________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-601. Tue 01 Oct 1991. Lines: 239 Subject: 2.601 Responses Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 29 Sep 91 9:02:18 EDT From: Sarah Thomason Subject: unconditioned sound change is no myth 2) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 91 11:03:02 EDT From: Geoffrey Russom Subject: Re: 2.593 What is a Linguist? 3) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 91 17:21:28 EDT From: jack rea Subject: varia 4) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 1991 00:59:23 PDT From: paramskasdm@CCVAX.CCS.CSUS.EDU Subject: Newfoundland 5) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 1991 09:06:26 From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz) Subject: Directionals and Possessions -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 29 Sep 91 9:02:18 EDT From: Sarah Thomason Subject: unconditioned sound change is no myth When Bert Peeters refers to the `myth of unconditioned sound change', he is using the term `unconditioned' in a way that differs from mine and, I think, from most other people's use of the word. It doesn't mean `without a cause'; it means `without any phonological conditioning factor, i.e. in all phonetic environments'. More interestingly, when people talk about unconditioned sound changes they are referring to the end point only: there is no claim, implicit or explicit, that the change began everywhere and proceeded through the lexicon randomly. So, for instance, to say that most Salishan languages (Pacific Northwest, U.S. and Canada) underwent a change from nonlabialized velars to alveopalatals does not imply a claim that the change happened simultaneously in all environments. It seems most likely, in fact, that it began, like other palatalization changes, before /i/ only, or before front vowels. (I should have said: like most other palatalization changes; not all.) And then it generalized until all the nonlabialized velars were swept away, so that Flathead (e.g.) has no plain velars at all, except in two recent loanwords ("coffee", "coat"). But since the initial stages of this change are not documented in any way, there's no way to test the hypothesis that the change began as a conditioned change. -- Sally Thomason __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 91 11:03:02 EDT From: Geoffrey Russom Subject: Re: 2.593 What is a Linguist? As the chief of the Harrisites, can Roy Harris be called a Harrisiarch? __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 91 17:21:28 EDT From: jack rea Subject: varia 1. As Susan Fischer mentions, Mussolini did try a bit of linguistic engineering with the second person pronoun. When he and his government were removed, gradually this usage of 'voi' as a general second person pronoun sort of vanished. But it ain't quite as simple as that. There was already considerable regional and social variation in use of second person pronouns, and many considered the textbook ones of prewar days 'elitist', but the 'voi' usage was on the other hand felt to be a bit 'red-neckish' to use a possibly inappropriate but useful term. A strange post-war bit of socio-linguistic custom then arose: that not inconsiderable group that was still sympathetic (understatement) with the former Fascist party continued to use 'voi' (and clustered politically in the MSI party -- Italian Social Movement 'meaningless'). The growing PCI (Italian Communist Party -- at one time there were _three_ communist parties in Italy, Italy having no dearth of parties, including one some of us called the 'pea soup party -- but that's another story). Most Italians settled on 'Lei' as the article for second person, singular, 'Loro' as a plural -- with the occasionally heard Royalists (of which there were only two political parties) holding out for forms like, say 'egli' or even 'essa'. For a while use of a pronoun for second person singular reference would thus also be an expression of the speakers political persuasion, etc. I saw a fight almost start near CIM department store in Rome when the parking attendant addressed a suited and tied man with an Alfa Romeo as 'tu', the latter pointing out in no uncertain terms that he was 'laureato' (had a university degree), and one doesn't address 'laureati' as 'tu'. So much for pronouns of power and solidarity! 2. If the Harris referred to considers himself a linguist, and feels that what he practices is linguistics, but if linguists disagree, what is it they are accusing him of? Harrisy?? 3. Professor Peeters is distressed by the term 'unconditioned sound changes'. I would usually use 'unconditional sound changes' myself, but accept either as a useful term, interchangeable in meaning. What most historical linguists are trying to get at with these terms is a distinction between those sound changes that take place in a language only under certain conditions contrasted (if you forgive the word) with those that are general and can be stated without mentioning conditions under which they operated, conditions in both instances meaning phonological environment (typically). Thus words which in latin had a /k/ phoneme at the beginning (represented by ), changed in French so that when this was followed by /a/, the resultant consonant was the voiceless palatal affricate, spelled , later developing further to a fricative. But when this same phoneme /k/ was at the beginning of words and followed by /o/ or /u/ in Latin, it remained a voiceless velar stop. Thus the condition under which it was replaced by the palatal affricate was presence of a following /a/. The usage has been to refer to this as a conditioned of conditional sound change: it takes place iff... On the other hand, it is agreed that early French, like Latin and like most Italian and Spanish had an apico-alveolar /r/. This changed in general so that nearly all dialects of French have instead a uvular, and the key word here is general: there is no need to specify the other phonemes or other phonological conditioning when stating this development and it is thus labeled unconditioned, or unconditional. This is not meant to imply that there are not causes for the change, whether we are aware of such causes or not, merely that it is not necessary to specify different phonological environments for differing developments of the same original phoneme. Needless to say, it is always possible to manufacture a new label for this sort of thing if one is distressed by terminology, but usually such terminological wars are not worth the effort. How many today use Martinet's term 'moneme' for what is usually called 'morpheme', despite his preaching for it. Nor has Jakobson's use of 'contrast' prevailed to the extinction of its paradigmatic use. __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 1991 00:59:23 PDT From: paramskasdm@CCVAX.CCS.CSUS.EDU Subject: Newfoundland Re: Newfoundland dialects My thanks to Heidi Harley for the information on Nfld English. It was indeed Harold Paddock whom I heard interviewed on the CBC. He might be interested in the exchange on this subject - does anyone have an e-mail address for him? Whatever the true facts about the regional origins of English speakers in Nfld, the national perception (aided and abetted, no doubt with a typical twinkle, by the islanders, who refer to the rest of Canada as "from away") is that Newfoundland considers itself to be pure Irish in descent. The francophone part of Nfld is minuscule (around 1500 at last census, which includes those who consider themselves ethnic francophones but who no longer speak French). Before importing Quebecois teachers, their dialect was much closer to that of St- Pierre and Miquelon, and they boasted of having a "French" accent as opposed to a "Canadian" accent. They also tended to distinguish themselves from the predominant francophone group in the Maritimes (Acadians) by calling themselves Les Francais de Terre-Neuve. This information is probably somewhat outdated, though. Dana Paramskas (danap@csus.edu) __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 1991 09:06:26 From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz) Subject: Directionals and Possessions Patrick McConvell, in Linguist, Vol-2-563, asks about the concept of self as reflected in various Wintu sentences. While I am unable to discuss the Wintu examples in particular, I am reasonably sure that represent possessor raising with inalienables, as he suspects. I don't think that absence vs. presence of possessor raising has any particular implications for the concept of self among the speakers of a given language, e.g., Wintu, though the possibility of possessor raising in human languages may well say something about the conception of self among human beings in general. If the existence or absence of possessor raising in particular languages did reflect a difference in concepts of self, I wonder what the concept of self would be among individuals bilingual in languages with and without the distinction? McConvell asks for examples of languages in which Earth-based directional systems do or do not associate with alienable/inalienable distinctions in possession marking. For what it is worth, the Siouan language Omaha-Ponca has raising of inalienable possessors to subject with stative intransitives and certain active intransitives, and to object with most transitive verbs. There is a distinction between inalienable and alienable possession, but not in simple terms. Inalienables with respect to the verbal concord systems consist of kinfolk, real and ostensive, and body parts. Most kin terms have explicit marking for possessor, but there are only fossil remnants of such a system with body parts and intimate possessions. There are four or so predicative constructions for possession, depending on the nature of the possession. Omaha-Ponca has a six term cardinal directional system: north, east, south, west, up, and down. All of these terms are quite transparently derived. Although I can't say that these directions dominate conversation, or demonstrative references as such, traditional lifeways attached considerable ritual significance to orientation with the path of the sun, e.g, the camp circle of the tribe on the annual hunt opened to the east, as did doors of tents; the fore and aft paint stripe along the woman's hair parting was said to represent the path of the sun, directional references of this sort occur in songs, and at least one modern story, etc., etc. There are also terms for left and right, front and back. These terms are not transparent, but do not, again, dominate conversation or directional references, though they do occur in natural contexts, e.g., `On the Left Side', the name of one of the clans, apparently from the fact that this clan's position in the tribal circle was on the left of the important `Leader' clan's position. Terms of this set do occur more frequently in text than the cardinal set (other than up and down). For what it's worth, I believe that the terms for left and right, at least, have good Proto-Siouan etymologies. Casual directional/positional references in conversation are not Earth-based or body-based. They tend to be in terms of orientation, distance, or movement with respect to the interlocutors or a third party, plus occasional references to up and down. Historically, there may be some traces of orienting by up and downriver, e.g., with relation to the Missouri River, though this is somewhat speculative. I have a longer version of this post with the net-compatible transcriptions of examples. __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-601. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-602. Tue 01 Oct 1991. Lines: 174 Subject: 2.602 Is Language Finite? Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 91 17:36:29 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Re: 2.595 Is Language Infinite? 2) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 91 11:20 +8 From: Tom Lai Subject: Is language infinite? 3) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 91 17:02:17 MST From: Terry Langendoen Subject: is language infinite? -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 91 17:36:29 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Re: 2.595 Is Language Infinite? Answer to Linguist subscriber Macrakis on how Langendoen and Postal get uncountably infinite languages: the answer is that they argue, contrary to the standard position, that there are sentences of infinite length. (See Chapter 3 of their book.) Alexis Manaster-Ramer makes a couple of comments in his most recent posting that I want to strongly second. The first is that the question of finiteness/ nonfiniteness of languages is not a factual one; the second is his expression of discomfort with the cavalier way in which the Langendoen-Postal thesis is rejected by most linguists. I'm reluctant to take up a lot more space with my endless 2 cents worth but encourage Linguist subscribers who are interested in the issue to correspond with me personally. My address is kac@cs.umnedu. Michael Kac __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 91 11:20 +8 From: Tom Lai Subject: Is language infinite? I appreciate Alexis Manaster Ramer's remarks of Sept. 29. I apologize for any previous strong-worded comments of mine. The notions of countable and uncountable infinity are, I agree, mathematical convenience. But, that they are such only because they are useful, i.e. they do reflect something that is significant. For example, a properly written computer program should, at least, terminate after a _finite_ number of operations. If there is an unending loop like WHILE TRUE DO BEGIN STATEMENT END then the number of operations will be _(countably) infinite_. The physical significance is that this program will never terminate. As for the cardinality of language or of individual languages, natural or not natural, I have been silent for some time to sort out my ideas and to listen to other contributors to the discussion. Now, I would say (1) To use computing jargon, any (particular) language over a finite alphabet with no upper bound on the length of its strings is _countably_finite; (2) Natural languages have finite inventories of phonemes. It follows from (1) that if there is no upper bound on the length of words (there may be dispute over this point), the lexicons can be (countably) infinite; (cf. linguists' perception of "open" lexicons) (3) If the sentences of a language is to be formed by words extracted from an infinite (countable) lexicon, and as recursion entails the possibility of sentences of any length, the set of sentences (of this language) is _uncountably_ infinite. Point (3) above should answer Macrakis' query on the possibility of uncountable cardinality in set theory. We will not get into any paradox (a concern of Macrakis'). Whereas natural languages can be perceived as infinite, any actual simulation of a natural language on a computer is finite. (Can I assume that it is impossible for us to have infinite computer lexicons?) Sorry for the length of this posting. Looking forward to views of samretanos. Tom Lai. __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 91 17:02:17 MST From: Terry Langendoen Subject: is language infinite? In a recent LINGUIST posting, Alexis Manaster-Ramer writes: The same applies, of course, the Langendoen/Postal work: I still cannot believe that Terry and Paul could seriously claim that the issue of whether NL sentences are merely of unbounded length or of infinite length (and whether the collection of English sentences was countable or not) a factual question. But by the same token I cannot understand the self-righteous dismissal of their proposals by those who somehow possess the certitude (that I so notably lack) that NL sentences are only of finite length. I cannot speak for Paul, but I agree with Alexis that the question of the size of natural languages is a theoretical one. As a matter of fact, we can all agree (even Jacques Guy), that NLs are at least of some finite size. How much larger they are depends on whether one considers that grammars of natural languages contain what Paul and I called "size laws", of which the following are possibilities. (For simplicity, I assume that these all deal with the notion of "length".) 1. There is some fixed, finite n, such that all sentences of all natural languages are no longer than n. Something like this assumption was made by Peter Reich in a paper in LANGUAGE in 1969. 2. All sentences of all natural languages are of finite length, but there is no n, as in (1). This is the standard Chomskyan assumption. 3. There are no size laws. That is there are no priniciples of grammar that either explicitly or implicitly limit the length of sentences in natural languages. This is the assumption that Paul and I defend, basically on simplicity grounds. Paul and I show that given (3), and given a principle of grammar concerning coordinate compounding, there are transfinitely many sentences in all natural languages for which that principle holds. The principle itself is quite simple and we think uncontroversial. It says in effect if expressions of type X (such as the type of declarative sentences) are compoundable by coordination, then for any two or more expressions of that type, there is at least one coordinate compound in the language, also of type X, made up of those expressions. To see how this works in a simple case, let us limit our (uncompounded) expressions of type X to the countably infinite set B = <<(I know that)**n Babar is happy: n >= 0>>. (Note: I use << and >> as set delimiters, to avoid transmission difficulties with the curly brace symbols.) From the principle, there is an expression of type X for every member of the power set of B, excluding the empty set. Call this set B'. For example, B' contains <>, and corresponding to this member is the expression, also of the appropriate type, Babar is happy and I know that I know that Babar is happy. (In fact, there are other expressions as well, but we ignore these.) By standard assumptions of set theory, B' has greater cardinality than B. Paul's and my result then follows, unless one imposes a size law such as (2), which effectively (and in our view arbitrarily) limits the application of the coordinate compounding principle to sets of expressions of finite cardinality (that is, one replaces the "two or more" in my formulation above by the range 1 < x < infinity, where x ranges over the number of expressions that are coordinately compounded). Paul and I argue that the best theories of natural languages are those which do not countenance size laws, which we claim have two properties: 1. they are not constructive (e.g., generative); 2. they support a realist (i.e., Platonist) view of natural languages. The first property certainly must hold, but given the spirit of much contemporary theorizing is less controversial than it was when we published our book in 1984, if it was even controversial then, given the rise of "principles and parameters" based theories of natural languages during the 1980s. The second property, it now strikes me, does not hold. Paul and I spilled a lot of ink trying to clarify Chomsky's "conceptualist" view of natural languages, and having clarified it, to show that it is incorrect. But it now strikes me as quite easy to work out a coherent conceptualist theory of natural languages that does not incorporate a size law. In fact, any principles and parameters theory that does not do so, but that does include what strikes me as the patently correct principle of coordinate compounding, will yield the result that natural languages (albeit, E-languages, in Chomsky's terminology) are of transfinite size. Linguist List: Vol-2-602. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-603. Tue 01 Oct 1991. Lines: 140 Subject: 2.603 Whorf and Plurals Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 91 09:50 EST From: KINGSTON@cs.umass.edu Subject: Re: 2.588 Responses: Whorf, Einstein, Change 2) Date: 30 September 91, 15:33:10 SET From: Marc.Eisinger.+33.49.05.72.27.EISINGER.at.FRIBM11@tamvm1.tamu.edu (1) 3) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 91 10:12:55 -0500 From: Dyvik@uib.no Subject: Re: 2.594 Queries: Whorf 4) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 91 22:34:27 -0400 From: Ellen Prince Subject: Re: 2.599 Plurals 5) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 91 22:39:14 EDT From: Michael Covington Subject: Re: 2.599 Plurals -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 91 09:50 EST From: KINGSTON@cs.umass.edu Subject: Re: 2.588 Responses: Whorf, Einstein, Change This is a reply to Manater-Ramer's suspicion that Hoijer is (in part) res- ponsible for perpetrating the idea that Whorf believed that the language someone speaking structures their thinking about the world. At a conference in the 50s on the Whorf hypothesis (I can dig up the reference if necessary), Hoijer felt compelled to get up and tell the assembly of linguists, anthro- pologists, and psychologists, who had been happily beating on what they thought was Whorf, that they had best read the original. Hoijer was specifically annoyed that these scholar's had taken the inverted view of Whorf's ideas that Manaster-Ramer derides. (No, I wan't at that confer- ence, but Hoijer's reaction was noted down -- perhaps in his obituary in Language). John Kingston University of Massachusetts __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: 30 September 91, 15:33:10 SET From: Marc.Eisinger.+33.49.05.72.27.EISINGER.at.FRIBM11@tamvm1.tamu.edu (1) Subject : Whorf > One's world view is determined by the language one speaks This is in the order of belief (which, by the way, I share). Now, is there any way to demonstrate/show/prove/determine *how* the language determine one's view ? To my knowledge, no. Marc __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 91 10:12:55 -0500 From: Dyvik@uib.no Subject: Re: 2.594 Queries: Whorf >Here's this week's subject for an empirical study of attitudes toward >language. On the basis of unsystematic observation and impressionistic >judgements which are confirmed by all other linguists I've consulted, it >would appear that the view that one's world view is determined by the >language one speaks is nearly universally accepted by educated people >who aren't linguists. I guess I don't find that particularly strange >(a lot of my friends, however, consider ME extremenly strange for >being skeptical on this point); I DO find it somewhat odd that people >who accept this view seem to think that it is (a) obviously correct, and >(b) profound, a contradiction in terms. I welcome further data and insights. > >Michael Kac If you credit yourself with sufficient intelligence there is no *contradiction* in finding something obviously correct and profound at the same time. It is not illogical to be conceited. My belief is that the question is potentially empirical ("potentially" because the concept of 'world view' could do with some explication before we start devising psycholinguistic experiments), but that its empirical nature is obscured by current deeply-entrenched mentalist conceptions of grammar and lexicon. If you believe that a grammatical or lexical description cannot be understood as anything but a description of cognitive structures, then it may start looking obvious that grammar and lexicon must determine the way you think and perceive. Helge Dyvik __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 91 22:34:27 -0400 From: Ellen Prince Subject: Re: 2.599 Plurals >From: "Michael Kac" >Subject: Re: 2.589 Odd Plurals >For all you Latin fans out there: next time you hear someone complaining >about the use of words like *bacteria* and *media* as singulars in English, >ask what they do with *agenda* and *propoganda*. not to mention *data*... __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 91 22:39:14 EDT From: Michael Covington Subject: Re: 2.599 Plurals "Propaganda" is not a Latin plural. It is originally a feminine ablative singular, from "Congregatio de Propaganda Fide" ("Organization to Propagate the Faith," roughly; non-Latinists note that "Propaganda" is a gerundive, i.e., a passive future-or-optative-or-something participle). But then, "bus" is part of an inflectional ending... ------------------------------------------------------------- - Michael A. Covington internet mcovingt@uga.cc.uga.edu - - Artificial Intelligence Programs bitnet MCOVINGT@UGA - - Graduate Studies Research Center phone 404 542-0359 - - The University of Georgia fax 404 542-0349 - - Athens, Georgia 30602 bix, mci mail MCOVINGTON - - U.S.A. packet radio N4TMI@WB4BSG - ------------------------------------------------------------- __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-603. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-604. Tue 01 Oct 1991. Lines: 143 Subject: 2.604 Responses: Kreplach and Washing Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 91 18:51:41 WST From: harrison@cs.uwa.oz.au (Sheldon Harrison) Subject: Yiddish -ax 2) Date: Sun, 29 Sep 91 10:20:35 -0400 From: Ellen Prince Subject: Re: 2.583 Semantics and Chinese Kreplach 3) Date: Sun, 29 Sep 1991 16:04 EDT From: Robert D Hoberman Subject: Kreplach 4) Date: Sun, 29 Sep 91 13:26:53 PDT From: scobbie@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Jim Scobbie) Subject: Re: 2.566 Washing 5) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 91 16:14:28 -0500 From: louden@bongo.cc.utexas.edu (mark l louden) Subject: Re: 2.566 Washing -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 91 18:51:41 WST From: harrison@cs.uwa.oz.au (Sheldon Harrison) Subject: Yiddish -ax I'd always thought it was a Slavic plural, in one of the more high frequency oblique cases, I can't recall which one[s]. shelly harrison univerisity of western australia __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Sun, 29 Sep 91 10:20:35 -0400 From: Ellen Prince Subject: Re: 2.583 Semantics and Chinese Kreplach >---------------------------------------------------------------------- >Date: Fri, 27 Sep 91 14:26:35 EDT >From: Geoffrey Russom >Subject: Re: 2.570 Queries > >Local Canadian French influence on culinary terms is also evident: even >Italian-Americans call chicken cacciatore "chicken chaser (It would be "chicken catcher" if you went directly from Italian. i think a more cooperative rendition of the italian would be 'hunter's chicken'. __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Sun, 29 Sep 1991 16:04 EDT From: Robert D Hoberman Subject: Kreplach State University of New York at Stony Brook Stony Brook, NY 11794-3355 Robert Hoberman Comparative Studies Dept. 516 632-7462, -7460 29-Sep-1991 03:32pm EDT FROM: RHOBERMAN TO: Remote Addressee ( _linguist@tamvm1.tamu.edu) SUBJECT: Kreplach Somewhere I heard it suggested that the Yiddish diminutive plural /-lax/ or /-lex/ was from a concatenation of two separate diminutive suffixes, an *l one as in modern standard German -lein and a *k>x one as in MSG -chen. They do occur concatenated, though not as a plural, in some dialectal German, as my wife's parents' Jewish Hessisch, where the diminutive of /na:s/ 'nose' is /ne:zel$e/ (/z/ is voiceless but lax, /$/ is like English SH, German SCH -- in this dialect Fisch /fi$/ and Ich /i$/ rhyme perfectly). (The plural of /ne:zel$e/ is, of course, /ne:zel$en/.) Etymologically doubled diminutives like this are mentioned by Max Weinreich in his History of the Yiddish Language, p. 522, but unfortunately he doesn't discuss the Yiddish diminutive plural. By the way, Max Weinreich is OBVIOUSLY the source of "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy", by an elementary principle of historical linguistics. Here's the proof: If we have in modern English both BROTHERS and BRETHREN, the latter is obviously original because we know of "the regularizing trend of analogic change" (Bloomfield 1933:410). Well, the other candidates proposed for the army-navy criterion, Sapir and Jakobson, are much more widely known (distributed, not to say productive) than Weinreich; if it was really Weinreich, we understand how people might have come to think it was either of the others, but if it was really Sapir or Jakobson, would anyone have forgotten and called it Weinreich? Q.E.D. -Bob Hoberman __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Sun, 29 Sep 91 13:26:53 PDT From: scobbie@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Jim Scobbie) Subject: Re: 2.566 Washing Not to be forgotten is "it's needing washed". This may be a Highland influence (ie Gaelic originally) on this Glaswegian. -- oo -- James M. Scobbie: Dept of Linguistics, Stanford University, CA 94305-2150 __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 91 16:14:28 -0500 From: louden@bongo.cc.utexas.edu (mark l louden) Subject: Re: 2.566 Washing In reference to nonstd. constructions of the 'needs washed' type: It has been stated in the past that such constructions in SE Pennsylvania are due to substratal Penn German influence. This is highly unlikely, since there is no such construction in the dialect. This is another instance of the largely mythical 'Dutchified English', e.g. 'Come the house in', 'Throw my wife out the window a kiss', etc. There are a few lona translation idioms which have passed into colloquial usage in PA from the dialect, notably 'what for + N' as in 'What for a book is that?' Mark Louden UT Austin __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-604. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-605. Tue 01 Oct 1991. Lines: 171 Subject: 2.605 Polite Pronouns Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 1991 22:04 EDT From: "Michel (mgrimaud@lucy.wellesley.edu\") GRIMAUD" Subject: 2.598 Polite Pronouns 2) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 1991 22:25 EDT From: "Michel (mgrimaud@lucy.wellesley.edu\") GRIMAUD" Subject: Polite Pronouns: Mischstil 3) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 91 21:29:17 EST From: raskin@j.cc.purdue.edu (Victor Raskin) Subject: Tu/vous -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 1991 22:04 EDT From: "Michel (mgrimaud@lucy.wellesley.edu\") GRIMAUD" Subject: 2.598 Polite Pronouns Marianne Schoch (La Linguistique, 14, 1978, 55-73) discusses TU/VOUS in yet another francophone country, Switzerland and -- of course (?) -- comes to the same old conclusion first brought out by Brown in the 1960 Sebeok volume on _Style in Language_ -- that TU is commoner and VOUS becoming less frequent; but that the use of polite pronouns varies with AGE and SOCIAL CLASS there as in other European countries. Brown had already suggested that this trend had been going on for a couple of centuries. I have looked at the TU/VOUS distinction within the broader framework of terms of address and found a steady evolution from the 17th century on in France. (The system of address in the Middle Ages is rather drastically different.) [See Michel Grimaud, "Les appellatifs dans le discours" _Le Francais moderne_, 57, 1989, 54-78] The trend, then, concerns FORMS OF ADDRESS IN GENERAL and the significance of TU/VOUS in European is largely related to the usage of other terms of address (e.g., "tu" with first name vs. last name; "vous" with last name vs . first name). My feeling is that indeed NON-METROPOLITAN FRENCH DIALECTS use TU more freely that the French do -- even though there was a clean break during the May 1968 "revolution" which was marked (like all revolutions) with a change in forms of address (more "tu" in this case). But I know of no study of Caribbean or African French. Michel Grimaud Wellesley College __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 1991 22:25 EDT From: "Michel (mgrimaud@lucy.wellesley.edu\") GRIMAUD" Subject: Polite Pronouns: Mischstil There exists a kind of RAPID SWITCHING between TU/VOUS in French drama which has not been studied much (... except my "Tutoiement, titres et identite sociale" in _Poetique_ no. 77, 1989, 53-75). Medieval French scholars call it "Mischstil" or mixed style. What is striking is that it has continued in French drama almost unnoticed since them. All French students learn about the notorious passage in _Andromaque_ where Hermione says _tu_ with disgust to Orestes -- but the rapid switch technique continues into the 20th century in all kinds of dramatic productions. I have been trying to find out whether this rapid switching is a tacit dramatic writing convention or was (is?) indeed used in everyday life. The issue is not easy to solve since written texts tend to be somewhat untrusworthy, and overhearing conversations difficult... especially when one lives in the U.S. as I do. Moreover, the issue is not so much the kind of dramatic change in a relationship found in Corneille or Racine or even the more subtle ones exploited by Marivaux, Beaumarchais, Musset, and Hugo -- but the quick switching to EXPRESS A TEMPORARY FEELING OF DISTANCE OR INTIMACY among people who are living in an otherwise STABLE RELATIONSHIP. I have however in published private letters of the 19th century some evidence that this could and did occur with more frequency that I expected. I have also noted similar trends in terms of address in French and English today: on _Hill Street Blues_, when the police captain and his wife are in bed, he suggests that they make love and asks her by addressing her as "councillor." This humorous distance is typical and not infrequent. But what I have been unable to establish is whether there is much switching outside of such special, usually humorous, circumstances. Does anybody know of similar switching in contemporary European? As a footnote let me add that VOUS is used by some French married people today who object to what they feel is the trivialization of TU. A typical socioliguistic reaction, I suppose. Michel Grimaud Wellesley College __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 91 21:29:17 EST From: raskin@j.cc.purdue.edu (Victor Raskin) Subject: Tu/vous The Russian ty/vy, calqued directly from French a couple of centuries ago (I am not sure of the exact time), is different from the French original in its current usage. When I was in France in the late 1970s, French friends whom I did not know too well, were quite tolerant of my French and even generous in their praise of it, but they did eventually ask me to switch from vous to tu. They told me that they had actually expected me to start out with tu because vous meant detachment, arrogance, "I am not like you." I had, of course, been using my native Russian honorificity rules. In Russian, vy is common and unmarked. Ty automatically applies to friends of the same age when young. It applies to children, but teachers are instructed to switch to vy when talking to an individual student in seventh or eighth grade (14-15). It also applies to parents and grandparents, but not necessarily to aunts and uncles (not in my family). If you are addressed in the ty form, otherwise, it is a very marked and often unwelcome claim by a stranger to be exactly like you and, therefore, close, familiar. A blunt and openly hostile response to that is "My s vami na brudershaft ne pili!" /You--the vy form--and I did not drink to bruderschaft--a reference to an old German ritual of switching from sie to do in a special toast drunk with intertwined arms/. A subtler way to discourage the unwelcome ty usage is to continue to respond with vy, very similar to the American insistence on using Mr Doe instead of John. Alexander Pushkin wrote in the 1820s, "Pustoe vy serdechnym ty/ona obmolvyas' zamenila" /She replaced the empty vy with an affectionate ty, but it was a slip of the tongue/. This notion of ty/vy is still there today. It has also resulted in a peculiar literary translation practice. When a man and a woman meet at the beginning of an English-language story or novel translated into Russian, they must start out with vy. At the end of the story or novel, after having become intimate, they must use ty. When to switch them becomes the translator's decision because, of course, the English original often lacks a usable clue. The standard practice is to do the switch when the heroes go to bed together for the first time. But what if it is not entirely clear in the original or left deliberately ambiguous by a modernist author as to exactly when it happens? The translator does not have the luxury of being vague or ambiguous about that--either way sends a clear yes or no message. In other words, the translator cannot help informing the readers, ordinary people, not just the literati, that the heroes have been to bed the moment the switch from vy to ty occurs. Needless to say, the translator can make a mistake or disambiguate a situation against the author's attention, and you definitely do not want one translator's personal interpretation imposed on you. But there is not much choice: leaving the heroes on the vy basis precludes intimacy. I am sure people familiar with various honorific systems can tell many anecdotes about the horrors of translating from a language with less honorificity into a language with more. This may be the beginning of a new list. Victor Raskin raskin@j.cc.purdue.edu __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-605. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-606. Wed 02 Oct 1991. Lines: 287 Subject: 2.606 African Font Encoding Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 02 Oct 1991 08:38:47 From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz) Subject: Re: 5.0349 African Font Encoding (TeX) (1/254) -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 02 Oct 1991 08:38:47 From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz) Subject: Re: 5.0349 African Font Encoding (TeX) (1/254) Reposted from: Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 5, No. 0349. Tuesday, 1 Oct 1991. Date: Tue, 1 Oct 1991 17:41 +0100 From: KNAPPEN@VKPMZD.KPH.Uni-Mainz.de Subject: FC font encoding scheme (for TeX) -- 2nd draft Second Draft for the African Font Encoding Scheme FC This is the second draft for the FC font encoding scheme. I want to fix this scheme at 1-nov-1991 and change it no more. If you see any flaw in it, complain now, before it is too late. I'm nearly ready with a METAFONT fount according to the fc scheme, and I want to make it accesible to the public in the beginning of 1992. It will be copyrighted, but free according to the GNU licence. Send any suggestions to: knappen@vkpmzd.kph.uni-mainz.de or to: J"org Knappen Institut f"ur Kernphysik Postfach 39 80 D-W 6500 Mainz Allemagne The TUG (TeX User Group) conference of Cork 1990 has proposed a 256 character font encoding scheme well suited for european languages. This scheme does not fit for the various african languages with latin writing. So I want to propose a scheme suited for the so called critical languages of africa. It should be named FC or FCM for aFrican Computer. The coding is arbitrary besides the following rules: * The lower 128 codes are identical to the Cork scheme * A glyph also occurring in the Cork scheme is placed on the same code point as in the Cork scheme * Each letter from the 128-char cm-font is saved (Thus !', \L,\O etc. will work) * The uppercase/lowercase mechanism holds The following languages are covered: Akan, Bamileke, Basa (Kru), Bemba, Bete, Ciokwe, Dinka, Efik, Ewe-Fon, Fulani (Fulful), G\~a, Ganda, Gbaya, Hausa, Igbo, Kamba, Kanuri, Kikuyu, Kikongo, Kpelle, Krio, Luba, Mandekan (Bambara), Mende, More, Ngala, Nyanja, Oromo, Rundi, Kinya Rwanda, Sango, Shona, Somali, Songhai, Sotho (two different writing systems), Suaheli, Tiv, Tsonga, Yao, Yoruba, Xhosa and Zulu. Also covered are: Maltese and Sami (European languages not covered by the Cork scheme). Not included are: Tamasheq (Berber): The UNESCO suggests an alphabet with hooktop t, s, and z. Since I have not seen this in real print, I'm not sure about the relevance of this alphabet, I don't even know if it was adopted by one coutry in which Tamasheq is spoken. Nama: The symbols for the click sounds in Nama are not included. They can, however, be created by macro calls. Serer: I have a secondary reference that Serer uses hooktop p. If I had a primary reference, this character is a candidat for inclusion. \.Igb\.o: The catholic orthography includes an horizontal crossed o, which is not included in the fc scheme, since this system is considered obsolete. I tried to consult the most recent dictionaries. A good part of the mentioned languages has not yet a standardised writing system. I considered accents which are only tonal marks and optional in writing not to be a part of a letter. These should be created by using floating accents. (Even double accenting is possible, e.g. Open e with tilde and acute.) Accented letters, where the accent is a part of the letter, are included. Here are first the changes since the first draft: I newly included: A with trema Ezh T with tail Latin letter Iota Double universal accent I moved to other code points: Open E with Tilde O with macron I removed: A with circumflex A with grave U with circumflex W with breve small raised w Only by typo, in some versions an A with acute occured. This was never really in and is not included now. Support is weak for the following characters: E with acute C with cedilla G with dot above A with trema Enj These are the most likely ones to dissappear for new insertions. If you know facts supporting them, let me know. The table: octal code description 200 Capital letter hooktop B 201 Capital letter hooktop D 202 Capital letter open E (\varepsilon-like) 203 Capital letter reversed E (like \exists) 204 Capital letter long F 205 Capital letter E with ha\v{c}ek 206 Capital letter ipa Gamma 207 Capital letter double barred H 210 Capital letter hooktop K 211 Capital letter Enj 212 Capital letter open O (reversed C) 213 Capital letter N with acute 214 Capital letter Esh 215 Capital letter Eng 216 Capital letter Round V 217 Capital letter hooktop Y 220 Capital letter G with dot above 221 Capital letter M with acute 222 Capital letter S with ha\v{c}ek 223 Capital letter N with dot above 224 Capital letter N with line below 225 Capital letter S with dot below 226 Capital letter Ezh 227 Capital letter crossed T 230 Capital letter E with dot above 231 Capital letter E with dot below 232 Capital letter I with tilde 233 Capital letter T with tail 234 ligature t-esh 235 ligature fj 236 Lowercase letter crossed d 237 double grave accent 240 Lowercase letter hooktop b 241 Lowercase letter hooktop d 242 Lowercase letter open e 243 Lowercase letter inverted e 244 Lowercase letter long f 245 Lowercase letter e with ha\v{c]ek 246 Lowercase letter ipa gamma 247 Lowercase letter crossed h 250 Lowercase letter hooktop k 251 Lowercase letter enj 252 Lowercase letter open O 253 Lowercase letter n with acute 254 Lowercase letter esh 255 Lowercase letter eng 256 Lowercase letter round v (\upsilon) 257 Lowercase letter hooktop y 260 Lowercase letter g with dot above 261 Lowercase letter m with acute 262 Lowercase letter s with ha\v{c}ek 263 Lowercase letter n with dot above 264 Lowercase letter n with line below 265 Lowercase letter s with dot below 266 Lowercase letter ezh 267 Lowercase letter crossed t 270 Lowercase letter e with dot above 271 Lowercase letter e with dot below 272 Lowercase letter i tilde 273 Lowercase letter t with tail 274 double universal accent 275 inverted exclamation mark 276 inverted question mark 277 universal accent 300 Capital letter Iota 301 Capital letter I with dot below 302 Capital letter Open E with tilde 303 Capital letter A with tilde 304 Capital letter A with trema 305 Capital letter Open O with tilde 306 Capital letter ligature AE 307 Capital letter C with cedilla 310 Capital letter E with grave 311 Capital letter E with acute 312 Capital letter E with circumflex 313 Capital letter E with trema 314 Capital letter E with line below 315 Capital letter E with macron 316 Capital letter E with tilde 317 Capital letter I with diaresis 320 Capital letter crossed D (Edh) 321 Capital letter N with tilde 322 Capital letter O with grave 323 Capital letter O with dot above 324 Capital letter O with circumflex 325 Capital letter O with tilde 326 Capital letter O with trema 327 Capital letter ligature OE 330 Capital letter crossed O (\O) 331 Capital letter O with dot below 332 Capital letter O with line below 333 Capital letter O with macron 334 Capital letter O with ha\v{c}ek 335 Capital letter U with dot below 336 Capital letter U with tilde 337 cross piece for polish L and l (and maybe other letters, like I and J) 340 Lowercase letter iota 341 Lowercase letter i with dot below 342 Lowercase letter open e with tilde 343 Lowercase letter a with tilde 344 Lowercase letter a with trema 345 Lowercase letter open o with tilde 346 Lowercase letter ligature ae 347 Lowercase letter c with cedilla 350 Lowercase letter e with grave 351 Lowercase letter e with acute 352 Lowercase letter e with circumflex 353 Lowercase letter e with trema 354 Lowercase letter e with line below 355 Lowercase letter e with macron 356 Lowercase letter e with tilde 357 Lowercase letter i with diaresis 360 Lowercase letter d with tail (note: not edh!) 361 Lowercase letter n with tilde 362 Lowercase letter o with grave 363 Lowercase letter o with dot above 364 Lowercase letter o with circumflex 365 Lowercase letter o with tilde 366 Lowercase letter o with trema 367 Lowercase letter ligature oe 370 Lowercase letter crossed o (\o) 371 Lowercase letter o with dot below 372 Lowercase letter o with line below 373 Lowercase letter o with macron 374 Lowercase letter o with ha\v{c}ek 375 Lowercase letter u with dot below 376 Lowercase letter u with tilde 377 Lowercase letter scharfes s (\ss) J"org Knappen email: knappen@vkpmzd.physik.uni-mainz.de Institut f"ur Kernphysik Postfach 3980 D-W6500 Mainz Allemagne Linguist List: Vol-2-606. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-607. Thu 03 Oct 1991. Lines: 193 Subject: 2.607 Queries Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 91 11:06:43 PDT From: scobbie@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Jim Scobbie) Subject: Query 2) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 1991 08:27 EST From: Herb Stahlke <00HFSTAHLKE@BSUVAX1.BITNET> Subject: Another quotation to trace 3) Date: Tue, 01 Oct 91 08:39:05 EDT From: Geoffrey Russom Subject: Re: 2.596 Whenever 4) Date: Tue, 01 Oct 91 11:03:43 BST From: "(Dr) David Denison" Subject: Re: 2.597 For Your Information 5) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 91 21:45:15 -0400 From: matsuda@linc.cis.upenn.edu (Kenjiro Matsuda) Subject: Literatures on Priming? 6) Date: Wed, 2 Oct 91 10:23:54 GMT From: me@suzuka.u-strasbg.fr (Michel Eytan LILoL) Subject: IPA fonts 7) Date: Thu, 3 Oct 1991 14:25:28 -0400 From: rogers@epas.utoronto.ca (Henry Rogers) Subject: query Mongolian -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 91 11:06:43 PDT From: scobbie@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Jim Scobbie) Subject: Query Can anyone help me get in touch with Masayoshi Shibatani? Also, did these papers ever appear? Does anyone have them? They were cited in 1973 but I don't know if they were ever completed. Crothers (John) and Shibatani (1973+) Surface phonetic constraints, archiphonemes and the description of vowel harmony. ms. C & S (1973+) Review of The sound pattern of English. ms. Many thanks -- oo -- James M. Scobbie: Dept of Linguistics, Stanford University, CA 94305-2150 __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 1991 08:27 EST From: Herb Stahlke <00HFSTAHLKE@BSUVAX1.BITNET> Subject: Another quotation to trace Now that we've pretty much exhausted, and possibly solved the "dialect with an army and a navy" question, I have another one to post. I have heard the statement Syntax is ninety percent phonetics. attributed to Wallace Chafe, but I haven't found it in his writings, which I also have not scanned comprehensively. Did Wallace Chafe say/write this, and, if so, where? If not, who did and where? Herb Stahlke Ball State University __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Tue, 01 Oct 91 08:39:05 EDT From: Geoffrey Russom Subject: Re: 2.596 Whenever Speaking of dialectal time adverbials (whenever), does anybody know about the distribution of "anymore" used in sentences without negation (like "still")? -- Rick Russom __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Tue, 01 Oct 91 11:03:43 BST From: "(Dr) David Denison" Subject: Re: 2.597 For Your Information Dale Savage refers to a round of discussion 'awhile back' about word processors and auto numbering of examples. As author of a PC add-on for doing precisely that job, and as someone often asked to do a Mac version, I would be very interested to see that discussion, which I assume predates my subscription to Linguist. Can anyone (moderators, Dale Savage, whoever) send me the relevant file(s)? Thanks. David Denison (d.denison @ uk.ac.man) __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 91 21:45:15 -0400 From: matsuda@linc.cis.upenn.edu (Kenjiro Matsuda) Subject: Literatures on Priming? Hi. Could anyone let me know any relevant literatures on priming? My main interest is in seeing the priming factor in language variation (mainly in morphology) in natural discourse. The only paper I know in this area is "Constraints on Agentless Passive" by Weiner and Labov (1982), but I assume that the topic has been expplored more extensively in other areas, notably in psycholinguistics. I welcome references for any literatures in any fields. Thanks a lot. Ken Matsuda Department of Linguistics University of Pennsylvania matsuda@linc.cis.upenn.edu __________________________________________________________________________ 6) Date: Wed, 2 Oct 91 10:23:54 GMT From: me@suzuka.u-strasbg.fr (Michel Eytan LILoL) Subject: IPA fonts in a previous message I have corrected the error in the name of the ftp server, that should read "aisun1.ai.uga.edu". However, I promised to send these files directly to people who ask for it. Unfortunately, there is a snag: these files are PC-executables, whereas e-mail consists of ascii (text-only) files; sent via e-mail they could get messed up. I shall send them via POPmail, a PC-mail application. I need however to : 1. learn to use the application; 2. wait for all the requests to arrive, since I do not want to do it piecemeal but in one fell swoop. Please send me a personal message if you want it via e-mail (ie POPmail), I promise to send it in a few days' time. __________________________________________________________________________ 7) Date: Thu, 3 Oct 1991 14:25:28 -0400 From: rogers@epas.utoronto.ca (Henry Rogers) Subject: query Mongolian Is anyone familiar with writing Mongolian on a Macintosh? I would be + interested in fonts and a suitable operating system. There is a small group of people here at Toronto working on Mongolian, and we would appreciate any help. Mongolian is written with a cursive alphabet in lines running from top to bottom with the first line starting at the top left and subsequent lines moving to the right. The best solution so far seems to be a Hebrew/Arabic word processor with the letters entered on their side. Naturally Mongolian speakers/writers find writing sideways odd.The output must be turned 90 degrees to be read. The right-to-left input puts the lines in the correct order. A Chinese/Japanese system with vertical input puts the lines in the wrong order. Further,it is mono-spaced, not suitable for a cursive writing system. Does anyone know of a suitable operating system runing from top to bottom starting at the left and allowing proportional spacing? Also, does anyone have a Mongolian font? The only one we have is bit-mapped and has a rather heavy old-fashioned 19th-century look? I realise that this problem may seem a touch recherche, but it is comforting to think that technology is allowing us to think about such things nowadays. Thanks, Henry Rogers Department of Linguistics University of Toronto rogers@epas.utoronto.ca rogers@epas.toronto.edu __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-607. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-608. Thu 03 Oct 1991. Lines: 162 Subject: 2.608 Polite Pronouns Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 1991 14:25 CST From: LIFY460@orange.cc.utexas.edu Subject: Re: 2.605 Polite Pronouns 2) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 91 22:25:29 -0700 From: slobin@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Dan I. Slobin) Subject: Re: 2.605 Polite Pronouns 3) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 1991 13:51 EST From: Herb Stahlke <00HFSTAHLKE@BSUVAX1.bitnet> Subject: Re: 2.605 Polite Pronouns 4) Date: Wed, 2 Oct 91 15:27:45 +0100 (MET) From: garof@sixcom.sixcom.it (Joe Giampapa) Subject: Re: Jack Rea's "varia" 2.601 -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 1991 14:25 CST From: LIFY460@orange.cc.utexas.edu Subject: Re: 2.605 Polite Pronouns Re Michel Grimaud's reference to Mischstil in Hill Street Blues Recall the "sweet nothing" uttered by Peter Wimsey to Harriet Vane on the last page of _Gaudy Night_ (where they're affirming that they're meant for each other): he says (what a line!): Placetne, magistra? she repies (what else?): Placet. Christine Kamprath __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 91 22:25:29 -0700 From: slobin@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Dan I. Slobin) Subject: Re: 2.605 Polite Pronouns I asked a visiting Russian psychotherapist, Alexander Zinchenko, what pronouns are used in therapist-client interaction nowadays in Moscow. He is young, and represents Esalen-type therapeutic methods. These approaches, in California, are clearly non-hierarchical, and if we spoke Russian here, I have no doubt that mutual "ty" would be the norm. However, Zinchenko reports that therapy sessions are conducted with mutual "vy" in Moscow. With regard to switching between "ty" and "vy": Paul Friedrich did an extensive study, published in the 60s, about switches in Russian literature and drama, with intimates switching from "ty" to "vy" to indicate momentary distance (anger, hurt, rejection, etc.). If this interchange is to continue, we might as well start looking at address terms as well. Russian provides a middle ground in use of first name and patronymic (e.g. Mikhail Sergeyevich) with "vy". Dan Slobin (slobin@cogsci.berkeley.edu) __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 1991 13:51 EST From: Herb Stahlke <00HFSTAHLKE@BSUVAX1.bitnet> Subject: Re: 2.605 Polite Pronouns I'm not a native speaker of a you/youse dialect of American English, but in driving through small Ohio towns along Lake Erie I have found myself addressed, politely, by local shop-keepers as "youse," as in, "Well, youse can take a left turn at the light and then go three blocks." Such speakers, and I've heard the like from more than one, might have assumed that I was not alone, but the feel of it was that they were being polite to a stranger. Does anyone with more experience of such a dialect have a stronger sense of the use of youse? Herb Stahlke Ball State University __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Wed, 2 Oct 91 15:27:45 +0100 (MET) From: garof@sixcom.sixcom.it (Joe Giampapa) Subject: Re: Jack Rea's "varia" 2.601 |3) |Date: Mon, 30 Sep 91 17:21:28 EDT |From: jack rea |Subject: varia |Italians settled on 'Lei' as the article for second person, singular, |'Loro' as a plural -- with the occasionally heard Royalists (of which |there were only two political parties) holding out for forms like, say |'egli' or even 'essa'. ^^^^ ^^^^ Still used. A quick review with my colleagues (some ex-grammar teachers) produces the following: Italian Subject Pronouns 1st singular io 1st plural noi 2nd singular informal tu 2nd plural informal voi considered correct for 2nd singular formal but not used 2nd singular formal *Lei formally incorrect but used considered correct for object pronoun 2nd plural formal *Loro archaic; formally incorrect but used considered correct for object pronoun 3rd singular male egli/esso considered correct for 2nd singular formal but not used 3rd singular female essa considered correct for 2nd singular formal but not used 3rd singular female archaic ella 3rd plural male essi 3rd plural female esse 3rd plural fe/male *loro formally incorrect but used considered correct for object pronoun Egli/esso/essa/ella/essi/esse are used in formal Italian contracts, from first hand experience. I have never used them in conversation. Another person corrects me: "Lei" corresponds to "she" whereas "essa" and "ella" are for female "it". "Voi" is frequently used as the convention for 2nd person plural formal, even though I learned "Loro" in Connecticut (USA) schools. I might have confused some of this information, as it usually takes about an hour to get a consensus on this list and its usage. There have been differences of opinion according to age of speaker, as well. -Joe Giampapa Sixcom, Olivetti Group Milano garof@sixcom.sixcom.it garof%sixcom.sixcom.it@uunet.uu.net __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-608. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-609. Sun 06 Oct 1991. Lines: 132 Subject: 2.609 International Pragmatics Association Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 91 09:00:25 GMT From: eelen@ccu.uia.ac.be Subject: International Pragmatics Association -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 91 09:00:25 GMT From: eelen@ccu.uia.ac.be Subject: International Pragmatics Association information on: INTERNATIONAL PRAGMATICS ASSOCIATION (IPrA) IPrA Secretariat, P.O. Box 33, B-2018 Antwerp 11, Belgium Tel. + fax: +32 3 230 55 74. E-mail: ipra@ccu.uia.ac.be IPrA Research Center (IRC), University of Antwerp, Linguistics (GER) Universiteitsplein 1, B-2610 Wilrijk, Belgium Tel.: +32 3 820 27 73. Fax: +32 3 820 22 44. E-mail: ipra@ccu.uia.ac.be The INTERNATIONAL PRAGMATICS ASSOCIATION (IPrA) was established in 1986 to represent the field of pragmatics in its widest sense as a functional (i.e. cognitive, social, and cultural) perspective on language and communication. In particular, it pursues the following goals: 1. the search for a coherent general framework for the discussion and comparison of results of the fundamental research, in various disciplines, carried out by those dealing with aspects of language use or the functionality of language; 2. the stimulation of various fields of application (such as language teaching, the study of problems of intercultural and international communication, the treatment of patients with language disorders, the development of computer communication systems, etc. ); 3. the dissemination of knowledge about pragmatic aspects of language, not only among pragmaticians of various 'denominations' and students of language in general, but in principle among everyone who, personally or professionally, could benefit from more insight into problems of language use. The Association's research and documentation activities are coordinated by the IPrA Research Center (IRC). IPrA President (1991-1994): Sandra Thompson (Linguistics, Santa Barbara); she was preceded from 1986 through 1990 by John Gumperz (Anthropology, Berkeley) IPrA Secretary General and IRC Director: Jef Verschueren (Linguistics, Antwerp) Director of IRC documentation services: Jan Nuyts (Linguistics, Antwerp) PRAGMATICS is the Association's quarterly publication (consolidating the Association's earlier output of a diversity of irregularly issued publications, viz. the IPrA Bulletin, the IPrA Working Documents, the IPrA Papers in Pragmatics, and the IPrA Survey of Research in Progress). In addition to articles, research reports and discussions, it contains an extensive news section (with current trends reports, conference reports and announcements, book notices, the annual list of members, etc.). Issues are due in March, June, September, and December. It is available to libraries and institutions, but it also reaches all the Association's individual members (about 1000 in over 60 countries) including a large number of 'indirect members' in countries with severe currency restrictions who are usually the victims of a serious information gap but who have access to PRAGMATICS, without much delay, through IPrA Distribution Centers established especially for this purpose. Editors: Alessandro Duranti, Dept. of Anthropology, 341 Haines Hall, U.C.L.A., Los Angeles, CA 90024, USA. E-mail: duranti@anthro.sscnet.ucla.edu Bambi B. Schieffelin, Dept. of Anthropology, 202 Rufus Smith, New York University, New York, NY 10003, USA. E-mail: schieffelin@acfcluster.nyu.edu Subscriptions: Personal membership in IPrA (US $ 55.--/BF 2,000.-- for regular members) includes a subscription to the publication. Membership information is to be found at the end of this message. Library subscriptions and institutional memberships for 1991 are US $ 110.--/BF 3,900.-- (surface mail and handling included). Minimum 600 pp. per volume. ISSN: 1018-2101. Manuscripts for publication should be sent to the editors; style sheet is available on request (and can be found on the inside back cover of each issue). All correspondence concerning membership and subscriptions as well as items for the news section should be sent to the IPrA Secretariat. For all research- and documentation-related maters, write to the IPrA Research Center (IRC). The following papers have appeared in PRAGMATICS 1:1 (March 1991) and 1:2 (June 1991): Dan I. SLOBIN: "Learning to think for speaking: native language, cognition, and rhetorical style" Maya HICKMANN & David WARDEN: " Children's strategies when reporting appropriate and inappropriate speech events" John DU BOIS: "Transcription design principles for spoken discourse research" Angeliki ATHANASIADOU: "The discourse function of questions" Kenneth William COOK: "The Samoan cia suffix as an indicator of agent defocusing " J. Lachlan MACKENZIE & M. Evelien KEIZER: "On assigning pragmatic functions in English" Ad FOOLEN: "Metalinguistic negation and pragmatic ambiguity: some comments on a proposal by Laurence Horn" Eddy ROULET: " Le mod QIAN Guanlian: "Pragmatics in China" Among the forthcoming articles we find: Edith L. BAVIN: "The acquisition of Warlpiri kin terms" Charlotte LINDE: "What's next?: The social and technological management of meetings" Renata TESTA: "Negotiating stories: Strategic repair in Italian multi-party talk" Senko MAYNARD: "Pragmatics of discourse modality: A case of the Japanese emotionl adverb doose" [The full posting, from which this is excerpted, may be obtained from the server by sending the message: get pragmatics to: listserv@uniwa.uwa.oz.au ]]__________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-609. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-610. Mon 07 Oct 1991. Lines: 186 Subject: 2.610 Washing, Whorf and Whenever Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 91 18:41 BST From: David E Newton Subject: RE: Washing, etc 2) Date: Thu, 03 Oct 1991 07:17:42 EDT From: AHARRIS - Alan Harris Subject: re: needs washing and anymore/SouthernCA. 3) Date: Fri, 04 Oct 91 13:44 PDT From: Pamela Munro Subject: Re: 2.555 It needs washed 4) Date: Tue, 01 Oct 91 15:05:53 BST From: Catrin Sian Rhys Subject: Re: 2.596 Whenever 5) Date: Wed, 2 Oct 91 00:43:27 -0400 From: lojbab@grebyn.com (Logical Language Group) Subject: Re: 2.603 Whorf and Plurals -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 91 18:41 BST From: David E Newton Subject: RE: Washing, etc To add a further dialect where the "washed"form is used, I heard the following last night, from a speaker who comes from a village in Cumbria, England: [talking about a bubbling coffee machine] "Does that want turned off then?" Cumbria, as some of you will know, is in NorthWest England. Interestingly, as previously posted by Richard Ogden, this form does not occur in other parts of this region (for example, Manchester, and also Liverpool, which is where I come from). Cumbria is further North than either of these two areas. David E Newton den1@uk.ac.york.vaxa __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Thu, 03 Oct 1991 07:17:42 EDT From: AHARRIS - Alan Harris Subject: re: needs washing and anymore/SouthernCA. I have heard "needs washing" and similar constructions in Southern CA and the "anymore"=nowadays is quite frequent here anymore. . . AHARRIS@VAX.CSUN.edu/bitnet __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Fri, 04 Oct 91 13:44 PDT From: Pamela Munro Subject: Re: 2.555 It needs washed RE: Needs Washed and SWNY In response to Susan Fischer's comment about "Southwestern New York", I'm from the Hudson Valley and would never say "needs washed". I thought the thing about New York was that it didn't have a southwest! Pam Munro __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Tue, 01 Oct 91 15:05:53 BST From: Catrin Sian Rhys Subject: Re: 2.596 Whenever The "whenever" for standard "when" is also common in some Scottish dialects, eg. in Kirkcaldy, Fife. catrin __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Wed, 2 Oct 91 00:43:27 -0400 From: lojbab@grebyn.com (Logical Language Group) Subject: Re: 2.603 Whorf and Plurals >Subject: Whorf and linguistic relativism Michael Kac says: >On the basis of unsystematic observation and impressionistic >judgements which are confirmed by all other linguists I've consulted, it >would appear that the view that one's world view is determined by the >language one speaks is nearly universally accepted by educated people >who aren't linguists. I'll concur, as well, and my primary interaction is with such people. The exceptions to this are correlated with politics, with some people (usually 'left') considering linguistic relativism to be racist. However, even these people are inconsistent, since the arguments about gender and pronouns/language-gender (including the recent one on Linguist) inherently assume some form of language effect on world-view, or it wouldn't make any difference. Note that the occasionally emotive arguments in this latter discussion shows that even linguists may to some extent assume what they claim they don't. Factors in the continuing belief include: a) what people mean by 'world view' and 'determined' is different. Sapir-Whorf is generally understood to have strong and weak versions, with the strongest form almost certainly false because translation IS possible, and the weakest form true to the point of triteness. b) the field of semiotics is heavily dependent on assuming linguistic relativism, and most educated people are more exposed to literary criticism than linguistic theory. c) the continuing identification of political issues with the linguistic relativity assumption. As such, people are continually exposed to the assumption in daily life without it being explicitly identified as a hidden assumption. d) I believe certain areas of anthropological linguistics still accepts Sapir-Whorf to some extent, especially where the researcher is in the anthropology department rather than the linguistics dept. My source of this is Reed Riner at U. of No. Arizona, but I think I heard something similar from John Atkins who was at U. of Washington. I've used the phrase 'linguistic relativity' because when actually pinned down, many people will say that they aren't sure whether language determines world-view or vice versa, but that there is obviously a relation. > I guess I don't find that particularly strange (a >lot of my friends, however, consider ME extremely strange for being >skeptical on this point); The Loglan (artificial language) project has the goal (among others) of testing the 'Sapir-Whorf hypothesis'. Those of us working on the project, linguists or not, are assumed by many to 'believe in' the SWH, though we are predominantly agnostic or skeptical like you. I think it is again an unquestioning assumption that the concept holds, with little analysis of the implications, that leads to this assumption. >I DO find it somewhat odd that people who >accept this view seem to think that it is (a) obviously correct, and (b) >profound, a contradiction in terms. I welcome further data and >insights. Again, I think people assume the concept to be obviously correct in some 'weak' form and also intuitively realize that it breaks down in some stronger form. The profundity is due to the never-ending political and philosophical implications of the assumed-true concept. That the hypothesis isn't even well stated means that none of the tests conducted in the 50s truly settled the issue. Supporters of the hypothesis seem to think that linguists abandoned the issue either because they could not prove it one way or the other, or because the idea became unfashionable or even non-P.C. with the rise of Chomsky's ideas. If unambiguously true, the hypothesis itself is uninteresting. Until the bounds of its truth are explored, the philosophical implications will continue to be profound. I think there is some considerable correlation in attitude on linguistic relativity and language prescriptivism. In the latter area as well, linguists tend to have a considerable disagreement with the educated-populace-at-large, who consider it a truism that there is a right way to speak and use a language and other usages are wrong. This assumption is also considered 'obvious', and when its fallacies and philosophical implications are pointed out, also considered profound. ---- lojbab = Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 lojbab@grebyn.com __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-610. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-611. Mon 07 Oct 1991. Lines: 264 Subject: 2.611 Responses Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: 1 Oct 91 14:12 From: Subject: specific/referential 2) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 91 17:09:12 CDT From: Eric Schiller Subject: Re: 2.597 For Your Information 3) Date: Wed, 2 Oct 91 15:30:10 EDT From: Marjorie K M Chan Subject: Acquisition of (Mandarin) Chinese classifiers: References 4) Date: Fri, 4 Oct 91 13:20:01 BST From: John Phillips Subject: Re: query Mongolian 5) Date: Fri, 04 Oct 91 10:25 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: 2.607 Queries 6) Date: Mon, 7 Oct 91 10:37:30 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: Webster 7) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 91 15:31:54 BST From: Henry "S." Thompson Subject: Re: 2.574 That's and WordCruncher 8) Date: Wed, 02 Oct 91 07:20:45 EDT From: Peter Cole Subject: Microsoft Word -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: 1 Oct 91 14:12 From: Subject: specific/referential I have recently read quite a few papers from various traditions that deal with the semantics of specificity/referentiality (I am working on a typological study of indefinite pronoun distinctions like English some/any). The following are some generalizations that seem to hold, although I have my own biases, of course: SPECIFIC is used for an NP if the speaker presupposes the existence of a referent. The typical example is something like the following: She wants to get married to an Ainu speaker. On the specific reading, there is an Ainu speaker (e.g. the one she did fieldwork with and fell in love with) that she wants to marry. On the NON-SPECIFIC reading, all she cares about is that her future husband speaks Ainu, whoever he will be (e.g. because she wants her children to acquire her ancestors' language, which she no longer speaks). CONCRETE is a term that I have seen particularly in Russian-language works, but also in Czech. It seems to be used in exactly the same way as SPECIFIC. (A good place to look is Elena V. Paducheva's book "Vyskazyvanie i ee otnesennost' s dejstvitel'nost'ju", Moskva 1985, which contains a very clear discussion of basic notions of the semantics of reference.) By the way, the term SPECIFIC is sometimes attributed to Fillmore (a 1967 paper in the journal Glossa), although I would be interested to hear whether it was used before. If this term was coined so recently, that explains why the Russians have a different one. REFERENTIAL is most often used in contrast to GENERIC. For example, adjectival modifiers are generally NON-REFERENTIAL, whereas genitival modifiers may be referential: Humboldtian views vs. Humboldt's views Similarly, dependent compound members and incorporated nouns tend to be NON-REFERENTIAL: apple tree, bike rental, etc. Sometimes people use REFERENTIAL in the sense of SPECIFIC (and NON-REFERENTIAL in the sense of NON-SPECIFIC), e.g. Givon in the 1978 paper in Universals of Human Language, Vol. 4 (ed. J. Greenberg, Stanford). There is of course a clear similarity between the two senses, so to a large extent your usage depends on your theory of these meanings. Martin Haspelmath, Free University of Berlin __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 91 17:09:12 CDT From: Eric Schiller Subject: Re: 2.597 For Your Information Re: Mac/Word/Renumbering I suggest you just give them a copy of Nisus and tell them to incorporate all the features. Including, of course, the ability to attach sounds to strings of text. Meanwhile, I'll just stick with Nisus - a much more powerful program with unlimited macro support. Eric Schiller __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Wed, 2 Oct 91 15:30:10 EDT From: Marjorie K M Chan Subject: Acquisition of (Mandarin) Chinese classifiers: References In response to Qian Hu's inquiry of references on acquisition of Mandarin Chinese classifiers, probably the most accessible are work by Mary Erbaugh, such as "Taking stock: the development of Chinese noun classifiers historically and in young children" in Colette Craig's (ed.) 1986 book, _Noun classes and categorization_ (Amsterdam: John Benjamin). Kin Ken Loke (perhaps still at National U. of Singapore?) has also done research on the topic. e.g. A psycholinguistic study of shape features in Chinese (Mandarin) Sortal classifiers. (1982, D. Phil. thesis, U. of York, York, England.) "Young children's use of Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin) sortal classifiers", in Henry S.R. Kao and Rumjahn Hoosain's (1986) edited volume, _Linguistics, psychology, and the Chinese language. (Centre of Asian Studies, U. of Hong Kong). I'd be interested in knowing of other L1 acquisitional studies on classifiers in Chinese (Mandarin, Cantonese, or other dialects (or "varieties"). Marjorie Chan Dept. of E. Asian L & L Ohio State University (marjorie_chan@osu.edu) __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Fri, 4 Oct 91 13:20:01 BST From: John Phillips Subject: Re: query Mongolian I don't know of a Mongolian font for the Mac, but there is one for the Xerox Star. This was demo'd at IJCAI in 1983 and is reviewed in an article in Scientific American, July 1984, by Joseph Becker. There is an example of the Mongolian font on p. 85 - it looks correct and is visually pleasing. (I'm indebted to my colleague Graham Wilcox for putting me onto this.) John Phillips __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Fri, 04 Oct 91 10:25 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: 2.607 Queries to Ken Matsuda re priming literature. It is vast. Look at any recent psycholilnguistics text book or recent issues of LANGUAGE AND COGNITIVE PROCESSES or other psycholinguistics journals -- a few books which will provide more references than you will probably want: PSYCHOLINGUISTICS:CENTRAL TOPICS by Alan Garnham 1985 Methuen - London,NY PSYCHOLOGY OF LANGUAGE - David W. Carroll 1986 Brooks/Cole Publishing Co or more substantive: LEXICAL REPRESENTATION AND PROCESS edited by William Marslen-Wilson - 1989. MIT - Bradford Books or look at volume IIIof LINGUISTICS: THE CAMBRIDGE SURVEY ed by F Newymeyer VA Fromkin __________________________________________________________________________ 6) Date: Mon, 7 Oct 91 10:37:30 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: Webster Dennis Baron asked a while back about a PC "Webster's" dictionary from Random House. Random House has been trying very hard to take a bite out of Merriam-Webster's deservedly large market share for a good number of years, cp. their much touted (and self-congratulatory) "usage panel" for the flag-waving American Heritage Dictionary. The PC slant appears to be an effort to shore up their left wing. Merriam-Webster (out in Springfield, MA) has a citation file many times larger than any other dictionary maker except probably the OED. I recommend Sidney Landau's _Dictionaries: the art and craft of lexicography_ for amusin' and amazin' insights into the economics and politics of dictionary publishing. Bruce Nevin __________________________________________________________________________ 7) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 91 15:31:54 BST From: Henry "S." Thompson Subject: Re: 2.574 That's and WordCruncher Wrt David Powers's request for real data: Here are all the examples of "that's" as a relative in the first half of a corpus of 16 hours/1million words of natural dialog (... means a pause in the original, [] means i`ve left out a bit in copying from the transcript): >From the one that's sort of S-shape. Past the shel- shelter that's over the top. Ehm, what's your next thing that's marked? down from the hide-out err ... that ... that's just up the left-hand side [] is it the part that's the lowest down or the part [] You got the one that's coming more, almost like, almost eh, horizontal. Have you got a public footpath that's just like to ... Is there anything else that's in ... eh, that's causing ... Right, on my drawing I've got a chapel that's about an inch long on [] there's a wee bit that's almost at a horizontal. Yeah, the far away one, the one that's ... the very bottom line like imagine that's cut in half. straight line down there that's the edge of the golf course. [unclear what this is - ht] plus twenty-three more in the second half. There are no examples of "whose" in the corpus at all. As far as I can see, none of the examples of "that's" as a relative are of the sort under discussion. Sorry. ht -- Henry Thompson, Human Communication Research Centre, University of Edinburgh 2 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LW, SCOTLAND -- (44) 31 650-4440 Fax: (44) 31 650-4587 ARPA: ht@cogsci.ed.ac.uk JANET: ht@uk.ac.ed.cogsci UUCP: ...!uunet!mcsun!ukc!cogsci!ht __________________________________________________________________________ 8) Date: Wed, 02 Oct 91 07:20:45 EDT From: Peter Cole Subject: Microsoft Word There are two features that would be very useful: 1) autorenumbering of exampl es as in Renumber; 2) an automatic backup save as in Mac Word Perfect. The lat ter feature creates a backup which is deleted when you close down normally. But if the system goes dead etc., the backup is there when you reboot. I don't like normal autosave because I may have messed something up and be on the verge of abandoning the change when the save takes place, but the WP backup save does not do that. It is only there when things go wrong. Another important thing w ould be for Microsoft to provide alternate key combinations for those used to Word on another platform e.g. Windows. The pull down menus are nearly the same but the key combinations are different. What I really want is Mac key combinat ions to be available on Word for Windows. A more reliable ability to read the file formats from other versions of Word would also be useful. Linguist List: Vol-2-611. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-612. Mon 07 Oct 1991. Lines: 171 Subject: 2.612 Calls For Papers Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 01 Oct 91 15:19:26 EDT From: Greg Stump Subject: Call for papers:Kentucky Foreign Language Conference 2) Date: Fri, 4 Oct 91 06:36:02 EST From: nuyts@ccu.uia.ac.be Subject: 5TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR 3) Date: Sun, 6 Oct 91 19:01:44 EDT From: Student Conference in Linguistics Subject: Conference Announcement -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 01 Oct 91 15:19:26 EDT From: Greg Stump Subject: Call for papers: Kentucky Foreign Language Conference CALL FOR PAPERS Kentucky Foreign Language Conference The 45th annual Kentucky Foreign Language Conference will be held on April 23-25, 1992, at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. The conference will include sessions devoted to linguistic theory, linguistics pedagogy, and TESL. If you wish to present a paper in one of these sessions, send one copy of a one-page abstract to Greg Stump (sessions on linguistic theory and linguistics pedagogy) or to Barbara Kennedy (sessions on TESL) at the following address: Department of English, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506-0027. Alternatively, abstracts may be submitted by e-mail to the following addresses: eng101@ukcc.uky.edu (Stump), engblk@ukcc.uky.edu (Kennedy). Please specify whether your abstract is for a 20-minute or a 45-minute paper. The deadline for submission of abstracts is November 15, 1991. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 4 Oct 91 06:36:02 EST From: nuyts@ccu.uia.ac.be Subject: 5TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR Call for papers for the 5TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR to be held at the University of Antwerp, August 24-28, 1992. The conference will be devoted to recent developments in the theory of Functional Grammar as developed by S.C.Dik. Papers pertaining to any area of relevance to the model are eligible for presentation. We also encourage the submission of papers comparing (aspects of) the model of Functional Grammar to other models and theories in linguistics and related disciplines. Time allotted for presentation will be 30 minutes, followed by 10 minutes of discussion time. If you intend to submit a paper for presentation, please send six copies of a one-page camera-ready abstract to Functional Grammar Organizing Committee c/o Jan Nuyts University of Antwerp fax: ++32/3/820.22.44 Linguistics (GER) e-mail: nuyts@ccu.uia.ac.be Universiteitsplein 1 B-2610 Wilrijk Belgium The deadline for submission is February 1st, 1992. If you intend to attend the conference (with or without a paper), please return the slip below to the same address at your earliest convenience, and no later than December 1st, 1991. Only those who send in the slip will receive further information concerning the conference. Registration fees will be 1500 BFr, or 1000 BFr for students and unemployed colleagues. This includes coffee/tea, lunch, and all paperwork related to the conference. We can also provide hotel accommodation at reduced rates (app. 2000 BFr per person per night) for those who are interested. There will be a limited number of cheaper accommodations for those who have a limited budget. The organizing committee C.Braecke, G.De Schutter, B.Devriendt, L.Goossens, J.Nuyts, J.Van den Hauwe, J.Van der Auwera ************************************************************** Pre-registration slip for the 5th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR Antwerp, August 24-28, 1992 I intend to participate in the conference. I intend to present a paper YES / NO I want the organizers to reserve hotel accommodation for me YES / NO Name and address .............................................................. .............................................................. .............................................................. .............................................................. __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Sun, 6 Oct 91 19:01:44 EDT From: Student Conference in Linguistics Subject: Conference Announcement please post STUDENT CONFERENCE IN LINGUISTICS SCIL IV CALL FOR PAPERS The Student Linguistic Association at the Ohio State University is pleased to announce that it will host the fourth annual Student Conference in Linguistics, to be held April 4-5, 1992. Any student who will not have a Ph.D. by April 1992 is welcome to submit a paper in any area of linguistic study, written in any theoretical framework. All papers accepted will be published in the MIT Working Papers in Linguistics. Speakers will be allowed 30 minutes for presentation and 10 minutes for questions. To submit an abstract, send five copies of an anonymous one-page proposal by January 1, 1992 Abstracts should be accompanied by a single 3 x 5 card with: 1. title of the paper 2. the author's name 3. the author's affiliation 4. address and phone number 5. e-mail address Send inquiries or entries to: SCIL IV Department of Linguistics 204 Cunz Hall, 1841 Millikin Rd. Ohio State University Columbus, OH 43210 USA Or send e-mail to: SCIL@ling.ohio-state.edu Accomodation for participants of the conference will be provided. __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-612. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-613. Mon 07 Oct 1991. Lines: 172 Subject: 2.613 Queries Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 4 Oct 91 01:10:45 -0400 From: "l. valentine" Subject: Machine Translation Involving Spanish 2) Date: Fri, 04 Oct 91 08:23:00 BST From: "(Dr) David Denison" Subject: Double modals, "real" data 3) Date: Fri, 4 Oct 91 15:51 EDT From: AMODIO@vaxsar.vassar.edu Subject: query regarding esperanto 4) Date: Sat, 05 Oct 91 21:02:07 EDT From: Michael Newman Subject: query 5) Date: Sun, 6 Oct 1991 16:33 EST From: Fan mail from some flounder? Subject: Third person indefinite reflexive 6) Date: Mon, 7 Oct 91 9:41 GMT From: Julie Coleman Subject: political correctness -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 4 Oct 91 01:10:45 -0400 From: "l. valentine" Subject: Machine Translation Involving Spanish Is anyone aware of any machine translation projects either ongoing or completed involving Spanish? Can anyone point me to some current literature on the subject of machine translation in general, or more specifically, projects involving French or Spanish? Thanks. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 04 Oct 91 08:23:00 BST From: "(Dr) David Denison" Subject: Double modals, "real" data With reference to recent discussions of double modals and genuine data, how about this one? "Might could I offer you a seat, Miss?" It's from Allan Gurganus's novel, Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, 1989, UK paperback ed. p.606. The novel is full of *might could*s: the main narrator is a white Carolina woman supposedly nearly 100 years old. The blurb says that Gurganus is from there (can't recall whether North or South Carolina). The above example is the only one I have noticed so far which isn't a positive declarative, and - to make matters worse - it's supposed to be an utterance TO the principal black female character, as imagined by her and possibly said out loud by her to her white owner at the end of the US Civil War, the whole conversation apparently imagined by the fictional white woman not yet born, and narrated by her to a reporter! The dialects of black former slave and white friend are usually distinguishable, though they share many features. So: is this a genuine dialect example of interrogative *might could*? As a historical linguist I sometimes have to rely on novels for examples. This 19th/20th-century stuff could be checked with real informants, presumably, but it does raise some interesting questions, doesn't it? (And if it IS genuine, the syntax is fun too.) David Denison __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Fri, 4 Oct 91 15:51 EDT From: AMODIO@vaxsar.vassar.edu Subject: query regarding esperanto Can anyone on this network tell me if there is an electronic discussion group devoted to Esperanto? I ask this on behalf of a colleague who has been studying it for the last several years. Does linguist-l perhaps have a sub-group of Esperanto devotees? As I'm not a member of linguist-l, I'd appreciate it if you would contact me directly if you have any knowledge of such a group. Thanks in advance. Mark Amodio Department of English Vassar College Poughkeepsie, NY 12601 amodio@vaxsar.vassar.edu __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Sat, 05 Oct 91 21:02:07 EDT From: Michael Newman Subject: query Howard Lasnik in his 1976 article, Remarks on Corefernce, in Linguistic Analysis used a few examples along the lines of"*Everyone/*No one sat down after he walked in." His point is the impossibility of coreference under these circumstances. His theoretical point aside, what I find interesting is his ex- clusive mention of HE as the possible coreferent pronominal--following the old fashioned norm. He ignores what would be the most typical coreferent pronoun for EVERY under all syntactic configurations: ie. THEY. Gareth Evans in his response to Lasnik does basically the same thing with one of his examples, star ring "Every congressman came to the party and he had a marvelous time" and giving and undeserved marginal status to "?Every congressman came to the party and they had a marvelous time." This phenomenon of ignoring useage in favor of school-grammar norms seems wide- spread in theoretical studies of pronouns, at least if my memory does not deceive me. My query is:1. does anyone remember other such cases? 2. Does any- one's thery get into trouble because they have ignored this? 3. Has anyone pointed out the inconstency before? 4. If not why in the ruthless world of theoretical linguistics haven't they? Michael Newman Hunter College __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Sun, 6 Oct 1991 16:33 EST From: Fan mail from some flounder? Subject: Third person indefinite reflexive We've all heard (and Anne Bodine has documented) sentences like (1): (1) If anyone calls, tell >>them<< I can't come to the phone or even (2): (2) Someone dropped by, but >>they<< didn't say what they wanted. The following sentence appeared in today's New York Times (Section I, p. 27), and although I think I've heard things like it, I've never seen its like in print: (3) (quoting the Georgia Attorney General) "I'm not going to hire someone who holds >>themself<< out to the public by their own admission as being engaged in homosexual marriage," Mr. Bowers said. I found this fascinating, since as (1) and (2) show, colloquial English does use a plural for indefinite third person pronouns (as well as the well-known "everyone...their" constructions that English teachers try to bash out of us. However, (3) seems to be the most felicitous way to express the intended idea in this case, since the "correct" >>himself<< is inappropriate given the genders of the participants, and even >>themselves<< is a little funny since the pronoun is semantically singular, and unlike the case of "their", there seems to be a singular counterpart. Has anyone else encountered constructions like (3)? Susan Fischer __________________________________________________________________________ 6) Date: Mon, 7 Oct 91 9:41 GMT From: Julie Coleman Subject: political correctness I'm informed that the term "individual" is 'politically incorrect'. Can anyone tell me why this should be? __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-613. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-614. Mon 07 Oct 1991. Lines: 166 Subject: 2.614 Queries Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 2 Oct 1991 20:39 EDT From: "Michel (mgrimaud@lucy.wellesley.edu\") GRIMAUD" Subject: Orthographic to phonetic French 2) Date: Wed, 02 Oct 91 13:05:54 EDT From: waoneil@Athena.MIT.EDU Subject: bananar 3) Date: Wed, 2 Oct 91 15:49:19 -0400 From: gb661@csc.albany.edu (BROADWELL GEORGE AARON) Subject: trema? 4) Date: Thu, 03 Oct 91 23:14:01 +0000 From: And Rosta Subject: [one of you]rs 5) Date: Thu, 3 Oct 91 17:50:34 -0500 From: Michael Kac Subject: Query -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 2 Oct 1991 20:39 EDT From: "Michel (mgrimaud@lucy.wellesley.edu\") GRIMAUD" Subject: Orthographic to phonetic French I am planning to transcribe about 4,000 lines of French poetry -- the text of Victor Hugo's masterpiece _Dieu_ (note modest title) -- into phonetics... and would like the computer to do much of the work for me. DOES ANYONE KNOW OF A MACHINE READABLE GLOSSARY OF FRENCH WORDS WITH THEIR PHONETIC EQUIVALENT? If not I suppose I will have to create it myself. Here is how I imagine doing it. Please criticize! Step 1: Scan the text into WordPerfect and proofread Step 2: run a frequency list so that repeated words do not need to be transcribed phonetically twice Up to here things are clear. The next steps are where I would like suggestions. Step 3: Find in the linguistic literature... WHERE???... if there are robust (not fail-safe but useful) sets of correspondences between spelling and pronunciation in French. (Beyond the obvious.) Step 4: Find out whether there are robust rules for SYLLABIFICATION (I remember reading about problems with this... in an article published 15-20 years ago and read 10 years ago at least...) Does there exist a DICTIONARY OF ALL POSSIBLE SYLLABLES? Would it be of any use? Step 5: Deal with liaison and enchainement One solution I envisage is to search for all PAIRS of words and try to create rules for those pairs that do occur. Step 6: Deal with the phonetics of end of line to beginning of next line... Which would be considered performance under ordinary circumstances but which has to be dealt with here Step 7: Put all this together Step 8: Establish links in a database between the text and its transcription Any help on any of the steps would be most welcome. I would, of course, be most curious to know if anyone has already done this kind of work. Michel Grimaud Dept of French Wellesley College Wellesley MA 02181 Tel. 617/235-0320 (extension 2404) __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Wed, 02 Oct 91 13:05:54 EDT From: waoneil@Athena.MIT.EDU Subject: bananar I am trying to locate a short, ten-minute movie that I saw on two occasions in Cambridge MA several years ago. It is a parody of a language lesson in which this very straight-faced person is teaching the intricacies of the Spanish verb bananar 'to banana'. At one point in the movie, the guy drags out a large banana and a small one and has them usted-ing and tu-ing one another. I want to use the film in a course on bilingual education that I am presently co-teaching at Wheelock College in Boston. Any help with pinning down the title, producer, etc. will be appreciated. Wayne O'Neil. __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Wed, 2 Oct 91 15:49:19 -0400 From: gb661@csc.albany.edu (BROADWELL GEORGE AARON) Subject: trema? A recent post on coding schemes for African languages referred to a diacritic called a `trema'. Can anyone tell me what this is? ****************************************************************************** Aaron Broadwell, Dept. of Linguistics, University at Albany -- SUNY, Albany, NY 12222 gb661@leah.albany.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Chi Wen Tzu always thought three times before taking action. Twice would have been quite enough." -- Confucious ****************************************************************************** __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Thu, 03 Oct 91 23:14:01 +0000 From: And Rosta Subject: [one of you]rs The other day I heard someone say: 1a Is this book one of yours? meaning "Does this book belong to one of you?". Though initially gobsmacked by this utterance, on reflection I reckon I could utter it, as a possibly preferable alternative to: 1b Is this book one of you's? though I prefer (2b) & (3b) to (2a) & (3a). 2a *This is one of your/our/their book. 2b This is one of you's/us's/them's book. 3a *Sophy's picture of your/our/their frame. [not a picture of a frame] 3b Sophy's picture of you's/us's/them's frame. [not a picture of a frame] First question: Who *can* accept (1a)? (And (2a), (3a)?) Second question: How do you analyse & explain them? ---------- And Rosta __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Thu, 3 Oct 91 17:50:34 -0500 From: Michael Kac Subject: Query Are there any languages which have some kind of morphological marking of verbs to distinguish collective vs. distributive interpretation? E.g. in an analogue of *John and Bill carried a piano upstairs* a way of mor- phologically distinguishing the sense in which John and Bill each carried a piano upstairs from the one in which the two of them did it together? Michael Kac __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-614. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-615. Mon 07 Oct 1991. Lines: 167 Subject: 2.615 Polite/Plural Pronouns Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 4 Oct 1991 08:16:53 +0100 From: Swann Philip Subject: 2.608 Polite Pronouns 2) Date: Fri, 04 Oct 91 08:45:20 EDT From: Geoffrey Russom Subject: Re: 2.608 Polite Pronouns 3) Date: Fri, 04 Oct 91 07:57:40 EDT From: elc9j@prime.acc.Virginia.EDU Subject: 2.608 Polite Pronouns 4) Date: Sat, 5 Oct 91 19:23 MST From: WDEREUSE@ccit.arizona.edu Subject: Re: 2.605 Polite Pronouns 5) Date: Mon, 7 Oct 1991 8:04:30 GMT From: MCCONVELL_P@DARWIN.NTU.EDU.AU Subject: You/youse and politeness -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 4 Oct 1991 08:16:53 +0100 From: Swann Philip Subject: 2.608 Polite Pronouns RE: Lei in Italian If I remember correctly, "Lei" in Italian derives from forms such as "la sua altezza" (your Highness). It is the standard polite/formal 2nd singular pronoun in Northern Italy, but I think that Voi is more frequent in some other regions. "Lei" is not the same as the 3rd singular feminine pronoun "lei". Once on Italian television Racquel Welsh was a guest with an Italian actor, with the show's host acting as interpreter. At one point the actor said to the host "Lei e' molto ridicolo" (You are very funny), which the host translated as "She is very ridiculous"... the look on Welsh's face was memorable. Philip Swann FPSE-TECFA University of Geneva __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 04 Oct 91 08:45:20 EDT From: Geoffrey Russom Subject: Re: 2.608 Polite Pronouns In Providence we have a you/yous (not youse) distinction with a voiceless final -s. It seems to function entirely as a singular/ plural distinction, with no implications of politeness, though of course the difference in phonology would tend to discourage one from using you/yous usage as a guide to usage of you/youse (with final -z). __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Fri, 04 Oct 91 07:57:40 EDT From: elc9j@prime.acc.Virginia.EDU Subject: 2.608 Polite Pronouns "Y'all" is sometimes used, at least in Virginia, as a polite form of address to a single person, as in "Y'all come back, now", said by a shopkeeper to a customer. Of course, this could just be a standardized greeting formula. We're looking for more data on this. __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Sat, 5 Oct 91 19:23 MST From: WDEREUSE@ccit.arizona.edu Subject: Re: 2.605 Polite Pronouns Just a note on tu/vous in Belgian French: there have been several people who have suggested that non-French French varieties have different usages concerning the T/V distinction in pronouns. Sorry for not remembering who all mentioned this. My own experience is the following (I was monolingual Dutch speaking till the age of eight, then moved to Paris and learned French there, and then moved back to Belgium at the age of eighteen, and got my first exposure to Belgian French only then.) I did not notice any differences between the way Belgians use the tu/vous distinction and the Parisian way, even though I did carry around a notebook in which I recorded any tiny differences (phonological, lexical, syntactic) I could detect. I do remember snooty right-wing kids from Paris addressing their mom with 'vous', but I bet even those have their equivalents in Belgium. One thing that struck me in Belgium is a very great awareness of the existence of a class of people who use tu where they should use vous a lot. This is supposed to be typical of uneducated lower class Brussels people who are ethnically Flemish, and are more proficient in the Brussels Flemish dialect than they are in French, but nevertheless consider themselves French- speaking. As far as I can tell, there is such a class of heavy tu-users, but they are not nearly as numerous and stereotypable as popular opinion would have you believe. The Flemish dialects do not have a T/V distinction but Standard Dutch does. (Actually the Flemish dialects (that of Brussels, at least) uses something corresponding to an archaic-biblical type 2nd person sg. subject pronoun in Standard Dutch (can also be pl.), and what is related to the StandardV pronoun for an object 2nd person pronoun. So you never sound very rude in hteFlemish dialect). I suppose, then, that speakers of Flemish dialects would be tempted to use tu as a general equivalent for their 2nd person pronoun. But since the Flemish dialects are disappearing fast in Brussels and are being replaced by French and by more mesolectal varieties of Flemish, which are closerto standard Dutch and can do the Standard Dutch T/V distinction, one can understand how French speakers who do not have a T/V distinction are disappear- ing fast. There is a lot of stigmatizing against this in Brussels, but as we know Brussels is at least (if not more) prescriptive than Paris (Grevisse was from Brussels), so the proper T/V usage is a big deal for Bruxellois French speakers. Willem J. de Reuse Department of Anthropology University of Arizona Tucson, AZ 85721 U.S.A. __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Mon, 7 Oct 1991 8:04:30 GMT From: MCCONVELL_P@DARWIN.NTU.EDU.AU Subject: You/youse and politeness With reference to Herb Stahlke's report of polite (rather than plural) use of "youse" in Ohio, I am wondering if there may be comparable things happening in Australia. Many Australian English speakers have the you/youse distinction marking number (my own children for instance - I don't as I'm a Pom i.e. from England). However my students often insist that they have heard "youse" commonly in a singular sense. Whether it has to do with politeness, power/solidarity etc. I don't know. I don't think I've heard it. It occurs in Barry Mackenzie cartoons and films in a singular sense but since this is an exaggerated portrayal of Broad Australian speech and manners in part for an overseas audience this may be stereotyping involving unnatural extension of "youse". On Michel Grimaud's contribution on "mixed style" in plays involving T/V rapid switching between the same people, Brown and Gilman give a (presumably parallel) example from Marlowe: TAMBURLAINE: Here, Turk, wilt thou have a clean trencher? BAJAZETH: Aye,tyrant, and more meat. TAMBURLAINE: Soft, sir, you must be dietee; too much eating will make you surfeit. Brown and Gilman point out that the V is sarcastic when used t a prisoner, but also recalls the fact that Bajazeth is an emperor. This makes me wonder to what extent theatrical dilogue mirrors everyday usage or goes beyond it to create a special mixed style. Going back to "youse" one of the problems in this developing a polite connotation, at least in Australia, is the fact that it is a stigmatised substandard form. If it did occur this would be an interesting case of very widespread linguistic tendencies (for plural second plurals to become polite forms) overcoming local language attitudes. Patrick McConvell, Anthropology, Northern Territory University Darwin, Australia __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-615. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-616. Mon 07 Oct 1991. Lines: 245 Subject: 2.616 Plurals and Kreplach Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 01 Oct 1991 08:45:16 From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz) Subject: Plural of Mac 2) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 91 9:03:06 CDT From: Dennis Baron Subject: odd/even plurals 3) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 91 17:54:09 -0400 From: gb661@csc.albany.edu (BROADWELL GEORGE AARON) Subject: odd plurals 4) Date: Wed, 2 Oct 91 08:20:46 GMT From: me@suzuka.u-strasbg.fr (Michel Eytan LILoL) Subject: Re: 2.599 Plurals 5) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 91 17:58:42 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Re: 2.603 Whorf and Plurals 6) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 91 20:46:34 -0700 From: tshannon@garnet.berkeley.edu Subject: Re: 2.604 Responses: Kreplach and Washing 7) Date: Wed, 02 Oct 91 09:44:45 EDT From: Geoffrey Russom Subject: Re: 2.604 Responses: Kreplach and Washing 8) Date: Thu, 03 Oct 91 00:32:12 EDT From: Larry Horn Subject: On Kreplach and UD 9) Date: Wed, 02 Oct 91 09:44:45 EDT From: Geoffrey Russom Subject: Re: 2.604 Responses: Kreplach and Washing -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 01 Oct 1991 08:45:16 From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz) Subject: Plural of Mac It occurs to me that the in-group plural of Mac ought to be Mace. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 91 9:03:06 CDT From: Dennis Baron Subject: odd/even plurals What to do with _agenda_ and _propaganda_? I asked this very question of one hypercorrective committee chair, who insists for example that _data_ can only be plural, "Can you have an agenda with only one item?" and got the predictable reply, "Of course." It seems that the correct construal of numbers is both complex and variable. When my daughter went to C.E.S. Henri IV for a year we spent in France she was marked wrong when she said there were 7 continents and no amount of arguing with the teacher could change what was regarded as a universal fact. Of course the English prof also insisted that "number phone"--a calque of the French idiom--was correct British English, and that my daughter's insistence on "phone number" was incorrect, or at best, American. So what do _you_ do with _data_? -- 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 \\ """""""" \ \\ """""""" \ ~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 91 17:54:09 -0400 From: gb661@csc.albany.edu (BROADWELL GEORGE AARON) Subject: odd plurals For an example of a regular plural used with the metaphoric sense of a noun that normally takes an irregular plural, recall the lyrics to 'Diamonds are a girl's best friend': That's when those louses Go back to their spouses Diamonds are a girl's best friend! ****************************************************************************** Aaron Broadwell, Dept. of Linguistics, University at Albany -- SUNY, Albany, NY 12222 gb661@leah.albany.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Chi Wen Tzu always thought three times before taking action. Twice would have been quite enough." -- Confucious ****************************************************************************** __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Wed, 2 Oct 91 08:20:46 GMT From: me@suzuka.u-strasbg.fr (Michel Eytan LILoL) Subject: Re: 2.599 Plurals I would like to add a small grain of salt to the debate, but in a very exotic language -- viz. French. Some time ago I taught a course in Automata Theory. The formal definition implies a set of final states, that I called "un ensemble d'e'tats *finals*'. This seemed to confuse quite a bit the students, used to form the plural of adjectives in -al as -aux. My only argument was that of 'euphonia', but I am no more so sure of this sort of reason. Michel Eytan De'pt. Info. Univ. Strasbourg II __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 91 17:58:42 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Re: 2.603 Whorf and Plurals I have gotten corrections publicly and privately regarding *propoganda*; my thanks to the correctors. There's a sense, however, in which the general point remains unaffected: if *propoganda* is an ablative form then one would not expect to find it used as a subject, for example (I don't believe that there are any Latin verbs which govern ablative for subject, though maybe that's too strong a claim). The general point, which is that prescriptive rules, including ones of the genreal form 'This comes from language X so you have to use it in the way it's used in that language' are invariably belied by at least some usages by those who adamantly tout the rules. Ellen Prince mentions *data*. This is actually an interesting case -- my own usage (which tends to be rather puristic, my linguistic political correctness notwithstanding) is actually inconsistent. I'll say things like 'The data are on page 3' but also 'There's a lot of data to support that claim'. But the most interesting phenomenon I've run into is that in some branches of computer science the plural *datums* has now entered the lexicon, in a sense that I'm not sure I understand, but about which I have some suspicions. There are some bona fide computer scientists out there -- comments on this one would be most welcome (to me, at least). Michael Kac __________________________________________________________________________ 6) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 91 20:46:34 -0700 From: tshannon@garnet.berkeley.edu Subject: Re: 2.604 Responses: Kreplach and Washing Usually I ignore my urge to reply to linguistic trivia questions and let the mavens handle them, but on the Yiddish diminutive plurals I just couldn't resist! Some time ago the question intried me and I decided to look into it, figuring, as one of our colleagues mused, that it was either Slavic or Hebrew. Friends told me it couldn't be Hebrew, and it didn't look that Slavic either, unfortunately. Finally, I came up with what appears to be the right answer, although right now I can't come up with a more authoritative source than what I give here. The plural ...l-ech seems to be from Germanic! Krahe/ Meid (Germanische Sprachwissenschaft, vol. 3), p. 194, note about the IE collective suffix *-ahja- that it survives in Gmc. as *-aha: cf. OGH eihhahi "Eichengehoelz", widahi "Weidicht" rorahi "Roehricht", etc. They go on to note that in MHG & NHG dialects (East Franconian) -(l)ech serves as a plural suffix: MHG ermelech (< ermel) "Aermel", knehtelech "Knechte"; and NHG dial. zaehnlich, oerhlich. I thought I had a more decisive reference to prove conclusively that this was the source of the Yiddish dimunitive plural, but that's the best I can do right now. It certainly looks pretty good, however, faute de mieux! tom shannon, uc berkeley german department tshannon@garnet.berkeley.edu __________________________________________________________________________ 7) Date: Wed, 02 Oct 91 09:44:45 EDT From: Geoffrey Russom Subject: Re: 2.604 Responses: Kreplach and Washing Both French and Italian designations can be translated as "hunter's chicken." What interested me was the fact that Italian-Americans here (admittedly a casual sample) use an Anglicized French designation for the Italian dish (cacciatore). A personal message informs me that poulet chasseur, strictly so-called, is made differently from chicken cacciatore, strictly so-called. This makes the blending of terminology even more interesting. "Chicken chaser" seems to be cacciatore in Providence no matter what your ethnic heritage might be, but its name is Anglicized via French. -- Rick Russom __________________________________________________________________________ 8) Date: Thu, 03 Oct 91 00:32:12 EDT From: Larry Horn Subject: On Kreplach and UD For those of you especially interested in the multicultural dimensions of the kreplach/wonton/dumpling/ravioli issue, I recommend the lead article in today's (actually Wednesday, October 2's) New York Times Living Section, "The Universal Dumpling", by Molly O'Neill (the only food writer whose brother is a major league outfielder). O'Neill quotes deli owner Joseph Ben-Moha, organizer of last week's dumpling derby, as asking rhetorically, "What makes a wonton not a kreplach, a kreplach not a pirogi, a pirogi not a wonton?" While kosher caterer Dan Lenchner (whose repertoire includes a wonton stuffed with Mexican fried beef and chili) speculates that "small, wrapped food is a universal concept, and while chefs Janny Leung and Tony Yep--who describe them- selves as dumpling makers--are reported to have "waved aside the semantics", the constraints on UD (Universal Dumpling, of course) remain to be elucidated. __________________________________________________________________________ 9) Date: Wed, 02 Oct 91 09:44:45 EDT From: Geoffrey Russom Subject: Re: 2.604 Responses: Kreplach and Washing Both French and Italian designations can be translated as "hunter's chicken." What interested me was the fact that Italian-Americans here (admittedly a casual sample) use an Anglicized French designation for the Italian dish (cacciatore). A personal message informs me that poulet chasseur, strictly so-called, is made differently from chicken cacciatore, strictly so-called. This makes the blending of terminology even more interesting. "Chicken chaser" seems to be cacciatore in Providence no matter what your ethnic heritage might be, but its name is Anglicized via French. -- Rick Russom __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-616. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-617. Mon 07 Oct 1991. Lines: 180 Subject: 2.617 ASL Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: 1 Oct 91 17:12 EST From: pchapin@nsf.gov Subject: 2.600 ASL 2) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 91 15:53:05 BST From: Henry "S." Thompson Subject: Re: 2.600 ASL 3) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 1991 13:34-0400 From: Allan C. Wechsler Subject: Towards a literary tradition in ASL 4) Date: Wed, 2 Oct 91 15:05:09 EDT From: macrakis@osf.org Subject: ASL as a foreign language 5) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 1991 13:34-0400 From: Allan C. Wechsler Subject: Towards a literary tradition in ASL -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: 1 Oct 91 17:12 EST From: pchapin@nsf.gov Subject: 2.600 ASL The Summer 1988 issue of _Sign Language Studies_ (Issue 59) is devoted entirely to the topic of the "Academic Acceptance of American Sign Language". I have a short article in there, presenting some arguments for accepting ASL in satisfaction of foreign language requirements in a liberal education, which I could provide copies of on request, but other much more qualified people (including such names as Vicki Fromkin, Harlan Lane, and Nancy Frishberg, among many others) have much longer and more substantive pieces, so I recommend the whole issue strongly to Maggie Sokolik and others who are interested in this question, and who are perhaps dealing with attitudes like the one recently expressed by the BU Dean. Paul Chapin __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 91 15:53:05 BST From: Henry "S." Thompson Subject: Re: 2.600 ASL When I was at Berkeley, the criterion for allowing a language to satisfy the requirement which would bar ASL was not that there be a literary tradition, but rather that there were scholarly articles being published in that language relevant to the candidate's discipline. On this basis it was informally decided that Latin did not qualify, although it might perhaps have done so at one time. ht -- Henry Thompson, Human Communication Research Centre, University of Edinburgh 2 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LW, SCOTLAND -- (44) 31 650-4440 Fax: (44) 31 650-4587 ARPA: ht@cogsci.ed.ac.uk JANET: ht@uk.ac.ed.cogsci UUCP: ...!uunet!mcsun!ukc!cogsci!ht __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 1991 13:34-0400 From: Allan C. Wechsler Subject: Towards a literary tradition in ASL It strikes me as reasonable for a university degree program to demand proficiency in same language other than English that possesses a literary tradition. On these grounds, it would seem that ASL cannot qualify, since there is no orthography in wide use. (On the same grounds, the same degree program ought to reject Cantonese. Several native Cantonese speakers have informed me that there is little Cantonese literature because of the orthography problem.) But I wonder whether the ASL literary corpus is really as empty as it would seem. I am hoping that a native ASL user in net-land can answer the following queries: 1) Is there any "folk" literature in ASL, that owes its dispersal to repeated transmission from one ASL user to another? Such folk literature could take the form of proverbs, poems, or whatever. My daydream is that there are unrecorded ASL "epics" out there, known by heart by a few "bards". 2) Has there been any movement toward an ASL literature following on the wide availability of video technology? It would seem that videotape is a possible medium of dispersal for ASL essays, articles, poetry, and even novels. The video medium still suffers from editing difficulties, and a hypothetical ASL novelist would either need access to sophisticated editing technology, or would have to do everything in one "take" and accept any imperfections in the result as unavoidable. There may be insufficient motivation for the ASL community to produce such works, since most ASL users are bilingual in English. __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Wed, 2 Oct 91 15:05:09 EDT From: macrakis@osf.org Subject: ASL as a foreign language If universities were clearer about the goals of their language requirements, perhaps the decision about including ASL would be easier. Some possible reasons are: 1) Wider access to scholarly literature. Learning Russian, French, or Japanese helps a mathematician to do mathematics in a way that learning Ewe does not. 2) Access to other cultures through their literature. Although Written Arabic and even Spoken Egyptian Arabic (through film) are useful this way, Spoken Moroccan Arabic is not. 3) Interpersonal communication (leading presumably to intercultural understanding). Here, Coranic Arabic, Latin, and Hittite are not much use, whereas Haitian Creole may be very useful. 4) Learning more about languages in general. Any language is useful for this, although you might learn more if the language is not too close to your own (e.g. learning Italian if you are French). 5) General culture, mental finger exercise, etc.? ASL does not contribute to (1) or (2). It does contribute to (3). Recent postings to Linguist indicate that it contributes to (4). Perhaps the real debate is on the valid goals for foreign language requirements? -s __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 1991 13:34-0400 From: Allan C. Wechsler Subject: Towards a literary tradition in ASL It strikes me as reasonable for a university degree program to demand proficiency in same language other than English that possesses a literary tradition. On these grounds, it would seem that ASL cannot qualify, since there is no orthography in wide use. (On the same grounds, the same degree program ought to reject Cantonese. Several native Cantonese speakers have informed me that there is little Cantonese literature because of the orthography problem.) But I wonder whether the ASL literary corpus is really as empty as it would seem. I am hoping that a native ASL user in net-land can answer the following queries: 1) Is there any "folk" literature in ASL, that owes its dispersal to repeated transmission from one ASL user to another? Such folk literature could take the form of proverbs, poems, or whatever. My daydream is that there are unrecorded ASL "epics" out there, known by heart by a few "bards". 2) Has there been any movement toward an ASL literature following on the wide availability of video technology? It would seem that videotape is a possible medium of dispersal for ASL essays, articles, poetry, and even novels. The video medium still suffers from editing difficulties, and a hypothetical ASL novelist would either need access to sophisticated editing technology, or would have to do everything in one "take" and accept any imperfections in the result as unavoidable. There may be insufficient motivation for the ASL community to produce such works, since most ASL users are bilingual in English. __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-617. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-618. Mon 07 Oct 1991. Lines: 167 Subject: 2.618 Is Language Finite? Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 2 Oct 91 11:14:02 EST From: j.guy@trl.oz.au (Jacques Guy) Subject: Is language infinite? 2) Date: Thu, 3 Oct 91 01:22 +8 From: Tom Lai Subject: Why talk about infinite lang 3) Date: Thu, 3 Oct 91 14:34 BST From: John Coleman Subject: RE: 2.595 Is Language Infinite? -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 2 Oct 91 11:14:02 EST From: j.guy@trl.oz.au (Jacques Guy) Subject: Is language infinite? I have received this message which encapsulates the gist of this discussion: "I can only assume that you believe there is a finite number of numbers, by precisely the same argument as you apply to natural languages. [...] If you believe there is an infinite number of numbers, then you contradict yourself and should rethink what you believe about natural language." The assumption is right. Yes, right; LITERALLY right. "Literally" is the key: I do hold that the "number of numbers", that is, the number of PHYSICALLY enumerable SIGNS representing numbers, is finite. I also hold that the number of positive integers is infinite. Ditto for the number of points on a line, or in a plane, or in a space, only more "infinite" than the former. Contradiction? No. Integers, geometric points have no physical existence; linguistic signs have. There again we meet the fundamental distinction between signifiant and signifie', sign and referent, and between reality and abstract models of it. Should I ramble on about what lurks behind "numbers" and "counting"? I'd rather not. Show time, instead. ------------------------ ARTHUR: This new learning amazes me, Sir Bedevere. Explain again how there are infinitely many ways in which Joseph could have descended from Abraham. BEDEVERE: Of course, my Liege. Matthew has written that Abraham begat Isaac, who begat Jacob, who begat Juda, and so on, who begat Joseph. ARTHUR: Yes. BEDEVERE: Behold then, my Liege, these generative rules: ::= Abraham Joseph ::= | They are truly wondrous, my Liege, for they account for all the possible filiations through which Joseph could have descended from Abraham, including that reported by Matthew: just replace with a Hebrew and have him beget. ARTHUR: Uh, yeah, I can see that. Randy lot those Hebrews, eh? BEDEVERE: And those alternative genealogies, my Liege, are infinite in number because is recursive. ---------------------------- As you can see, Sir Bedevere's conditions for membership of the set of alternative genealogies include a recursive definition, which allows him to conclude that their number is infinite. Reinterpret "Abraham" and "Joseph" as the boundaries of a sentence, and replace not with a Hebrew patriarch but with a phoneme of whatever language you please. Sir Bedevere's rules now generate all the possible sentences of that language, and the impossible ones too. Are there really infinitely many possible alternative ways in which Joseph could have descended from Abraham? Yes, if there are infinitely many sentences in any natural language. And vice versa. For the rules are one and the same, and the cardinality of their elements alike: there was a finite number of generations from Abraham to Joseph, as there is a finite number of phonemes in any sentence; there was only a finite number of Hebrews draftable into stud duty at any time, as there is only a finite number of phonemes you can choose from to fill any particular position in a sentence. >From here on, the choice is yours. But note that Sir Bedevere does not test what his model predicts against what is physically possible, let alone what has been physically observed. He is in good company, with Hegel and Descartes, for whom truth was derivable through reason alone without reference to the physical world. Does that settle it? __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Thu, 3 Oct 91 01:22 +8 From: Tom Lai Subject: Why talk about infinite lang When we look at a language in its actual state, it is finite. As such it has all the limitations of finite entities. There are, for example, ideas that do not have a word in the lexicon to express it with because the lexicon is finite. But, if we consider the possibility of an open lexicon taking in new words, the infinite language, in its abstract aspect, has the potential to express anything hitherto not encountered. So, it is not meaningless to talk about the properties of of a language that come with its infinite character. I understand that the question of whether sentences can be of infinite length is a thorny issue. I think I should not say anything definite about it. Tom Lai. __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Thu, 3 Oct 91 14:34 BST From: John Coleman Subject: RE: 2.595 Is Language Infinite? macrakis@osf.org asks > Assuming finite-length sentences and finite numbers of combining > elements (whether phonemes or something else), set theory won't get > you anywhere beyond countable infinity. How do they [Langendoen > and Postal] get anything bigger? They allow infinite-lenth sentences, built by closing a finite set of finite-length sentences under conjunction. They they introduce a Cantorian diagonalization to show the existence of new sentences not in the original set, and thus claim to show that the size of an NL is transfinite. Given that the argument they present is essential no different from Cantor's, it seems to me that if you accept the "existence" in some sense of transfinite numbers, you can't also deny the existence of sentence-like objects and transfinite-sized NL-like objects of the sort Langendoen and Postal are talking about. The philosophical problems only arise when we consider whether the NL-like objects of transfinite size are "real languages" in the more familiar sense. But this is the bag of worms, not L&P's mathematical argument, it seems to me. --- John Coleman __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-618. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-619. Mon 07 Oct 1991. Lines: 138 Subject: 2.619 The Finiteness of Language; Features Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 91 11:12:54 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@mts.cc.wayne.edu Subject: 2.602 Is Language Finite? 2) Date: Fri, 27 Sep 91 11:18:16 -0400 From: mj@cs.brown.edu (Mark Johnson) Subject: Re: 2.568 Features 3) Date: Sat, 28 Sep 91 10:02:45 -0500 From: Dyvik@uib.no Subject: Re: 2.568 Features -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 91 11:12:54 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@mts.cc.wayne.edu Subject: 2.602 Is Language Finite? (1) I don't see how Tom Lai gets the result that languages whose sentences are made up of words taken from an infinite lexicon are necessarily uncountably infinite. I can have a (countably) infinite lexicon and a syntax of the form S -> w, where w is any word in the lexicon. The language will then be the same as the lexicon, viz., countable. I can also concatenate all the words in the lexicon into a single string of countably infinite length (Langendoen and Postal of course allow even greater lengths!), then the language will be finite! (2) I was really happy to see Terry Langendoen present the case for transfiniteness the way he does (as a theoretical simplicity argument). It does seem as though in the published works the argument was presented as a proof about the properties of a real- world object, namely, English. This distressed many readers, I think, since cannot state theorems about English and since the size of the real-world object in question did not seem to be a question subject to testing. It is also of capital importance that Terry now separates the issue of Platonism vs. conceptualism from the question of size of NLs. But I for one would be interested to know whether he therefore no longer disagrees with conceptualism or whether he finds other arguments against conceptualism more compelling. (3) And I cannot resist adding that this very important statement from Langendoen is a perfect example of the kind of useful function that LINGUIST has been performing. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 27 Sep 91 11:18:16 -0400 From: mj@cs.brown.edu (Mark Johnson) Subject: Re: 2.568 Features From: Linguist List: Vol-2-568. WHEATLJS@ibm3090.computer-centre.birmingham.ac.uk asks > Yes but ... is this in aywa connected with > what ordinary people do with language > ... John Wheatley Underneath all the algebra and logic of the disjunctive feature structure work I think there is an intuition that many ambiguities are essentially _local_ in nature, and that rather than always "multiplying out" these ambiguities, it should possible to keep at least some ambiguities local, and avoid an exponential explosion in the number of analyses. Right now our understanding of how to do this is still fairly primitive (despite all the fancy jargon!), but I think ultimately we would like to obtain a parse representation that says something like (say) "In this sentence, PP_1 is either modifying VP_2 or NP_3, and the quantified NP_4 may optionally take scope over NP_5; if it does then the pronoun NP_6 is contra-indexed with NP_4". Right now, most parsers would produce a set of the parse trees that enumerate all of these possibilities. Aside from its exponential size, such a set of parse trees is also really not so good as an input for semantic/pragmatic processing if we take it that one of the things these components do is disambiguate syntactic ambiguities. This is because such a disambiguator really isn't concerned with the "semantic value" of each individual parse tree; what it really needs to know is how the various possible syntactic analyses minimally differ from each other, which is what these disjunctive representations provide. This is a fairly tricky area, and I would like to see more psycholinguistic work done to see how the one type of fully-functional Natural Language Understanding systems (the one in the human mind) solves this problem. Kurt Vanlehn's MIT thesis suggests that humans can delay deciding quantifier scopes in many situations, and I've heard proposals that PP attachment may also in general not be resolved. Note that if they are to be taken seriously, these proposals cannot mean that the PP is literally unattached (otherwise how does it contribute semantically to the utterance, or why isn't it interpreted as potentially modifying all NPs and VPs in the sentence). Mark Johnson __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Sat, 28 Sep 91 10:02:45 -0500 From: Dyvik@uib.no Subject: Re: 2.568 Features >Yes but what has this to do with the cost of bread >or to paraphrase - is this in aywa connected with >what ordinary people do with language >can all this Boolean logic contribute somewhere or is >it just cleverness for its own sake - linguistics >away from the social or even the psychological? >I do not mean to be disrespectful - I just wonder! >John Wheatley Before we start studying what ordinary people do with language in any detail, it seems useful to characterize the regularities of language itself. For that purpose feature structures are a very useful tool. As a linguist I certainly want to know as much as possible about the mathematical properties of and inherent possibilities in the formal tools I am using. Helge Dyvik __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-619. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-620. Mon 07 Oct 1991. Lines: 134 Subject: 2.620 Jobs Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 4 Oct 91 8:52:28 EST From: kwilling@suna.mqcc.mq.oz.au (Ken Willing) Subject: Job Announcement: Sydney, Australia 2) Date: Mon, 07 Oct 91 16:42:39 -0700 From: Diane Enders Subject: Job Announcement: UC Irvine -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 4 Oct 91 8:52:28 EST From: kwilling@suna.mqcc.mq.oz.au (Ken Willing) Subject: Job Announcement: Sydney, Australia Job Announcement MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF ENGLISH AND LINGUISTICS SENIOR LECTURER IN LINGUISTICS COORDINATOR OF PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT THE NATIONAL CENTRE FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING AND RESEARCH REF. 880183 The appointee will have special responsibility for the area of Professional Development within the National Centre for English Language Teaching and Research, which is a Commonwealth Key Centre for Teaching and Research located within the Linguistics Discipline. The successful applicant will have appropriate postgraduate qualifications, substantial research publications in teacher education and applied linguistics and a record of successful professional development work. He or she will also be able to demonstrate skills in administration and management and exercise educational leadership. The ability to work in a team is essential. It is expected that the successful applicant will be experienced in the field of adult language education and it is desirable that he or she has some awareness of the objectives and practices of the Australian Adult Migrant English Program in particular. The position will require an expertise in one or more of the following applied linguistics fields: . second language teacher education . discourse analysis and pragmatics . language curriculum development and practice . English language and literacy in the workplace . classroom centred action research . program management Experience in planning, teaching and evaluating qualificatory and non- qualificatory courses is highly desirable and there will be opportunities for the successful applicant to contribute to the well-developed graduate programs in the Linguistics Discipline. Ample opportunities and support facilities exist for personal research in the various research centres in Linguistics and the Discipline actively encourages and supports colleagues to participate in national and international conferences. The position will involve both interstate and overseas travel. Salary range: $47,500 to $56,000 per annum (with the top rate rising to $56,500 in July 1992) The position is tenable from early 1992 (or as soon thereafter as may be arranged) to 31 December 1997 with an extension dependent upon the availability of funds. Alternatively, the University would be willing to consider secondment, either for the full term, or for a shorter period. Further information about the position may be obtained from Professor Christopher N. Candlin: telephone (61-2-805-7673) Fax (61-2-805-7849) E-mail: (Ken Willing): kwilling@suna.mqcc.mq.oz.au. Further information about the University, conditions of appointment, and the method of application should be obtained from the Recruitment Manager, Personnel Office, Macquarie University, NSW 2109, or by telephoning (02)805 7391, facsimile (02)805 7398. Applications close on 1 November 1991. Equality of Employment Opportunity is University Policy __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Mon, 07 Oct 91 16:42:39 -0700 From: Diane Enders Subject: Job Announcement: UC Irvine POSITION IN THEORETICAL LINGUISTICS University of California, Irvine The Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Irvine is offering a position in the area of grammatical theory, commencing with the 1992-93 academic year. Applications are welcome at all professorial ranks, including senior scholars. Preference will be given to applicants with an established research record. Applicants are being sought in all specialization areas, including syntax, semantics and phonology. This position is one of an anticipated block of three senior and junior positions in grammatical theory to be filled over the next two to three years. In filling these positions, we will be paying particular interest to candidates with active interest in syntax/semantics, formal semantics, historical linguistics, and phonetics and phonology. Applicants should send a letter of interest, curriculum vita, any supporting materials, and names of three or more references to: Linguistics Search Committee School of Social Sciences University of California, Irvine Irvine, CA 92717. Deadline for receipt of application materials is 1 December 1991. The University of California is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer. Women and minority candidates are encouraged to apply. __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-620. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-621. Tue 08 Oct 1991. Lines: 91 Subject: 2.621 Sound Change Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 91 11:15:36 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@mts.cc.wayne.edu Subject: Unconditioned Sound Change 2) Date: Sun, 6 Oct 91 16:04:16 EST From: bert peeters Subject: 2.601 Unconditioned/-tional change -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 91 11:15:36 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@mts.cc.wayne.edu Subject: Unconditioned Sound Change Sally Thomason does not seem to commit herself as to whether she believes that all sound change (in those cases where we have the evidence) starts out in a restricted environment and only becomes "unconditioned" at the end of a protracted process. If so (and I suspect this to be true), this would have revolutionary implications for phonological theory, since every framework I know of allows (indeed, encourages) us to write processes of the form X -> Y (without a conditioning environment). __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Sun, 6 Oct 91 16:04:16 EST From: bert peeters Subject: 2.601 Unconditioned/-tional change > From: Sarah Thomason > > When Bert Peeters refers to the `myth of unconditioned > sound change', he is using the term `unconditioned' in a > way that differs from mine and, I think, from most other > people's use of the word. It doesn't mean `without a cause'; > it means `without any phonological conditioning factor, i.e. > in all phonetic environments'. When I chose to interpret "unconditioned" as 'without a cause' I did so to denounce the inappropriateness of the term. Instead, it looks as though I have convinced a certain number of people about my utter ignorance of what most historical linguists mean when they use the term. As a matter of fact, I am not at all unaware of what is usually meant - but it is about time we start thinking about a substitute for a word which is potentially misleading. When the labels "conditioned" and "unconditioned" were coined, historical linguists did not know better (witness the other label for "unconditioned", viz. "spontaneous"). Nowadays, we do know that there are no changes without causes. So why do we stick to the old terminology? > From: jack rea [Jack Rea starts off with observations very similar to those made by Sarah Thomason (hi, Sally!). The examples from the history of the French language which he then very conscienciously reproduces are among those that during my undergraduate years in Romance Philology I have heard more often than I really wanted to - it's nice to be reminded of them after so many years :-). After providing the data, Jack goes on thus:] > Needless to say, it is > always possible to manufacture a new label for this sort of thing if one is > distressed by terminology, but usually such terminological wars are not worth > the effort. How many today use Martinet's term 'moneme' for what is usually > called 'morpheme', despite his preaching for it. Nor has Jakobson's use of > 'contrast' prevailed to the extinction of its paradigmatic use. I agree if the implication is that NOT ALL terminological wars (the examples from Martinet and Jakobson are well chosen) are worth the effort. However, I tend to believe that SOME are - and the one which is being discussed here is of the latter kind. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr Bert Peeters Tel: +61 02 202344 Department of Modern Languages 002 202344 University of Tasmania at Hobart Fax: 002 207813 GPO Box 252C Bert.Peeters@modlang.utas.edu.au Hobart TAS 7001 Australia __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-621. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-622. Tue 08 Oct 1991. Lines: 181 Subject: 2.622 Anymore Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 3 Oct 91 17:42:27 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Re: 2.607 Queries 2) Date: Thu, 3 Oct 91 23:27:35 EDT From: Ron Smyth Subject: Re: 2.608 Polite Pronouns 3) Date: Fri, 4 Oct 91 11:31:35 EST From: Robin J. Edmundson Subject: RE: 2.607 Queries 4) Date: Fri, 04 Oct 91 14:30:07 EDT From: Larry Horn Subject: Re: 2.607 Queries 5) Date: 4 Oct 91 16:36:00 EST From: "STEVE SEEGMILLER" Subject: RE: 2.607 Queries 6) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 1991 10:38-0400 From: Allan C. Wechsler Subject: 2.610 Anymore -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 3 Oct 91 17:42:27 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Re: 2.607 Queries Rick Russom inquires about the distribution of positive *any more*. I cannot give a comprehensive account, but here is some partial information. Although not confined to the Philadelphia area, the phenomenon is well entrenched there. Some work done back in the '70's by Labov's group at Penn suggests that even if there is no overt negative marker, one is most likely to find something in the content that indicates a negative attitude on the part of the speaker toward the topic -- as in *The city is really filthy any more*. Michael Kac __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Thu, 3 Oct 91 23:27:35 EDT From: Ron Smyth Subject: Re: 2.608 Polite Pronouns RE: ANYMORE When I was in grad school, Gary Prideaux, a Texan, told us that the use of 'anymore' without an overt negator was common in his home state. I had never heard it in Canada until, whilat Queen's University in Kingston (middlle of the north shore of Lake Ontario), I met two university educated people (husband and wife, born in the 1930's) who used it frequently. Each time LP used it, I waited until the content of her statement had passed, then asked whether or not it might have been a slip. She said it was perfectly normal, but that others had commented on it in the past. I don't think it's feature of the Kingston area dialect. What do you learnability theorists thing about the possibility that someone might develop this 'overgeneralization' without prior exposure? With one or two accidental exposures (etc.). Ron Smyth smyth@lake.scar.utoronto.ca __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Fri, 4 Oct 91 11:31:35 EST From: Robin J. Edmundson Subject: RE: 2.607 Queries re: anymore I believe that this is a midwest phenomenon. At any rate the use of anymore without a negative is very acceptable in my dialect (northern Indiana, south-central Indiana). For example, I can say things like: Anymore, we sleep late on Saturdays. This basically means that we used to not sleep late on Saturdays, but now we do. In other words, 'anymore' in this sense is the opposite of 'used to' (in a PAST/PRESENT opposition). Something similar is the use of 'yet' in the same dialect. For example, She's downstairs yet. We can use it without a negative. 'Yet' means 'still' in this sentence. robin edmundson indiana university, bloomington __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Fri, 04 Oct 91 14:30:07 EDT From: Larry Horn Subject: Re: 2.607 Queries Re Rick Russom's query (2.607) on 'the distribution of "anymore" used in sentences without negation (like "still")': in fact, there has been work done on positive (or more properly non-negative-polarity) "anymore" and its geographical distribution, but the first datum to remember is that such occurrences of "anymore" are NOT equivalent to "still". Indeed, Labov somewhere brings up this case as an instance of how opaque a given dialect trait can be to speakers outside that dialect: non-positive-"anymore" speakers are likely to guess that "He always goes there anymore" means that he STILL goes there, when in fact for those speakers who actually get such sentences it's closer to meaning that he goes there NOW or NOWADAYS, presupposing that he didn't used to (I'll finess what I mean by 'presuppose'). Actually the "nowadays" paraphrase isn't exact, since it requires a longer time interval than "anymore": if you ask me whether I've been getting good poker hands I can say "anymore, I am" (note the preposing, characteristic of non- polarity "anymore") but not "nowadays, I am" if my luck changed an hour ago. Anyway, the best paper on so-called positive "anymore" is by Don Hindle and Ivan Sag from one of the NWAVE volumes in the '70's, if I'm not mistaken, but this largely deals with variation rather than distribution. Raw data on the latter can be gleaned from contributions over the years to "American Speech", especially from the 1930's and thereabouts. (There's also a brief discussion of this in my CLS 6 paper (1970), "Ain't it hard (anymore)", significant principally for motivating the first appearance in print of the % notation, developed by Paul Neubauer and me, for a sentence whose grammaticality is dialectally restricted, viz. "Floyd always thinks he's right anymore".) While I claimed in this paper that the positive "anymore" dialect encompasses the American midwest, extending eastward to Pennsylvania and southward to Georgia, but largely bypassing urban areas, I'm not confident that this assessment is correct. One citation of interest is due to D. H. Lawrence, whose character Birkin in "Women in Love" complains "Suffering bores me any more". (The spelling of this adverb as two words in British English, incidentally, makes it impossible to research its distribution in the OED, since it evidently doesn't count as a lexical item on that side of the pond.) --Larry Horn __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: 4 Oct 91 16:36:00 EST From: "STEVE SEEGMILLER" Subject: RE: 2.607 Queries This is an anecdotal reply to Rick Russom's query about "anymore" in the sense of "yet" or "still". When I was growing up in northern Utah, an entire family of my cousins, including those who were my age and were born in the same town, used "anymore" in non-negative sentences, i.e. they would say things like "It's hard to find a job here anymore." This usage always struck me as strange, and I never noticed anyone else using it, which I take to mean that it was not usual in that place at that time. Steve Seegmiller __________________________________________________________________________ 6) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 1991 10:38-0400 From: Allan C. Wechsler Subject: 2.610 Anymore I haven't verified this reference, from Jim Quinn's _American Tongue and Cheek_: "Quite absurd," he said. "Suffering bores me any more." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald, _Women in Love_, xiii, p. 159. (1920) __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-622. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-623. Tue 08 Oct 1991. Lines: 180 Subject: 2.623 On Becoming Bilingual Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: 01 Oct 91 14:49:21 EST From: JASKE@bat.bates.edu Subject: Query: Bilingual education of deaf children 2) Date: Thu, 3 Oct 91 11:52 CDT From: FFE@vz.acs.umn.edu Subject: query regarding bilingual children 3) Date: Thu, 03 Oct 1991 07:14:01 EDT From: AHARRIS - Alan Harris Subject: SEND TO LOJBAB OR INLCUDE OR BOTH//THANKS,ACH -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: 01 Oct 91 14:49:21 EST From: JASKE@bat.bates.edu Subject: Query: Bilingual education of deaf children The following request about bilingual education of deaf children was sent to me by a friend in the Basque Country. If any of you out there can provide any feedback it will be greatly appreciated. Or if you know of someone who does not subscribe to this list who could contribute please do pass this on to him or her. I became painfully aware of the problem presented here when i spent a few weeks in Lizartza last year, a small 100% Basque speaking town in Gipuzkoa. The only time i heard anyone speak Spanish there was when they had to speak to a teenage deaf girl who lives there. I'm sure she would appreciate your help. You can reply directly to the address below or e-mail to me at jaske@bat.bates.edu or jonaske@garnet.berkeley.edu Thanks, Jon Aske --------------------------------------------------------------- Dukumentazio eta Ikerketa Zentroa Center for Ducuments and Studies Reina Regente 5, bajo Aptdo. 667 10003 Donostia-San Sebastian Spain Voice: (43) 42 36 56 Fax: (43) 29 30 07 Background ---------- In the last few years a tendency has surfaced with relation to the education of deaf children which has two main characteristics: 1. Giving priority to verbal communication, since this gives greater possibilities of social integration. 2. Integration into regular schools, since early contacts with non-handicapped individuals is a prerequisite for the acquisition of the spoken language. Sign language is actually banned in practice--some years ago children were forcefully repressed so that the spoken language would be used--since teachers don't know it and it is most definitely not taught in the school medium. Although there are no follow-up studies, it is safe to say that it is not until deaf people leave school that they retreat to their own clubs and learn sign language on their own. In the [Spanish] Basque Country everyone speaks Castilian (Spanish), which was the only official language until some fifteen years ago. Next to Catilian, the Basque language [Euskara] continued to exist side by side in a diglossic situation, being spoken by one fourth of the population [with varying demographic densities]. Basque has become a legal language of instruction only in the last fifteen years. At present efforts are being made, some more successful than others, for the recuperation [or at least to halt the decline] of Basque, which is now co-official with Spanish and must be studied in school [much like a foreign language] in even all-Spanish schools. Traditionally, special education has taken place in Spanish, even when the student comes from a Basque family background (i.e. one in which Basque is the natural and probably only language used for communication). This is due to two factors: 1. It is hard enough for the handicapped child to learn one language, and thus the introduction of another language would complicate matters unnecessarily. 2. Since only one language must be chosen it makes sense to opt for the most cost-effective one, i.e. Spanish. After Basque was introduced in the Spanish-speaking schools as an obligatory subject, the question came up about the difficulties that this entails for the deaf student. Some experts proposes to exempt the deaf student from such a requirement so that harm is not done to his or her progress in Spanish, precarious as it already is. Another group of experts argues on the other hand that this policy deprives the deaf student of the right of learning to utilize a second language. Questions --------- We at the Center for Documentation and Studies would like to contribute to the maximum rationality of the debate that is being carried on by providing documentation about the subject and the opinion of experts from as widespread a background as possible. The questions that we would like to center on are the following: 1. Can it be said that in general a deaf child is not capable of learning two (spoken) languages? 2. If the answer to question 1 is that it depends on the capabilities of the child, which are the most appropriate instruments for measuring that capability so as to ascertain the optimal time to introduce the second language? 3. Does the fact that a child has poor language skills mean that he or she is not "ready"/"prepared" for being introduced to another language? Could it mean that progress is not likely to be made in the first language and that insisting in using only one language deprives the studying of the possibility of learning another language, even if it is to a similar limited level? We are very interested in any feedback that we can get on this difficult question. We are mostly interested in collecting as much material (references, bibliography, etc.) as possible, but we are also willing to consider hiring an expert to provide us with a comprehensive background study adapted to our situation. Thank you for your help. Ramon Saizarbitoria Zabaleta __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Thu, 3 Oct 91 11:52 CDT From: FFE@vz.acs.umn.edu Subject: query regarding bilingual children Along with many people, I can attest to the fact that children can become bilingual by being exposed to the native language at home and the other language elsewhere. ( I hesitate to single out either language at 'native' in this case actually.) My 12-year old son, who's a bilingual speaker of Turkish and English is a good example. He was born and raised in Minnesota. We speak Turkish at home almost exclusively; he learned English at school, day-care, from friends, etc. He had a slow start in both languages (only observations; no quantified data un unfortunately), but then progressed just fine. Feride Erku __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-623. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-624. Tue 08 Oct 1991. Lines: 160 Subject: 2.624 Workshop on Comparative Germanic Syntax Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 3 Oct 91 14:09:04 +0100 From: Arild Hestvik Subject: ANNOUNCEMENT: Seventh Workshop on Comparative Germanic Syntax -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 3 Oct 91 14:09:04 +0100 From: Arild Hestvik Subject: ANNOUNCEMENT: Seventh Workshop on Comparative Germanic Syntax The Seventh Workshop on Comparative Germanic Syntax University of Stuttgart, November 22-24, 1991. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Friday, November 22, 1991. Venue: Hoersaal 17.01, KII (Keplerstrasse 17, Lower Ground Floor) 13:15-14:15 INVITED SPEAKER: Teun Hoekstra (Leiden) 14:15-15:00 Knut Tarald Taraldsen (Tromsoe): Experiencers as External Arguments in Icelandic 15:00-15:30 Coffee break 15:30-16:15 Ad Neeleman (Utrecht): Against Small Clause Complements in Dutch 16:15-17:00 Joan Maling (Brandeis) & Rex Sprouse (Harvard): The Case of Predicate NPs 17:00-17:30 Coffee break 17:30-18:15 Sigridur Sigurjonsdottir & Nina Hyams (UCLA): Parametrizing Binding Theory: Evidence from Language Acquisition 18:15-19:00 Tanya Reinhart (Tel Aviv) & Eric Reuland (Groningen): Pronouns, simplex anaphors and chains ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Saturday, November 23, 1991. Venue: Hoersaal 17.02, KII (Keplerstrasse 17, Lower Ground Floor) 09:15-10:15 INVITED SPEAKER: James McCloskey (UC, Santa Cruz): Verb Fronting, Verb Second and the Left Edge of IP in Irish 10:15-11:00 Hans Bennis (Leiden): On the Properties of Syntactic Clusters 11:00-11:30 Coffee break 11:30-12:15 Manuela Schoenenberger (Geneva) & Zvi Penner (Berne): Cross-Dialectal Variation in Swiss German: Doubling Verbs, Verb Projection, Raising, Barrierhood, and LF Movement 12:15-13:00 Guenther Grewendorf (Frankfurt) & Jamal Ouhalla (QMW, London): Causative in Germanic and Romance Languages 13:00-15:00 Lunch 15:00-16:00 INVITED SPEAKER: Richard Kayne (CUNY, New York) 16:00-16:45 Ellen Brandner (Stuttgart): Local vs. Pronominal Expletives 16:45-17:15 Coffee break 17:15-18:00 Kyle Johnson (U.Wisconsin, Madison): On the Verb ^ Adverb ^ NP Word Order 18:00-18:45 Gereon Mueller (Konstanz): Chain formation in double object constructions ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sunday, November 24, 1991. Venue: Hoersaal 17.02, KII (Keplerstrasse 17, Lower Ground Floor) 09:15-10:15 INVITED SPEAKER: Christer Platzack (Lund): Phi-Features in C 10:15-11:00 Robert Kluender (UC, San Diego): Universal Properties of Wh-Scope Marking and Wh-Agreement: The Interaction of Spec-Head Agreement with Verb Movement, Predication, and Referentiality 11:00-13:00 Coffee break 11:30-12:15 Peter Svenonius (UC, Santa Cruz): The Structure of the Norwegian Noun Phrase 12:15-13:00 Peter Ackema (Utrecht): Verbal Passives and Perfects: from synthetic to periphrastic 13:00-13:45 Ian Roberts (U.Wales, Bangor): Object Movement and Verb Movement in Early Modern English ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Alternate papers: 1. Jarich Hoekstra (Ljouwert): Preposition Stranding and Resumptivity in West Germanic 2. Josef Bayer (Duesseldorf): On the Origin of Sentential Arguments in German and Bengali 3. Giuliana Giusti (Venezia): Case as a Functional Head 4. Helen de Hoop & Wim Kosmeijer (Groningen): Case and Scrambling: D-Structure vs. S-Structure ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ If you have not already reserved a hotel room, we strongly advise you to do this as soon as possible. You should get in touch with Stuttgart Tourist Office, Postfach 10 50 44, D-7000 Stuttgart 10, Germany. phone (+49 711) 22 28 0, fax (+49 711) 22 28 270. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ In spite of the signs at the airport, the metro station there has not yet opened, and you will therefore have to take the Airport bus to the central station (Hauptbahnhof). It leaves every 20 minutes and the fare is DM 6.00. >From the central station it is only a short walk to the K II, the building where the conference will take place, and where the Linguistics Department is located: Walk down Friedrichstrasse, across Kronenstrasse, and turn left down Geschwister-Scholl-Strasse. This runs into Keplerstrasse, where you will find yourself in front of two tower blocks. K II is the one on the right, with the entrance from the "square" between the two tower blocks. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ If you should arrive in Stuttgart already on Thursday, Nov. 21, or earlier, you may find it convenient to register for the workshop between 17:00 and 19:00, at the Department of Linguistics, office 5.32 (fifth floor), Keplerstrasse 17. The building is known as K II, and it is only 5 minutes walk from the central station (as described above). The registration fee is DM 10.00. Afterwards you are welcome to have dinner with us at the Fontana di Trevi, Kriegsbergstrasse 55, which is right behind the K II. Registration is also possible Friday, between 11:00 and 17:30, at the registration desk in front of the conference hall, 17.01, Lower Ground Floor, Keplerstrasse 17, in the same building as the Department of Linguistics. There will be a reception on Friday evening, at 19:30, in the Senatssaal in the University Administration Building (Rektoramt), which is next to the conference venue. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Seventh Workshop on Comparative Germanic Syntax Institut fuer Linguistik, Universitaet Stuttgart, Postfach 10 60 37, D-7000 Stuttgart 10, Germany. (e-mail: vikner@rus.uni-stuttgart.dbp.de) __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-624. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-625. Tue 08 Oct 1991. Lines: 193 Subject: 2.625 ASL Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 7 Oct 1991 16:57 EST From: Fan mail from some flounder? Subject: Re: 2.617 ASL Subject: Re: 2.617 ASL 2) Date: Mon, 07 Oct 91 17:22:03 -0400 From: Ellen Prince 3) Date: Mon, 07 Oct 91 20:14 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: 2.617 ASL 4) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 1991 10:59 EST From: Karen Christie Subject: Re: 2.617 ASL 5) Date: Tue, 08 Oct 91 11:27:55 EST From: Ronnie Wilbur Subject: More on ASL 6) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 1991 11:12 EST From: Karen Christie Subject: Re: 2.617 ASL -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 7 Oct 1991 16:57 EST From: Fan mail from some flounder? Subject: Re: 2.617 ASL The issue of the literary tradition in ASL is particularly timely. This coming weekend at RIT there will be a national conference on ASL literature. This includes poetry, storytelling, original drama (not just translation from other languages), and literary and folklore traditions, which are indeed elaborated and passed down. It will be substantially documented on video. There have been several attempts at an orthography for ASL, none of which are, to my mind, satisfactory as of yet. However, there are many languages (Sanskrit comes to mind) that had a long literary tradition before they were ever written down. The point about what the language requirement is *for* is, of course, well taken. Susan Fischer __________________________________________________________________________ Subject: Re: 2.617 ASL 2) Date: Mon, 07 Oct 91 17:22:03 -0400 From: Ellen Prince re language requirements, i think two different situations are possibly being confused: the undergraduate language requirement in many colleges and the language reading requirement in many phd programs. the constraint that henry thompson recalls from berkeley, that there be scholarly work in that lg in one's field, is a constraint we have at penn on the phd reading requirement (two foreign languages). i would be very surprised if any modern institution had such a requirement for the undergraduate curriculum. and my understanding of the original question was whether asl could count as a foreign language for an undergraduate foreign language requirement. __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Mon, 07 Oct 91 20:14 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: 2.617 ASL If you looks at ttraditions re requirements for degrees in US and non-US universities you will find many changes. The 'two foreign language'language requirements had more than one rationale -- it first came in when Latin was no longer the 'language of scholarship' and it was thought that graduate degrees shhould be awarded to those who either could read non-native language scholarly literature, or, for some, could show by knowledge of at least two other languages that they were cultured well educated scholars. After WWII there was much movement to delete the requirement and in a survey taken by either the Association of Graduate Schools (of the AAU) or the Council of Graduate Schools (which includes over 400 schools offering the PhD and/or the MA) it was found that a majority of graduate programs no longer had such a requirement or that the requirement could be fulfilled by substituting a 'methodology' course such as statistics, since, it was argued, the language requirement was as some of the readers have suggested due to the need to use another language as a research tool. Given that in most sciences -- physical, life, and social -- the bulk of the literature is now in English the 'tool' argument does not hold. But, if it does -- (and languages certainly can be a research tool) than a literature in the language is not the key to fulfilling the criterion. Linguistis, anthropologists, sociologists, historians, demographers, etc etc can and often must use other languages in field work. Certainly ASL canand serve as such a research tool. Certainly ASL can and does serve this important function for many (linguists doing research on ASL, neuropsycholo- gists workling with brain damaged hearing and deaf patients, sociologists, anthropologists (you should see Barbara Le Masters phD thesis re men's and women's sign languages in Ireland, for example, which she could never have written without knowing the sign lgs.). But the second argument re approving ASL as a lg to fulfill the PhD (or an undergraduate) language requirement is the importance of studying a language for its own sake -- to broaden one's intellectual abilities, understanding of this great human ability etc. And ASL does indeed fulfill this need Based on both these reasons, UCLA a number of years ago (with the lead taken by the Graduate Dean and Senate Graduate Council) approved ASL as fulfilling any language requirement in any department that had one. __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 1991 10:59 EST From: Karen Christie Subject: Re: 2.617 ASL It might interest people to know that the first national ASL Literature Conference begins this week, Oct. 10-13. The conference provides performances and presentations of ASL Literary genres such as storytelling, poetry, and an excerpt from a play. As for some of the presentations, there will be two presentations discussing metaphors, one which will focus on ASL poetic duets, another on signlore (numbers and manual alphabet stories), and another which disucsses how ASL literary performances resembles those of other orginally oral (unwritten) cultures. Additonally, there will be a number of presentations related to how to teach ASL literature and make it an integral part of Teaching ASL and Deaf studies programs. The argument that ASL does not have a literature sparks the memories of the argument that ASL could not be a 'true language' because it was not spoken. Perhaps, it is about time that the term "literature" be re-defined in a broader, more unoppresive manner. __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Tue, 08 Oct 91 11:27:55 EST From: Ronnie Wilbur Subject: More on ASL Paul Chapin has noted the potential utility of the Sign Language Studies issue of the case for academic acceptance of ASL. I provided a copy to the head of our foreign languages department, who ended up stipulating that ASL was a language but that it could nonetheless not fill the language requirement for a variety of reasons, such as "entry to culture", "entry to literature", "not governed by traditional foreign language teaching methods", etc. (Fortunately, the Dean, who is a political scientist, found otherwise and approved the student's petition.) The debate is precisely the result of what Allan Wechsler has identified - failure to understand the purpose of the language requirement. In the absence of clear reasons, we linguists have taken the high road and stated the "benefit from knowing another language for a multitude of possible purposes", thereby potentially permitting any human language, whether spoken or signed, PROVIDED that it is either taught at Purude or that we can obtain suitable evaluators for students needing proficiency exams. And yes, there is a substantial literary tradition in ASL, including plays, poems, folktales, origin myths (origins of signing, not origins of people), muc h of which is now available on videotape. There is a conference on ASL literat ure being held in Rochester in a few weeks. And don't look now, folks, but there is an entire repertoire of "hearing people" jokes... __________________________________________________________________________ 6) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 1991 11:12 EST From: Karen Christie Subject: Re: 2.617 ASL I also feel compelled to add to the discussion about ASL Literature the existance of and ASL Literature Series Workbook and Videotape by Ben Bahan and Sam Supalla (available through DawnSign Press) which teaches students to analyze the ASL Stories told on the videotape. Ben and Sam are 'bards,' I guess, who have only recently produced this analysis which focuses on meaning of the terminology of a "line" in ASL and a "stanza" in ASL. In addition, there are discussions related to theme and motif....language and cultural aspects...a number of different levels of analysis. --Karen __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-625. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-626. Tue 08 Oct 1991. Lines: 114 Subject: 2.626 Queries Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 08 Oct 91 11:11:22 HOE From: ENRIQUE@EMDCCI11.BITNET Subject: Computational Linguistics 2) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 91 15:06 MET From: TIMVB@alf.let.uva.nl Subject: anymore 3) Date: 8 Oct 91 15:35:00 EST From: "STEVE SEEGMILLER" Subject: Queries 4) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 1991 19:37 IST From: Ron Kuzar Subject: overt/covert messages -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 08 Oct 91 11:11:22 HOE From: ENRIQUE@EMDCCI11.BITNET Subject: Computational Linguistics Hi, there: I have been awarded a scholarship in order to follow postgraduate studies in the US for two years and I need some information on Masters of Computational Linguistics, how long they are, which requisites they ask (GRE General Test or Subject Test or both) as well as which department the Master is housed within. Any information from universities such as Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA, Brandeis, MIT, will be appreciated. Thank you very much in advance. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 91 15:06 MET From: TIMVB@alf.let.uva.nl Subject: anymore In reply to Geoffrey Russom's question, I can answer that "anymore" is indeed found without negation in some (American?) English dialects, e.g. in southern California (as Alan Harris observes). Actually, it was through William Ladusaw's dissertation (1980) that I became aware of this issue. I am doing a typological investigation into the domain of already/still/ anymore/yet/only, etc., and as far as I know the above phenomenon is found in some other languages as well, e.g. in Albanian and (maybe) in. The main difference is that bare "anymore" means 'nowadays', whereas Albanian "me" (with Umlaut) and Irish "a thuilleadh" mean 'still'. One further question on my behalf is: does anyone know of other languages in which similar phenomena occur? Or: does anyone know of linguists working in this particular field of research ? (i.e. apart from those in Holland, Belgium and Germany) Tim van Baar Department of linguistics University of Amsterdam __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: 8 Oct 91 15:35:00 EST From: "STEVE SEEGMILLER" Subject: Queries 1. I have come across comments several times, including recently on LINGUIST (maybe from Dan Slobin, I'm not sure), to the effect that the Soviet government intentionally produced alphabets for the Turkic languages of the USSR that were slightly different, presumably in order to discourage cooperation among groups or some such thing. In my own reading on this topic, including those in Soviet sources, I have never come across any documentary evidence to support this view. In fact, it is my conclusion that in several cases, the Soviet linguists responsible for introducing Cyrillic alphabets for Turkic languages (circa 1939) simply adapted palohabetRZs habets that were previously in use by Western or Eastern European Turkologists, importing all of their flaws. I would be most interested in learning of the source of the view that some unstated, anti-nationalist motive was at work. 2. On a related topic, is anyone outside the Soviet Union working on the lesser-known Turkic languages, e.g. Karachay-Balkar? Thanks for any information that anyone can supply. Steve Seegmiller __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 1991 19:37 IST From: Ron Kuzar Subject: overt/covert messages I would appreciate any references about gaps between overt and covert message of texts. Both theoretical and specific analyses are welcome. Thanks Ron Kuzar __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-626. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-627. Tue 08 Oct 1991. Lines: 242 Subject: 2.627 Themselves Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 07 Oct 91 17:01:08 -0400 From: Ellen Prince Subject: Re: 2.613 Queries 2) Date: Mon, 07 Oct 91 16:49:54 CDT From: GA3662@SIUCVMB.BITNET Subject: Themself 3) Date: Mon, 7 Oct 91 17:19:58 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Re: 2.613 Queries 4) Date: Mon, 07 Oct 91 23:21:19 EDT From: MAILBOOK Subject: Re: 2.613 Queries 5) Date: Tue, 08 Oct 91 13:50:58 BST From: David Denison Subject: Re: 2.613 Queries 6) Date: Tue, 08 Oct 91 12:54:55 +0000 From: "And Rosta" Subject: RE: Third person indefinite reflexive -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 07 Oct 91 17:01:08 -0400 From: Ellen Prince Subject: Re: 2.613 Queries >Date: Sat, 05 Oct 91 21:02:07 EDT >From: Michael Newman >Subject: query > >Howard Lasnik in his 1976 article, Remarks on Corefernce, in Linguistic >Analysis used a few examples along the lines of"*Everyone/*No one sat down >after he walked in." His point is the impossibility of coreference under these >circumstances. His theoretical point aside, what I find interesting is his ex- >clusive mention of HE as the possible coreferent pronominal--following the old >fashioned norm. He ignores what would be the most typical coreferent pronoun >for EVERY under all syntactic configurations: ie. THEY. Gareth Evans in his >response to Lasnik does basically the same thing with one of his examples, sta r >ring "Every congressman came to the party and he had a marvelous time" and >giving and undeserved marginal status to "?Every congressman came to the party >and they had a marvelous time." >This phenomenon of ignoring useage in favor of school-grammar norms seems wide - >spread in theoretical studies of pronouns, at least if my memory does not >deceive me. My query is:1. does anyone remember other such cases? 2. Does any- >one's thery get into trouble because they have ignored this? 3. Has anyone >pointed out the inconstency before? 4. If not why in the ruthless world of >theoretical linguistics haven't they? >Michael Newman >Hunter College it's not that anyone's theory gets into trouble, it's that you've got a different phenomenon with 'they'. the point, as i recall, of lasnik's discussion was where bound anaphora could occur--basically, within the clause. with 'they', you've got discourse anaphora, which can occur anywheres, constrained only by our (very impressive) powers of inference. to quote an example of bonnie webber's: every man who owns a donkey beats it. and someday they'll rise up and fight back. note that 'it' is stellarly impossible in the second sentence, in contrast to the first (= bound anaphora). but, since we can infer that there are a bunch of donkey-owners and hence a bunch of donkeys, we can interpret the 'they' as this bunch (= discourse anaphora). >Date: Sun, 6 Oct 1991 16:33 EST >From: Fan mail from some flounder? >Subject: Third person indefinite reflexive > > >We've all heard (and Anne Bodine has documented) sentences like (1): > > (1) If anyone calls, tell >>them<< I can't come to the phone > >or even (2): > > (2) Someone dropped by, but >>they<< didn't say what they wanted. > >The following sentence appeared in today's New York Times (Section I, p. 27), >and although I think I've heard things like it, I've never seen its like >in print: > > (3) (quoting the Georgia Attorney General) "I'm not going to hire >someone who holds >>themself<< out to the public by their own admission as >being engaged in homosexual marriage," Mr. Bowers said. > >I found this fascinating, since as (1) and (2) show, colloquial English >does use a plural for indefinite third person pronouns (as well as the >well-known "everyone...their" constructions that English teachers try to >bash out of us. However, (3) seems to be the most felicitous way to express >the intended idea in this case, since the "correct" >>himself<< is inappropria te >given the genders of the participants, and even >>themselves<< is a little >funny since the pronoun is semantically singular, and unlike the case of >"their", there seems to be a singular counterpart. Has anyone else >encountered constructions like (3)? >Susan Fischer you're not going to believe this, but i clearly remember the first time i saw it in writing--and i bet you saw it there too. it was in catcher in the rye, and i was in the 7th grade. the sentence was about holden caulfield's roommate and was something like: 'he's one of those guys who's always patting themself on the back.' it blew me away because it looked so wrong but sounded so right. and that was both before and irrelevant to the whole sex/gender thing. (don't remember when it was written, but i read it in 1956.) >__________________________________________________________________________ >Date: Mon, 7 Oct 91 9:41 GMT >From: Julie Coleman >Subject: political correctness > >I'm informed that the term "individual" is 'politically incorrect'. Can >anyone tell me why this should be? at my esteemed institution (the univ of pennsylvania), some administrator allegedly told a student that the term 'rights of the individual' constitutes a 'red flag' and presumably shouldn't be used. (or at least that's what i read about my esteemed institution in the reader's digest.) hopefully, the term 'individual' is still kosher...but who knows. ________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Mon, 07 Oct 91 16:49:54 CDT From: GA3662@SIUCVMB.BITNET Subject: Themself Further to the question raised by Susan (..flounder) Fischer, (Hi, Susan..), I am a native speaker of the dialect in question. I am perfectly happy to say things like: Everyone should give themself a little free time if they need it. Incidentally, has anyone else noticed that, although in general English has merged the sg./pl. contrast in II person pronouns, it is morphologically alive and well in the reflexive paradigm: yourself (sg.) yourselves (pl.) even in the most standard, prescriptively correct dialects. Geoff Nathan __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Mon, 7 Oct 91 17:19:58 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Re: 2.613 Queries Susan Fischer notes an occurrence of *themself* in naturally occurring speech reported by the New York Times and asks if anyone has encountered anything similar. This may not be a persuasive example since it's almost certainly intended as facetious but I can remember from time to time seeing in The Talk of the Town in The New Yorker sentences like *Last Friday we found ourself at the South Street Seaport for the Fourth Annual Citywide Pancake Flipping Championsips* (example invented but based on real ones). Re Julie Coleman's query about the political incorrectness of *individual*, I wonder if perhaps it isn't that individuals themselves are politically incorrect -- it's the collectivity that counts. Just a thought. Michael Kac __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Mon, 07 Oct 91 23:21:19 EDT From: MAILBOOK Subject: Re: 2.613 Queries Susan Fischer asks about having seen 'themself' in print. I saw it in linguist- l just a few weeks ago, but I can't remember in what place exactly. __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Tue, 08 Oct 91 13:50:58 BST From: David Denison Subject: Re: 2.613 Queries In response to Susan Fischer's question, I have not just encountered forms like *themself* for indefinite singular reflexive, I use them. If she wants a written example, I happen to know (because I commented on it delightedly in Year's Work in English Studies 65: p.54) that Dick Hudson used the phrase "preferably the speaker themself" in his Word Grammar (1984: 34). David D. __________________________________________________________________________ 6) Date: Tue, 08 Oct 91 12:54:55 +0000 From: "And Rosta" Subject: RE: Third person indefinite reflexive Susan Fischer asks: > Has anyone else encountered constructions like (3)? > (3) (quoting the Georgia Attorney General) "I'm not going to hire > someone who holds >>themself<< out to the public by their own > admission as being engaged in homosexual marriage," Mr. Bowers > said. I know at least 3 people to use the word. (1) Jim Scobbie - cf one of his recent postings to LINGUIST: >Date: Wed, 18 Sep 91 16:59:52 PDT >From: scobbie@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Jim Scobbie) >This mailing list seems to be the ideal forum for the question... what >does a theoretical phonologist who doesn't teach or speak languages >call themself? (2) Dick Hudson, somewhere in his _English Word Grammar_, 1990. (Only sighting in print.) (3) me. For such a sensible word it seems rather underused... ----------- And Rosta __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-627. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-628. Wed 09 Oct 1991. Lines: 191 Subject: 2.628 Polite Pronouns and Plurals Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 7 Oct 91 16:54:20 -0400 From: gb661@csc.albany.edu (BROADWELL GEORGE AARON) Subject: y'all and politeness 2) Date: Mon, 7 Oct 91 22:20 BST From: David E Newton Subject: RE: 2.615 Polite/Plural Pronouns 3) Date: Mon, 07 Oct 91 21:41:11 EDT From: Henry Kucera Subject: Re: 2.615 Polite/Plural Pronouns 4) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 91 11:07:29 EST From: bert peeters Subject: 2.616 Plurals 5) Date: Tue, 08 Oct 91 11:34:50 -0500 From: Stephen P Spackman Subject: Datum/Data -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 7 Oct 91 16:54:20 -0400 From: gb661@csc.albany.edu (BROADWELL GEORGE AARON) Subject: y'all and politeness A previous poster asked if 'youse' might be used for politeness as well as plurality. I can't say for `youse', but I can affirm that `y'all' is never used with singulars, polite or otherwise. Occasionally `y'all' means something like `you and others (supplied from context)' so it is possible to say to a single person "How much do y'all pay for your apartment?" with the implication that the person addressed has a roommate. Another example: "When are y'all going to get married?" which includes both the addressee and their fiance(e). I suppose that it must be exchanges like this that give some non-Southerners the impression that Southern English uses `y'all' in the singular. On a vaguely related topic -- As a native speaker of a double modal dialect, I agree with Jim Harris that "Might could I get you a chair?" is totally impossible. The example from Gurganis's novel sounds very odd to me -- I would have guessed it was written by a non-Southerner trying (unsuccessfully) to imitate the dialect. Did the book say that Gurganis is *from* the Carolinas or only that he *lives* there? ****************************************************************************** Aaron Broadwell, Dept. of Linguistics, University at Albany -- SUNY, Albany, NY 12222 gb661@leah.albany.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Chi Wen Tzu always thought three times before taking action. Twice would have been quite enough." -- Confucious ****************************************************************************** __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Mon, 7 Oct 91 22:20 BST From: David E Newton Subject: RE: 2.615 Polite/Plural Pronouns "Youse" certainly exists in the Scouse speech of Liverpool, though I am not sure whether it has a strict sing/pl distinction, or even if it has a polite/informal distinction. (Apart from the obvious, in that if one was trying to be formal, "youse" would probably not be used, as it is not part of Standard English. I use it myself occasionally, though this may just be affectation, as I use it without regard to number or formality. I would be interested if anyone has any data on its use in the Liverpool area. David E Newton den1@uk.ac.york.vaxa __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Mon, 07 Oct 91 21:41:11 EDT From: Henry Kucera Subject: Re: 2.615 Polite/Plural Pronouns G. Russom's observation that we have you/yous in Providence is correct but its usage is very limited (South Providence, mostly). It is, it would seem, a feature closely connected with ethnic usage--still interesting, of course. __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 91 11:07:29 EST From: bert peeters Subject: 2.616 Plurals > Date: Wed, 2 Oct 91 08:20:46 GMT > From: me@suzuka.u-strasbg.fr (Michel Eytan LILoL) > > I would like to add a small grain of salt to the debate, but in a very exotic > language -- viz. French. Some time ago I taught a course in Automata Theory. > The formal definition implies a set of final states, that I called "un > ensemble d'e'tats *finals*'. This seemed to confuse quite a bit the students, > used to form the plural of adjectives in -al as -aux. My only argument was > that of 'euphonia', but I am no more so sure of this sort of reason. To me (but let's not forget that I am NOT a native speaker) *finaux* simply does not sound right, for exactly the reason suggested by Michel Eytan: it seems to strike me as being non euphonic. Bu the way, according to the Petit Robert, *final* can be pluralized as either *finals* or *finaux*. I vote for the former. > Date: Tue, 1 Oct 91 17:58:42 -0500 > From: "Michael Kac" > > I have gotten corrections publicly and privately regarding *propoganda*; > my thanks to the correctors. I wonder whether they also told Michael that the word is spelled as *propaganda*, with 1 O and 3 A's. (Sorry, it was too tempting...) > Ellen Prince mentions *data*. This is actually an interesting case -- > my own usage (which tends to be rather puristic, my linguistic political > correctness notwithstanding) is actually inconsistent. I'll say things like > 'The data are on page 3' but also 'There's a lot of data to support that > claim'. The latter example does not suggest that *data* is singular. Cf. There's a lot of people in the movie theatre. There's a lot of flowers in this field. etc. I think the issue of *there's* as a short form for both *there is* and *there are* has been discussed on LINGUIST before - but I haven't kept the relevant data (I deleted IT/THEM...). At first sight, therefore, there is nothing inconsistent about Michael Kac's way of expressing himself. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr Bert Peeters Tel: +61 02 202344 Department of Modern Languages 002 202344 University of Tasmania at Hobart Fax: 002 207813 GPO Box 252C Bert.Peeters@modlang.utas.edu.au Hobart TAS 7001 Australia __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Tue, 08 Oct 91 11:34:50 -0500 From: Stephen P Spackman Subject: Datum/Data As a computer scientist, I have two distinct words, "data": one is the plural of "datum", and the other the name of the stuff of which data are constituted. The point is semantically interesting, because when is a datum indivisible? The existence of the word "datum" is widely known, but it's not so clear that there is any (technical) occasion to use it. For instance, though in a social context one might say that that Jane is swimming is a datum, the data structure "(swims jane)" is a compound object of at least four parts - and even then "'swims" is "(intern "swims")", and "swims" is "(implode ?s ?w ?i ?m ?s)" and "?s" is .... In strongly typed languages (though not in Lisp, C, or any of the other well-known languages) there can be a clear answer: wherever a type is OPAQUE (that is, nominally atomic in some context) it makes unequivocal sense to talk about a datum pertaining to it. Presumably, "datums" would be the plural of "datum", an opaque item of "data", thus distinguishing the two uses - though I haven't heard it used often enough (perhaps twice or thrice, always, as far as I can recall, from students) to be sure. stephen p spackman __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-628. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-629. Wed 09 Oct 1991. Lines: 224 Subject: 2.629 Responses Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 2 Oct 1991 08:57 EST From: Larry Davis <00LMDAVIS@BSUVAX1.bitnet> Subject: The Irish Connection 2) Date: Wed, 2 Oct 91 17:25:48 CDT From: Eric Schiller Subject: Re: 2.606 African Font Encoding 3) Date: Fri, 04 Oct 91 17:01:46 EST From: Leslie Barratt Subject: IPA fints 4) Date: Mon, 07 Oct 91 16:34:53 -0400 From: Ellen Prince Subject: Re: 2.611 Responses 5) Date: Mon, 7 Oct 91 16:42:43 -0400 From: gb661@csc.albany.edu (BROADWELL GEORGE AARON) Subject: example numbering in WordPerfect 6) Date: Mon, 07 Oct 91 17:06:52 -0400 From: Ellen Prince Subject: Re: 2.614 Queries 7) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 91 10:11:27 EST From: bert peeters Subject: What Chomsky does and what he says he does... -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 2 Oct 1991 08:57 EST From: Larry Davis <00LMDAVIS@BSUVAX1.bitnet> Subject: The Irish Connection For what it's worth, Irish also came to North American as overseers on the large rice plantations along the eastern seabord. Larry Davis __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Wed, 2 Oct 91 17:25:48 CDT From: Eric Schiller Subject: Re: 2.606 African Font Encoding Returning to some previous debate about UNICODE, I would like to respond to J. Knappen re African font coding. We prefer to use floating diacritics here (Univ. of Chicago linguists) because one can support a broad range of phonetic characters within the confines of the 256 characters supported by most available software. It would be really nice if we could get together on some standard codings! Eric Schiller University of Chicago schiller@sapir.uchicago.edu __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Fri, 04 Oct 91 17:01:46 EST From: Leslie Barratt Subject: IPA fints Many thanks to everyone who wrote in with advice about IPA fonts. I was amazed at how fast I could get information from such a wide number of sources with e-mail. This list should be required reading for all graduate students in linguistics! __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Mon, 07 Oct 91 16:34:53 -0400 From: Ellen Prince Subject: Re: 2.611 Responses >Date: Wed, 02 Oct 91 07:20:45 EDT >From: Peter Cole >Subject: Microsoft Word > >There are two features that would be very useful: 1) autorenumbering of examp l >es as in Renumber; 2) an automatic backup save as in Mac Word Perfect. The la t >ter feature creates a backup which is deleted when you close down normally. >But if the system goes dead etc., the backup is there when you reboot. I don' t >like normal autosave because I may have messed something up and be on the verg e >of abandoning the change when the save takes place, but the WP backup save doe s >not do that. It is only there when things go wrong. ah, but word has just what you're looking for already--click 'commands' in the edit menu. you'll get a list of a zillion possible commands in alphabetical order. scroll down to MAKE BACKUP FILE and click the 'add' button. the next time you open word, you'll have MAKE BACKUP FILE on your FILE menu (that's the default--you could have put it on any menu). if you want a file backed up automatically, click it. a check will appear. from then on, for that file, every time you save, it will keep the pre-saved version with the title 'backup of '. the only thing you have to remember is to click it once for EACH file you want backed up. frankly, i think it's better than what you describe for wp--the backup doesn't delete itself when you close down--i like that since sometimes **i** mess up, not the mac, and i want the previous version. (of course, it does delete/write over the previous backup.) there are also things like SHADOW, a piece of software that runs in the background and makes backups at whatever time interval you specify. you tell it where you want the backups to go. of course, you have to invoke it each time you open a file, which is annoying, but it works pretty well. (however, i stopped using it since i discovered the MAKE BACKUP FILE command in word, and i've made it a habit to save after every paragraph or so. mustn't lose those words of wisdom...) what i'd really like is what i have on the mainframe i'm on, a checkpoint feature that makes a backup at whatever CHARACTER interval you specify, and it does it for EACH emacs file, without you ever having to do anything except put the appropriate line in your .cshrc file. if anyone knows how to do that with word, i'd like to hear about it. __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Mon, 7 Oct 91 16:42:43 -0400 From: gb661@csc.albany.edu (BROADWELL GEORGE AARON) Subject: example numbering in WordPerfect Some people who use WordPerfect may not be aware that there is an easy way to do automatic example numbering within the program. What you use is the Outline function (Shift-F5) and select Paragraph numbering. I have written a simple macro that indents, inserts the paragraph number, and changes to single spacing, and that makes example especially easy. You can refer to examples through the Cross-Reference function (under Mark Text, Alt-F5), and these references change as examples are added and deleted. ****************************************************************************** Aaron Broadwell, Dept. of Linguistics, University at Albany -- SUNY, Albany, NY 12222 gb661@leah.albany.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Chi Wen Tzu always thought three times before taking action. Twice would have been quite enough." -- Confucious ****************************************************************************** __________________________________________________________________________ 6) Date: Mon, 07 Oct 91 17:06:52 -0400 From: Ellen Prince Subject: Re: 2.614 Queries >Date: Wed, 2 Oct 91 15:49:19 -0400 >From: gb661@csc.albany.edu (BROADWELL GEORGE AARON) >Subject: trema? > > >A recent post on coding schemes for African languages referred to a diacritic >called a `trema'. Can anyone tell me what this is? >****************************************************************************** >Aaron Broadwell, Dept. of Linguistics, University at Albany -- SUNY, >Albany, NY 12222 gb661@leah.albany.edu >------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >"Chi Wen Tzu always thought three times before taking action. Twice >would have been quite enough." -- Confucious >****************************************************************************** 'trema' is french for 'diaeresis', the two dots over a second vowel to indicate that the two vowels do not constitute a diphthong, as in the french spelling of naive or in older spellings of cooperate/cooccur, etc. (it looks like an umlaut but has a different function.) __________________________________________________________________________ 7) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 91 10:11:27 EST From: bert peeters Subject: What Chomsky does and what he says he does... > Date: Wed, 2 Oct 91 00:43:27 -0400 > From: lojbab@grebyn.com (Logical Language Group) > Note that the occasionally emotive > arguments in this latter discussion shows that even linguists may to > some extent assume what they claim they don't. This made me think of what I read quite a while ago in Esa Itkonen's *Causality *Causality in linguistic theory* (Croom Helm, 1983), p. 13, n. 4: "I am interested in what Chomsky does, not in what he says he does" In my review (*Studies in language* 10, 1986, pp. 208-213), I pointed to similar "succulent observations" on pp. 140-141 and 262, where it is made clear that (I quote from my own review, p. 212) "ce clivage entre le faire et le dire n'est pas caracte'ristique de Chomsky seul". Cf. also Raimo Anttila, "Causality in linguistic theory and in historical linguistics" (Review article of Itkonen 1983), *Diachronica* 5, 1988, pp. 159-180, p. 169: "One of his [= Itkonen's] tenets is to study what linguists actually do, not what they say they do (140-141, 262; favorably commented on by Peeters [1986:212])." --------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr Bert Peeters Tel: +61 02 202344 Department of Modern Languages 002 202344 University of Tasmania at Hobart Fax: 002 207813 GPO Box 252C Bert.Peeters@modlang.utas.edu.au Hobart TAS 7001 Australia __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-629. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-630. Wed 09 Oct 1991. Lines: 135 Subject: 2.630 Machine Readable Dictionaries and Spanish MT Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: 30 Sep 91 21:53 GMT From: D1634@applelink.apple.com (Circle Noetic Svc, A Nizhnikov,PAS) Subject: Re: 2.587 Machine Readable Dictionaries 2) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 91 13:23 MET From: RICHARD@celex.kun.nl Subject: RE: 2.613 Queries 3) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 1991 09:19 +0200 From: Derk Ederveen Subject: Re: 2.613 - Machine translation involving spanish -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: 30 Sep 91 21:53 GMT From: D1634@applelink.apple.com (Circle Noetic Svc, A Nizhnikov,PAS) Subject: Re: 2.587 Machine Readable Dictionaries To Pam Munroe on machine readable dictionaries... I don't know much about what's around in academia. There are lots of dictionaries in the corporate world without pronunciations. Generally these cost from $5000 - $10,000. You can also find packaged programs with pronunciations for sale, but the ASCII files are harder to find and much more expensive. We sell ASCII files in that price range, but no pronunciations. We can't afford to make them unless we sell them for a lot, unfortunately. However there is one list I know of for English with pronunciations called MobyPronounced by someone called Grady Ward - it's perhaps very well known amoung academic linguists. I don't know. It has about 167,000 words. He also sells hyphenated lists, frequency lists, specialized lists and others. The sizes vary from around 100,000 words to 500,000, I think. And they are very inexpensive - close to the cost of duplicating and mailing the disks. The address: Grady Ward 380 N. Bayview Ave. Sunnyvale, CA 94086 I'm also very interested in what is available. Margaret Nizhnikov __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 91 13:23 MET From: RICHARD@celex.kun.nl Subject: RE: 2.613 Queries >Date: Fri, 4 Oct 91 01:10:45 -0400 >From: "l. valentine" >Subject: Machine Translation Involving Spanish > >Is anyone aware of any machine translation projects >either ongoing or completed involving Spanish? >Can anyone point me to some current literature >on the subject of machine translation in general, >or more specifically, projects involving >French or Spanish? > >Thanks. > One project I know of is the Rosetta Translation System, a machine translation system sponsored by Philips and located at the company's Physics Laboratory in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. It has gone beyond the initial development stages now, so it is an actually working system with user interfaces and the lot, though it is not yet commercially or otherwise available, as far as I know. The program translates between Dutch, English and Spanish (Spanish only as a target language starting out from Dutch; I think they're still working on an English-Spanish interface). The grammar is predominantly Montague, with aspects of Transformational Grammar incorporated. The set-up functions best at the moment as a semi-automatic program, with the user choosing the most suitable meaning of a homographic word from a set offered on pull-down menus to reduce ambiguity. As this is all I know about the system (and only second-hand), you can contact the Rosetta research team at: Philips Research Laboratories P.O. Box 80 000 5600 JA Eindhoven The Netherlands Richard Piepenbrock richard@hnympi52 (bitnet) richard@celex.kun.nl (internet) __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 1991 09:19 +0200 From: Derk Ederveen Subject: Re: 2.613 - Machine translation involving spanish > Date: Fri, 4 Oct 91 01:10:45 -0400 > From: "l. valentine" > Subject: Machine Translation Involving Spanish > > Is anyone aware of any machine translation projects > either ongoing or completed involving Spanish? > Can anyone point me to some current literature > on the subject of machine translation in general, > or more specifically, projects involving > French or Spanish? I came across one article: David B. Roe, Fernando Pereira, Richard W. Sproat, Michael D. Riley, Pedro J. Moreno, Alejandro Macarr\'on: "Toward a spoken language translator for restricted-domain context-free languages", Proceedings Eurospeech'91, sept 24-26, Genova, Italy, vol.3, pp. 1063-1066 This is a project aiming at realtime spoken language translation between spanish and american english for a limited domain, conducted by AT&T Bell Labs, USA and Telef\'onica Investigaci\'on y Desarrollo, Spain. Derk Ederveen +31-70-3323202 PTT Research/Nijmegen Univ. __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-630. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-631. Wed 09 Oct 1991. Lines: 170 Subject: 2.631 Double Modals; Specific/Referential Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 07 Oct 91 16:48:19 -0400 Subject: Double Modals From: billr@arch.ling.upenn.edu 2) Date: Mon, 07 Oct 91 17:06:34 CDT From: Barbara Johnstone Subject: Re: 2.613 Queries 3) Date: 08 Oct 91 08:31:14 EDT From: Ron Hofmann <71721.2655@compuserve.com> Subject: specific-contcrete-refential 4) Date: 1 Oct 91 14:12 From: Subject: specific/referential -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 07 Oct 91 16:48:19 -0400 Subject: Double Modals From: billr@arch.ling.upenn.edu With regard to David Denison's example of interrogative "might could", and speaking as a native southerner, I simply cannot conceive of this as a possible occurrence in Southern States English (or BVE, for that matter). I recall being struck by other unrealistic-sounding constructions in Gurganus' novel at the time I read it, although I cannot now remember exactly what they were. This is not to say that declarative double modals are impossible, however; but the only cases I can think of off-hand would necessitate some combination of modal+subject+"oughta" -- for example, "Should we oughta eat dinner first?" How do other southerners feel about this? Bill Reynolds __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Mon, 07 Oct 91 17:06:34 CDT From: Barbara Johnstone Subject: Re: 2.613 Queries References to double modals in Southern American speech can be found in James B. McMillan and Michael B. Montgomery, Annotated Bibliography of Southern American English, U of Alabama P 1989. Also, Guy Bailey (Dept. of English, Oklahoma State U) and his colleagues have done some more recent work on double modals in Texas and Oklahoma. The McMillan and Montgomery bibliography might be useful in connection with some of the other regional syntactic features that have been discussed here recently, such positive anymore. __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: 08 Oct 91 08:31:14 EDT From: Ron Hofmann <71721.2655@compuserve.com> Subject: specific-contcrete-refential TO: >INTERNET: Linguist@TAMvm1.bitnet To add to Haspelmath's 2.611 summary of specific-concrete-referential, we can give an other, complementary interpretation of SPECIFIC. SPECIFIC: [presupposing existence in the 'real' world] (but please don't ask me what the real world is) "She wants to marry an Ainu speaker -- but I haven't met him yet." NON-SPECIFIC: [presupposing existence in some non-real world, here the world of her wants (desires, dreams, &c)] " --SAME--, but she hasn't met (him/the right one) yet." Either account applies also to pronouns (examples above) or to definite nominals; "(Smith's murderer/The guy who murdered Smith) must be insane" is ambiguous on this point. This is for NP's. For N's, Aj's, Vb's, SPECIFIC contrasts with GENERAL (or possibly VAGUE) & alternates with HYPONYM. I dislike Martin's main example for GENERIC, "Humboldtian views" (vs "Humboldt's views"), for this form can be systematically interpreted as [views that resemble/derive from those of Humboldt] where it is not generic but REFERENTIAL. A more satisfying example (for me, anyhow) is GENERIC: "I want water" [the nature of what I want is water] REFERENTIAL: "I want some water" [what I want is (-Specific) water] or better perhaps, "he bought apples" vs "he bought some apples" Thus: GEN: "Humans have 2 legs" true by definition REF: (1)"All humans have 2 legs" almost certainly false. " (2)"Some humans have 2 legs" obviously true. but -- if there are no humans, then (1) is true (vacuously) & a logician's sense of (2) is false! This too is for NP's. 'Humdoldtian' -- along with other Aj, N, Vb, &c -- can be called non-referential, but then so are all words that are not complete NP's. For words, some people use GENERIC as I used GENERAL above. It seems worthwhile to distinguish carefully between the terms applied to NP's & the terms applied to N's. All this within a modern received view of reference; there have been & are other views, where this is probably nonsense. There is much more to say. Over to you! ...Ron H. __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: 1 Oct 91 14:12 From: Subject: specific/referential I have recently read quite a few papers from various traditions that deal with the semantics of specificity/referentiality (I am working on a typological study of indefinite pronoun distinctions like English some/any). The following are some generalizations that seem to hold, although I have my own biases, of course: SPECIFIC is used for an NP if the speaker presupposes the existence of a referent. The typical example is something like the following: She wants to get married to an Ainu speaker. On the specific reading, there is an Ainu speaker (e.g. the one she did fieldwork with and fell in love with) that she wants to marry. On the NON-SPECIFIC reading, all she cares about is that her future husband speaks Ainu, whoever he will be (e.g. because she wants her children to acquire her ancestors' language, which she no longer speaks). CONCRETE is a term that I have seen particularly in Russian-language works, but also in Czech. It seems to be used in exactly the same way as SPECIFIC. (A good place to look is Elena V. Paducheva's book "Vyskazyvanie i ee otnesennost' s dejstvitel'nost'ju", Moskva 1985, which contains a very clear discussion of basic notions of the semantics of reference.) By the way, the term SPECIFIC is sometimes attributed to Fillmore (a 1967 paper in the journal Glossa), although I would be interested to hear whether it was used before. If this term was coined so recently, that explains why the Russians have a different one. REFERENTIAL is most often used in contrast to GENERIC. For example, adjectival modifiers are generally NON-REFERENTIAL, whereas genitival modifiers may be referential: Humboldtian views vs. Humboldt's views Similarly, dependent compound members and incorporated nouns tend to be NON-REFERENTIAL: apple tree, bike rental, etc. Sometimes people use REFERENTIAL in the sense of SPECIFIC (and NON-REFERENTIAL in the sense of NON-SPECIFIC), e.g. Givon in the 1978 paper in Universals of Human Language, Vol. 4 (ed. J. Greenberg, Stanford). There is of course a clear similarity between the two senses, so to a large extent your usage depends on your theory of these meanings. Martin Haspelmath, Free University of Berlin __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-631. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-632. Wed 09 Oct 1991. Lines: 151 Subject: 2.632 Whorf Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 1991 11:05-0400 From: Allan C. Wechsler Subject: 2.610 Whorfian relativism 2) Date: Tue, 08 Oct 91 13:23:10 EDT From: Niko Besnier Subject: Whorf again 3) Date: Tue, 08 Oct 91 17:51 EDT From: CHARLES LAUGHLIN Subject: SAPIR-WHORF -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 1991 11:05-0400 From: Allan C. Wechsler Subject: 2.610 Whorfian relativism In the fifties, Brown and Lenneburg did some research on color-naming that is relevant to the history of linguistic "Whorfian" relativism. This is described in an article (by Brown?) in tribute to Eric (?) Lenneburg in some old issue of LI, perhaps from 1974. I'm sorry I don't have the reference at hand. But I recall that it was a well-written and intriguing piece. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Tue, 08 Oct 91 13:23:10 EDT From: Niko Besnier Subject: Whorf again Re.: The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and "popular" beliefs, cf. most recently Bob LeChevalier in 2:610 The reason why linguistic anthropologists "still" believe in some version of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (SWH) is not that they know less about language than mainstream linguists (many fields have much to say about language, and it is a delusion to think that any one field has a monopoly on the subject), but that they focus on language in a different way from linguists. The prototypical anthropological paradigm focuses on diversity, on the particular, and builds theory on the particular, looking at, for example, relational patterns between the particular in language and the particular in society and culture. This contrasts with the avowed universalism extant in most linguistic paradigms. Having been "brought up" in the latter paradigm, to then move to some version of the former, I am at a loss to decide that one is "better," more intellectually worthwhile, etc., than the other. I doubt that mud- slinging ("butterfly collector!" "universalist-schmuniversalist!") will get either field very far. There *is* room for the SWH in a particularistic approach to language. But what it has to be grounded on is a careful reading of poor Whorf, who must be on the most misread (unread?) thinkers of the century. Interpretations of Whorf extant amongst mainstream linguists have little to do with what Whorf actually wrote, and this had led linguists to call the man by all sorts of names (e.g. "weekend linguist"--Geoffrey Pullum in _NLLT_). It is telling, for example, that in my linguistic training at two institutions I was never required to read a single original text by Whorf. To a certain extent this is understandable, since Whorf wrote in an opaque, dense style. John Lucy ("Whorf's view of the linguistic mediation of thought," in _Semiotic Mediation_, ed. by Elizabeth Mertz & Richard Parmentier, Academic P, 1985) shows that one of the important aspects of the SWH missing from laypersons' accounts (i.e. accounts by those who have not read Whorf) is that Whorf is not talking about determinism by all of language of all aspects of world view. Rather, *fashions of speaking* determine *habitual thought*. Fashions of speaking are broad patternings of grammatical categories and discourse strategies in a language, across what Whorf calls *overt* and *covert* categories. Areas of language where one should seek "weak" determinism (the strong version of determinism was never advocated by Whorf, but by subsequent linguists who never seem to have read Whorf) are in fact very different from areas that Whorf is usually said to have claimed to be deterministic. I'd point to work like that of Elinor Ochs as example of where determinism is to be found between language and habitual thought: the shape of, even the presence/absence of baby talk in a speech community, provides a pretty strong deterministic "lesson" to language acquirers about the relationship between structure (=institutions) and agency (=person) extant in the society, i.e. about the type of things that social theorists worry about. This posting is already too long, but I'd like to point to Alan Rumsey's (1990) paper, "Wording, Meaning, and Linguistic Ideology," _American Anthropologist_ 92:346-361, for an excellent discussion of where Whorfianism works. Niko Besnier Department of Anthropology Yale University __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Tue, 08 Oct 91 17:51 EDT From: CHARLES LAUGHLIN Subject: SAPIR-WHORF Re: Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis It is curious that no one has mentioned some of the most interesting research relative to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis -- that done by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay on basic color terms. Their book, BASIC COLOR TERMS (University of California Press, 1969), is a classic in anthropological linguistics, and they have gone on to produce more evidence over the years, published in various papers (if anyone is interested in refs, I'll dig them up). Their argument runs something like this. If the S-W hypothesis is true, at least in its strong form, then we would expect natural continua like the visual spectrum to be categorically chopped up at random. If culture is the only variable at play, then there should be a great number of ways that language expresses color. In fact, they found that how languages discriminate the color spectrum is extremely lawful and predictable. Languages appear to scale between those languages exhibiting the fewest basic color terms to those exhibiting the maximum basic color terms. This is as one would expect if universal (perhaps heritable biological) factors determine how the mind discriminates the spectrum. So far as I am aware, the Berlin and Kay researches are the best empirical tests yet done of the S-W hypothesis, and it is disconfirmed. I would be interested in any other good empirical tests of the hypothesis that have been carried out and of which I am unaware. Charles Laughlin Department of Sociology & Anthropology Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA K1S 5B6 charles_laughlin@carleton.bitnet Charles Laughlin __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-632. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-633. Wed 09 Oct 1991. Lines: 143 Subject: 2.633 Yours, and Distributivity Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 7 Oct 91 15:18 MST From: Kim Jones Subject: [one of you]rs 2) Date: Mon, 7 Oct 91 16:13 CDT From: Joe Stemberger Subject: Re: 2.614 Queries 3) Date: 8 Oct 91 12:25 From: Subject: distributive verbs 4) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 91 10:19:41 -0400 From: lojbab@grebyn.com (Logical Language Group) Subject: distributive/collective -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 7 Oct 91 15:18 MST From: Kim Jones Subject: [one of you]rs Re: And Rosta's first question: 1a Is this book one of yours? 1b Is this book one of you's? 2a *This is one of your/our/their book. 2b This is one of you's/us's/them's book. 3a *Sophy's picture of your/our/their frame. [not a picture of a frame] 3b Sophy's picture of you's/us's/them's frame. [not a picture of a frame] First question: Who *can* accept (1a)? (And (2a), (3a)?) I can say something similar to 1b, except that in my (Texas) dialect, it becomes "Is this book one of y'all's?" The only possible permutation of 2a/b for me would make book plural: "This is one of y'all's books," which would have a rather different meaning (this is one of a number of books which you-plural own jointly). Otherwise I would say, "This book is one of y'alls." This is ambiguous, as it could mean either "This book belongs to one of you-plural" or "This book is one of a number of books which you-plural own jointly." __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Mon, 7 Oct 91 16:13 CDT From: Joe Stemberger Subject: Re: 2.614 Queries And Rosta asks about people's reaction to sentences like: This is [one of you]'r book. This is [one of you]'s book. To me, both are equally hideous. I don't think that I can do anything other than avoid the whole construction. Which is unfortunate, since there is occasionally a need to use it. I have seen people grind to a halt and get all confused when beginning a sentence of this sort, only to realize that they have no way to complete it. ---joe stemberger __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: 8 Oct 91 12:25 From: Subject: distributive verbs Re M. Kac's query concerning verbal morphological marking of distributivity: Languages that have this seem to be quite common, see the typological survey in: Xrakovskij, Viktor S. (ed.) 1989. Tipologija iterativnyx konstrukcij. Leningrad: Nauka. Dressler, Wolfgang. 1967. Studien zur Verbalen Pluralitaet. Wien. However, such distributive markers on verbs are typically derivational and rarely 100% productive. Martin Haspelmath, Free University of Berlin __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 91 10:19:41 -0400 From: lojbab@grebyn.com (Logical Language Group) Subject: distributive/collective >From: Michael Kac >Are there any languages which have some kind of morphological marking of >verbs to distinguish collective vs. distributive interpretation? E.g. >in an analogue of *John and Bill carried a piano upstairs* a way of mor- >phologically distinguishing the sense in which John and Bill each >carried a piano upstairs from the one in which the two of them did it >together? I would be suspicious of any claim that a language conveys this information solely through the verb, since it is inherently a function of the subject/object. If the example were "John carried two pianos upstairs", would you use the same collective/distributive distinction on the verb for the two possible interpretations (that he carried them both up at once, or that he took two trips). If the collective/distributive is spread over two different objects, any verb-based system would break down: "John and Bill carried two pianos upstairs" could be distributive on John and Bill and collective on the pianos, vice versa, or both collective, or both distributive. A language for which it was important to make the distinction at all would likely allow for the possibility that more than one of the NP's/subjects/objects would be plural. I base my response on my experience with the design of Loglan/Lojban, which makes these distinctions, but in a different way than you pose. Lojban distinguishes collective/distributive of this sort by the form of expression of the subject/object, not by a marker on the verb. In this example, the 'and' would be the non-logical massifying 'and' to indicate that they did it jointly, and the logical conjunction 'and' to say that they each did it separately. In other cases where there is no conjunction, the 'article' distinguishes individual from mass e.g. "the three persons carried a piano upstairs". I am of course interested in languages that run counter to this analysis. Are there any languages that make the distinction Michael seeks, but only to refer to plural subjects, and/or to plural objects, but not multiple plurals in one sentence. ---- lojbab = Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 lojbab@grebyn.com __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-633. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-634. Wed 09 Oct 1991. Lines: 138 Subject: 2.634 Is Language Finite? Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 1991 13:05:05 GMT From: ADA612@csc1.anu.edu.au (AVERY D ANDREWS) Subject: finiteless of language 2) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 91 14:12:42 EST From: j.guy@trl.oz.au (Jacques Guy) Subject: Not (in)finity of NL, but it started there. 3) Date: Tue, 08 Oct 91 10:47 EDT From: CHARLES LAUGHLIN Subject: 2.618 Is Language Finite? 4) Date: Tue, 08 Oct 91 11:11:47 -0500 From: Stephen P Spackman Subject: Re: 2.618 Is Language Finite? -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 1991 13:05:05 GMT From: ADA612@csc1.anu.edu.au (AVERY D ANDREWS) Subject: finiteless of language It seems to me that both Jacques Guy and Postal/Langendoen are missing something important in their positions on NL cardinality. What Guy is missing is that the idea that sentence length has no finite bound is an interesting idealization of the behavior of an actual device, namely, us. If one increases the quality of the life-support systems and the strength of motivation, the maximum attainable sentence length will increase, with no fixed limit. Such limitations as there are on sentence length are not inherent in the structure of the language faculty, but derive from other features of human existence. On the other hand, what Postal/Langendoen miss is that a sentence of infinite length is not an idealization of our behavioral capacities: no amount of life-support & proferred rewards are going to get an infinite-length sentence out of anyone's mouth. The mathematics of infinite languages might be amusing for its own sake, but it has no bearing on the goals of generative grammar. Avery Andrews (ada612@csc.anu.edu.au) __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 91 14:12:42 EST From: j.guy@trl.oz.au (Jacques Guy) Subject: Not (in)finity of NL, but it started there. Tom Lai writes: "There are, for example, ideas that do not have a word in the lexicon to express it with because the lexicon is finite." I wouldn't think so, but I am starting to wonder if I am alone and *nuts* in holding contrary views. To me, a finite lexicon (which I see as the tautology of tautologies) can express new ideas and referents, without additional words, even without new compounds, old words simply taking on new meanings, sometimes related to the old ones, sometimes not. As for composition, the elements seldom if ever retain the meanings they have on their own and in other compounds. The nao3 of dian4nao3 (Chinese for "computer") has precious little to do with the nao3 inside our tou2, really. If some ideas, or objects, do not have words in the lexicon to express them, it is not because the lexicon is finite, but because not enough people have thought of that idea, or been acquainted with that object, to press an existing word or two into service, or make a new one up. I'm fishing there, really, because I would be interested in learning more about those views contrary to mine. __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Tue, 08 Oct 91 10:47 EDT From: CHARLES LAUGHLIN Subject: 2.618 Is Language Finite? Is Language Infinite? It seems to me that the discussion about whether or not language is infinite offers a textbook example of the process Alfred North Whitehead called "extensive abstraction." Humans abstract recurrent patterns from actual experience by vague adumbrations, then concetualize those patterns, lose sight of their origins in extensive abstraction, and finally reify those conceptions upon the world. The result is what Whitehead called the "bifurcation of nature" into the world of everyday experience and the world of science. He used this approach to account for geometry and other kinds of formal thought. But it seem quite applicable here. Language, as experienced on the ground, is finite. It is constructed of a finite number of phonemes, lexemes, grammatical constructions, etc. But we also experience the creative function of language in the seemingly endless variety of utterances people generate. By extensive abstraction we come to the notion that there is an infinite possibility here, and then we formalize this adumbration as a principle of linguistic structure. By the time we are finished, we have the bifurcation that Whitehead so decried, language on the ground and linguist's formal notions about what language is. The former is finite, the latter is (for some) infinite. Charles Laughlin Department of Sociology & Anthropology Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA K1S 5B6 charles_laughlin@carleton.bitnet Charles Laughlin __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Tue, 08 Oct 91 11:11:47 -0500 From: Stephen P Spackman Subject: Re: 2.618 Is Language Finite? Tom Lai comments that one of the ways in which language may meaningfully be said to be infinite is that the lexicon is open and new words can always be introduced. Yet the entire phonological mechanism is, meseems, concerned with maintaining adequate "distance" between spoken symbols, and coping with bounded information content: it is profoundly and essentially finitary. Can we not look forward to the discovery of similar structures and results in other lexical information? Isn't coping with finite channels and finite processing power what language is ultimately about? stephen p spackman __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-634. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-635. Thu 10 Oct 1991. Lines: 119 Subject: 2.635 Queries Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 91 00:59:11 PDT From: ees@speech.sri.com (Liz Shriberg) Subject: filled pauses 2) Date: Wed, 09 Oct 91 21:05:39 EDT From: Niko Besnier Subject: English dialectal verb-ending form 3) Date: Wed, 09 Oct 91 21:08:55 EDT From: Niko Besnier Subject: Rhetorical questions: Query 4) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 91 11:22:58 MET From: Paul Heisterkamp Subject: Political Correctness: What is it? -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 91 00:59:11 PDT From: ees@speech.sri.com (Liz Shriberg) Subject: filled pauses Does anyone know of any cross-linguistic work on hesitation phenomena? In particular I am interested in filled pauses (like "um" and "uh" in English; "euh" in French.) Any type of information (phonetic/phonological form, prosodic characteristics, function, distribution, etc.) would be extremely helpful. Information on languages other than English, French or German would be especially appreciated. Anecdotal information on a language you have worked on would also be great, as would suggestions for people to contact. And, if anyone knows the answer to either of the following mysterious questions (both are things I heard second-hand and cannot find the answers to) please let me know (and you should win a prize. . .): 1) in what language(s) is the high front vowel /i/ used as a filled pause? 2) on what island in the South Pacific is the form "um-um" used as a filled pause? Thanks very much for any help, Liz Shriberg __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Wed, 09 Oct 91 21:05:39 EDT From: Niko Besnier Subject: English dialectal verb-ending form A couple of my undergraduate students maintain that the verbal ending *-s* in the first-person singular (e.g. `I says') is a past- tense marker in the social/regional dialects that have this feature. I tried to verify whether this was the case but have not been able to find the answer. I was under the impression that it was a present-tense form, and wonder if my students are not confusing the narrative present with the past tense, since the form will frequently occur in narratives. Can anyone enlighten me on this? Is *-s* only associated with the first-person singular, or with other persons as well? What is its exact regional/social distribution? Niko Besnier Department of Anthropology Yale University __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Wed, 09 Oct 91 21:08:55 EDT From: Niko Besnier Subject: Rhetorical questions: Query A social anthropologist colleague of mine is working on transcripts of Kenyan political meetings (KiSwahili _baraza_), which are full of rhetorical questions, and has asked me for references on rhetorical questions. The most useful for her purposes would be any work taking a discourse analytic/functional/sociolinguistic perspective. Any suggestions? Niko Besnier Department of Anthropology Yale University __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 91 11:22:58 MET From: Paul Heisterkamp Subject: Political Correctness: What is it? Here in a small town in Germany, I only hear rumors about this PC business, which I did not take too seriuos. So, I was bewildered when someone asked recently (in LINGUIST) whether the term 'Individual' was politically correct or not. My question those of you in the US: What IS Political Correctness really? What is it there for (any relation to (at least the 'weak') Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? And: cui bono? Paul __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-635. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-636. Thu 10 Oct 1991. Lines: 202 Subject: 2.636 Whorf Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 9 Oct 1991 15:03 EST From: Fan mail from some flounder? Subject: Re: 2.632 Whorf 2) Date: Wed, 9 Oct 91 19:40:33 PDT From: William McKellin Subject: Re: 2.632 Whorf 3) Date: Wed, 09 Oct 91 21:07:57 EDT From: Niko Besnier Subject: Berlin & Kay vs Whorf 4) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1991 14:03:06 +0800 (SST) From: A_DENCH@FENNEL.CC.UWA.OZ.AU Subject: RE: 2.632 Whorf 5) Date: Wed, 9 Oct 91 17:43 EST From: KINGSTON@cs.umass.EDU Subject: Re: 2.632 Whorf 6) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 91 14:38 +0800 From: MATTHEWS@HKUCC.BITNET Subject: Re: 2.632 Whorf 7) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 91 12:29 EDT From: "Barbara.Abbott" Subject: 2.632 Whorf -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 9 Oct 1991 15:03 EST From: Fan mail from some flounder? Subject: Re: 2.632 Whorf There's a nice discussion by Roger Brown of the Brown & Lenneberg work in his old book "Words & Things", in 2 different chapters separated by another chapter. There is one article I know of that provides some evidence for the strong version of the hypothesis, by Carroll & Casagrande on object classification by Navaho vs. Boston suburban kids. It's in an early psycholinguistics anthology (Saporta's??) Susan Fischer __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Wed, 9 Oct 91 19:40:33 PDT From: William McKellin Subject: Re: 2.632 Whorf An earlier posting asked if there was any connection between Whorf and von Humboldt. Though I don't have direct evidence that such is the case, it is worth noting that Sapir, who offered Whorf some guidance was very familiar with the Germanic tradition - his M.A. thesis was on Herder's Origin of Language which opened the door for von Humboldt. -- Prof. Bill McKellin mcke@unixg.ubc.ca Department of Anthropology and Sociology University of British Columbia Vancouver, B.C. V6T 1Z1 __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Wed, 09 Oct 91 21:07:57 EDT From: Niko Besnier Subject: Berlin & Kay vs Whorf Berlin & Kay's (1969) study of color-term universals was indeed a real breakthrough, although I also believe again that it attacked what Whorf did not maintain, but rather what was imputed to Whorf. However, there has been work since then which has examined Berlin & Kay (1969) closely, and has come up with some pretty damning evaluations. One of the main problems with the study is the inaccurate data that it used (but then again Whorf has been shown to have misunderstood the structure of Hopi), and the criteria used in determining when a color term is *basic* and when it's not, and when a color is *focal* or not. Chapter 4 of Geoffrey Sampson's (1980) _School of Linguistics_ (Stanford U P) is one reference that comes to mind. There are also pretty careful experimental studies on the recognition of and memory for color terms which have come out in favor of both Whorfian relativism and determinism. See: Lucy, John and Richard Shweder. 1979. Whorf and his critics: Linguistic and nonlinguistic influences on color memory. _American Anthropologist_ 81:581-615. Lucy, John and Richard Shweder. 1988. The effect of incidental conversation on memory for focal colors. _American Anthropologist_ 81:923-931. The first paper was critiqued by Linda Garro (reference below), and the second paper is an answer to Garro. Garro, Linda. 1986. Language, memory, and focality: A reexamination. _American Anthropologist_ 88:128-136. The long and short of all this is that whether or not color-term universals present counter-evidence to the SWH is the subject of a lively debate, rather than a foregone conclusion. Niko Besnier Department of Anthropology Yale University __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1991 14:03:06 +0800 (SST) From: A_DENCH@FENNEL.CC.UWA.OZ.AU Subject: RE: 2.632 Whorf Thankyou Niko Besnier for the posting re Whorf! I can't agree more. I have been laying bets against myself at how long it would be before Whorf hit the little screen, and hoping that when he did we would not see the shocked amazement that people actually seemed to think he was anything other than a turkey. Oh well, I lost that bet! Sure, Berlin and Kay, as every intorductory textbook knows, is a killer for the strong deterministic version of somebody's hypothesis. But I don't remember reading quite this version in Whorf myself :> Alan Dench Department of Anthropology (there's your cop out if you want it) University of Western Australia A_DENCH@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Wed, 9 Oct 91 17:43 EST From: KINGSTON@cs.umass.EDU Subject: Re: 2.632 Whorf Re: Charles Laughlin on Berlin and Kay. Berlin and Kay have not had the last words on the relativism of color terminology; Harold Conklin in particular has offered trenchant criticism of their conclusions, based on more detailed investigation of the use and interpretation of color terms in various speech communities. What may be at work in color terminology is a kind of tug-of-war between universal tendencies, which probably reflect the way color is perceived, and the encoding of these tendencies in speech events, which is subject to the particularities of those events, the culture (linguistic and otherwise) of the speaker, and other pressures which might render the interpretation of these terms quite relativistic. John Kingston University of Massachusetts __________________________________________________________________________ 6) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 91 14:38 +0800 From: MATTHEWS@HKUCC.BITNET Subject: Re: 2.632 Whorf Charles Laughlin mentions Berlin & Kay's classic work as being the best empirical tests done of the SWH and as disconfirming it. A follow-up study by Kay and Kempton is discussed in the Relativity chapter of Lakoff's "Women, Fire and Dangerous Things." The experiment involved chips ranging from blue to green, and found that (not) having a word for green in one's native language does affect how one rates the similarity of such items. Lakoff's wide-ranging discussion sees this as evidence of an area where relativity is found. Another attempt at an empirical test is Alfred Bloom's book "The Linguistic Shaping of Thought." He found that Chinese speakers had more difficulty comprehending a text full of counterfactual conditionals than English speakers, and attributed this to the lack of explicit coding of counterfactuals in Chinese. However, Terry Au and Lisa Garbern Liu in "Cognition" (1985?) replicated the experiment trying to avoid cultural bias, and found no significant difference. This case would appear to support the view that cultural, rather than linguistic differences are often responsible for apparent relativity effects. Stephen Matthews, U. of Hong Kong __________________________________________________________________________ 7) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 91 12:29 EDT From: "Barbara.Abbott" Subject: 2.632 Whorf A more recent reference on Whorf and color terms is a paper by Paul Kay and Willet Kempton called "What is the Sapir Whorf hypothesis?" in American Anthropologist vol. 86, 1984. __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-636. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-637. Thu 10 Oct 1991. Lines: 206 Subject: 2.637 Word Processing Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 91 13:45 U From: "Randy J. LaPolla" Subject: Re: 2.611 Responses 2) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 91 02:29 MET From: KAHREL@alf.let.uva.nl Subject: wordperfect linguist utilities 3) Date: Wed, 9 Oct 91 14:39:42 CDT From: Eric Schiller Subject: Re: 2.629 Responses 4) Date: 10 Oct 91 02:07 GMT From: D2628@applelink.apple.com (Photographic Sys, L Rosenblum,PAS) Subject: Source for Fonts 5) Date: Wed, 9 Oct 91 14:41:11 CDT From: Eric Schiller Subject: Re: 2.630 Machine Readable Dictionaries & Spanish MT -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 91 13:45 U From: "Randy J. LaPolla" Subject: Re: 2.611 Responses >From reading Peter Cole's recent letter it seems Microsoft has asked for suggestions about changes to Word (I must have missed their original notice). If this is indeed the case, I would like to add a suggestion, that MS add an optional vertical ruler like the already existing horizontal one. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 91 02:29 MET From: KAHREL@alf.let.uva.nl Subject: wordperfect linguist utilities In the past months I have read several comments in the Linguist list about things that would be impossible or difficult in Wordperfect, such as lining up glossed examples. Through this list I want to offer a collection of Wordperfect utilities (screen fonts, keyboard files, and macros) that I made in the past years and which I find very useful. Let's call it the WP Language Toolbox. The utilities can be used only in WP 5.1. It includes the following things: 1. A screen font (VGA) that will show all characters in character set 1, including the floating accents (numbers 0 through 20). Displaying the floating accents is useful, for example when you use the Overstrike feature to put a macron over a q. When you switch on Reveal Codes, you will actually see the macron, rather than that black square. 2. Two keys for a keyboard definition. The first key is an improvement of WP's Compose key. The Compose key is a very elegant solution for typing special characters on a standard keyboard, but there are some strange omissions. For example, you can't use the Compose key to type a letter with a breve (used in among others Turkish), while `my' Compose key will do that: you type Ctrl-V followed by ug to get the g-breve. My compose key will also handle the Hungarian umlaut, the dot under, and the apostrophe beside. The accompanying (short) manual describes how you can extend the Compose key. For example, I included for myself key combinations to type the universal and the existential quantifier, the assertion sign, several symbols from set theory, and the left, right, up, and down arrows. Further, my Compose key will put any accent on any letter. When you type a combination of a diacritic and a letter, it will first see if there is a WP character available; if not, it will automatically make an overstrike of the diacritic and the letter. So you can use it to get a tilde over the w, to mention something. The second key is an extension of the Help key. When you press F3, you can choose whether you want the 'normal' WP help or help on characters. When you choose Characters, it will show help screens with all WP conventions for diacritics and the ones that I added (u for breve, ! for dot under, # for Hungarian umlaut, etc). 3. A keyboard definition for making WP type from right to left. With it, you can type Hebrew, and it even provides for automatic word wrap. 4. A keyboard to type Japanese, both hiragana and katakana. You type Latin letters and the Japanese characters will be printed. For example, typing 'wa' will print the character 'wa'. Using the 'bare' keys will give you hiragana, when you type Alt-letter you get katakana. I also have an experimental keyboard that that will let you type from top to bottom and from right to left, with word wrap and all. 4. An impractical (I suppose) keyboard for typing boustrophedon (alternatively from left to right and right to left, as in older forms of Greek and Latin). Most probably no one wants the keyboard, but I made it just to prove a point. 5. A macro that lines up glosses, so original word and gloss will be vertically aligned in proportional type. 6. A macro that transliterates Japanese (both hiragana and katakana) to Latin script and one that does the same with Cyrillic. Could be done for Greek as well. Let me kow if you want it and I'll make it. 7. A not very linguistic macro (but very useful) to handle notes. It has four options: convert footnotes to end notes; convert footnotes to text; convert end notes to footnotes; convert end notes to text. When converting footnotes or end notes to text, you can choose to leave the notes as they are, or to delete the notes and have the note numbers replaced by superscripted numbers. The accompanying manual explains why this is a useful option. 8. A macro that finds references in one or more texts. When you run it, it will search a text for a reference and block it. Then it will ask you whether you want to include it in the reference list or not, and search the next reference. When it is through, it will clean up the list (remove any parentheses and such things), sort the list and remove any double entries. When you have a master bibliography the macro can optionally generate a full bibliography on the basis of the references found in the text or texts. I'll offer all these gems for an average shareware price: the equivalent of 60 Dutch guilders (approximately 30 US$) net, so the price includes all kinds of taxes, diskette, and postage. I will not, repeat NOT accept any cheques other than Eurocheques or girocheques (bank fees for cashing bank and personal cheques are murderous in The Netherlands). I can charge your credit card (Euro/Master, not AMEX or VISA; give card number and expiration date). You can send an international money order. Don't forget to specify what diskette type you want. Peter Kahrel e-mail: kahrel@alf.let.uva.nl __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Wed, 9 Oct 91 14:39:42 CDT From: Eric Schiller Subject: Re: 2.629 Responses Autorenumbering, Autobackup in temporal or character increments, full graphic drawing capability, automatic indexing of all instances of a string etc., etc. etc. are all available in Nisus on the Mac. Lots of people here at UC have switched Word to Nisus. None have switched back. Full regular expression search, font/style global replacement. Nice guys too, they just sent me a Macro to eliminate the annoying problem of double-clicking on a word that contains IPA - usually only one half is selected. Haven't tested it yet - but that is REAL tech support - constructing a solution for a user! Nisus is available at a nice academic price. $89 here ($400 list). Eric Schiller University of Chicago schiller@sapir.uchicago.edu or @tira.uchicago.edu. __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: 10 Oct 91 02:07 GMT From: D2628@applelink.apple.com (Photographic Sys, L Rosenblum,PAS) Subject: Source for Fonts Dear Colleague, "Source for Fonts" 9oct91 cc: Margaret @ Circle Noetics We have been working in the field of typesetting languages that use orthographies other than Latin letters. My analyses, designs, technical papers, and seminar participations include Cyrillic fonts as well as the writing forms of India, China, and West Asia. If this brief background seems appropriate to the interests that you and your colleagues have, I would be pleased to receive more information about your activities and requirements. This work started in the 1950s with the Higonnet-Moyroud analog phototypesetting machines and the related hardware developed ^Aat that time by Prof. Samuel H. Caldwell of M.I.T. For sending material by US Mail the more complete address is: Louis Rosenblum Graphic Arts Technology 24 Cedar Road Photographic Systems Corporation Belmont, Massachusetts 02178-2905 Tel: (617) 484 - 9005 AppleLink D2628 Sincerely, /s/ Lou Rosenblum __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Wed, 9 Oct 91 14:41:11 CDT From: Eric Schiller Subject: Re: 2.630 Machine Readable Dictionaries & Spanish MT The discussion of machine readable dictionaries reminds me that the new Nisus extension module ($75) allows you to attach any recorded sound to any piece of text or whatever in the word processing environment. Now your papers can talk, too! Eric Schiller University of Chicago __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-637. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-638. Thu 10 Oct 1991. Lines: 151 Subject: 2.638 Functionalist Papers Available Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 4 Oct 91 15:53:59 MET From: lachlan@let.vu.nl Subject: Functionalist Papers -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 4 Oct 91 15:53:59 MET From: lachlan@let.vu.nl Subject: Functionalist Papers WORKING PAPERS IN FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR ISSN: 0924-1205 Editor: Lachlan Mackenzie Executive editor: Helma Dik WPFG publishes papers which have not yet been officially published but which are sufficiently interesting as contributions to ongoing discussions within Functional Grammar (as presented by Simon Dik, *The theory of Functional Grammar*, 1989). For all information and orders contact: Helma Dik Klassiek Seminarium University of Amsterdam Oude Turfmarkt 129 NL-1012 GC Amsterdam tel: +31-20-525 2571 Papers may be ordered by sending an international money order or a EUROcheque made out in Dutch guilders to the above address. Other cheques and money orders are acceptable ONLY IF (just in case!) Hfl. 12.50 is added to cover the extra bank charges involved. PLEASE SPECIFY CLEARLY WHICH ITEMS YOU REQUIRE. For standing orders please contact the above address. Contributions to the series and requests for exchanges of working paper series may be addressed to the editor at the following address: Lachlan Mackenzie Department of English Free University De Boelelaan 1105 NL-1081 HV Amsterdam e-mail: lachlan@let.vu.nl The following papers are now available: 1985 1. Martin Harris: Word order in contemporary French: a functional view. Hfl. 5.00 2. Simon Dik: Copula auxiliarization - how and why? Hfl. 6.00 3. Gerard Steen: Grammar and metaphor - the consequences of an anomaly. Hfl. 6.00 4. Peter Kahrel: Some aspects of derrived intransitivity. Hfl. 6.00 5. Luke Zimmermann: Subordinate clauses in Australian aboriginal languages. Hfl. 7.00 6. Liesbeth Afman: Les constructions pronominales en franc,ais. Hfl. 6.00 7. Louis Goossens: The auxiliarization of the English modals. Hfl. 6.00 1986 8. Machtelt Bolkestein: Parameters in the expression of embedded predications in Latin. Hfl. 6.00 9. Simon Dik: Linguistically motivated knowledge representation. Hfl. 6.00 10. Ahmed Moutaouakil: Towards an adequate representation of illocutionary force in FG. Hfl. 5.00 11. Simon Dik: On the notion 'functional explanation'. Hfl. 6.00 12. Casper de Groot & Michiel Limburg: Pronominal elements - diachrony, typology and formalization in FG. Hfl. 6.00 13. Albert Rijksbaron: The pragmatics and semantics of conditional and temporal clauses - some evidence from Dutch and Classical Greek. Hfl. 6.00 14. Jan Rijkhoff: Word order universals revisited - the principle of Head Proximity. Hfl. 6.00 15. Lachlan Mackenzie: Aspects of nominalization in English and Dutch. Hfl. 6.00 16. Co Vet: A pragmatic approach to tense in FG. Hfl. 5.00 17. Lourens de Vries: The Wambon relator system. Hfl. 6.00 18. Simon Dik: Two papers on the computational application of FG. Hfl. 6.00 1987 19. Bieke van der Korst: Twelve sentences - a translation procedure in terms of FG. Hfl. 6.00 20. Casper de Groot: Predicate formation in FG. Hfl. 6.00 21. Jan Nuyts: Negatives are not fond of travelling - a cognitive-pragmatic reconsideration of negative raising. Hfl. 6.00 22. Kees Hengeveld: The Spanish mood system. Hfl. 6.00 23. Kees Hengeveld: A functional analysis of copula constructions in Mandarin. Hfl. 5.00 24. Hetty Voogt: Constructing an FG lexicon on the basis of LDOCE. Hfl. 5.00 25. Lachlan Mackenzie: The representation of nominal predicates in the fund - a new proposal. Hfl. 5.00 1988 26. Evelien Keizer: Definiteness and indefiniteness: a scalar representation. Hfl. 5.00 27. Kees Hengeveld: Layers and operators. Hfl. 5.00 28. Johan van der Auwera: On the position of Dutch complementizers. Hfl. 5.00 29. Jan Rijkhoff: A typology of operators. Hfl. 5.00 1989 30. Peter Harder: The instructional semantics of conditionals. Hfl. 5.00 31. Jan Nuyts: Functional Procedural Grammar - an overview. Hfl. 5.00 32. Hella Olbertz: Periphrastic aspect in Spanish. Hfl. 5.00 33. Rolandt Tweehuysen: An FG analysis of Spocanian passive constructions [Editorial note: Spocanian is a language that Mr Tweehuysen invented in his childhood]. Hfl. 6.00 1990 34. Rodie Risselada: Illocutionary function and functional illocution. Hfl. 5.00 35. Cees Hesp: A critique of FG-CNLU [Editorial note = Functional Grammar - Computational Natural Language User]. Hfl. 6.00 36. Tim van Baar: The Dutch perspectivity particles in FG. Hfl. 5.00 37. Simon C. Dik & Kees Hengeveld: The hierarchical structure of the clause and the typology of perception verb complements. Hfl. 5.00 38. Mike Hannay; J. Lachlan Mackenzie & M. Evelien Keizer: Pragmatic functions - the view from the V.U. Hfl. 6.00 39. Chris Butler: Functional Grammar and Systemic Functional Grammar - a preliminary comparison. Hfl. 6.00 1991 40. Ahmed Moutaouakil: On representing implicated illocutionary force - grammar or logic? 41. Louis Goossens: The English progressive tenses and the layered representation of Functional Grammar. Hfl. 5.00 42. Ewa Zakrzewska: Predicative adjuncts in Polish and the Egyptian pseudo-participle: a contrastive analysis. Hfl. 5.00 43. M. Evelien Keizer: Referring in Functional Grammar: how to define reference and referring expressions. Hfl. 5.00 Also available from the same source are Simon Dik's 1978 monograph *Stepwise lexical decomposition* (Hfl. 5.00) and a complete bibliography of books, articles and papers in Functional Grammar (Hfl. 2.50). __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-638. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-639. Thu 10 Oct 1991. Lines: 148 Subject: 2.639 Responses: PC, Pronouns, Plurals and Turkic Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 91 11:08:33 EDT From: Geoffrey Russom Subject: Re: 2.635 Queries 2) Date: Wed, 9 Oct 91 12:10:00 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: rejecting plural of respect 3) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 91 19:47:31 -0700 From: slobin@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Dan I. Slobin) Subject: Turkic 4) Date: Wed, 09 Oct 91 21:08:53 EDT From: JAREA@UKCC.uky.edu Subject: plural data -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 91 11:08:33 EDT From: Geoffrey Russom Subject: Re: 2.635 Queries On the "cui bono" of political correctness: The "PC" concept is invoked by conservatives to suggest that liberals are unthinking doctrinaires: i.e., it's a variant of the "knee-jerk" label. A divide-and-conquer strategy has pitted liberal camps against one another as well, with those opposed (like most Americans) to ideology placing the PC label on other progressives whose political stances are theorized. -- Rick Russom __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Wed, 9 Oct 91 12:10:00 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: rejecting plural of respect No one has mentioned socalled "plain speech" traditional among members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). Examples: Let me give thee this gift for her. Thee has spoken to my condition Is thee prepared? The particular levelling of the agreement paradigm is I believe preserved from a 17th-century dialect of the north of England, where Quakerism was strongest in the early years. Originally, use of the singular was refusal to use the plural of respect to supposed social betters, along with refusal to doff hats, bow, etc., in recognition of irrelevance of rank with respect to "that of God in every person." Today it seems to function as a mark of membership in "birthright Friend" families with perhaps some extension to "convinced Friends" who may take it up. One hears of an incensed teenager retorting to an offending sibling something like "Thee--thee *you*, thee!," whose point hinges on the insider/outsider function. Bruce Nevin bn@bbn.com __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 91 19:47:31 -0700 From: slobin@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Dan I. Slobin) Subject: Turkic Steve Seegmiller asks if there is any evidence that political motives may be found in Soviet alphabet reforms for the Turkic languages. The early reforms from Arabic to Roman, and the subsequent replacement by Cyrillic, clearly had political motivation. Bernard Lewis offers the following summary in _The emergence of modern Turkey_ (Oxford Univ. Press, 1968:432): "In the spring of 1926 a congress of Turcologists assembled in Baku, under Soviet auspices. One of its decisions was to introduce the Latin in place of the Arabic script in the Turkic languages of the Soviet Union, and in the following years a number of varying Latin scripts were introduced in Central Asia. One aim of this Soviet policy of romanization was to reduce the influence of Islam; another was no doubt to cut off contact between the Turks of the Soviet Union and those of Turkey, who were still using the Arabic script. The contrary consideration--that of maintaining contact between the different Turkic peoples--induced some Turkish nationalists to favour the adoption of the Latin script in Turkey. When, eventually, this was done, the Russians countered again by abolishing the Latin script and introducing the Cyrillic, thus reopening the gap between the Soviet Turks and Turkey." As for the next phase--the establishment of differing Cyrillic alphabets for the various Turkic languages--I can find no direct evidence that these inconsistencies were politically motivated. Nicholas Poppe, in his _Introduction to Altaic linguistics_ (Harrassowitz, 1965: 56), speculates: "It is hard to say what the reasons for rendering the same phonemes with so [sic] different letters are. They may be lack of coordination of work in this field in the various countries of the USSR or the result of a deliberate policy of making closely related languages and dialects unintelligible to their neighbors." The latter possibility is a widespread suspicion, and I would be interested in knowing if there is any direct evidence for it. -Dan Slobin (slobin@cogsci.berkeley.edu) __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Wed, 09 Oct 91 21:08:53 EDT From: JAREA@UKCC.uky.edu Subject: plural data Many people who may have less Latin that Jonson attributed to Shaxper continue to be overheated about the use of 'data' as a singular. In Latin this form was the neuter plural (nominative and accusative) while 'datum' was the nominative and accusative singular. These people feel that to 'misuse' a plural like 'data' as a singular, taking singular demonstratives and verbs, does violence to Latin, and thus to English. If these people knew more about Latin, they would realize that already in Classical Latin such second declension neuter plurals were often used as singulars syntactically, sometimes with collective force as is clearly the situation with 'data'. Further, the Romance languages have carried this further, so that it is not at all unusual for one Romance language to take the singular of these former neuters as a singular, and make a new (masculine) plural, and for another RL to take the neuter plural as a singular, creating a new (feminine) plural. There are also traces of this in other Indo-European languages, leading one to suspect that the same situation held in part for PIE (whatever that was). For Latin, a handy reference might be Ernout, _Morphologie historique du latin_ #2A, or for Romance treatments Rohlfs _Grammatica storica della lingua italiana...: v.2 Morfologia #384. Let us not stand in the way of an historical process that has been under way for millenia (My god, there's another one of those wretched neuter plurals!) __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-639. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-640. Thu 10 Oct 1991. Lines: 173 Subject: 2.640 Anymore Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 9 Oct 1991 15:12-0400 From: Allan C. Wechsler Subject: Re: 2.622 Anymore 2) Date: Tue, 08 Oct 91 20:54:40 -0400 From: Ellen Prince Subject: Re: 2.622 Anymore 3) Date: Wed, 09 Oct 91 08:39:27 EDT From: Geoffrey Russom Subject: Re: 2.622 Anymore 4) Date: Wed, 9 Oct 91 10:20:43 EDT From: Ron Smyth Subject: Re: 2.622 Anymore 5) Date: Wed, 09 Oct 91 19:17:46 MET From: Rob Vousten Subject: Re: 2.622 Anymore 6) Date: Wed, 9 Oct 1991 09:00 PDT From: Scott Delancey Subject: Re: 2.626 Queries 7) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1991 09:07:34 -0400 From: rogers@epas.utoronto.ca (Henry Rogers) Subject: Re: Anymore -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 9 Oct 1991 15:12-0400 From: Allan C. Wechsler Subject: Re: 2.622 Anymore [Linguist added back so I can correct myself and exonerate Quinn publicly.] Date: Wed, 9 Oct 1991 11:48 EDT From: cbmvax!snark.thyrsus.com!cowan@uunet.UU.NET (John Cowan) You write: > I haven't verified this reference, from Jim Quinn's _American Tongue and > Cheek_: > > "Quite absurd," he said. "Suffering bores me any more." > -- F. Scott Fitzgerald, _Women in Love_, xiii, p. 159. > (1920) You certainly haven't. What's more, neither has Quinn. >Women in Love< was, of course, written by D.H. Lawrence. Ohmygod. The mistake was all mine, not Quinn's. I read the attribution to Lawrence (p. 43 in Quinn), rolled over to my terminal, and typed "Fitzgerald". Thanks for pointing this out. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Tue, 08 Oct 91 20:54:40 -0400 From: Ellen Prince Subject: Re: 2.622 Anymore i have no native intuitions about this, but it seems that there may be another difference between positive anymore and nowadays: conventional vs. conversational implicature. that is, 1 is ok but 2 is claimed by my native informant students to be infelicitous: 1. people are really busy nowadays--and i guess they always have been. 2.#people are really busy anymore--and i guess they always have been. if this is correct, then nowadays would simply have a conversational implicature, cancellable by context, that things used to be different, whereas positive anymore would have a conventional, i.e. uncancellable, implicature to that effect. you native positive anymore speakers out there, is that right? also, wrt michael kac's remark that positive anymore indicates a negative feeling on the speaker's part, i think that was an artifact of the particular data--in labov's interviews, people were always grumbling about how lousy things had gotten. in other contexts one can certainly find positive anymore without any negative feelings about the present state. __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Wed, 09 Oct 91 08:39:27 EDT From: Geoffrey Russom Subject: Re: 2.622 Anymore Thanks for the many and varied replies on "anymore." -- Rick Russom __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Wed, 9 Oct 91 10:20:43 EDT From: Ron Smyth Subject: Re: 2.622 Anymore Steve Seegmiller's anecdote about cousins his own home town using 'anymore' differently from him seems to support my observations about the couple from Kingston Ontario who used it differently from everyone else. Again, I wonder if this might be a ca where a few exposurcan trigger a different set of restrictions. BTW, I was surprised to find that his example, 'It's hard to find a job here anymore' is O.K. for me. Time to check the references provided by Larry Horn and others. Ron Smyth smyth@lake.scar.utoronto.ca __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Wed, 09 Oct 91 19:17:46 MET From: Rob Vousten Subject: Re: 2.622 Anymore On 'positive anymore': In 1973 Labov published "The boundaries of a grammar: inter-dialectal reactions to positive anymore". Reprinted in: Trudgill & Chambers (1991) _Dialects of English_ London: Longman, pp. 273-288. Rob Vousten __________________________________________________________________________ 6) Date: Wed, 9 Oct 1991 09:00 PDT From: Scott Delancey Subject: Re: 2.626 Queries For Tim van Baar: see John Okell's paper, "Still and anymore in Burmese", in Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 4.2 (1979). I'm intrigued by your interest in "other languages in which similar phenomena occur". It seems to me that the Standard English situation is the unusual case--in which the anymore-equivalent is restricted to negative contexts--and that one would expect most languages to lack such a restriction. (I'm also puzzled by the puzzlement that some people express about the meaning of positive anymore--isn't it exactly the same as the meaning anymore in negative contexts, minus the negation? Scott DeLancey __________________________________________________________________________ 7) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1991 09:07:34 -0400 From: rogers@epas.utoronto.ca (Henry Rogers) Subject: Re: Anymore Ron Smyth mentioned that Gary Prideaux, having grown up in Texas, found 'anymore' common. I also grew up there, in Amarillo, fairly close to Gary's home. I first heard of 'anymore' meaning 'nowadays' in graduate school. On visiting home, I then discovered that my own mother used it, as in 'we shop there anymore'. I am still perplexed at how I missed it, or how it sneaked into the area while I was away at university. Henry Rogers Dept. of Linguistics University of Toronto rogers@epas.utoronto.ca __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-640. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-641. Thu 10 Oct 1991. Lines: 157 Subject: 2.641 Themself and Yours Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 9 Oct 1991 08:59 IST From: Ron Kuzar Subject: Themself 2) Date: Wed, 9 Oct 91 08:57:33 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: they 3) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 91 18:55:02 -0700 From: saka@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Paul Saka) Subject: RE: yours/you's -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 9 Oct 1991 08:59 IST From: Ron Kuzar Subject: Themself During 1974-1976 I lived in Northern California. The use of they and themself among counter-culture people then and there was widespread. An alternative dentistry book called "The Tooth Trip" which I read at the time had many "themself"s. Ron Kuzar __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Wed, 9 Oct 91 08:57:33 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: they OED cites use of "they, them, their" with indefinite "one, someone," etc. as antecedent in Fielding ("Everyone in the house were in their beds"), Goldsmith, Sydney Smith, Thackeray ("A person can't help their birth"), Bagehot ("Nobody in their senses"), and George Bernard Shaw, noting only that it is "not favoured by grammarians." >From quoting this, Fowler _Modern English Usage_ (article "they, them, their") continues that the grammarians are likely, nevertheless, to have their way on the point is suggested by the old-fashioned sound of the Fielding & Thackeray sentences quoted; few good modern writers would flout the grammarians so conspicuously. He gives examples (many of his examples throughout are from contemporary i.e.turn-of-the-century press): The lecturer said that everybody loved their ideals. Nobody in their senses would give sixpence on the strength of a promissory note of that kind. Elsie Lindtner belongs to the kind of person who suddenly discovers the beauty of the stars when they themselves are dull & have no one to talk with Of the last, he says it is amusing by the number of the emendations that hurry to the rescue; E.L. is ond of the people who discover ... ; ... kind of people who discover ...; ... when he himself is ... ; ... when she herself is ... ; ... the kind of woman who discovers ... when she herself is ... The reason given is avoidance of sexist diction (though the term "sexist" is of course not used): "The grammar of the recently issued appeal to the Unionists of Ireland, signed by Sir Edward Carson, the Duke of Abercorn, Lord Londonderry, & others, is as shaky as its arguments. The concluding sentence runs: `And we trust that everybody interested will send a contribution, however small, to this object, thereby demonstrating their (sic) personal interest in the anti-Home Rule campaigh'. Archbishop Whately used to say that women were more liable than men to fall into this error, as they objected to identifying `everybody' with `him'. But no such excuse is available in this case." _Their_ should be _his_; & the origin of the mistake is clearly reluctance to recognize that the right shortening of the combersome he or she, his or her, &c, is he or him or his though the reference may be to both sexes. Whether that reluctance is less felt by the male is doubtful; at any rate the OED quotes examples . . . The quotations are at the beginning of this note. In the article "number" (heading 11, pronouns and possessives after each, every, anyone, no-one, etc), Fowler offers more examples: Everyone without further delay gave themselves up to rejoicing. But, as anybody can see for themselves, the quotation of the actually relevant portion of the argument in our columns would have destroyed . . . Saying of them: Each & the rest are all singular; that is undisputed; in a perfect language there would exist pronouns and possessives that were of as doubtful gender as they & yet were, like them, singular; i.e., it would have words meaning him-or-her, himself-or-herself, his-or-her. But, just as French lacks our power of distinguishing (without additional words) between his, her, & its, so we lack the French power of saying on one word his-or-her. . . . Have the patrons of [the popular usage exemplified above] made up their minds yet between "Everyone _was_ blowing their noses" and "everyone _were_ blowing their noses"? It should be clear that this is not a very new phenomenon. The solution, to use "they" etc. in indefinite sense for an indefinite antecedent, has probably been around as long as the problem of a forced choice in English between he and she, etc., where sex is unspecified. I take it as an extension of indefinite "they" in e.g. "as lazy as they come" and "they say global warming may make winters colder." Bruce Nevin bn@bbn.com __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 91 18:55:02 -0700 From: saka@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Paul Saka) Subject: RE: yours/you's In LING 2.614, And Rosta provides the following sentences along with the indicated judgments: 1a Is this book one of yours? 1b Is this book one of you's? 2a *This is one of your/our/their book. 2b This is one of you's/us's/them's book. 3a *Sophy's picture of your/our/their frame. [not a picture of a frame] 3b Sophy's picture of you's/us's/them's frame. [not a picture of a frame] >First question: Who *can* accept (1a)? (And (2a), (3a)?) For me, (1a) is perfectly good and normal; it is (1b) that sounds bad. >Second question: How do you analyse & explain them? In (1), the material that comes after 'book' is a predicate NP; it needs to have a nominal or pronominal head, and thus the possessive pronoun works. (Notice: This book is mine/*my/*me's.) In (2, 3), the predicate NPs already have nominal heads ('book', 'frame'); in order to express the notion of possessiveness you need to use a determiner. (Notice: This is my/*mine book.) __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-641. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-642. Thu 10 Oct 1991. Lines: 126 Subject: 2.642 Sound Change and Collectives Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 91 18:35:38 -0700 From: Ellen Kaisse Subject: Re: 2.621 Sound Change 2) Date: Tue, 08 Oct 91 21:03:08 -0400 From: Ellen Prince Subject: Re: 2.621 Sound Change 3) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 91 23:00:10 -0700 From: barlow@ucselx.sdsu.edu (Michael Barlow) Subject: Re: 2.614 Collective marking 4) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1991 08:52 PDT From: Scott Delancey Subject: Re: 2.633 Yours, and Distributivity -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 91 18:35:38 -0700 From: Ellen Kaisse Subject: Re: 2.621 Sound Change Alexis Manaster Ramer writes that every phonological framework allows, indeed encourages, us to write rules of the form X-->Y without conditioning environment. Allow me to come to the phonologists' defense (if defense is what is called for.) Most phonologists would now agree, I think, that assimilations should be represented as spreading rules, dissimilations as delinking rules, and that feature-changing rules not caused by spreading and delinking are both marked and (therefore) more difficult to write, since one has to insert a feature from out of nowhere rather than simply letting the the geometric representation be minimally altered by the addition or removal of lines of association. ellen kaisse university of washington __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Tue, 08 Oct 91 21:03:08 -0400 From: Ellen Prince Subject: Re: 2.621 Sound Change >Date: Sun, 6 Oct 91 16:04:16 EST >From: bert peeters >Subject: 2.601 Unconditioned/-tional change >When I chose to interpret "unconditioned" as 'without a cause' I did >so to denounce the inappropriateness of the term. Instead, it looks >as though I have convinced a certain number of people about my utter >ignorance of what most historical linguists mean when they use the >term. As a matter of fact, I am not at all unaware of what is usually >meant - but it is about time we start thinking about a substitute for >a word which is potentially misleading. When the labels "conditioned" >and "unconditioned" were coined, historical linguists did not know >better (witness the other label for "unconditioned", viz. "spontaneous"). >Nowadays, we do know that there are no changes without causes. So why >do we stick to the old terminology? historical linguists did not know better? what is the evidence that they ever thought that unconditioned (or conditioned) sound change did not have (or had) causes? and why is 'spontaneous' another label for 'unconditioned'? i thought it was opposed to 'gradual', a distinction that is, to my understanding, orthogonal to conditioned/unconditioned. __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 91 23:00:10 -0700 From: barlow@ucselx.sdsu.edu (Michael Barlow) Subject: Re: 2.614 Collective marking Michael Kac asks about languages in which there is some kind of verbal morphology indicating a collective interpretation in a sentence such as "John and Bill carried the piano upstairs". I have looked for examples of collective marking, but without distinguishing different kinds of collective meaning. Generally, only the nouns have collective morphology, but presumably nominal morphology of this sort says something about a preferred interpretation of the activity, as long as the collective is not of the "police, army" type. Languages with SOME kind of collective marking include Abkhaz, Hua, Manam, and Turkana. The only example of verbal marking of collectivity that I came across was Hixkaryana, which has collective markers all over the place (so the verb may be agreeing with the noun). The data is given in Derbyshire 1979 (Lingua Descriptive Studies 1). Another tack might be to look for languages in which reciprocal marking on the verb gives a collective interpretation. Michael Barlow Linguistics CSU San Marcos __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1991 08:52 PDT From: Scott Delancey Subject: Re: 2.633 Yours, and Distributivity For Michael Kac: I think that reduplication and other "distributive" derivations in a number of North American languages may be of interest. Typically these indicate plural Theme or multiple actions, but not plural Agent, so that the sense 'John and Bill [eac] carried a piano' could have a distributive form, but the sense 'John and Bill [together] ...' couldn't. See Marianne Mithune's paper in Hammond and Noonan, _Theoretical Morphology_. On "one of yours'" -- the correct version, of course, that we would use back in Syracuse is "Is this one of you guys's books?" Scott DeLancey __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-642. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-643. Thu 10 Oct 1991. Lines: 212 Subject: 2.643 What is a Linguist? Is Language Finite? Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 91 12:07:34 EST From: bert peeters Subject: 2.634 Is language infinite - Infinite polysemy 2) Date: Wed, 9 Oct 91 21:31:32 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.CC.WAYNE.EDU Subject: 2.634 Is Language Finite? 3) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 91 18:08:02 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Re: 2.593 What is a Linguist? 4) Date: Wed, 2 Oct 91 20:07:41 -0700 From: psaka@seq.csuhayward.edu (paul saka) Subject: RE: what is a linguist? 5) Date: Thu, 3 Oct 1991 11:49 MDT From: REBWHLR@cc.usu.edu Subject: Re: 2.580 What is a Linguist? -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 91 12:07:34 EST From: bert peeters Subject: 2.634 Is language infinite - Infinite polysemy > Date: Tue, 8 Oct 91 14:12:42 EST > From: j.guy@trl.oz.au (Jacques Guy) > > To me, a finite lexicon (which I > see as the tautology of tautologies) can express new ideas and > referents, without additional words, even without new compounds, old > words simply taking on new meanings, sometimes related to the old ones, > sometimes not. "Old words simply taking up new meanings" - infinite polysemy is rearing its ugly head again... I'm not saying that new meanings cannot be added to old words; there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever in support of such an extreme view. However, lexicographers and linguists tend to posit polysemy a little too easily, I believe, and consider as a separate meaning something which is purely and solely the effect of the context in which a word is used. If a word has always been used in contexts A, B, C until P, it has one or more meanings (probably not as many as there are contexts); now, if that word starts being used in a context Q, which is entirely new, it does not automatically follow that it takes on a new meaning. The existing meaning or one of the existing meanings may be sufficiently coloured by the new context to create the impression that a new meaning has just come about. Lexicographers and linguists alike tend to underestimate the power of con- text. I for one was very impressed by Charles Ruhl's work on monosemy, where he posits that words are necessarily monosemic (that's the working hypothesis) until proven otherwise. Ruhl's thesis cannot yet be considered as final: it does need tuning - but it is a hypothesis worth looking at. Reference: Charles Ruhl, *On monosemy. A study in linguistic semantics*, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989. (A review is forthcoming in the Canadian Journal of Linguistics; other reviews I know of are by Barbara M. Birch in *Language* 66:4 (1990), pp. 881-882, and by Adrienne Lehrer in *Journal of linguistics* 27:1 (1991), pp. 298-300.) --------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr Bert Peeters Tel: +61 02 202344 Department of Modern Languages 002 202344 University of Tasmania at Hobart Fax: 002 207813 GPO Box 252C Bert.Peeters@modlang.utas.edu.au Hobart TAS 7001 Australia __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Wed, 9 Oct 91 21:31:32 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.CC.WAYNE.EDU Subject: 2.634 Is Language Finite? I hate to differ with Avery Andrews, but I do not see that increasing the quality of life-support and such justifies assuming that sentences have no upper bound on their length. Unless that is we assume that human life spans have no upper bound, and even then there are problems connected with the fact that might have spend your entire (unbounded) life span just saying ONE very long sentence. The assumption that sentences have no upper bound on their lengths strikes me as a reasonable idealization but in no way superior to the one that Langendoen and Postal advocate. What continues to puzzle me about this whole debate, I should add, is that a lot of people seem to talk as though (a) something important rides on these distinctions and even as though (b) they were things you could decide on factual grounds. Whereas I believe that the people who came up with these ways of modeling things (people like Turing, for example) would have agreed that we are just dealing with convenient idealizations. In general, infinity is a convenient way of talking about very big sets and especially ones which are difficult to list (but easy to define), like the set of sentences of a language, for example. Not that I am advocating the idea that the set of sentences of English is REALLY finite, as some have. I would argue that it REALLY is not anything, for the whole notion of the set of sentences of English is itself a convenient fiction. (This last point incidentally is what Chomsky refers to in his recent writings when he says that E-language is not a real object.) What does everybody else think? Alexis Manaster Ramer __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 91 18:08:02 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Re: 2.593 What is a Linguist? Hmmmm ... As a sometime graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, a Harrisian to me is a follower of Zellig, nor Roy. Ironically, the former would appear to represent the epitome of what the latter seems to despise. What, indeed, is in a name? Michael Kac __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Wed, 2 Oct 91 20:07:41 -0700 From: psaka@seq.csuhayward.edu (paul saka) Subject: RE: what is a linguist? Recent discussion motivates me to elaborate on some of my earlier remarks. First, I claimed that a linguist is one who (saliently) engages in the study of language. Randy LaPolla reports that in Chinese and Japanese the closest translation of "linguist" suggests some sort of prestige or fame. It would seem, then, that languages (or cultures?) conventionalize the degree or manner of salience that is appropriate for "-ist" words. It has also been observed -- I forget by who, and apologize -- that "linguist" applies more readily to undergrads in Britain that in the US. This again MIGHT indicated a difference in conventionalization; but it might alternatively reflect the fact that undergrads at British universities are almost as specialized as grad students in America. Second, I did NOT say that a linguist is one who does research in linguistics, which would indeed be virtually vacuous; I claimed that a linguist is one who does research into language. This, I think, is a perfectly straight-forward definition that causes difficulties only if you think in terms of exclusive categories. A psychologist or philosopher can be a linguist (or not) just as easily as a breadbasket can simultaneously be made of wicker (or not). The reason that you would hesitate to call, say, Donald Davidson a linguist has to do with Gricean concerns. While it is a salient fact that Davidson studies language, the coordinate fact that Davidson is a philosopher is yet more salient. This is because administratively defined departmental boundaries constantly impose themselves on the every-day activities of academics. __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Thu, 3 Oct 1991 11:49 MDT From: REBWHLR@cc.usu.edu Subject: Re: 2.580 What is a Linguist? I appreciated Bert Peeters' affirmation that to do semantics is to do linguistics. Yet when he writes that "there is a place out there in linguistics for the study of meaning", I sense a lingering apology for semantics as the poor relation of linguistics. The study of meaning is no poor relation -- if it is not a central concern in linguistic analyses, it ought to be. Phonology, morphology and syntax are core to linguistic study because 1) each studies explicit elements of language structure and hence 2) rigorous analytic frameworks are readily available. The language phenomena we call semantics is elusive: distinguishing word knowledge from world knowledge and pragmatic knowledge is, to put it mildly, tricky. Development of a rigorous methodology for the study of linguistic meaning is still in its early stages. Yet, if we accept Saussure's notion of the sign as a pairing of signifier and signified (form/content), and if we accept that language is a system of signs then meaning is central to language. Any study of language which omits examination of meaning is incomplete. Thus, not merely is there 'a place out there in linguistics for the study of meaning' but if we take seriously that language is a sign system then the place of meaning ought be as central in linguistics as the signified is to the construction of the sign. Rebecca S. Wheeler Utah State University Logan, Utah 507E 100N Smithfield, UT 84335 REBWHLR@cc.usu.edu __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-643. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-644. Thu 10 Oct 1991. Lines: 271 Subject: 2.644 Responses Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 91 16:16:52 EST From: RGAGNE@ucs.indiana.edu Subject: possessive -s in English 2) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 91 11:38:07 CDT From: Barbara Johnstone Subject: I says 3) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1991 07:04:16 EDT From: AHARRIS - Alan Harris Subject: to Liz Shriberg re filled pauses 4) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1991 08:59 PDT From: Scott Delancey Subject: Re: 2.635 Queries 5) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 91 10:45:33 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: rwojcik: range-specifying NPs 6) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 91 20:46:19 -0700 From: tshannon@garnet.berkeley.edu Subject: Re: 2.614 Queries 7) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 1991 09:40 +0200 From: Derk Ederveen Subject: Re: 2.613 - esperanto 8) Date: Mon, 7 Oct 91 16:29:24 CDT From: lynne@kant.cogsci.uiuc.edu (Lynne Murphy) Subject: esperanto net -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 91 16:16:52 EST From: RGAGNE@ucs.indiana.edu Subject: possessive -s in English NOTE TO THE EDITORS: I have been away and my account has been set to nomail for the last week or two. If this issue has already been addressed, please suppress my redundant posting below. Thank you!--Elise On Sept 20 Lachlan Mackenzie wrote "There is of course a strong case for regarding *'s* in general as an enclitic postposition, historically derived from *his*..." The possessive -s in English is historically derived from the singular genitive -(e)s in the very large class of Old English a-stem nouns, masc. and nt. This ending was extended to other classes and genders of nouns in the late ME period. The OE ending was not itself a cliticization of the word "his". A useful reference is _Historical Outlines of English Sounds and Inflections_ by S. Moore and revised by A. H. Marckwardt, George Wahr Publishing Company, Ann Arbor, 1969, especially pages 22, 83-87, and 142- 144. Some confusion about the historical facts has doubtless been occasioned by the synchronic reanalysis of this -s as being from "his", starting as early as the Middle English period, so that masculine possessives were in fact written out as "God his people". Presumably this reanalysis was facilitated by the fact that the possessive still was -es on words ending with consonants, and the unstressed form of "his" (like " 'im") lacked the h-; so the form "Goddes" (with unvoiced fricative until late in ME) would in fact sound exactly the same as "God 'is" (ditto about the fricative, and with reduced vowel in each case). However, synchronic reanalysis is a different animal from historical development. I do not mean to suggest that masc. possessives were always written out with "his", by the way; insert "sometimes" after "in fact" in line 3 of the paragraph above for a less misleading statement. --Elise Morse-Gagne __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 91 11:38:07 CDT From: Barbara Johnstone Subject: I says I've found "I says" to be a fairly common form in narratives by Midwesterners who would in other contexts use "I say." These are Northern/North Midland speakers. If the only occurrences of this form are in the historical present (as I think for these speakers they are) then it makes some sense to say that the form is used for past time -- though it's not, of course, a past tense form according to English morphology, and I don't think its users would say it was. For these speakers, I think the use of "I say" in narrative would have a habitual reading ("I'm always saying") which "I says" does not. The issue of tense choice with quotatives is more complex than it ought to be, and no one has it figured out yet. Schiffrin ("Tense variation in narrative," Language 57 (1981), 45-62) Wolfson (CHP: The conversational historical present in American English narrative, Foris, 1982) and Johnstone ("'He says ... so I said': Verb tense alternation and narrative depictions of authority in American English," Linguistics 25 (1987), 33-52) all touch on the issue. __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1991 07:04:16 EDT From: AHARRIS - Alan Harris Subject: to Liz Shriberg re filled pauses in Israeli Hebrew, you get a rounded "e" as in 'bet' (Eng.) with a slight post aspiration as a filler; at the word level, you get the kind of "well" or "then" as you get in English--[uv-xen] glossed as "therefore" elsewhere but often just a filler. in Turkish, you get a repeated [mmm] with a kind of a schwa and aspiration at the end (maybe DFan Slobin knows or remembers others); at the word level, you often get [shey] glossed as "thing" elsehwere (yes, it is derived from the classical Arabic, to anticipate a question), but used very often as a filler. hope this helps. AHARRIS@VAX.CSUN.EDU __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1991 08:59 PDT From: Scott Delancey Subject: Re: 2.635 Queries The only interesting fact that I know about filled pauses is that in some languages the filler is a lexical form rather than a strange noise. I'm thinking in particular of Japanese and Mandarin, where it is the distal demonstrative (Japanese _ano_, Mandarin _jeige_). Scott DeLancey __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 91 10:45:33 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: rwojcik: range-specifying NPs Still playing catch-up catch as catch can, so this is ancient email. In 2.265 (Sunday, 2 June 1991) Rick Wojcik wrote (the previous Thursday) regarding "Pseudo-oblique objects": >My thanks to those who have sent me comments on the syntax of range-specifying >NPs such as "between 45 minutes to an hour". The grammatical problem that >these things pose is that they resemble PPs but behave like NPs. >Semantically, the prepositions name beginning and end points on a scale, >rather than a relation between an NP and a verb or situation. Right now, I am >inclined to think of them as headless post-modifying PPs. So (1) behaves as >if it had the syntax of (2): > > (1) Between 45 minutes and an hour elapsed. > (2) A time between 45 minutes and an hour elapsed. . . . >The headless postmodifier idea might also help to illuminate the nature of >double-preposition constructions: > > (5) Set the timer to between 45 minutes and an hour. > (6) Remove debris from around the pipe. > >I.e. "...to a time between 45 minutes and an hour" and "...from the space >around the pipe". Any comments on this line of thought would be appreciated. > > -Rick Wojcik (rwojcik@atc.boeing.com) This is exactly the analysis found in Z. S. Harris, _A Grammar of English on Mathematical Principles_ (GEMP). I commented earlier on the role of elision in Harris's theory (re the unbearable elision of being, or was that unbeable elision). See e.g. under "Nouns derived from operators modifying zero-order arguments" in GEMP for related discussion. Bruce Nevin bn@bbn.com __________________________________________________________________________ 6) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 91 20:46:19 -0700 From: tshannon@garnet.berkeley.edu Subject: Re: 2.614 Queries At the risk of being one of a multitude of people answering the question "What's a trema?", let me try anyway. At first I thought any good English dictionary would define the term, but I was wrong; so I checked my German Duden and of course, there it was confirming what I already knew. In essence, it's the diacritic one otherwise calls "umlaut": those two little raised dots over certain letters (vowels). I assume that "trema" is sometimes preferred over "umlaut" because the latter also designates the historical vowel fronting process itself and in order to have a neutral term that doesn't necessarily refer to that same historical development, as would befit a neutral diacritic. The trema can be used for other purposes than to designate front rounded vowels, hence the need for a more general term. C,a suffit, n'est-ce pas? tom shannon, uc berkeley german department tshannon@garnet.berkeley.edu __________________________________________________________________________ 7) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 1991 09:40 +0200 From: Derk Ederveen Subject: Re: 2.613 - esperanto > Date: Fri, 4 Oct 91 15:51 EDT > From: AMODIO@vaxsar.vassar.edu > Subject: query regarding esperanto > > Can anyone on this network tell me if there is an electronic discussion > group devoted to Esperanto? I ask this on behalf of a colleague who > has been studying it for the last several years. Does linguist-l > perhaps have a sub-group of Esperanto devotees? As I'm not a member > of linguist-l, I'd appreciate it if you would contact me directly if > you have any knowledge of such a group. Thanks in advance. > > Mark Amodio, Department of English, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY 12601 > amodio@vaxsar.vassar.edu There are three possibilities: 1. send a subscription request to esperanto-request@rand.org. This is an unmoderated Internet mailing list (esperanto@rand.org) discussing esperanto-related topics. Discussions in Esperanto and English. 2. send a mail to listserv@trearn.bitnet, with subject AND body of the message containing 'SUB ESPER-L Your Name'. This is a bitnet/earn-based unmoderated mailing list (ESPER-L@TREARN). 3. read the Usenet newsgroup soc.culture.esperanto. At present, mail is forwarded between the lists as follows: ESPER-L@TREARN <--- esperanto@rand.org <---> soc.culture.esperanto So, contributions to esperanto@rand.org or soc.culture.esperanto appear at all three lists. Mail to ESPER-L is not forwarded, in order to avoid endless loops. Finally, I would like to mention the file server at rand.org, reachable by anonymous ftp, and the Language Server (send mail containing 'help' to langserv@hebrew.cc.columbia.edu). Derk Ederveen +31-70-3323202 PTT Research/Nijmegen Univ. __________________________________________________________________________ 8) Date: Mon, 7 Oct 91 16:29:24 CDT From: lynne@kant.cogsci.uiuc.edu (Lynne Murphy) Subject: esperanto net i don't know of a specifically esperanto electronic discussion group, but there is a constructed languages e-mail discussion group. lately, esperanto has been much discussed, though this is not always the case. Many of the subscribers are language constructors, and therefore spend much time on explaining the intricacies or simplicities of their own languages. contact: conlang@buphy.bu.edu lynne murphy __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-644. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-645. Thu 10 Oct 1991. Lines: 103 Subject: 2.645 Queries Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 91 11:58:14 EDT From: Kelly.K.Wahl@ub.cc.umich.edu Subject: preposition stranding 2) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 91 14:36:38 EDT From: Kelly.K.Wahl@ub.cc.umich.edu Subject: Query on pronouns 3) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 91 17:29:22 EDT From: Marjorie K M Chan Subject: Refs on Society and Language Use in China 4) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 91 18:45:12 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@mts.cc.wayne.edu Subject: Simple Phonological Systems, a Query -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 91 11:58:14 EDT From: Kelly.K.Wahl@ub.cc.umich.edu Subject: preposition stranding I'm looking for examples of clearly ungrammatical preposition stranding in finite clauses in English. Can anyone either give me some examples or direct me to a good source? --Kelly_Wahl@ub.cc.umich.edu __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 91 14:36:38 EDT From: Kelly.K.Wahl@ub.cc.umich.edu Subject: Query on pronouns In Russian, the concept "x and I" is expressed "we with x", where 'we' includes'x' (eg, 'Ivan and I' = 'we with Ivan'). I was told that this use or something similar exists in other languages, notably Turkish. Is this true (about Turkish), and what other languages does this (or something similar) exist in? Any references would be welcome. __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 91 17:29:22 EDT From: Marjorie K M Chan Subject: Refs on Society and Language Use in China I'm in the midst of proposing an upper-level undergraduate course on the Chinese language, and am including a section on language and society. Aside from some work by Y.R. Chao, Beverly Hong, and Margaret Sung, I have not encountered very much anthropological or descriptive types of studies that would be appropriate for undergraduates and non-Chinese linguistics grads. I'd appreciate any references Linguist List readers can offer, including any on differences in language use between Chinese males and Chinese females. Re the last case, my only sources so far are: "Feminine accent in the Bejing Vernacular: a sociolinguistic investigation." by Mingyang Hu. Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association (1991) XXVI.1:49-54. "On being _De_ing: How Women's Languae is Perceived in Chinese." by Timothy Light. Computational Analyses of Asian and African Languages (CAAAL) (1982) 19:21-49. (Hu's articles include a couple of references which I have not yet acquired, and likely to be in Chinese.) The course is conducted in English, and all reading assignments are in English, so I am particularly interested in English-language articles and sources, though not exclusively. Marjorie Chan (Dept. of E. Asian L & L, Ohio State U.) marjorie_chan@osu.edu __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 91 18:45:12 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@mts.cc.wayne.edu Subject: Simple Phonological Systems, a Query I would appreciate any examples of languages with /a/, /u/, and /i/ as the only vowels (with or without length or tone contrasts) and a simple syllable structure. By simple I mean either only CV or if consonant clusters are permitted than only ones involving obstruents, nasals, laterals, rhotics, and laryngeals, but not semivowels like /y/ and /w/. __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-645. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-646. Fri 11 Oct 1991. Lines: 45 Subject: 2.646 LINGUISTS Nameserver Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 11 Oct 91 14:59 MET From: "Norval Smith (UVAALF::NSMITH)" Subject: LINGUISTS namserver -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 11 Oct 91 14:59 MET From: "Norval Smith (UVAALF::NSMITH)" Subject: LINGUISTS namserver I would like to repeat our periodic invitation - for the benefit especially of new subscribers - to register your e-mail address with the nameserver at LINGUISTS@ALF.LET.UVA.NL. This enables other linguists to find your e-mail address by sending a query to the nameserver. A second reason for doing this is that we are thinking of publishing a hard copy version of the 4500 line list. Obviously we want as many and as accurate addresses as possible. You check your possible entry with: list carter (assuming that your surname is Carter) You can remove an erroneous entry as: remove carter, peter: pecar@lazyhazy.uslop.edu (exact entry required) You can add your (new) address with: add carter, peter x: awpxc@financial.security.com If you want to see the whole list: list * If you can't follow this: help N.B. The server cannot understand other messages, and does not read the subject line. You can send as many requests in one message as you want, as long as each request is on a new line (column 1). Norval Smith __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-646. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-647. Sun 13 Oct 1991. Lines: 75 Subject: 2.647 Proposal to Shut Down Linguistics at Minnesota Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 11 Oct 91 15:23 CDT From: ASHELDON@UMNACVX.BITNET Subject: closing Linguistics at Minnesota -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 11 Oct 91 15:23 CDT From: ASHELDON@UMNACVX.BITNET Subject: closing Linguistics at Minnesota 10/11/91 TO: Colleagues FROM: The Department of Linguistics, U of Minnesota RE: Closing the Department of Linguistics at Minnesota Dear Colleagues, The Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, Julia Davis, has recommended that the Department of Linguistics at the University of Minnesota be abolished because of the financial crisis that the University is currently in. The linguistics curriculum is to be totally eliminated. Thus, the undergraduate linguistics major would be eliminated, the graduate program would become nonexistant, and there would be no curriculum to train students in other programs (e.g. cognitive science, communication disorders, natural language processing in computer science, language teaching and education, etc.). There would be no long range plan to rebuild the Department. No new students will be admitted. Current students will have to seek financial support elsewhere at the University, complete their degrees without the Department or linguistics courses in place, finish their degree elsewhere, or abandon it altogether. If the current Department faculty remain at Minnesota, they would have to move individually to other departments and fit in with the teaching needs of those departments, even if it means "retooling". Linguistics as a discipline, will be eliminated from the curriculum. Whereas some courses in linguistics might be occasionally taught in other departments, there would be no future administrative support for teaching a coherent linguistics curriculum or for reconstituting linguistics outside of the current Departmental arrangement. At a meeting with a number of faculty this morning, Dean Davis projected that the immediate "savings" to the University would come from our loss of the supply budget, T.A. salaries, the secretary, and the Chair's augmentation. The largest part of the "savings" are expected to come from faculty attrition over the long run. The effectiveness of this plan therefore depends on the salaries of the present faculty eventually being "freed up". This proposal will be reviewed and voted upon by CLA committees beginning October 17th and ending on October 22nd. The Linguistics Department has been in existance at Minnesota for twenty-five years. We would like to enlist your support in making a strong case to the effect that it is not in the University's best interest to abolish either the Linguistics Department nor the linguistics curriculum and the undergraduate or graduate degrees at the University. Please send two copies of your message. One can go to Dean Julia Davis, College of Liberal Arts. The email address is BARDOUCH@UMNACVX (bitnet), or BARDOUCH@VX.ACS.UMN.EDU (internet). Please send a carbon copy of your letter to the Linguistics Department email address for our files: UMLING@UMNACUX (bitnet), or UMLING@UX.ACS.UMN.EDU. This is a matter of utmost urgency. The support of colleagues in linguistics and related disciplines will be crucial to the outcome of this proposal. We appreciate your support. __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-647. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-648. Mon 14 Oct 1991. Lines: 232 Subject: 2.648 X and I Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 11 Oct 91 15:58:58 EDT From: Niko Besnier Subject: Inclusive reference in pronoun-noun coordinate constructions 2) Date: Fri, 11 Oct 91 21:19 EDT From: FENYVESI@vms.cis.pitt.edu Subject: Re: "we with x" 3) Date: Fri, 11 Oct 91 18:46:59 -0700 From: barlow@ucselx.sdsu.edu (Michael Barlow) Subject: Re: 2.645 Pronouns 4) Date: Fri, 11 Oct 91 22:58:12 -0500 From: lambrec@emx.utexas.edu (Knud Lambrecht) Subject: Re: 2.645 Queries 5) Date: Sat, 12 Oct 1991 17:17:49 -0700 (PDT) From: Christopher Brockett Subject: rwojcick: range-specifying NPs 6) Date: Mon, 14 Oct 91 9:05 BST From: Richard Ogden Subject: 'X and I' 7) Date: Fri, 11 Oct 91 13:39:37 -0400 From: Ellen Prince Subject: Re: Query on Pronouns 8) Date: Sat, 12 Oct 1991 13:41:58 EDT From: AHARRIS - Alan Harris Subject: re: Kelly K. Wahl's inquiry on Turkish -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 11 Oct 91 15:58:58 EDT From: Niko Besnier Subject: Inclusive reference in pronoun-noun coordinate constructions Re: Kelly Wahl's query in 2.645 Coordinate pronoun-noun/pronoun constructions of the type `we and Bill' or `you-2 and you' translating in English as `Bill and I' and `you and s/he' respectively are very common throughout Polynesia and, I'd venture, across Oceanic languages. In some Polynesian languages (e.g. Tongan) you *have* to include the referent of the 2nd element in the coordinate structure in the reference of the pronoun; in other languages (e.g. Tuvaluan), there is a preference for doing so. Most logical possibilities are allowed, although some are very strange; for example, in Southern Tuvaluan, ??_taaua mo koe_ `we-2-inclusive and you' and *_taaua mo au_ `we-2-inclusive and I' are weird and not allowed respectively, because the coordinated element is rendered superfluous by the specificity of the pronoun itself (_taaua_ is dual 1st person inclusive, hence can only refer to the speaker and the addressee). That the first should be only judged strange, while the second is out under elicitation probably stems from the fact that, in ordinary communicative contexts, there might be some ambiguity on the referent of an interlocutor, but not of a speaker. It might pay to go through the Croom Helm Descriptive Grammars to find out how various Ls treat these constructions. Refer to the questionnaire in _Lingua_ 1977, authored by Comrie & Smith. Niko Besnier Department of Anthropology Yale University __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 11 Oct 91 21:19 EDT From: FENYVESI@vms.cis.pitt.edu Subject: Re: "we with x" The same construction that exists in Russian, namely "I and X"="we with X" exists in Hungarian as well. Anna Fenyvesi __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Fri, 11 Oct 91 18:46:59 -0700 From: barlow@ucselx.sdsu.edu (Michael Barlow) Subject: Re: 2.645 Pronouns Kelly Wahl asks for references on constructions of the form "we with/and X" with the meaning 'X and I'. Linda Schwartz has several papers on this construction, which she calls Plural Pronoun Constructions (PPC). In Schwartz (1988) she notes that some version of the PPC occurs in Latvian, Polish, Russian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Kp>elle, Mende, Temne, Diola-Fogny, Ewe, Kirundi, Tera, Tagalog, Mokilese, Yapese, Hawaiian, and Fijian. Judith Aissen also has written about PPCs, but I don't have a reference. I only have two references for Linda Schwartz, but I think there are other papers. I find interesting the cases where the plurality is expressed as an agreement marker on the verb. (Schwartz and Aissen, among others, have also looked at these examples.) My favourite examples come from West Greenlandic where one of the conjuncts can be absent. Hansi=lu aqagu aalla-ssa-agut Hansi and tomorrow leave-FUT-1.PL.INDIC 'Hansi and I will leave tomorrow.' (Fortescue 1984:128) Michael Fortescue 1984. West Greenlandic. Croom Helm Descriptive Grammars. Croom Helm Linda Schwartz 1985 Plural pronouns, coordination, inclusion. Papers from the Tenth Minnesota Regional Conference on Language and Linguistics. Dept of Linguistics. University of Minnesota. Linda Schwartz. 1988. Asymmetric feature distribution in pronominal 'coordination' In Barlow and Ferguson (eds) Agreement In Natural Language. Stanford: CSLI. Michael Barlow Linguistics, CSU San Marcos __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Fri, 11 Oct 91 22:58:12 -0500 From: lambrec@emx.utexas.edu (Knud Lambrecht) Subject: Re: 2.645 Queries Kelly Wahl inquires about languages in which "x and I" is expressed as "we with x". One other, perhaps little kno, example is spoken French. (To understand the examples, one has to know that ON = NOUS in spoken French, i.e. `we'.) Avec Michel on est alle' au cine'ma. On est alle' au cine'ma avec Michel. Both can mean (and often do mean in conversational French) `Michel and I went to the movies'. I do not know exactly what the difference is between the two examples above, and I forgot which one is more common. But I do know that this is common in the spoken language, at least in Switzerland, but I'm pretty sure in France too. I've been meaning to do some research into this construction for quite a while now and have never gotten around to doing so. Is there anyone out there who has noticed the construction in their dialect of French? Knud Lambrecht (lambrec@emx.utexas.edu) __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Sat, 12 Oct 1991 17:17:49 -0700 (PDT) From: Christopher Brockett Subject: rwojcick: range-specifying NPs These constructions also occur in Japanese, where they may be case-marked, e.g., issai kara kookoo made o Amerika de sugosita 1-year from high-school to ACC LOC spent 'she spent from 1 year of age to high school in America' Does anyone have any information about what happens in Turkish? __________________________________________________________________________ 6) Date: Mon, 14 Oct 91 9:05 BST From: Richard Ogden Subject: 'X and I' 'X and I' is expressed as 'we with X' in Finnish too, at least in spoken Finnish. I'm not sure about whether you'd write it. Richard Ogden __________________________________________________________________________ 7) Date: Fri, 11 Oct 91 13:39:37 -0400 From: Ellen Prince Subject: Re: Query on Pronouns >Date: Thu, 10 Oct 91 14:36:38 EDT >From: Kelly.K.Wahl@ub.cc.umich.edu >Subject: Query on pronouns > >In Russian, the concept "x and I" is expressed "we with x", where 'we' > includes'x' (eg, 'Ivan and I' = 'we with Ivan'). I was told that this use or > something >similar exists in other languages, notably Turkish. Is this true (about >Turkish), and what other languages does this (or something similar) exist in? >Any references would be welcome. yiddish has something similar tho not the same--mit 'with' as a variant of 'and', tho i don't think the two are everywhere interchangeable: men shenkt laykhter mit bekher mit nokh azelkhe zakhn. one gives [as gifts] candlesticks and (with) goblets and (with) other such things. an ofitser mit a yunger sheyner vayb zenen tsuzamen. an office and (with) a young pretty wife are together. note that the second one shows plural agreement. __________________________________________________________________________ 8) Date: Sat, 12 Oct 1991 13:41:58 EDT From: AHARRIS - Alan Harris Subject: re: Kelly K. Wahl's inquiry on Turkish if you want to say "John and I" in Turkish, you say 'john benimle' i.e. john I-Gen.marker-shortened 'ile'--> le="with"; in very colloquial speech you get the John I-with with out the gnitive marker, i.e., John benle. John ve ben, literally John and I, is really quite rare. Coming to think about it, even more idiomatic Turkish has Benle John (I-with John), too. Again, maybe Dan Slobin can enlighten you more. AHARRIS@VAX.CSUN.EDU __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-648. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-649. Mon 14 Oct 1991. Lines: 239 Subject: 2.649 Conferences Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 9 Oct 1991 15:05:53 +0100 From: Erik-Jan van der Linden Subject: Call for Papers: Idioms 2) Date: Fri, 11 Oct 91 09:56:52 SET From: Sergio Scalise Subject: Incontro di Grammatica Generativa 3) Date: Sat, 12 Oct 91 09:35:49 PDT From: wccfl@cognet.ucla.edu (West Coast Conf. on Formal Ling.) Subject: WCCFL XI special session: Models of Acquisition 4) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 91 12:16 PST From: Subject: Conference: THEORETICAL ISSUES IN SIGN LANGUAGE RESEARCH -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 9 Oct 1991 15:05:53 +0100 From: Erik-Jan van der Linden Subject: Call for Papers: Idioms CALL FOR PAPERS IDIOMS September 2-4, 1992, Tilburg, The Netherlands Idioms are the subject of research in theoretical linguistics, computational linguistics, and psycholinguistics. The aim of the IDIOMS conference is to bring together scholars from these disciplines with an interest in idioms, in order to further the interaction between these disciplines and to transfer results from one discipline to another. The theme of IDIOMS is the representation of idioms at the various levels of grammar and the analysis and generation of idioms both in psychological models of the human language faculty, and in computational and theoretical linguistic frameworks. Original papers are sollicited, including but not limited to - comparison of idiomatic expressions to other forms of non-literal language. - accounts of the prosodic, morphological, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic behaviour of idioms. - lexical representation of idioms; representation of idioms in the mental lexicon. - ambiguity resolution in the case of idiomatic expressions. - analysis and generation of idioms. In order to guarantee the multi-disciplinary character of the workshop, contributions should stress relevance to the study of idioms, rather than focus on the relevance to the study of theoretical and computational linguistic formalisms or psychological models. The conference comprises invited and contributed papers. Papers will be one hour including discussion. The following speakers have been invited: - Joan Bresnan (Stanford University) (to be confirmed) - Lynn Frazier (University of Massachusetts) (to be confirmed) - Raymond Gibbs (University of California at Santa Cruz) - George Lakoff (Berkely University) (to be confirmed) - Igor Mel'cuk (Universite' Quebec Montreal) (to be confirmed) SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS Authors are requested to submit four copies of an extended abstract (4 pages; 1500 words) written in English in hardcopy format to the address below. All abstracts will be refereed by a programme committee which consists of Peter Coopmans (Utrecht), Dirk Geeraerts (Leuven), Jan Odijk (Philips Eindhoven), Louis des Tombe (Utrecht), Wietske Vonk (Nijmegen) and the members of the organising committee. ACCEPTED PAPERS Accepted papers (max. 15 pages) will be published in the proceedings of the conference. Guidelines for submission of final versions of accepted papers will be sent to the authors. TIMETABLE Abstracts must be received before December 15, 1991. Authors will be notified of acceptance or rejection by February 1, 1992. Final camera-ready papers must be received by June 1, 1992. A copy of the conference proceedings will be distributed among the participants of the conference. ORGANISING COMMITTEE Martin Everaert (Research Institute for Language and Speech, Utrecht) Erik-Jan van der Linden (Institute for Language Technology and Artificial Intelligence, Tilburg) Andre' Schenk (Philips Research Labs, Eindhoven) Rob Schreuder (Center for Language Studies, Nijmegen) Those who are interested in contributing a paper or in attending the conference are requested to return the reply form to the following address, preferably the E-mail address. IDIOMS / Erik-Jan van der Linden Institute for Language Technology and AI PO BOX 90153 NL-5000 LE Tilburg The Netherlands tel.: +31 13 663070 / 3113 fax.: +31 13 663110 E-mail: idioms@kub.nl ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- IDIOMS Tilburg, September 2-4, 1992 Name ...................................................................... Address ...................................................................... ...................................................................... City ...................................................................... Country ...................................................................... E-mail ...................................................................... 0 wants to receive further announcements 0 intends to attend 0 intends submit an abstract __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 11 Oct 91 09:56:52 SET From: Sergio Scalise Subject: Incontro di Grammatica Generativa ANNOUNCEMENT The XVIII Meeting of "GRAMMATICA GENERATIVA" will be held in Ferrara (Feb. 28 - 1 March 1992). Deadline for abstracts (one page): December 15r1991. For more information, write to SCALISE@IVEUNCC.BITNET or to Sergio Scalise - Universita' di Ferrara - Via Savonarola 27 - 44100 Ferrara - Italy / tel. 0532-40219. __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Sat, 12 Oct 91 09:35:49 PDT From: wccfl@cognet.ucla.edu (West Coast Conf. on Formal Ling.) Subject: WCCFL XI special session: Models of Acquisition ---------------------------- WCCFL XI/1992 AT UCLA SPECIAL SESSION ON COMPUTATIONAL MODELS OF ACQUISITION ---------------------------- A special session on computational models of language acquisition will be held at the Eleventh West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL XI) which will be held at UCLA, February 21-23, 1992. Language acquisition models are of central interest not only to linguists but also to many other researchers in cognitive science, and papers in this area are particularly solicited. You are invited to submit abstracts for 20 minute papers to be presented in this session of WCCLF XI. Abstracts should be anonymous, no more than one page, single spaced, with all margins at least one inch wide, and typed in 12 point type or larger. An additional page with examples and references may be included. Submissions are limited to 1 individual and/or 1 collective abstract per person. Ten copies of the abstract along with a 3" by 5" card with paper title, name of author(s), affiliation, address, phone number and e-mail address should be sent to: WCCFL XI Abstract Committee UCLA Dept. of Linguistics 405 Hilgard Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90024-1543 Deadline for receipt of abstracts is November 30, 1991. Late abstracts will only be reviewed if postmarked by November 25, 1991. No abstract arriving after December 6, 1991 will be reviewed. Conference schedule and further announcements will be issued later. Inquiries may be addressed via e-mail to : wccfl@cognet.ucla.edu Questions about this special session should be sent to this address marked "Attn: acquisition". __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 91 12:16 PST From: Subject: Conference: THEORETICAL ISSUES IN SIGN LANGUAGE RESEARCH ANNOUNCEMENT Fourth Conference on THEORETICAL ISSUES IN SIGN LANGUAGE RESEARCH University of California, San Diego August 5 - 8, 1992 Keynote Speaker: Victoria Fromkin, UCLA Session Topics: Chairs: Phonology David Perlmutter Morphology and Syntax Carol Padden Language Acquisition Judy Reilly Neurolinguistics/Psycholinguistics Helen Neville & Karen Emmorey Narrative and Poetry Sam Supalla Open Poster Session ROUND TABLE Bilingual and Bicultural Approaches to Deaf Education and Policy Host: Harlan Lane Abstracts are due March 15, 1992 (Abstract and registration forms will be sent early in 1992) Conference Organizers: Karen Emmorey, Salk Institute for Biological Studies Judy Reilly, San Diego State University Carol Padden, University of California, San Diego __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-649. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-650. Mon 14 Oct 1991. Lines: 95 Subject: 2.650 Jobs Moderators: Anthony Aristar (e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu) Helen Dry (hdry@emunix.emich.edu) -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 91 10:28:17 PDT From: COMRIE@USCVM.BITNET Subject: Post-Doc at UCLA: Sociolinguistics 2) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1991 18:30:50 +0100 From: RJOLIVET@ul9000.unil.ch Subject: PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS: LAUSANNE -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 91 10:28:17 PDT From: COMRIE@USCVM.BITNET Subject: Post-Doc at UCLA: Sociolinguistics UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, Los Angeles CA 90089-1693. Applications are invited for a Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Linguistics, in the area of Sociolinguistics. This is a non-tenure-track one-year appointment for the academic year 1992-93. Teaching duties include one course in each of two semesters. The PhD must be in hand at the time of appointment and must not have been awarded prior to September 1985. The salary is approximately $27,500 with full faculty fringe benefits. The deadline for applications is February 1, 1992. Send applications (cv, statement of research interests, graduate transcript, and 3 letters of reference) to Chair, Department of Linguistics, 301 Grace Ford Salvatori Hall. USC is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1991 18:30:50 +0100 From: RJOLIVET@ul9000.unil.ch Subject: PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS: LAUSANNE The University of Lausanne (Switzerland) is looking for a PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS Candidates should preferably have an interest in one or more of the following fields: contrastive linguistics, discourse analysis, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, stylistics, English as an international or second language (other kinds of linguists welcome). Part of the work is responsibility for (advanced) English language training, but the bulk of the (6) teaching hours is devoted to the linguistics of English. Teaching is done in English, but a good knowledge of French is desirable. The post includes administrative tasks within the Department of English. REQUIREMENTS: A Ph.D. and a good list of publications. SALARY RANGE: Sfr.130,683 p.a. (minimum) Sfr.156,057 p.a. (maximum, after 10 years) Deductions are as follows: contributions to pension fund, state pension scheme and about 15-20% income tax. Benefits include 13th month salary and family allowances (Sfr.1,680 per child under 16, Sfr. 2,340 per child aged 16 to 25 who is still at school). STARTING DATE: September 1, 1992 or other date to be agreed on. Winter semester classes begin on about October 20. PLACE OF RESIDENCE: Teachers at the University of Lausanne are required to reside in the canton of Vaud. APPLICATION PROCEDURE: Applications, returnable by November 1, 1991, must include seven copies of each of the following documents: - covering letter - CV - list of publications (please do not include publications themselves for the moment). They must be sent to: Doyen de la Facult'e des Lettres, Universtie'e de Lausanne, BFSH 2, CH-1015 Lausanne. Candidates who are shortlisted may be invited to deliver a 45 minute lecture, followed by a discussion and an interview with members of the committee. __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-650.