________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-701. Thu 24 Oct 1991. Lines: 180 Subject: 2.701 Computational: Shoebox, Speech Database, Prolog Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 21 Oct 91 9:34:35 CDT From: evan@utafll.uta.edu (Evan Antworth) Subject: SHOEBOX for MS-DOS by FTP 2) Date: Tue, 22 Oct 91 17:40:50 -0700 From: Ron Cole Subject: A Multi-language Speech Database: An Informal Survey 3) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 11:28:25 EDT Subject: 2.693 Spanish MT, Prolog Course From: Stavros Macrakis -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 21 Oct 91 9:34:35 CDT From: evan@utafll.uta.edu (Evan Antworth) Subject: SHOEBOX for MS-DOS by FTP SHOEBOX for MS-DOS is now available by FTP from SIMTEL20 and various other archives. See below on availability. SHOEBOX is a database management program, designed expressly to meet the needs of the field linguist. Using SHOEBOX, the linguist can easily enter, edit, and analyze lexical, textual, anthropological and other types of data. All data are maintained in ASCII text files. For example, with SHOEBOX, one can: + Maintain a simple dictionary, or a more complex lexicon, + Interlinearize text, where new words are automatically entered into the dictionary, + Do grammatical filing and analysis of text data, + Enter and file cultural notes, + Maintain nonlinguistic types of databases, such as address lists or library catalogs. SHOEBOX contains numberous features that aid in accomplishing the various tasks that are often a part of linguistic data storage and analysis. These include: + A text editor for the entry and editing of data, + The ability to conduct very rapid searches; any data record can be accessed nearly instantaneously for editing or review, + A rigorous select option that allows the user to view only those records that conform to certain criteria, + The ability to specify a special sort ordering, taking into account groupings of digraphs and characters from the IMB extended character set, + A flash card function to aid in language learning, + Functions to number and interlinearize text. SHOEBOX allows up to seven databases to be concurrently loaded, each accessible by the touch of a single key. Because each database can reference the other databases, information can be easily retrieved and integrated from any location. SHOEBOX was written by John Wimbish of the Summer Institute of Linguistics. Version 12a is now being offered to the academic community as 'freeware'. SHOEBOX is available by anonymous FTP (and mail server) from SIMTEL20: wsmr-simtel20.army.mil (192.88.110.20) pd1:sh12a.zip It is also available from various other archives that mirror SIMTEL20 including these: wuarchive.wustl.edu (128.252.135.4) /mirrors/msdos/linguistics/sh12a.zip rana.cc.deakin.oz.au (128.184.1.4) /pub/PC/simtel-20/linguistics/sh12a.zip nic.funet.fi (128.214.6.100) /pub/msdos/science/linguistics/sh12a.lzh Evan Antworth | Internet: evan@sil.org Academic Computing Department | UUCP: ...!uunet!convex!txsil!evan Summer Institute of Linguistics | phone: 214/709-2418 7500 W. Camp Wisdom Road | fax: 214/709-3387 Dallas, TX 75236 | __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Tue, 22 Oct 91 17:40:50 -0700 From: Ron Cole Subject: A Multi-language Speech Database: An Informal Survey This posting is being made to gauge the level of potential interest in a speech database that we are collecting and developing. We believe that the database will be of great value to the speech and language research communities, but we would like to substantiate this through an informal survey. The Center for Spoken Language Understanding at the Oregon Graduate Institute is collecting a large, 10-language database of digitized speech recorded over the telephone. The goal of the initial database collection effort is to obtain fluent speech samples from at least 100 native speakers in each of 10 languages. The languages in the database are: English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Persian (Farsi), Spanish, Tamil and Vietnamese. The recording protocol was designed to obtain (a) short descriptions from the speakers about themselves and their environment (domain-specific vocabularies); (b) language names, digits, days of the week (well-defined, restricted vocabularies); and (c) samples of elicited free speech (unrestricted vocabularies). Each speaker provides about 5 minutes of speech. We will verify each utterance in the database and assign time-aligned phonetic transcriptions to them. When database development is completed in mid-1992, we intend to make the database available to interested researchers at nominal cost. The database package will also include speech tools to display and interactively modify the speech files, and signal processing functions that compute different parameters of the speech waveforms. This software can be used on any UNIX(tm) machine running the X window system. The National Science Foundation is funding the development of the speech software tools. Portions of our database are currently being used for research on automatic language identification. While we believe that this database will satisfy a long-standing need for a public-domain database for automatic language identification research, the presence of different types of vocabularies in this database makes it eminently suitable for other research areas in speech and natural language. If you think this database would be helpful in your research, or if you are interested in obtaining it, please contact me at: Ronald A. Cole Director Center for Spoken Language Understanding Oregon Graduate Institute of Science and Technology 19600 NW Von Neumann Drive Beaverton, OR 97006-1999 USA Vmail: (503) 690-1159 Internet: cole@cse.ogi.edu __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 11:28:25 EDT Subject: 2.693 Spanish MT, Prolog Course From: Stavros Macrakis ALS's ad for their Prolog course translates a Prolog fragment as "Any linguist who does not know Prolog is unhappy." This implies that Prolog is a truly declarative language. Although Prolog is an important, interesting, and useful programming language, alas, it really isn't that declarative (although it is more declarative than many other languages). What the Prolog fragment really says is: In order to establish property unhappy(X), first establish linguist(X). Then, if you cannot establish know(X,prolog), consider that unhappy(X) has been established. It goes without saying that all terms are uninterpreted, but that's I guess a reasonable amount of advertising puffery. Then again, Drew McDermott's classic article ``Artificial Intelligence and Natural Stupidity'' points out how easy it is to be seduced by suggestive predicate names. Still, it may well be worthwhile learning Prolog...! -s __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-701. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-702. Thu 24 Oct 1991. Lines: 146 Subject: 2.702 Queries Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1991 17:46 -0300+1 From: FACUNDES@mpeg.anpa.br Subject: COMPUTER STORAGE AUDIO 2) Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1991 17:19 -0300+1 From: FACUNDES@mpeg.anpa.br Subject: INDEXING DAT 3) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1991 10:24 EST From: 00Z0ZHAO@LEO.BSUVC.BSU.EDU Subject: Query 4) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 11:56:53 EST Subject: Re: 2.698 Queries From: daysa@mace.cc.purdue.edu (,sd) 5) Date: Thu, 24 Oct 91 12:14:52 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@mts.cc.wayne.edu Subject: Query: Romanian dialects 6) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 00:14:23 IST From: David Gil Subject: query -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1991 17:46 -0300+1 From: FACUNDES@mpeg.anpa.br Subject: COMPUTER STORAGE AUDIO DENNY MOORE ASKS ANOTHER QUESTION: If tape recordings of human speech are stored as computer files, to be indexed and played back for rough phonetic transcription (not spectrography or something refined), what is the MINIMUM space necessary for an hour of speech, using low sampling rates and data compression? The SIL sound analysis box, CECIL, appears to use only 10K per second. ANSWERS ALSO CAN BE SENT TO: MOORE@MPEG.ANPA.BR SIDNEY FACUNDES. BY __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1991 17:19 -0300+1 From: FACUNDES@mpeg.anpa.br Subject: INDEXING DAT DENNY MOORE ASKS: (1) IS THERE A WAY TO INDEX WORDS ON DAT TAPE SO THAT THEY CAN BE RECOVERED BY THE RECORDER/PLAYER? THAT IS, PUT SOME SORT OF SIGNAL OR INDEX NUMBER ON THE TAPE, NEAR THE WORD? ANSWERS ALSO CAN BE SENT TO: MOORE@MPEG.ANPA.BR __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1991 10:24 EST From: 00Z0ZHAO@LEO.BSUVC.BSU.EDU Subject: Query Could anyone provide me some information about lexical borrowings? I've noticed that when Chinese bilinguals converse in Chinese, they sometimes have English words. Any literature in this aspect? Thanks in advance. 00Z0ZHAO@bsuvax1.bitnet __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 11:56:53 EST Subject: Re: 2.698 Queries From: daysa@mace.cc.purdue.edu (,sd) Querie -- Ogham: I am somewhat of a neophyte looking for people familiar with the various forms of Celtic languages (and NON-Celtic inputs) involved in Ogham inscriptions (all locations and instances). Are there still people out there fooling around with this stuff?!? References to books and articles would be appreciated, too (just as long as no-one seriously mentions Robert Graves). Sean A. Day Undue Perversity __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Thu, 24 Oct 91 12:14:52 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@mts.cc.wayne.edu Subject: Query: Romanian dialects Is there anybody out there who is (or knows) an expert on Romanina (I mean Romanian) dialects, especially one called Meglenoromanian? __________________________________________________________________________ 6) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 00:14:23 IST From: David Gil Subject: query A query for experts on Vietnamese: Thompson (1965:179) and others discuss the following two forms: (a) /moi/ (with dot under /o/) "every"; and (b) /moi/ (with circumflex and tilde above /o/) "each". Can anybody tell me more about these two forms, or direct me to published descriptions and/or analyses? In particular, are these two forms related, either synchronically/derivationally or diachronically? In additon, if there are any native speakers of Vietnamese out there amongst LINGUIST subscribers, I would very much appreciate being able to elicit some syntactic and semantic judgements of constructions containing these two forms. Thanks, David Gil rhle813@haifauvm.bitnet __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-702. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-703. Thu 24 Oct 1991. Lines: 145 Subject: 2.703 Using last names Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1991 08:05 EST From: Herb Stahlke <00HFSTAHLKE@LEO.BSUVC.BSU.EDU> Subject: Re: 2.696 Using Names 2) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 08:01 EDT From: CHARLES LAUGHLIN Subject: LAST NAMING 3) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 09:30 EDT From: "Barbara.Abbott" Subject: Names/terms of address 4) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1991 08:53:34 From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz) Subject: Last Name Usage in US English 5) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 13:45:51 EDT From: susann@starbase.MITRE.ORG (Susann Luperfoy) Subject: 2.696 Using Names -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1991 08:05 EST From: Herb Stahlke <00HFSTAHLKE@LEO.BSUVC.BSU.EDU> Subject: Re: 2.696 Using Names The use of last names for address may be as related to authoritarian structures as to militaristic, although that may be a distinction without a difference. In the movie "Dead Poets Society" the boys in the prep school referred to each other usually by last name, and their teachers addressed them by last name as well. I found this to be the case also at Concordia College in Milwaukee, the all-male _gymnasium_ I attended for six years in the '50's. That it's not strictly sex-linked is borne out by the fact that it was also the case at Concordia Teachers College, River Forest, Illinois, where the enrolment had always been coed but the environment was similarly authoritarian. I had siblings attending there, and I understood that faculty addressed students, regardless of sex, by last names. I don't know how far that went among students, although I heard instances of it between the sexes. Herb Stahlke Ball State University __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 08:01 EDT From: CHARLES LAUGHLIN Subject: LAST NAMING Re: Using Last Names I, too, have wondered about last naming among friends and non-friends. My dearest, most loved male friend (I am also male) calls me by my last name, and he's a sports fanatic, where I am not. I also experienced last naming in the Air Force years ago. So try this on for size: Might it be that last naming interjects distance in relationship, in some cases like the military where intimacy is not present, and in other cases where a lot of intimacy is present. In the former case (military, classrooms, etc.) the last naming reflects the desired affective state of non-intimacy, while in the latter case (dear friends, close-knit team, in the gym where we see each other in the buff, etc.) last naming marks a symbolic reversal of the desired affective state. OK, I confess, I stayed up late watching the Braves win it in the 12th. Charles Laughlin Department of Sociology & Anthropology Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1S 5B6 Charles Laughlin __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 09:30 EDT From: "Barbara.Abbott" Subject: Names/terms of address Some more data on the difference between "Mr. X" and just plain "X": Russell's scathing reply to Strawson's paper "On Referring" was titled "Mr. Strawson on Referring". Throughout the paper Russell refers to Strawson as "Mr. Strawson", while Quine is referred to as "Quine". (Russell obviously respects Quine more than Strawson: at one point he remarks, "I will leave the defence of Quine to Quine, who is quite capable of looking after himself.") __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1991 08:53:34 From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz) Subject: Last Name Usage in US English In regard to the issue of contemporary US English address by last names, I have noticed that phone order clerks, e.g., for mailorder computerware, are very reluctant to give out last names. They introduce themselves by first names only, and, if one asks for a name, they provide only a first name. One generally has to explicitly ask for a surname, and, as a rule, they seem quite uncomfortable providing it, even though I am presumably trying to get their name to go with a price quote, in order to insure that the later sale was made through them. I have had responses like `Well, I'm the only Randy here.' I speculate that it has something to do with reluctance to provide intimate information to strangers, since it most cases it would be to their actual financial advantage to insure that I later dealt with them. The only functional sense in which a last name is intimate that I can think of is that home addresses are listed in the phone book by last name, but perhaps the intimacy is actually conditioned by social factors, e.g., providing a last name is tantamount to introducing oneself to a stranger. Other possibilities may be that last names may reveal (historic) ethnic background, information not otherwise available, or simply that providing a surname may lead to awkward and time-consuming exchanges on how to spell it. __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 13:45:51 EDT From: susann@starbase.MITRE.ORG (Susann Luperfoy) Subject: 2.696 Using Names I'd always thought the reason was that girls were being discouraged from getting too attached to their birthnames because of the expectation that they were destined to give them up for marriage. Whereas a boy was to carry on the family name and so should build it into his identity. Susann LuperFoy __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-703. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-704. Thu 24 Oct 1991. Lines: 176 Subject: 2.704 You-Guys Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1991 09:20:31 From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz) Subject: Re: You-Guys 2) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1991 09:02 PDT From: Scott Delancey Subject: you guys 3) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 12:32:33 EDT From: hharley@Athena.MIT.EDU Subject: you guys 4) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 18:05:40 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@mts.cc.wayne.edu Subject: You guys 5) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 17:56 EST From: BARBARA PARTEE Subject: Re: 2.698 Queries 6) Date: Thu, 24 Oct 91 06:28 EDT From: CHARLES LAUGHLIN Subject: YOU GUYS 7) Date: Thu, 24 Oct 91 14:23:09 PDT From: Michael Toolan Subject: Re: 2.698 Queries -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1991 09:20:31 From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz) Subject: Re: You-Guys I have essentially the same pattern with English second persons that Dray reports: you-guys (plural, for several individuals, or informal, for totalities) and you-all (never plural per se, but more formal, for totalities). I have had the impression for some time that you-guys is the normal plural of you in the General American dialect(s), that it is unmarked for gender and problematic only as to register, i.e., it isn't part of elevated speech. By way of background, my father is a Kansan (western), my mother is a Baltimorean, and I was raised in Maryland and Colorado. Another you plural that I have encountered, and occasionally find useful as the formal equivalent of you-guys is you-folks (stress on you), which was used by my father's father (Kansan - his parents were from Missouri). I don't know how widespread it is. I have also run across you-ones, you'uns, y'uns, and you-people, but I couldn't say where or when. I suspect that there is no regional or local variant of English, at least in the US, that doesn't have an innovated second person plural or plurals. You-lot sounds distinctly British, though I wouldn't be able to assign it to a level or region. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1991 09:02 PDT From: Scott Delancey Subject: you guys For me, although in my native speech _guy(s)_ has pretty unavoidably masculine reference (when I was learning to talk it formed a constrast set with _girl(s)_), pronominal _you guys_ is absolutely gender-neutral; I can use it with any plural set of addressees. Scott DeLancey __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 12:32:33 EDT From: hharley@Athena.MIT.EDU Subject: you guys Ha - I never really thought about it before, but I am indubitably a you guys 2nd plural person as well, with guys being neuter. Someone mentions the etymology of guy... has this been posted and I've missed it? Maybe someone could send it to me if that's the case... thanks Heidi __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 18:05:40 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@mts.cc.wayne.edu Subject: You guys I tend to agree with Nancy Dray (and must say have trouble believing Scott DeLancey) regarding 'you guys'. Surely, Scott can also say things such as 'You people are crazy', 'You people are all crazy', 'You are all crazy', and so on, which would indicate that 'You guys are crazy' is not the unique translation of Southern 'Y'all are crazy'. But I also have trouble believing that 'you by itself is always singular, since for me it can clearly be plural in anaphoric contexts such as the following: You guys are crazy. I don't believe a word you're telling me. Indeed, I would find 'you guys' or any of the equivalent locutions a little strange in such anaphoric contexts, especially the third or fourth time the pronoun has to occur. __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 17:56 EST From: BARBARA PARTEE Subject: Re: 2.698 Queries Re: you guys's gender. I wish I had already been a linguist when as a high school student I attended the first Girl Scout Roundup in Michigan in 1956; we were all in patrols of 8 from different parts of the country, and I do remember noticing that there were many different forms of plural you coming into collision there; "youse" was common in my (Baltimore) patrol (which surpised some of the others), and of course we weren't surprised to hear y'all from southerners, but I remember that we were a bit taken aback that the St.Paul patrol used "you guys", in that all-female environment. For me by now the "guys" in "you guys" is totally gender-neutral; I assume it's the same item when we use "these guys" to refer to constituents in a phrase-structure tree, a use I wasn't conscious of until I first heard it in the mouth of a non-native and otherwise slightly formal-sounding speaker who had evidently picked it up as standard linguistic terminology. __________________________________________________________________________ 6) Date: Thu, 24 Oct 91 06:28 EDT From: CHARLES LAUGHLIN Subject: YOU GUYS Re: You Guys Dennis Breminded me that I was raised using "you guys" indiscriminately for both genders (I was raised in Arkansas and Texas) and have run into the situation numerous times here in Ottawa, Canada, of people telling me it was inappropriate for women. It reminds me also of the time I walked into the front office at my department, full of female staff at the time, and complained that I was tired of being called a "guy." I had just found out that it has the traditonal meaning of "grotesque." Related to Guy Fawkes it seems. Well, one of the secretaries complained back that I was feminist- baiting. She missed the point. Charles Laughlin _______________________________________________________________________________ 7) Date: Thu, 24 Oct 91 14:23:09 PDT From: Michael Toolan Subject: Re: 2.698 Queries I think 'you guys' is residually gender-marked (in my dialect). That is, it's OK when addressed to any group by a girl or woman, but only OK, coming from a b oy or man, when addressed to a mixed or all-male group. And with a male speake r, probably 'a reasonable proportion' of the group needs to be male--1 male in a group of 3 or 4 would be enough, but 1 male addressee out of a group of 12 wo uldn't. __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-704. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-705. Fri 25 Oct 1991. Lines: 140 Subject: 2.705 Prosody and Pauses Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 13:49:07 +0900 From: nick@atrp05.atr-la.atr.co.jp (Nick Campbell) Subject: 2.692 Phonology, Pauses, R-linking 2) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 11:23:46 GMT From: David Powers Subject: Re: Syntactically filled pauses -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 13:49:07 +0900 From: nick@atrp05.atr-la.atr.co.jp (Nick Campbell) Subject: 2.692 Phonology, Pauses, R-linking Richard Ogden (in reply to Jim Scobbie's claim that 'there are sophisticated, systematic, non-univeral rules of phonetic implementation.`) maintains that ' French doesn't sound like English in any way, nor does German, or any other language. Why? because the 'low level' phonetics is just different.' and asks ' if each language has a different interpretation of 'the same' feature, what are the constraints on what might constitute an interpretation of that feature so that you recognise it as 'the same'?' Perhaps he should have gone further here, beyond languages, to consider the differences between individual speakers. At ATR we are implementing speech synthesisers for both Japanese and English, and certainly have to set the duration parameters differently for each language, but also for each dialect, and for each speaker. But in every case these parameters are set from consideration of the same linguistic factors (`stress` is not absent from Japanese, just prioritised differently) with context-specific defaults. In asking ` What then does it mean to say that certain phonological features are 'the same' when their interpretation in different languages is different? or when the features they stand in relation to in different languages is different?' Richard is addressing the basic issue of invariance in speech. Phonetics does not yet have an answer, but humans don't typically assume that two speakers are using different rules just because of (for example) differences in voice quality - we generalise over such differences as phonation type and vocal tract length. Does this abstraction require different interpretation rules or just a different set of settings for the same set of rules? In listening to speaker A or language B, can we not just posit a shift in the weighting of the defaults? Nick Campbell P.S. After the XIIth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, we set up a mailing list to discuss issues related to prosody. In light of recent postings it may be better to address replies or comments to PROSODY@PURCCVM. (Subscribe requests should be sent to LISTSERV@PURCCVM instead). __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 11:23:46 GMT From: David Powers Subject: Re: Syntactically filled pauses kjetilrh@hedda.uio.no comments: > Bulgarian has a well-developed system of pause fillers: > _tova_ (proximal demonstrative, neuter) for definite NP's, > _takova_ (demonstrative adjective/pronoun,neuter, "such") for indefinite > NP's, and > _takovam_ (conjugated as a verb of the a-class) for verbs. > Let me also point out a definite advantage that similar pause-fillers have > over _um_, _e:_ and the like: you can actually go on speaking, even if you > have forgotten much of what you were going to say. I would like to point out that the _um_ in English does extend to such syntactic fillers: i.a. _thingummy_ (adj/verb?), _thingummygig_ (noun, common or proper - cf Mrs Thingummygig or Mrs Thingo). I think I have even heard thingummy or thingo used and conjugated as a verb: _He umm thingoed with High Distinction, uhh graduated._ It's certainly in my family's dialect, primarily _Educated Major City Australian_, but I'm pretty sure some variant occured frequently during my school education in South-East London. The noun _thingummy_ is clearly primary, _thing_ being a normal placeholder for an unspecific object and _um_ marking that the indeterminism arises from tompting (the Tip Of My Tongue phenomena). The verbs are least likely to be handled this way, and in fact a generic is likely to be substituted: _The customs umm ex- umm umm charged a umm what-d@-y@-call-it charge for storing the packet._ In German the final verbs are often either dropped and left understood, or filled in, possibly generically, after a pause, with a filler which may be a rounded interminate or simply end of sentence prosody. The form with the omitted verb is in some context regarded as quite acceptable: _Englisch aber kann ich nicht (sprechen/verstehen/lesen/schreiben)._ _However I can't (speak/understand/read/write) English._ This is not just contextual elision (_englisch_ is an adverb here): _Kannst Du englisch?_ _Can you (speak) English?_ I would expect that in all languages there was some way of achieving syntactic filling which allows said advantage that: > you can actually go on speaking, even if you > have forgotten much of what you were going to say. in English there are stacks, including proper words, and combinations with words (e.g. _whatever_ or _the umm whatever_). David Powers __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-705. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-706. Fri 25 Oct 1991. Lines: 169 Subject: 2.706 Onomatopenia Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 11:21:56 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: Thud! sound symbolism 2) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1991 09:54:55 From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz) Subject: Re: Ejaculatives 3) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1991 12:12 EST From: Herb Stahlke <00HFSTAHLKE@LEO.BSUVC.BSU.EDU> Subject: Re: 2.698 Queries 4) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 12:20:27 CDT From: rau@boas.cogsci.uiuc.edu (Nalini Rau) Subject: Re: 2.698 Queries 5) Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1991 10:50:53 +0800 (SST) From: A_DENCH@FENNEL.CC.UWA.OZ.AU Subject: Svlan! Plouf! Pan! 6) Date: 23 October 91, 14:30:50 EDT From: R12040.at.UQAM@tamvm1.tamu.edu Subject: Ejaculatives 7) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 11:23 MET From: RICHARD@celex.kun.nl Subject: RE: Query Australian sound imitations -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 11:21:56 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: Thud! sound symbolism Alan Dench asks for a term for things like his "binj-binj-binj" ringing noise. These are regularly termed "sound symbolism" in the linguistics of Native America. I believe the term stems from Sapir via Haas. Bruce Nevin bn@bbn.com __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1991 09:54:55 From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz) Subject: Re: Ejaculatives Per A. Dench's inquiry concerning ejaculatives in Nyungar, I believe the standard term is ideophone. See, for example, the Lingua Descriptive Series outline/prospectus, or, particularly, the first (?) volume, dealing with Hixkaryana. Robert Hsu, at the University of Hawaii has been conducting a survey of ideophonic systems, and could probably recommend referencces on the subject. His email address is t119920@uhccmvs.bitnet. __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1991 12:12 EST From: Herb Stahlke <00HFSTAHLKE@LEO.BSUVC.BSU.EDU> Subject: Re: 2.698 Queries On Alan Dench's query on Bif! Bop! Kapow! There is extensive literature in African linguistics on a class of words, called ideophones, that look and function like the words Dench lists. A good place to start would be with Chapter 15 "Adverbials, Ideophones, Semantic Ranges" of William Welmers _African Language Structures_ (University of California Press, 1973). An excellent language-specific study of ideophones is Olayiwola Awoyale's 1973 Illinois dissertation "The Syntax and Semantics of Ideophones in Yoruba." Herb Stahlke Ball State University __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 12:20:27 CDT From: rau@boas.cogsci.uiuc.edu (Nalini Rau) Subject: Re: 2.698 Queries Alan Dench asked for suggestions about the linguist expression to cover words such as `derrku-derrku' One could use the term `onomotopoeic' Nalini Rau __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1991 10:50:53 +0800 (SST) From: A_DENCH@FENNEL.CC.UWA.OZ.AU Subject: Svlan! Plouf! Pan! Thankyou to those people who have already replied to my posting about Bif! Bang! noise-words. To forestall similar suggestions. 1. I am aware that these terms are onomatopoeic but wanted a term which was more specific. 2. I had understoof the term 'ideophone' to be at least more general than I wanted and to refer to a different kind of thing as primary sense. Sorry if I gave the impression that all such words have to do with sexual organs. This is not the case. My favourite (though not from Nyungar - another Oz language) is 'Jirtun!' the noise of someone's stomach exploding after they have eaten that particular poisonous fish which is a delicacy in Japan. Alan Dench Department of Anthropology University of Western Australia Nedlands WA 6009. __________________________________________________________________________ 6) Date: 23 October 91, 14:30:50 EDT From: R12040.at.UQAM@tamvm1.tamu.edu Subject: Ejaculatives Evidently nothing as dry and sterile as "interjection" will suffice so, I suggest one of these terms: "Conan-ism" or "Rambo-ism" __________________________________________________________________________ 7) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 11:23 MET From: RICHARD@celex.kun.nl Subject: RE: Query Australian sound imitations RE: Alan Dench's query about 'ejaculatives' The word which immediately springs to mind for the phenomenon of verbal sound-imitation is onomatopoeia. Mentioning this word in connection with your query immediately drew 'onomatopenis' from my colleagues, but I cannot be held responsible for their one-track minds (sigh). By the way, the word is Greek for simply 'name-making'. 'Ejaculatives' would indeed be inappropriate (terminologically speaking), as this is equivalent to 'interjections', which includes greetings, curses like 'Hello', 'Damn', which are not imitative of sound. I think it is a criterion for onomatopoeia that they should imitate non-linguistic sounds, which can be human if they are restricted to coughing, belching, snoring and the like, so not copying someone's dialect or speech defects. Richard Piepenbrock __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-706. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-707. Fri 25 Oct 1991. Lines: 186 Subject: 2.707 R-Linking Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 22 Oct 91 18:20 CDT From: Joe Stemberger Subject: Re: 2.692 Phonology, Pauses, R-linking 2) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 05:43:09 -1000 From: David Stampe Subject: 2.681 R-linking 3) Date: Thu, 24 Oct 91 12:12:05 PDT From: scobbie@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Jim Scobbie) Subject: R-linking -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 22 Oct 91 18:20 CDT From: Joe Stemberger Subject: Re: 2.692 Phonology, Pauses, R-linking In a comment on r-linking, Geoffrey Russom states that: >My understanding is that you get r-linking primarily to avoid a hiatus >between vowels. With tense "u," there's an off-glide "w" to avoid the >hiatus, so it's not surprising to find that Ellen doesn't get r-linking >in that environment. This is assuming that [uw] occurs in English. In almost all dialects of English, whether British or North American, the vowel is actually pronounced [u:]. This has been recognized for more than 30 years by phoneticians studying English. There are SOME dialects that have [uw], but they are relatively uncommon and "nonstandard" (on both sides of the Atlantic). The reason that transcriptions with [uw] are so common is that it was the preferred transcription of the American Structuralists. They pointed out that English mid-vowels are diphthongized, so that treating the high vowels as diphthongized fit the pattern of English better than treating the high vowels as long. Such patterning is no longer of great concern to most phonologists, but [uw] and [iy] have been retained in transcriptions out of tradition. As far as r-linking goes, though, it would be useful to know whether the dialect in question is one of those relatively uncommon dialects that does in fact have a diphthong. If so, then Geoffrey Russom's comments would provide a possible explanation. But if not ... ---joe stemberger __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 05:43:09 -1000 From: David Stampe Subject: 2.681 R-linking Isn't "intrusive r" just an underlying /r/? That's the analysis that Patricia Donegan describes in a forthc. book on historical phonology ed. by Ch. Jones. Intrusive r occurs only in dialects of the UK, US, Oz, NZ, that that de-rhoticize /r/ to [schwa] (syllabic or not) in syllable-rimes, so that the distinction between /r/ and /schwa/ is manifested only finally before a vowel, e.g. `copper is' vs `Cuba is'. If learners miss such rare examples as these, the distribution of [r] and [schwa] will seem complementary, and it is fully accounted for by analyzing all [schwa]s as de-rhoticized allophones of /r/. On this re-analysis, the reason for "intrusive r" being heard in `Cuba[r] is', as well as in `coppe[r] is', is simply because Cuba also ends in /r/. The same analysis extends to [schwa]s that arise in some of these dialects by the centering diphthongization of low or lax vowels as in saw, pa, baa, yeah. If `saw' [s.O.schwa] is analyzed as de-rhoticized /s.O.r/, then `sawing', where de-rhoticization is blocked by the following vowel, naturally will be pronounced [s.O.r.I.eng]. In some dialects and speech styles, nonsyllabic [schwa]s are fully assimilated to certain preceding vowels, i.e. deleted. This is true both of the [schwa] from historical /r/ as in `soar' and of the [schwa] from diphthongization as in `saw'. If both are analyzed as /s.O.r/, the complete phonetic convergence of `soar' and `saw' as [s.O(:)], and `soaring' and `sawing` as [s.O.r.I.eng] is explained. (A slightly different analysis, better for speakers who pronounce etymological and intrusive r as [schwa.r] before vowels, instead of just [r], would be that [schwa] is analyzed as a diphthongal phoneme /schwa.r/, paralleling /a.r/ in `car', /a.y/ in `eye', etc. The point remains that the "intrusive r" is synchronically basic, not inserted.) The hypothesis that intrusive r is actually an underlying r seems to fit the facts better than the alternative hypotheses I know of, viz (1) Analysis of intrusive [r] as a "linking" sound (a consonant inserted to avoid vocalic hiatus). Besides not explaining why a rhotic should be used when the adjacent sounds aren't rhotic, this also does not explain why intrusive r occurs only in dialects with de-rhoticization: this is not normally a condition on "linking" sounds: for example, glottal stop is used in hiatus in English and other languages with no corresponding glottal-deletion process. (2) Analysis (e.g. by Bill Labov) of intrusive r as due to false analogy or hypercorrection: soa' : soaring :: saw : X This fails to account for the fact that intrusive r is regular, and not just randomly distributed among individual lexical items. (3) Analysis (by Theo Vennemann) of intrusive r as "rule reversal": Beside the phonetically motivated process r --> schwa / __Vowel speakers posit a complementary, distributionally motivated rule schwa --> r / __nonVowel This avoids the problems of analyses 1 and 2, but it introduces another: if the r is inserted by a phonetically unmotivated rule, why do intrusive-r speakers say that it is as difficult (some say more difficult) to avoid [r] in `I saw it' as it is to pronounce [r] in `I hear them'? The hypothesis that /r/ is already there in underlying representation would explain this: it's hard not to say /r/ in `I saw it' if /r/ is in what you're trying to say in the first place! More technically, it's well known that glottal insertion blocks the "insertion" of r: [ay sO(.schwa) ?Ed] `I saw Ed' But phonetic processes don't block rules! The hypothesis that /r/ is there to begin with avoids such problems: glottal insertion (a fortition) would apply before de-rhoticization (a lenition), and therefore it could only feed de-rhoticization: /ay sOr Ed/ [ay sO(.schwa) ?Ed] `I saw Ed' /ay hIr Ed/ [ay hI.schwa ?Ed] `I hear Ed' The /r/-as-basic hypothesis is also supported by spellings like Eeyore for (H)ee(h)aw, or Marmie for Mommie, and also by the "hypercorrect" pronunciations, in rhotic dialects under the influence of prestigious non-rhotic dialects, of idear, vehercle, chester drawers, etc. David Stampe , __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Thu, 24 Oct 91 12:12:05 PDT From: scobbie@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Jim Scobbie) Subject: R-linking >From: Geoffrey Russom >Subject: Re: 2.681 R-linking >My understanding is that you get r-linking primarily to avoid a hiatus >between vowels. With tense "u," there's an off-glide "w" to avoid the >hiatus, so it's not surprising to find that Ellen doesn't get r-linking >in that environment. Linking "-r" is also sometimes present word-finally >before a pause (my British grandmother said "akapulker" for >"Acapulco" even at the end of a sentence). But a word-final "-r" after >tense "u" amounts to a final consonant cluster [wr], which is so awkward >for English speakers that epenthesis or vowel shortening would be used to >correct it. My understanding of /r/ suggests the above is correct. I wonder though if the grandmother in question was in fact rhotic. As a rhotic speaker, I lack certain diphthongs associated with glide /r/ in non-rhotic dialects. For example I have no [i@] diphthong, so 'idea' has a final [r]. 'Theatre' also has an extra [r]. We hear non-rhotic television, and have to construct the appropriate forms mentally, so for years I thought Gibraltar had *no* final [r] but that Chicago *did* have a medial [r]. Silly me. Wells in his 'Accents of English' talks about this stuff at interesting length. QUERY: for those speakers who have merged /r/ and /w/... what happens about /w/-/r/ insertion. I'd love to read a description of this. Some speakers I know have the very rounded /r/, a labio-dental approximant, and it's not merged with /w/, alwight? The case I'm interested in is a real /w/ /r/ merger. -- James M. Scobbie: Dept of Linguistics, Stanford University, CA 94305-2150 __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-707. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-708. Fri 25 Oct 1991. Lines: 142 Subject: 2.708 FYI Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 13:26:30 EDT From: pesetsk@Athena.MIT.EDU Subject: New interdepartmental program at MIT 2) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1991 17:04:28 -0500 From: "Mimi Klaiman" Subject: forthcoming book -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 13:26:30 EDT From: pesetsk@Athena.MIT.EDU Subject: New interdepartmental program Dear colleagues: We would appreciate it if you brought this announcement to the attention of interested students: -David Pesetsky/Ken Wexler ============================================= The Departments of Brain & Cognitive Sciences and Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT are inaugurating a new interdepartmental Ph.D.-level training program in Language: Acquisition and Computation. This program is made possible by a $1.3 million Research Training Grant (RTG) from the National Science Foundation. BACKGROUND: The study of language has traditionally been pursued separately as part of linguistics and as part of psychology. Researchers in both areas have sought to understand how language works: as a system of knowledge which all human beings hold in common, as a computational ability, and as a mental structure subject to development in the child. Linguistics at MIT has strengths in the traditional fields of phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. The Language Group in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences focuses on developmental and computational psycholinguistics, including processing. This new program represents the realization that frontline work in these areas increasingly requires more than individual strengths. The separate fields have matured to a point where researchers must begin combining the results and methods that have been developed separately into an integrated picture of linguistic knowledge and language use. The Research Training Group funded under this new program will be dedicated to the formation of new scientists for whom links between linguistics and psycholinguistics will be second nature, for whom research of the sort fostered by this program will no longer count as interdisciplinary. NATURE OF THE PROGRAM: Students in the program must first be admitted to graduate study in either the Cognitive Science Program of the Dept. of Brain and Cognitive Sciences (BCS) or the Linguistics Program of the Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy (L&P). Students will complete all the normal requirements of the relevant department, but will have five years instead of the usual four to complete these requirements. In addition, they will complete a substantial amount of coursework and research training in the other department, as well as a special seminar for program participants. Research will be guided by the faculty of both departments. Students who complete this program will have substantial professional competence in both linguistics and psycholinguistics. They will thus be poised to take full advantage of the new directions our fields will follow in the years to come. ADMISSION TO THE PROGRAM: Applications for graduate study at MIT may be requested from the Graduate Admissions Office, 3-103 MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139 (USA). Students should apply for the Ph.D. program in Cognitive Science (BCS) or in Linguistics (L&P). Students interested in the RTG program should indicate this explicitly in their application, and should explain their interest as part of their personal statement. 1992 ADMISSIONS ONLY: If you have already mailed your application to one of the two programs at MIT, but now wish to be considered for the RTG as well, send a letter explaining your interest to the relevant department(s). It will be added to your admissions file. Information about the Departmental graduate programs, Faculty research interests, and the RTG Program may be obtained from: Graduate Admissions Graduate Admissions Dept. of Brain and Cognitive Dept. of Linguistics and Sciences Philosophy E25-406 MIT 20D-213 MIT Cambridge, MA 02139 Cambridge, MA 02139 (617) 253-5742 (617) 253-4141 Questions about the RTG should be addressed to the co-directors of the program: Prof. Kenneth Wexler Prof. David Pesetsky E10-020 MIT 20D-219 MIT Cambridge, MA 02139 Cambridge, MA 02139 wexler@psyche.mit.edu pesetsk@athena.mit.edu FACULTY PARTICIPANTS IN THE RTG PROGRAM Robert C. Berwick (BCS) Michael Kenstowicz (L&P) Susan Carey (BCS) Samuel Jay Keyser (L&P) Noam Chomsky (L&P) Maryellen MacDonald (BCS) Kenneth Hale (L&P) Alec Marantz (L&P) Morris Halle (L&P) Wayne O'Neil (L&P) James Harris (L&P) David Pesetsky (L&P) Irene Heim (L&P) Steven Pinker (BCS) James Higginbotham (L&P) Mary Potter (BCS) Michael I. Jordan (BCS) Kenneth Wexler (BCS and L&P) __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1991 17:04:28 -0500 From: "Mimi Klaiman" Subject: forthcoming book I have had many inquiries about my forthcoming book Grammatical Voice. If I may be permitted to use the listserve for the purpose, I wish to inform all inter- ested persons that currently, the work is due out in time for display at the winter LSA meeting, 9-11 January, 1992, in Philadelphia; it will probably appear some 6 weeks sooner in the UK; publisher is Cambridge UP; and the projected prices are 42.50 pounds and $64.95. M.H. Klaiman __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-708. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-709. Fri 25 Oct 1991. Lines: 167 Subject: 2.709 He goes Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1991 04:22:19 EDT From: AHARRIS - Alan Harris Subject: all 2) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 07:54:46 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: precursors for be like etc. 3) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 07:19:14 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: be all etc. 4) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 01:27:51 EDT From: Ron Smyth Subject: Re: 2.704 You-Guys From: Dennis Baron Subject: guy(s) 5) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 9:13:58 CDT 6) Date: 25 Oct 91 11:18:00 EST From: "ALICE FREED" Subject: RE: 2.704 You-Guys -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1991 04:22:19 EDT From: AHARRIS - Alan Harris Subject: all Tom Shannon''s description of He/she's all. . . and he/she's like. . . is entirely correct for Valley Talk, as, I think , for all of southern California. I might add that, although much of Valley talk is rejected by college students as socially undesirable, this quotative persisits in their speech and is a clear substitute for us older fogies' I says etc^[ __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 07:54:46 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: precursors for be like etc. That's like cool, man. '50s "beat" subculture < BEV I remember language pundits inveighing against "like" as an adverb in the early '60s, referring to this "beatnik" usage. Bruce Nevin bn@bbn.com __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 07:19:14 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: be all etc. I propose that these locutions be called not quotatives but soundbiteatives. They mark something that would stand out from the general drone and be memorable on TV. They often include visual and kinesthetic aspects, but so do socalled sound bites. I doubt there is any parallel closer than true quotatives in cultures lacking TVs. Wryly, Bruce Nevin bn@bbn.com __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 01:27:51 EDT From: Ron Smyth Subject: Re: 2.704 You-Guys For the record, in northwestern Ontario, 'youse' is common but marked as lower SEC (even by those who aren't, but use it). 'You guys' is gender neutral, but still not quite an unanalyzed form, so if you ask users you'll find that they are reluctant to say they use it for women. Nobody has mentioned "youse guys" -- the plural with lower SEC connotations; no better and no worse than "youse", but worse than "you guys". Ron Smyth smyth@lake.scar.utoronto.ca __________________________________________________________________________ From: Dennis Baron Subject: guy(s) 5) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 9:13:58 CDT _Guy_ in reference to people is usu. derived from Guy Fawkes, and from the effigy, called a Guy, traditionally burned on Guy Fawkes day; intermediate sense of guy = grotesquely dressed person. OED claims use of _guy_ in the sense we have been discussing (=person) is chiefly US. Websters 9th New Collegiate Dictionary notes, "used in pl. to refer to members of a group regardless of sex " while the new "politically correct" Random House Webster's College Dictionary notes, "The use of guys meaning `people' or `folks' in reference either to a mixed group or to a group of women has drawn criticism as sexist language, no matter who employs it." Webster's Dictionary of English Usage opts for a British, rather than American, origin of the modern sense, `person,' ca. mid-19th c., adding, "it can also be used of women and corporations; it truly has become a term for "just any person." Could objections to guy as sexist signal that the word indeed has gone neutral and that some people are trying to drag it back to its former [+masc] sense? Or is it still a mixed form that some find m. and some n.? -- __________________________________________________________________________ 6) Date: 25 Oct 91 11:18:00 EST From: "ALICE FREED" Subject: RE: 2.704 You-Guys I am surprised (shocked?) to see the number of people stating that pronominal _you guys_ is "absolutely/totally gender neutral" (Scott Delancey, Barbara Partee, etc.). While the exchange about 2nd person plural pronouns in English is an interesting one, it should not lead us to ignore issues which go beyond a narrow discussion of reference. We have been this route before. There IS a difference between wide-spread usage, some prescribed and some inherited socially, and claims about the "meaning" of a term. When_he/his_ was first prescribed for agreement with sex-indefinite referents, despite common usage (then and now) of _they/their_, it did not change the "meaning" of the pronoun _he_. When a woman in her 40's, 50's 60's, etc. is referred to as a _girl_, it does not change the meaning of _girl._ Although _man_ may have started off as a generic, since it later became male-specific, it is now at best ambiguous. Studies have consistently shown that people hear and understand generic _man_ to include primarily male humans. The fact that children learn the male-specific meaning first may have a lot to do with this. Now we have our most recent example of the male form being used as a generic --once again, maleness becomes the norm. For many of us who grew up singing songs from "Guys and Dolls" as well as for our students who refer to boys as _guys_ and girls as _girls_, a guy is still a guy, despite the the fact that _you guys_ is used in addressing girls and women. For us it is ALWAYS sex-specific. >From a social, shall we call it prescriptive feminist standpoint, I object to its usage and believe that it is damaging to girls and should be avoided. Here of course, is where the disagreement comes in. May I ask what the Whorfians would say? __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-709. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-710. Fri 25 Oct 1991. Lines: 115 Subject: 2.710 Queries Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 02:14:51 -0400 From: "l. valentine" Subject: Adjective Order in NP's 2) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1991 09:50:59 +0000 From: Mark Sanderson Subject: word sense disambiguation by people 3) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 09:36 EDT From: CHARLES LAUGHLIN Subject: QUERY 4) Date: 23 Oct 91 11:46:27 EDT From: "CHRISTOPHER A. BREWSTER" Subject: LRE programme of EEC -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 02:14:51 -0400 From: "l. valentine" Subject: Adjective Order in NP's Does anyone know of any literature addressing the issue of the order of adjectives in English NP's? How about French? Thank you. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1991 09:50:59 +0000 From: Mark Sanderson Subject: word sense disambiguation by people I am doing some research into word sense disambiguation applied to information retrieval. Recently I was reading a paper that said, "a number of researchers in text processing have observed that people can consistently determine the sense of a word simply by examining the half dozen or so words just before and after the word in focus." But then the paper doesn't seem to directly reference any papers mentioning this. I would really like to track down these papers, does anyone have a reference for them ? +------------------------------------------------------------+ | Mail : Mark Sanderson, Department of Computing Science, | | The University, Glasgow G12 8QQ, Scotland, UK. | +------------------------------------------------------------+ | If yer no Scottish, away and throw shite at yourself | +-------------------------------------+----------------------+ | e-mail : sanderso@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk | Tel: +44 41 330 4264 | | | Fax: +44 41 330 4913 | +-------------------------------------+----------------------+ __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 09:36 EDT From: CHARLES LAUGHLIN Subject: QUERY Re: Query Will the reader that contacted me on the whereabouts of John deVries at Carleton University please contact me again. Your message was wiped. Thanks. Charles Laughlin Charles Laughlin __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: 23 Oct 91 11:46:27 EDT From: "CHRISTOPHER A. BREWSTER" Subject: LRE programme of EEC This addressed to LINGUIST members in the EEC. We would like to hear about intended proposals to the DG XIII Linguistic Research and Engineering programme which need a partner for Modern Greek. The Wire Communications Laboratory has ten years experience in speech processing (recognition and synthesis) and has participated in ESPRIT 860 "Linguistic Analysis of European Languages" and ESPRIT 2104 "POLYGLOT" - the latter concerned with multilingual synthesis and speech recognition. We can offer expertise in automated labelling (text-tagging), synthesis, speech recognition, syntactic analysis, morphological analysis, phoneme-to- grapheme systems, grapheme-to-phoneme systems. We possess extensive corpora of Modern Greek, and full-for and lemmatic dictionaries for Modern Greek. We are interested in partipating any cooperative venture, but particularly in the context of applications to the LRE programme. Christopher Brewster p.p. G. Kokkinakis, Wire Communications Laboratory, University of Patras, Patras, Greece fax 30 61 991855 email brewster@grpatvx1 __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-710. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-711. Fri 25 Oct 1991. Lines: 141 Subject: 2.711 Pragmatics, Possessive, ASL, Anymore Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 11:21:24 EDT From: Larry Horn Subject: Re: 2.698 Queries 2) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 10:39:48 EDT From: cowan@uunet.UU.NET (John Cowan) Subject: Re: 2.691 Possessive 3) Date: Tue, 22 Oct 91 17:46:44 EDT From: Stavros Macrakis Subject: ASL Literature 4) Date: Tue, 22 Oct 91 19:27:04 -0700 From: jtang@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Joyce Tang) Subject: double modals, anymore -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 11:21:24 EDT From: Larry Horn Subject: Re: 2.698 Queries Re Michael Covington's search for the first pragmatics course: I'm pretty sure I taught such a course during or (just) before the spring of 1978 at the University of Wisconsin, but I also have a distinct memory of consulting a bibliography in preparing that course for a course called something like Pragmatics and Speech Acts that was taught at the University of Cambridge (like the Levinson course Michael mentions) sometime in the MID-seventies by (I'm almost positive) Elinor Ochs (then-)Keenan. Sorry not to have done a better job on the record-keeping. As for Alan Dench's problem with Nyungar idiophonic nomenclature, I can only suggest "vasculo-congestive". Larry Horn __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 10:39:48 EDT From: cowan@uunet.UU.NET (John Cowan) Subject: Re: 2.691 Possessive Steve Harlow writes: > If you produce a > coordinate possessive structure, of which the last item is a pronoun, you get > by analogy with non-pronominal NPs and pronominal possessives (for example) > the following (increasingly desperate) range of possibilities: > > John's and my car [other forms omitted] > None of these is any good for me (nor for many British English speakers I have > asked about the topic). The only grammatical way for us to express this is by > paraphrase - eg. 'the car belonging to John and me'. For me (white, American, middle-class, Northern dialect), this is the only possible form of those listed. (Of course, I can use the paraphrase too.) It is entirely natural for me. -- cowan@snark.thyrsus.com ...!uunet!cbmvax!snark!cowan e'osai ko sarji la lojban __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Tue, 22 Oct 91 17:46:44 EDT From: Stavros Macrakis Subject: ASL Literature Christie asks me not to `hide my feelings'. I don't see why I should be exposing my feelings to the Linguist list. If my `New Logic' squib wasn't explicit enough, I'll rephrase: calling something `oppressive' is not a reasoned argument, but an appeal to goodthink. As for substance, my original posting claimed that a permanent record (written, audiotaped, videotaped, ...) of important cultural artifacts (often called `literature') is one good motivation for studying a language. I also pointed out that there are others. Where's the oppression in that? -s __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Tue, 22 Oct 91 19:27:04 -0700 From: jtang@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Joyce Tang) Subject: double modals, anymore Some comments, questions 1) on double modals and 2) on 'anymore': 1. When 'might'+modal is used, it seems to me that that 'might' might be being used as an adverb of unconfidence or politeness like 'maybe'; in my idiolect, I can use 'maybe' in all the same contexts as 'might could'-speakers use 'might': eg, "We maybe should go to the store now" "But she maybe couldn't have done anything better". Another utterance I've heard was "[that's something] which you may have might not [thought of]"; I can say, "that's something which you may have maybe not thought of". Admittedly, I use 'maybe' in a lot more contexts than 'might' can occur (I realize that 'might' doesn't have *all* the hallmarks of adverbs), but would it help to think of 'might' as an adverb rather than as a modal? 2. I share Scott DeLancey's intuition that some people have come to learn the meaning of 'anymore' as something like 'as of recently', rather than as 'still'. When one negates 'still', the negation is of continuation-into-the-present; when one negates 'as of recently', the negation is of a just-begun-present-state. I don't speak this dialect, but it does make sense to me, given the input contexts of 'anymore': "Katie doesn't like me anymore" "K likes me anymore" a) K does not continue to like me => "K still likes me" b) K does not, as of recently, like me => "Katie now likes me" "Can't you skate anymore?" a) You do not continue to be able to skate b) You are not, as of recently, able to skate Given such input patterns, it would be just as reasonable for a learner to infer that 'anymore' means 'these days' as it would be to infer that it means 'still'. Back to Ron Smyth's query to acquisition people. What can be said about children's learning of semantics when the input is ambiguous like this? Joyce T. __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-711. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-712. Fri 25 Oct 1991. Lines: 136 Subject: 2.712 Chinese and Dravidian Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 12:26 BST From: Steve Harlow Subject: RE: 2.702 Queries 2) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 13:55 BST From: Steve Harlow Subject: RE: 2.697 Queries: Chinese, Dravidian 3) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 18:00:50 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@mts.cc.wayne.edu Subject: Dravidian Retroflexes 4) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 08:13:36 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: Nostratic/Dravidian retroflexion -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 12:26 BST From: Steve Harlow Subject: RE: 2.702 Queries >Could anyone provide me some information about lexical borrowings? I've >noticed that when Chinese bilinguals converse in Chinese, they sometimes have >English words. Any literature in this aspect? Thanks in advance. > 00Z0ZHAO@bsuvax1.bitnet Dear 00Z0ZHAO, Try Aspects of Chinese Sociolinguistics - essays by Yuen Ren Chao, edited by Anwar S Dil, Stanford UP, 1976, particularly the very short paper on 'skipants'. Steve Harlow University of York __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 13:55 BST From: Steve Harlow Subject: RE: 2.697 Queries: Chinese, Dravidian >I am looking for references to works on Chinese NPs (in the hope of finding >data for a DP-analysis approach to Chinese.) Does anyone know likely > sources? >Laurel Smith Stvan >Northwestern University There is an article by Jane Tang in Linguistics 28-2 (1990) on 'The DP analysis of the Chinese noun phrase'. Steve Harlow __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 18:00:50 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@mts.cc.wayne.edu Subject: Dravidian Retroflexes Madhav Deshpande (it's good to hear from an old friend) asks about the origin of the Dravidian reftroflexes according to the Nostratic theory of Illich-Svitych, suggesting that there is a possible difficulty involved, since other Nostratic languages do not appear to have retroflexes. First, I think this is a false problem, for the fact that Indo-Aryan languages have retroflexes whereas most of the rest of IE does not is not considered a problem for the "Indo-European theory". Nor is the fact that Swedish and Norwegian have retroflexes and the rest of Germanic lacks them considered a problem for the "Germanic hypothesis". Second, I personally believe that Dravidian is the weakest link by far in the Nostratic chain. Thus it seems to me virtually certain that IE is related to Uralic, almost as certain that both of these are related to Altaic (and entirely certain that the Altaic languages are indeed related to each other), and much much less certain that this group is related to Kartvelian and Afroasiatic (although quite likely in each case), but the Dravidian connection seems to me less than a 50% shot. Third, Illich-Svitych appears to have believed that Dravidian retroflex t. comes from Nostratic voiced d whereas Dravidian non-retroflex t comes from Nostratic voiceless t and glottalized t'. In the case of the laterals and nasals, he appears to have believed that the Dravidian contrasts correspond to Nostratic ones (which are also reflected in Uralic) between different different laterals and nasals (whose phonetic features are identified with less precision). And in the case of the rhotics, the contrast is again is supposed to be Proto-Nostratic, involving two rhotics which are also supposed to be distinguished in Altaic. __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 08:13:36 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: Nostratic/Dravidian retroflexion Madhav Deshpande (madhav.deshpande@um.cc.umich.edu) challenges Nostratic advocates to account for retroflexion in proto-Dravidian. I had long understood that Indo-Aryan acquired retroflexion from Dravidian, as an areal feature. Hock dismisses this customary view in his _Principles of Historical Linguistics_, arguing that it can be accounted for entirely internally to Indo-Aryan (p. 500, with reference to pp. 77-9). Similar arguments apply to Dravidian wrt other languages considered related in Nostratic. While I am agnostic re Nostratic, I must say this looks like a red herring to me. >. . . As far as we know, retroflex consonants are reconstructed >as far back as Proto-Dravidian. If Dravidian is a branch of Nostratic >family, what happens to retroflexion? Do we reconstruct retroflexion >to Proto-Nostratic? Or, do we claim that Dravidian independently >developed retroflexion? Any suggestions? Bruce Nevin bn@bbn.com __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-712. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-713. Fri 25 Oct 1991. Lines: 172 Subject: 2.713 Names Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 01:21:48 EDT From: Ron Smyth Subject: Re: 2.703 Using last`names 2) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 15:10:25 EST From: j.guy@trl.oz.au (Jacques Guy) Subject: Using last names 3) Date: Thu, 24 Oct 91 18:01 EST From: NMILLER@vax1.trincoll.edu Subject: Re: 2.696 Using Names 4) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1991 11:13 EDT From: Mark H Aronoff Subject: Re: 2.703 Using last`names 5) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1991 08:35 CST From: LIFY460@orange.cc.utexas.edu Subject: Re: 2.703 Using last`names -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 01:21:48 EDT From: Ron Smyth Subject: Re: 2.703 Using last`names My experience is that last naming at school in the 1960's (Gr. 3 to 13) is had two distinct functions. First, the military/gym class social distancing of buddies (our gym teachers were ex-military) created a kind of camaraderie without intimacy. Secondly, last-naming was used to ostracize members of a loosely-knit group. Being called 'Smyth' in one context meant "Yeah, nice shot". In another, it meant "you'll never be one of us". When professors used it in the early 1970's, I felt that it meant neither of the above, and I was happy to find that it was on the way out. By the end of my B.A. in 1975 it was completely gone. Did the disco era wipe it out? Ron Smyth smyth@lake.scar.utoronto.ca __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 15:10:25 EST From: j.guy@trl.oz.au (Jacques Guy) Subject: Using last names When I was a kid in primary school and high school our teachers always addressed us by last names. The reason was probably very simple: in those days, far-fetched Christian names were not fashionable, so that you'd have half-a-dozen or a dozen "Jacques" per classroom, closely followed by "Jean". We'd also call one another by last names. Question, if anyone knows: how are school children called in Arab countries, where most are likely to have Muhammad or Ali as first names? __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Thu, 24 Oct 91 18:01 EST From: NMILLER@vax1.trincoll.edu Subject: Re: 2.696 Using Names Larry Hutchinson's experience with last names and intimacy among men matches mine exactly. My high-school (1) and college friends (1) and I use last names exclusively. The first name would be unthinkable. Indeed, I introduced my college friend to his future wife; she too has called him by his last name for more than 45 years. Hell, his _children_ have called me 'Miller' since they could talk. But. I've always been under the impression that this changed sometime in the mid-60's. Am I mistaken? Certainly my sons don't follow that practice with their friends. Norman Miller __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1991 11:13 EDT From: Mark H Aronoff Subject: Re: 2.703 Using last`names State University of New York at Stony Brook Stony Brook, NY 11794-4376 Mark H Aronoff Linguistics 632-7775 25-Oct-1991 11:05am EDT FROM: MARONOFF TO: The Linguist List ( _@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu:LINGUIST@TAMVM1.BITNET) SUBJECT: RE: 2.703 Using last`names What about first-naming by strangers? Back when, the only people who first-named strangers were police officers. They pull you (never me!) over for speeding, ask for your licence, and then say: Well Mark, do you know that you were doing 56 in a 55 mph zone?" That really put one in one's place. But now, people I don't know from Adam call me up on the phone and first-name me. It gets my goat (etymology please!) and my wife has also noticed it. To me, it is an indicator of false intimacy. At the university, I associate it with the department of human resources (formerly personnel). I suspect that it is a factor in the first-naming practice of telephone sales-people, though I agree that privacy is also strangely at work there. Note its use in advertising, as in the celebrated old sexist airline ad: I'm Barbara, fly me. I would like to blame it on California, or better on Ronald Reagan, but ... __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1991 08:35 CST From: LIFY460@orange.cc.utexas.edu Subject: Re: 2.703 Using last`names The aspect of using last names brought up by Susann Luperfoy is a very important one, and one that seems not to have been addressed in this long and very interesting exchange on the topic. The last names that males have are the ones they are likely to have their whole lives. the last names that women have may come an go--and indeed that fact is a source of confusion and possibly shame for women. So in addition to other differences between what it means to call a girl/woman by her last name and what it means to call a boy/man by his, there's the aspect of hesitation (or whatever it is) brought by the knowledge that this may not be her "real" name anyway. This fact is exploited, at least unconsciously, I think, by people (male gym teachers come to mind) who are trying to humiliate girls by calling them by their last names. The confusion and humiliation are not always intentional, though. I recall being called by my (then married) last name in grad school in a hearty, comradely fashion by a fellow (male, older) grad student. My interior response was confusion. Here he was scooping me into the boys' club (I perceived it as a definitely boys-y thing to do) as if I were a buddy and a peer by a name that wasn't even mine. How can you be a buddy if you don't even know a person's name? But what choice did he have? Very confusing! By the way, is this linguistics? I find it very interesting, especially since it's a topic that we seem to be pioneering in exploring, and especially especially in the wake of the Thomas hearings. But is this the sort of thing that "belongs" in this discussion group, apropos of Helen and Anthony's comments about whether or not to slice up or somehow streamline the volume of LINGUIST offerings? My own response is something like yes and no. I'd hate to have the LINGUIST list reserved for theoretical linguistics topics, but on the other hand, the last-naming sort of discussion could go very far afield from linguistics. Is it possible to do something like this: leave the LINGUIST list open to any topic that comes up in the course of our linguistic discussions, and then if the discussion starts to get more sociological or mathematical or neurological, H or A could declare a cut-off and shunt the discussion to another list (which would have to be established). I don't think we should have a special list for each of these topics, because that contradicts the purpose of the LINGUIST list, namely to be cross-disciplinary within linguistics. But a single parallel list in which people could hash out these issues to their hearts' content might help us keep the main list both lean and diverse. What do you all/guys think?iO }i Christine Kamprath __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-713. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-714. Sat 26 Oct 1991. Lines: 121 Subject: 2.714 Is language Finite? Motion Verbs Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 14:54:42 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Re: 2.686 Is language infinite 2) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 10:24:11 EDT From: Larry Horn Subject: Come and Bring 3) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 09:24 EDT From: "Barbara.Abbott" Subject: Bring and come 4) Date: Tue, 22 Oct 91 22:46 EST From: BARBARA PARTEE Subject: Motion Verbs -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 14:54:42 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Re: 2.686 Is language infinite In response to Henry Kucera's query re Hockett's baseball/football analogy: Hockett, if I remember correctly, argues that football scores above a certain number are impossible because a game of football is played within a closed time interval (whereas a baseball game continues until one side wins, howe- ver long it takes). The problem I have always had with this argument is that I see an equivocation in 'impossible'. It's certainly true that for team of human football players to score, say, 1m. points in a single game would be impossible from a performance standpoint. But insofar as the rules of football are concerned, such a score is perfectly possible. What I mean by this is that given the rules (particularly as they pertain to what kind of play is worth how many points) you can, by induction, prove that for any n > 1 there is a combination of plays that will yield n points. In that sense, all scores greater than 1 are possible. And in the SAME sense, a score of 1 is IMPOSSIBLE because while there is a play worth just 1 point (namely the point after touchdown), this play can- not be executed until a touchdown (worth 6 points) has already been scored. I think this makes it clear that two quite different senses of 'impossible' are involved when you say (a) that 1 is an impossible score, and (b) that 1m. is an impossible score. As long as I have the floor (metaphorically speaking), let me toss in ano- ther observation that I don't think has yet been made in this discussion. Think about what you do when you program a computer to, say, add arbitrary sequences of numbers: 2 + 2, 3 + 9 + 24 + 837, etc. No actualy computer is ever going to be given anything but a finite sequence to work with, and no actual computer will be able to exceed a certain length limit (nor, indeed, if the sum is too large, a limit on the sizes of the various terms in the expression). But when you program a computer to do things like this, you write the program with a control structure that allows in principle for all kinds of possibilities that are going to be beyond the capacities of any actual machine. As far as the programmer is concerned, in other words, there is no upper bound on either the length of the sequence of terms to be added or on the size of the sum. So as to simplify the task, the programmer addresses an ideal machine. The analogy to what a linguist does is not pre- cise, but I think that it is revealing nonetheless. Michael Kac __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 10:24:11 EDT From: Larry Horn Subject: Come and Bring Re Adam Kilgarriff's query on "come" and "bring" patterns: besides the Fillmore citations, there's a contemporaneous squib in Linguistic Inquiry 2 (1971): 260-65 by Bob Binnick called "Bring and Come" in which a number of idioms that allow both predicates (come about/bring about, come up/bring up, come to/bring to) are listed, along with a number that don't (come to grief/*bring to grief, come clean/*bring clean, come to pass/*bring to pass). [Fillmore is cited, along with Perlmutter, in a footnote as having come up with [!] "essentially the same set of facts".] To the Binnick/Fillmore lists we can now add (at least in some dialects) come out/bring out [as gay, out of the closet, etc.]. My favorite uncited example of the non-parallel variety is come a cropper/*bring a cropper. Incidentally, these patterns were historically important in the support they offered for the then popular view of lexical decomposition in the grammar, in that an abstract higher predicate CAUSE seems to have to apply to an idiom chunky, sublexical item "come". --Larry Horn __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 09:24 EDT From: "Barbara.Abbott" Subject: Bring and come Another early reference on shared idioms with bring and come is Robert Binnick's 1971 squib "Bring and come", in LInguistic Inquiry vol. 2. (I sent this info. to Adam Kilgarriff separately, but maybe others would be interested.) __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Tue, 22 Oct 91 22:46 EST From: BARBARA PARTEE Subject: Motion Verbs Re "Bring" and "come": Another early reference is Robert Binnick (1971) "Bring and come", LI 2.2 260-265. That squib contains a long list of parallel idioms. -Barbara Partee partee@cs.umass.edu __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-714. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-715. Sat 26 Oct 1991. Lines: 129 Subject: 2.715 Aboriginal Material, Semiotics Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 13:13:43 EST From: dgn612@csc2.anu.edu.au (David Nash) Subject: An Archive of Australian Aboriginal Linguistic Material 2) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1991 05:37:11 EDT From: AHARRIS - Alan Harris Subject: PLEASE POST RE:SEMIOTICS COMMISSION AT SCA/BUSINESS MEETING -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 13:13:43 EST From: dgn612@csc2.anu.edu.au (David Nash) Subject: An Archive of Australian Aboriginal Linguistic Material A List of Machine-Readable Texts held at AIATSIS, Canberra September 1991 A catalog giving brief details of material held in the Aboriginal Studies Electronic Data Archive of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies is available on the LINGUIST listserv. This catalog may be obtained by sending the message: get aboriginal-cat to the address: listserv@uniwa.uwa.oz.au *** *** *** What is the Aboriginal Studies Electronic Data Archive? The archive provides a service to researchers in the field of Aboriginal Studies. By accessing information in electronic form researchers can engage in comparative linguistic work, can locate references that are not available by keyword searching of catalogues, and can 'add value' to existing work (by producing various forms of output from existing data files). Researchers may request particular searches or other uses of the archive. The archive offers a free service of secure long term storage of electronic data. It also arranges for the production of information in electronic form from paper texts, using optical scanning technology. Data and scanned graphics can be obtained from the archive for use in literature production. The archive is available to researchers, subject to deposit and access conditions. It currently has material of the following types: * Dictionaries of Aboriginal languages. * Texts in Aboriginal languages. * Graphics for use in literature production. * General texts relating to Aboriginal Australia. * Theses on topics in Aboriginal Studies. In addition the archive has software and can provide information and advice about use of Macintosh computers. What restrictions are there? Normal copyright restrictions apply, and there may be additional restrictions placed on items in the archive by depositors. Deposit and access forms accompany each item, specifying the type of access permitted. Many items are freely available for the use of researchers. Deposit and access forms are included in the centre pages of this catalogue. How can I use the archive? In two ways. First, you can deposit information with the archive. Any information that you produce or have produced on disk can be deposited. Any information that would normally be deposited with the AIATSIS in a hard copy can now also be deposited in electronic form. Second, you can request information from the archive. You will then be sent a copy of the data, subject to the access restrictions placed on it by the depositor. There may be nominal charges for disks and documentation. For further information contact: Nick Thieberger Aboriginal Studies Electronic Data Archive AIATSIS GPO Box 553 Canberra ACT 2601 Australia +61-6 246 1170 +61-6 249 7310 (fax) e-mail: aiatsis@peg.pegasus.oz.au (within Australia) aiatsis@peg.apc.org (outside Australia) __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1991 05:37:11 EDT From: AHARRIS - Alan Harris Subject: PLEASE POST RE:SEMIOTICS COMMISSION AT SCA/BUSINESS MEETING TO: ALL COMMUNICATORS/SEMIOTICIANS ATTENDING SCA IN ATLANTA. WE WANT TO REMIND YOU ONCE AGAIN OF THE DROP IN BUSINESS MEETING(S) WE WILL BE HAVING AT sPEECH cOMMUNICATION aSSOC. NATIONAL CONVENTION IN ATLANTA. THURS. OCT.31 (THE FIRST DAY OF THE CONVENTION) BETWEEN 12-5 PM TO DISCUSS PLANS, ROUND UP SIGNATURES FOR THE PETITION(S) TO POPOSE THE COMMISSION ON SEMIOTICS IN THE SCA (SEMCOM), GET A WORKING GROUP OF OFFICER(S) AND THE LIKE. IF NECESSARY, A SECOND BUSINESS MTG. ON SATURDAY, noV. 2, 7:15-8:45. THE THURS. MTG IS IN TOWER 3; THE SATURDAY ONE, TOWER 16. COME AND SHOW YOUR SUPPORT; LEND A VOICE! WE CANNOT DO IT ALONE. JACKIE MARTINEZ (BABSON COLLEGE) ALAN HARRIS (CSU, NORTHRIDGE) __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-715. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-716. Sun 27 Oct 1991. Lines: 65 Subject: 2.716 Helsinki Workshop Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1991 16:19 EET From: Arto Anttila Subject: Helsinki workshop -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1991 16:19 EET From: Arto Anttila Subject: Helsinki workshop This notice is a bit late, I'm sorry. My only excuse is that I joined the linguist list only very recently. So here goes: ********************************************************************* SYMBOL MANIPULATION CONNECTIONISM AND THE SEMANTICS OF NATURAL LANGUAGE November 13-15, 1991 University of Helsinki Finland ********************************************************************* A workshop to be held at Saatytalo, Snellmaninkatu 9-11, Helsinki. ORGANISERS The Linguistic Association of Finland (SKY) The Finnish Artificial Intelligence Society (STeS) The Philosophical Society of Finland (SFY) INVITED SPEAKERS Graeme Hirst, University of Toronto Ronald W. Langacker, University of California, San Diego Keith Stenning, University of Edinburgh CONTACT INFORMATION Arto Anttila Research Unit for Computational Linguistics University of Helsinki tel. (90) 191 3500 e-mail: aanttila@finuh.bitnet _____________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-716. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-717. Sun 27 Oct 1991. Lines: 105 Subject: 2.217 PC Dictionaries, Prolog Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 24 Oct 91 11:07:33 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: PC dictionary again 2) Date: Thu, 24 Oct 91 10:46 PDT From: Pamela Munro Subject: Re: 2.587 Queries 3) Date: Sat, 26 Oct 91 18:39:55 EDT From: Michael Covington Subject: Re: 2.701 Computational: Shoebox, Speech Database, Prolog -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 24 Oct 91 11:07:33 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: PC dictionary again A followup on the "PC dictionary" note that came up a while back. I read in the NYT yesterday (10/22) that a Federal jury had the previous day awarded Merriam-Webster more than $2M, plus $500,000 in punitive damages, after finding that Random House's copycat "Webster's College Dictionary" intentionally infringed on their design. The socalled "PC" Random House dictionary comes in a bright red jacket with "Webster's" in white lettering down the spine--characteristics of the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate dictionary since 1973. Lawyers for Random House maintained that people had mixed up the words "collegiate" and "college" long before the lawsuit, as though that were germane, material, pertinent, or relevant to the issue. Bruce Nevin bn@bbn.com __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Thu, 24 Oct 91 10:46 PDT From: Pamela Munro Subject: Re: 2.587 Queries RE: Machine readable dictionaries I'm sorry that I've been so swamped I haven't written to report the two responses I received to my request for information about machine readable dictionaries a few weeks ago. Bert Peeters wrote to suggest Le Robert electronique (on CD Rom), and Richard (@celex.kun.nl) of the Centre for Lexical Information in Nijmegen let me know about the work his group is doing on Dutch, English, and German. When I conveyed all this to my former student for whom I had made the request (as I will do with any other responses I receive) he was most grateful. Thanks to all. Pam Munro __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Sat, 26 Oct 91 18:39:55 EDT From: Michael Covington Subject: Re: 2.701 Computational: Shoebox, Speech Database, Prolog Re: Prolog Of _course_ Prolog isn't a purely declarative language. It's a procedural language which happens to be organized around a couple of very powerful procedures (unification, and SLR-resolution). Most programming languages are organized around a much simpler built-in procedure: "Do the first thing in the list, then the second, then the third..." This means that many Prolog clauses can be read _both_ procedurally (To prove P, prove Q and then prove R) and non-procedurally (P if Q and R). Back in 1957, Fortran was greeted the same way. It was the first program- ming language that allowed mathematicians to write X=Y+Z instead of LOAD Y, ADD Z, STORE X. In that sense, Fortran was "non-procedural." But in fact it's impossible to use Fortran without thinking about the steps that the computer goes through, and some Fortran assignment statements, such as X=X+1, make sense only on a procedural interpretation. Prolog is very useful for linguistic work. The two important things to realize very early on are (1) it _is_ procedural and you have to know what the computer is doing; (2) whenever possible you should process symbolic structures rather than character strings. ------------------------------------------------------------- - 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-2-717. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-718. Sun 27 Oct 1991. Lines: 153 Subject: 2.718 Ideophones Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1991 10:32 EST From: Herb Stahlke <00HFSTAHLKE@LEO.BSUVC.BSU.EDU> Subject: More on ideophones 2) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1991 12:20:36 -0700 (PDT) From: Christopher Brockett Subject: Re: 2.706 Onomatopenia 3) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 12:29:49 EST From: daysa@mace.cc.purdue.edu (,sd) Subject: Re: 2.706 Onomatopenia 4) Date: Sat, 26 Oct 91 17:56:10 CDT From: Nancy L. Dray Subject: Wham! Bam! binj-binj-binj... -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1991 10:32 EST From: Herb Stahlke <00HFSTAHLKE@LEO.BSUVC.BSU.EDU> Subject: More on ideophones I don't know how broad the set of words is that Alan Dench is dealing with. Certainly in many West African languages the class of ideophone is more a matter of morphophonology than of lexicon. Ideophones can be nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and even verbs, provided those categories can all be justified in a particular language. In Yatye (O is open o, N is angma, S is ash), O`Ngba`ra`Ngba` means "oil drum" and O`ba`ka`ri'Ngba`Ngba` is a rather raucous sounding species of hornbill. tSOO` is descriptive of the sound made when urinating, to keep close to the apparent theme of this discussion, and waa'tsa'tsa' (which may be continued with more of tsa') means something like completely. The first two are onomatopoeic nouns, the third an onomatopoeic adverb, and the last an adverb that is not onomatopoeic but still and ideophone. One of the questions about ideophones in Yoruba is whether they are a morphophonologically distinct class from other words. They exhibit types of tonal, phonotactic, and reduplicative behavior that would seem to suggest that they are, but it's a case where you cannot provide a set of descriptive properties that is both necessary and sufficient. There are many non-ideophonic nouns, for example, that share some of the properties of ideophones, such as switching the value of the feature gravity from syllable to syllable, but not potential for reduplication. Before rejecting the term ideophone for the Australian phenomena, I would want to know whether the class of words Dench is working on is similarly ill-defined. Herb Stahlke Ball State University __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1991 12:20:36 -0700 (PDT) From: Christopher Brockett Subject: Re: 2.706 Onomatopenia The term commonly employed with respect to similar sound symbolism in Japanese is 'mimetic.' Traditional Japanese grammar distinguishes between two types: *giseigo* or onomatapoeia, and *gitaigo* or words representing states or manner. Joe Grimes once suggested to me that kinesthetic might be an appropriate catchall term for these. __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 12:29:49 EST From: daysa@mace.cc.purdue.edu (,sd) Subject: Re: 2.706 Onomatopenia Re: Bif! Bap! Kapow! -- Why not use one of the above?!? Personally, I like the idea of having a word-form labled/known as a 'kapow'. Sean Day Purdue University/ Undue Perversity __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Sat, 26 Oct 91 17:56:10 CDT From: Nancy L. Dray Subject: Wham! Bam! binj-binj-binj... A. Dench's examples kind of put one in mind of a porno version of the old Batman series (or comic book if you prefer)... Actually, the idea of well-crafted comic-book versions of myth-texts in the vernacular, with expressions such as these splashed across the frames at appropriate moments, is oddly appealing.... (or perhaps I'm just weird....) ...but never mind that, I think the term Dench is looking for is "expressives"; this term was coined by Gerard Diffloth (formerly of the University of Chicago, now at Cornell, I believe) to refer to a kind of productive word-class especially evident in the many Asian languages that Diffloth specializes in, though also to be found (or, at least, related phenomena are also to be found) in many other languages. Some references to Diffloth's work are: Diffloth, Gerard. 1972. "Notes on expressive meaning." CLS 8. Reprinted (with postscript) in E. Schiller, B. Need, D. Varley, & W. Eilfort, eds., _The Best of CLS_ (Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society, 1988). (e-mail address for CLS is cls@sapir.uchicago.edu) Diffloth, Gerard. 1976. "Expressives in Semai." _Austroasiatic Studies_, Oceanic Linguistics Special Publication No. 13, University of Hawaii Press. Diffloth, Gerard. 1979. "Expressive phonology and prosaic phonology of Mon-Khmer." _Studies in Tai and Mon-Khmer Phonetics and Phonology in Honour of E. J. A. Henderson_ (Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University Press). Other work on expressives by students of Diffloth includes Martha S. Ratliff's work on Hmong expressives, which appears in her University of Chicago dissertation (ca. 1986?) and in at least one conference paper, and Janis B. Nuckolls' work on Quechua expressives, which I believe appears in her dissertation (University of Chicago, ca. 1990?) and may also be written up elsewhere. (Sorry to be so vague about the references. The departmental office is closed right now, the library's a long walk away in the rain, and I'd like to send this message while it is still timely. If you want more info, please e-mail me.) Ratliff is currently at Wayne State University in Detroit, and she is on e-mail, though I can't find her address (perhaps Alexis Manaster-Ramer has it). Nuckolls is at Indiana University (though currently on leave and based at Emory), and I have her e-mail address if anyone wants to contact her for additional references. I hope this helps to bring this very important work to a wider audience! NLD __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-718. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-719. Sun 27 Oct 1991. Lines: 121 Subject: 2.719 Word Senses Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 16:04:56 PDT From: Marti Hearst Subject: 2.710 Queries 2) Date: Sat, 26 Oct 91 20:30:17 -0500 From: David D. Lewis Subject: word sense disambiguation -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 16:04:56 PDT From: Marti Hearst Subject: 2.710 Queries (Moderators: if this is too long or not of general interest, I won't be offended if you don't post it to the entire list.) I'm replying to: 2) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1991 09:50:59 +0000 From: Mark Sanderson Subject: word sense disambiguation by people I am doing some research into word sense disambiguation applied to information retrieval. Recently I was reading a paper that said, "a number of researchers in text processing have observed that people can consistently determine the sense of a word simply by examining the half dozen or so words just before and after the word in focus." But then the paper doesn't seem to directly reference any papers mentioning this. I would really like to track down these papers, does anyone have a reference for them ? I have several references for disambiguation via local context. The Kelly and Stone is pioneer work on computational disambiguation, although it focuses on part-of-speech disambiguation rather than determining the sense given that the word has more than one meaning with the same part of speech. The Choueka reference has experimental evidence that human readers can disambiguate in this way. The next four papers describe recent work that use this assumption to automatically assign the correct sense. There is also work on using the surrounding context of dictionary definitions, and I enclose a well-known reference for this, by Lesk. *I* would like references that show that word sense disambiguation is useful for information retrieval. The only one that I know of is the Krovetz reference that I list at the end, and that is inconclusive. Do you have others? Edward Kelly and Philip Stone, "Computer recognition of english word senses", "North-Holland Linguistics Series", 13, "North-Holland", "Amsterdam", 1975 Y. Choueka and S. Luisgnan, "Disambiguation by Short Contexts", "Computers and the Humanities", 19(3), 147-157,1985 Kenneth Church, (don't have title here), "The Proceedings of the 7th Annual Conference of the UW Centre for the New OED and Text Research: Using Corpora", "Oxford", 1991 George A. Miller and Daniel A. Teibel, "A Proposal for Lexical Disambiguation", "Proceedings of the DARPA Speech and Natural Language Workshop", 1991 Uri Zernik, "TRAIN1 vs. TRAIN2: Tagging Word Senses in Corpus", RIAO 91 Conference Proceedings", Barcelona, Spain, 567-585, 1991 Marti A. Hearst, "Noun Homograph Disambiguation using Local Context in Large Text Corpora", "The Proceedings of the 7th Annual Conference of the UW Centre for the New OED and Text Research: Using Corpora", "Oxford", 1991 Michael Lesk, "Automatic Sense Disambiguation Using Machine Readable Dictionaries: How to Tell a Pine Cone from an Ice Cream Cone, "Proceedings of the 1986 SIGDOC Conference", 1987 Robert Krovetz and Bruce Croft, "Word Sense Disambiguation Using Machine-Readable Dictionaries", Proceedings of the Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval",Cambridge, MA, 127-136, 1989 Marti Hearst marti@auspex.berkeley.edu __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Sat, 26 Oct 91 20:30:17 -0500 From: David D. Lewis Subject: word sense disambiguation Re Mark Sanderson's query on word sense disambiguation using a small number of words of context's there's a paper on this by Choueka and Lusignan, "Disambiguation by Short Contexts", Computers and the Humanities, 19, pp. 147--157, 1985. This isn't from the psych literature however, as your mentioning of "focus" seemed to suggest. David D. Lewis | net: lewis@tira.uchicago.edu Center for Info. and Language Studies; U Chicago| ph. 312-702-6992 1100 E. 57th St.; JRL S-116 | fax. 312-702-0775 Chicago, IL 60637; USA | __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-719. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-720. Sun 27 Oct 1991. Lines: 177 Subject: 2.720 R-Linking Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 15:20 EST From: "John J. McCarthy" Subject: R-Linking 2) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 21:34:14 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@mts.cc.wayne.edu Subject: 2.707 R-Linking 3) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 20:23:12 PDT From: elordie@girtab.usc.edu (Gorka Elordieta) Subject: Re: 2.707 R-Linking 4) Date: Sat, 26 Oct 91 21:19:40 CDT From: Nancy L. Dray Subject: r-linking/"the issue-r-is" 5) Date: Sun, 27 Oct 91 08:55:29 EST From: Geoffrey Russom Subject: Re: 2.707 R-Linking -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 15:20 EST From: "John J. McCarthy" Subject: R-Linking The forthcoming BLS 17 Proceedings contains a paper by me on R-linking and dropping in Eastern Massachusetts. It discusses a number of facts, particularly involving function words, that have not been considered previously. For example, there is a remarkable contrast between He shoulda eaten already. and He's gonna[r] even if you're not ready. I argue that both deletion and insertion are required, that the question of rule "inversion" misconceives the problem, and that hiatus is not implicated in the contemporary situation. John McCarthy mccarthy@cs.umass.edu Replies should be addressed to me directly, since I do not read this bulletin board usually. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 21:34:14 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@mts.cc.wayne.edu Subject: 2.707 R-Linking David Stampe makes a fundamental error in reasoning in his recent posting, arguing that the linking /r/ is "underlying". (I put 'underlying' in quotes because, as a good declarative phonologist, I reject that notion as a snare and a delusion, but for the sake of the argument, I will pretend I know what is meant by this term.) The error lies in assuming that, since r-insertion would be phonetically unnatural, it cannot be involved in a process which is characterized by a great degree of automaticity. But that's circular, since the correlation between phonetic naturalness and automacity was supposed to be a discovery, not a postulate, of the school of natural phonology. The linking r, as well as numerous other examples (such as the /n/ that shows up between a word-final /t/ and a following word-initial /y/ (and perhaps elsewhere) in Korean), are simply counterexamples to this. And I think that, since in many other cases the claims of natural phonology seem to be brilliantly vindicated, the appropriate response to such counterexamples is not turn a factual theory into an a priori formal system, but to see what makes these counterexamples different and to modify the theory to account for them. Moreover, it would not be unreasonable to expect that David should note somewhere in passing that this critique of natural phonology has been made before and has never received an adequate response. (Not having read the Donegan paper referred to by David yet, I confine my remarks to the Stampe posting on LINGUIST only!) I almost forgot to add that such spellings as Eeyore for (H)ee(h)aw and such hypercorrect pronunciations as idear for idea have no bearing on the question of whether the linking r is "underlying" or not. One might as well say that when people started spelling delight with a 'gh', that this proved that /ae/ is underlyingly /ix/ in English. Or that when I use /x/ for /h/ in speaking Dutch (as sometimes happens, especially in words with both these sounds in close proximity like 'geheten') that that shows that /x/ us the "underlying" form for /h/ in my English. __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 20:23:12 PDT From: elordie@girtab.usc.edu (Gorka Elordieta) Subject: Re: 2.707 R-Linking To David Stampe: could we possibly generalize the rule which deletes the underlying /r/ (or blocks the insertion of it) so as to say that an /r/ will never appear before a stressed vowel? (e.g. 'I saw Italy' would have the verb ending in a schwa, whereas 'I saw it' or 'I saw a car' would have a surfacing /r/? I'm sorry but I'm not a native speaker of English, nor do I know somebody who speaks those dialects with the so-called 'r-linking' phenomenon. Thank you. Gorka Elordieta USC, Los Angeles elordie@girtab.usc.edu __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Sat, 26 Oct 91 21:19:40 CDT From: Nancy L. Dray Subject: r-linking/"the issue-r-is" re linking "r" after "u" (cf. 2.681, 2.692, 2.707): During the Thomas/Hill hearings, one of the senators* said "the issue-r-is". This struck me at the time as an unusual instance of r-linking, and now, reading LINGUIST, I see that others, too, would find it somewhat unexpected. My mother, who grew up in the Bronx, has some vestiges of r-linking, but not after "u"; this fits with Ellen Prince's observation about her own New York City dialect. By the way, has anyone out there who's interested in this checked the Linguistic Atlas? I believe that one of the questionnaire items is "law and order," and field workers have noted down other data on the distribution of r-linking as well. Now a tangent: Listening to the Senate committee during the Thomas hearings, and also to George Bush, I have been struck by the use of "ye" (I mean something like a schwa for the vowel --I can't write phonetics in e-mail) for "you", in contexts where I would really have "you" or at least something quite a bit closer to it. Is this an attempt to sound "folksy," or are (at least some of) these individuals just speaking their native dialects? NLD *(I'm not sure which senator said this, but I know which question it occurred in and could find out who asked that question, if anyone wants to know; it may have been Strom Thurmond.) __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Sun, 27 Oct 91 08:55:29 EST From: Geoffrey Russom Subject: Re: 2.707 R-Linking The claim attacked by stemberger wasn't a claim about proper phonetic transcription of English high tense vowels. What I claimed was that English [u:] or [uw] develops something like a w-glide to prevent hiatus and [i:] or [iy] develops something like a y-glide. I suggested that you don't get r-linking after the high tense vowels because they are already provided for in this way. Question: is there anything against using [uw] and [iy] for representation of underlying forms? Question: what does a phonetician do with words like "appreciate" and "cooing" or phrases like "too easy" and "tree apples"? Do these have hiatus? __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-720. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-721. Mon 28 Oct 1991. Lines: 309 Subject: 2.721 Whorf Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 24 Oct 91 12:29:24 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@mts.cc.wayne.edu Subject: Language/Behavior Correlations 2) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 21:03:00 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@mts.cc.wayne.edu Subject: Whorf 3) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 91 10:37:41 EST From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: Whorf-Sapir ms excerpt 2 -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 24 Oct 91 12:29:24 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@mts.cc.wayne.edu Subject: Language/Behavior Correlations Setting aside for the moment the question of why so many people continue to insist on attributing to Whorf and Sapir views they did not hold (or at least did not express), I would like to say something about the results which are claimed to support the hypothesis that language and non-linguistic behavior (behavior, for short) exhibit certain close connections (which people seem to want to interpret as involving causality going from language to behavior). (1) Even if we find certain correlations between language structure and patterns of behavior, this does NOT (as I think I noted earlier) indicate the direction of causality (as indeed Whorf himself noted at one point). The color terminology business shows, if anything, that the complexity of a color terminology seems to depend on the complexity of the culture, there being, for example, no industrial or postindustrial cultures whose languages use two or three color terms. There has also been speculation about the fact that the lateness of terms for 'blue' may be connected with the relative scarcity of blue objects (other than the ubiquitous sky) in nature. This would suggest very strongly that the linguistic pattern comes second, as a reflection of a culture's need to make certain distinctions. (2) All the studies that claim to show a connection between language and behavior that I have seen mentioned seem to deal with two or at any rate a small number of languages, e.g., Tarahumara and English. Likewise, I have seen studies by Alexander Guiora on Hebrew and English and other such small sets, which I don't think have been cited on LINGUIST so far. Yet, since the claim being tested is correlation between linguistic structure and nonlinguistic behavior, the relevant population is languages (not individual speakers), and you cannot seriously talk about correlations for populations of two (or three or whatever small number is involved). What we require is a study involving a dozen or a hundred languages that have the Tarahumara color system and a dozen or a hundred that have the English one before we can say anything at all about correlations and things. Having said this, I would predict that we will find such correlations but I would also predict that at least some of them will turn out to have the opposite causality from that suggested (or a more complex one than either of the simple unidirectional ones). Is there anybody out there who would like to collaborate on putting together such a mass crosslinguistic study? __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 21:03:00 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@mts.cc.wayne.edu Subject: Whorf Since many of the readers of LINGUIST are from Missouri, I thought I would provide some evidence for my recent assertions that Whorf's position has been widely misunderstood. In "The relation of habitual thought and behavior to language", Whorf says among other things" That portion of the whole investigation here to be reported may be summed up in two questions: (1) Are our concepts of 'time', 'space', and 'matter' given in substantially the same form by experience to all men, or are they in part conditioned by the structure of particular languages? (2) Are there traceable affinities between (a) cultural and behavioral norms and (b) large-scale linguistic patterns? (I should be the last to pretend that there is anything so definite as "a correlation" between culture and language, and especially between ethnological rubrics such as 'agricultural, hunting', etc., and linguistic ones like 'inflected', 'synthetic', or 'isolating'. In a footnote on the same page (p. 139 of the Language, Thought, and Reality book), he says emphatically that "The idea of "correlation" between language and culture, in the generally accepted sense of correlation, is certainly a mistaken one" and he cites some arguments. Thus, I believe that Whorf made a clear distinction between culture (behavior) and language, but he did not make such a distinction between language and thought. As I said before, he presupposed as did almost everyone else at the time that if people speak a certain way then that reflects the way they think. He took it for granted for example that if the Hopis pluralize the word for cloud (oomaw) the way that they normally pluralize animate nouns, then they must think of the clouds as animate. Of course, this view is naive, as Joseph Greenberg pointed out in the fifties, since languages make all sorts of arbitrary distinctions (or fail arbitrarily to make them in certain environments) without any apparent conceptual consequences. Essentially, I think the connection works one way, namely, if a language makes a distinction which cannot be described in purely structural terms, then we must ascribe to the speakers the ability to perceive or imagine or whatever the corresponding distinction in the world. Thus, when Greenberg points out that nothing important hinges on the fact that the French use an ordinal in Napoleon Premier but a cardinal in Napolean Deux, that's OK, because the choice here can be made w/o reference to the world. The rule is purely linguistic. And, of course, this could be the case with the Hopi word for cloud and its plural. On the other hand, if we find that speakers of Polish systematically use a different genitive ending for placenames in Poland (and other Slavic countries) than they do for other placenames, and do so PRODUCTIVELY, then it IS reasonable to conclude that they are capable of a conceptual distinction between Poland (or Slavdom) and the rest of the world. The distinction between these two kinds of cases is what seems not to have been entirely clear to Whorf, and that, as far as I can see, is where he came to sometimes came to grief. It is also quite clear that he was not claiming any originality about the relation of language and thought per se, rather he was trying to show just how different the language/thought of one culture could be from that of another in the case of such basic ideas as that of time, although he points out (p. 158) that there is not a comparable difference between Hopi and Standard Average European regarding space. As to culture, Whorf was faithfully following Sapir in claiming that there is no more than an "affinity" between language and culture, but no "correlations or diagnostic correspondences" (p. 159). For, as I noted earlier, Sapir was one of the staunchest critics of the late 19th century and early 20th century linguists who propounded such theories as the "passivity" of peoples whose languages use the ergative constructions, and such like drivel. Incidentally, much of what I have said about Whorf's intent in bringing the Hopi vs. the SAE treatment of time and matter can also be said about Sapir's work on the psychological reality of phonemes. Today, we emphasize the psychological reality part, but actually in his time, the novelty was the phoneme. Claims about psychological reality about in the second half of the 19th century and later (and we find them in all of Sapir's as well as Bloomfield's early writings). The idea of the psychological vs. the grammatical subject after all originated in that period. And, to take one example our of thousands, when Platt wrote in the 1870's that the Urdu speakers perceive certain constructions in their language as active even though they look passive (these are, of course, ergatives again!), he was expressing himself in a way which was quite typical for the time (though not for the 17 or the 18th century). __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 91 10:37:41 EST From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: Whorf-Sapir ms excerpt 2 Several people have indicated that the excerpt I submitted from my back-burner work-in-progress ms relating to the Whorf-Sapir Hypothesis was useful to them. I might as well include some additional excerpts. Construe this as continuing from the end of my post yesterday. (That includes the possible response of deleting it now if your reading of the prior part so indicates to you.) [For "yesterday" above, substitute Wednesday 10/16. The present submission apparently was a victim of the crash experienced by tamu on or about 10/17.--BN 10/28/91] -=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=- In formal linguistics, Zellig Harris and his co-workers have come full circle to the work on information structures in discourse that opened the whole field of transformational grammar. Harris, Ryckman, Gottfried et al. _The Form of Information in Science_ (1990) develops a representation of the information immanent in a body of texts written over a span of years in the history of a subfield of a science (immunology). Changes in this structure correlate transparently with historically well-documented changes and developmental stages of the science during that period, although the structure was determined by clearly defined formal means and without reference to any knowledge of that historical context. In this way, they have demonstrated strongly that structures found in the sublanguage of that science (and not imposed a priori on it) correlate on the one hand with aspects of the social reality of the science and on the other with the structure of the real-world domain which is the concern of that science. The latter correlation is reflexive, however, in the sense that, as the structure changed, it (and the undestanding of the scientists writing the original research reports on which the analysis was done) over time came into closer conformity with a reality whose nature was in process of being discovered. Before that change and that concurrent discovery, certain characteristics of reality could not be stated or thought; afterward, they could. But the discovery and the change in structure were simultaneous (though of course the writing down for publication was not). No better confirmation of Sapir's intuition of the essential unity of language and thought could be offered by one of his students. ____________________ 5. The confirmation is equivocal, however, since the work clearly demonstrates (as Harris stated at the end of _Mathematical Structures of Language_ (Wiley, 1968)) that language is not identical with thought but instead provides a rather rigid channel for thought. This corresponds precisely to the observation above that the discovery and the language for talking about it co-evolved. By using this term I refer specifically to the common misperception regarding biological evolution that e.g. eohippus evolved into the horse in response to environmental changes, when one must instead acknowledge eohippus and its pre-grasslands environment co-evolved into the horse and its grasslands environment. Synecdoche is fallacious in both cases. The claim, then, is of the unity, but not identity of language and thought. ____________________ To illustrate this point further, I should like to adduce a recent contribution to the enormous literature in the study of kinship categories, always a favorite topic in anthropological linguistics. Wierzbicka, in Semantics and the interpretation of cultures: the meaning of 'alternate generations' devices in Australian languages, proposes a new set of metalanguage terms for discussing the alternate sets of pronouns used in many Australian languages. She urges that the terminology of "generation harmony" and "disharmony" that has become traditional in anthropology is arcane and psychologically arbitrary, does not capture native speakers' meaning and does not make that meaning accessible to people from other cultures, and claims that her new terminology provides a better fit. This work illustrates a Whorfian effect in the sublanguage of a specialization within the science of anthropology. With the traditional terminology, aspects of aborigine culture are difficult to come to recognize and understand, and not possible to communicate; she claims that with the proposed new terminology it is.<6> Thus, while providing an illustration of Whorfian ____________________ 6. This is part of Wierzbicka's ongoing work on natural language semantics based, ultimately, on a proposed set of universal semantic primitives, including: I, you, this, someone, something, want, don't want, say, think of, imagine, know, become, part, place, and world (Wierzbicka, Semantic Primitives (1972), Lingua Mentalis (1980). Be it noted that Harris denies there can be a lingua mentalis or any metalanguage external to natural language. For one thing, were there such one would need to account for the grammar and semantics of that metalanguage, and off we go in an infinite regress of grammatical and semantic metalanguages. For another, Harris has demonstrated that the information structures immanent in texts account precisely for the information that the texts report, so that, like LaPlace, he has no need for this additional hypothesis. But Wierzbicka's proposal here, however it may be guided by her broader theoretical interests, concerns only a sublanguage of English serving as metalanguage for a subfield of anthropology, and as such is unobjectionable. The _semantics_ of this sublanguage inhere in its informational structures, per Harris, rather than in its use of vocabulary from a supposedly universal lingua mentalis. ____________________ effects within a subfield of a science, she proposes to overcome such effects by devising a perfect metalanguage for that subfield. Since the subfield concerns an area that is by nature a matter of social convention and so in social reality rather than physical reality (to make that Durckheimian distinction again), she may be able to get away with it. I do not doubt the creativity of human cultures, however, and would build in means for the sublanguage to evolve. An abiding interest of Harris, as of his teacher Sapir, has been the question of refinements and possibly extensions of natural language that foster international scientific communication. In his analysis, language-particular characteristics due to the reduction system (extended morphophonemics) of one language or another are partitioned from operator-argument structures that `carry' information, which are remarkably uniform from one language to another. This uniformity becomes very close indeed in the grammar of a science sublanguage, where classifications and selection restrictions are much more closely constrained than in other domains. But even in nontechnical domains Harris has a great deal to say about linguistic universals,<7> and about the distinctions between what is universal in language and culture and what is idiosyncratic and therefore pertinent to the Whorf-Sapir Hypothesis. ____________________ 7. See e.g. _Language and Information_ (Columbia 1989) and _A Theory of Language and Information_ (Oxford, 1990), which is a more philosophical companion volume to _A Grammar of English on Mathematical Principles_ (Wiley 1982). c 1991 Bruce Nevin bn@bbn.com __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-721. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-722. Mon 28 Oct 1991. Lines: 106 Subject: 2.722 r-linking Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 27 Oct 91 15:05:45 EST From: IANSMITH@VM1.YorkU.CA Subject: Re: 2.707 R-Linking 2) Date: Sun, 27 Oct 91 15:30:34 CST From: Nancy L. Dray Subject: p.s. re r-linking -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 27 Oct 91 15:05:45 EST From: IANSMITH@VM1.YorkU.CA Subject: Re: 2.707 R-Linking David Stampe argues that intrusive-r is best treated as underlying /r/ which gets deleted in non-linking environments. I have always favoured a rule- reversal analysis, but I'm not sure there's a lot of evidence either way. The rule reversal analysis certainly fits the historical facts equally well. Once the rule r --> 0 / C or pause has been reversed to 0 ---> /[V,-hi,+back]__(#)V the extension to words with no historical /r/ is explained as a natural dropping of lexical restrictions on a rule, there is no need to assume, as Stampe suggests for the underlying /r/ analysis that speakers think /Vr/ is in complementation with V# because they don't often hear examples of historically V final words like banana, saw, paw, pa, in hiatus with a following vowel. (I'm slightly misrepresenting his argument - he takes [a:] and [O:] as /a@/ and /O@/, which doesn't seem at all motivated for most non-American non-rhotic dialects.) Against the rule-reversal analysis, Stampe points out that some non-rhotic speakers find it as hard to avoid intrusive-r in "I saw it" as to pronounce [r] in "I hear them". I don't know of any hard evidence on how easy speakers find it to not implement obligatory sandhi rules, whether they are phonetically motivated or not, so this seems a difficult line of argument to pursue. I don't suppose there are that many phonetically unmotivated sandhi rules in the world's languages anyway, so it would be hard to get a real grip on this anyway. Stampe points out that glottal insertion (as in "I saw [?]Ed") blocks r-insertion. [I have actually heard instances in which both intrusive-r and glottal insertion took place, but I expect they were slips of the tongue - they were on the BBC, and may have been attempts to avoid intrusive-r in words with non-historical /r/.] As Stampe points out "Phonetic processes don't block rules". I wonder if ?-insertion couldn't also be a "rule" in non-rhotic varieties. It seems to me that ?-insertion is used as an alternative to intrusive r [particularly as a way of avoiding it, as I suspect was the case in the BBC examples]. I would probably have to accept that ?-insertion is also a phonetic process in non-hiatus environments in these dialects, which will not appeal to some. There is some phonological evidence for r-insertion, however: @ derived from V-reduction can also trigger r-insertion in many non-rhotic varieties. As in "The wind[@] [r] isn't broken" [hypothetical] or "See ya [r] Ian" [attested in natural speech]. We don't want to claim window and you have underlying /r/, nor to we want to have vowel reduction produce [@r], so here there seems no viable alternative to r-insertion. Stampe points to spellings such as EEyore and marmie as support for the underlying /r/ analysis. I don't think we can assume spellings necessarily directly reflect underlying representations. It would be sufficient for speakers to observe that may represent [O:] and that may represent [a:] for them to use such spellings creatively. [In fact, in non-rhotic varieties is the only unambiguous way of representing [a:] in non- prevocalic environments; so it is very useful. - I'm discounting which is pretty rare in the orthographic system, and not used at all preconsonantally .] To prove the point, we can also observe that in non-rhotic varieties final (bigga, supa etc.) can be used in the orthographic representation of words in final /@/ instead of . (I have observed a lot of this in Oz, where it seems to be particularly common in advertising.) Ian Smith York U __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Sun, 27 Oct 91 15:30:34 CST From: Nancy L. Dray Subject: p.s. re r-linking A postscript to my note re "the issue-r-is": It dawned on me that this may not actually have been a case of r-linking after "u" after all. Perhaps for speakers of this dialect "issue" has a schwa or other vowel at the end, at least in rapid speech. The spelling of "issue" and my own citation form may well have altered my perceptions (or at least my recollections) here. Does anyone know more about what the final vowel for "issue" would be for dialects that have this kind of r-linking? Thanks. NLD __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-722. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-723. Mon 28 Oct 1991. Lines: 102 Subject: 2.723 Queries Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 14:23:03 MDT From: Subject: help on degree expressions 2) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 10:47:14 -0400 From: Nancy L. Crowley Subject: Need an ATN Parser 3) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 91 10:39:12 -0800 From: Ellen Kaisse Subject: language in StarTrekV -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 14:23:03 MDT From: Subject: help on degree expressions Dear members of LINGUIST: I would like to have a list of references concerning about degree expressions in natural language, such as so-called degrees (all, many, some,.. always, often,...), the numbers, and the adjectives (tall-short, clean-dirty, alive-dead,...), etc. If you have time, could you please send me a list of the reference? Thank you. Shin-ichiro Kamei (skamei@nmsu.edu) Visiting Researcher Computing Research Lab. New Mexico State Univ. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 10:47:14 -0400 From: Nancy L. Crowley Subject: Need an ATN Parser I am a PhD student that needs an ATN parser for the front end of my dissertation work. The ATN needs to syntactically parse declarative English (no questions or incomplete sentences) and also provide some semantic information such as main noun, relationships between the nouns and verbs, and check tense and voice agreement. I will need the source code, because I expect to have to do some modification. Even a basic ATN that can be expanded to do what I want would be appreciated. Please send any information to ncrowley@galaxy.afit.af.mil Thanks. Nancy L. Crowley __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 91 10:39:12 -0800 From: Ellen Kaisse Subject: language in StarTrekV I saw StarTrek V for the first time this weekend (I had been residing on another planet when it came out, apparently) - the one called The Final Frontier, or something like that, where they across the Great Barrier and find an evil creature impersonanting God. In this Star Trek, the Klingons speak in Klingon aboard their own vessel, and we get English subtitles. I was pretty impressed with how believeable this language sounded, but I didn't want to impose on my friends clustered around the VCR and keep winding it back to see if it was SOV, had ejectives, etc. Does anyone know anything about the creation of this language? As I recall, there was a credit for 'Klingon dialect coach' or something like that, a Marc Ok-something. If it were a real language (Abkhaz leapt to mind, largely, I suspect, because I've never *heard* Abkhaz), they'd have to have said so, wouldn't they? It idlely crossed my mind that this Klingon clip would make a good mid-November visual/aural aid in an intro class. -ellen kaisse (kaisse@u.washington.edu) ps While I am bending everyone's pixelated ears on the subject of movie languages, does anyone know what language, if any, Fellini used in Satyricon for the beautiful (North African?) woman's language. I don't remember too much about her character - I think she was taken as a slave when her village was overrun - but she spoke in the most amazing, rapid, unique-sounding tongue! __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-723. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-724. Mon 28 Oct 1991. Lines: 168 Subject: 2.724 You Guys Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1991 19:34 EDT From: BELMORE@vax2.concordia.ca Subject: guys 2) Date: Sat, 26 Oct 91 10:50:15 BST From: WHEATLJS@ibm3090.computer-centre.birmingham.ac.uk Subject: Re: You-Guys 3) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 22:48:19 EDT From: Ron Smyth Subject: Plurals vs. epithets 4) Date: Sat, 26 Oct 91 22:30:07 CDT From: Nancy L. Dray Subject: "you guys" -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1991 19:34 EDT From: BELMORE@vax2.concordia.ca Subject: guys Subscribers may be interested in the Collins COBUILD dictionary entry for 'guys": "In informal American English, you can address a group of people as guys or you guys, whether they are male or female. eg Hey, you guys! Come back here. As a synonym they give "you folks". __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Sat, 26 Oct 91 10:50:15 BST From: WHEATLJS@ibm3090.computer-centre.birmingham.ac.uk Subject: Re: You-Guys some women in the uk fnd it aggravating to be addressed as yo guys by americans. brits don't do it - it can seem that women are being alowed to be honorary men or included regardless or dismissively of their sex. is there a feminist position on this in the states. __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 22:48:19 EDT From: Ron Smyth Subject: Plurals vs. epithets Has anyone noted the relationship between the pronominal 'you guys' and epithets such as 'you scum'? The difference is marked prosodically: 'you SCUM', but 'YOU guys'. Epithets like this form an open class ('you idiot', 'you dork', 'you Conservative', 'you disgusting swindler', etc.). They can be used as vocatives in both singular and plural ('You dork' is as good as 'You dorks'), but as arguments of the verb they must be plural. Thus: 'You idiots make me sick!', but *'You idiot make me sick!' 'Are you [*linguist/ linguists] [*idiot/idiots] going to try that again?' Note the contrast between 'You make me sick, you idiot/you idiots', where both forms work, and 'You idiots/*you idiot make me sick!'. I interpret this to mean that 'you' is the head of the epithet phrase, and that it is obligatorily plural, but that the lexical NP is the head of the vocative phrase, with 'you' as a specifier. But why should this type of epithet be restricted to plurals? Can anyone offer insight from other languages? The evidence would have to come from languages that have analogous you+NP forms, and we would want to compare those which distinguish you sg. from you plural with others which don't. There is further evidence for this plurality constraint. 'You lot', (not in my dialect, but familiar from British speakers), contains the collective 'lot', which is morphologically singular. Because of the ambiguity between singular and plural use for collectives, this provides a good test of the plurality constraint. I presume that speakers of that dialect can say 'This lot is/are really off base', with the usual uncertainty about the status of 'lot' (correct me if I'm wrong), but, given the plurality constraint, not '*You lot is really off base'. Again, this supports the argument that the head is 'you', and is obligatorily plural. It has been suggested that 'you guys' has become the second person plural pronoun, but there is evidence against the notion that it has become fully morphologized: 'You guys are coming to dinner with us, aren't you / * you guys?'. I presume that the same applies to y'all and so on. Thus, all of these second person plurals still belong to the productive paradigm. Is there any evidence to suggest otherwise? For the epithets, my intuition is that there is a tendency (perhaps only statistical) toward an interpretation with negative connotations. For example, 'you slob' is negative because of 'slob'. However, cases like 'you linguist', where the noun is neutral in terms of evaluation, seem to have a negative connotation without a full context. If real, this isn't a very strong constraint, since you can easily get positive meanings (as opposed to ungrammaticality) if the lexical item is positive: 'You've solved it, you genius!'; 'You did the dishes, you sweetie'. With more neutral terms, the negative reading seems a little better than the positive: 'You've ruined it, you linguist!', but '?You've solved it, you linguist!'. I think that to get the for neutral terms such as the last example I'd use pronoun copying: 'You've solved it, you linguist you!'. (I'm not sure how widespread this copying is, but it's perfectly fine for me). Copying seems better for positive than for negative evaluations: 'You did the dishes, you sweetie you!', but 'You broke the dishes, ?you idiot you!'. Do you guys have this copying in your dialects? If so, do you think that it leans toward positive evaluation? Is this subject to areal variation? Or is it just moi? By the way, most of my teachers addressed their students collectively as 'You people' instead of 'you guys', presumably in order to maintain grammatical decorum. Hence: 'Are you people ready for the test?' This extended to the vocative, but without the 'you': 'Calm down, people (class, students, etc.)'. Ron Smyth smyth@lake.scar.utoronto.ca __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Sat, 26 Oct 91 22:30:07 CDT From: Nancy L. Dray Subject: "you guys" Thanks for all the commentary. Just one follow-up re "you guys" and gender: The following, insofar as I've remembered it correctly, is an anecdote told by Howard Aronson (I think I heard it in his "Morphology and Syntax" class, quite a few years ago). As I recall, he said he had been working in an otherwise all-female office--the boss and all the other employees were women--and one day the boss said the following (or something like it): "You guys can all go to lunch now. You too, Howie." Professor Aronson suggested (if I recall correctly) that "you guys" might for at least some speakers be used only to a group of persons the same sex as the speaker, not to a group that includes persons of the opposite sex. I now see some other possible interpretations, but today I am sending heaps of messages to LINGUIST (I've been saving them up...) and I don't want to try anyone's patience. So I will just leave the anecdote as it stands and let the other possible linguistic analyses be an exercise to the reader (and the reader can ask me, if interested). Perhaps if I show some restraint now y'all will forgive me for not having been able to resist jocularity in my "expressives" posting.... NLD __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-724. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-725. Tue 29 Oct 1991. Lines: 132 Subject: 2.725 Jobs Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 22 Oct 91 08:19:00 EDT From: Geoffrey Russom Subject: Job Listing 2) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 91 18:14-0600 Subject: JOB OPPORTUNITY From: Hedy McGarrell 3) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 91 21:07:40 EST From: John.M.Lawler@um.cc.umich.edu Subject: Tenure-Track Syntax Position at University of Michigan -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 22 Oct 91 08:19:00 EDT From: Geoffrey Russom Subject: Job Listing SOFTWARE LINGUISTS Houghton Mifflin Company, leading publisher of educational, reference, and trade books, and supplier of linguistically sophisticated software, has three positions available for Software Linguist to: create and maintain linguistic databases for spelling and grammar software products; recruit and supervise freelance language consultants; develop and test lexical and functional components of products; and conduct competitive analyses. Positions require: three years' experience in development of language software lexicons and/or linguistic algorithms; reading knowledge of at least two non-English languages; M.A in Scandinavian languages / Spanish, Italian, or Portugese / English / or Linguistics. Candidates should be able to learn salient features of new languages quickly and conduct simultaneously focused work on a variety of products with high attention to detail, accuracy, and organization. Please send cover letter, indicating salary requirement, and resume to: Debra Earls, Personnel Administrator, MOUGHTON MIFFLIN CO., One Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA 02142. Competitive salary and excellent benefits offered. An EEO/AA employer. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 91 18:14-0600 Subject: JOB OPPORTUNITY From: Hedy McGarrell POSITION AVAILABLE Please draw the following to the attention of potential candidates. I'd be glad to pass on any questions. Hedy McGarrell Department of Applied Language Studies, Brock University ALFMCGARRELL@BROCKU.CA (due to new computer hardware at Brock, this will change to HMCGARRE@SPARTAN.AC.BROCKU.CA in November) BROCK UNIVERSITY. Department of Applied Language Studies. Applications are invited from suitably qualified candidates for a one year sabbatical replacement position, subject to budgetary approval, to begin July 1, 1992. Applicants should have a Ph.D in hand or near completion in linguistics or related disciplines and should be committed to excellent undergraduate teaching. The Department especially welcomes applicants with expertise in one or more of discourse analysis, reading in a second language, comparative phonology (English/French) and comprehension based approach to second language teaching. In accordance with Canadian immigration requirements, this advertisement is directed to Canadian citizens and permanent residents. Brock University is committed to a positive action policy aimed at reducing gender imbalance in faculty; qualified women candidates are especially encouraged to apply. Smoking in Brock University is strictly controlled. Candidates should submit a curriculum vitae with their application and arrange for three referees to send letters to: Professor Ernest V.C. Harris, Chair, Hiring Committee, Department of Applied Language Studies, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, L2S 3A1. The DEADLINE for application is February 28, 1992, or until the position is filled. __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 91 21:07:40 EST From: John.M.Lawler@um.cc.umich.edu Subject: Tenure-Track Syntax Position at University of Michigan The Program in Linguistics at the University of Michigan has an authorized tenure-track position in syntax (any approach), beginning Sept. '92, most likely at Asst. Prof. level, although some postdoctoral experience would be helpful. We seek candidates with interdisciplinary interests and/or strong language backgrounds. Send letter describing: a) primary, secondary, and potential teaching/research interests, b) research methodologies and/or language background, and c) availability for LSA interviews. Enclose a list of names/coordinates of 3 referees and a modest quantity of your best writing, preferably by Dec 1 '91 to permit LSA interviews. Later applications, especially from overseas candidates, will be considered until the position is filled. Jeff Heath, Acting Director 1076 Frieze Bldg University of Michigan Ann Arbor MI 48109-1285 (USA). E-mail: Jeff_Heath@um.cc.umich.edu. Fax (313) 763-0369. __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-725. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-726. Tue 29 Oct 1991. Lines: 156 Subject: 2.726 Names Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1991 13:11 EDT From: Cathy Ball Subject: Last names (women) 2) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 14:36 EDT From: "E_Dean.Detrich" <22743MGR@msu.edu> Subject: 2.703 Using last`names 3) Date: Sat, 26 Oct 91 10:33:24 MDT From: Randy_Allen_Harris@mts.ucs.ualberta.ca Subject: last names and titles 4) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1991 20:55 EDT From: BELMORE@vax2.concordia.ca Subject: Re: 2.713 Names 5) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 23:15:31 EDT From: Michael Newman Subject: Re: 2.703 Using last`names 6) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1991 11:57:05 +0200 From: akman@TRBILUN.BITNET Subject: Re: 2.703 Using last`names -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1991 13:11 EDT From: Cathy Ball Subject: Last names (women) For what it's worth, in my (secular) girls' school, we used last names: `Hey, {Ball/???Cathy}!' The faculty, however, addressed us as 'Miss X'. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 14:36 EDT From: "E_Dean.Detrich" <22743MGR@msu.edu> Subject: 2.703 Using last`names I was a bit surprised at the tenor of the observations on last name usage. In my world the surname is the default form. I am "Detrich". When further specification or intimacy is needed, I am "Dean". To me the use of first names implies the intimacy of friendship, and friendship is not presumptive at the outset. I feel uncomfortable when societal norms prescribe that I deal with individuals whom I dislike on a first name basis. But then we live at a time when we are expected to like or at least to feign to like every one. As to the telephone sales clerk's reluctance to reveal a surname, that is nothing more than a desire for anonymity. Isn't it ironic that the "intimate" form provides the anomynity. E. Dean Detrich __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Sat, 26 Oct 91 10:33:24 MDT From: Randy_Allen_Harris@mts.ucs.ualberta.ca Subject: last names and titles The Russell-Mr.-Strawson-and-Quine story reminded me of an exchange in (I think) _Language Sciences_ in the late sixties or early seventies. Fred Householder wrote a hostile review of Robin Lakoff's _Abstract Syntax_, in which she was always "Mrs. Lakoff." There was no introductory "Robin Lakoff's book ..." There was no use of simply "Lakoff." And there was no other title (she had her doctorate). Other mentions in the review were to men, and were mostly last-names, though Ross and someone else (Austin, come to think of it) got initials. Lakoff parodied a bit of Householder's review in her response, but never commented on his exclusive use of "Mrs." Householder, once again, last named and sometimes first-and-last- named males, and titled Lakoff, in a response to the response. My suspicion is that Householder's use (and perhaps Lakoff's indifference) wasn't too uncommon when women were fairly rare in the profession (and academics generally). __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1991 20:55 EDT From: BELMORE@vax2.concordia.ca Subject: Re: 2.713 Names Yes, this is linguistics: sociolinguistics, registers (a la Halliday), varieties of language a la Douglas Biber, etc. I haven't found it too diffi- cult to quickly skip over topics of no special interest to me. More elaborate subject headings (e.g. not just query but query: followed by a question or well-defined topic) would probably help a lot. __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 23:15:31 EDT From: Michael Newman Subject: Re: 2.703 Using last`names More on this business of last +first naming and intimacy. In 'Another Country', a film which takes place in an English public (read prep) school in the 30s all the boys last name each other. The main character (who is supposed to modeled after Guy Burgess) is in love with another boy and finally gets up the courage to ask him out. When they meet the first thing the Burgess character does is to ask his beloved his first name, and then to introduce his own. But the other character only smiles and says he already discovered it. I take this to support the distance theory of last names that has recently been propounded. Both boys realize that for their new relationship, last names are no longer ap- propriate, which they formally acknowledge by introducing their first names. Michael Newman __________________________________________________________________________ 6) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1991 11:57:05 +0200 From: akman@TRBILUN.BITNET Subject: Re: 2.703 Using last`names First of all, I would like to thank everybody who contributes to the success of the Linguist List. I am no linguist but I read it with great interest and do profit from the views of knowledgeable people discussing various important issues. I would like to report something re: using the last names. In Turkey, the usage of "Bay" and "Bayan" (which correspond to Mr and Mrs (or Miss), respectively) has been diminishing. I have noticed that politicians and newspaper columnists use "Bay" nowadays to refer to politicians that they want to ridicule or offend. Similarly, "Bayan" is commonly used by this group to refer to ladies whom they consider vulgar or banal. Obviously, counterexamples can be found, but this has been my general observation. Mr. Oktay Akbal, a (minor) Turkish writer and columnist, is a good example. In the late 70's, his essays which were regularly published in the Turkish daily "Cumhuriyet" used to refer to prime-minister of that period, Suleyman Demirel, as "Bay Demirel" whereas his favorite politician at that time, Bulent Ecevit, will be referred to as "Sayin Ecevit." ("Sayin" = (approx.) Honorable.) Varol Akman Dept. of Computer Eng. Bilkent University, Ankara __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-726. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-727. Tue 29 Oct 1991. Lines: 197 Subject: 2.727 Queries Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 14:23:03 MDT From: Subject: help on degree expressions 2) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 10:47:14 -0400 From: Nancy L. Crowley Subject: Need an ATN Parser 3) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 91 10:39:12 -0800 From: Ellen Kaisse Subject: language in StarTrekV 4) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 91 15:43 EST From: "Kaz.Fukushima" <22734KAZ@MSU.BITNET> Subject: Zeevat' paper 5) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 91 18:15:43 -0500 From: david@snowhite.cis.uoguelph.ca (David C. J. Leip) Subject: Military's alphabetic code 6) Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1991 11:22:46 CST From: Chris Culy Subject: Kenyan pidgin? 7) Date: Tue, 29 Oct 91 16:58:37 EST From: cowan@uunet.UU.NET (John Cowan) Subject: Re: The four tones -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 14:23:03 MDT From: Subject: help on degree expressions Dear members of LINGUIST: I would like to have a list of references concerning about degree expressions in natural language, such as so-called degrees (all, many, some,.. always, often,...), the numbers, and the adjectives (tall-short, clean-dirty, alive-dead,...), etc. If you have time, could you please send me a list of the reference? Thank you. Shin-ichiro Kamei (skamei@nmsu.edu) Visiting Researcher Computing Research Lab. New Mexico State Univ. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 10:47:14 -0400 From: Nancy L. Crowley Subject: Need an ATN Parser I am a PhD student that needs an ATN parser for the front end of my dissertation work. The ATN needs to syntactically parse declarative English (no questions or incomplete sentences) and also provide some semantic information such as main noun, relationships between the nouns and verbs, and check tense and voice agreement. I will need the source code, because I expect to have to do some modification. Even a basic ATN that can be expanded to do what I want would be appreciated. Please send any information to ncrowley@galaxy.afit.af.mil Thanks. Nancy L. Crowley __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 91 10:39:12 -0800 From: Ellen Kaisse Subject: language in StarTrekV I saw StarTrek V for the first time this weekend (I had been residing on another planet when it came out, apparently) - the one called The Final Frontier, or something like that, where they across the Great Barrier and find an evil creature impersonanting God. In this Star Trek, the Klingons speak in Klingon aboard their own vessel, and we get English subtitles. I was pretty impressed with how believeable this language sounded, but I didn't want to impose on my friends clustered around the VCR and keep winding it back to see if it was SOV, had ejectives, etc. Does anyone know anything about the creation of this language? As I recall, there was a credit for 'Klingon dialect coach' or something like that, a Marc Ok-something. If it were a real language (Abkhaz leapt to mind, largely, I suspect, because I've never *heard* Abkhaz), they'd have to have said so, wouldn't they? It idlely crossed my mind that this Klingon clip would make a good mid-November visual/aural aid in an intro class. -ellen kaisse (kaisse@u.washington.edu) ps While I am bending everyone's pixelated ears on the subject of movie languages, does anyone know what language, if any, Fellini used in Satyricon for the beautiful (North African?) woman's language. I don't remember too much about her character - I think she was taken as a slave when her village was overrun - but she spoke in the most amazing, rapid, unique-sounding tongue! __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 91 15:43 EST From: "Kaz.Fukushima" <22734KAZ@MSU.BITNET> Subject: Zeevat' paper I have a question. Has a review of an article by H. Zeevat: Combining Categorial Grammar and Unification' in Reyle and Rohrer (eds.) (1988) appear anywhere? __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 91 18:15:43 -0500 From: david@snowhite.cis.uoguelph.ca (David C. J. Leip) Subject: Military's alphabetic code I'm presently doing some work in the domain of vocabulary design. In particular, vocabulary design for automatic speech recognition. I'd be interested in communicating directly with others who might be doing work in this area. Also, I'm trying to locate information regarding the design history of the military's alphabetic code, (alpha, bravo, charlie,...), and other vocabularies like it, regardless of language. If you have any leads, I'd like to hear about them. Thanks! David Leip. (519) 824-4120 ext.3709 - David. __________________________________________________________________________ 6) Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1991 11:22:46 CST From: Chris Culy Subject: Kenyan pidgin? Hi all, A student of mine is interesting in finding out about work on Sheng (sp?), apparently a pidgin spoken in Kenyan cities. Any information would be appreciated. Please reply directly to me at: cculy@vaxa.weeg.uiowa.edu Thanks. Chris __________________________________________________________________________ 7) Date: Tue, 29 Oct 91 16:58:37 EST From: cowan@uunet.UU.NET (John Cowan) Subject: Re: The four tones Many years ago, in some forgotten place, I read an anecdote to the effect that a Chinese emperor once asked a scholar, "Just what are these so-called four tones, anyhow?", to which the scholar replied (something to the effect of) "foo1 bar3 baz5 zam7", which illustrated the four tones of Middle Chinese but also meant "Whatever Your Majesty chooses to make them." Does anyone have any idea what the four words he used were, or might have been? (Presumably the story is apocryphal, but I don't care -- I'd like to use it to make a point about the simultaneous use of language as discourse and meta-discourse.) It's also conceivable that the story referred to modern Chinese, and that the four tones were 1, 2, 3, and 4 -- at this lapse of time, I can't be sure. -- cowan@snark.thyrsus.com ...!uunet!cbmvax!snark!cowan e'osai ko sarji la lojban __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-727. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-728. Wed 30 Oct 1991. Lines: 148 Subject: 2.728 Infinite Languages Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 26 Oct 91 12:36:44 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@mts.cc.wayne.edu Subject: Infinite Language 2) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 91 21:13:41 EST From: Henry Kucera Subject: Re: 2.714 Is Language Finite? Motion Verbs 3) Date: Tue, 29 Oct 91 22:51:36 EST From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@mts.cc.wayne.edu Subject: Infinite languages -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 26 Oct 91 12:36:44 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@mts.cc.wayne.edu Subject: Infinite Language Michael Kac, as usual, hits the nail on the head (in fact, more than one: there is going to be an epidemic of Kopfschmerz in the Nagel family) in his recent posting. The rules of football do not impose an upper bound of permissible scores (perhaps we should stop using the word 'possible' in the sense of 'legal' or 'permissible'), and a program for adding two integers might well be written in a way that did not involve imposing an upper bound on the size of the integers. In fact, the computer analogy is the relevant one, because some (many) programs do impose such bounds, whereas others do not. For example, the DOS operating system can only address so much memory and can only handle calendar dates up to a fixed point (sometime in the next century, I forget the details). Thus, contrary to some people in linguistics have asserted over the years, the computer analogy does NOT support the standard Chomsky position on unbounded length of sentences. It merely shows that this position is not inherently untenable. But it also shows that the opposite position is also tenable. Now, I am not at all sure that this issue can be resolved on factual grounds in all cases (as I have been arguing all along), but there are certainly special cases where it can be resolved PROVIDED the construction we are studying DOES have an upper bound. If it does NOT, then I don't see any way of conclusively showing that this is the case. Also, what complicates the picture is that the linguist's usual (and I think mistaken) distinction between competence and performance makes it very difficult to draw ANY conclusions from any given piece of data. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 91 21:13:41 EST From: Henry Kucera Subject: Re: 2.714 Is Language Finite? Motion Verbs >Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 14:54:42 -0500 >From: "Michael Kac" >Subject: Re: 2.686 Is language infinite > >In response to Henry Kucera's query re Hockett's baseball/football analogy: >Hockett, if I remember correctly, argues that football scores above a certain >number are impossible because a game of football is played within a closed >time interval (whereas a baseball game continues until one side wins, howe- >ver long it takes). The problem I have always had with this argument is that >I see an equivocation in 'impossible'. It's certainly true that for team of >human football players to score, say, 1m. points in a single game would be >impossible from a performance standpoint. But insofar as the rules of football >are concerned, such a score is perfectly possible. > This is part of Michael Kac's argument. I think that it, in effect, goes to the heart of the matter: As far as I know, only humans play football and, similarly, it is humans who speak natural languages. This is not, in my view, a point to be dismissed lightly. We are, after all, dealing with a specific biological and mental facility particular to humans. Is it not the case that, in the most elementary sense, the limits of human articulatory organs restrict the set of possible sounds that a language might have? Or that it explains certain historical developments, such as palatalizations? Or, on the mental level, that human memory limitations pretty much account for *all* languages being highly redundant in terms of information theory (more than 80% probably)? Or even: if a universal "faculty of language" actually exists, is it not bound to humans and thus essential to an understanding of language acquisition, for example (if one believes in a universal grammar theory)? And that, consequently, some languages (such as those in which every well- formed sentence must have an even number of words) do not exist? (One could very easily design a programming language with exactly this limitation--as a matter of fact, all "machine-level" languages have precisely some such property. I can't help but feel that the discussion on this issue has not been much different from medieval theology. I brought up the Hockett argument because I am increasingly concerned about the reaction of the "real world" out there to our linguistic abstractions. Is it any wonder that many psychologists or even computer scientists are not taking us very seriously and that deans want to derminate our departments? Henry Kucera __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Tue, 29 Oct 91 22:51:36 EST From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@mts.cc.wayne.edu Subject: Infinite languages There was a recent request for an evaluation of Hockett's claims about finite and infinite languages in his book State of the Art. While Michael Kac has commented on one aspect of this, I would like to add, having located and reread the book in question, that Hockett's main point seems to be that the notions of finiteness and infinity (and indeed all of the theory of computation) cannot be applied to sets that are not well-defined. At the same time, he claims that languages are not well-defined (and incidentally that no physical system is well-defined). At the same time< Hockett argues that languages are finite, specifically, that very long sentences are not grammatical (w/o, of course, a specific upper bound on their length). It seems to me that, while much that he says makes sense, Hockett cannot have it both ways. He cannot assert that languages are finite, and also that the finite/infinite distinction does not apply to them. Furthermore, I think that he is utterly wrong in his understanding of the relevant mathematical notions. That is, there is nothing to prevent us from talking about infinite sets that are not entirely well-defined. The easiest way to do this is to refer two well-defined sets A and B, both of which are infinite and such that A is a proper subset of B, and then refer to a third set C, for which we have no precise definition, but of which we know that it is a superset of A and a proper superset of B, for example. Then C is inescapably infinite. This is much like my earlier argument that there are sets without definite boundaries which are clearly finite because we know that they are contained within well-defined finite sets. But the sword here cuts both ways. __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-728. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-729. Wed 30 Oct 1991. Lines: 118 Subject: 2.729 Queries Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1991 17:42:21 CST From: billp@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Bill Pottenger) Subject: contribution 2) Date: Tue, 29 Oct 91 21:24:43 EST From: Graham Katz Subject: English "pro-drop" 3) Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1991 11:40 EDT From: SAMEK@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU Subject: Languages with gemination phenomena -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1991 17:42:21 CST From: billp@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Bill Pottenger) Subject: contribution Hello! I'd like to get in touch with anyone whose done some work investigating phonological rules for the Korean language. Specifically, if two-level rules based on Kimmo Koskenniemi's two-level method are being or have been worked on, I'd like to know about it. In any case I'm interested in generative rules based on standard generative phonology as well - these kinds of rules may greatly assist in writing the two-level rules. If you have any information about research of this nature, please send email to billp@ncsa.uiuc.edu. I'll be using these rules along with Evan Antworth's PC-KIMMO and Nathan Miles' (as in "s:0 <=> +:0 (0:e) s +:0 '__" :-)) kgen to develop a description of Korean. Thanks! Bill Pottenger NCSA Consulting UIUC CS Dept. ps. above two-level s-deletion rule courtesy of Evan Antworth's "PC-KIMMO: A Two-level Processor for Morphological Analysis" __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Tue, 29 Oct 91 21:24:43 EST From: Graham Katz Subject: English "pro-drop" In speech of a certain variety there is a fairly well behaved process in which pronominal and auxiliary elements are dropped: a. Been planting corn all day. b. Seems like Jake sold the farm. c. Watch the crops for me? d. Going home for break? Flows pretty natural, once you get rolling. Certainly this has been noted and discussed in the literature, but where? Can't find it. Help? Thanks, graham katz __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1991 11:40 EDT From: SAMEK@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU Subject: Languages with gemination phenomena I am interested in the phenomenon of medial and initial gemination as a morphological process, such as is found in Choctaw, Alabama, Keley-i and Balangao. The following is an example of medial gemination from Keley-i: Paradigm of Future Focus. Base: 'pili' = 'to choose' Subject focus ?um-pilli Object focus pilli-?en Accessory focus ?i-ppili Referential focus pilli-?an Beneficial focus ?i-ppili-?an (from L. Hohulin and M. Kenstowicz. "Keley-i Phonology and Morphophonrmics" 1979) I would be very grateful to anyone who could suggest specific languages where similar gemination phenomena occur. Thank you Vieri Samek-Lodovici Samek@brandeis.bitnet Dept of Psychology Brandeis University Waltham 02254 MA __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-729. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-730. Thu 31 Oct 1991. Lines: 195 Subject: 2.730 R-Linking Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 91 16:15:58 PST From: scobbie@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Jim Scobbie) Subject: Re: 2.707 R-Linking 2) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 91 16:01:30 PST From: scobbie@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Jim Scobbie) Subject: Re: 2.707 R-Linking 3) Date: Wed, 30 Oct 91 20:01:12 CST From: Richard Goerwitz Subject: Re: 2.720 R-Linking -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 91 16:15:58 PST From: scobbie@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Jim Scobbie) Subject: Re: 2.707 R-Linking I don't think I made myself very clear at one point: >>From: Geoffrey Russom >>My understanding is that you get r-linking primarily to avoid a hiatus >>between vowels. With tense "u," there's an off-glide "w" to avoid the >>hiatus, so it's not surprising to find that Ellen doesn't get r-linking >>in that environment. ... But a word-final "-r" after >>tense "u" amounts to a final consonant cluster [wr], ... >My understanding of /r/ suggests the above is correct. This cryptic comment is meant to convey the idea that /w/ and /r/ are constrasting glide elements of the vowel system, and that you can't get both. The system doesn't allow /Vwr/ or /Vrw/ as vowels, only /Vw/ /Vr/. I should have noted my change of [] brackets to // brackets: someone asked about the [uw] vowel, where if Geoffrey had used /uw/ the confusion may not have arisen. In my opinion, '[]' are generally used nowadays to flag the alphabetic transcription of some speech, '//' are used to flag the alphabetic shorthand for a theoretical representation. If they aren't, they should be, damnit. ;-) -- James M. Scobbie: Dept of Linguistics, Stanford University, CA 94305-2150 __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 91 16:01:30 PST From: scobbie@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Jim Scobbie) Subject: Re: 2.707 R-Linking David Stampe writes: >Isn't "intrusive r" just an underlying /r/? Yes. :-) >That's the analysis that >Patricia Donegan describes in a forthc. book on historical phonology >ed. by Ch. Jones. It's an analysis that crops up from time to time. I presented a paper myself at the LAGB meeting a few years back which argued for underlying /r/ in words such as 'idea'. I also posted the basis of the argument to sci.lang. I was adapting a Wells-ian/Firthian vowel system analysis in a unification-based framework. I was also attempting to use a 'licensing' approach to account for the distribution of [r] and [schwa], taking parts of Goldsmith and Ito's work. COnsequently you'll not be at all surprised to find that I agree with your conclusions: >The hypothesis that intrusive r is actually an underlying r seems to >fit the facts better than the alternative hypotheses I know of, viz >(1) Analysis of intrusive [r] as a "linking" sound (a consonant > inserted to avoid vocalic hiatus). >(2) Analysis (e.g. by Bill Labov) of intrusive r as due to false > analogy or hypercorrection: >(3) Analysis (by Theo Vennemann) of intrusive r as "rule reversal": The reference for the talk I gave at LAGB, and to the unpublished draft paper: Scobbie, JM (1989) The r-0 alternation of non-rhotic English. ms-draft. Scobbie, JM (1990) A lexical account of [r]-sandhi in English. Paper presented at Spring meeting of Linguistics Association of Great Britain on Wednesday April 4th 1990. Jim Scobbie PS... For some interesting discussion of /r/ in some rhotic dialects of English, see Tom Veatch's 1991 dissertation 'English vowels: their surface phonology and phonetic implementation in vernacular dialects'. -- James M. Scobbie: Dept of Linguistics, Stanford University, CA 94305-2150 __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Wed, 30 Oct 91 20:01:12 CST From: Richard Goerwitz Subject: Re: 2.720 R-Linking I somewhat incongenial statement was recently made here in response to David Stampe's bit on r-insertion: David Stampe makes a fundamental error in reasoning in his recent posting, arguing that the linking /r/ is "underlying". (I put 'underlying' in quotes because, as a good declarative phonologist, I reject that notion as a snare and a delusion, but for the sake of the argument, I will pretend I know what is meant by this term.) Every one of the innumerable schools of linguistic thought that have sprung up out of the primaeval structuralist mud seems to think the other schools a foolish ruse. It would be nice if we showed a bit of mutual respect around here. Also, don't forget that we're not all phonologists. Some of us (heaven forbid!) are philologists, and don't even know what declarative phonology is. Anyway, the objection to Stampe's assertions seems to come down to this: The error lies in assuming that, since r-insertion would be phonetically unnatural, it cannot be involved in a process which is characterized by a great degree of automaticity. But that's circular, since the correlation between phonetic naturalness and automacity was supposed to be a discovery, not a postulate, of the school of natural phonology. Let's rephrase your statement a bit, and see if we can evoke an answer to an interesting question, rather than just dump on David (who always seems to stand at the eye of one or another storm): What evidence do you (David) have that r-insertion is phonetically "unnatural"? Presumably this evidence would have to overrule the specifics of the r-insertion case in English (where, if the evidence were taken simply on the basis of this one phenomenon, your argument would in fact be circular). The objections to David's analysis continues on with a hint at counterevidence: The linking r, as well as numerous other examples (such as the /n/ that shows up between a word-final /t/ and a following word-initial /y/ [and perhaps elsewhere] in Korean), are simply counterexamples to this. You know, not all of us know Korean here. Those that do probably only know it superficially. And even if this is a valid analysis (which I do not doubt), I do not see how dropping the velum after /t/ and before /y/ in Korean brings David's theories crashing to the ground. Nor does the following blanket statement: ...I think that, since in many other cases the claims of natural phonology seem to be brilliantly vindicated, the appropriate response to such counterexamples is not turn a factual theory into an a priori formal system, but to see what makes these counterexamples different and to modify the theory to account for them. You mean as in "Why Phonology is not Natural" and what not? If you feel the claims of natural phonology have been brilliantly vindicated, then why bother with a response? You certainly haven't offered any evidence yourself that David's analysis is unreasonable. If we are supposed to know, a priori, that it's unreasonable, then I don't really see why you felt the need to post. I feel a bit bad to put you under the flame thrower, but your response really offers very little in the way of constructive criticism. It is merely a pooh-poohing of David's particular theoretical framework. Incidentally, David has on many occasions - both on Usenet (sci.lang), and in papers he has given - tried to respond to these criticisms. Have you read any of these responses? It appears you are readily willing to admit you have not. It is true that Stampean papers are not always as accessible as one might like. This does not prevent us, however, from addressing his ideas seriously here, and from making reasonable requests for clarification on points that might seem to cloud, or even undermine, his position. David's certainly heard the sorts of objections you raise before. Ask him nicely, and I'll bet he'll tell you why he's still a natural phonologist :-). d __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-730. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-731. Thu 31 Oct 1991. Lines: 156 Subject: 2.731 Names and Titles Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1991 13:11 EDT From: Cathy Ball Subject: Last names (women) 2) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 14:36 EDT From: "E_Dean.Detrich" <22743MGR@msu.edu> Subject: 2.703 Using last`names 3) Date: Sat, 26 Oct 91 10:33:24 MDT From: Randy_Allen_Harris@mts.ucs.ualberta.ca Subject: last names and titles 4) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1991 20:55 EDT From: BELMORE@vax2.concordia.ca Subject: Re: 2.713 Names 5) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 23:15:31 EDT From: Michael Newman Subject: Re: 2.703 Using last`names 6) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1991 11:57:05 +0200 From: akman@TRBILUN.BITNET Subject: Re: 2.703 Using last`names -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1991 13:11 EDT From: Cathy Ball Subject: Last names (women) For what it's worth, in my (secular) girls' school, we used last names: `Hey, {Ball/???Cathy}!' The faculty, however, addressed us as 'Miss X'. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 14:36 EDT From: "E_Dean.Detrich" <22743MGR@msu.edu> Subject: 2.703 Using last`names I was a bit surprised at the tenor of the observations on last name usage. In my world the surname is the default form. I am "Detrich". When further specification or intimacy is needed, I am "Dean". To me the use of first names implies the intimacy of friendship, and friendship is not presumptive at the outset. I feel uncomfortable when societal norms prescribe that I deal with individuals whom I dislike on a first name basis. But then we live at a time when we are expected to like or at least to feign to like every one. As to the telephone sales clerk's reluctance to reveal a surname, that is nothing more than a desire for anonymity. Isn't it ironic that the "intimate" form provides the anomynity. E. Dean Detrich __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Sat, 26 Oct 91 10:33:24 MDT From: Randy_Allen_Harris@mts.ucs.ualberta.ca Subject: last names and titles The Russell-Mr.-Strawson-and-Quine story reminded me of an exchange in (I think) _Language Sciences_ in the late sixties or early seventies. Fred Householder wrote a hostile review of Robin Lakoff's _Abstract Syntax_, in which she was always "Mrs. Lakoff." There was no introductory "Robin Lakoff's book ..." There was no use of simply "Lakoff." And there was no other title (she had her doctorate). Other mentions in the review were to men, and were mostly last-names, though Ross and someone else (Austin, come to think of it) got initials. Lakoff parodied a bit of Householder's review in her response, but never commented on his exclusive use of "Mrs." Householder, once again, last named and sometimes first-and-last- named males, and titled Lakoff, in a response to the response. My suspicion is that Householder's use (and perhaps Lakoff's indifference) wasn't too uncommon when women were fairly rare in the profession (and academics generally). __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1991 20:55 EDT From: BELMORE@vax2.concordia.ca Subject: Re: 2.713 Names Yes, this is linguistics: sociolinguistics, registers (a la Halliday), varieties of language a la Douglas Biber, etc. I haven't found it too diffi- cult to quickly skip over topics of no special interest to me. More elaborate subject headings (e.g. not just query but query: followed by a question or well-defined topic) would probably help a lot. __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 23:15:31 EDT From: Michael Newman Subject: Re: 2.703 Using last`names More on this business of last +first naming and intimacy. In 'Another Country', a film which takes place in an English public (read prep) school in the 30s all the boys last name each other. The main character (who is supposed to modeled after Guy Burgess) is in love with another boy and finally gets up the courage to ask him out. When they meet the first thing the Burgess character does is to ask his beloved his first name, and then to introduce his own. But the other character only smiles and says he already discovered it. I take this to support the distance theory of last names that has recently been propounded. Both boys realize that for their new relationship, last names are no longer ap- propriate, which they formally acknowledge by introducing their first names. Michael Newman __________________________________________________________________________ 6) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1991 11:57:05 +0200 From: akman@TRBILUN.BITNET Subject: Re: 2.703 Using last`names First of all, I would like to thank everybody who contributes to the success of the Linguist List. I am no linguist but I read it with great interest and do profit from the views of knowledgeable people discussing various important issues. I would like to report something re: using the last names. In Turkey, the usage of "Bay" and "Bayan" (which correspond to Mr and Mrs (or Miss), respectively) has been diminishing. I have noticed that politicians and newspaper columnists use "Bay" nowadays to refer to politicians that they want to ridicule or offend. Similarly, "Bayan" is commonly used by this group to refer to ladies whom they consider vulgar or banal. Obviously, counterexamples can be found, but this has been my general observation. Mr. Oktay Akbal, a (minor) Turkish writer and columnist, is a good example. In the late 70's, his essays which were regularly published in the Turkish daily "Cumhuriyet" used to refer to prime-minister of that period, Suleyman Demirel, as "Bay Demirel" whereas his favorite politician at that time, Bulent Ecevit, will be referred to as "Sayin Ecevit." ("Sayin" = (approx.) Honorable.) Varol Akman Dept. of Computer Eng. Bilkent University, Ankara __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-731. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-732. Thu 31 Oct 1991. Lines: 148 Subject: 2.732 Linguistics Department closing at Minnesota Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 91 12:28 CST From: Joe Stemberger Subject: Linguistics Department closing at Minnesota -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 91 12:28 CST From: Joe Stemberger Subject: Linguistics Department closing at Minnesota We've been told that folks on LINGUIST are interested in hearing what is happening about the possible closing of the Linguistics Department here at Minnesota. The following is my personal opinion about what has happened and why. The Faculty Assembly of Liberal Arts has voted to support the Dean's plan to close us down. They explicitly rejected a counterproposal that we merge with another department (the one that the Dean's were trying to get us to merge with last year). The Dean is also dead-set against a merger. She says that only closing departments will get her what she needs for Liberal Arts. The Dean will forward recommendation of closure to central administration. In theory, our president could refuse to follow it. Now, President Hasselmo is a linguist, trained by Einar Haugen, and a current member of the LSA. But he also attempts to be squeeky-clean, and would never do anything that could be even remotely construed as favoritism. So, I doubt that he'll intervene on our behalf. The Regents will hear the plans at their meeting next week, and will vote in early December. We are still fighting for a merger. But since the Dean is so strongly opposed to this, success is unlikely. Many of you out there may be wondering why the Dean is doing this, since it looks like it doesn't save much money. We heard from one linguistics department that saved itself a few years ago by compromising, and agreeing to give up a secretary and some TA lines. We have only one secretary and 0.8 TA lines, so that wasn't possible. You'd think that any savings would come only from people leaving, so that this decision was a decision to eliminate all aspects of linguistics at this university. But the story is more complicated. Some of the things that the Dean has said just this week have made several things clearer to me. The budget of Liberal Arts is not, in fact, being decreased. The University of Minnesota is undergoing a massive internal reallocation of funds. The budget of the College of Education is being slashed, and one whole branch campus (at Waseca) has been closed. The money from those changes is being re-distributed to other colleges at the university, and Liberal Arts is a designated winner. Our budget is actually being increased substantially. However, there are strings attached. In order to get the new money, Liberal Arts much show savings of 1.5 million dollars. This reallocation is actually crucial to understanding the Dean's actions. In addition to closing two departments, the Dean wants to strengthen others, USING FUNDS FROM REALLOCATION. This allows her to do some creative book-keeping. If she can take someone from the Linguistics Department and transfer him/her to a department slated for strengthening, then that person's salary can come FROM REALLOCATION FUNDS; since the source of the salary would no longer be the Linguistics Department budget, all the money in the salary WOULD BE SAVED --- cut from the PREVIOUS budget. So, costs can be transferred from one category (old budget) to a new one (reallocation funds). In actual dollars spent, there would be little change. But the Dean can claim that so-many-dollars have been saved, and commit new money to paying the person. If there were no money coming to us through reallocation, or if central administration hadn't put strings on that money, there would be little or no savings from closing us. So, paradoxically, we have been done in because of an increase in the budget. This also explains why the Dean is so opposed to us merging with another department. The most likely departments to merge with are not slated for strengthening, so no money would be "saved". But why Linguistics? We have repeatedly told the Dean that we, as linguists, have our fingers in many pies, that we are needed by many other departments. Lots of you wrote letters saying that (for which we thank you). Lots of our colleagues in other departments here at Minnesota wrote similar letters, including our cognitive science center and cognitive science program. I think the Dean is well aware of that. In fact, she had an interesting response to our graduate students when they told her that. It was something like, "That's fine. That means that there are many other departments that we could move the faculty to." In order to get "savings" by using reallocation money, she really needs to disperse a faculty. Most departments are highly focused. If you close down a German Department, you basically have to merge it with some other language department. It is unlikely that you could put 2 faculty in French, 2 in Spanish, 1 in Psychology, 1 in computer science, etc. But a discipline that has lots of inter-disciplinary characteristics is suitable for dispersal. If linguistics interacts with a lot of other disciplines, then linguists can theroretically be found in many different types of departments. So dispersal would work. The other department being shut down, Humanities, is inter-disciplinary in the same way; they are being closed even though previous Deans have ranked them as one of the best departments in Liberal Arts. Our Linguistics Department here at Minnesota has always prided itself on being particularly interdisciplinary. One theoretical phonologist (me) also specialized on psycholinguistics and language acquisition; the other concentrates on Spanish phonology. Our syntacticians also by-and-large have broader interests, in computational linguistics, mathematical linguistics, the philosophy of language, ESL, translation, etc. One faculty member works on gendered speech in young children. We don't have anyone concentrating on, say, phonological theory with a concentration on Bantu languages; such a person would not fit at all with any other department at the university. But most of our faculty fit more obviously into other departments. So the Dean thinks that she can scatter us to many departments, and we can carry on our work in those departments. I doubt it will work. The Dean wants to eliminate undergraduate degrees, but doesn't have the authority to touch the graduate program. But we won't be able to have any TA's any more. And we won't be able to attract graduate students, since we no longer have a department. The survival of our graduate program is uncertain. If faculty get upset and leave, there's no guarantee that they'll be replaced with people who would have a commitment to keep linguistics going here. But the Dean is at least trying to pretend that things can be kept going. So, that's how things stand. We haven't given up yet by any means, but things look grim. And paradoxically, the whole mess came about because of the promised reallocation money. If we had been facing REAL budget cuts, we'd have had to tighten our belts, and that would have been all. But because the Dean has to APPEAR to save money without actually having to do so, we have been sacrificed towards that goal. Most of you will not be faced with similar situations; this reallocation business is peculiar to our situation. But you might want to think about the centrality of our field to so many others. Whoever would have thought that being valuable to other departments would have made us MORE likely to be closed, simply because there would be easy places to put us. I'd like to thank everyone for all the support that you have given us, both in terms of letters and in terms of moral support. We will give further updates as things procede. Maybe we'll even manage to fight some of this off and have some good news. ---joe stemberger __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-732. ________________________________________________________________ 8/17/91 [Moderators' note: The following message describes how to do things on LINGUIST. We send this out every few weeks so that it will be available through the same channel as the messages, rather like the stylesheet in the front cover of a paper journal. It will always appear without a volume number and with the subject line "LINGUIST How-To's" followed by the date of the latest update.] HOW TO: 1) SUBSCRIBE TO LINGUIST: Send a message to: Listserv@tamvm1.tamu.edu (if you are on the Internet) or Listserv@tamvm1 (if you are on Bitnet) The message should consist of the following line only: subscribe linguist Ex: subscribe linguist Jane Doe 2) TEMPORARILY STOP RECEIVING LINGUIST: Send a message to the Listserv, at the address in (1) above. The message should consist of the following line only: set linguist nomail You might do this if, for example, you are going on vacation for a few weeks. When you return, simply do (3) below. 3) RESTART LINGUIST AFTER HAVING SET YOURSELF TO "NOMAIL": Send a message to the Listserv, at the address in (1) above. The message should consist of the following line only: set linguist mail 4) PERMANENTLY REMOVE YOURSELF FROM THE LIST: Send a message to the Listserv, as in (1) above. 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If, on the other hand, you want to change your ADDRESS, please contact the moderators. 7) GET THE NAMES AND E-MAIL ADDRESSES OF LINGUIST SUBSCRIBERS: Send a message to the Listserv, as in (1) above. The message should consist of the single line: review linguist 8) JOIN IN THE LINGUIST DISCUSSION: Address your message to: Linguist@tamvm1.tamu.edu (Internet) or Linguist@tamvm1 (Bitnet) Or simply select the Reply option while reading a LINGUIST message. 9) RETRIEVE A FILE FROM THE LISTSERV: We frequently announce that files (e.g. conference programs) are available on the Listserv. To get such a file sent to you as a mail message, follow the instructions given in the message announcing that the file is available. BUT REMEMBER: The address for retrieving files is different from the address for posting a message to LINGUIST. Most of our files are kept on listserv@tamvm1.tamu.edu, but a few are kept elsewhere. So be sure to use the address given in the announcement. Usually it will tell you to send a message consisting of the following line: get linguist Ex: get lsa lst linguist (This will retrieve the list of e-mail addresses for LSA members.) If the listserv tells you that the file is unknown to it, you may just have the wrong name. Get a listing of all the files it has by sending the listserv the message: index linguist 10) PUT A FILE ON THE LISTSERV: We ask that you put long messages (over 200 lines) on the Listserv, rather than posting them to the entire list. Files appropriate for the Listserv include conference programs and registration forms; linguistic surveys; long bibliographies; reports on projects directly relevant to linguistic research (e.g., the Text-Encoding Initiative); and other material of wide interest within the linguistcs community. If you have material to put on the Listserv: Head the material EITHER "For the Listserv" OR "For the Listserv--announcement follows" and send it to: Linguist@tamvm1.tamu.edu In other words, send it exactly like a regular LINGUIST message. We will put it on the Listserv for you and announce to the list that it is available. Depending on your header, we will announce it in one of two ways: If you have headed it, " . . . announcement follows" we'll wait for your summary announcement and post that, after appending our standard header telling how to retrieve the complete file. THIS IS THE OPTION WHICH WE WOULD PREFER, since it ensures a coherent announcement. Please make your announcement brief and send it, as a second mail message, to the same address. If you have headed it simply "For the Listserv," we'll post the first few lines of the file, after appending our standard header telling how to retrieve the complete file. 11) GET A BACK ISSUE OF LINGUIST: If the issue you want is one from the last few months, these are still available on line from the listserv. Since these are kept in archive files, you have to find out which file contains the issue you're interested in. To find out which archive file is the one you want, send the message: index linguist to the address: listserv@tamvm1.tamu.edu (Internet) listserv@tamvm1 (Bitnet) The listserv will send you back a listing of all the archive files it has. When you've figured out which file contains the issue you're after, get the file you're after by sending the message: get linguist to the same address. 12) GET THE LISTSERV TO COOPERATE WHEN IT HASN'T SO FAR: If you've been getting LINGUIST but haven't been able to get files, set nomail, etc., simply resubscribe, as in (1) above. (If you didn't resubscribe when LINGUIST moved from the U. of Western Australia to Texas A&M, the Listserv may have no record of your current address, since the path used to reach you from Australia may differ from the one used to reach you from the USA.) 13) GET EXTRA HELP WITH ANY OF THE ABOVE: Send a message to either of us: e311aa@tamuts.tamu.edu (Anthony Aristar) hdry@emunix.emich.edu (Helen Dry) We'll be happy to help if we can. --Helen & Anthony ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-733. Thu 31 Oct 1991. Lines: 144 Subject: 2.733 Klingon Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 30 Oct 91 17:12:12 PST From: silver@Sonoma.EDU Subject: Klingon 2) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1991 9:38:58 +0800 (SST) From: A_DENCH@FENNEL.CC.UWA.OZ.AU Subject: RE: 2.723 Queries 3) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1991 21:12:47 +1100 From: Major Subject: 2.723 Queries 4) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 91 15:06:50 EST From: "Erik Carvalhal Miller ('On ne peut rien contre Erik! On ne peut que fuir!')" Subject: RE: 2.723 Queries -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 30 Oct 91 17:12:12 PST From: silver@Sonoma.EDU Subject: Klingon Re Star Trek language, cf. Okrand, Marc. 1985. The Klingon Dictionary New York : Pocket Books. Okrand (PhD Linguistics UCB) is the linguistic con sultant for the Startrek movies. He created the Klingon language for Star Trek III: the search for Spock, and for all the subsequent Star Trek movies, and trains actors in the phonetics of Klingon, among other aspects of the language. The Klingon dictionary (bilingual: Klingon-English; English-Klingon) consists of a descriptive sketch of the phonology, morphology and syntax of Klingon, as well as comments about dialect variation, the writing systemn and language use. That Klingon tends towars polysynthesis is not surprising since Okrand's dissertation was the grammar of a California Indian language. Klingon may also reflect his interest in Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages. One thing for sure, Klingon is not like English. I have made up problems for beginning linguistics classes and Okrand has even provided me with a short text for analysis. Students like to speculate on how aspects of the morphology and lexicon may reflect Klingon culture. Shirley Silver, Dept. of Anthropology/Linguistics Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park CA 94928 silver@sonoma.edu __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1991 9:38:58 +0800 (SST) From: A_DENCH@FENNEL.CC.UWA.OZ.AU Subject: RE: 2.723 Queries re Ellen Kaisse's query about Klingon. If my memory serves me right, the offending linguist is Mark Okrand and I think there is a Klingon dictionary in print. I stumbled across the reference while chasing things he had written in the reconstitution of various Amerindian languages. Perhaps he reads Linguist??! Alan Dench University of Western Australia A_DENCH@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1991 21:12:47 +1100 From: Major Subject: 2.723 Queries Ellen Kaisse ask about the Klingon language in StarTrek V. A Klingon language was developed by Mark Okrand for the filming of Star Trek III and has been used ever since whenever Klingon dialogue is called for in the movies and in ST:TNG. It is described in The Klingon Dictionary Mark Okrand Pocket Books ISBN 0-671-66648-7 Approx. US$5 Despite the title, about 50% of the space in the book is taken up with a description of the grammar. Major __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 91 15:06:50 EST From: "Erik Carvalhal Miller ('On ne peut rien contre Erik! On ne peut que fuir!')" Subject: RE: 2.723 Queries >From: Ellen Kaisse >Subject: language in StarTrekV >I saw StarTrek V for the first time this weekend (I had been residing on >another planet when it came out, apparently) - the one called The >Final Frontier, or something like that, where they across the Great >Barrier and find an evil creature impersonanting God. In this Star >Trek, the Klingons speak in Klingon aboard their own vessel, and we >get English subtitles. I was pretty impressed with how believeable >this language sounded, but I didn't want to impose on my friends >clustered around the VCR and keep winding it back to see if it >was SOV, had ejectives, etc. Does anyone know anything about the >creation of this language? As I recall, there was a credit for >'Klingon dialect coach' or something like that, a Marc Ok-something. >If it were a real language (Abkhaz leapt to mind, largely, I suspect, >because I've never *heard* Abkhaz), they'd have to have said so, wouldn't >they? It idlely crossed my mind that this Klingon clip would make a >good mid-November visual/aural aid in an intro class. > >-ellen kaisse (kaisse@u.washington.edu) Marc Okrand did indeed design the Klingon language used in _Star_Trek_V:_The_ _Final_Frontier_ (it also appeared, with subtitles, in the first and third movies and is slated for the sixth). The same language (but with greatly varying pronunciation) is used on the _Star_Trek--The_Next_Generation_ TV show in episodes like "A Matter of Honor," "Sins of the Father," and "Redemption." You can learn more about Klingon (or Klingonese) by checking out Okrand's _Klingon_Dictionary_, a paperback available from Pocket Books or whoever it is who publishes the ongoing series of _Trek_ novels. (Note: I don't think an update has appeared since its first printing, around the time _STIII_ came out.) Incidentally, I have met someone who learned Klingonese--with the help of film clips--at a summer camp for gifted high school students. Apparently the kids had to do videotaped skits, so my friend's group did a Klingon _Leave_It_to_ _Beaver_. Oh--Klingon is OVS. Erik Carvalhal Miller, Klinguist ECMILLER@UCS.INDIANA.EDU Indiana University (Bloomington) __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-733. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-734. Thu 31 Oct 1991. Lines: 186 Subject: 2.734 Jobs Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 30 Oct 91 17:05 EST From: BARBARA PARTEE Subject: Job 2) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 91 08:56:56 CST From: huttar%dallas@utafll.uta.edu Subject: JOB at U Texas - Arlington 3) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 91 13:00:30 MET From: Jacob Hoeksema Subject: jobs -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 30 Oct 91 17:05 EST From: BARBARA PARTEE Subject: Job POSITION ANNOUNCEMENT The Department of Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst invites applications for a possible one-year Visiting Assistant or Associate Professor position, contingent on funding, to begin September 1, 1992. Specialization: syntax. Salary commensurate with qualifications. Send letter of application, curriculum vitae, sample publications, and three letters of reference by Feb. 14, 1992 to: Syntax Search Committee Department of Linguistics South College University of Massachusetts Amherst, MA 01003 The University of Massachusetts at Amherst is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer PLEASE POST _______________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 91 08:56:56 CST From: huttar%dallas@utafll.uta.edu Subject: JOB at U Texas - Arlington The University of Texas at Arlington, Program in Linguistics announces one tenure track opening at the Assistant/Associate Professor level beginning September 1992 in Text Theory, Text Linguistics, and Discourse Analysis. Publications and grants record required. Candidates should have a record of linguistic fieldwork and have a non-IE language area specialty. The University of Texas at Arlington is connected with the Summer Institute of Linguistics, Dallas, TX and has a graduate linguistics program at the MA and PhD levels with special emphasis in field linguistics. The candidate would have responsibility for teaching the text theory portion of our BA and MA linguistics program and in the PhD program in Graduate Humanities. The candidate would also be expected to supervise theses and dissertations. Salary and rank commensurate with experience. UTA is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Deadline for CV's and names and addresses of persons to provide supporting letters, Feb. 1, 1992. Address: Dr. J. Edmondson Linguistics University of Texas at Arlington Arlington, TX 76019 USA E-mail: jerry@utafll.uta.edu __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 91 13:00:30 MET From: Jacob Hoeksema Subject: jobs Opening 1: The University of Groningen (the Netherlands) has an opening for a POSTDOCTORAL FELLOW with (1) experience in the field of computational linguistics, especially natural-language parsing, and (2) a solid background in logic and (3) some interest in corpus-oriented research. The succesful candidate will take part in a 5-year project (called 'Reflections of Logical Patterns in Language Structure and Language Use') at the University of Groningen sponsored by the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research as part of their Pionier program. The project focusses on the study of logico-semantic patterns (in particular those associated with negation and quantification) in natural language from a wide variety of perspectives, including in particular psycholinguistic, computational and diachronic points of view. The task of the candidate is to design and develop parsing modules and tools which enable automatic detection of monotonicity and other logical properties of words and expressions in a given linguistic context. For example, this includes the formulation of algorithms which determine whether a given expression can be replaced in a given sentence by more or less specific items while preserving the truth of that sentence. Similarly for the applicability of the De Morgan laws and other related boolean properties. The position is a temporary one, with a maximum length of five years. Send applications and all inquiries to dr. Jack Hoeksema, Faculty of Letters, University of Groningen, P.O. Box 716, 9700 AS Groningen, The Netherlands. E-mail: hoeksema@let.rug.nl Deadline: December 16, 1991 Opening 2. The University of Groningen (the Netherlands) has an opening for a POSTDOCTORAL FELLOW with experience in the field of psycholinguistics. Required are a solid knowledge of theories of language acquisition and an interest in semantics (preferably one which can be traced in publications). The succesful candidate will take part in a 5-year project (called 'Reflections of Logical Patterns in Language Structure and Language Use') at the University of Groningen sponsored by the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research as part of their Pionier program. The project focusses on the study of logico-semantic patterns (in particular those associated with negation and quantification) in natural language from a wide variety of perspectives, including in particular psycho- linguistic, computational and diachronic points of view. The task of the candidate is to study the acquisition and use of semantically-defined dependencies in natural language, such as those between positive and negative polarity items and their respective triggers and anti-triggers, in connection with a study of the acquisition and use of logical operators such as negation, implication and the comparative. One of the questions involved is the extent to which the acquisition of polarity items is mirrored or preceded by the acquisition and correct use of their triggers. Other questions involve the precise path along which polarity-sensitivity is mastered, how various classes of polarity-sensitive items are established by the child, in which environments these items first show up, to what extent overgeneration is found, the role of negative evidence in the acquisition process and so on. The position is a temporary one, with a maximum length of five years. Send applications (with CV) and all inquiries to dr. Jack Hoeksema, Faculty of Letters, University of Groningen, P.O. Box 716, 9700 AS Groningen, The Netherlands. E-mail: hoeksema@let.rug.nl Deadline: December 16, 1991 __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-734. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-735. Thu 31 Oct 1991. Lines: 235 Subject: 2.735 Conferences Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1991 09:20 MST From: Joseph Pentheroudakis Subject: Association for Machine Translation 2) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 91 11:41:23 MST From: FD00000 Subject: Announcement about Romance Conf. 3) Date: 30 Oct 91 00:36:00 EST From: "Jinjuan Duan (STU)" Subject: PAN ASIATIC LINGUISTICS SYMPOSIUM 4) Date: Wed, 30 Oct 91 15:56:18 -0500 From: walker@flash.bellcore.com (Don Walker) Subject: ACL-92 Call for Papers, 28 June - 2 July 1992, Newark, Delaware, USA -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1991 09:20 MST From: Joseph Pentheroudakis Subject: Association for Machine Translation ********************************************************************* Announcing the formation of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas (AMTA) AMTA is a newly formed organization which seeks to bring together researchers, commercial developers, users, sponsors, and other individuals or institutional or corporate entities interested in machine translation in order to promote and foster the development and active use of this technology. It is part of the International Association for Machine Translation, which shares the same purpose. AMTA offers its members a variety of benefits and activities. Plans are already under way to sponsor workshops and conferences (with discounted registration to members), develop and propose criteria for the evaluation of MT systems, cooperate in the exchange of pre-competitive data such as parallel texts and mailing lists, and disseminate information, including an international newsletter under the editorship of John Hutchins to appear starting in January 1992. Members in all categories will receive the newsletter. Individuals who want to participate in the life and doings of AMTA with full voice and vote should join as Active Members. For those who only wish to receive the mailings, there is a category of Associate Member. Nonprofit institutions are eligible to join as Institutional Members, and for-profit companies, as Corporate Members. Dues paid in 1991 cover membership through the end of 1992. Individuals who join as Active Members before 1 January 1992 pay the special founder's rate of only $50.00. If you have questions, please contact: Scott Bennett (fax: 512/471-6084 / voice: 512/471-4166 Email: bennett@utxvms.cc.utexas.edu) Joann Ryan (fax: 301/585-0742 / voice: 301/585-0851) Muriel Vasconcellos (fax: 202/667-8808 / voice: 202/861-4338) __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 91 11:41:23 MST From: FD00000 Subject: Announcement about Romance Conf. FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS This is the final call for papers for the Twenty Second Annual Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages, to be held at the University of Texas at El Paso and the Universidad Autonoma de Ciudad Juarez on February 20 - 23, 1992. Deadline for receipt of abstracts is NOVEMBER 15, 1991. Abstracts are invited for 20-minute talks. Send six copies of an anonymous one-page abstract. Enclose a 3"x5" card with your name, address, phone number, e-mail address, affiliation, and the title of your paper. Abstracts taking any linguistic approach to the Romance languages are welcome. In observation of the Columbian Quincentenary, abstracts dealing with language contact in the Americas are especially encouraged. Address abstracts and inquiries to: LSRL XXII Department of Languages and Linguistics The University of Texas at El Paso El Paso, Texas 79968 USA Phone: (915) 747-5767 e-mail: fd00@utep.bitnet fax: (915) 747-5111 DO NOT SEND ABSTRACTS BY E-MAIL! SNAIL-MAIL ONLY PLEASE! Invited Speakers: Denis Bouchard Universite de Quebec a Montreal Bernard Tranel University of California, Irvine Carlos Otero University of California, Los Angeles Yolanda Lastra Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico Sessions are scheduled to take place in both El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua. Conference Organizers: Jon Amastae Grant Goodall Mario Montalbetti Marianne Phinney __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: 30 Oct 91 00:36:00 EST From: "Jinjuan Duan (STU)" Subject: PAN ASIATIC LINGUISTICS SYMPOSIUM The Organizing Committee of the PAN ASIATIC LINGUISTICS SYMPOSIUM to be held at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand, on January 8-10, 1992 would like to invite you to attend the Symposium. Over a hundred papers have been accepted for presentation. The papers cover a variety of topics on Asian languages, i.e., phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, socioling- uistics, language contact, natural language processing, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, typology and diachronic studies. This is a golden opportu- nity for you to meet fellow linguists with similar interests from 23 countries. Registration fee : US$ 180.00 (to cover 2-volume proceedings, luncheons, coffee breaks, reception, symposium dinner) Contact address : "Pan-Asiatic Linguistics Symposium" Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, THAILAND. Email address : fwww@chulkn.chula.th@munnari.oz.au __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Wed, 30 Oct 91 15:56:18 -0500 From: walker@flash.bellcore.com (Don Walker) Subject: ACL-92 Call for Papers, 28 June - 2 July 1992, Newark, Delaware, USA ACL-92 CALL FOR PAPERS 30th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics 28 June - 2 July 1992 University of Delaware Newark, Delaware, USA TOPICS OF INTEREST: Papers are invited on substantial, original, and unpublished research on all aspects of computational linguistics, including, but not limited to, pragmatics, discourse, semantics, syntax, and the lexicon; phonetics, phonology, and morphology; interpreting and generating spoken and written language; linguistic, mathematical, and psychological models of language; language-oriented information retrieval; corpus-based language modelling; machine translation and translation aids; natural language interfaces; message understanding systems; and theoretical and applications papers of every kind. REQUIREMENTS: Papers should describe unique work; they should emphasize completed work rather than intended work; and they should indicate clearly the state of completion of the reported results. A paper accepted for presentation at the ACL Meeting cannot be presented at another conference. FORMAT FOR SUBMISSION: Authors should submit six copies of preliminary versions of their papers, not to exceed 3200 words (exclusive of references). The title page should include the title, the name(s) of the author(s), complete addresses, a short (5 line) summary, and a specification of the topic area. Submissions that do not conform to this format will not be reviewed. Send to: Henry S. Thompson University of Edinburgh Human Communication Research Centre 2 Buccleuch Place Edinburgh EH8 9LW, SCOTLAND UK (+44-31)650-4440; (+44-31)650-4587 fax acl92@cogsci.edinburgh.ac.uk (Internet) acl92@uk.ac.edinburgh.cogsci (Janet) SCHEDULE: Preliminary papers are due by 6 January 1992. Authors will be notified of acceptance by 28 February 1992. Camera-ready copies of final papers prepared in a double-column format, preferably using a laser printer, must be received by 20 April 1992, along with a signed copyright release statement. STUDENT SESSIONS: Following last year's success, there will again be a special Student Session organized by a committee of ACL graduate student members. ACL student members are invited to submit short papers describing innovative work in progress in any of the topics listed above. The papers will again be reviewed by a committee of students and faculty members for presentation in a workshop-syle session. A separate call for papers will be issued; to get one or for other information contact David Traum, University of Rochester, Computer Science, Rochester, NY 14627, USA; (+1-716)275-7230; traum@cs.rochester.edu. OTHER ACTIVITIES: The meeting will include a program of tutorials coordinated by Bonnie Webber, University of Pennsylvania, Computer & Information Science, Philadelphia, PA 19104; (+1-215)898-7745; bonnie@central.cis.upenn.edu. Some of the ACL Special Interest Groups may arrange workshops or other activities. CONFERENCE INFORMATION: Local arrangements are being chaired by Sandra Carberry, University of Delaware, Computer & Information Science, Newark, DE 19716, USA; (+1-302)451-1954; carberry@dewey.udel.edu. CoChairs are Daniel Chester, (+1-302)451-1955; chester@dewey.udel.edu; and Kathleen McCoy, (+1-302)451-1956; mccoy@dewey.udel.edu. Anyone wishing to arrange an exhibit or present a demonstration should send a brief description together with a specification of physical requirements (space, power, telephone connections, tables, etc.) to Chester. ACL INFORMATION: For other information on the conference and on the ACL more generally, contact Don Walker (ACL), Bellcore, MRE 2A379, 445 South Street, Box 1910, Morristown, NJ 07960-1910, USA; (+1 201)829-4312; walker@flash.bellcore.com or bellcore!walker. __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-735. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-736. Thu 31 Oct 1991. Lines: 170 Subject: 2.736 Queries Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 30 Oct 91 16:35:02 CST From: Nancy L. Dray Subject: Address query 2) Date: Wed, 30 Oct 91 18:47:36 MST From: Subject: think, believe 3) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1991 10:04 EET From: "Juhani H{rm{, CEFO, Univ.de Paris III, 13, rue de Santeuil, 75005 Paris" Subject: E-mail address query 4) Date: 31 October 91, 13:00:53 MST From: ASLEM.at.ASUACAD@tamvm1.tamu.edu -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 30 Oct 91 16:35:02 CST From: Nancy L. Dray Subject: Address query Does anyone have a current address ("snail mail"--I don't think she's on e-mail) for Mary Ellen Ryder? I believe she's at Boise State University in Boise, Idaho, but I can't seem to locate her address. Thanks very much. NLD __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Wed, 30 Oct 91 18:47:36 MST From: Subject: think, believe In an AI project, I've recently started to consider (a) The differences between usage/meaning of the verbs ``think'' and ``believe''. (b) The fact that ``think'' is often used as if it were speech verb, as in John thought, ``Mary must have taken the car''. (c) The fact that the examples like the following are common: I must be more careful next time, John thought where there are no quotation marks but their use would be appropriate. (d) As a sort of dual of (b), the fact that speech verbs are often used (metaphorically??) to portray thought, as in I must be more careful next time, John said to himself. (e) The fact that ``think'' in certain contexts can be used to portray speech (as well as thinking), as in I must be more careful next time, John thought aloud. I'd be very grateful for any pointers to work on any of (a) to (e), and would of course be glad to supply a listing of any pointers I receive. Pointers can be to any sort of literature (linguistic, psychological, philosophical, ...). Under (a) I'm particularly, but not exclusively, interested in ``think'' as having a greater tendency to imply occurrent (active) thinking events as opposed to stable/long-term/background mental states, and in ``think'' as having a greater tendency to imply conscious as opposed to unconscious belief. These tendencies are clearest in the past-tense, pseudo-speech usage as in (b). Though neither a polyglot nor a machine-translation researcher, I'd be interested in observations of similar phenomena, or lack of them, in other languages (especially Spanish, French, German, Chinese or Japanese, with which colleagues are familiar). Incidentally, all the above examples are closely modelled on things I've seen in perfectly mundane sources such as detective novels, children's books, pulp magazines, etc. -- John Barnden __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1991 10:04 EET From: Juhani H{rm{, CEFO, Univ. de Paris III, 13, rue de Santeuil, 75005 Paris" Subject: E-mail address query Does anyone know e-mail addresses for people working at the University of Paris III (Sorbonne-Nouvelle)? (The answers, if any, can perhaps be sent directly to me, rather than to this list.) Thanks in advance. Juhani H{rm{ harma@cc.helsinki.fi HARMA@FINUH.BITNET __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: 31 October 91, 13:00:53 MST From: ASLEM.at.ASUACAD@tamvm1.tamu.edu Greetings and Happy Halloween!:, I'm new to the list so excuse me, if I'm a littles short on protocol. I've been reading the mail that comes from the linguist list diligently and find the discussion very intersting. I'm not a linguist by training nor by any stretch of the word. I'm however interested in the important role which language plays in our lives and in our society as a whole. I'm a graduate student in sociology and my main interest is in cultural sociology. I have studied minority cultures in the United States, especially Chicano culture. My main interest in language is in its relationship with culture. My undergraduate thesis was a study of Chicana/o college students' ethnic identity. I studied the use of the Spanish and English languages by the students and tried to draw correlations between language use ethnic identity, and political identity. The main question was: How does Spanish language use or lack of use relate to one's identity? How does speaking Spanish affect one's outlook on their culture? I believe that I have found some interesting correlations and would like to gain better more extensive knowledge about linguistics so that I can understand these correlations better. I have read minimal amounts by sociolinguists and have found this to be very helpful. My meager understanding of some of Whorf's writings has also been a big help. I'm looking to gain a better understanding of language acquistion and the different roles which men and women (specificaly mothers and fathers) play in teaching language to the following generation. I'm not sure if this is the correct forum for asking for help in this area (if it isn't I'm sure I'll be notified) but is there anyone who can lead me to some studies concerning language acquistion especially those which discuss language acquistion in the Chicano culture? Can someone offer a short bibliography? I also need something which will discuss Whorf's ideas on the differences between languages, especially concerning differences in realities which people who speak different languages experience. This information is needed to strengthen some of the claims I make in the thesis. I intend to use this information to carve out a piece to present at a couple of conferences. Your help would be greatly apreciated thanks. Sincerely, Louis McFarland Department of Sociology Arizona State University __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-736. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-737. Fri 01 Nov 1991. Lines: 181 Subject: 2.737 Pro-Drop, Come and Bring Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 30 Oct 91 21:27:05 EST From: Ellen Prince Subject: Re: Queries 2) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 91 10:49:00 EST From: John.M.Lawler@um.cc.umich.edu Subject: Shouldn't Ignore These Strings 3) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 91 23:07:04 EDT From: LHORN@YALEVM.YCC.Yale.Edu Subject: Re: Queries 4) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 91 9:44:43 CST From: green@boas.cogsci.uiuc.edu (Georgia Green) Subject: Re: "pro&aux" drop 5) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 91 10:59:14 GMT From: Adam Kilgarriff Subject: Come and Bring -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 30 Oct 91 21:27:05 EST From: Ellen Prince Subject: Re: Queries >Date: Tue, 29 Oct 91 21:24:43 EST >From: Graham Katz >Subject: English "pro-drop" ... >Flows pretty natural, once you get rolling. >Certainly this has been noted and discussed >in the literature, but where? Can't find it. Schmerling, S. 1973. Subjectless sentences and the notion of surface structure. CLS 9. also, there is a dissertation in progress that includes this topic by sharon cote, univ. of penn., cote@linc.cis.upenn.edu. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 91 10:49:00 EST From: John.M.Lawler@um.cc.umich.edu Subject: Shouldn't Ignore These Strings Graham Katz asks about sentoids like: > Been planting corn all day. > Seems like Jake sold the farm. > Watch the crops for me? > Going home for break? As it happens, I chaired a dissertation study of precisely this phenomenon some years back. Here's the reference: Thrasher, Randolph Hallett, Jr. (1974) _Shouldn't Ignore These Strings: A Study of Conversational Deletion_. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan. This is available, like all U.M. dissertations, from University Microfilms in the usual way. It's pretty good, and pretty thorough, and holds up remarkably well 17 years later. Thrasher (who has been living and teaching in Japan for many years - don't know his e-mail address, sorry) analyzes this as, essentially, a pragmatic phenomenon with syntactic effects. (A parenthetical note: despite the bucolic nature of some of the examples these are by no means restricted to rural contexts.) Some interesting exx (from memory): a) Wife's on the phone, Bill. (= Your wife) b) *Turn, Bill. (= Your turn) c) *Bill, wife's on the phone. __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 91 23:07:04 EDT From: LHORN@YALEVM.YCC.Yale.Edu Subject: Re: Queries Re Graham Katz's query (Linguist List 2.729) on "English pro-drop"--his examples included "Seems like Jake sold the farm" and "Been planting corn all day", but the process extends to those speaking with no straw between their teeth--this has indeed been worked on. One fairly recent reference is Donna Jo Napoli (1982), "Initial Material Deletion in English", Glossa 16: 85-111. The general phenomenon of subjectless declaratives and other free-standing subsentential constituents is treated in greater depth in Ellen Barton's 1990 book, "Nonsentential Constituents" (John Benjamins). Larry Horn __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 91 9:44:43 CST From: green@boas.cogsci.uiuc.edu (Georgia Green) Subject: Re: "pro&aux" drop The best references I know on this phenomenon are: Susan Schmerling. Subjectless sentences and the notion surface structure. CLS 9 (1973) Randy Thrasher. University of Michigan Ph.D. diss. circa 1975. __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 91 10:59:14 GMT From: Adam Kilgarriff Subject: Come and Bring Firstly, thanks to everyone who replied to my query. The reference must have been Robert Binnick (1971) "Bring and come", LI 2.2 260-265. It contains a long list of parallel idioms for the two verbs. As Larry Horn point out, at the time the parallel lists entered into a debate about lexical decomposition. My interest in the data is rather different: I'm concerned with the hypothesis that words of `related meaning' tend to share the same patterns of variation in word sense (where `related meaning' means `in the same semantic field/thesaurus entries' or, for those wanting something tighter, `similar distribution (in relation to syntax and collocates)' though that needs stating carefully to avoid tautology). Provided that we are willing to consider phrasal verbs and idioms as collocations based on distinct senses of the base verb, Binnick's list gives striking support to the hypothesis. Larry Horn listed "come to grief" as an expression which did not have a parallel with "bring". But acceptability is certainly a matter of degree. "The Wall Street Crash brought to grief his plans for building a publishing empire." is not so odd. There is a productive process here, along the lines of "if word X is used with sense X1, and the situation is similar to one where X1 applies but for some factor F, and the core sense of word Y varies from the core sense of X by F, then we can generate and use a sense Y1 of word Y". Diagrammatically, factor F Words: X ----------------> Y | | | | V factor F V Senses X1 ----------------> By analogy, Y1 The 'acceptability' of Y in sense Y1 then breaks down into the factors that determine the ready availability of the analogy: How similar are X and Y? Does factor F conflict with the X/X1 alternation? (The reservation about `bring to grief' possibly stems from the interaction of the relatively fixed form of `come to grief' with the preference for `bring' to be immediately followed by its direct object.) Are there pre-existing senses of Y which interfere with the generation of a Y1 sense? Are both F and the X/X1 alternation sufficiently simple to be compounded without cognitive confusion? Is X heard sufficiently often in its X1 sense for the X/X1 alternation to be a well-worn path, or does it involve interpretative labour to cross from the one to the other? If this is valid, there is a research program implied. This will seek out what X/X1 alternations there are for different semantic fields, test the extent to which all the members of the semantic field have the same potential for polysemy, and consider the circumstances under which alternations are blocked or can be compounded. Would others agree? Adam Kilgarriff __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-737. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-738. Fri 01 Nov 1991. Lines: 284 Subject: 2.738 R-linking, Invariance, Gemination Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 91 10:37:22 EST From: Geoffrey Russom Subject: Re: 2.720 R-Linking 2) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 91 11:14:30 EST From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@mts.cc.wayne.edu Subject: R-Linking and Natural Phonology 3) Date: Tue, 29 Oct 91 10:52:46 PST From: scobbie@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Jim Scobbie) Subject: Phonetic invariance 4) Date: Tue, 29 Oct 91 12:41:27 PST From: scobbie@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Jim Scobbie) Subject: phonetic invariance (extra comment) 5) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 91 11:42:25 +0100 From: Michael.Cheney@teol.lu.se Subject: Languages with gemination phenomena -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 91 10:37:22 EST From: Geoffrey Russom Subject: Re: 2.720 R-Linking Question for Nancy Dray: did the Senators who had r-linking after "issue" speak the dialect that has schwa for the final syllable of the citation form? If so, r-linking would be unremarkable. -- Rick __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 91 11:14:30 EST From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@mts.cc.wayne.edu Subject: R-Linking and Natural Phonology A recent defense of David Stampe by Richard Goerwitz misses the point of my critique of Stampe's contribution. W/o dwelling on the emotional points of Goerwitz's contribution (whose feelings I apologize for out- raging), I would like to restate the substantive point in a way which is perhaps clearer and also to point out that this criticism applies to many other people's work in linguistics and has no special relation to natural phonology (which, as perhaps one or two people know, I have considerable sympathy for). Stampe's argument that the linking /r/ must in fact be underlying because (a) r-insertion is not phonetically natural and (b) it is automatic (a process rarther than a rule in NP terms), yet (c) according to NP only phonetically natural developments can be processes (i.e., automatic). My point was that NP, as originally developed, claimed it as a matter of FACT not of DEFINITION that automatic processes are precisely the phonetically natural ones. By making what I still consider a cardinal error in reasoning in his latest posting, Stampe runs the danger of turning this into a matter of definition and hence to make his theory no longer subject to factual challenge. That is the central point, and one which applies to many other cases in the linguistic literature. For example, to cite some once celebrated examples, take Relational Grammar (in its early days) and spontaneous demotion or the way in which one typically reasons about purported universals: A: I just found a language that violates the complex NP constraint. B: No, you have not, your examples are not complex NPs. A: How do you know they are not complex NPs. B: If they were, they would obey the complex NP constraint. My point was simply that NP seems to make many almost true predictions, and it would be better to revise the theory to deal with the counterexamples rather than take the route of definining the counterexamples away. For, in that case, you lose all predictive power. Goerwitz also asks how we know that some process is natural. I would point out that this not my problem as much as David's, but in fact I think the answer is reasonably clear. If you could show me that there are many languages in which children (or adults) spontaneously insert rhotics after central vowels before a vowel EVEN though /r/ was not previously lost in this environment in the history of the language, then I would agree that this is natural. This is something that I have pointed out since 1981 at least, arguing that it is precisely those dialects which lost /r/ in this position that then insert it (or, if you accept Stampe's analysis, generalize it to all underlying post-central vowel environments). Likewise, it is precisely those English dialects that lost final /l/ that then exhibit a linking-L phenomenon. Likewise, as I have pointed out since 1981, Korean lost initial /n/ before /i/ and /y/ (y means yod not a front rounded vowel here). Subsequently, this /n/ gets reinserted even in cases where it does not belong etymologically in sandhi environments. As a result of which, one can hear Korean speakers rendering English 'not yet' as /nannyet/. The /nn/ arises, apparently, because of the reinserted /n/ and then the assimilation (by a regular and well-known rule) of the final /t/ of 'not' to that /n/. It has also been pointed out that the form of the English indefinite article ('a' vs. 'an') is determined after rather than before speech errors (see Fromkin's work) and also that Spanish, Catalan, etc., speakers of English say things like an e-street (where, presumably. the /e/ is not underlying). And again, I would say that we know that the 'a'/'an' alternation is not natural because it is not something that we find children (or adults) doing spontaneously in languages of the world. If this was natural, then we would expect Dutch or German children to go through a stage in which they develop a similar alternation before "suppressing" it. Yet they do not seem to. On the other hand, the insertion of /e/ before /sC/ clusters IS natural in this sense. And, of course, NP predicts that all the rules (which are supposed to be unnatural) apply before all the processes (which are supposed to be natural). Now, as I said, it would be better to revise the theory to deal with these examples (which Stampe has known about for at least 10 years, not least because I keep reminding him of them several times a year) rather than attempt to immunize the theory--by defining natural to mean automatic--from factual challenge. Since all these examples involve external sandhi (ifEnglish examples like draw-r-ing are external), perhaps that is the relevant factor. And perhaps it is something quite different. Indeed, maybe NP is fundamentally wrong (though I rather doubt that). But we cannot find out if the factual issue is defined out of existence. __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Tue, 29 Oct 91 10:52:46 PST From: scobbie@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Jim Scobbie) Subject: Phonetic invariance Richard Ogden and Nick Cambell bring up the issues: 1) what constrains the relationship between a feature and a sound? 2) what does it mean to compare features across languages/speakers? I don't know the answer to these questions, :-), and I'd like to see more discussion of such difficult issues here. Does no-one have an opinion? Is the lack of a satisfactory answer something to be contemplated in embarrassed silence? We seem to spend quite a lot of time in this group bandying relatively trivial stuff around. Yet we are all supposed to be language professionals. Am I missing something? I'd have thought this relatively casual forum would be a good one. We can indulge in after-dinner chats happily. People don't often scream for data, references... This net is the napkin of the future. Let's have some half-baked ideas, please. Let me punt... (2) and (1) seem to be the same question. The constraints on the realisation of some feature are going to vary depending on the system of features and the system of realisations. There is also going to be arbitrary variance. There is also going to be absolute constraints. So, [+low] will on average be in a certain place universally, but this will vary both with regard to the other features in the system, the realisations of the other features and other factors (socially selected?) Note also that the featural and prosodic context of [+low] is important. I know nothing about this stuff, so can some people in the know please argue with each other to further my education? ;-) Now the question about comparing [+low] across languages/speakers. Speakers I have no problems with. You and me have the same system but sound differnt. Fine. Languages... I have no problems with a universal phonological feature set, but am not convinced comparisons of some feature across langauges is always immediately useful. Richard seems to be pointing out the arbitrary component of feature-exponent mapping then saying consequently all features are uniquely defined in each language making cross linguistic comparison impossible. Is that right? 'If [+low] for me and you is different, what the hell is [+low]' ??? If this is the question (straw-man alert) then I don't buy it. It is precisely *because* the feature-exponent relation varies that we want to talk about there being a [+low]. Otherwise we wouldn't need to. -- James M. Scobbie: Dept of Linguistics, Stanford University, CA 94305-2150 __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Tue, 29 Oct 91 12:41:27 PST From: scobbie@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Jim Scobbie) Subject: phonetic invariance (extra comment) Richard Ogden asked *two* questions here: > ` What then does it mean to say that certain phonological > features are 'the same' when their interpretation in > different languages is different? or when the features they > stand in relation to in different languages is different?' In a posting here I tried to debunk the 1st half of this. It is the difference in phonetic interpretation that partly creates the phonological level: to say two features are the same when their interpretations differ in different langauges is the basic stuff of phonology. However the 2nd part, where Richard askes how can people say the [+low] in a 1-vowel langauge is the same [+low] as appears in an n-vowel language --- that is the basic stuff of bad phonology. It isn't an impossible comparison, but we need to be careful. We also need to be careful when we claim that such and such a language has so many vowels. How many vowels has turkish got in non-initial syllables? Are we talking contrastive vowels or identifyable phonological configurations? I suspect the comparisons between languages in which this parameter is manipulated is a greater problem than the one Richard brings up. For example Navajo has /ieao/ vowels. What does this mean? What is the /o/? Is it really /u/? If it is a 4-vowel system what are the 4 vowels? /o/ has [u] and [o] allophones, [o] being the primary one. So Navajo has [ieaou]. What does this mean? Is it a 5 vowel system after all? -- James M. Scobbie: Dept of Linguistics, Stanford University, CA 94305-2150 -- James M. Scobbie: Dept of Linguistics, Stanford University, CA 94305-2150 __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 91 11:42:25 +0100 From: Michael.Cheney@teol.lu.se Subject: Languages with gemination phenomena I saw the posting of Vieri Samek-Lodovici on geminiation in the linguist. Although I am not a professional linguist, I have written a thesis on the theories of the ancient Hebrew D-stem (i.e. the one with the doubled radical) and its relationship to the geminated D-stems in the other Semitic languages. Though the specific argument of the thesis itself might not be of such great interest, the bibliography and the general discussion might be of some interest. Among the literature on the subject that might be of interest are the following: Leemhuis, F. The D and H Stems in Koranic Arabic Ryder, S. The D-stem in Western Semitic Mettinger, T "The Hebrew Verbal System" in Svensk Exegetisk Aarsbok Jenni, E Das hebraeische Pi'el: syntakticsh- semasiologische Untersuchung einer Verbalform im Alten Testament I suppose that I should also (humbly) mention that I discuss the above contributions, along with a number of articles and shorter contributions to the subject in my thesis (available on microfilm or, with some work, electronically via the network). Michael Cheney Teologiska Institutionen Lunds Universitet Lund, Sverige + 46 46 10 47 52 Internet: cheney@teol.lu.se EARN cheney@seldc52 Fax: +46 46 10 44 26 __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-738. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-739. Fri 01 Nov 1991. Lines: 109 Subject: 2.739 Lexical Borrowing, Goats, Tones, Motion, Washing... Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 91 12:41 +0800 From: MATTHEWS@HKUCC.BITNET Subject: Re: 2.702 Queries 2) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 18:41:56 CDT From: "M. Sokolik" Subject: Re: 2.713 Names 3) Date: Sun, 27 Oct 91 18:30:12 MET From: Jacob Hoeksema Subject: Re: 2.714 Is Language Finite? Motion Verbs 4) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1991 17:05 EST From: Herb Stahlke <00HFSTAHLKE@LEO.BSUVC.BSU.EDU> Subject: Needs -ed 5) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 91 20:05 +8 From: Tom Lai Subject: The four tones -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 91 12:41 +0800 From: MATTHEWS@HKUCC.BITNET Subject: Re: 2.702 Queries Re. lexical borrowing in Chinese: Cantonese in Hong Kong naturally borrows heavily from English. An interesting theoretical question her is how to distinguish borrowing from the ubiquitous code-mixing. Two relevant books produced here at HKU are: A Study of Lexical Borrowing from English in Hong Kong Chinese by Helen Kwok and Mimi Chan, 1982; Code Mixing and Code Choice: a Hong Kong Study, by John Gibbons, 1987 Stephen Matthews, U. of Hong Kong __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 91 18:41:56 CDT From: "M. Sokolik" Subject: Re: 2.713 Names Re: Gets My Goat Putting P.C. aside, according to Mencken (1945, American Language) it originated in a practice among certain trainers of horses of calming a nervous horse by putting a goat into the stall with it. If someone wanted to throw a race, s/he (probably he) would come and take the goat away. Then, of course, the horse would be overcome by a case of the jitters, I guess, and lose the race. First print recording: C. Mathewson's Pitching in a Pinch (1912) "Then Lobert...stopped at third with a mocking smile which would have gotten the late Job's goat." Timely, no? __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Sun, 27 Oct 91 18:30:12 MET From: Jacob Hoeksema Subject: Re: 2.714 Is Language Finite? Motion Verbs Re: Bring and Come check out the squib in the CLS book of squibs (1977) -- I forget who by -- but certainly entertaining! __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1991 17:05 EST From: Herb Stahlke <00HFSTAHLKE@LEO.BSUVC.BSU.EDU> Subject: Needs -ed Going back a few weeks to the "needs washed" discussion, I just heard a colleague who grew up in central Ohio say, "That list needs a lot of cleaned up." When I asked her about it, about two sentences later, to get her permission to exhibit her speech here, she thought that she had said "needs to be cleaned up." She didn't. I won't even try to parse this one, unless anyone is willing to consider "cleaned up" a nominal. Herb Stahlke Ball State University __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 91 20:05 +8 From: Tom Lai Subject: The four tones The four characters John Cowan asked for may be (in Pinyin) _tian zi sheng zhe_. Tom Lai. __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-739. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-740. Fri 01 Nov 1991. Lines: 110 Subject: 2.740 English NPs and Non-Stative Be Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 27 Oct 1991 18:02 EDT From: "David A. Johns" Subject: Active BE, themself 2) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1991 13:31 EST From: Fan mail from some flounder? Subject: Re: 2.710 Queries 3) Date: Tue, 29 Oct 91 22:30:03 CST From: Nancy L. Dray Subject: Response re adjective order 4) Date: Sun, 27 Oct 91 22:12:11 EST From: Wayles Browne Subject: Re: 2.710 Queries -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 27 Oct 1991 18:02 EDT From: "David A. Johns" Subject: Active BE, themself In a recent posting Richard Ogden quotes someone as saying, "If you don't be very specific ...." This non-stative BE is more common than you might think at first. It's even fairly easy to elicit. Imagine a scenario where you have trouble speaking in front of groups, and you go to a counselor for help. The counselor counsels, "Just be yourself". You take this advice, and after a few attempts, find that your stage fright is fading. You get so comfortable in front of an audience that a friend remarks on it, asking, "How do you do it?" How do you answer? I get the response I want -- "I just be myself" -- about 50% of the time. This actually sounds perfectly OK to me, although it seems to follow the same pattern as "try and" and "go " in that it works only if there is no ending on the verb. "He bes himself" sounds pretty bad, and "He be'ed himself is right out". Of course, "He is being himself" is OK, and is probably the form from which the others are backformed. By the way, the best example of "themself" I've ever heard occurred (timelily enough) during a World Series a couple of years ago. It was the one between St. Louis and Kansas City, and the announcer was interviewing the KC catcher. I don't remember his name, but he had lost a year due to alcohol problems. The interviewer was asking him about drug and alcohol problems among players, and asked if he thought players should go into treatment programs rather than fighting the problem alone. The player answered, "Well, I guess that's a problem every player is going to have to decide among themself." David Johns __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1991 13:31 EST From: Fan mail from some flounder? Subject: Re: 2.710 Queries Re Valentine's query about adjective order in NP's: I believe Zeno Vendler wrote an article where he pointed out that in English NP's are in the order least-noun-like to most noun-like. So for example, "white" is more noun-\ like than "pretty," since "white" can also serve as a noun, hence we say "pretty white house," and not "white pretty house." Susan Fischer __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Tue, 29 Oct 91 22:30:03 CST From: Nancy L. Dray Subject: Response re adjective order In response to L. Valentine's 25 Oct request for literature on the order of adjectives in NP's in French and English: Try the following article, which also has a useful bibliography: Waugh, Linda R. 1976. "The semantics and paradigmatics of word order," Language 52:82-107. NLD __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Sun, 27 Oct 91 22:12:11 EST From: Wayles Browne Subject: Re: 2.710 Queries On order of adjectives in English NPs: there is a good deal of work, including notably an essay in a book of collected articles by Zeno Vendler. __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-740. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-741. Fri 01 Nov 1991. Lines: 104 Subject: 2.741 Jobs Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 91 09:07:37 PST From: sharon@bend.UCSD.EDU (Sharon McGill) Subject: DIRECTOR OF BASIC LANGUAGE PROGRAM, UCSD 2) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 91 13:56 EST From: Subject: Applied Linguistics at Purdue -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 91 09:07:37 PST From: sharon@bend.UCSD.EDU (Sharon McGill) Subject: DIRECTOR OF BASIC LANGUAGE PROGRAM, UCSD ANNOUNCEMENT OF TENURED/TENURE-TRACK POSITION DIRECTOR OF BASIC LANGUAGE PROGRAM UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO The Department of Linguistics at the University of Califor- nia, San Diego has a tenured/tenure-track opening for the director of its undergraduate Basic Language Program, begin- ning September 1992. The Basic Language Program, with a teaching staff of 90 TAs and a support staff of 6, currently offers first-year language courses in Spanish, French, Ger- man, Italian, and Portuguese to approximately 4,300 students/year. We seek a person with a linguistics Ph.D. who has strong interests in foreign language acquisition and pedagogy and can teach a variety of graduate and undergraduate courses in linguistics. Practical knowledge of relevant languages is quite desirable. Rank and salary will be commensurate with qualifications and based on UC salary scales. Send letter of application, curriculum vitae, names of 3 referees, and one representative publication, to: University of California, San Diego BLP Search Committee Dept. of Linguistics, 0108 9500 Gilman Drive La Jolla, CA 92093-0108 Application materials must be received no later than December 1, 1991. The University of California is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer. ANNOUNCEMENT OF TWO TENURE-TRACK POSITIONS UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO The Department of Linguistics at the University of Califor- nia, San Diego has two tenure-track openings at the Assis- tant Professor level beginning September 1992. One position is for a theoretical linguist with a specialization in syn- tax and/or formal semantics, and the other for a specialist in functional and/or cognitive linguistics. For either position, desirable qualifications include a strong language background, a serious interest in morphology, and familiar- ity with multiple theoretical frameworks. A linguistics Ph.D. is required. The annual salary for an Assistant Pro- fessor is $35,900-$45,600. Send letter of application, curriculum vitae, names of 3 referees, and one representative publication, to: University of California, San Diego Search Committee Department of Linguistics, 0108 9500 Gilman Drive La Jolla, CA 92093-0108 Application materials must be received no later than December 1, 1991. The University of California is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 91 13:56 EST From: Subject: Applied Linguistics at Purdue Indiana University, Purdue University at Fort Wayne invites applicants for a tenure-track assistant professorship in applied linguistics, beginning fall 1992. The area of research is open: however, we are particularly interested in candidates with a background in rhetoric/composition, TESOL, or other fields related to writing or literary study. A Ph.D. in Linguistics or English is required: college-level teaching experience and publications are desirable. Send letter of application, names of at least three references, and curriculum vitae by 18 November to Frederick Kirchhoff, Chair, Department of English and Linguistics, Indiana University-Purdue University at Fort Wayne, Fort Wayne, IN 46805. AA/EOE __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-741. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-742. Fri 01 Nov 1991. Lines: 129 Subject: 2.742 You Guys and Onomatopenia, Names Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 30 Oct 91 19:28:01 EST From: Ron Smyth Subject: Re: 2.724 You Guys 2) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 91 12:09:29 CST From: Dennis Baron Subject: you guys > dudes 3) Date: Sun, 27 Oct 91 12:06:20 CST From: Eric Schiller Subject: Re: 2.706 Onomatopenia 4) Date: Sun, 27 Oct 91 12:02:45 PST From: silver@Sonoma.EDU Subject: Dench--BIF!BAM!BOP! 5) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 91 14:29:51 CST From: green@boas.cogsci.uiuc.edu (Georgia Green) Subject: Re: 2.731 Names and Titles -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 30 Oct 91 19:28:01 EST From: Ron Smyth Subject: Re: 2.724 You Guys William Kehoe, also a northern Ontario speaker, pointed out to me that 'guys' is a plural marker in our (former?) dialect: I, you, he/she/it, us guys, you(se) guys, them guys. I always wondered why people said 'them guys' instead of 'those guys'. It's interesting that the object pronouns are used ('Us guys didn't have a chance'; 'Them guys get all the breaks'). Now I'm wondering about the distribution of 'we' vs. 'us guys' (etc.) in such dialects. There's something about initial mention: 'Us guys didn't have a chance, but at least we didn't get shut out', but not '*We didn't have a chance, but at least us guys didn't get shut out'. Returning to my point in a previous posting about the possibility of tag questions, I think that 'youse' is a true pronoun because it can be so used, along with schwa reduction (...wouldn't youse -> wouldnch@z, where @ is schwa). Ron Smyth smyth@lake.scar.utoronto.ca __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 91 12:09:29 CST From: Dennis Baron Subject: you guys > dudes To add to the _you guys_ gender-marking issue, a survey of an unrepresentative sample of women aged 24-30something (my daughter and some of her friends) reveals they use _you guys_ w.o. gender marking, and also use _dudes_ to refer to all-female groups. So much for resisting masculines as generics. (Incidentally, older +f versions of dude include dudette and dudine, from the 1930s and 1940s, in AMerican English). -- __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Sun, 27 Oct 91 12:06:20 CST From: Eric Schiller Subject: Re: 2.706 Onomatopenia Don't overlook the important work by Gerard Diffloth on Expressives in this context, e.g. Notes on Expressive Meaning in CLS 8, reprinted in "The Best of CLS" (1988). Eric Schiller (ed. of Best of CLS) __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Sun, 27 Oct 91 12:02:45 PST From: silver@Sonoma.EDU Subject: Dench--BIF!BAM!BOP! Cf. Oswalt, Robert 1973. Inanimate imitatives in Pomo. Pp. 175-190 in Jesse Sawe(sp.error) Sawyer, ed. Studies in American Indian languages, University of Califpr ornia Press. Shirley Silver, Dept. of Anthropology Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, CA 94928 [silver@sonoma.edu] __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 91 14:29:51 CST From: green@boas.cogsci.uiuc.edu (Georgia Green) Subject: Re: 2.731 Names and Titles I have to respond to the story about Householder's review of Robin Lakoff's Abstract Syntax. It's possible Householder (believed he) was being chivalrous. I'm less inclined to believe Lakoff was indifferent. I, too, wrote a review of that book. When I submitted it to Language, all of the references to the author were Lastname. When I got the galleys, all (except one, curiously) had been changed to Mrs. Lastname. Discussion with the editor revealed that the motivation or rationalization was respect and/or "avoidance of confusion". I pointed out that differential naming practices in scholarly discussion did not serve to display respect, which was irrelevant anyway, but rather marked that individual as an outsider, and observed that no one worried about distinguishing unrelated linguists with the same name (say, Henry Lee Smith and Carlota Smith) from each other by sex, or worried about linguists of the same gender with the same last name. I don't recall seeing "Mrs." in the pages of Language after that. This was a long time ago, you know, before 1970. Georgia Green __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-742. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-743. Sat 02 Nov 1991. Lines: 208 Subject: 2.743 Conferences Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 91 13:39:10 PST From: clrf@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Child Language Research Forum) Subject: STANFORD CHILD LANGUAGE RESEARCH FORUM 2) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 91 14:28 GMT From: Onderzoeks instituut voor Taal en Spraak Subject: Announcement Lexicon Workshop -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 91 13:39:10 PST From: clrf@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Child Language Research Forum) Subject: STANFORD CHILD LANGUAGE RESEARCH FORUM STANFORD CHILD LANGUAGE RESEARCH FORUM 24rd Annual Meeting APRIL 3-5, 1992 KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Barbara Landau (University of California at Irvine) "Learning the Language of Space" SPECIAL WORKSHOPS on: "Crosslinguistic Studies of Spatial Semantic Development" -- Melissa Bowerman (MPI) & Soonja Choi (CSUSD) "Speech Errors as Evidence in Acquisition" -- LouAnn Gerken & Jeri Jaeger (SUNY Buffalo) CALL for PAPERS: The CLRF-92 Committee welcomes abstracts on any topic within first language acquisition, from the deletion of /-l-/ in clusters to crosslinguistic comparisons of questions, from the influence of perception on language to the modularity of syntax, from the forms of subordinate clauses to the pragmatics of greetings. ABSTRACTS should be no more than ONE PAGE long (preferably in 12-point font or type), with a title. Authors should send TEN COPIES, plus a separate sheet with the author's NAME, ABSTRACT TITLE, MAILING ADDRESS, EMAIL ADDRESS, and TELEPHONE NUMBER. DUE DATE (for receipt) is JANUARY 10, 1992. ADDRESS for Abstracts is: CLRF-92 Department of Linguistics, Stanford University Stanford CA 94305-2150, USA ENQUIRIES: email ; telephone 415 723-4284 __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 91 14:28 GMT From: Onderzoeks instituut voor Taal en Spraak Subject: Announcement Lexicon Workshop PLEASE POST Programme ******************************************************************* WORKSHOP ON LEXICAL SPECIFICATION AND LEXICAL INSERTION ******************************************************************* Research Institute for Language and Speech University of Utrecht 9 - 11 December 1991 Location: Achter de Dom 22, room 0.01 * * * Monday December 9, 1991 9.00-10.00 Registration 10.00 - 11.00 The extended projection of lexical information Jane Grimshaw (Brandeis) 11.00-11.45 Aspect, argument structure and the by-phrase in Polish nominalizations Bozena Rozwadowska (Univ. of Wroclaw/Univ. of Utrecht) 11.45 - 12.30 Aspectual Roles Carol Tenny (Univ. of Pittsburgh) 2.00 - 3.00 On the structure of argument structure, - and its projection Hubert Haider (Univ. of Stuttgart) 3.00 - 3.45 How lexical is argument structure? The case of activity verbs Angeliek van Hout (Tilburg Univ.) 4.00 - 4.45 Classifying single argument verbs Malka Rappaport-Hovav (Bar Ilan Univ.) & Beth Levin (Northwestern Univ.) 4.45 - 5.30 Lexical properties of ergativity Tanya Reinhart (Univ. of Tel Aviv/Univ. of Amsterdam) * * * Tuesday December 10, 1991 9.30 - 10.30 Projection and the lexical functional distinction M. Rita Manzini (Univ. College London) 10.30 - 11.15 Lexical specification with variables Johan Kerstens (Univ. of Utrecht) 11.15 - 12.00 On the storage, insertion, and form of phi-features Daniel Everett (Univ. of Pittsburgh) 1.30 - 2.30 Lexical specification, functional specifiers Peggy Speas (Univ. of Massachusetts) 2.30 - 3.15 Eliminating disjunction in lexical specification David Adger & Catrin Sian Rhys (Univ. of Edinburgh) 3.30 - 4.15 External arguments Joost Zwarts (Univ. of Utrecht) 4.15 - 5.15 Theta role assignment and the lexicon Edwin Williams (Princeton) Drinks * * * Wednesday December 11, 1991 9.30 - 10.30 Adjectives and argument structure Hans Bennis (Univ. of Leiden) 10.30 -11.15 Aspect and adjectival passives Anneke Groos (Univ. of Utrecht) 11.15 - 12.00 Levels of representation and experiencer objects Frank Drijkoningen (Univ. of Utrecht) 1.30 - 2.30 The grammar as incremental gestalts Lars Hellan (Univ. of Trondheim) 2.30 - 3.15 Event structure, lexical coindexation, and control Johan Rooryck (Indiana Univ.) 3.30 - 4.15 The semantic representation of denominal verbs Marie Labelle (UQAM) 4.15 - 5.15 Principles of lexical projection Joseph Emonds (Univ. of Washington) Alternate: Extending prefix-verb combinations in Hungarian Laszlo Maracz (Univ. of Groningen/ Niels Stensen Foundation) * * * Registration fee: regular: dfl 50 / $25 / students: dfl 35 / $17.50 "Achter de Dom", where the workshop will be held, is in the centre of Utrecht, close to the Dom tower, around the corner of "Trans 10", where the Research Institute is located. More information available from: Research Institute for Language and Speech phone: 31-30-392006 University of Utrecht fax: 31-30-333380 Trans 10, 3512 JK Utrecht email: ots@let.ruu.nl The Netherlands ots@hutruu59.bitnet * * * Some Hotel-information: Inexpensive hotels, walking distance from the conference site. Rates are approximate, in Dutch guilders (excl. tourist tax) Hotel de Admiraal, tel (0)30-710253/fax (0)30 732418 (single 75-95; double 125-140) (15 min.) Hotel Kay, tel. (0)30-712124/fax(030)-734058 (single 80-100; double 110-120) (5 min.) Parkhotel tel. (0)30-516712 (single 50; double 75-90) (5 min.) Hotel Domstad tel. (0)30-310131/322205 (single 50, double 65) (10 min.) Hotel Ouwi tel. (0)30-716303 (single 50-70; double 70-90) (15 min.) Less inexpensive: Hotel IBIS Utrecht tel. (0)30-910366/fax (0)30-942066 (single 110; double 140) (10 min. by tram) Hotel Pays Bas tel. (0)30-333321/fax (0)30-313169 (single 135; double 220) (5 min.) Hotel Mitland tel. (0)30-715824/fax (0)30-719003 (single 110; double 145) (15 min. by bus) Tourist information: VVV-Utrecht tel. (0)6-34034085 fax: (0)30-331417 __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-743. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-744. Sat 02 Nov 1991. Lines: 125 Subject: 2.744 Think/Believe and Themself Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 91 12:14:49 EST From: rapaport@cs.Buffalo.EDU (William J. Rapaport) Subject: Re: 2.736 Queries 2) Date: Sat, 02 Nov 91 10:05 EST From: "Barbara.Abbott" Subject: think/believe 3) Date: Fri, 01 Nov 91 16:45:05 -0600 From: Stephen P Spackman Subject: themself -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 91 12:14:49 EST From: rapaport@cs.Buffalo.EDU (William J. Rapaport) Subject: Re: 2.736 Queries Date: Wed, 30 Oct 91 18:47:36 MST From: Subject: think, believe In an AI project, I've recently started to consider (a) The differences between usage/meaning of the verbs ``think'' and ``believe''. (b) The fact that ``think'' is often used as if it were speech verb, as in John thought, ``Mary must have taken the car''. (c) The fact that the examples like the following are common: I must be more careful next time, John thought where there are no quotation marks but their use would be appropriate. (d) As a sort of dual of (b), the fact that speech verbs are often used (metaphorically??) to portray thought, as in I must be more careful next time, John said to himself. (e) The fact that ``think'' in certain contexts can be used to portray speech (as well as thinking), as in I must be more careful next time, John thought aloud. I'd be very grateful for any pointers to work on any of (a) to (e), and would of course be glad to supply a listing of any pointers I receive. Pointers can be to any sort of literature (linguistic, psychological, philosophical, ...). ........ -- John Barnden John- Take a look at: Wiebe, Janyce M., & Rapaport, William J. (1988), ``A Computational Theory of Perspective and Reference in Narrative'' \fIProceedings of the 26th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics\fP (\fISUNY Buffalo\fP) (Morristown, NJ: Association for Computational Linguistics): 131-138. Wiebe, Janyce M. (1990), ``Recognizing Subjective Sentences: A Computational Investigation of Narrative Text,'' \fITechnical Report 90-03\fP (Buffalo: SUNY Buffalo Department of Computer Science). Janyce M. Wiebe, "References in Narrative Text," Nous, Special Issue on Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence, Volume 25, Number 4, September 1991 William J. Rapaport Associate Professor of Computer Science Center for Cognitive Science Dept. of Computer Science||internet: rapaport@cs.buffalo.edu SUNY Buffalo ||bitnet: rapaport@sunybcs.bitnet Buffalo, NY 14260 ||uucp: {rutgers,uunet}!cs.buffalo.edu!rapaport (716) 636-3193, 3180 ||fax: (716) 636-3464 __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Sat, 02 Nov 91 10:05 EST From: "Barbara.Abbott" Subject: think/believe John Barden asked for references on the relation between verbs of saying and verbs of thought. One such is Zeno Vendler's 1972 book "Res Cogitans: An essay in rational psychology". (Jerry Fodor used some of Vendler's arguments to argue for his language of thought hypothesis in a paper called "Propositional Attitudes", in Monist, vol. 61, 1978.) __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Fri, 01 Nov 91 16:45:05 -0600 From: Stephen P Spackman Subject: themself Yesterday I was discussing a prospective joint project with a (good friend and) colleague; everything was framed in terms of "we" are going to have to do this that and the other, even when discussing a detail that was clearly going to fall to exactly one of us; so we drifted (perhaps semi-consciously) into "hospital we". And then I heard myself say, "So are we going to do this by ourself?". stephen __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-744. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-745. Sat 02 Nov 1991. Lines: 178 Subject: 2.745 Klingon, Names and Old Theories Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: 1 Nov 91 15:33 +0100 From: "Michael J. Hussmann" Subject: tlhIngan Hol Dajatlh'a'? 2) Date: Fri, 01 Nov 1991 17:06:29 PST From: webbd@CCVAX.CCS.CSUS.EDU Subject: Klingon font 3) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 91 22:05:52 EST From: Gilbert Harman Subject: Lakoff, Mrs. Lakoff, R. Lakoff 4) Date: Sat, 02 Nov 91 12:57 EST From: Brian Given Subject: 2.731 Names and Titles 5) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 91 19:05:11 CST From: Eric Schiller Subject: Re: 2.739 Lexical Borrowing, Goats, Tones, Motion, Washing... -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: 1 Nov 91 15:33 +0100 From: "Michael J. Hussmann" Subject: tlhIngan Hol Dajatlh'a'? Re: language in StarTrekV The Klingon language was created by Marc Okrand. The "official" (and, as far as I know, the only) reference is: Okrand, Marc: The Klingon Dictionary. English/Klingon, Klingon/English. Pocket Books, Simon & Schuster, New York 1985. It's far more than a dictionary, though: it contains an introduction into Klingon phonology, morphology, and syntax, with little bits of pragmatics and sociolinguistic stuff thrown in. (And it's genuinly funny, for a linguist anyway.) Okrand admits that the description of Klingon grammar is sketchy, but assures us that "most Klingons will never know the difference." There's also a collection of useful Klingon phrases, from "HIjol" ("Beam me aboard") to "nuqDaq 'oH Qe' QaQ'e'" ("Where is a good restaurant?"). Ah yes, the subject line: it means "Do you speak Klingon?". -- Michael Hussmann PS: Klingon is OVS. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 01 Nov 1991 17:06:29 PST From: webbd@CCVAX.CCS.CSUS.EDU Subject: Klingon font A Klingon font is available for the Macintosh by FTP from the Info-Mac archives at Stanford. Address: 36.44.0.6 cd info-mac, cd font; filename klingon.hqx (18311 bytes). Enjoy! Don W. DonWebb@CSUS.EDU __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 91 22:05:52 EST From: Gilbert Harman Subject: Lakoff, Mrs. Lakoff, R. Lakoff Georgia Green is not inclined to believe that Robin Lakoff was indifferent to the way Householder referred to her in his review. She also reports on how changed her own review in Language of Lakoff's book was changed to refer to "Mrs. Lakoff." It may be relevant to mention my own similar experience a few year's later. In 1973 I published a review in Language, referring in passing to Lakoff's review of Grammaire generale and raisonnee. The editor changed my reference to "R. Lakoff." Since that was the only reference to any Lakoff in my review, I queried the change and was given the same story that Green had been given a few years earlier: avoiding confusion. I objected further on the same grounds that Green mentions (e.g., there were references to just plain "Lakoff," meaning G. Lakoff, elsewhere in the issue) and asked for a correction notice. The editor (I do not remember who) refused on the grounds that he had asked Robin Lakoff if she objected to the changed reference and she did not object, he said! Gil Harman __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Sat, 02 Nov 91 12:57 EST From: Brian Given Subject: 2.731 Names and Titles There are some very intersting cultural but also micro-cultural differences here. I'm an anthro but not a linguist but have noticed rather pronounced differences among universities and corporations with regard to the etiquette of titles. My own student experience what that undergraduates called professors either "Dr. Whatsit" or "Professor Whatsit" until they reached fourth year where some professors would identify themselves by their first names, indicating a preference for that informality. In graduate school they myth of equality mandated the use of first names only. As a prof. I have taught at Dalhousie, Waterloo and Carleton U. My reading (and I'm sure it is only one of many at each institution) was that at Dalhousie students addressed you by title and it was up to the professor to suggest the use of a first name if they wished - many did. At Carleton my first year students often use my first name without begin asked. I would not, at Carleton, introduce myself by title unless I was attempting to identify myself vis-a-vis the bureacracy to an officer or staff member - I think it would be seen as violating an ethic of equality among faculty, staff and administration. I note, however, that many students from other cultures (e.g. India) tell me that they are very uncomfortable calling my "Brian" and would prefer "professor." One student from India recently explained to me that he would not be able to call anyone "Dr." but was very comfortable with "professor" - I think that Dr. was seen as rather pompous but I'm not certain. Certain corporations (or at least their P.R. departments) take great pains to find and use your first name. I recently had a conversation with Compuserve P.R. folks in California (phone) during which I (to clarify my role re. a new forum) introduced myself as "Dr. Given of Carleton U." Somehow they got my first name from my conversation or checked their records, and all officers addressed me by my first name. At each stage in a TRANSFER...HOLD...TRANSFER conversation I would introduce myself as DR. and they would come back with "Brian." I think, in this case, that the use of a first name is a strategy of dominance (they don't tell you THEIR first names). Maybe they were countering what they thought was a strategy of dominance on my part. Maybe it is simply a cultural difference. I note though, that my M.D. and her secretary absolutely refuse to call me "doctor!" That is probably the only situation in which I would prefer it since M.D.s intimidate me. I have run into gender differences in the use of titles at universities. A couple of female colleagues have explained to me that more women introduce themselves to students as "Dr." because they feel more need to establish academic authority than they beleive male faculty require. If so, I would assume that this gender-based usage is transitory and will disappear as the gender balance among faculty shifts closer to 50/50. Some interesting variance in usage of first/last names among new Canadians. The Tibetan people I work with don't use "last" names, but do have two (this wreaks havoc with immigration requirements for family identification!) - this is further complexified through anglicization. My (fictitious) friends Norbu Samdup and Samphe Drugpa both become "Sam." This seems to bother me much more than it does them! __________________________________________________________________________ 5) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 91 19:05:11 CST From: Eric Schiller Subject: Re: 2.739 Lexical Borrowing, Goats, Tones, Motion, Washing... Mention of the CLS squib volume (1977) reminds me that this is a great hunting ground for current theories. Old problems don't die, they just go into hibernation until some linguist figures out what to do about them! Eric Schiller schiller@sapir.uchicago.edu __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-745. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-746. Sat 02 Nov 1991. Lines: 97 Subject: 2.746 Subjectless S, Lexical Borrowing, Pragmatics, Prolog Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 2 Nov 91 11:21:34 MST From: Randy_Allen_Harris@mts.ucs.ualberta.ca Subject: English subjectless sentence references 2) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1991 14:29 EST From: Fan mail from some flounder? Subject: Re: 2.739 Lexical Borrowing, Goats, Tones, Motion, Washing... 3) Date: Sat, 26 Oct 91 06:39:49 EDT From: Gilbert Harman Subject: Pragmatics 4) Date: Sun, 27 Oct 91 12:26:34 CST From: Eric Schiller Subject: Re: 2.701 Computational: Shoebox, Speech Database, Prolog -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 2 Nov 91 11:21:34 MST From: Randy_Allen_Harris@mts.ucs.ualberta.ca Subject: English subjectless sentence references Don't forget Quang's "Phrases anglaises sans sujet grammatical apparent," _Langages_ 14 (1969):44-51, reprinted in translation in Zwicky's 1971 _Studies out in left field: Defamatory essays presented to James D. McCawley_ (Edmonton: Linguistic Research Inc.), and possibly elsewhere. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1991 14:29 EST From: Fan mail from some flounder? Subject: Re: 2.739 Lexical Borrowing, Goats, Tones, Motion, Washing... Re Lexical borrowing: hope there's no duplication here, as I didn't read Linguist for about a week, but there's a dissertation by Julie Lovins on lexical borrowing in Japanese. I think it's University of Chicago in the late 70's. Susan Fischer __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Sat, 26 Oct 91 06:39:49 EDT From: Gilbert Harman Subject: Pragmatics On the question of early pragmatics courses, H. P. Grice taught a course on "Logic and Conversation" at Stanford University in the summer of 1964 or 1965. Gil Harman __________________________________________________________________________ 4) Date: Sun, 27 Oct 91 12:26:34 CST From: Eric Schiller Subject: Re: 2.701 Computational: Shoebox, Speech Database, Prolog I have been playing with Prolog for a bit, but when I delved into the new object-oriented C I noticed that there are some tremendously useful capabilities built into the approach, including inheritance (The Head Feature Convention!), multiple inheritance and overides (to cover the exceptions), strong typed classes and other features which may make the sophisticated and unwieldy C++ a tremendous tool for linguists. Think C is a magnificent implementation on the Mac - the best environment for programming I have seen in a long time. Borland's C++ (2.0) on the DOS side looks good too - once I free up the necessary 16 meg of Hard Disk I will find out (Think is just 5 Meg). I would be interested to know if any other linguists are working in C++ and would appreciate any code or object classes that can be made available. My own goal is a quick and dirty parser on Autolexical lines, with separate parses for syntax, logico-semantics, morpho- syntax and morphophonology (at least). Eric Schiller University of Chicago Center for Information and Language Studies schiller@sapir.uchicago.edu __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-746. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-747. Sat 02 Nov 1991. Lines: 67 Subject: 2.747 Are languages infinite? Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 91 19:27:47 -0600 From: Michael Kac Subject: Are languages infinite? -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 91 19:27:47 -0600 From: Michael Kac Subject: Are languages infinite? A quick response to Henry Kucera's comments on my posting in regard to Hockett's football analogy: Yes of course, games are played by people just as languages are spoken by people. Indeed, rule-governed behavior (of which game playing and language use are two examples) appear to be distinctively human or close to it. But there is a crucial difference between (a) what a system of rules allows as a matter of principle and (b) what kinds of behaviors are possible in the mundane, workaday world because of limitations on humans and the physical universe they inhabit. That it's physically impossible for a team of human football players to score a million points in the confines of an hour of play is a fact, but it isn't because the rules of football either state or imply that this should be so. It's necessary to advert to principles which are, or are closely related to, the ones which also have among their consequences that it isn't possible for a single cat to catch a million mice in the space of an hour or for an airplane to travel a million miles in an hour. All these things are true, but as matters of natural law, not of the conventions which govern the playing of games or the use of language. Having said that, I should go on to say that I don't in point of fact think that it's especially productive to debate whether languages are infinite. If you accept certain other assumptions then to suppose they are serves a useful simplificatory function. But one needn't necessarily accept those assumptions: in a book to make its appearance shortly, I argue for a view of what a grammar of a language is on the basis of which the question of whether languages are infinite or not can be left open. I personally incline away from thinking that trying to find length laws (in the terminology of Langendoen and Postal) is a good way to spend your time -- even if there are such laws, it's not clear that recognizing them advances our understanding much. Why then have I entered the debate at all? The answer is that I've done so only for purposes of providing what I think is needed clarification where I perceive conceptual confusion. To compare doing so to practicing medieval theology seems to me to be at the very least an inapt analogy from a historical point of view: Plato is a better model than St. Thomas in this context. Michael Kac __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-747. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-748. Sat 02 Nov 1991. Lines: 126 Subject: 2.748 R-Linking Moderators: Anthony Aristar Helen Dry -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 91 12:56:52 PST From: scobbie@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Jim Scobbie) Subject: Re: r-linking 2) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 91 13:18:39 PST From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com Subject: Re: 2.720 R-Linking 3) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 91 14:47:20 PST From: scobbie@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Jim Scobbie) Subject: Re: 2.738 R-linking, Invariance, Gemination -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 91 12:56:52 PST From: scobbie@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Jim Scobbie) Subject: Re: r-linking IANSMITH@VM1.YorkU.CA writes: >There is some phonological evidence for r-insertion, however: @ derived from >V-reduction can also trigger r-insertion in many non-rhotic varieties. As in >"The wind[@] [r] isn't broken" [hypothetical] or "See ya [r] Ian" [attested in >natural speech]. We don't want to claim window and you have underlying /r/, >nor to we want to have vowel reduction produce [@r], so here there seems no >viable alternative to r-insertion. I do. I want to claim that there is a close phonological relation between the feature definitions of /schwa/ and /r/ in non-rhotic dialects. I bet the [@] before the [r] is different from a phonetically reduced /ow/. But we've got no data on that here, so its just a claim. -- James M. Scobbie: Dept of Linguistics, Stanford University, CA 94305-2150 __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 91 13:18:39 PST From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com Subject: Re: 2.720 R-Linking Alexis Manaster-Ramer has attempted to point out a "fundamental flaw" in David Stampe's reasoning on R-linking. He alleges Stampe's position to be the following: (a) r-insertion is not phonetically natural and (b) it is automatic (a process rarther than a rule in NP terms), yet (c) according to NP only phonetically natural developments can be processes (i.e., automatic) I have gone over Stampe's contribution, and I can't find where he raised the issue of automaticity. He did take the position that R-linking was not a phonological process, but he linked the prima facie case for processhood to other criteria--e.g. the subjective difficulty that speakers feel in trying to suppress "R-insertion". Stampe's happy solution was that the apparent problem resolved itself in his framework when you took /r/ to disappear by process (derhoticization). He offered corroborating evidence, such as the fact that so-called "intrusive r" only appeared in de-rhoticizing dialects. I think that Stampe has long recognized the existence of morphonological rules that are fully automatic. Unfortunately, the best know publications by him and Pat Donegan do raise the issue of automaticity as a "Process" property. But this has more to do with the fact that they never defined Rules very care- fully. The problem was that they tended to attribute properties of derivation- al morphonology to the entire class of Rules. (In fact, the distinction between derivational and inflectional morphonology was practically nonexistent in those days, and still is for many linguistis.) So David and Pat tended to say things like "Rules don't necessarily apply in speech performance" and "Processes, but not Rules, interact with tongue slips." These claims are simply wrong when you look at a/an suppletion, liaison, contraction, etc. I would maintain that derivational morphonology does apply during speech processing--but not to very familiar words like 'electricity'. Their raison d'etre is vocabulary augmentation. Now, Ian Smith points out that expressions such as "The wind[@] [r] isn't broken" and "See ya[r] Ian" are counterexamples to Stampe's claim on the grounds that the alleged intrusion occurs after phonological vowel reduction. That would be an easier argument to make if reduced vowels weren't easily confused with the phoneme /@/ (or /@r/ under Stampe's analysis). It is perfectly permissible to have allomorphic variants of words in most theories. I think that lexical phonologists might dislike the idea of having lexical and post-lexical operations that cover the same ground, but no such parsimony exists in Natural Phonology. You can achieve the same effect as vowel reduc- tion by replacing vowels consciously with the schwa phoneme. English speakers know this and even incorporate it in so-called "eye dialect" writing--e.g. "Ya know, doncha?" Note that non-neutralizing allophonic variation tends not to be represented in eye dialect. You can also get there by attempting to pronounce the regular unstressed noncentral vowel and letting vowel reduction take you the rest of the way. Both paths are allowed in NP. -Rick Wojcik (rwojcik@atc.boeing.com) __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 91 14:47:20 PST From: scobbie@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Jim Scobbie) Subject: Re: 2.738 R-linking, Invariance, Gemination I wrote: >... We seem to spend quite a lot of >time in this group bandying relatively trivial stuff around. Well thankfully no one so far has sent me the obvious email message... I must have been in a grumpy mood or something, because this gives totally the wrong impression of what I think about this forum. So I'd like to get in quick and retract my moan. -- James M. Scobbie: Dept of Linguistics, Stanford University, CA 94305-2150 __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-748. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-749. Sun 03 Nov 1991. Lines: 78 Subject: 2.749 Job; Assoc. for Machine Translation Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University, Editorial Assistant: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1991 15:17 CDT From: BERN@ducvax.auburn.edu Subject: Job at Auburn 2) Date: Sun, 3 Nov 1991 13:24 MST From: Joseph Pentheroudakis Subject: Assoc. for Machine Translation Newsletter -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1991 15:17 CDT From: BERN@ducvax.auburn.edu Subject: Job at Auburn ASSISTANT OR ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR: Pending budgetary approval, tenure-track appointment to begin Fall 1992. Primary duties involve developing, directing, and teaching both service ESL and graduate TESL courses. Ph.D. required. Send letter of applciation and vita postmarked by November 11 to Dennis Rygiel, Head, Dept. of English, 9030 Haley Center, Auburn Univ., AL 36849-5203. Applications from women and minority group members are especially encouraged. Auburn is an AA/EO employer. __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Sun, 3 Nov 1991 13:24 MST From: Joseph Pentheroudakis Subject: Assoc. for Machine Translation Newsletter The International Association for Machine Translation, of which the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas (AMTA) is a part, will publish its first newsletter in January 1992 under the general editorship of John Hutchins in the U.K. Individuals and organizations in the Americas are invited to send letters, announcements of conferences, publications or software products, or other material of interest, to the following address; electronic submissions are encouraged! Joseph Pentheroudakis AMTA Newsletter Editor ECS, Inc. 455 N. University Avenue Provo, UT 84601 USA fax: (801) 374-6292 voice: (801) 377-1167 e-mail: pentherj@cc.utah.edu or ecs@yvax.byu.edu I will be happy to forward announcements from other regions to the appropriate regional editor. For information on joining the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas (AMTA), please contact: Scott Bennett (fax: 512/471-6084 / voice: 512/471-4166 e-mail: bennett@utxvms.cc.utexas.edu) Joann Ryan (fax: 301/585-0742 / voice: 301/585-0851) or Muriel Vasconcellos (fax: 202/667-8808 / voice: 202/861-4338) Thanks! Joseph Pentheroudakis __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-749. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-750. Sun 03 Nov 1991. Lines: 76 Subject: 2.750 Queries: Categorial, NLP, Wishram Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University, Editorial Assistant: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 3 Nov 1991 10:01:22 +0800 (SST) From: A_DENCH@FENNEL.CC.UWA.OZ.AU Subject: categorial grammars of determinerless NP's 2) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 91 10:56:25 -0500 From: walker@flash.bellcore.com (Don Walker) Subject: Ivan Sag needs references on ill-formed input for NLP Systems 3) Date: Sun, 3 Nov 91 11:10:00 EST From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Query on Wishram -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 3 Nov 1991 10:01:22 +0800 (SST) From: A_DENCH@FENNEL.CC.UWA.OZ.AU Subject: categorial grammars of determinerless NP's I would like references to any treatments of Latin NPs within the general framework of categorial grammar. Analyses incorporating some kind of Motagovian semantics for a determiner-less NP are of special interest to me. And/or any analyses of languages in which a noun/adjective distinction cannot be maintained without some difficulty. Thanks Alan Dench Department of Anthropology University of Western Australia Nedlands WA 6009 A_DENCH@fennel.cs.uwa.oz.au __________________________________________________________________________ 2) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 91 10:56:25 -0500 From: walker@flash.bellcore.com (Don Walker) Subject: Ivan Sag needs references on ill-formed input for NLP Systems Date: Thu, 31 Oct 91 13:55:13 PST From: Ivan A. Sag Subject: A Query I wonder if I could ask you for some bibliographic help. Can you give me a couple references on the problems of ill-formed input for NLP systems? I'd be especially interested in references that surveyed the area, specifically also in references that discussed unfamiliar lexical input. Are there some standard sources? Yours in ignorance, Ivan __________________________________________________________________________ 3) Date: Sun, 3 Nov 91 11:10:00 EST From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Query on Wishram Does anybody know Wishram phonology (or can refer me to a reputable source)? __________________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-2-750.