlotte, NC, Mint Museum. It depicts an old geizer kneeling in his bed looking upset. The inscription reads: "Doctor Syntax loses his wig. / The rats, its seems, had play'd the rig / In tearing up the doctor's wig." Apparently, this was executed after an original watercolor painting by Thomas Rolandson. This Doctor Syntax, then, must have been quite popular at one time. Who knows more about him? He isn't the Saint patron of LSA, is he...? Ralf Thiede UNCC Dept. of English FEN00RT1@UNCCVM __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Sun, 25 Aug 91 13:07 PDT From: Pamela Munro Subject: Re: Linguistic Novels RE: Linguistic novels by non-linguists I can recommend several mysteries with linguistic themes by authors who are not (at least well-known) linguists. First, those by P. M. Carlson starring Maggie Ryan. I think Carlson's first name may be Patricia and I suspect that one of these is the book remembered by Helen Dry in a recent posting, though I could be wrong. Many have academic backgrounds and mention linguistics; they take place in the late 60's or early 70's; and there are many well-portrayed child characters, including Ryan's daughter in later books. The most linguistic, I think, is Murder is Academic. Next, those by Aaron Elkins (a physical anthropologist) starring forensic anthropologist Gideon Oliver. I like these a lot except for the bizarre view of academic life at the "University of Northern California". The Dark Place concerns a long-hidden Indian tribe and their language (I don't want to give too much away, but students of California languages will find this amusing); Curses is about a dig at a Mayan site in the Yucatan and involves deciphering hieroglyphics. "The polysynthetic Mayan characteristic of reliance on verbal nouns has necessarily been transformed into our own grammar," says a linguist character. Necessarily!! Finally, those by Peter Dickinson. The best one I don't have, but it concerns chimp language and is, I think, called The Poison Oracle. You might also like The Glass-Sided Ants' Nest, which is about a strange type of anthropological field work, though I don't think there's too much linguistics involved. Does anyone know anything about David Carkeet's background? Pam __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-442. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-443. Tue 27 Aug 1991. Lines: 301 Subject: Linguistic Novels Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 91 08:01 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: novels 2) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 91 12:15:08 -0400 From: gb661%csc.albany.edu@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (BROADWELL GEORGE AARON) Subject: linguists in novels 3) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 1991 09:44 PDT From: Scott Delancey Subject: Re: Linguistic novels 4) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 91 07:51:38 EST From: Ronnie Wilbur Subject: David Carkeet 5) Date: 27 August 91, 01:28:42 EDT From: R12040 at UQAM@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU:LISTSERV@TAMVM1.BITNET Subject: Dr. Syntax, Call for Papers 6) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 91 17:25:33 EST From: bert peeters Subject: Re: Linguistics in novels - Doctor Syntax 7) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 91 11:12:54 CDT From: Dennis Baron Subject: dr. syntax 8) Date: Monday, 26 August 1991 2:01pm ET From: "Barbara.Abbott" Subject: Linguistic novels 9) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 91 13:27:25 PDT From: marks%neuro.usc.edu%usc.edu@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Mark Seidenberg) Subject: Dr. Syntax 10) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 91 20:38:38 CDT From: Barbara Johnstone Subject: Doctor Syntax -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 91 08:01 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: novels In response (or reaction) to Michael Kac's suggestions that books about linguistics (or language) be constrained to those not written by linguists. Michael -- it's bad enough when they are (not all of course since some are terrific) but as the respondent wrote re The Embedding -- what crimes re language and linguistics are committed by those who know not from whence or what they speak. There are enough myths out there. Only good thing about such books which distort what us linguist folks know is that we can use them in intro courses to point out to the students that there are myths and fabrications about language as shown by etc. Only most readers don't take our courses or read our books. Good sf does not violate the laws of nature (as we know them or surmise them to be) but builds upon them. Interesting that H.G. Wells in 1913 predicted atomic chain reaction and the atom bomb and was just a little off when he suggested it would be used in 1950. I love aliens but if they speak languages based on UG the projection principle should NOT be violated. Right? Inciodentally, I am sure every one knows that Charles Hockett wrote a science fiction story in the 40's, Can't remember the name. But someone will or we can ask him. VAF __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 91 12:15:08 -0400 From: gb661%csc.albany.edu@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (BROADWELL GEORGE AARON) Subject: linguists in novels One of the recent Tony Hillerman novels (I think it was Coyote Waits) has a linguist as a main character. Certain unpleasant aspects of the character's personality can no doubt be attributed to the fact that he's writing a dissertation ... __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 1991 09:44 PDT From: Scott Delancey Subject: Re: Linguistic novels M. A. R. Barker, who wrote the seminal grammar and dictionary of Klamath, is also the originator of a role-playing game set in a fantasy world, and has written at least one novel (The Man of Gold; I think there may be others) set in the same world, in which the hero is a linguist (or the nearest equivalent available in that universe) who has to save the world through philological analysis of a dead language ... Scott DeLancey __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 91 07:51:38 EST From: Ronnie Wilbur Subject: David Carkeet As far as we know, David Carkeet received his doctorate in English from IU, Bloomington, where he taught for a few years before moving to someplace in Missouri (we think it's St. Louis). In addition to his "linguist-type" novels, Carkeet has written was is currently ranked among the top 15 best baseball novels - The Greatest Slump of All Time, about a team that continues to win despite the individual neuroses of each of its players. The book is wonderfully funny, displays a detailed knowledge of the different kinds of psychotherapy/analysis/counseling, and according to my husband Dr. Baseball [Pete Bjarkman] can also be read along the lines of Camus' "The Stranger". __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: 27 August 91, 01:28:42 EDT From: R12040 at UQAM@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU:LISTSERV@TAMVM1.BITNET Subject: Dr. Syntax, Call for Papers RE the two comments (so far) about Dr. Syntax, I can't add any accurate historical details (but am interested in hearing about them). What I can add is that, whatever the Dr. Syntax series of books were, they were plentifully illustrated with colored ink drawings. A number of antiquarian book dealers (e.g. The Argosy bookshop in New York City) have dismembered these old books and individually mounted/framed the illustrations, each of which now fetches a good price. I have seen in the past but unfortunately have no current list, prices quoted for individual volumes of the Dr. Syntax series. I don't recall ever seeing an offer for the whole series. If any of you has one or more of these books, it is probably worth your effort to check the value with an antiquarian dealer. The same applies if you have one or more of the colored illustrations. Since I have (obviously) only casually glanced at a book or an illustration from the Dr. Syntax series, I can't add much about the "linguistics" content; but, my recollection is that such content is minimal at best. I would be surprised if either Dr. Syntax or his creator, whoever that was, offers enough historical content to link with the LSA in any essential sense. But, either might have the potential to serve as a mascot. While I'm on an historical bent, I'd like to mention that I've been charged with the responsibility of organizing a panel discussion (ou, une table ronde) on the subject of 18th and early 19th century scientific origins of neurolinguistics: contributions to brain/language relationships before Broca (les origines scientifiques de la neuro- linguistique au 18e et au debut du 19e siecle: les contributions a l'etude du rapport cerveau/langage avant Broca), at the 15th Inter- national Congress of Linguists to be held in Quebec (City), Quebec Canada, next Auust 9-14, 1992. I have two papers tentatively scheduled so far and there is room for others; I would be very interested in hearing from anyone who might have an interest in the general domain or anything related to it. The deadline is approaching for abstract submission in order to be represented properly in the meeting handbook, so it would be nice to hear from you even if your idea/interest is only at a pre=mature stage. Contributions in either French or English are certainly a bit easier to handle than contributions in other languages, but don't hesitate to contact me regardless of your language of choice. I am prepared to discuss PBI's, too (partly baked ideas). Harry Whitaker __________________________________________________________________________ 6) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 91 17:25:33 EST From: bert peeters Subject: Re: Linguistics in novels - Doctor Syntax Forwarded message (slightly adapted): > From Richard.Davis@history.utas.edu.au Tue Aug 27 15:42:37 1991 > To: bert peeters > > (...) The English satirical painter and artist Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827) > specialised in depicting humorous scenes of low life, sometimes very bawdy. > Between 1809 and 1826 he illustrated a series of 'Travels of Dr Syntax', a > comic clergyman and schoolmaster to illustrate verses by William Combe > (1741-1823). Presumably Combe and Rowlandson invented Dr Syntax, but the > character may have been based on some earlier original. LINGUIST readers who'd like to find out more, please get in touch with Richard Davis. Also, some of you might be interested to know that we have got our own genuine Doctor Syntax hotel here in Hobart. Could there be a more fitting place to accommodate linguists attending a conference? (Especially those linguists who cannot afford our Wrest Point Hotel Casino or the Sheraton...). --------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr Bert Peeters Tel: +61 02 202344 Department of Modern Languages 002 202344 University of Tasmania at Hobart Fax: 002 202186 GPO Box 252C Bert.Peeters@modlang.utas.edu.au Hobart TAS 7001 Australia __________________________________________________________________________ 7) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 91 11:12:54 CDT From: Dennis Baron Subject: dr. syntax Dr. Syntax is the creation of William Combe (1741-1832); the following information is from the _Dictionary of National Biography_ entry. Combe attended Oxford, "where he gave himself up to dissipation and left without taking a degree." He had "an indifferent reputation for honesty" and apparently squandered his inheritance. After waiting tables and other such tasks, including the practice of law, he turned to writing for the reviews of the day. He wrote satire, and was a friend of Sterne (_Tristram Shandy_). In 1809 he was asked to supply text to accompany a series of illustrations --this resulted in "The Schoolmaster's Tour," which appeared between 1809 and 1811, and was reprinted as a book in 1812 under the title "Tour of Doctor Syntax in Search of the Picturesque." Combe contri- buted some 10k lines of verse to accompany the popular illustrations of a pedantic, moralising schoolmaster. The verse is "sad doggerel, and Syntax, in spite of considerable humour and kindliness, is apt to tire with his endless moralisings." Nonetheless, Dr. Syntax proved popular, and a number of imitations followed. Mrs. Syntax (yes, there was a Mrs. Syntax!) died at the end of the first tour, and two other tours followed ostensibly in search of consolation and a new wife. The last in the series authored by Combes was _Johnny Quae Genus_, the "story" of the foundling son of Dr. Syntax. However none of the sequels, and none of the imitations, achieved the success of the original. I myself tried to read some once, but found it indeed tiresome, though when I do radio call-in shows on the English language I sometimes call myself Dr. Grammar, an homage to Combe's title, though not to his work. -- debaron@uiuc.edu ____________ 217-333-2392 |:~~~~~~~~~~:| fax: 217-333-4321 Dennis Baron |: :| Dept. of English |: db :| Univ. of Illinois |: :| 608 S. Wright St. |:==========:| Urbana IL 61801 \\ """""""" \ \\ """""""" \ ~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________________________________ 8) Date: Monday, 26 August 1991 2:01pm ET From: "Barbara.Abbott" Subject: Linguistic novels There's a relatively new novel called "Dr. Syntax" by Michael Petracca (who teaches English at UC Santa Barbara). __________________________________________________________________________ 9) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 91 13:27:25 PDT From: marks%neuro.usc.edu%usc.edu@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Mark Seidenberg) Subject: Dr. Syntax When I was in England on sabbatical a couple of years ago, I bought 2 "Dr. Syntax" prints. They seem to be illustrations from 19th century stories about Dr. Syntax, a picaresque fellow who finds himself in various comical predicaments. I couldn't induce from the illustrations why they called him Dr. Syntax. No other discernible connection to linguistics, either. He seems to be a bumbling idiot, however, and therefore probably not the person to be nominated for patron saint of linguistics. Though people who find the concept of a bumbling idiot named Dr. Syntax irresistably amusing should still be able to find the prints in England (I found mine in a store on Trumpington St. in Cambridge). They used to be inexpensive and I suppose will remain so unless the linguists of the world start a run on them. Mark Seidenberg __________________________________________________________________________ 10) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 91 20:38:38 CDT From: Barbara Johnstone Subject: Doctor Syntax To expand the topic in yet another direction, there is a ragtime or jazz tune called "Doctor Syntax." I haven't seen it, but a colleague has ordered it. If anyone's still interested, I'll let you know what it sounds like later. Barbara Johnstone __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-443. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-444. Wed 28 Aug 1991. Lines: 157 Subject: Wh-, Sound Change Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 91 17:13:01 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Comment by Tom Lai 2) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 1991 13:58 EST From: Fan mail from some flounder? Subject: Re: Wh-, Sound Change 3) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 91 15:03:59 EDT From: Jack Rea Subject: 'wh' words 4) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 91 12:17:23 +1000 From: bert peeters Subject: Sound change -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 91 17:13:01 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Comment by Tom Lai In response to my comment about non-occurring sound changes, Tom Lai asks if phoneticians/phonologists don't view all combinations of speech sounds as possible. Being neither, I won't speak for them except to say that there IS a general consensus that certain combinations are more natural than others (e.g. nasal-stop sequences in which the two segments share point of articu- lation). Some linguistic changes appear to clearly move in the direction of increasing naturalness in this sense, palatalization before front vowels be- ing an example. Lots of languages from many different families have undergone this kind of change at some point in their histories (indeed, there's even some in the history of English); but then the question is, why do relative- ly less natural configurations persist? It is quite possible that social explanations can be found in some cases, but then we find ourselves confronting the opposite question: if social forces are sufficient to counteract linguistic change, why does linguistic change nonetheless occur? Michael Kac __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 1991 13:58 EST From: Fan mail from some flounder? Subject: Re: Wh-, Sound Change With regard to John Lawler's comment, Joe Emonds wrote a paper a long time ago suggesting that Grimm's Law in fact *did* go the other way. I don't know if it was ever published. With regard to WH in ASL, the signs for WHO and probably WHY are derived from fingerspelling (I had an older informant from a deaf family who still signs all the letters in WHO, albeit in front of his mouth). I believe that the fact that *some* ASL WH-signs use the index finger is largely an accident, a change that is fueled by the fact that the "1" handshape is relatively unmarked phonologically (for example, it is one of only 6 handshapes that can serve as a distinct base hand) Susan Fischer __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 91 15:03:59 EDT From: Jack Rea Subject: 'wh' words Perhaps the seeming plethora of words beginning in English with 'wh-' and used as interrogatives can be reduced a bit by remembering that three of these Modern English words were actually different forms of a single word in Old English (and so on back via Germanic to IE). Modern English 'who' comes from the OE nominative case, masc & fem, essentially; 'what' is the neuter nom. + acc. case originally (hence a nice 'inside joke' is to ask, "What is the first word of _Beowulf_"; 'why' is the instrumental -- sort of equivalent to 'what for'. It is typically assumed, given the nature of IE words, that 'when' and 'where' represent developments of this same root (call it -kwa-_, although we might wish to footnote the use of a sequence /kw/ for what has usually been taken as a unit labialized velar phoneme, and I omit detail on what other ingredients that root may have had, say length or an additional phoneme); to that root IE may have suffixed something now represented by and to make the ancestors of 'where' and 'when', suffixes (or root extension if you will) also found attached to 'there' and 'then'. This helps reduce the 'coincidence' of having so many interrogatives starting with the same letters. Although the labialized velar in question (no pun intended) usually is represented by the spelling in Latin, with the result that interrogatives in Latin typically start with that sequence, this was changed to a simple velar in instances before rounded vowel, hence _cur_ 'why'. Anthony Boucher (pseud), wrote a novel,_Seven of Calvary_ in which the principal crime-solver (on a campus) is a professor of Sanskrit. In the olden days that qualified one as a linguist. Wm. Bull, linguist at UCLA some years ago, had a pre-teen aged son who once said, "Syntax sure is a whipped cream dog." Those who knew of this understood it, and agreed. __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 91 12:17:23 +1000 From: bert peeters Subject: Sound change John M. Lawler writes: >We con't understand why any of them occurred, even when we've got >tons of data on them. Interesting typo: Shall I understand "we won't" or "we can't"? :-) More seriously: >we have no theory whatsoever (...) >that will allow us even to explain >ex post facto (...) that there would be >some benefit to an individual speaker of a language.... I think we are asking for the wrong explanation here. What we should determine is not for what purpose a language change occurred, but why. In other words. I don't believe in teleology. Language change occurs not because the resulting system is easier, but because the previous one was not easy enough. (That is, in a nutshell, the idea I develop in a note published in _Folia linguistics_ in 1986.) >it may >perhaps be that language change simply isn't the same kind of thing >as biological evolution. What I find uncomfortable is that we >don't even know whether *that's* true. I have argued (_Language sciences_, 1991) that the two kinds of evolution cannot be compared. Language is not some sort of organism that evolves. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr Bert Peeters Tel: +61 02 202344 Department of Modern Languages 002 202344 University of Tasmania at Hobart Fax: 002 202186 GPO Box 252C Bert.Peeters@modlang.utas.edu.au Hobart TAS 7001 Australia __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-444. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-445. Wed 28 Aug 1991. Lines: 106 Subject: Linguistic Novels Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 91 9:17:22 PDT From: "Charles A. Bigelow" Subject: Linguistic font names 2) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 91 10:35:51 CDT From: Maggi Sokolik Subject: Re: Linguistic Novels 3) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 91 12:12:37 EDT From: Ron Smyth Subject: Summary of novels etc. -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 91 9:17:22 PDT From: "Charles A. Bigelow" Subject: Linguistic font names Not only do linguistic terms sometimes appear in the titles of novels, a few linguistic/semiotic/semiologic terms have become the names of fonts (typefaces). They are: Syntax - designed by Hans Ed. Meier (Zurich) Symbol - designed by Aldo Novarese of (Turin?) Signa - designed by Andre Guertler, Christian Mengelt, Erich Gschwind (Basle) Icone - designed by Adrian Frutiger (Paris) Curiously, they are all more or less sans-serif (Signa has slight flares at the terminals of its strokes, and Icone has pronounced flares that are almost serifs). __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 91 10:35:51 CDT From: Maggi Sokolik Subject: Re: Linguistic Novels More on the recent novel DR. SYNTAX by Michael Petracca. It concerns a purloined volume of "DR. SYNTAX", which was bequeathed to the protagonist, a grad student in English. The hero is not as concerned with the volume itself, but with the dissertation notes he has left inside. It's a humorous/bizarre little tale, worth a read. It even has footnotes. __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 91 12:12:37 EDT From: Ron Smyth Subject: Summary of novels etc. Chris Culy's question about linguistic terms in titles and my followup about linguist heroes have elicited quite a response! Chris, I tried to email your directly but my messages are always sent back. You said you would post responses sent to you directly. I've compiled the responses that have been posted here as of noon EST August 27. I'll be out of town for a week and still look forward to hearing more. Let's get some Hollywood film makers involved! After all, someone has put out a movie called "The Doctor". Why not "The Linguist"?? Ron Smyth smyth@lake.scar.utoronto.ca ******************************************************************************** M. A. R. Barker: The Man of Gold AnthonyBurgess: The Long Day Wanes [The Malayan Trilogy in the U.S.]; The Doctor is Sick; Little Wilson and Big God P. M. Carlson (Patricia?): Murder is Academic. David Carkeet: Double Negative; Full Catastrophe Samuel Delany: first novel (?); Babel 17, 1967, London: Gollancz. Peter Dickinson: The Poison Oracle (?); The Glass-Sided Ants' Nest Suzette Haden Elgin: Elgin Native Tongue and others Aaron Elkins : The Dark Place Guy Endore: Detour at Night (1959) Patricia Highsmith: mystery novel Tony Hillerman: novels, including Coyote Waits Hockett, Charles (1940's; scifi story) Walter Meyer: Aliens and Linguists (1980). U of Georgia Press. ISBN 0-8203-0487 Michael Petracca: Dr. Syntax Robert Sheckley: Shall We Have a Little Talk Raymond Sokolow: Native Intelligence Jack Vance: The Languages of Pao, 1974, Mayflower Books Ltd. Ian Watson: The Embedding 1973-75, London: Quartet Books. Thanks to the following contributors: Joyce Neu , Susan Fischer, Scott DeLancey, Jonathan Mead, Paul Chapin, Jason Johnston, Helen Dry, Ellen Contini-Morava, Jack Morava, Paul Saka, Tom Green, Michael Kac, Jeutonne P. Brewer, Stuart Spore, Ralf Thiede, Pamela Munro, Barbara Abbott, George Aaron Broadwell, Vicki Fromkin. __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-445. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-446. Wed 28 Aug 1991. Lines: 127 Subject: Linguistic Software Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 1991 12:36:12 From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz) Subject: Re: Software 2) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 1991 22:50 EDT From: BELMORE%Vax2.Concordia.CA@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU Subject: Re: Responses: Software, Addresses, "On" 3) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 1991 23:15 EDT From: BELMORE%Vax2.Concordia.CA@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU Subject: Re: Software -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 1991 12:36:12 From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz) Subject: Re: Software Susan Fisher asks: > Someone from Australia told me that there is software "out there" that > lets you keep 2 lines together, as in word-for-word glosses. Does anyone > know more about these programs, and could they be submitted to the > software exhibit? I don't know about software to keep things together - that's the business of your word processor - but there are at least two programs that can help you construct parallel lines of annotations, etc., beneath an original source line. You supply the glosses and analyses; they do the alignment, and remember previous glosses when faced with a new line of input. The two I have in mind are the Summer Institute of Linguistics' (SIL) IT program, which does nothing but this, and their Shoebox program, which is a linguistic database (slip-base) program that includes glossing as part of its implementation of the slipping operation. Note that these are PC programs, though there is also a commercial version of IT for the Mac. I seem to recall a price above $300 US. IT is out of print, but used to cost c. $70 US. It is supposed to be due out in a new and final revision soon. Shoebox is in print, maintained by SIL's JAARS, and costs c. $14 US. Both programs have their virtues and flaws and work with non-proportional fonts only. That is, they align things with spaces, and assume that all characters, including space, are equal in width. SIL also sells an inexpensive set of TeX macros that can use IT output (and therefore also the similar Shoebox output, I suppose) to typeset interlinear material in proportional fonts. I don't recall the price for this, but it was $20-$30 or so. Doing the same task as these TeX macros in most word processors is virtually impossible. It involves setting up customized sets of tab stops for each bundle of lines, or reverting to nonproportional fonts. Please lobby your word processing vendors for this feature! Surely linguists aren't the only ones who can make good use of it! I have recently heard on the Nota Bene word processor listserv of a German program that does something similar to what IT and Shoebox do, using the metaphor of a musical score. It is apparently called Partitur. I have little or no information on it. In response to Fisher's plea, by all means let SIL demonstrate some of their numerous programs for linguists at LSA! Their stuff isn't perfect, but it is pretty good, and not widely enough known. Incidentally, the address for SIL products is: Academic Book Center Summer Institute of Linguistics 7500 W. Camp Wisdom Road Dallas, TX 75236 JAARS can be reached at: Software Librarian International Computer Services JAARS Box 248 Waxhaw, NC 28173 Note that most SIL-authored software that I am aware of is freely distributable, but the documentation is copyrighted, and has to be purchased from SIL. The documentation comes with the necessary diskettes. When ordering, specify what kind of diskettes (3.5 or 5.25) you need. If you are in a hurry, in the past the Academic Book Store has been willing to send invoices with the order, at least within the USA. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 1991 22:50 EDT From: BELMORE%Vax2.Concordia.CA@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU Subject: Re: Responses: Software, Addresses, "On" For a review of software for working with corpora, see Knut Hofland's "Concordance programs for personal computers" in Johansson, Stig and Anna-Brita Stenstrom. English computer corpora. Selected papers and research guide. Tiel:Mouton de Gruyter, 283-307. The book has just been published. Jacques Noel's article in the same collection "Corpora and dictionaries in multiline records: A Unix/Awk approach to home=-made text retrieval (307-316) is also interesting. __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 1991 23:15 EDT From: BELMORE%Vax2.Concordia.CA@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU Subject: Re: Software Don't know if there are programs for psycholinguistic experiments but I think there are Mac programs under the more general heading psychology experments. Suggest you describe the kind of data you want to collect and query GENIE, America Online, Compuserve, etc. Meanwhile, you probablywill find the article in MacWorld Aug. '91 "Science and the Mac" of interest. __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-446. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-447. Wed 28 Aug 1991. Lines: 103 Subject: Lexical Workshop Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 91 17:30 GMT From: "MARTIN EVERAERT, LINGUISTICS DEPT. UNIVERSITY OF UTRECHT" Subject: summary announcement -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 91 17:30 GMT From: "MARTIN EVERAERT, LINGUISTICS DEPT. UNIVERSITY OF UTRECHT" Subject: summary announcement Call for Papers Workshop on LEXICAL SPECIFICATION and LEXICAL INSERTION Research Institute for Language and Speech University of Utrecht December 9 - 11, 1991 In December a workshop will be held in Utrecht on the issues of what type of lexical specifications we need in a generative grammar and by what principles this information is projected onto syntactic configurations, i.e. how lexical insertion is executed. A number of invited speakers have agreed to present their ideas on topics related to these questions. They include: Hans Bennis (Leiden), Joe Emonds (Washington-Seattle), Jane Grimshaw (Brandeis), Hubert Haider (Stuttgart), Lars Hellan (Trondheim), Rita Manzini (UC London), Bozena Rozwadowska (Wroclaw), Margaret Speas (Amherst), Edwin Williams (Princeton). The workshop will have a limited number of slots available for people who want to present 35-minute papers on issues covered by the topic description of the workshop (see below). Those who want to present a paper should submit an abstract (max. 2 pages) to the organizers no later than October 20, 1991. Notice of acceptance will be given very shortly afterwards. Organizing committee: Peter Coopmans, Martin Everaert, Jane Grimshaw For further information, please contact Research Institute for Language and Speech phone: 31-30-392006 University of Utrecht fax: 31-30-333380 Trans 10, 3512 JK Utrecht email: ots@let.ruu.nl The Netherlands ots@hutruu59.bitnet TOPIC DESCRIPTION: ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Workshop on Lexical Specification and Lexical Insertion This workshop addresses the issues of what type of lexical specifications we need in a generative grammar and by what principles this information is projected onto configurations, i.e. how lexical insertion is executed. The workshop will particularly focus on the question of what the syntactic consequences are of choices that are made with respect to the lexical specifications of heads. The general assumption is that 'lexical insertion' means replacing a X-o position in a phrase-marker by a lexical formative. Simultaneous insertion of more than one X-o, as in the case of phrasal idioms, is probably exceptional. Lexical formatives contain inherent and contextual features. Through the projection of the contextual features of a X-o (= head) the structural properties of phrases are determined. Although the Projection Principle is one of the core principles of UG, very little explicit discussion has been devoted to determining what contextual features we have and what 'projection' actually means and how it is executed. Since Chomsky's Aspects several forms of lexical encoding have been proposed in the literature, such as 'subcategorization', 'selectional restrictions', 'theta grid/argument structure', 'predicate argument structure', 'grammatical function assignment', 'lexical conceptual structure', and more recently 'event structure'. It is clear that some of these notions are mutually incompatible, others are not, and that, furthermore, there is redundancy. Despite the work that has been done, it is still very much open to debate to what extent the lexical specifications that have been offered in the literature are necessary and sufficient to fully specify the structural configurations in which a head can appear. Specific questions that come to mind are: - How are theta roles mapped onto syntactic configurations? Through specific realization rules, universal mapping principles, or through mediation of aspectual marking? - To what extent are the types of lexical specifications autonomous, or are they linked? For instance is theta-specification linked to aspectual information or to specifications of Case information? - How is,in general, the projection part of the Projection Principle executed? - Should we distinguish inherent theta-grids and non-inherent theta-grids for semi-adjuncts? How is this encoded, and what syntactic consequences can be derived from this? - Do we need a lexical specification of aspectual information, and if so what would such a specification look like? - Is there a distinct level of lexical representation on which 'lexical collocational restrictions' are encoded? And if so, in what way are they expressed grammatically? - To what extent can subcategorization be reduced to other selectional properties of predicates? __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-447. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-448. Mon 02 Sep 1991. Lines: 310 Subject: Linguistic Terms in Titles Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 91 12:39:03 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: linguists in novels 2) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 91 13:38:05 EDT From: Laurie Stowe Subject: linguistic novels 3) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 91 15:58:32 EDT From: marantz@ATHENA.MIT.EDU Subject: Dr. Syntax 4) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 91 17:41:19 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Re: Linguistic Novels 5) Date: Wed, 28 Aug 91 10:53:28 CET From: Tibor Kiss Subject: Re: Linguistic Novels 6) Date: Wed, 28 Aug 91 13:49:35 MET DST From: hartmut@ruc.dk (Hartmut Haberland) Subject: Re: Linguistic Novels 7) Date: Wed, 28 Aug 1991 08:33:45 -0500 From: Dennis Baron Subject: linguistic titles 8) Date: Wed, 28 Aug 1991 17:20:37 CST From: Chris Culy Subject: More linguistic title summary 9) Date: Thu, 29 Aug 91 15:25:52 CDT From: Nancy L. Dray Subject: Linguistics in novels, etc. Date: Fri, 30 Aug 91 09:41:59 EDT From: jharris%ATHENA.MIT.EDU@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: linguists in fiction 11) Date: Sun, 1 Sep 1991 14:48 MST From: CAROLG@CC.UTAH.EDU Subject: Re: Linguistic Novels -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 91 12:39:03 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: linguists in novels No one has mentioned the many philologically inclined characters in Tolkein's Ring novels. I recall a short story comprising dialogue between two creatures of unfamiliar sort, filled with polyperverse puns. The only line I remember now is "I decline to conjuge with you!" Perhaps 20 or 25 years ago. Author escapes me. Bruce Nevin bn@bbn.com __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 91 13:38:05 EDT From: Laurie Stowe Subject: linguistic novels Nobody seems to have mentioned a short stroy by H. Beam Piper called Omnilingual, concerning the Rosetta stone used to decipher the defunct Martian script. Frances and Richard Lockridge wrote several murder mysteries (one called Accent on Murder) where one main character can identidy people's origin within narrow limits, rather like the Smith radio program that was popular at the time. In at least one novel, this ability provides a crucial clue. Going back to Piper for a moment, he also has a bit in one novel where a character adrift across possible timelines identifies the language that is being spoken around him as Indo-European based on its similarities to the Greek and Latin he learned in seminary. Unfortunately, from a linguist's viewpoint, the cognates he reports are mama and papa words, so dubious support for the hypothesis. Laurie A. Stowe __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 91 15:58:32 EDT From: marantz@ATHENA.MIT.EDU Subject: Dr. Syntax After you've read the book and seen the movie -- listen to the recorder suite: AUTHOR: Joubert, John, 1927- TITLE: [Dr. Syntax] * Dr. Syntax : opus 85 : a suite for recorder ensemble for descant, treble (div.), tenor (div.), and bass (div.) recorders IMPRINT: London : Nova, c1981. PHYSICAL FEATURES: 1 miniature score (15 p.) ; 21 cm. NOTES: "For either solo quartet or consort performance" Duration: 10 min., 15 sec. CONTENTS: March : Dr. Syntax at a review -- Pastorale : Dr. Syntax sketching the lake -- Country dance : Rural sport -- Quodlibet : Dr. Syntax entertained at college. __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 91 17:41:19 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Re: Linguistic Novels I think Vicki Fromkin may have misunderstood my suggestion that in identifying novels with linguists as characters we limit ourselves to ones written by nonlinguists. My only reason for making the suggestion was that if what's of interest is how far awareness of linguistics (however distorted or muddled) has advanced at least among those who read and write books,to include books written by linguists somewhat stacks the deck. As long as I'm on the subject: I forget whether anyone has yet mentioned David Lodge; in the books ofhis I've read I don't recall any linguists per se, but there are certainly references to lx. and the influence it's having in lit. crit. circles. Some of that bothers me a bit, I'll confess; the im- pression that Lodge gives is that linguistics is just another trendy fad that has been picked up by English departments. That is my only criticism of an otherwise wonderful writer. Michael Kac P.S. I MUST have a Dr. Syntax poster and am not good at delaying gratifi- cation. Is anyone out there willing to sell me one? __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Wed, 28 Aug 91 10:53:28 CET From: Tibor Kiss Subject: Re: Linguistic Novels Concerning linguistic novels, and linguists as characters in novels, what about linguists in the movie scene. I know only of one movie, in which a linguist is involved, viz. the sci-fi PHASE IV (U.S. 1973). In this movie, due to celestial contigencies, ants are becoming intelligent. They even develop a kind of language. Two guys -- a biologist and a linguist -- try to uncover what the plans of the ants are. (The movie is quite famous, I think everyone knows about it, especially since it does not leave us with a happy end.) I found one novel which could be termed 'linguistic' but unfortunately it is written in German, and I do not believe that it has been translated. It is called WELTGEIST SUPERSTAR (Weltgeist is the counterpart of Zeitgeist, I assume) and written by an anonymus abbreviated as P.M. It's a sci-fi story in the conspiracy lead, but it is not to be taken too serious. It includes, however, a 60-page-appendix on the grammar of the extra- terrestrials plus dictionary. This language is alledgedly a kind of proto-indoeuropean. Tibor Kiss. __________________________________________________________________________ 6) Date: Wed, 28 Aug 91 13:49:35 MET DST From: hartmut@ruc.dk (Hartmut Haberland) Subject: Re: Linguistic Novels May I take the opportunity to run an ad for the review of SHE (viz. Suzette Haden Elgin)'s 'Native Tongue' by Jacob L. Mey in Journal of Pragmatics vol. 13, issue 6 (1989), pp. 1035-1045? Hartmut Haberland __________________________________________________________________________ 7) Date: Wed, 28 Aug 1991 08:33:45 -0500 From: Dennis Baron Subject: linguistic titles Two more bits of trivia--there are 2 musical groups with quasi-linguistic names: _Bad English_ and _American English_, though the latter from what I can tell from its poster is called what it is because it performs only Beatles music and is thus not an overt reference to a World English. __________________________________________________________________________ 8) Date: Wed, 28 Aug 1991 17:20:37 CST From: Chris Culy Subject: More linguistic title summary Hi all, As promised, here is a summary of works with linguistic terms in their titles. I have not included works with linguist characters but non-linguistic titles (Ron Smyth has summarized those; this list includes a few titles that were sent directly to me). Thanks to Barbara Abbot, Dennis Baron, Ellen Contini-Morava, , Richard Davis, Helen Dry, Hannele Dufva, Gisbert Fanselow, Georgia Green, Tom Green, Barbara Johnstone, Michael Kac, Jack Morava, Joyce Neu, Bert Peeters, Paul Saka, Norval Smith, Ron Smyth, Maggi Sokolik, C. Jan Wouter Zwart, and please excuse me if I omitted anyone. Chris cculy@vaxa.weeg.uiowa.edu ________ ??, _The Cunning Linguist_ Appel, Rene _Het[De?] derde persoon_ Carkeet, David _Double Negative_ Combe,William _The Adventures of Doctor Syntax_ Elgin, Suzette Haden _Native Tongue_ Esterhazy, Peter, _Sydmen apuverbit_ [Auxiliaries of the heart] (translated from Hungarian) Handke, Peter "Repetition" The New Yorker 2/29/88, also part of a book? Highsmith, Patricia ?? Ionesco, Eug`ene _Pre'sent passe' passe' pre'sent_ Mooser, Tilman _Die Grammatik der Gefuehle_ Petracca, Michael _Dr. Syntax_ Watson, Ian _The Embedding_ There is also a painting called _the irrecoverability of deleted traces_, as well as jazz/ragtime piece called "Doctor Syntax." __________________________________________________________________________ 9) Date: Thu, 29 Aug 91 15:25:52 CDT From: Nancy L. Dray Subject: Linguistics in novels, etc. Broadening the scope to TV shows: I once saw part of a truly awful TV show (one of those silly crime shows from the '70s, e.g., Charlie's Angels, Simon & Simon?) that contained some horrifyingly botched "linguistics." Specifically, as I recall, it concerned a chimp or related creature who has been taught to sign as part of an experiment, and who then witnesses a murder. During the murder, or perhaps in a phone call shortly before or after the murder, someone within earshot of the chimp calls the murderer or victim a "cheater" and an "embezzler." Later, the agitated chimp keeps making the signs (manual) for "cheetah" and "buzzard" (!); the clever (?) sleuth then determines that the chimp is trying to say "cheater" and "embezzler" (!) and thus discovers the motive, identifies the killer, solves the case, and, above all, reveals the writer's complete misunderstanding of, among other things, the nature of the linguistic sign. (I leave the unraveling of all the presumed misconstruals to Linguist List participants.) It's possible I've misremembered this, but I found it startlingly funny--or simply startling--at the time. A colleague here recalls hearing about a mystery novel that also included a signing chimp witnessing a murder. Perhaps someone out there knows more about this? As for other media, how about films? Aside from "Pygmalion" and "My Fair Lady," there is, I understand, a film called "Ball of Fire," in which a/the main character is an academic sort who specializes in current slang. I've never seen it, though. Does anyone know of others? Perhaps in conjunction with CLS or some other conference we could have a film night... Nancy L. Dray __________________________________________________________________________ 10) Date: Fri, 30 Aug 91 09:41:59 EDT From: jharris%ATHENA.MIT.EDU@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: linguists in fiction Has >>Rate of Exchange<< by Malcolm Bradbury appeared in these postings? It's a novel about the academic, amorous, social, etc., (mis)adventures of a linguist on a government-sponsored lecture tour in some E. European country. The linguistic theory is a bit vague, but the story and characters are funny. It's a good read for vacation or bedtime. Jim Harris __________________________________________________________________________ 11) Date: Sun, 1 Sep 1991 14:48 MST From: CAROLG@CC.UTAH.EDU Subject: Re: Linguistic Novels Didn;t Ursula Leguin write a novel about linguistics research of some kind? _________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-448. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-449. Mon 02 Sep 1991. Lines: 169 Subject: Natural Sound-Change Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 91 13:12:27 PDT From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com Subject: Natural Sound Change 2) Date: Wed, 28 Aug 91 11:48 +8 From: Tom Lai Subject: Possible sounds and natural sounds 3) Date: Fri, 30 Aug 91 11:47:42 CDT From: GA5123%SIUCVMB@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: Sound change -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 91 13:12:27 PDT From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com Subject: Natural Sound Change Perhaps it would be better if we qualified terms like 'natural', which mean different things to different linguists. E.g. palatalization before front vowels is 'natural' because it reduces articulatory complexity. On the other hand, there might be 'natural' changes that have little to do with articulatory complexity. In some technical discussions, 'natural' means little more than 'frequently observed'. There is no single standard by which to measure naturalness. It has been asked why relatively less natural configurations persist in language. For example, why don't all languages eliminate [ki] clusters via palatalization? First of all, [ki] clusters are not unnatural by virtue of just a single natural process. You could ease articulation by changing the vowel to a non-palatalizing back vowel. That move would remove the transi- tional complexity, but leave you with an 'unnatural' high back unrounded vowel. This kind of thing happens. Russian {gde} 'where' is historically related to {kuda} 'whither'. A short [u] dropped between [k] and [d]. Then regressive voice assimilation stepped in to polish off the resulting cluster. All very natural, but look at that cluster! So isolated natural changes don't necessar- ily lead to more natural overall systems. If a language were to eliminate all unnatural sounds totally, I submit that it would have no sounds at all. Indeed, this is what one phonological theory-- Stampe's Natural Phonology--takes to be the case at the onset of phonological acquisition. The infant reduces everything to silence by a process of phonolo- gical overkill. Phonological acquisition entails modification of the initial system until the child can pronounce what he/she needs to. The leftover processes constitute the mature phonological system. If you observe the pro- gression from babytalk to mature pronunciation, then you see that language change tends to move in the reverse direction from language acquisition. Or perhaps you could say that change is a kind of "imperfect learning". Which brings me to the following recommendation (to be read before Bert Peeters' Martinet reference, i.e. in chronological sequence): Paul Passy. 1890. "Etude sur les Changements Phonetiques" Paris: Librairie-Diderot. One of the earliest works discussing the two great opposing forces in language: ease and clarity. IMHO, therein lies the answer to why lack of naturalness persists. Rick Wojcik (rwojcik@atc.boeing.com) __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Wed, 28 Aug 91 11:48 +8 From: Tom Lai Subject: Possible sounds and natural sounds I appreciate Michael Kac's distinguishing between possible sounds and natural sounds. But then 'naturalness' of speech sounds is a rather tricky issue. Say, the voiced uvular trill in the first sound of the German word _Rad_ ('wheel') may be difficult to a monolingual English speaker, but it is by no means unnatural to a native German speaker. Another example is the 'ch' sound in the Scottish pronunciation of _loch_. (And in my native Chinese dialect, there is nothing unnatural about an 'm' immediately followed by an 'ng' in the same word.) I do not claim that technical linguistic factors do not have a role to play in sound change, though. Social forces do not counteract linguistic change. They just have a role to play there. Tom Lai __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Fri, 30 Aug 91 11:47:42 CDT From: GA5123%SIUCVMB@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: Sound change I'm glad to see the question of "What causes sound change?" reopened here for informal discussion, even though I suspect that the simplicity of the question's form is a large part of what dooms us to failure in trying to answer it. The problem of oversimplification is only slightly reduced by asking separately about the "origination" ("actuation") and the "propagation" of sound changes. If for the moment, tentatively, propagation can be satisfactorily explained simply as people's conscious or unconscious imitation of a prestige-group's pronunciation, then we have only to explain the origination problem. But this origination seems elusive: it occurs somewhere between the random, socially-insignificant, synchronic variations permitted and ignored by speakers, on one hand, and the full-fledged rule-governed sound-change on the march (through society, geography, and/or the lexicon), on the other. How does a random fluctuation become ruly; when does a ruly change take on social significance; and what is it before it does that? The purpose of this note is both to request and to offer: to ask if anyone has found a metaphor that helps them grasp that elusive moment when random variation turns into nascent regular change; and to offer two of my own (as yet whimsical) images for possible discussion -- (1) the Brownian motion of molecules in a fluid, and (2) a stampede of wildebeests. Yes, whimsical: I hereby forbid any reader to treat either one as a solid proposal at this time. If a society were purely egalitarian in an impossibly mechanical way -- with no gradients of prestige -- perhaps language fluctuation would, like the Brownian motion, never become so organized as to flow in a particular direction. Conversely, if for example water molecules had a social pecking-order among them, then perhaps the at-first-random motion of an influential molecule would be followed by others to the point of bringing about an eddy current or even a migratory flow of some volume of water -- analogous to a permanent diachronic sound change. What the Brownian motion brings to the question of sound change is the reminder that the background of synchronic variation is always present, more so than "we" usually recognize. Given this constant variation, the origination of a ruly change is not so much a matter of "initiating" something as it is of _choosing_, from among the available repertoir of on-going variations, a particular variation to push forward. But now we have succeeded only in making two unanswered questions where before there was one: (1) Why (aside from the usual requirements of maintaining contrasts and intelligibility) does phonological system S permit synchronic variations V1, V2, and V3, but not V4, V5, and V6? And (2) why does variation V1 get chosen for pushing forward, but not V2 or V3? Meanwhile, we've seen the Family Tree "theory" and the Wave "theory" -- consider now the Wildebeest "theory" of sound change (bearing in mind the caveat that I know nothing first-hand about real wildebeest behavior). We might say that a heard of wildebeest -- or a large flock of starlings or school of fish, for that matter -- is made up of individuals who move under the combined influences both of individual-internal and of social forces. Each wildebeest (I speculate) moves partly at random, as required by grazing, but the movements of a socially influencial member of the herd might be magnified as he or she is followed and imitated by socially more subordinate wildebeests. The point here, as with the Brownian motion, is that all wildebeests are in motion at all times, but that social forces may channel and encourage some of those motions and suppress others. The analogy with sound change is, I presume, obvious. One more question, and I'll close. Kiparsky, in his 1970 essay "Historical Linguistics" discusses the difference between "competence theories" ------------------------------------------------------------ (in Lyons, ed.; not his 1971 essay of the same title, in Dingwall, ed. -- chapter 3 of K's 1982 book _Explanation in Phonology_) ------------------------------------------------------------ vs. "performance theories" of sound change (referring to where change is thought to originate). H. Anderson, in a 1973 article in _Language_, distinguishes between "evolutive" and "adaptive" changes. My question: What does anyone today think of either or both of these dichotomies? Are they valid? ----------------------------------- Lee Hartman, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, ga5123@siucvmb.bitnet __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-449. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-450. Mon 02 Sep 1991. Lines: 112 Subject: Sound-Change and Teleology Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 29 Aug 91 11:55 CDT From: Joe Stemberger Subject: Re: Why 'wh-' 2) Date: Thu, 29 Aug 1991 23:57 EET From: MANYMAN%FINUHA.BITNET@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: Teleology of function/purpose -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 29 Aug 91 11:55 CDT From: Joe Stemberger Subject: Re: Why 'wh-' Bruce Samuelson asks about why there are phonological-semantic congruences at all. First, we have to keep in mind that there are different historical pathways to such congruences. The wh-words are presumably just a synchronic residue of standard word-formation processes at some ancient stage of the language. The "gl" words that someone else reported (GLITTER, GLEAM, etc.) are another example. The "th" congruence that Bruce brought up is quite different: "th" is voiced in function words "th" is voiceless in content words This was never part of word formation, and is the result of sound change. All words originally had voiceless "th", but it voiced in word-initial position in just the function words. (I seem to remember that this happened in the early Middle English period, but I wouldn't swear on it.) The sound change was identical in Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish (which, because of a later change, now show stops, with /d/ in function words and /t/ in content words). The change in German was more extensive; "th" became voiced in ALL words, and then word-initial /s/ also voiced (and in some obscure dialects, even word-initial "sh" has voiced). I don't think that anyone knows why the change went so much further in German. I question whether English really shows a congruence between phonology and SEMANTICS, though. There is little in common semantically between the affected function words. It correlates with whatever makes function words function words, but that is probably not semantic. (Some people would claim it is more syntactic in nature. You might be able to get away with arguing that it is pragmatic in nature.) It is possible that the change didn't really even have anything to do with the function/content distinction at all. Sound changes often spread through the lexicon one word at a time, with two common patterns: frequent words change first (with infrequent words unaffected), or infrequent words change first (with frequent words unaffected). (Labov had a paper in LANGUAGE a few years back on what determines whether sound change will be word-by-word. There was a paper in LINGUISTICS ca. 1984 that tried to sort out what determines whether it is infrequent or frequent words that change first; I don't recall the author's name.) It is quite possible that this change affected frequent words first, which would largely be function words, since they are the most frequent words in the language. The change may have ended (and who knows why?) before spreading to even relatively frequent content words like THINK. (It may not have spread to words like THREE and THROUGH because of a phonological constraint in English barring voiced fricatives in syllable-initial consonant clusters. English doesn't allow *VRY or *ZLIP, either.) Anyway, this congruence may be entirely accidental. Anyone know more of the details? I'm not an expert on such long-ago sound changes. I also agree with the comments that we have no idea why sounds change, except in the most general sense. Why did original Germanic /sk/ change to "sh" in West Germanic, but survive as [sk] in most North Germanic languages until comparatively recently? In Swedish, before front vowels and /j/, it is now "sh" in many dialects (a standard palatoalveolar fricative), but is a highly unusual labiopalatal or labiovelar fricative (with frication at both the palate and lips) in many other dialects. But in Danish, I think, it is still [sk]. Anyone who can explain that sort of variability should come forward. ---joe stemberger __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Thu, 29 Aug 1991 23:57 EET From: MANYMAN%FINUHA.BITNET@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Subject: Teleology of function/purpose In Linguist List: Vol-2-444, Bert Peeters says, re sound change, that he doesn't believe in teleology; instead, he opts for (French) functionalism. But is it *really* possible to maintain the distinction between teleology of purpose and teleology of function in the explanation of language change? Suppose the Latin change "-nct- > -nt-" (quinctus > quintus; sanctus > santus; &c) took place because the sequence -nct- was "not easy enough". This is scarcely substantially different from saying that this change took place for the purpose of ease of pronunciation. That is: the gist of Martinet's principle of economy remains the same, whether economy is conceived as a telos, or as a function. -- Martti Nyman Univ of Helsinki, Finland __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-450.