________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-151. Sat 15 Feb 1992. Lines: 415 Subject: 3.151 Proto-World Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 11 Feb 92 20:18:58 EST From: Henry Kucera Subject: Re: 3.134 Linguistics and Popular Press 2) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 92 16:41:02 EST From: j.guy@trl.oz.au (Jacques Guy) Subject: Cavalli-Sforza, Part II 3) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 92 20:36:24 EST From: jack Subject: Mother Tongue -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 11 Feb 92 20:18:58 EST From: Henry Kucera Subject: Re: 3.134 Linguistics and Popular Press If memory serves, isn't the "bow-vow" theory of language origin mentioned in Bloomfield's Language, with civilized contempt? I can't check it myself since I gave most of my books to the department when I retired (not that all of them are read by anybody--ah, a Lakoffian passive PROOF!). Anyway, Bloomfield, I think, also mentions a Dutchman who traced all languages to Dutch. And there is, of course, our good old friend Prof. Marr (posthumously deposed by Stalin, the greatest linguist of them all) who even knew the four syllables of the original proto-language. So, what else is new? Greetings, Henry Kucera -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 92 16:41:02 EST From: j.guy@trl.oz.au (Jacques Guy) Subject: Cavalli-Sforza, Part II This is a long (350 lines) and perhaps not too easy article. I nevertheless urge you to read it carefully. It contains evidence that Cavalli-Sforza chose to ignore data well known among geneticists because they contradicted his assumptions, and that he chose to ignore mathematically correct methods of tree reconstructions the existence of which he knew. That is what I meant in my very first posting when I wrote that I proposed to show that his article was in breach of the scientific method and his methods mathematically incorrect. GENES, PEOPLES AND LANGUAGES? (Scientific America, November 1991, pp.72-78) Cavalli-Sforza's hypotheses examined (Part II) The reconstruction of genetic trees, like the one in the article in question, and of the divergence of language families are but particular applications of a much more general problem: Given a tree-shaped transmission network, a message is input at one node, from which it travels to the terminal nodes. The network is noisy, that is, transmission is subject to errors. The problem is: from the garbled versions of the original message collected at the terminal nodes, reconstruct the network and the amount of errors on each of its arcs (branches, if you prefer). Replace "error" by "mutation", and "message" by "DNA genes" or "mitochondrial genes" and you have a genetic model. Replace "error" by "innovation" or "drift", and "message" by "basic sample vocabulary" or whatever other data you see as representative of the languages in the family being reconstructed, and you have a linguistic model. You will have noticed that no mention is made in there of the rate of change, be it genetic mutations or linguistic innovations, contrary to Sforza and Wilson, who both posit a mutation rate constant in time and across the different human populations. Likewise, Swadesh posited a universal rate of vocabulary replacement also constant through time and across languages when he proposed his theory of glottochronology, later re-christened "lexicostatistics". Readers familiar with these two methods will have been struck by the remarkable similarity of Sforza's and Wilson's methods with glottochronology and lexicostatistics, even down the terminology: "drift", "constant rates", etc. Yet, the assumption of a constant universal rate is completely unnecessary for reconstructing trees, genetic or linguistic. Here is a tree reconstructed under the assumption that the innovation rate of linguistic features (be they lexical, grammatical, or whatever) varies in time and across languages (I have deleted the language names, which are irrelevant to the point, as you will later see): _95.-90----- (1) _88.-62| `-94----- (2) | | `-64--------- (3) | `-61------------- (4) | .-42------------- (5) | | _96.-78----- (6) | |-75| `-76----- (7) | | `-71--------- (8) | | _93.-87- (9) |-84| .-93| `-87- (10) | | | `-64----- (11) | `-87|-75--------- (12) | | _99.-86- (13) | `-82| `-78- (15) _| `-87----- (14) |_94.-37------------- (16) | `-54------------- (17) | .-78--------- (18) | .-91|_89.-93----- (19) |-64| `-86----- (20) | |_86.-75--------- (21) | `-80--------- (22) | _79.-94--------- (23) | | `-80--------- (24) | | .-80--------- (25) |_70| | .-94----- (26) |_82|-85|_99.-96- (27) | `-97- (28) |-74--------- (29) `-66--------- (30) The figures along each branch (arc, if you prefer) represent the percentage of the message which has been correctly transmitted. And here is the true tree: _87.-90----- (1) _87.-70| `-95----- (2) | | `-70--------- (3) | `-60------------- (4) | .-43------------- (5) | | _96.-78----- (6) | |-77| `-77----- (7) | | `-70--------- (8) | | _92.-88- (9) |-80| .-92| `-87- (10) | | | `-65----- (11) | `-84|-75--------- (12) | | .-85----- (13) | `-79|-89----- (14) _| `-78----- (15) |-34----------------- (16) |-51----------------- (17) | .-79--------- (18) | .-91|_88.-91----- (19) |-64| `-88----- (20) | |_86.-79--------- (21) | `-78--------- (22) | _79.-93--------- (23) | | `-80--------- (24) | | .-83--------- (25) |_71| | .-95----- (26) |_82|-85|_98.-95- (27) | `-98- (28) |_94.-76----- (29) `-71----- (30) This last tree is artificial. It is part of the output from a computer simulation. Another part is the log of the history of the tree which, for each split, gives its date, the number of items innovated since the previous split, and lists them. The last part, computed from the latter, is, to use a lexicostatistical term, a matrix of "percentages of shared cognates" (it could equally well be "shared genes"), from which the reconstructed tree was computed. In possession of such data, it is interesting to test various reconstruction methods (clustering algorithms, if you prefer) by observing how well their resulting trees fit the true tree. Classical lexicostatistical methods all yield poor results. One of the worst amongst the many clustering algorithms I once tested is the minimal-spanning tree method, which, incidentally, is precisely what Cavalli-Sforza used for the genetic tree p.76 of the article in question: "Essentially, this concept describes the tree having the smallest total branch length" (p.73, col.2) The minimal-spanning tree method, applied blindly, also tends to reconstruct trees with only binary splits. Observe the genetic tree, p.76 of the Scientific American article: all binary splits, except for the one and only four-way split of the Southern Chinese, Indonesian, Malaysian, and Philippino populations. You have there a typical artifact of a clustering algorithm about 30 years old, as the author himself admits: "An example is furnished by a tree linking 15 populations that Anthony F.W. Edwards, now at Cambridge, and I published 27 years ago" (p.73, col. 2, immediately above the former quotation) Observe now the reconstructed tree above, and you will see, instead, two, three, four and five-way splits [Footnote 1]. Sforza posits this model of genetic evolution, which is exactly similar to that of glottochronology: "The evolutionary model we used is the simplest. It predicts that the branches will evolve equally fast". (p.73, col. 1) "The mitochondrial clock is based on the number of mutations that have accumulated.... Whereas we hypothesized that our gene frequencies had drifted at constant rates, the Wilson group hypothesized that their mitochondrial genes had mutated at constant rates." (p.74, col.2) Yet, Sforza is aware of the weaknesses of his model: "If one assumes that the rate of evolutionary change is constant along all branches, one can equate their lengths to the time elapsed since they diverged. Such rooted trees may also be subject to biases, however, if some branches have undergone more rapid evolutionary change than others". (p.74, bottom of col.2) He is also aware that there exist methods unaffected by unequal and varying evolutionary rates: "Mathematical techniques of population genetics can minimize biases by accurately predicting rates of evolution". (It is precisely such techniques which I used in the reconstructed tree at the beginning of this article. The word "predicting" in the quotation is a misnomer. The correct word is "estimating"). Why, then, does he not use those robust methods? He does not say [Footnote 2]. Extraordinary indeed, for the "gene map" on p.74 of the article in question shows a glaring piece of evidence that evolutionary rates fluctuate wildly. Consider Iceland on that map. It has been colored dark green, showing that from 0% to 1% of its population is Rh-negative. The population of Iceland is about two-third of Scandinavian and one-third of Irish descent. On that same map, Scandinavia Ireland, and the British Isles show from 16% to 25% and above Rh-negative. The other populations with a proportion of Rh-negative individuals similar to Iceland occupy the eastern half of Asia, Madagascar, Australia and New-Zealand. I may perhaps be forgiven for having believed, upon seeing that map, that Iceland had been mistaken for Eskimo- populated Greenland. Not at all. I went to the considerable trouble of verifying the Icelandic data. Considerable, because Sforza does not give his sources. And it appeared that the aberrant case of Iceland is not only well-known among geneticists, but even more aberrant that the "gene map" shows. "Finally, tests were done on some 2000 Icelanders, mostly of precisely known birth-places within Iceland, for some twenty [blood-classification] systems. The results of the tests were then compared with the results of similar tests on the populations of the separate countries of the British Isles and Scandinavia, and of several European countries. A large quantity of data was fed into a computer, using a highly sophisticated programme, and it was anticipated that the result would be a clear-cut indication of either a Scandinavian or British origin, or perhaps a precise estimate of the proportion of genes derived from each of the two sources. Neither of these was found to be the case. The Icelanders showed a very marked difference from the populations of all other European countries, British, Scandinavian, and other, and even wide differences between the regions within Iceland itself." (Mourant, 1983:79) Before quoting further, I ask you to stop and ponder the import of that last sentence: "The Icelanders showed a very marked difference from the populations of all other European countries, British, Scandinavian, and other, and even wide differences between the regions within Iceland itself." First, it is prime evidence of an exceedingly fast rate of genetice drift. Second, it is prime evidence that the "gene map" showing Iceland uniformly dark green, at 0% to 1% Rh-negative, is the artifact of having averaged the Rh-negative scores of extremely divergent local populations. Now to quote Mourant further: "Since there is no doubt that the original colonists of Iceland came almost exclusively from Scandinavia and the British Isles, there must have been great changes in the island gene frequencies since the colonization." Indeed, and what might the reasons be? "Natural selection may have played a part, but there can be little doubt that we are witnessing what are mainly the effects of genetic drift due to severe epidemics, volcanic eruptions, and volcanically initiated floods. These have at various times over the centuries reduced the populations of different regions, and of Iceland as a whole, to levels where great accidental fluctuations of gene frequencies were possible, and such fluctuations seem indeed to have occurred so that, as we have seen, the frequencies observed at present bear little relationship to those of the original colonists." Thus, in the words of a geneticist, we have there prime evidence that a reduced gene pool, here due to natural catastrophies, has translated itself in greatly increased genetic drift, so great that "the [gene] frequencies observed at present bear little relationship to those of the original colonists". Not only natural catastrophies reduce the gene pool. So can endogamy and migrations. Think how narrow the gene pool carried by the settlers of the Polynesian Islands migh have been. Or of populations once nearly wiped out by warfare, or disease. How then can Sforza, a geneticist, hold the contrary view that genetic drift is constant and the same for all? He candidly admits to having ignored evidence contrary to his thesis: "a judicious selection of populations makes the latter [hypothesis, i.e. constant universal rate of drift] quite probable." Upon which, I beg to excused from writing a conclusion and I leave you to draw your own. FOOTNOTES [Footnote 1] The algorithm, however, failed to reconstruct the original six-way split. The reason is clear: when "languages" 16 and 17 split again, they had innovated only 6% of the message (or wordlist). They then innovated respectively 66% and 49% of that inherited message, obliterating two-thirds and one half of the already scanty evidence for their earlier split from the "protolanguage". [Footnote 2] But I may venture this guess: under the true assumption that evolutionary rates are neither constant nor universal, it is impossible to tell which node of the reconstructed tree is the root. Transposed into linguistic terms: the protolanguage may reside anywhere in the tree, and, in the absence of dated documentary evidence, it absolutely impossible to know where. Consequently, it is impossible to know where the centre of greatest diversity lies, and therefore where the centre of diffusion is. WORKS CONSULTED Mourant, A.E. Blood Relations: Blood Groups and Anthropology. OUP 1983 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 92 20:36:24 EST From: jack Subject: Mother Tongue Under this rubric on 29 Jan with reference to the _"Scientific" American_ article classifying population groups (and language families) D. Bedell comments on the Sardinians, wondering about their preroman origins, culture etc. Briefly, there was a significant bronze age populace in Sardinia of some interest, which has left over 7,000 huge stone towers throughut the island in associatin with interesting bronze statuettes, dating from the last third of the second millenium BC up into the early first millenium BC (although there are remnants of much earlier cultures not necessarily related). People who like to do so have speculated on the provenance of these people, whose culture predates that of the Romans. This has led to pawing around in comments by Greek historians, and attempts to associate apparently non-Latin vocabulary in Sard with other "mysterious" groups around the mediterranean. Prime candidates have been Basques, Lybians and Etruscans. J. Hubschmidt has a whole baffling monograph (Sardische Studien, Bern: Francke, 1953), and Massimo Pittau has pushed the Etruscan hypothesis. A first reading on the language side should be M.L.Wagner's _Lingua Sarda_ especially chapter 11, and E. Blasco Ferrer's _Storia Linguistica della Sardegna_, Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1984, especially pp 1-13. I do not have any control of recent archeological speculations, not having updated myself much on material more recent than Boucher's _Sardinia in Ancient Times_, now too far out of date to bear on the current topic. Beware of enthusiasts. The language is fascinating enough in its on right (as I have tried to illustrate in a couple of previous posts) without becoming worked up over a few disiecta membra in its otherwise Latin based vocabulary. Its phonologican and syntactic delights deserve a dozen contentious doctoral dissertations! -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-151. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-152. Sat 15 Feb 1992. Lines: 130 Subject: 3.152 Queries: Amerind, Galician, Mac Phono, On Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 11 Feb 92 15:15:29 EST From: Bob Singerman Subject: Native American Linguistic Bibliography 2) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 92 14:17 EST From: Subject: Galician 3) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 92 11:46:47 EST From: Brian Jepson Subject: Mac Phono Phonts 4) Date: Fri, 14 Feb 92 10:36:50 PST From: hiromi@psych.stanford.edu (Hiromi Morikawa) Subject: Query: "On" instead of "about" -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 11 Feb 92 15:15:29 EST From: Bob Singerman Subject: Native American Linguistic Bibliography For a published bibliography of completed graduate work at American, Canadian, and British universities on NATIVE AMERICAN LANGUAGES/LINGUISTICS (North, Central, and South America), I would appreciate receiving bibliographic citations from researchers, especially those of you who've either completed thesis work and/or have directed the work of graduate students. I've already written to dozens of anthropology and linguistics departments for internal departmental registers of completed theses. University libraries have also been approached. This information has been invaluable, especially with respect to identifying the elusive master's thesis for which there is notoriously poor bibliographic control. Although my files are relatively complete for doctoral dissertations, I feel that many master's theses dealing with Native American languages remain to be identified and have thus far eluded me. There may also be work on Native American languages (e. g. psycholinguistics, bilingualism) being directed through departments/programs other than Anthropology and Linguistics. Fewer students seem to complete M. A.'s now as they steer a straight course toward the Ph.D. I am approaching LINGUIST LIST to capture additional theses and dissertations before completing my manuscript and submitting it to Scarecrow Press for publication in its "Native American Bibliography Series." If you know of relevant titles, kindly provide me with as much data (student's full name, complete title, name of university or college, and year submitted) as you have available. The B. A. honors thesis and M. A. Research Paper (in lieu of a thesis) is also of interest, as are Canadian theses in French as well as English. You may also direct correspondence to: Robert Singerman Linguistics Bibliographer 406 Smathers Library University of Florida Gainesville, FL 32611 (904) 392-0308 E-mail: JUDAICA@NERVM. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 92 14:17 EST From: Subject: Galician I have a student from Spain at the Univesity of Tennessee for one year. His native language is Spanish. His parents were/are fluent in Galician. He speaks Galician with some degree of fluency. Can someone help me with bibliography in Galician? Does anyone have tapes, copies of which might be obtained for analysis by this student? All help will be greatly appreciated. Bethany Dumas (bitnet%"dumasb@utkvx") -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 92 11:46:47 EST From: Brian Jepson Subject: Mac Phono Phonts Hi there. Does anyone know of any (preferably PD) sources for phonological fonts for the Macintosh? I'm not really particular about them being *ostscript or not, any bitmapped font that prints oK is fine for my purposes. Thank you in advance, Brian Jepson IBY223@URIACC.URI.EDU -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Fri, 14 Feb 92 10:36:50 PST From: hiromi@psych.stanford.edu (Hiromi Morikawa) Subject: Query: "On" instead of "about" I am posting the following for a friend: It seems that the word "on" has, in many cases, replaced the word "about". Often I hear "a report on", President Bush "referring to" someone "on that", or "a question on that". What is the origin of this transformation in American and/or British usage? Thank you! -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-152. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-153. Wed 19 Feb 1992. Lines: 89 Subject: 3.153 Employment Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 92 12:04:16 GMT-0600 From: blevins@mcc.com (Jim Blevins) Subject: Re: Job 2) Date: Tue, 11 Feb 92 18:30:18 -0800 From: Bill Poser Subject: temporary position -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 92 12:04:16 GMT-0600 From: blevins@mcc.com (Jim Blevins) Subject: Re: Job The natural language processing group at MCC is looking for a linguist with a strong background in both semantics and syntax and an interest in computational issues. Our system includes an understanding component and a generator. They share a reversible grammar and a set of semantic interpretation rules. The basic grammar formalism is a combinatorial categorial grammar/HPSG hybrid, and it is applied by a unification-based chart parser. The final step of the parsing process produces an LFG-style f-structure, which is used as input to the semantic interpretation system. We have built a moderate-sized English grammar and a small Spanish one. The semantic system exploits a set of compositional mapping rules that describe meanings in terms of a back-end domain knowledge base, a set of declarative transformations that account for such things as metonymy, and a set of additional rules that handle phenomena like quantification. The entire system is intended to be used in conjunction with a strong domain knowledge base and is structured around a functional interface to the KB that allows it to be exploited in conjunction with almost any declarative knowledge representation system. We are looking for someone who can: - Work on expanding the semantic coverage of the system - Maintain the English grammar and extend it as necessary to support particular application development - Work with native speakers of other languages to extend the current system to additional languages. This work is both theoretically and pragmatically motivated. We are looking for someone with a strong theoretical background but a lack of theoretical dogmatism. Although significant programming experience is not required, comfort working with a large system in a complex software environment is important. If you are interested, send a resume to Jim Blevins (blevins@mcc.com). -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Tue, 11 Feb 92 18:30:18 -0800 From: Bill Poser Subject: temporary position Dear colleagues, We would be grateful if you would circulate this announcement to anyone you know who might be interested and whose qualifications include excellent current work in phonological theory. T E M P O R A R Y P O S I T I O N I N P H O N O L O G Y Stanford's Department of Linguistics has a one-year replacement position for a phonologist, beginning in September, 1992. The person filling the job must have a Ph.D. by the time of the beginning of the appointment. The position involves teaching five one-quarter courses, primarily in phonology, at the graduate and undergraduate levels, plus advising students on their research. Candidates should send a CV and names of three references by February 24 to: Prof. Will Leben Phonology Search Committee Stanford Unversity Stanford CA 94305-2150 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-153. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-154. Wed 19 Feb 1992. Lines: 145 Subject: 3.154 Parsing Challenges Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 16 Feb 92 19:42:32 -0600 From: sck@lambda.wustl.edu (Stan C. Kwasny) Subject: Re: 3.147 Parsing Challenges 2) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 92 14:06 EST From: "Barbara.Abbott" Subject: 3.147 Parsing Challenges 3) Date: Tue, 18 Feb 92 00:31 GMT From: BORKOVSA Subject: and and and in Russian 4) Date: Tue, 18 Feb 92 11:22:46 EST From: will@franklin.com (William Dowling) Subject: repeated words: " ... had had ..." etc. 5) Date: Sun, 16 Feb 1992 8:55:36 -0500 (EST) From: J_LIMBER@UNHH.UNH.EDU Subject: RE: 3.147 Parsing Challenges 6) Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1992 15:27:40 PST From: Annie_Zaenen.PARC@xerox.com Subject: Re: 3.132 Is, is; But; Parsing challenge -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 16 Feb 92 19:42:32 -0600 From: sck@lambda.wustl.edu (Stan C. Kwasny) Subject: Re: 3.147 Parsing Challenges Try this one: Will will will Will's will, will Will? A bit ungrammatical, but interesting just the same. Stan C. Kwasny Center for Intelligent Computer Systems Department of Computer Science Washington University -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 92 14:06 EST From: "Barbara.Abbott" Subject: 3.147 Parsing Challenges I came in late to the 'many tokens of the same type word in a row' discussion, but I do know that the "had" example ("John, where Jack had had "had", had had...") appears as an exercise in Hans Reichenbach's _Elements of Symbolic Logic_, Macmillan, 1947, p. 405. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Tue, 18 Feb 92 00:31 GMT From: BORKOVSA Subject: and and and in Russian >>The painter, painting the sign over the bar had left no space >>between dog and "and" and "and" and duck. . Using the same construct for Russian you can get long sequences of the same LETTER: . Begin with: Vo imja Devy Marii i Iisusa (in the name of virgin Mary and Jesus) . Then think also of the St.Ija: Vo imja Devy Marii, i Ii i Iisusa . And than take care of the spaces: Nuzhno ostavit' probely mezdy slovami "Marii" i "i", "i" i "Ii", "Ii" i "i" i "i" i "Iisusa" (One should put spaces between the words ...) . Arkady Borkovsky Dialog Information Services (415)858-3744 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Tue, 18 Feb 92 11:22:46 EST From: will@franklin.com (William Dowling) Subject: repeated words: " ... had had ..." etc. Re: "John, where Mary had had "had" ..." I learned this from my grandfather in the mid sixties. My impression was that he had learned it "in school," which would put its origin at least before 1920. The Dutch wax and German flies are nice, but my favorite is still the Latin: Malo malo malo malo. (I'd rather be in an apple tree than an evil man in adversity.) No, I'm not claiming it's natural... Will Dowling (will@franklin.com) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5) Date: Sun, 16 Feb 1992 8:55:36 -0500 (EST) From: J_LIMBER@UNHH.UNH.EDU Subject: RE: 3.147 Parsing Challenges For parsing opaqueness, nothing in the 7 or less familiar word range, with limited recursion can touch "The player kicked the ball kicked him." I find this is a good example to use in my pyscholinguistics classes, not only to illustrate some aspects of syntax and parsing, but also as a test of supposedly "psychologically real" parsing models. The point is that these models DO parse this without a glitch yet humans almost NEVER do. There's some discussion in:Limber, J. (1976). Syntax and sentence interpretation. In R. Wales (Ed.), Walker, E. C. T. (pp. ). Amsterdam: North Holland. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6) Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1992 15:27:40 PST From: Annie_Zaenen.PARC@xerox.com Subject: Re: 3.132 Is, is; But; Parsing challenge 'Eer was was was, was was is' I think that's parsable but i find the following easier: 'Eer was was was was was is is' or 'Eer was was was was was is was' or (in these one was is a contraction of wat is, it should be written wa's, i guess) Annie -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-154. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-155. Wed 19 Feb 1992. Lines: 114 Subject: 3.155 Comments: -Ish, All's Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 92 11:44:36 GMT From: Richard Coates Subject: Re: 3.140 -ish, Def 2) Date: Thu, 13 Feb 92 23:25:48 CST From: Eric Schiller Subject: Re: 3.140 -ish, Def 3) Date: Mon, 10 Feb 92 19:51:12 EST From: teaman@unagi.cis.upenn.edu (Brian Teaman) Subject: Re: 3.131 Alls I know 4) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 92 09:13:24 EST From: elc9j@prime.acc.Virginia.EDU Subject: 3.131 Is, is -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 92 11:44:36 GMT From: Richard Coates Subject: Re: 3.140 -ish, Def On -ish: In reply to Dick Hudson: my usage isn't restricted to time of day expressions; cf. middle-of-Septemberish, round about closing-timeish (well I suppose that's time of day), and I have caught myself using it in place expressions, e.g. sort of Eastbourne-ish, i.e. 'in the region of Eastbourne'. I take the point about the problem of formalizing the constraint, whatever it is. Richard Coates -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Thu, 13 Feb 92 23:25:48 CST From: Eric Schiller Subject: Re: 3.140 -ish, Def -ish Maybe I am missing something, but I see no direct link to time phrases here, since age in years (he is twenty five-ish), color phrases (he is lime greenish), and other scalable items (How tall is he? Two point five-ish (of a British boxer or basketballer, on this side of the atlantic 6 foot nine-ish). Anyway, Sadock's Autolexical approach is one of many generative lexicalist approaches that can handle it without difficulty, simply invoking the semantic subcategorization facts. But I am not sure where the conceptual or practical problem lies for ANY theory I know. On the other hand, it is certainly a fun topic worthy of exploration at the dissertation level, whatever one's theoretical preference. I would agree with Hudson in one sense. I wonder how many generative linguists would be interested enough to invest the time to study the phenomenon, and can only hope the number is higher than I am inclined to guess. I keep a copy of the 1977 CLS Squibs volume in my bathroom, where it provides numerous similar challenges, some of which evolve into full fledged studies. Eric Schiller -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Mon, 10 Feb 92 19:51:12 EST From: teaman@unagi.cis.upenn.edu (Brian Teaman) Subject: Re: 3.131 Alls I know "Alls I know" is one feature I have in my English that doesn't seem to be common on the East Coast. I must have acquired this in Lorain, Ohio (near Cleveland) where I grew up. Others have pointed out that it struck them as unusual. I think I can credit Peter Patrick for first pointing it out to me. As for the analysis "All as I know", alls I know is it might be a historical fact but it is not part of my understanding of the form. To me, it was always just "all" with an "s" attached. I absolutely cannot say the full form "as" in this context. And, until now, I don't think I ever wrote it down; perhaps this could be some indication that I recognized it as non-standard, or at least only a spoken form. Brian Teaman -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 92 09:13:24 EST From: elc9j@prime.acc.Virginia.EDU Subject: 3.131 Is, is on "all's I know is...": I had always heard that this was a dialect form of "all", retaining an -s originally derived from German "alles"-- no connection to the copula at all. Is it found outside of areas that were settled by German speakers? Ellen Contini-Morava -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-155. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-156. Wed 19 Feb 1992. Lines: 44 Subject: 3.156 The Role of LINGUIST Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 18 Feb 92 15:21:43 -0500 From: o10@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Paul Baltes) Subject: Role of LINGUIST -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 18 Feb 92 15:21:43 -0500 From: o10@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Paul Baltes) Subject: Role of LINGUIST As doctoral students at Purdue University, we are participating in a class project conducting a rhetorical analysis of electronic forums. To assist us in understanding how LINGUIST subscribers perceive the list and its role within the discipline of linguistics, we ask interested subscribers to send us your views, including your sense of the overall importance of LINGUIST, your personal experience as a reader/contributer, and how discussion and participation are shaped by the electronic nature of the forum. Rather than posting to LINGUIST, please send all replies to us directly at: kevans@mace.cc.purdue.edu o10@mace.cc.purdue.edu Thank you, Karin Evans Paul Baltes -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-156. ________________________________________________________________ Subject: 3.157 Aeroplane Talk Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 15 Feb 92 23:28:17 EST From: Michael Morse Subject: Re: 3.145 Intonation In Announcements 2) Date: Sun, 16 Feb 92 09:49:46 EST From: BERGDAHL@OUACCVMB.bitnet Subject: 3.142 Airplane talk 3) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 92 11:18:11 +0100 From: garof@helios.sixcom.it (Joe Giampapa) Subject: Re: 3.142 4) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1992 08:19 EST From: Herb Stahlke <00HFSTAHLKE@LEO.BSUVC.BSU.EDU> Subject: Intonation in Announcements 5) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 92 10:19:36 MST From: Randy_Allen_Harris@mts.ucs.ualberta.ca Subject: Intonation In Announcements 6) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 92 10:30:06 PST From: toolan Subject: Re: 3.145 Intonation In Announcements 7) Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1992 08:16:39 PST Subject: airplane talk From: Martin Kay -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 15 Feb 92 23:28:17 EST From: Michael Morse Subject: Re: 3.145 Intonation In Announcements As a non-linguist spy from sociology and music theory, it sounds to me that most contributors are positing a basis for airplane intonation which has nothing to do with phonology, but much to do with the social psychology of George Herbert Mead. Mead's division of the `I' and the `me' expresses the sometimes radical incongruity between norms--in this case, linguistic--and their execution. There is a tug of war between these two versions of the self in trying to figure out what is appropriate, and how to come up with the goods. The dissociative gestures of officialese are always good illustrations: no one IS an airline pilot, as a speaker of English, it's simply a language-role which some speakers are required to produce. The odd sounds express the fact that, in Gertrude Stein's memorable phrase, "there's no there there." -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Sun, 16 Feb 92 09:49:46 EST From: BERGDAHL@OUACCVMB.bitnet Subject: 3.142 Airplane talk This may be a matter related to airplane talk: "weekend" with the stress pattern of "weak end." I've heard it on tv news for decades. It always seems to come clause-final. I wonder if there's some School of Communications speaking rule against weakly-stressed final syllables. David Bergdahl (BERGDAHL@OUACCVMB.BITNET) Ohio University, Athens OH -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 92 11:18:11 +0100 From: garof@helios.sixcom.it (Joe Giampapa) Subject: Re: 3.142 I unify the "air speak" stresses as semantic loci. The motivating example cited situations of public service in very noisy environments (air plane, subway, ?any place where the noise from forced ventillation can obscure the public addresser?). As such, the addresser wants to politely convey the essentials. As noted by Susan Fischer [Thu, 13 Feb 1992 09:44 EST]: "Please put your bags IN the overhead bin or UNDER the seat in FRONT of you." Airline personnel want to expedite the passengers' boarding of the plane. In the general confusion, the stressed IN can be a reminder --- get IN your seats, put your luggage IN the bins. {Who ever took the underground conveyors at Chicago O'Hare and suffered the, "Do not stop. Keep Walking." announcements. The reminder makes you move (if only to not hear it anymore).} "No, you may not leave your bag ON the seat next to you (how many of us have tried?), it must be placed UNDER the seat. Not BEHIND your legs (which causes discomfort to the passenger behind you) but before you, in FRONT." Certainly these prepositions are not semantically rich. Perhaps it is precisely the reason that they ARE stressed. Try re-reading the above sentences with stress on the other words. Or, pretend for a moment that there was noise in the plane, and you hear every other (or only one). For me, it is logical that the prepositions are stressed, as from the context I can probably reconstruct the nouns and verbs. The do-insertions and auxiliary stresses (noted by Paul Hopper) can function as attention-grabbing prefixes. Hearing "do", "will", and "has" makes the listener stop and wait for the rest to follow. Since English must be spoken on all international flights, do these clues help non-native speakers understand better? On Alitalia flights, I believe that the stress is on VI PREGHIAMO, or Le signore e i signori passeggeri SONO GENTILMENTE PREGATI ... etc. ... -Joe Giampapa Olivetti Sixcom Milano garof@sixcom.sixcom.it garof%sixcom.sixcom.it@uunet.uu.net -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1992 08:19 EST From: Herb Stahlke <00HFSTAHLKE@LEO.BSUVC.BSU.EDU> Subject: Intonation in Announcements I've been intrigued by the announcement intonation pattern too. I hear it frequently from inexperienced college radio station announcers, as well as from local TV news anchors. I've wondered about a less pragmatically rich explanation than some of those that have been suggested. When you hear an inexperienced, inattentive, or bored announcer saying, "This IS WBST IN Muncie," could it be that the announcer has said this so often that it has lost any significance for the speaker and thus there is no pragmatic determination of intonation? The same thing seems to happen when the news reader isn't particularly interested in the news report he/she is reading and is simply making the noises that the marks on paper indicate--or when the news reader hasn't taken the time to read the story in advance, which may amount to the same thing. This would, at least, account for the absence of some pragmatically reasonable intonation. It does not account for why stress would end up falling on function words. Herb Stahlke Ball State University -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 92 10:19:36 MST From: Randy_Allen_Harris@mts.ucs.ualberta.ca Subject: Intonation In Announcements If we suspend the (apparently) natural assumption that all of these people are stupid, vain, pretentious and stupid, and suppose that announcers have developed a successful communicative strategy, one explanation might be that functors are quite easily lost when airplane engines are running, trains wheels are chugging, or shoppers are nattering; giving them unnatural stress would make them more salient against background noise. Another explanation (or another part of the same one) might be that this type of distortion forces more attention to the argument assignment by waving an acoustic flag at the boundaries. I'm sure there are much better accounts, but they'll come to us more easily if we look at the phenomenon as linguists rather than as snobs. The Bakhtinian account won't hold, at least not without modification, since most TV and radio people (maybe K-Mart announcers, too, though certainly not plain and train people) write their own copy. The even-out-the-stress account might hold, though we'd have to look at the signals; the contentives are probably losing stress simultaneously. Sorry: I just yelled that there were no non-snobby accounts, and then discussed two non-snobby proposals. It's been a rough morning. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 92 10:30:06 PST From: toolan Subject: Re: 3.145 Intonation In Announcements It's true that Victoria Wood has a marvellous line of sometimes-barely-detectab le sending-up of cosmetics-sales and health-farm talk. But I DO think that a n umber of different tendencies are being lumped together, when they may occur se parately: specifically, prep-stress, aux-stress, and do-suppletion. On the las t of these I think Paul Hopper and others are right that it often has the effec t of detaching the performative from the here and now speaker, turning the utte rance away from a use to a mention, but still with regulative force: "we do ask at this time that you refrain from photographing or recording the performance.. ". I dont see how that detachment effect can be achieved by prep-stress: when the announcement tells you to stow your luggage IN the overhead compartments, w hat other options have you? A gravity-defying on or under?? It may make you f eel like a kindergartener again; or does one put it down to text-reading oddnes s? But aux-stress on train-announcements I take to be intended to be informati ve, affirmative, and somewhat contrastive. When the voice says 'The 7.13 to Tonbridge Wells WILL be leaving from platform 6' etc. I assume a context in wh ich numerous anxious travellers have been asking if the last-heard rumour (word of mouth, scrawled message, etc.) about the 7.13 (which of course was originall y the 6.33 non-stop to Petersfield) is correct. This may apply more to British Rail than elsewhere ... -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7) Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1992 08:16:39 PST Subject: airplane talk From: Martin Kay I have frequently remarked on the special stress pattern used in airplane announcements. It is not just that the stress is placed on the verb, but that it is an auxiliary verb, and there is a tendency to overwork do-support so as to maximize oportunities to use the pattern-- Captain Streichhoelzer DOES request that you DO remain seated until the aircraft HAS come to a complete stop. The nearest to an explanation I have heard for this is as a mechanism for distancing announcer from the content of the announcement---this is not me telling you to do these silly things; I just work here. --Martin Kay -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-157. ________________________________________________________________ Subject: 3.158 Linguistics in Education Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 13 Feb 92 12:02:20 EST From: rh@inmet.camb.inmet.com (Rich Hilliard) Subject: Linguistics in Elementary Curricula 2) Date: Fri, 14 Feb 92 11:58:22 -0600 From: mfleck@cs.uiowa.edu (Margaret Fleck) Subject: linguistics in early education -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 13 Feb 92 12:02:20 EST From: rh@inmet.camb.inmet.com (Rich Hilliard) Subject: Linguistics in Elementary Curricula The recent notes from Bob Chevalier and Brian Joseph on the notion of introducing linguistics into elementary school curricula, remind me of an idea that was floating around MIT linguistics in the middle 1970s. The idea was to develop a science curriculum based on linguistics. The scientific method would be taught via linguistic argumentation: observation, hypothesis formation and refutation, formulation of experiments, etc. Each student clearly has primary access to the relevant data. And no expensive equipment would be required! The idea had the added benefits of getting native speakers looking at languages which had not yet been studied within a generative framework and maybe even "indoctrinating" new generativists at an early age. I associate the idea with Ken Hale and Wayne O'Neill. I don't know what became of it. Rich Hilliard rh@inmet.camb.inmet.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Fri, 14 Feb 92 11:58:22 -0600 From: mfleck@cs.uiowa.edu (Margaret Fleck) Subject: linguistics in early education The attitude of the public towards linguists may not be helped by the way grammar is taught in English classes. What I had inflicted on me was deadly boring, badly taught, and largely repeated each year because the class pretended to have forgotten everything over the summer. Sentence diagrams must be one of the worst methods known to man for indicating grammatical structure: my memories of them are dominated by trying to remember which construct corresponded to e.g. a rightward slash vs. a leftward one. If we wanted to analyze a sentence that was not totally trivial, we found that the book didn't actually tell you it was supposed to be handled and also didn't admit that there might be limitations to the rules it gave. I'd be surprized if such experiences were not enough to give many adults a permanent dislike for English grammar or anything that looks like it. Margaret Fleck -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-158. ________________________________________________________________ Subject: 3.159 Calls for Papers Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 92 08:17:10 EST From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Session on Linguistic Prehistory at the Next LSA? 2) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1992 11:37 MET From: Marcel den Dikken Subject: CONSOLE 1 3) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 92 16:42:43 MST From: Sherman Wilcox Subject: Conference announcement -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 92 08:17:10 EST From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Session on Linguistic Prehistory at the Next LSA? Given the very positive response to my call for a symposium on this topic at this summer's ICL, I thought there might interest in doing something similar at the next winter LSA meeting, especially since a lot of people go to the LSA but won't be at the ICL. Although the deadlines are a long time away, a collective effort like this needs to be started right away. Anybody who would like to participate, please send me your ideas (best in the form of an abstract) as soon as you are able. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1992 11:37 MET From: Marcel den Dikken Subject: CONSOLE 1 PLEASE POST - PLEASE POST - PLEASE POST - PLEASE POST - PLEASE POST * * * * * * The Student Organisation of Linguistics in Europe announces CONSOLE 1 (formerly LCJL) University of Utrecht - December 15-18, 1992 * * * * * * CALL FOR PAPERS * * * * * * SOLE, the Student Organisation of Linguistics in Europe, announces its first conference, the successor of the Leiden Conferences for Junior Linguists. CONSOLE 1 will be held at the University of Utrecht on December 15-17, 1992. The conference will be followed, on December 18, by workshops on the following topics: The semantic and syntactic analysis of Focus Phonological and phonetic aspects of prosodic Minimality For the conference, PhD-students in linguistics are invited to submit five copies of a two-page abstract for a thirty-minute talk, one of which should bear name and affiliation. Abstracts dealing with issues in syntax, semantics and phonology are equally welcome, as long as they are interesting from a theoretical point of view. For the work- shops, five copies of abstracts of 3 to 4 pages for a twenty-minute presentation may be submitted. Submissions by E-mail will also be accepted. Free accommodations for speakers will be provided. Speakers will be partially reimbursed for their travelling expenses. All abstracts should have reached the local organisers by August 31, 1992. Late September, prospective participants will be notified whether their paper has been accepted for presentation. * * * * * * Abstracts and requests for further information about the conference and workshops should be addressed to: CONSOLE 1 - Peter Ackema & Maaike Schoorlemmer Research Institute for Language and Speech - University of Utrecht Trans 10 - 3512 JK Utrecht - The Netherlands E-mail: console@let.ruu.nl - Phone: +31-30-394319/392068 * * * * * * For information about the Student Organisation of Linguistics in Europe please contact: SOLE - Department of General Linguistics - University of Leiden P.O. Box 9515 - 2300 RA Leiden - The Netherlands E-mail: dikken@rulcri.leidenuniv.nl * * * * * * -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 92 16:42:43 MST From: Sherman Wilcox Subject: Conference announcement Conference of Interpreter Trainers Convention CALL FOR PAPERS October 21-24, 1992 The Executive Tower Inn Downtown Denver Colorado, USA THEME: "Student Competencies: Defining, Teaching and Evaluating" ABSTRACTS: Abstracts are invited which: - define desired student competencies; - offer specific teaching techniques to promote these competencies - present strategies to address evaluation of student competencies We encourage presenters to raise issues related to these instructional areas that challenge participants to approach the definition of competencies, instruction, and evaluation in new ways. Preference will be given to presentation formats which center on active participation among conference participants. We encourage presenters to use their research, theories, or techniques as a springboard for small group activities that will lead to further discussion and analysis. We welcome colleagues who have complementary or diverse approaches that would stimulate thinking to share presentation time. Presentations which are best suited to lecture format will also be considered. We look forward to receiving your abstract. LENGTH: 250 word maximum for each abstract submitted. PROCEDURE: Submit 4 copies of an anonymous abstract with an identifying cover letter. Reviewers will see only the abstracts without knowing the identity of the author. DEADLINE: March 10, 1992 (Notification by April 30, 1992) SEND TO: Risa Shaw, CIT Program Chair 901 Wabash Avenue Takoma Park, Maryland 20912 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-159. ________________________________________________________________ Subject: 3.160 Call for Verses Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 16 Feb 92 16:18:33 -0600 From: Michael Kac Subject: Patter Songs -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 16 Feb 92 16:18:33 -0600 From: Michael Kac Subject: Patter Songs The ditty recently contributed by Nancy Dray prompts the following (somewhat complex) response. First, I'd be interested in knowing from Linguist subscribers and their friends what other occupationally inspired paraphrases of 'I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General' there are out there. I know of two others, one being Tom Lehrer's 'The Elements' ('And these are all the ones of which the news has come to Hah-vard/And there may be many others but they haven't been dis-cah-vard') and one about computers called 'I've Built a Better Model than the One at Data General'. So, anyone who knows of others is welcome to contact me -- I'd like to start a collection. Second, I would like to invite anyone inclined to contribute verses about subfields of linguistics to a composite song of this type. I'll collect them and then mail the collection out to all who submitted. Contributions will be credited. Deadline for submission: Mar 31, 1992. Just to get the ball rolling, here's my own suggestion for a recruiting advertisement for the field. I admit to having let my personal biases have free rein, but anyone who wants can play too. If you're a college student who is feeling ineffectual And bored with all the contents of the mainstream in- tellectual, Intelligent, hard-working and a trifle egotistical, Then why not try your hand at some analysis lin- guistical? In syntax you can climb about in diagrams arboreal, And wrap discontinuities with grammar categorial And if this occupation should impress you as enjoyable Then welcome to the legions of the hard-core unem- ployable! If talk of archiphonemes and the details of allophony Should strike your ear as nothing but the vilest of ca- cophony If extrametricality should smack of demonology Then maybe you'd do best to give a wide berth to phonology. Semantics takes you off into a region mathematical, Opacity is studied with a passion that's fanatical And since all worlds are possible, the ultimate mo- rality Is hewing to the Principle of Compositionality. There are also those among us with a bent that is his- torical, They conjure up scenarios that seem phantasmagorical, They're getting all the press, the public finds it quite dramatic But woe betide the one who even breathes the word 'Nos- tratic'! So if you've a yen to study the Uralic and Altaic And to segment all your syllables in elements moraic Then we've got a little discipline that you might feel at home in -- Along with all the others who can't keep their mouths from foamin'. Third, why not do the same for theories/schools of thought? As in: There's Government and Binding and though it seem so- phomoric With its synthesis of movement with relations anaphoric And fanatical devotion to the cult of modularity Occasioning in some the wildest outbursts of hilarity. Again, if I let my biases show, I promise to give equal time to all sides and to share the results with all comers. Michael Kac kac@cs.umn.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-160. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-161. Wed 19 Feb 1992. Lines: 83 Subject: 3.161 Queries: German, cowabunga, media Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 16 Feb 1992 12:19 CST From: Subject: frequency analysis of German 2) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 92 07:58:42 -0500 From: ljd@world.std.com (Larry Davidson) Subject: cowabunga 3) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 92 13:52:39 GMT From: Dr M Sebba Subject: Re: 3.143 Linguistics And The MEdia -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 16 Feb 1992 12:19 CST From: Subject: frequency analysis of German Query: We have been unable to locate a frequency analysis of German similar to Francis & Kucera's frequency analysis of English. The analysis would have to include separate frequencies for the different possible forms of entries, hence separate listings for, e.g., GEHEN, GEHST, GEHT, and so forth, and, like Francis & Kucera, it would have to be based on a large and varied corpus of data. If anyone knows of such an analysis, we would appreciate hearing from you. Any replies may be send to the following address: EUBANK@VAXB.ACS.UNT.EDU Thanks in advance for any help ... Lynn Eubank Maria Beck -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 92 07:58:42 -0500 From: ljd@world.std.com (Larry Davidson) Subject: cowabunga Does anyone know the etymology of "cowabunga"? All I know about it is that it was once used in Peanuts and now appears in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 92 13:52:39 GMT From: Dr M Sebba Subject: Re: 3.143 Linguistics And The MEdia It is not only the media which ignore or caricature linguistics. Reference books such as atlases and almanacs which provide country information, and school texts on geography are persistent offenders and are undoubtedly part of the cycle which includes public ignorance and media indifference. I am making a collection of misrepresentations, omissions and outright wrong information contained in published reference works which are not primarily about language. All contributions welcome! Mark Sebba Dept. of Linguistics University of Lancaster, Lancaster LA1 4YT, England Telephone (0524) 65201 ext. 2241 (W) (0524) 69223 (H) Fax: (0524) 843085 e-mail: eia023@uk.ac.lancaster.central1 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-161. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-162. Wed 19 Feb 1992. Lines: 151 Subject: 3.162 Selectional, English Prime, Spanish, Fieldwork Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 92 15:10:11 GMT From: Arran Subject: Selectional Restrictions (Help!!!) 2) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 92 08:56:30 MST From: Helene Ossipov Subject: English Prime 3) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 92 14:23:20 EST From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Spanish la -> el rule 4) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1992 19:49:08 +1100 From: rigsby@lingua.cltr.uq.oz.au (Bruce Rigsby) Subject: Linguistic Fieldwork & Its Methods -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 92 15:10:11 GMT From: Arran Subject: Selectional Restrictions (Help!!!) HELP!!! I'm about to start a project on the formal modelling of selection restrictions and I need loads of different examples. Selectional restrictions are restrictions on the type of argument that certain lexemes can take, for example the verb 'eat' must take an animate subject and an edible object. So, for example, 1) is meaningful but 2) is not: So: 1) 'The pig eats the banana' 2) 'The idea eats the car' This is allright in theory but there are lots of idiomatic uses of language which break these simple restrictions, for example: 3) 'Rolls-Royces just eat gasolene.' Where the subject is not animate and the object is not edible. Some examples seem to be the normal English usage. For example you might expect the verb 'climb' to have an animate (or even movable) subject and an inanimate object, but consider: 4) 'The goat climbed up the mountain' 5) 'The house climbed up the stairs' 6) 'The road climbed steeply up the hill.' Example 4 is fine because the subject is animate, example 5 is not because the subject is inanimate, but example 6 is perfectly good English even though it breaks the selectional restriction. So there is more to it than simple selectional restrictions, and perhaps breaking usual selectional restrictions can communicate more information than is actually said. If you can think of other sentences where 'normal' selectional restrictions are broken but the sentence is still good English then please please send them to me. My address is arran%ling.ed.ac.uk@ed.castle Let me know what you think the normal selectional restrictions would be for the sentences. They could be anything you like from the conventional 'abstract' and 'concrete' to 'edible' and 'pretty'. Thanks a lot, Arran. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- PS: Here are a few more examples: 1) The new theory stabbed the old one in the back. -stabbed usually takes an animate subject, not an abstract one. 2) The commander barked out the order. - bark usually takes a doggy_like_animal as the subject, not a human. 3) This show is just a barrel of laughs. -a barrel usually contains a concrete object, not an abstract one. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 92 08:56:30 MST From: Helene Ossipov Subject: English Prime Query: A friend recently asked me about English Prime, which is a form of English that doesn't use the verb "to be." Apparently, it was invented (?) by a linguist in Indiana. Does anyone on the list know anything about E-prime? Thanks. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 92 14:23:20 EST From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Spanish la -> el rule There has been much discussion in (fairly) recent work on phonology of Spanish forms like el alma, el almita. The assumption seems to be that the (historically correct) rule is still productive, viz., that feminine words beginning with a stressed /a/ take el instead of la (and, of course, that this somehow extends to their derivates, this last point being what the theoreticians are interested in). However, my informant seems to treat these forms as lexical exceptions, since in made-up examples like 'The Anne', he says 'La Ana', not 'El Ana'. Also relevant are la a 'the a' and la hache 'the h'. If there are any linguists/informants out there who could help with relevant data or comments, I would be grateful. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1992 19:49:08 +1100 From: rigsby@lingua.cltr.uq.oz.au (Bruce Rigsby) Subject: Linguistic Fieldwork & Its Methods I am preparing a six-hour module of lectures about linguistic field- work and its methodologies (including sociolinguistic and ethnographic-type methods and techniques, as well as the classic/traditional linguist- informant methods and techniques). I would be grateful for any relevant course outlines, materials and reading lists that colleagues might send me by email or snail mail. Thanks in advance. Bruce Rigsby, Dept of Anthropology & Sociology, The University of Queensland, Qld 4072 AUSTRALIA rigsby@lingua.cltr.uq.oz.au -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-162. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-163. Wed 19 Feb 1992. Lines: 100 Subject: 3.163 LSA Email List Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 16 Feb 92 21:12:02 EST From: John Moyne Subject: LSA Email List -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 16 Feb 92 21:12:02 EST From: John Moyne Subject: LSA Email List Greetings Directory of Electronic Mail Addresses for Linguists Update: February 17 1992 Following is a list of the electronic mail (e-mail) addresses of linguists and some other individuals and organizations in related fields. The e-mail address appears against each name in the right column. When an individual has more than one address, the name is repeated. Because the list has been compiled from different sources, there is inconsistency in capitalization in the addresses. It is recommended that in using the addresses for communication, capital letters be avoided. The address against the name of a university is normally that of the linguistic department or program. A copy of this directory has been deposited at the offices of the Linguistic Society of America. Copies of this document can be requested from the LSA office, at the following address: Linguistic Society of America 1325 18th Street N.W., Suite 211 Washington, D.C. 20036-6501 E-mail: zzlsa@gallua.bitnet The list has been prepared mainly for hard copy distribution and readability. At the end of the list there is information on internetwork communication. Acknowledgement: Large lists were originally supplied by Bill Bright, John Goldsmith, Fritz Newmeyer, and Norval Smith. Shorter lists and individual names were supplied by many other correspondents. Bill Bright, Bradley Music, and Ivan Sag have supplied extensive corrections and updates. Ivan Sag has now made the list available via anonymous ftp. He has kindly provided the following procedure for accessing the directory through the Stanford node: (1) ftp to csli.stanford.edu from any INTERNET host. (2) login as anonymous and give your name in response to PASSWORD prompt. (3) type ls to display list of files, or ? to display commands. (4) type cdlinguistics to access files; ling.list.lsa is the name of the email directory file. (5) use the GET command to transfer the file: get or get to rename the file in your remote directory. (6) type quit to exit from ftp. The list is also available on-line to the subscribers of LINGUIST, who can obtain it by sending the message: get lsa lst to the address: listserv@tamvm1.tamu.edu (Internet) or listserv@tamvm1 (Bitnet) I will continue to collect corrections and additions, and I will issue occasional updates which will be sent to the LSA. John Moyne Ph.D. Program in Linguistics CUNY Graduate Center 33 West 42nd Street New York City, NY 10036-8099 Telephone: (212) 642-2173 e-mail: moygc@cunyvm.bitnet moygc@cunyvm.cuny.edu Linguist List: Vol-3-163. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-164. Wed 19 Feb 1992. Lines: 86 Subject: 3.164 Genes and Language Disorders Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1992 12:51:00 -0500 From: smithk@utormed.bitnet Subject: Re: 3.142 Queries: Registers, Acquisition 2) Date: Thu, 13 Feb 92 13:11:42 -0500 From: "Alan Prince" Subject: Genes and Language Disorders -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1992 12:51:00 -0500 From: smithk@utormed.bitnet Subject: Re: 3.142 Queries: Registers, Acquisition There is growing interest and debate regarding the nature of language impairment and its relation to a theory of Universal Grammar. Myrna Gopnik claims that language-impaired individuals do not have linguistic features such as "plural" and "tense". As a result they must memorize each instance and appropriate use rather than having a productive rule. She makes these claims based on sentence completion tasks like "Everyday the man walks to school, yesterday he -----" and grammaticality judgement tasks. Some language-impaired children and adults she tested had difficulty judging and correcting errors and sometimes omitted the inflectional morpheme in the sentence completion task. This work is described in Gopnik, M. (1990). Feature-blind grammar and dysphasia., Nature, 344. Gopnik, M. (1990). Feature Blindness: A case study. Language Acquisition, 1, 139-164., Gopnik, M. and Crago, M.B. (in press). Familial aggregation of a developmental language disorder. Cognition. This last article may be out now, I don't know. For alternative views, the work of Laurence Leonard is relevant (e.g. Phonological deficits in children with developmental language impairment, Brain and Langauge, 16, 73-86). Also, I am currently looking at morphological skills in normal and language- impaired children and their ability to implicitly and explicitly analyse morphological structure. One thing to keep in mind when you are thinking of these issues. I think it is important to distinguish between two different populations: individuals with overall cognitive deficits and individuals with specific language impairment but normal non-verbal skills. Individuals with overall cognitive deficits generally show linguistic development roughly comparable to their overall development (i.e. if they are 4 years behind in general cognitive development, their language may also be 4 years behind). I think this is very different from a specific lag in language development compared to normal development in other areas. We might want to handle these things differently from a theoretical point of view. Both interesting, though, and might be able to tell us a lot about modulariy. Karen Smith University of Connecticut -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Thu, 13 Feb 92 13:11:42 -0500 From: "Alan Prince" Subject: Genes and Language Disorders Gopnik's work appears (at least) in the following: Gopnik, M. (1990) Feature-blind grammar and dysphasia, Nature, 344, p.715. Gopnik, M. (1990b) Feature-blindness: a case study. Language Acquisition I, p.139-164. Gopnik, M. (1and M. Crago (1991) Familial aggregation of a developmental language disorder, Cognition 39, 1-50. Intersested parties should examine these references. I'd also like to express concern about the sneering quality of several of the posittings. , which does n -- Jakobson's memorable term `self-defamatory' comes to mind. -Alan Prince -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-164. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-165. Thu 20 Feb 1992. Lines: 162 Subject: 3.165 FYI: Galician, Phonics, CAL Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 16 Feb 92 14:20:18 CST From: GA3704@SIUCVMB.bitnet (Margaret E. Winters) Subject: Galician 2) Date: Sun, 16 Feb 92 21:45:50 -0500 From: berducci@linc.cis.upenn.edu (Dominic Berducci) Subject: Re: 3.146 Queries: Gangs, Phonics, Place Names, Replicability 3) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 92 08:44:15 CST From: (Dennis Baron) Subject: hooked on phonics 4) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 08:09:18 EST From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: phonics 5) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 92 10:36:22 MST From: Letticia Galindo Subject: Re: 3.137 Queries: Like, Swahili/Yoruba, ESL 6) Date: Sun, 16 Feb 1992 8:40:30 -0500 (EST) From: J_LIMBER@UNHH.UNH.EDU Subject: RE: 3.151 Proto-World -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 16 Feb 92 14:20:18 CST From: GA3704@SIUCVMB.bitnet (Margaret E. Winters) Subject: Galician For information on Galician and what is being published about it, see the yearly bibliography issue of the "Comparative Romance Linguistics Newsletter", published every spring through the Comparative Linguistics discussion group of the MLA. I don't have a current mailing address at home, but if anyone wants it, I'll be glad to post it from my office during the week. Margaret Winters -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Sun, 16 Feb 92 21:45:50 -0500 From: berducci@linc.cis.upenn.edu (Dominic Berducci) Subject: Re: 3.146 Queries: Gangs, Phonics, Place Names, Replicability Hooked on Phonics It may work for adults who cannot read and who know the content and context of words. But for children it appears to allow them to 'read' sounds or replicate sounds. It depends what you mean by reading. If you beleive readers interact with text rather than decode sound/meaning relationships then "Hooked on Phonics" does not work Dom Berducci----berducci@linc.cis.upenn.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 92 08:44:15 CST From: (Dennis Baron) Subject: hooked on phonics I too have heard the radio ads for "Hooked on Phonics," which aim to strike at our fears of a literacy crisis. They encourage the presumably illiterate adult audience (else why listen to radio?) to call a phone number which requires, ironically, a knowledge of the beginnings of the alphabet and promise what all the other quick-fix language ads over the years have promised: to make you (the sucker) who always feared you were worse than everyone else and whose language use continually reinforced that fear, finally just as good as your rivals and peers. You may have heard as well the ads for tapes that will improve your vocabulary (They begin, "People judge you by the words you use..." or something of the like)-- which you can listen to in your car while you're stuck in traffic (nothing to memorize, nothing to read--another quick fix for a major malaise). If I'm not mistaken, H-O-Ph does something like make sounds into songs, making reading fun (almost as fun as listening to the radio-- the station I've heard the commercial on is an all-news Chicago station). And the NCTE I believe has come out with a strong denunciation of the hucksterism involved in this particular program. No, I don't know if it works, but I wouldn't bet on it or anything else sandwiched between sound bites and competing ads for reconditioned copy machines and basement de-waterers. Context, as we know from reading, is all! Dennis Baron debaron@uiuc.edu Dept. of English office: 217-244-0568 University of Illinois messages: 217-333-2392 608 S. Wright St fax: 217-333-4321 Urbana IL 61801 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 08:09:18 EST From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: phonics > LRUDOLPH@vax.clarku.edu On Phonics vs. visual recognition of word shapes, the two methods seem to be complementary and both necessary to optimum pedagogy. See Marilyn Adams' book surveying the issues, published last year. Bruce Nevin bn@bbn.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 92 10:36:22 MST From: Letticia Galindo Subject: Re: 3.137 Queries: Like, Swahili/Yoruba, ESL TO THE FELLOW NEEDING INFO ON CAL--THE ADDRESS IS CENTER FOR APPLIED LINGUISTICS 1118 22ND ST., NW WASHINGTON, DC 20022 (202)429-9292 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6) Date: Sun, 16 Feb 1992 8:40:30 -0500 (EST) From: J_LIMBER@UNHH.UNH.EDU Subject: RE: 3.151 Proto-World The "bow-wow" and other ding-dong origin theories are mentioned in Max Muller's late 19th disagreements with Darwin's remarks on language origins in Origin of Species. Muller, I believe,was being sarcastically skeptical of the idea that human language could have been distilled from the cries of animals and the song dialects of birds Darwin mentions. I don't have a specific reference handy but they are in Limber, J. (1982). What can chimps tell us about the origins of language . In S.Kuczaj (Ed.), Language Development: Volume 2 (pp. 429-446). Hillsdale, NJ: L. E. Erlbaum. Its been quite while and I don't recall if Muller himself concocted these or just used them. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-165. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-166. Thu 20 Feb 1992. Lines: 36 Subject: 3.166 East Asian Syntax Workshop Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 92 11:56:22 EST From: Peter Cole Subject: Saito and Weinberg Talks--East Asian Syntax Workshop -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 92 11:56:22 EST From: Peter Cole Subject: Saito and Weinberg Talks--East Asian Syntax Workshop The Mid-Atlantic East Asian Syntax Workshop will meet this Friday, February 21 at the University of Delaware. The speakers will be Mamoru Saito, speaking on "Locatives & Temporal WH Phrases" and Amy Weinberg of the University of Mary- land, speaking on "Parameters For Natural Language Processing: English and Japanese". The talks will take place at 1 p.m. in room 202 of Old College (the building name), on Main Street at College Avenue. The closest parking is the lot just beyond the Linguistics Department office, at 46 E. Delaware Ave. There will be some time after the talks to meet the speakers, and there will be an early no host dinner. Please let me know if you plan to attend the talks and if you will stay for dinner. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-166. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-167. Fri 21 Feb 1992. Lines: 265 Subject: 3.167 Queries: Data, Texts Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 92 14:56:49 EST From: hitzeman@cs.rochester.edu Subject: ish, almost, sort of, about 2) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 09:10:11 EST From: j.guy@trl.oz.au (Jacques Guy) Subject: Query: month names 3) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1992 13:35:10 CST From: Warren Brewer Subject: Help with linguistics primers 4) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 15:56:40 MEZ From: Patrick Maun Subject: Looking for online American Indian databanks. 5) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 12:19:16 -0500 From: gb661@csc.albany.edu (BROADWELL GEORGE AARON) Subject: burps 6) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 From: peters@mack.uit.no Subject: Subcategorization for subjects 7) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 12:49:57 CST From: Michael Earl Darnell Subject: query: textbooks 8) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 13:59:26 EST From: Clergeau Stephanie Subject: 9) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 16:18:29 EST From: Edson Francozo Subject: IPA -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 92 14:56:49 EST From: hitzeman@cs.rochester.edu Subject: ish, almost, sort of, about I need some help finding papers concerning analyses of -ish, almost, sort of, about, completely, and words/affixes of that sort. The difference between "almost" and "sort of", I claim, is that, in a phrase of the form "almost phi" (where phi can be a constituent of any category), "almost" selects for a phi which describes a goal and direction toward that goal, while in "sort of phi" phi lacks this notion of direction. If I say "X is sort of phi", I'm saying that X is a peripheral member of the category described by phi. This analysis explains the general tendency for "almost" to be acceptable with ungradable adjs but not gradable ones, and for "sort of" to be acceptable with the gradable (or "fuzzier") ones: Martha is ?almost/sort of tall. Your goldfish is almost/?sort of dead. I also claim, contra Atlas '84 and Sadock '81, that almost(phi) entails not(phi)-- They argue instead that it's conversational implicature. Anyway, the only papers I can find that address these issues are Atlas '84 and Sadock '81. Does anyone know of papers on this topic, discussing similar words or affixes? Thanks, Janet Hitzeman -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 09:10:11 EST From: j.guy@trl.oz.au (Jacques Guy) Subject: Query: month names These month names are taken from the Voynich manuscript: mars, abril, may, yony, jollet, augst, septe[m]b[r], octe[m]bre, nove[m]bre. December is illegible, the folios where you would expect January and February are missing. [m] is represented by a macron over the preceding letter, [r] is a superscript r. I am no palaeographer, but the script looks very much like that of many French manuscripts of around the 15th century (give or take a century). Do those month names ring a bell with anyone? Thank you in advance. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1992 13:35:10 CST From: Warren Brewer Subject: Help with linguistics primers Dear LINGUIST list colleagues, A non-subscribing colleague in West Virginia has asked me to post several queries on his behalf regarding introductory texts, which I merely summarize below and relay to the list for comment. Please send replies directly to Juris G. Lidaka, LIDAKA@WVNWVSC. (1) Upper division grammar class, survey of traditional, structural, & transformational grammars. The class is typically half English majors and half education majors preparing for a standardized test before student teaching. Juris is familiar with the following texts, but would like further input before deciding. (A) Jeanne H. Herndon's _Survey_of_Modern_Grammars_(1976): What he has been using, but wants to get something more detailed for the students' actual needs. (B) Kolln's _Understanding_English_Grammar_: Likes this text, but too short for a semester, too expensive if two books are to be ordered. (C) Greenbaum & Quirk's _Student's_Grammar_of_the_English_Language_ looks good, but may be too hard for his students; but maybe not; no exercises. (D) Max Morenberg's _Doing_Grammar_(Oxford UP, 1991): Short, but with exercises. (E) Jesperson's _Essentials_: Available, but old. (F) Mark Lester's _Grammar_in_the_Classroom_. (2) Introduction to general linguistics: He has been using _Contemporary_Linguistics:_An_Introduction_, by Wm. O'Grady, M. Dobrovolsky, & M. Aronoff, but his students have threatened to defenestrate him; there seems to be problems with the exercises and their answers in the accompanying manual; sales rep promised corrected versions, but nothing has arrived thus far. "So what's the scuttlebut about this textbook and manual? Have people compiled and made available their own answers?" -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 15:56:40 MEZ From: Patrick Maun Subject: Looking for online American Indian databanks. Hello, I was wondering if there are any Amerindian databases out there somewhere (similar to the Australian Aboriginal one)? I am also looking for online Navajo verb lists. Anyone? Patrick Maun R5321GAB@AWIUNI11 bitnet Hochschule fuer Angewandte Kunst Universitaet Wien Vienna, Austria -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 12:19:16 -0500 From: gb661@csc.albany.edu (BROADWELL GEORGE AARON) Subject: burps What produces the sound in a burp? Is it the epiglottis? If not, what is vibrating? (#2 in my series of dumb questions about phonetics) ****************************************************************************** Aaron Broadwell, Dept. of Linguistics, University at Albany -- SUNY, Albany, NY 12222 gb661@thor.albany.edu ****************************************************************************** -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 From: peters@mack.uit.no Subject: Subcategorization for subjects This query has to do with subcategorization. I am interested in hearing from people who know of languages in which a verb may place a categorial restriction on its subject, for example a verb that must have a sentential subject or a prepositional phrase subject. I know of no such verbs in English; most cases where only an NP subject is permitted can probably be semantically explained. If anyone has an example that possibly involves some form of syntactic selection other than for category, I'd like to see that too. Possible examples or references may be sent directly to me, at peters@mack.uit.no; I will post a summary to the list. Thanks, Peter Svenonius =-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-= Peter Svenonius, UC Santa Cruz Linguistics and ISL, Univ. i Tromsoe, 9000 Tromsoe, Norway +47 (83) 44228 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 12:49:57 CST From: Michael Earl Darnell Subject: query: textbooks I'm going to be teaching a course entitled 'Introduction to ENGLISH Linguistics' in the future. Essentially, it's an intro course with an emphasis on English. I was wondering if anyone had some suggestions for an appropriate text. While I've used various introductory texts for strictly general linguistics classes, I haven't run across anything that would seem apropriate for what is essentially a group of future secondary level English teachers. Others around here who have taught the course before have generally created their own texts, in a sense, by using handouts. I'd appreciate any suggestions and comments and will post the results. Please reply directly to darnell@csd4.csd.uwm.edu Thanks in advance, Mike Darnell -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 13:59:26 EST From: Clergeau Stephanie Subject: Bonjour Je fais un MscA (maitrise) dans le domaine de la reconnaissance d'ecriture et mon projet est d'ameliorer la reconnaissance en integrant des connaissances linguistiques (lexicales, syntaxiques et semantiques). Pour cela, je d)sire utiliser un analyseur syntaxique du francais en Prolog (entre 50 et 100 r[gles) et un lexique des mots courants (environs 1000 formes canoniques). Je suis en train de le faire moi meme, mais +a n'est pas la finalite de mon projet et le temps risque de me manquer. Si vous disposez de tels produits, merci de m'en informer A Bientot Stephanie -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 16:18:29 EST From: Edson Francozo Subject: IPA Does anybody know whether IPA can be reached through e-mail? -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-167. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-168. Fri 21 Feb 1992. Lines: 279 Subject: 3.168 Summaries: Brain Research, Selectional Restrictions Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 08:46:01 EST From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: brain research, Gopnik 2) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 15:26:21 GMT From: Arran Subject: Selectional restrictions 3) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 13:11:00 EST From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: selection restrictions -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 08:46:01 EST From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: brain research, Gopnik I asked > Is there a good place to look for a survey and summary of research > into brain function and language capacities (lesions, aphasia, etc.)? Here are the very helpful responses I received. Thank you both! As promised, I am posting them here in a summary. -=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=- T. Daniel Seely Program in Linguistics Eastern Michigan Univ Ypsilanti, MI 48198 eng_seely@emunix.emich.edu Some books on brain research: Yosef Grodzinsky 1990 "Theoretical Perspective on Language Deficits" MIT Press. Richard M. Restak 1979 "The Brain: the last frontier" Warner Books Philip Lieberman 1984 "The Biology and Evolution of Language" Harvard. William F. Allman 1989 "Apprentices of Wonder: inside the neural network revolution" Bantam. -=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=- From: Garrett H. Riggs Dept. of Anatomical Sciences & Neurobiology Phone: (502) 588-7288 Caplan, David. 1987. _Neurolinguistics and Linguistic Aphasiology: An Introduction_ New York: Cambridge Univ. Press. A very thorough, scholarly and readable introductory text by one of the biggies in this field. Churchland, Particia Smith. 1986. _Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind/Brain_. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. I'm still reading this, but Churchland has done a good job so far in addressing more general issues of neuroscience and psychology. For current research, you must look at the journals _Brain and Language_ and _Cortex_. Of course _Brain and Language_ is an obvious choice, but Cortex has articles relevant to neurolinguistics fairly frequently as well. Here are a few representative interesting articles that I have run across recently: Demeurisse, G. and A. Capon. 1991. Brain activation during a linguistic task in conduction aphasia. _Cortex_ 27:285-294. Damasio, H. and A. R. Damasio. 1990. The neural basis of memory, language and behavioral guidance: Advances with the lesion method in humans. _Seminars in the Neurosciences_ 2:277-286. Ojemann, G. A. 1990. Organization of language cortex derived from investigations during neurosurgery. _Seminars in the Neurosciences_ 2:297-305. Mesulam, M-M. 1990. Large-scale neurocongitive networks and distributed processing for attention, language, and memory. _Annals of Neurology_ 28:597-613. These references cover a broad range of interests in neurolinguistics. -=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=- I also asked for information about where Gopnik had published her findings. I got only suggestions for alternative views. These were from Jeff Snow (SNOWJS@HUGSE1.HARVARD.EDU), who recommended Leonard and Tallal: Leonard, L. (1987). Language learnability and specific language impairment. Applied Psycholinguistics, 10, 179-202. Tallal, P., Ross, R., Curtiss, S. (1989). Familial aggregation in specific language impairment. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 54, 167-173. -=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=- Bruce Nevin bn@bbn.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 15:26:21 GMT From: Arran Subject: Selectional Restrictions: Thanks for all the replies. I'd really like to thank everyone who replied, I got some very useful suggestions and examples. At this stage I'm very open to suggestion, and any more comments and examples would be very welcome. Below I'll explain what more about what my special interest is, and the train of thought which led me to the project: 1) If you write a grammer which generates sentences and then look at a random sample you find sentences which are not sensible, for example: Ronnie hits Ronnie with Ronnie. 2) To add a level of semantic filtering, you can use a semantic network to make the arguments of 'hits' an animate subject, a concrete direct object and an inanimate concrete indirect object. Now the grammer will not generate sentences like the one above but will generate more sensible things like: Ronnie hits the nail with the hammer 3) This introduces selectional restrictions, which most text books describe in one paragraph with a couple of examples. The problem is that it is very difficult to describe what the selectional restriction actually is. Considering my example again: a) The house climbed up the stairs. b) The road climbed up the stairs. I recieved a reply which pointed out that a finer semantic study would put 'house' in a point-like category and 'road' in a line-like category. This shows the main problem. To describe even a small subset of English there need to be a huge number of categories. So a house is a point-like, concrete, immovable, heavy etc. Basically the semantic categories are trying to capture our intuition of what a house is. Then you have two different senses for climb, one taking a point-like subject and the other a line like subject. Presumably you would then have two different entries for climb in the semantic lexicon. One of my ideas is to create a model from the other perspective. To try and capture in the nature of a 'road' the fact that it can be thought of as climbing, running, going up, where these things mean in some sense 'lying'. As in: c) 'The road runs between Edinburgh and Glasgow' d) 'The road lies between Edinburgh and Glasgow' With (d) being being a kind of underlying meaning of (c) because it does not break the selectional restrictions. In a database of facts such as RUN(Sebastian_Coe,olympics) we would not want to see RUN(The_road,Edinburgh,Glasgow) but rather LIE_BETWEEN(The_road,Edinburgh, Glasgow). 4) So, as an idea, I would like to model some of the intuition about certain objects, for example that a road can be thought of as running because it starts in one place and ends up in another. In the example 'The Rolls_Royce eats gasolene' I would like to represent the intuition that a car consumes gasolene and gives out waste products which could be analogous to eating (whereas say a table does not). 5) I picture something like: a) check to see if normal selectional restrictions are broken b) check the knowlege about the objects to find an alternative reading which does not break the restrictions. c) if none can be found, reject the sentence as not sensible. (or in a limited implementation as not understood). 6) The questions are what type of knowlege needs to be stored, how to get this knowledge and how to use it to do the things above. To get an idea of the kind of knowlege which needs to be stored I'm collecting examples of where normal restrictions are broken but the sentence is still a meaningful sentence of English. (if you can think of more examples like 'The road climbs the hill' or 'The Rolls_Royce eats gasolene' then please send them to me. Of course it would be far to ambitious to hope to come up with a formal model to capture all this, and there are lots of big problems. (like the artificiality of semantic category names, which seem to be little better than type1, type2, type3 etc.). However, ideally I would like to create an implementable model which can extract the meaning from more sentences and generate fewer nonsense sentences. At the moment I'm reading as much as I can about the subject, and I'd welcome any ideas about references to read. Thanks again for all the ideas and comments, Arran. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 13:11:00 EST From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: selection restrictions Arran (no last name given, arran@ling.edinburgh.ac.uk) asks for help understanding selection restrictions. I think it is helpful to think of these in terms of normal selection plus analogic extension outside the normal selection, for metaphor. In what way is a Rolls Royce analogous to an animal and gasoline analogous to that animal's food? Another way to get better control of normal selection is to notice that selection restrictions are more precise and more stable for restricted subject-matter domains, particularly technical domains. Each such domain has its specialized sublanguage, characterized by differences of vocabulary, differences of selection (where a lexical item is the same as in another domain), and differences of word classes. Metaphor may then be seen as a process of borrowing from one domain sublanguage into another. (On sublanguage, the Kittredge & Lehrberger volume on sublanguage is a start, also Naomi Sager's book on natural language processing, cp. her discussion of medical informatics. Try Harris's _The Form of Information in Science_ for a much deeper bite.) This may help you take another tack with the examples you are gathering. That phrase using "tack" illustrates what I am talking about. It is borrowed from nautical (sailing) usage. Language users unaware of this are currently reinterpreting it as "take another tact." It thereby becomes a new lexical item, whose meaning now dismoored from its metaphorical origins is liable to drift with new and unforseen currents of usage, perhaps those associated with "tactic" and "tactful". Less metaphorically, selection restrictions appropriate for the image of a sailboat zig-zagging across a body of water are apt to be violated by users of this new lexical item "tact." By the way, I don't find this meaningless: 2) 'The idea eats the car' It's perfectly reasonable in, say, a sequel to the Beatles' film "Yellow Submarine." Might even find a way to make it a colorless green idea. I can say "rust ate my car". This I would derive from "rust affected my car as something eating it." (Similarly for acid.) So I work for GM as a designer. I have a great idea for a new car being developed. Everybody likes it. The company is committed to it. But over time it entails many unforeseen design changes in other aspects of the car. Finally, the car turns out to be too expensive to produce and market. My colleagues tell me the idea ate the car. They always thought it had poor sales value--kind of colorless. And it wasn't tested enough, it was applied to the development process while it was still green. Well, you can see it coming, so I'll stop there. The derivation of "rust ate my car" given above is from Harris, _A Grammar of English on Mathematical Principles._ This is the general form for derivation of metaphor. Is more formalization required than that? Bruce Nevin bn@bbn.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-168. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-169. Sat 22 Feb 1992. Lines: 207 Subject: 3.169 Queries: Chinese, Dictionary, Final Devoicing Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 92 14:43:39 EST From: Ralf Thiede Subject: CP/IP system in Chinese--query 2) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1992 10:08 EST From: SJS97@ALBNYVMS.bitnet Subject: Re: 3.164 Genes and Language Disorders 3) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1992 16:34:56 -0500 (EST) From: SEGUIN@VAXS.SSCL.UWO.CA Subject: RE: dictionary writing - request for help 4) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 92 15:52:10 PST From: rubba@bend.UCSD.EDU (Johanna Rubba) Subject: Re: 3.053 Origin of "Honkie" 5) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 92 17:14:53 MST From: southerl@acs.ucalgary.ca (Ron Southerland) Subject: Language and Power Course 6) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 92 21:18:56 EST From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Spanish la -> el 7) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 92 21:39:28 EST From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Final Devoicing 8) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 92 14:38:18 GMT From: Dr M Sebba Subject: query about Pasilingua -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 92 14:43:39 EST From: Ralf Thiede Subject: CP/IP system in Chinese--query I am trying to find some papers or articles or books on Chinese syntax which use the Government-and-Binding paradigm of projection grammar. A student of mine and I are trying to learn whether Chinese has a complete CP system (maybe not, we suspect) or IP system (probably no AGR), but we can't find anything in print so far within the current theory to educate ourselves. Can anyone give pointers? Ralf Thiede UNCC Dept. of English -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1992 10:08 EST From: SJS97@ALBNYVMS.bitnet Subject: Re: 3.164 Genes and Language Disorders Does anyone know the "snail mail" addresses for Michael Stubbs and Stephen Levinson, both of the UK? Please send responses directly to: SJS97@ALBNYVMS. S. Sigman -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1992 16:34:56 -0500 (EST) From: SEGUIN@VAXS.SSCL.UWO.CA Subject: RE: dictionary writing - request for help Kenn Harper is a linguist who has been asked to evaluate a dictionary project for the Government of the Northwest Territories. He does not have easy access to good library resources and would appreciate information on current litera- ture on dictionary development. Issues of particular relevance for this project include: methodologies, software, published reviews of other dictionaries, principles of dictionary construction; innovative projects from other language areas, etc. Kenn needs information very quickly as a short deadline has been set. He is not on email, and can be reached either by phone (819) 979-4616 FAX (819) 979-4207 or by mail at: Kenn Harper, Box 670 Iqaluit, NWT, X0A 0H0, Canada. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 92 15:52:10 PST From: rubba@bend.UCSD.EDU (Johanna Rubba) Subject: Re: 3.053 Origin of "Honkie" This isn't about 'honky', but about 'copacetic'. I heard a whole piece on PBS -- I don't know how many years ago. It was by a fellow who was a sort of language commentator -- someone very famous, who is now dead, but I can't for the life of me remember his name. He had a regular program about words or language or something. Anyway, he gave a whole story from Hebrew about 'copacetic'. Maybe someone else on the net can fill us in -- any Semitists out there who know the story? Or is speculating about 'honky' taking up enough space?? Jo Rubba - UC San Diego -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 92 17:14:53 MST From: southerl@acs.ucalgary.ca (Ron Southerland) Subject: Language and Power Course I'll be offering a new course with the above title in the Department of Linguistics (University of Calgary) in Fall 1992. It will be available to students beyond the first year and will have no linguistics (or other) pre- requisites. The course is supposed to address issues of 'language and power' in areas of racism, sexism, and the discourse of government and business (advertising). I'm aware of a number of texts/articles in language and gender and of Robin Lakoff's _Talking Power_. I'd appreciate receiving any suggestions anyone may have about texts or readings for this course -- and I'd really like to have general comments or suggestions from anyone who has taught such a course. I will summarize to Linguist whatever responses I receive. Ron Southerland Department of Linguistics The University of Calgary southerl@acs.ucalgary.ca [Internet] Southerland@UNCAMULT [Bitnet] -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 92 21:18:56 EST From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Spanish la -> el I am informed that the words azucar and avestruz are optionally feminine, but always take the article el. Are there any Spanish speakers who would care to send me their feelings about this. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 92 21:39:28 EST From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Final Devoicing This is a query directed to linguists familiar with languages with final devoicing (especially but not limited to Polish, Russian, Dutch, German, (certain varieties of) Yiddish, and Catalan). It is sometimes claimed that in at least some of these languages final devoicing can be "suppressed" when you "enunciate" (specifically, when you put a brief schwa-like vocoid after the final obstruent). However, my observation (at least in the case of Polish and Russian) is that it is possible to enunciate devoiced obstruents, as in the word ad, in one of two ways, depending on what is MEANT. Thus, if I want to stress that the word is spelled with a final 'd', then I can say it with a [d] followed by a brief vocoid of schwa- like timbre. But if I want to stress that it is pronounced /at/ and not /ad/ (as in correcting a foreigner who has not learned to devoice), then I can say it as a [t] followed by a similar brief vocoid. The question is whether anybody agrees or disagrees with my observation for these two languages and whether anybody would be willing to say whether the same is true or untrue about any other language with final devoicing (especially but not limited to the ones listed). Please respond directly to me, not to the list. And please indicate whether you would mind being cited in print as a source. (If anyone knows of published accounts of these phenomena, please let me know). -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 92 14:38:18 GMT From: Dr M Sebba Subject: query about Pasilingua "Orthodox linguists have paid scant attention to [pidgins and creoles]. ... apart from Steiner, the inventor of Pasilingua (1885), none of the pioneers of language-planning seems to have considered them worthy of study." F. Bodmer, The Loom of Language (1943), p. 442 Has anyone any idea who Steiner was, what Pasilingua was like, what he knew about Pidgins, and / or how he incorporated this knowledge into his artificial language? -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-169. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-170. Sat 22 Feb 1992. Lines: 223 Subject: 3.170 Positions Available Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 14:46:45 MEZ From: Martin Haase Subject: Job 2) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 16:43:55 GMT From: Margaret Rennex Subject: Research Associate Vacancy 3) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 92 9:33:02 EST From: Brian D Joseph Subject: Position Announcement at OSU -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 14:46:45 MEZ From: Martin Haase Subject: Job The University of Osnabrueck (Germany) has an opening for a Language Assistant ("Lektor") in English as a foreign language The person employed will teach English as a Foreign Language to German students who want to become teachers of English and to students studying other subjects. Employment will begin in October 1992. Salary will be fixed according to the State Employee Salary Schedule BAT IIa, ranging between DM 4700.00 and 5200.00 p.m. before taxes, depending on age, marital status, number of children, etc. Requirements: Native speaker of English with excellent command of German, academic degree, preferably in Applied Linguistics (incl. TEFL). Professional experience and an interest in EFL curriculum / materials development are expected. Applications, including the usual documentation, should be sent by "snail mail" or facsimile to the: Dean Fachbereich Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft Universitaet Osnabrueck Postfach 4469 D-W-4500 Osnabrueck Germany FAX: (+ 49 541) 969-4256 Deadline: March 1, 1992 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 16:43:55 GMT From: Margaret Rennex Subject: Research Associate Vacancy THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH HUMAN COMMUNICATION RESEARCH CENTRE An ESRC funded Interdisciplinary Research Centre and CENTRE FOR COGNITIVE SCIENCE Applications are invited for the post of Research Associate at the Human Communication Research Centre (HCRC) and the Centre for Cognitive Science, University of Edinburgh. Salary on AR1 or AR2 scale: #12,129 - # 23,739 (pounds) depending on age and qualifications The post is available from 1st July 1992 for an initial period of two years, with the possibility of extension. The successful candidate would be expected to interact with one or more of the following research groups at HCRC and the Centre for Cognitive Science, University of Edinburgh: Semantic Processing; Anaphora; Situation Theory and Grammar; Parsing; Grammar and Processing; Language Technology Group. The candidate should have a Ph.D., a strong background in theoretical linguistics in the areas of syntax and semantics, preferably within more than one linguistic theory, as well as experience with implementations of computational grammars for multi-lingual applications. An interest in psychological or computational aspects of language processing would be helpful, as would documented ability to conduct research in a team. Further particulars are available from the Personnel Office, address as below. If you require additional information please contact Dr. Elisabet Engdahl on 031-650-4446, email: margaret@cogsci.ed.ac.uk. Application forms including curriculum vitae, the names of at least three referees and a description of past and present research interests should be sent to: THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, PERSONNEL OFFICE, 1 ROXBURGH STREET, EDINBURGH EH8 9TB. TELEPHONE: 031-650-2260 The closing date for applications is 20 March 1992. REF: GU 910301 ********************************************************************** Further particulars for RA post in the Human Communication Research Centre and the Centre for Cognitive Science REF: GU 910301 The successful candidate would be expected to conduct an original research program relating to the interests of one or more of the following research groups: Semantic Processing; Anaphora; Situation Theory and Grammar; Parsing, Grammar and Processing; Language Technology Group. Here are some illustrations of recent concerns of these groups: [Semantic Processing] This group is concerned with psychological aspects of semantic processing and among other things has been looking recently at the interaction between the treatment of quantification in the literature on generalized quantifiers and experimental work on quantification which has been conducted in Glasgow by Garrod, Moxey, Sanford and others. [Anaphora] The remit of this group covers establishing the role of linguistic information in anaphora resolution, the role of people's monitoring of the topic of a discourse in processing and the representation of individuals and events in processing. [Situation Theory and Grammar] This group has been concerned with the foundations of situation theory and with developing a version of it that is easily used for linguistic analysis and implementation. [Parsing, Grammar and Processing] These groups are mainly devoted to computational aspects of language processing. Recent issues include principle-bnased parsing, theory-based translation and incremental processing. [Language Technology Group] This group started in September 1991 and has as its aim to develop technological aspects of some of the theoretical language research conducted in HCRC. It is expected that the candidate should contribute to the development of explicit models of the interface between syntax and semantics in the areas of anaphora and word order and scope. In particular, the research could address how general (syntactic) strategies interact with or are constrained by specific (lexical, semantic or thematic) information by studying one or more of the following issues: how different anaphors put different requirements on their antecedents and how this can be exploited in an implementation how information structure affects word order (comparing e.g. English and German) how word order options interact with quantifiers and their relative ability to take wide scope in a multi-linguistic perspective The ideal candidate would have a research background in theoretical and/or computational linguistics and proven ability to work on multi-lingual applications. However, a prime qualification for the post is outstanding research potential in some area related to the above and ability to contribute to an interdisciplinary research environment. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 92 9:33:02 EST From: Brian D Joseph Subject: Position Announcement at OSU POSITION ANNOUNCEMENT: INSTRUCTOR FOR INTRODUCTORY LINGUISTICS The Ohio State University Linguistics Department will appoint an Instructor of Linguistics with responsibility for teaching and coordinating intro- ductory linguistics courses. The appointment will begin in September 1992 and will be renewable annually up to a maximum of 3 years. The primary responsibilities for the position include teaching, during each quarter, one or more sections of an undergraduate introductory linguistics course which is taught in about 20 independent sections per quarter, serving as coordinator for all the sections, developing new course materials, running a one-quarter teacher-training course, etc. The minimum qualifications are (1) a Ph. D. in linguistics completed by August 31, 1992, (2) broad and sound training in contemporary linguistics, and (3) evidence of ability to teach the introductory course in an effective and stimulating way. The primary criterion for selecting a candidate will be anticipated success in teaching the introductory course, with past teaching experience and interpersonal skills highly desirable. Consideration will also be given to the applicant's ability to contribute to the upper division and graduate programs in linguistics (any subfields, but with special consideration given to candidates with expertise in phonetics or historical linguistics). The person filling the position might be asked to teach one or more advanced courses each year in place of some introductory sections. The Search Committee will begin screening applications on March 20, with a cut-off date of MARCH 31, 1992. Applicants should send a letter of application, a CV, up to three letters of recommendation (including one that specifically addresses teaching performance), no more than 2 sample publications or research papers (dissertation chapters are acceptable if appropriate), and a sampling of information relevant to teaching ability (evaluations, syllabi, etc.). Further materials will be requested from applicants later as required. Address correspondence to: Brian D. Joseph, 201 Search Committee Department of Linguistics The Ohio State University 222 Oxley Hall 1712 Neil Avenue Columbus, OH 43210-1298. The Ohio State University is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-170. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-171. Sat 22 Feb 1992. Lines: 175 Subject: 3.171 Language Deficit Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 92 20:43:50 EST From: jack Subject: Re:registers, acquisition 2) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 14:57 CST From: Joe Stemberger Subject: Re: 3.164 Genes and Language Disorders -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 92 20:43:50 EST From: jack Subject: Re:registers, acquisition I'm just about to leave for LSRL in El Paso, and should wait until I can make a more studied answer to the post of 14 Feb on this topic. There is reference there to "language-impaired individuals" who do not have linguistic features such as 'plural' and 'tense'. Such individuals have problems, it is claimed, with completion of test sentences such as "Everyday (sic!) the man walks to school, yesterday he-----". I presume that in this illiterate test item, it would be judged that filling in the blank with "walk" would be taken to indicate language impairment. This is particularly distressing, since in much of the upper southeast such forms are dialectally normal, and that's the way you learn them from your peers who talk that way. Only fancy restaurants in the South serve "Mashed Potatoes", the simple cafes have "Mash Potatoes", including often university dining areas. I have also run into a case of a distressed mother who had been told by the speech therapist at her first grader's school that her child had a speech defect, being unable to pronounce final 'r' in words, and needed special training. Apparently these people have no knowledge of the characteristics of American speech varieties, and are willing to place the label 'handicapped' and 'inferior' on those who speak certain of these varieties. Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of this (aside from the psychological damage done to individual children and parents) is that it becomes a rationale for racism. Many blacks, who come, or whose parents came, from the south also speak varieties that lack final clusters of consonant plus /t/ or consonant plus /d/, as to millions of other southern speakers. Since these people say such things as /kep/ for /kept/, they must have a language deficit of some sort, and since it often extends to a whole sub-community it must be that these people are inferior in speech, and probably in other ways as well. This is also an excuse for not bothering to try to teach the impaired. My God, I didn't expect to see this sort of thing appear on a bbs dedicated to communication among linguists, even though I had despaired of speech therapists. But, after all, they come from schools of education, and are probably beyond help. Chinese is also an inferior language of an inferior culture and inferior race, since the Chinese _never_ put past or plural affixes on -- we suspected this all along, of course. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 14:57 CST From: Joe Stemberger Subject: Re: 3.164 Genes and Language Disorders There has been a lot of work in the past decade showing that language disorders have a heritable component to them. I think that Gopnik is the first to maintain that it can be localized to a single gene, though. A few things to keep in mind, as regards the claim that specific language impairment reflects a "grammar gene". (This term, by the way, is not meant in a technical sense, and has not been used in the papers that Gopnik has published; it's for popular consumption only. Gopnik means specifically something affecting inflectional morphology, and not wh-movement, etc.) 1) Gopnik's subjects (and everyone with specific language impairment) have a deficit in at least two, maybe three areas. In addition to inflectional morphology, they have a problem with phonology. Nothing has been published about what the phonological deficits of her adult subjects were like; in general with specific language disorder, the phonological "errors" resemble those of younger normal children (but we don't have enough specifics about statistically common/uncommon characteristics of the phonology of either disordered or normal kids to get real detailed about comparisons). The "grammar gene" (and "feature blindness") hypothesis can't explain why there is a phonological deficit as well --- or, in fact, why morphological deficits in development are invariably accompanied by phonological deficits. If there IS an explanation for this, it hasn't been proffered yet. Third, there is evidence that children with specific language disorder have some perceptual problems with the acoustic signal (though this hasn't been tested with the family that Gopnik studied, and it is possible that they don't have such problems). Neither of these other deficits by themselves completely account for the morphological deficit; e.g., these kids say /rak/ when ROCKS is appropriate, but pronounce BOX as /baks/, so it's not JUST a matter of difficulty with e.g. consonant clusters. But for the purposes of determining genetic underpinnings, you need to explain the entire set of deficits, not just one part. 2) It is premature, to say the least, to claim that any gene that may underlie this disorder is a "grammar gene" just because it messes up grammar. In fact, it may an "anti-grammar gene" -- i.e., prevent people from expressing inflectional morphology, which has an entirely different genetic basis. We have to remember that everything that a human being does has a genetic basis in one sense: if our genes don't give us the ability to do it (either specifically or as part of some flexible learning mechanism), then we can't do it; after all, we don't observe inflectional morphology or bridge designing in rats. So, of course there's a genetic underpinning to it. The question is how specific that genetic underpinning is, and what other things are needed for it to be expressed. The "grammar gene" could affect some general process used for inflectional morphology and a number of other things; by removing a necessary part of the skill, inflectional morphology is affected. (Of course, you have to say what that general process is; myself, I think that it may reflect a greater amount of inhibition between competing units at the lexical and phonological levels, but that's a different story.) There is a lesson to be learned from work on developmental dyslexia (problems with reading). This too has a heritable component, and one study a few years ago actually located the gene responsible for it. There was no attempt to call this a "reading gene", though. Why not? Because reading is just too recent a skill. Nearly universal reading is a product of the last century even in Western cultures; and, given that socioeconomic class correlates positively with reading ability but negatively with offspring (i.e., people in "lower" socioeconomic groups tend to have more offspring but read less well), it is probably impossible to come up with an evolutionary scenario where the ability to read is caused by a gene THE PURPOSE OF WHICH is to allow people to read. Instead, reading seems to depend on more general perceptual and language skills that can get messed up by other genes --- and reading seems to be the task that is most sensitive to such disruption, since dyslexics can often be highly intelligent, great musicians, etc. The term "grammar gene" implies that the gene in question is THE gene for inflectional morphology, and it doesn't do anything else. No case has yet to be made for that. 3) The claims for the "grammar gene" have yet to be based on an explicit and fully developed psychological theory of how inflectional morphology is acquired by children or used by adults. The closest offering is by Steve Pinker and his colleagues, but even they admit that most of the details are mysterious. For example, they maintain the usual linguistic division between morphological rules and phonological rules, with phonological rules determining allomorphy; but have never investigated phonological development and in fact have yet to suggest how a child sorts all the input data out into that distinction. They have yet to address the morphological difficulties (and, often, lack of difficulty) shown by Italian children with specific language disorder, which at least on the surface contradicts their claims; perhaps a different gene is involved? I have no doubt that that is a possible task, but it's hard to evaluate any claims that may rely on specific formulations about the acquisition process. Anyway, the claims being made are presently very premature. They may turn out to be right, but it's WAY too early to tell. By the way, I agree with the comments made by Alan Prince that some of the comments about this on LINGUIST have been rather too "sneering". The literature on morphology during the past several years has degenerated into a lot of sneering (see, for example, the papers addressing connectionism in COGNITION in 1988). We should all just accept that there are differences of opinion, and try to be more polite. (Hopefully, that change in attitude will come before the Milwaukee Rules Conference in April, where these issues will come up again in a public forum.) ---joe stemberger -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-171. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-172. Sat 22 Feb 1992. Lines: 130 Subject: 3.172 Responses: Marr, Phonics, Texts Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1992 09:45 EST From: "I'm not short, merely vertically challenged." SDFNCR@ritvax.isc.rit.edu Subject: off the wall 2) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 11:58:30 EST From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: About Marr (Reply to Kucera) 3) Date: 20 Feb 92 10:57:55 EST From: Michael Sikillian/Annotext <76264.1323@compuserve.com> Subject: Hooked on Phonics 4) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 92 07:40 PST From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: 3.167 Queries: Data, Texts 5) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 92 13:37:44 MST From: Helene Ossipov Subject: English prime -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1992 09:45 EST From: "I'm not short, merely vertically challenged." SDFNCR@ritvax.isc.rit.edu Subject: off the wall My speculation of the derivation of "off the wall" is that it comes from the days of padded cells in mental institutions, where crazy people were referred to as "bouncing off the walls." so off the wall=crazy. Susan Fischer -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 11:58:30 EST From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: About Marr (Reply to Kucera) Since Prof. Kucera recently reminded us of Marr, I would point out that it is misleading to suggest that Marr's four elements represented a proto-language in our sense of the term. The whole idea of Marrism was to deny the reality of proto-languages and to viciously attack those who believed in (such people were called "Indo-Europeanists" no matter what they actually worked on). The basis for the attack was the claim that languages do not diverge over time, but rather converge (or perhaps both). -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: 20 Feb 92 10:57:55 EST From: Michael Sikillian/Annotext <76264.1323@compuserve.com> Subject: Hooked on Phonics To Mr. Dennis Barron: >And the NCTE I believe has come out with a strong denunciation of >the hucksterism involved in this particular program. No, I don't >know if it works, but I wouldn't bet on it or anything else sandwiched >between sound bites and competing ads for reconditioned copy machines >and basement de-waterers. Context, as we know from reading, is all! This sounds like a rather patronizing response to the product. Is it bad because it is mass market or because it is not pedagogically sound? And why doesn't the NCTE come out with a cheap cassette series that could help illiterates learn to read? I once met someone who worked in the inner city neighborhoods in Newark, NJ. He said that in the inner city his rate of selling encyclopedias was three times what it was elsewhere. There are a lot of people out there who have never heard of the NCTE, a university, or correct pedagogy. Hooked on Phonics is most probably a sham, trying to fleece people of their income (it costs $200). But what other alternatives do the poor or illiterate have? Michael Sikillian Annotext -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 92 07:40 PST From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: 3.167 Queries: Data, Texts re intro texts: if I may be self serving (and who will stop me) Fromkin and Rodman AN INTRODUCTION TO LANGUAGE is at least worth a try. We under- stand people shift to other texts but keep coming back to ours. The 5th edition will be out end of August 1992. Students seem to like it very much. The instructor's manual with answers to problems is carefully done by a wonderful grad student at ucla, Karen Wallace (who will be looking for a job as soon as she finishes her dissertation). The cartoons are funny and do make a point. Lots of English teachers use it all over the country as well as anthro and thankfully linguists. Since we received so many suggestions and help when I requested same via LINGUIST (and all of you are getting acknowledged in the new edition preface) someone out there must like it. Thank you Anthony, Helen, and Brian for the free advertising. Since other authors of texts will undoubtedly do the same I don't feel too guilty about taking this opportunity. re address of IPOA: Peter Ladefoged, the IPA president's e-mail address is idu0pnl@uclamvs.bitnet Vicki Fromkin -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 92 13:37:44 MST From: Helene Ossipov Subject: English prime Thanks to all who responded to my question about English Prime. I've got the article about it in the February 1992 issue of Atlantic Monthly. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-172. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-173. Sat 22 Feb 1992. Lines: 157 Subject: 3.173 Register, Linguistics In The Press Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 15 Feb 92 22:12:53 -0800 From: slobin@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Dan I. Slobin) Subject: Re: 3.145 Intonation In Announcements 2) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1992 14:07 CST From: 6160LACYA@vmsf.csd.mu.edu Subject: Register 3) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 92 15:06:57 EST From: Sarah Jones Subject: the Popular Press discovers NOT 4) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1992 15:36:08 HST From: Fran Karttunen Subject: Re: 3.161 Queries: German, cowabunga, media -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 15 Feb 92 22:12:53 -0800 From: slobin@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Dan I. Slobin) Subject: Re: 3.145 Intonation In Announcements The airplane-talk phenomenon seems to be limited to English, and probably only American. I don't think I've noticed it on British Airways. Nor have I detected anything like it in other languages--on international flights with native speakers making announcements in German, Dutch, Spanish, French, or Italian. Any explanations? The phenomenon has also entered the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour. About a year ago I started noticing, "Our lead story this evening IS the..." All of the commentators use it, so it must have been a conscious decision. (The airplane-talk phenomenon is much older--15-20 years, I would guess.) Dan Slobin (slobin@cogsci.berkeley.edu) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1992 14:07 CST From: 6160LACYA@vmsf.csd.mu.edu Subject: Register With regard to the recent discussion on register, I thought the following might be of interest. It seems to me we are looking at another reason for the same apparent phenomenon. This is from a column by Miss Manners that was printed a few years ago. (Sorry, I don't have the exact date.) ******************************* begin quote ******************************* Dear Miss Manners -- You often address the problem of responding to nosy questions, such as how much money one earns or why one isn't having a baby, but my concern is the opposite problem. A young woman I have just met is expecting her fourth child. She mentions to all and sundry (her invariable topics of conversation are herself, her husband and her family) that she is going to have her tubes tied after the baby is born. She is not an isolated instance of this lack of decorum. Strangers and casual friends tell me, without prompting or inquiry, details of their lives that I think are none of my business. What is an appropriate polite response? Gentle Reader -- "How nice for you." This is properly pronounced with the emphasis on "for." It is accompanied by a "so what?" smile (eyes fixed on confessor, closed lips briefly moved upwards and then down again) and followed by a change of subject. ******************************* end of quote ****************************** Alan F. Lacy Marquette University 6160lacya@vms.csd.mu.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Mon, 17 Feb 92 15:06:57 EST From: Sarah Jones Subject: the Popular Press discovers NOT Lately, it's seemed pretty easy to bash the popular press for its treatment of linguistic/pseudolinguistic issues. The other side of the coin appeared in this morning's paper--the Indianapolis Star ran an article from the Orlando Sentinel, by Linda Shrieves... a report of the varying theories of the origin of post affirmative NOT. It's quite a nice article, surely with great appeal to the "mass market" with its light tone and references to Wayne's World and the 70's Steve Martin SNL skit in which he used NOT (the appearance of which she refers to as "a linguist's archaeological find") In trying to track down somebody to comment on the phrase, the author, getting nowhere with the various SNL folks, ends up with Pamela Munro and none other than our own Larry Horn and references to our own LINGUIST discussion. It was a very faithful treatment of the whole matter, yet still very "readable". So, maybe there's hope for a "pop" linguistics that doesn't make us cringe, after all. --Sarah Jones saajones@ucs.indiana.edu saajones@iubacs.bitnet -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1992 15:36:08 HST From: Fran Karttunen Subject: Re: 3.161 Queries: German, cowabunga, media This AP release appeared in Ka Leo o Hawaii, the UH student newspaper on Feb. 19: GRAMMAR SCHOOL FOR THE DEAF Wilmington, Del. (AP) -- Deaf people who communiocate with the use of sign language are often at odds with the proper use of grammar. When they write, verb tenses may not match, noun phrases may be omitted, and there may be dropped words. Some things that are implied while communicating in American Sign Language may cause confusion when written. In an effort to help deaf writers catch their mistakes, a University of Delaware professor is developing a computer program that will catch grammatical errors that appear to be unique among deaf writers. "We're really trying to give them a tool they can use to raise their ability at written English," said Kathleen F. McCoy, associate computer science professor, who has been working on the project for nearly two years under a $45,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. Ms. McCoy and her graduate assistant, Linda Suri, have collected writing samples from deaf students from the National Technical Institute for the Deaf in Rochester, NY, the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf in Philadelphia, the Delaware School for the Deaf, and the Bicultural Center and Gallaudet University, Both in Washington, DC. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-173. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-174. Sat 22 Feb 1992. Lines: 115 Subject: 3.174 All's Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 92 16:26:06 EST From: Ron Smyth Subject: Re: 3.155 Comments: -Ish, All's 2) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1992 4:49:58 -0500 (EST) From: J_LIMBER@UNHH.UNH.EDU Subject: RE: 3.155 Comments: -Ish, All's 3) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 09:27:50 CST From: (Dennis Baron) Subject: all's 4) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 16:41:14 EST From: kevans@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Karin Evans) Subject: Re: 3.155 Comments: -Ish, All's 5) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 14:22:16 MST From: FD00000 Subject: 3.155 Comments: -Ish, All's -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 92 16:26:06 EST From: Ron Smyth Subject: Re: 3.155 Comments: -Ish, All's Although I, like Brian Teaman, balked at the complementizer explanation for "All's I know is", I just realized that I also used to say things like "Seeing as she isn't a linguist, how would she know?". So the as complementizer was a little more general. But in both cases I think that it was quite dead; "seeing as" was just an unanalyzed synonym for "since", and "all's" was just "all" with an inexplicable -s. So now I'm even more anxious to hear more on Ellen Contini-Morava's German explanation. Ron Smyth -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1992 4:49:58 -0500 (EST) From: J_LIMBER@UNHH.UNH.EDU Subject: RE: 3.155 Comments: -Ish, All's I'm an "all's" user from the south side of Chicago, circa 1940s. John Limber -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 09:27:50 CST From: (Dennis Baron) Subject: all's _DARE_, the Dictionary of American Regional English, analyzes _all's_ as all + as (+that) = all that. Its cites are from the 60s and 70s, from New England, but I have a friend from Cleveland who at the time was using the form. Dennis Baron debaron@uiuc.edu Dept. of English office: 217-244-0568 University of Illinois messages: 217-333-2392 608 S. Wright St fax: 217-333-4321 Urbana IL 61801 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 16:41:14 EST From: kevans@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Karin Evans) Subject: Re: 3.155 Comments: -Ish, All's I have a bunch of cousins, now in their late 20's-early 30's, who say "Alls I know is." They grew up in Elyria, Ohio, which is VERY near Lorain, Ohio. As far as I know, my aunt and uncle (their parents), who moved to Elyria from other parts of the Midwest, do not have this dialect feature. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 14:22:16 MST From: FD00000 Subject: 3.155 Comments: -Ish, All's In reply to Ellen Contini-Morava's question, I doubt very much whether the use of "all's" in relative clauses (e.g. "all's you need to do is ...") is related to German "alles". This use of "all's" is a very common part of my native dialect (San Francisco Bay Area), and most of us are at best several generations removed from anything German. For a long time, I thought this was a purely West Coast dialect feature, since I noticed I would get funny looks from people from other regions whenever I said it. But from the recent LINGUIST postings, I now know that's not true. I have also just within the last year heard people from El Paso and southern New Mexico (where I now live) say it, although it doesn't seem to be common. Here again, a German connection seems very unlikely. -Grant Goodall fd00@utep.bitnet -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-174. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-175. Sat 22 Feb 1992. Lines: 178 Subject: 3.175 Parsers Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 92 12:44:38 EST From: rapaport@cs.Buffalo.EDU (William J. Rapaport) Subject: Re: 3.154 Parsing Challenges 2) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 92 20:19 GMT From: "William Marslen-Wilson" Subject: RE: 3.154 Parsing Challenges 3) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 10:07:57 EST From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: parsers vs. humans 4) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 09:11:08 CST From: will@ils.nwu.edu (Will Fitzgerald) Subject: Re: 3.154 Parsing Challenges -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 92 12:44:38 EST From: rapaport@cs.Buffalo.EDU (William J. Rapaport) Subject: Re: 3.154 Parsing Challenges Well, there's my Buffalo favorite: Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo. Here's the story. First, when I was a grad student in philosophy at Indiana a long time ago, John Tienson gave us the example of: Dogs dogs dog dog dogs whose syntax is the same as: Mice cats chase eat cheese. We found the -s morpheme unaesthetic, so we came up with Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo where to buffalo = to bully around, to do a snow job on. (Poetic license if you think that buffalo can't buffalo other buffalo.) Of course, there's also the optional plural of buffaloes as mere buffalo, with no plural marker. Then, of course, you can make it more interesting by considering the buffalo in the Buffalo zoo, the Buffalo buffalo. And their peculiar way of buffaloing other Buffalo buffalo, so peculiar that, like the Tennessee waltz which you do by Tennessee waltzing, they Buffalo buffalo those other Buffalo buffalo: Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. 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: Wed, 19 Feb 92 20:19 GMT From: "NAME " William Marslen-Wilson "" Subject: RE: 3.154 Parsing Challenges I wonder if the garden path sentence cited by John Limber ("The player kicked the ball kicked him") is as mystifying when first encountered if it is spoken (with appropriate intonation) rather than written. In some recent research we find that the appropriate intonation pattern disambiguates potentially ambiguous sequences like "The workers considered the offer from the management..." just as effectively, in an on-line probe task, as the presence of an overt lexical cue ("The workers considered that the offer from the management...). This raises the possibility that many of the popular garden-path phenomena reflect the inadequacies of English orthography in conveying prosodic structure, rather than telling us about the normal operations of the psychological parser. William Marslen-Wilson -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 10:07:57 EST From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: parsers vs. humans >J_LIMBER@UNHH.UNH.EDU J. Limber offers the following example as being easy for parsing systems but difficult for humans: (1) The player kicked the ball kicked him. One reason (1) is difficult for humans is that (2) is not all that likely or acceptable: (2) A player was kicked the ball. Perhaps there are dialects in which (2) is ordinary. I predict that in such dialects the relative clause in (1) would also pose much less difficulty than for speakers of dialects like mine. The homophony of past tense and past participle is the evident source of difficulty. There is no problem with either of the following: (3) A player was thrown the ball. (4) The player thrown the ball kicked it back. The distinction blurrs a bit with other verbs, e.g. "send": (5) A contestant was sent a letter. (6) The contestent sent a letter sent it back. Here, it seems to me that (5) is much more acceptable and normal than (6). This may be because "send" is closer to the core agent/patient semantics. And indeed, in Harrisian operator grammar, I believe that the simply transitive "X kick Y" is basic, with the distransitive "X kick Y to Z" being derived from a source using a verb of the "send" set, such as "X sent Y to Z by kicking it." (See the discussion of derived verbs in _A Grammar of English on Mathematical Principles_.) Nonetheless, (6) is still a garden-path sentence because the past-tense reading of "sent" is so much more expectable (and probably more statistically likely) than the passive in a relative clause with relative pronoun zeroed. Computational parsing algorithms seldom take into account the relative likelihood of alternative parses, other than for imposing a search order. Certainly, they do not model that which in humans gives rise to the differences of likelihood as a byproduct. Perhaps this is covered in the cited >discussion >in:Limber, J. (1976). Syntax and sentence interpretation. >In R. Wales (Ed.), Walker, E. C. T. (pp.). Amsterdam: North Holland. Bruce Nevin bn@bbn.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 09:11:08 CST From: will@ils.nwu.edu (Will Fitzgerald) Subject: Re: 3.154 Parsing Challenges I'm sorry, but I can't resist. The 'had had' sentence (John, where Mary had had "had" had had "had.") takes advantage of the use/mention distinction. Of course, you can mention other examples of mentioning, so you can create infinitely long sentences. Mark, where I had had "had had 'had' had had 'had'" had had " had 'had' had had 'had.'"; extend this for as long as you like. Points off for incorrect punctuation. /-------------------------------------------------------------------------\ | Will Fitzgerald | In February it will be my snowman's anniverary | | Institute for the | with cake for him and soup for me! | | Learning Sciences | Happy once, Happy twice | | Northwestern Univ.| Happy chicken soup with rice. - M. Sendak | \-------------------------------------------------------------------------/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-175. ________________________________________________________________ From: The Linguist List Subject: 3.176 Semantics, Selectional Restrictions ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-176. Tue 25 Feb 1992. Lines: 142 Subject: 3.176 Semantics, Selectional Restrictions Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 08:46:00 +0000 Subject: semantic subcategorisation From: "R.Hudson" 2) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 92 11:50:38 PST From: rubba@bend.UCSD.EDU (Johanna Rubba) Subject: Selectional restrictions 3) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 92 17:18:01 CST From: Robert Goldman Subject: Selection restrictions -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 08:46:00 +0000 Subject: semantic subcategorisation From: "R.Hudson" Eric Schiller says that every theory he knows can handle semantic restrictions on arguments, such as the restriction that the phrase to which -ISH is attached must be a time of day, a colour, etc. I take his word for Autolexical Syntax, but my impression is that at least some modern theories would have difficulty in imposing semantic restrictions on arguments EXCEPT for restrictions which can be imposed in terms of semantic (theta) roles. To take a simple example, how can we require the complement of FLOCK to name a group of sheep or goats, but not of cows? Or again, how do we require the subject of German FRESSEN to be an animal, in contrast with ESSEN (`eat'), which takes human subjects but is otherwise synonymous? This kind of thing used to be handled in TG by selectional features but they don't seem to be much in evidence in GB; and they at least don't get much discussion in other theories like LFG and G, GPSG, HPSG, RG, CG. Dick Hudson Dept of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT (071) 387 7050 ext 3152 home: (081) 340 1253 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 92 11:50:38 PST From: rubba@bend.UCSD.EDU (Johanna Rubba) Subject: Selectional restrictions I wish Arran lots of luck with a formalist account of these phenomena. If he's interested in a cognitive semantic account, I can refer him to a few works. For the "Rolls Royce eats gasoline" type example, he can look at conventional metaphor, especially perhaps the Great Chain of Being model; see George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors we live by, U Chicago, 1980; but especially George Lakoff and Mark Turner, "More than cool reason: A field guide to poetic metaphor" (year?? Publlisher??), and Mark Turner "Death is the mother of beauty" (1987, U Chic). For the "Road climbs up the hill" type of example, Ron Langacker has developed an account within Cognitive Grammar under the topics 'abstract motion' and 'subjective motion.' See his recent book, "Concept, image, and symbol: The cognitive basis of grammar", 1991, Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 149-164, and references cited therein (his 1987 and 1991 monographs set out the theory in all its glory). He'll find examples in all these works, and lots more if he looks around through texts or corpora or whatnot. There are, I'm sure, tons of them. Jo Rubba, UC San Diego -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Fri, 21 Feb 92 17:18:01 CST From: Robert Goldman Subject: Selection restrictions Along the lines of your 5) I picture something like: a) check to see if normal selectional restrictions are broken b) check the knowlege about the objects to find an alternative reading which does not break the restrictions. c) if none can be found, reject the sentence as not sensible. (or in a limited implementation as not understood). I would suggest reading Hobbs, et. al's excellent work on the TACITUS project at SRI. May I suggest the following? @inproceedings(Hobbs:87, author = {Jerry R. Hobbs and Paul Martin}, year = {1987}, booktitle = IJCAI-87, title = {Local Pragmatics}, pages = {520-523} where IJCAI-87 is the proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence; and @inproceedings(Hobbs:88, author = {Jerry R. Hobbs and Mark Stickel and Paul Martin and Douglas Edwards}, year = {1988}, booktitle = ACL-88, title = {Interpretation as Abduction}, pages = {95-103} ACL being the Association for Computational Linguistics' yearly conference proceedings. For the gory details, write to Jerry Hobbs and/or Mark Stickel for SRI tech reports. I would just like to warn about one danger of this scheme: that is the assumption that a literal reading is always going to be preferable to a metaphorical/metonymic reading. This seems to me unlikely. (Hobbs' scheme does not make this assumption.) cf. also work done by Eugene Charniak on myself, which is very similar to the work done here, but whose foundations are in probability theory rather than in theorem-proving. R -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-176. ________________________________________________________________ From: The Linguist List Subject: 3.177 Replicability, Phonics ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-177. Tue 25 Feb 1992. Lines: 151 Subject: 3.177 Replicability, Phonics Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1992 23:40 PST From: GOLLAV@AXE.HUMBOLDT.EDU Subject: Replicability in Linguistics 2) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 08:25:56 EST From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: replicability 3) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 92 09:33:34 CST From: (Dennis Baron) Subject: hooked on phonics -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1992 23:40 PST From: GOLLAV@AXE.HUMBOLDT.EDU Subject: Replicability in Linguistics Re: Alexis Manaster-Ramer's comments about the infrequent use of replicability as a criterion in evaluating linguistic hypotheses (Linguist 3.146). Another of the rare instances of the failure to replicate reported data being used in a linguistic debate may be found in a recent paper by E. D. Cook, "Linguistic Divergence in Fort Chipewyan" (Language in Society 20: 423-440, Sept. 1991). In 1969 Ronald & Suzanne Scollon claimed that that Chipewyan (Athabaskan) had "converged" with Cree (Algonquian) at Ft. Chipewyan, Alberta, presenting a seemingly con- vincing abundance of data in several papers and a book. Cook has recently carried out fieldwork in the same community and dismisses much of the Scollons' data as "spurious" (i.e., unreplicable, hence unsupportive of their theory). I have to admit that when I first read Cook's paper I was a bit shocked; such criticism seemed almost a breach of scholarly etiquette. On reflection, it is clear that Cook was merely behaving like a normal scientist, and the fact that such behavior stands out like a sore thumb in linguistic discourse is what should really be shocking. Victor Golla -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 08:25:56 EST From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: replicability > Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Replicability is especially important in sciences that deal statistically with large populations (of molecules, photons, mice and men), and which consequently are abominable at predicting behavior of individuals. Most linguistics aims at modelling something that results in the behavioral outputs of individuals. The idealizing and abstracting away from raw performance data that characterize most linguistics are not due to statistical averaging. Rather they constitute some kind of claim about internalized norms or targets that the individual language user's performance approximates. Replicability also has to do with claims to objectivity based on intersubjective agreement. There are well known epistemological problems with this. Surprisingly few studies in other sciences are actually replicated. This has been a cause for some concern in recent years, with disclosures of flagrant fabrications of data and results in geology, psychology, chemistry, and other fields. I suspect we could all cite examples in linguistics. Bruce Nevin bn@bbn.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 92 09:33:34 CST From: (Dennis Baron) Subject: hooked on phonics Just because I am suspicious of a $200 instant learn-to-read program does not mean I'm against educating the poor. But I don't think that high levels of encyclopedia sales in poor neighborhoods is reason to give Hooked on Phonics a second look. I'm all too familiar with encyclopedia sales strategies (at least those of 20 or so years ago) where college students working summer jobs were forced into making high pressure installment sales (no money down, easy financing, no payments till March) to gullible residents of lower and working class neighborhoods (play on their guilt, their hopes for their children). Most people in this country would probably admit to wanting to read /use language / write better than they already do (literacy is, after all, an apple pie issue). But actually increasing/improving literacy turns out to be a bit more complex; it takes more than an advertising budget, and more than good intentions. It's easy, as well, to belittle NCTE (though that organization works hard for language rights) or any other arm of the education bureaucracy. What I object to most about Hooked and Phonics and schemes like it (and I repeat, I am not familiar with the program, only with its ads), are the following: 1. the attempt to turn a perceived literacy crisis (and it is a _perceived_ crisis, as well as a real one) into big bucks 2. the suggestion that there is an easy solution to language problems (like the eat-all-you-want, exercise never, thigh-master/tummyciser, lose weight, copper bracelet, grapefruit diet) 3. the suggestion that entrepreneurs are better than professionals (a very American notion, this, that the experts are fools--a feeling that the popular-press treatment of linguistics reminds us about all the time) There is a common notion abroad that the schools have failed to educate our children (in many cases this is true; in many it isn't). But of course the schools can't do everything we tell them to do, and education isn't as simple as sending children to school. Mass public schooling is an assembly-line process, not hand-crafting. We shouldn't be surprised that the line breaks down. The experts--teachers, cognitive psychologists, reading specialists, the passionate literacy volunteers, anthropologists, advocates of the poor and powerless, and, of course, the vast body of readers [and nonreaders] themselves disagree over the nature of the literacy problem and what to do about it. So if you trust little ads in the backs of magazines and 30-second spots on the radio, then by all means call and find out more. My initial reaction is to put HOF in the category of replacement windows and basement de-watering systems. I don't think it's the millennial solution to the problem any more than Literacy 2000 is (don't tell me the millennium turns in 2001, either; I saw the movie; I know why Arthur C. Clarke chose the name). But I've been wrong before. And the number is so easy to remember. 1-800-ABCDEFG. Dennis Baron debaron@uiuc.edu Dept. of English office: 217-244-0568 University of Illinois messages: 217-333-2392 608 S. Wright St fax: 217-333-4321 Urbana IL 61801 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-177. ________________________________________________________________ From: The Linguist List Subject: 3.178 Speech Pathology ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-178. Tue 25 Feb 1992. Lines: 197 Subject: 3.178 Speech Pathology Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 92 13:09:14 EST Subject: Re: 3.171 Language Deficit From: "Ellen F. Prince" 2) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 92 18:25:45 EST From: Ronnie Wilbur Subject: Language, genes, and speech therapists 3) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 92 17:50:32 CST From: mabel Subject: Re: 3.171 Language Deficit 4) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 92 16:17 EST From: "George Fowler h(317)571-9471 o(812)855-2829" Subject: Mash potatoes -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 92 13:09:14 EST Subject: Re: 3.171 Language Deficit From: "Ellen F. Prince" in support of the posting from jack on how nonstandard dialects are 'diagnosed' as pathological, i'd like to add my own experience as a student at brooklyn college in the early 1960s. all (non-foreign) students were required to take a speech course (speech 2.3--i'll never forget it) in which we had to say a bunch of items like _today_ and _long island_ and _surface_ and all the jews and italians (i.e. the bulk of the students) were 'diagnosed' with things like 'central european accent' and 'lazy tongue-tipped-down s' and 'n-g click'. the school was very proud that a fair number of the speech professors were from iowa, which they proclaimed to be the site of the 'best english'. to pass the course, and to get a degree, one had to manage alveolar stops as opposed to our native dental stops, etc (in citation form only, thank god). the most extraordinary thing was that foreigners, with *true* foreign accents, were *exempt* from speech 2.3. (my then-boyfriend now-husband, having just arrived from egypt, was one of them, and i was very envious.) one amusing thing was that, for the 'n-g click', neither the professors nor the students understood that, in our phonology, eng (which i can't type on this keyboard--the final sound in standard english _song_) was simply the allophone of /n/ before velars, and words like _song_, _long_ ended in a velar stop for us. so, when they told us to 'drop the g', _long_ became /lon/, i.e. homophonous with _lawn_. so i, and many others, would say _lawn island_ at our test and we'd pass... (it made sense to me since long island was full of lawns.) beware of the language pathology diagnosticians. when someone finds some english speakers with random word order, i'll believe the grammar gene. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 92 18:25:45 EST From: Ronnie Wilbur Subject: Language, genes, and speech therapists A recent posting from "jack Subject: Re: 3.171 Language Deficit This is in reply to two of the postings of Feb 19. For "Jack" who was concerned about the quotation attributed to Gopnik about past tense missing in SLI individuals, and the possible confusion between disorder and dialect, and the possible mislabelling of children as "impaired" on the basis of dialectal difference-- I note that Professor Gopnik is a linguist, not a speech/language pathologist, so this example does not support the sweeping conclusions drawn about speech/language pathologists. I am happy to report that the pathologists are, of course, well informed about the distinction. An expert source is Lorraine Cole, head of Multicultural Issues at the national office of the American Speech & Hearing Association, 301-897 5700. She can provide cc of multiple official guidelines and position statements developed over the last decade or so, along with the rather extensive reference lists that support the guidelines. It would be a gross misrepresentation to allege that speech clinicians are ignorant on this issue. I am sure that Dr. Cole will be pleased to update the commentator. Another inaccuracy in the posting was the assertion that speech therapists come from schools of education. I am not sure which profession that remark was intended to insult, but, just for the record, academic departments for the training of speech/language pathologists are often regarded as part of the behavioral sciences and based in the Liberal Arts (as they are here at Kansas), or, alternatively, they can be regarded as part of the field of allied health, and based in medical schools. Much of the basic research is funded by NIH, and is reviewed by panelists from the behavioral sciences. The main point is that if we are to arrive at a satisfactory interpretation of the specific language impairment issue, and the possible role of genetic factors, we will need information from several disciplines, including sound clinical description. Discipline bashing probably won't contribute much to the cross-disciplinary effort. The second posting of interest was that of Joe Stemberger's. I support his thoughtful remarks, and the observation that specific language impairment is often multidimensional, in that phonology and morphology can both be impaired, as they are in the Gopnik subjects. I offer two additional complications. Lexical acquisition can also be affected, with a delayed onset of first words and restricted lexicons subsequently. That also seems to characterize the Gopnik subjects. The second observation is that the assertion by Stemberger to the effect that morph deficits are invariably accompanied by phono deficits is too strong. There are individuals who have problems with morphology whose phonological system seems to be intact. We don't yet have definitive epidemiological data on the association of phonological and morphological impairment, although Bruce Tomblin of the U of Iowa is currently collecting relevant data. For a few years now we have been successful in locating SLI children who are selected for intelligible speech (generally intact phonology) and impaired morph and lexical acquisition. Thus, the 100+ subjects in our sample offer presumptive evidence of some dissociation of phonology and morph/lexical. In this sample, the SLI children show control of plurals, relative to their language-matched comparison group, a finding not predicted by Gopnik's assertion that SLI individuals are missing plurals. On the other hand, the SLI children show problems with agreement, a finding also reported by Clahsen for German-speaking children. All of which is to echo the point that the SLI story is likely to be complicated, and will pose interesting problems for current models of language acquisition. Mabel Rice -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 92 16:17 EST From: "George Fowler h(317)571-9471 o(812)855-2829" Subject: Mash potatoes A recent posting (by Jack, JAREA@UKCC.UKy.EDU) complained about the recent press coverage of a study of people who have trouble with English inflection, calling it an instance of language impairment. One of his examples was "Mash potatoes", supposedly representing an alternative morphological system. I've never seen that particular construct, although I'm from the South myself, but very common all over is "Ice tea". I always interpreted that as stemming from inability to retain the morphology in the face of the phonology of the "tt" cluster, which won't be retained. In this case there is a reasonable reanalysis; "mash potatoes" would be a little weirder, but might still be phonological, simply a spelling of the reduced pronunciation. The point is, I wonder whether this example really reflects any alternative system at all, or merely appears as a "pronunciation spelling". George Fowler GFowler@IUBACS.Bitnet Dept. of Slavic Languages GFowler@UCS.Indiana.EDU Indiana University (812) 855-2829 [office] Ballantine 502 (812) 855-2624 [dept.] Bloomington, IN 47405 USA (317) 571-9471 [home] -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-178. ________________________________________________________________ From: The Linguist List Subject: 3.179 All's, Not ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-179. Tue 25 Feb 1992. Lines: 239 Subject: 3.179 All's, Not Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 92 16:52:51 GMT From: Judy Delin Subject: Re: 3.174 All's 2) Date: 22 Feb 92 From: pchapin@nsf.gov Subject: 3.174 All's & ways 3) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 1992 16:10 EST From: LRUDOLPH@vax.clarku.edu Subject: Re: 3.174 All's 4) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 92 12:19:15 GMT From: John Phillips Subject: Re: 3.174 All's 5) Date: Tue, 18 Feb 92 19:15:27 CST From: dale@utafll.uta.edu (Dale Savage) Subject: related to not 6) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 92 16:52:18 GMT From: Martin Wynne Subject: retrogressive negation in Britain -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 92 16:52:51 GMT From: Judy Delin Subject: Re: 3.174 All's > In reply to Ellen Contini-Morava's question, I doubt very much > whether the use of "all's" in relative clauses (e.g. "all's you > need to do is ...") is related to German "alles". This use of > "all's" is a very common part of my native dialect (San Francisco > Bay Area), and most of us are at best several generations removed > from anything German. The `all' sentences are clearly cleft-like, which sets me off on a thread that might be relevant. `All I need to do is x', first of all, has an inverted version that I have heard and seen written in American English (no region, sorry) but which doesn't occur as far as I know in British English (although I'm interested to hear if anyone thinks otherwise): `You just need to do x, is all'. It prompts me to wonder whether the +s of `all's' is in fact a second copula, resulting from a re-clefting of the original cleft, and then eliding the two resulting `all's'. To illustrate what I mean without trying to draw trees via the keyboard, the following set of sentences might help: Begin with a simple canonical sentence, such as (a): a) You need to do x Perform an all-cleft: b) All you need to do is x Here is where the re-clefting part comes in. You can do one of two things. One: perform an inverted all-cleft on (b), using (b) as the focus of the resulting, new cleft: c) All you need to do is x, is all and invert the result (which, incidentally, I've never seen or heard---does anyone do this?) d) All is, all you need to do is x Or the less baroque two: you can simply embed the cleft (b) directly in a structure like (d), without the inversion part (although this is less attractive for another reason, namely that (d) exists only debatably, whereas (c) is common). However you got to this point, however, now elide the `all's, making one `all' act as the entire complement of the main (external) copula at one level, and as an internal part of the subject of the internal copula at the embedded level: e) All is you need to do is x Finally, reduce the external copula: f) All's you need to do is x I don't think this is what anyone actually *thinks*, but the analysis might well give an explanation to the otherwise-unanalysable `s'. The re-clefting of the already-cleft sentence could be explained simply by a requirement for extra emphasis or other cleft-like properties. Rather than end up with the extremely clumsy (d), Ohioans (?) might decide that a simple copula-insertion might serve the purpose. Is all. Finally, re-clefting of already-cleft sentences is OK for other cleft types: g) Blue was what I wanted can be reclefted as h) It was blue that was what I wanted and sentences like (i) are also possible: i) What is was was it was Paul that arrived late Although you might argue that these are the result of replanning or hesitation in mid-stream, they do occur. Judy Delin School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences University of Sussex, U.K. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: 22 Feb 92 From: pchapin@nsf.gov Subject: 3.174 All's & ways Although I had forgotten about it until reading the recent postings, "all's" was part of my childhood dialect too, possibly from my midwestern grandmother who lived with me -- I don't remember it as being particularly characteristic of the south Texas speech I grew up around. But the reason I'm posting here is to note a possibly related phenomenon, which I just noticed when I was writing a message to someone. I also have a colloquial intrusive -s in the phrase "a little/long ways", as in "it's a little ways from here", instead of the expected "way". If there is any relation, it raises difficulties for all of the explanations which have been proffered, such as the contracted "as" or the German derivation. Paul Chapin -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 1992 16:10 EST From: LRUDOLPH@vax.clarku.edu Subject: Re: 3.174 All's Here's another Clevelander who says "alls"! Specifically, I'm from the West Side neighborhood called South Brooklyn, decidedly a German enclave--there was even a Lutheran parochial school competing with Our Lady of Good Counsel--in the early 50s when I was starting to talk. On the other hand, though all my Cleveland relatives were of German descent, I don't recall any of them talking that way themselves... My own naive analysis, by the way, had always been "all as". -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 92 12:19:15 GMT From: John Phillips Subject: Re: 3.174 All's Surely the 'as' in 'all's' is just the dialectical form of the relative or complementiser which is 'that' in standard English. The following uses would be unexceptional in Northern England. It was him as did it. Who do you mean - him as his mother died last week? I thought as how he was coming tonight anyway. John Phillips -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5) Date: Tue, 18 Feb 92 19:15:27 CST From: dale@utafll.uta.edu (Dale Savage) Subject: related to not I was doing some fun reading last night and ran across the following datum from 1918. It's not not, but has the same sassy flavor as post posed not. It is, rather, a post posed clause negating the just uttered sentence. It is from "Tonto Basin" a factual story by Zane Grey about a 1918 Arizona hunting trip with his 9 year old son, Romer, and his brother, R.C. ====================== "Look here, kid," said R.C., "save something for tomorrow." In disgust Romer replied, "Well, I suppose if a flock of antelope came along here you wouldn't move.... You an' Dad are great hunters, I don't think!" ===================== One could easily imagine a 1990's version in which Romer replies, "You an' Dad are great hunters, not!" :) Dale Savage -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 92 16:52:18 GMT From: Martin Wynne Subject: retrogressive negation in Britain Another case of retrogressive negation. The NOT! and BUT! cases already mentioned do not occur in British English to my knowledge. (Has anybody heard kids pick up NOT! yet, perhaps from Bill & Ted films?). However there is a very common counterpart, especially among younger speakers. I heard the following recently: (1) - I don't mind working here. - Much! The second speaker was 26 years old from Bolton (Lancs.) and has a marked regional dialect. However, I'm from the other end of the country (Cambridgeshire) and it reminded me that this was very common in my school days. I'd guess it comes from sentences like: (2) - I don't like school dinners (very) much. with the 'much' becoming detached. As far as my intuitions go, it can be uttered by the same speaker, as if in response to his own statement, or by another as in my example above. I think it more common with negative sentences, where it could normally be added, as in (2) above, but it can used more widely, as in: (3) - I'm going to get a job in the City. - Much! -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-179. ________________________________________________________________ From: The Linguist List Subject: 3.180 Queries: Fonts, Lexicon, Phase Verbs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-180. Tue 25 Feb 1992. Lines: 124 Subject: 3.180 Queries: Fonts, Lexicon, Phase Verbs Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 92 14:17 EST From: "E_Dean.Detrich" <22743MGR@msu.edu> Subject: Re: 3.169 Queries: Chinese, Dictionary, Final Devoicing 2) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 92 16:32:22 CST From: DBEDELL3@UA1VM.UA.EDU Subject: IPA fonts for pc 3) Date: 25 Feb 92 14:46:54 EDT From: "CHRISTOPHER A. BREWSTER" Subject: Lexicon construction software - request info 4) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1992 16:41 MET From: JEROEN WIEDENHOF Subject: Query: phase verbs -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 92 14:17 EST From: "E_Dean.Detrich" <22743MGR@msu.edu> Subject: Re: 3.169 Queries: Chinese, Dictionary, Final Devoicing > Date: Fri, 21 Feb 92 21:18:56 EST > From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu > Subject: Spanish la -> el > > I am informed that the words azucar and avestruz are optionally > feminine, but always take the article el. Are there any Spanish > speakers who would care to send me their feelings about this. I am not a Spanish speaker and cannot answer the query, but I would like to add to the query on behalf of a colleague not on e-mail. She asks: "How do the Spanish speakers on the network say "[the] a personal" when referring to that preposition in Spanish?" E. Dean DETRICH 22743mgr@msu.bitnet Department of Romance and Classical Languages 22743MGR@MSU.EDU Michigan State University East Lansing, Michigan 48824 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 92 16:32:22 CST From: DBEDELL3@UA1VM.UA.EDU Subject: IPA fonts for pc A while back there was a discussion of IPA fonts, from which I obtained information about PalPhones and other fonts for Macintosh, but I've forgotten what was said about pc fonts. Are some public domain fonts available through the net? --David Bedell, U. of Alabama (dbedell3@ua1vm.ua.edu) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: 25 Feb 92 14:46:54 EDT From: "CHRISTOPHER A. BREWSTER" Subject: Lexicon construction software - request info I would like information on lexicon build-up software. In particular, I would like to know what has been created, what is available either commercially or for research purposes, and any publications which describe such software. I would be grateful for any pointers to work in this field. Thank you. Christopher Brewster Wire Communications Laboratory, Dept. of Electrical Engineering, University of Patras, Patras, Greece. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1992 16:41 MET From: JEROEN WIEDENHOF Subject: Query: phase verbs In German and Dutch, the terms _Phasenverb_ 'phase verb' (e.g. Li 1991:31) and _fasewerkwoord_ 'phase verb' (e.g. Barentsen 1985:62) are used for verbs which point at a particular phase of another verb. Examples of phase verbs are: _to start_, as in _to start feeling desperate_; _to go on_, as in _to go on seeing her_. Comrie (1976:48) describes 'phase' as 'a situation at any given point of time in its duration' - 'situation' being Comrie's (1976:13) cover-term for states, events and processes. This definition of 'phase' matches the meaning just given for 'phase verbs', but Comrie does not use the term 'phase verb', as far as I know. I would be interested to find other sources for the term 'phase verb' (or 'phasal verb'?). Can anybody help? Jeroen Wiedenhof references: ---------- Barentsen, Adriaan Arij, _'Tijd', 'aspect' en de conjunctie_ poka. Amsterdam: MS, 1985. Comrie, Bernard, _Aspect_. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976. Reprinted with corrections, 1981. Li, Chor-Shing, _Das Aspektsystem im modernen Chinesisch_. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1991. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-180. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-181. Tue 25 Feb 1992. Lines: 152 Subject: 3.181 Parsers Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 92 12:24:23 CST From: Eric Schiller Subject: Re: 3.175 Parsers 2) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1992 10:54:21 -0500 (EST) From: J_LIMBER@UNHH.UNH.EDU Subject: RE: subject 3.175 Parsing and prosody 3) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 92 16:24:27 CST From: DBEDELL3@UA1VM.bitnet Subject: parsing problems 4) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 92 18:07:54 MEZ From: Martin Haase Subject: Re: Parsing challenges 5) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 92 10:33:04 -0800 From: tshannon@garnet.berkeley.edu Subject: Re: 3.137 Queries: Like, Swahili/Yoruba, ESL -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 92 12:24:23 CST From: Eric Schiller Subject: Re: 3.175 Parsers Since I am in the midst of constructing the rules for one of these computational beasts, I find the discussion quite useful. Many of these cases have deleted relative markers, so it seems sensible to try inserting dummy relative markers after NP's when a parse fails. Won't solve all problems, but perhaps it is a start. With an Autolexically based approach, the semantics will have a better chance of making it through, I think, though I haven't worked out the details yet. The syntax is bound to gag without a kludge. Eric Schiller -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1992 10:54:21 -0500 (EST) From: J_LIMBER@UNHH.UNH.EDU Subject: RE: subject 3.175 Parsing and prosody William Marslen-Wilson is surely right that prosody can provide some useful information to listeners in parsing sentences. While I am dubious that it can do much for "the player kicked the ball kicked him" , generally there is f0 (pitch contour trend and duration) information that can be useful. For example in (1) I have put the approximate f0 at key points for my own voice. (1a) The professor (175Hz) the students believed was (175Hz) ar(150hz)rested died. (1b) The professor (175Hz) the students believed was (150Hz) ar(175Hz)rested. The crossing over of the pitchplots confirm what one's grandmother's ear might have told us--the initial level of F0 is maintained over the potential garden path deadend in (a). This could be used to preclude an immediate (inaccurate) parse of "believed" as a main verb- either as a specific "dependent clause" cue or--my guess--as a "procrastination" cue (Limber, 1976). I believe there's a paper by Grosjean in Cognition, circa 1988, demonstrating that listeners can in fact use f0 to predict the subsequent length of an utterance. Of course it is an empirical question as to the circumstances under which these prosodic cues are applied in everyday speech; presumably William Marslen-Wilson's experiments address this. John Limber -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Sun, 23 Feb 92 16:24:27 CST From: DBEDELL3@UA1VM.bitnet Subject: parsing problems The recently-discussed examples of sentences containing "and and and and and" and "had had had had had had had had had had" were both included in Robert Ripley's _Big Book of Believe It or Not_, published in the 1930s. I think there was an example with "that" also. Not to mention the six-page sentence from _Les Miserables_ and the Comma that Saved a Man's Life and palindromes and other such linguistic oddities. --David Bedell, U. of Alabama (dbedell3@ua1vm.ua.edu) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 92 18:07:54 MEZ From: Martin Haase Subject: Re: Parsing challenges Here is a parsing problem from French, at least if you want to deal with its phonological transcription. French orthography has already solved the problem: Si six scies scient six cypre`s, 606 scies scient 606 cypr`es. /si si si si si siprE si sa~ si si si si sa~ si siprE/ meaning: If six saws saw six cypresses, 606 saws saw 606 cypresses. It shows that orthography is much more than a transcription; it is a very efficient knowledge-based system. Martin -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 92 10:33:04 -0800 From: tshannon@garnet.berkeley.edu Subject: Re: 3.137 Queries: Like, Swahili/Yoruba, ESL Sorry to be answering this so late, but I have been to busy with our new baby to check out my e-mail lately! I don't know any examples of exactly the "thrice repeated" type, but I do remember a couple of similar examples that might be of interest: Dogs dogs dog dog dogs. (Meaning: "Dogs who dog [= verb] (other) dogs dog [= verb] dogs." Similarly: Buffaloes buffaloes buffalo buffalo buffaloes. (Meaning: "Buffaloes who (which?) buffalo [= verb] buffaloes buffalo [= verb] buffaloes." Of course, neither of these makes eminently reasonable sse, but then again, that's not the point. As they say out here (and elsewhere???): "Enjoy!" tom shannon german department, uc berkeley tshannon@garnet.berkeley.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-181. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-182. Wed 26 Feb 1992. Lines: 69 Subject: 3.182 Dwight Bolinger: In Memoriam Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 92 18:42:57 -0800 From: edwards@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Jane Edwards) Subject: Dwight Bolinger - In Memoriam -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 92 18:42:57 -0800 From: edwards@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Jane Edwards) Subject: Dwight Bolinger - In Memoriam (Forwarded from Talmy Givon.) >Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1992 09:54 PST >From: Tom Givon >Subject: D. Bolinger, RIP This is to let y'all know that one of our most cherished associates, Dwight Bolinger, died last night at 11:30pm at a hospital in Palo Alto. For the many of us who have been inspired by Dwight's work and encouraged by his generous sharing of his time and knowledge, this is a true loss. Dwight has never spared himself, his time and his unfailing attention and wit in encouraging young people in their work. While few people in linguistics could actually boast him as their professor, scores could justly claim him as their teacher. Dwight never allowed his temporal age to interfere with his unbounded enthusiasm, nor dull his curiosity, nor curtail his delight in talking to rank beginners about the subject dearest to his heart -- language. Through the thick and thin of structuralist dogmas, Dwight was a beacon of common sense and inspiration to all of us who persist in the simple-minded assumption that language is about communication. Dwight was a gentleman of the old school who could nevertheless appreciate the young and their foibles. We will miss him sorely. TG >Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1992 14:36 CDT >From: HAIMAN@MACALSTR.EDU >Subject: Dwight Bolinger I don't expect to attend a memorial service for Dwight Bolinger, and so would like to pretend that this network is a gathering of his friends and colleagues, come together to toast his passing. I hardly knew him, personally, having met him only twice, but I remember the first time I sent him a paper, more than ten years ago, when I really was, if not a rank beginner, a complete unknown. He sent back four pages of comments, all flattering and a mild query: I had cited Quine as the source of the witty observation that when we invite meaning into a linguistic description, he is sure to bring along some uninivited rowdy friends as well. As it happened, Bolinger had written something along those lines himself -- was this a case of convergence? As I discovered over many years, so many of the ideas, and so much of the poetry, which I misattributed to Quine and others, or thought to have discovered myself, I owed to him. I salute his brilliant mind, and his sweet and generous heart. He was the greatest. John Haiman -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-182. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-183. Thu 27 Feb 1992. Lines: 132 Subject: 3.183 Responses: copacetic, e-prime, burps Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1992 11:11 CST From: FIONA@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu Subject: Re: 3.169 Queries: Chinese, Dictionary, Final Devoicing 2) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 92 08:36 EST From: "Barbara.Abbott" Subject: 3.169 Queries: Copacetic 3) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1992 12:49 EST From: Robert D Hoberman Subject: Copacetic 4) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 92 08:50 EST From: KINGSTON@cs.umass.EDU Subject: Re: 3.167 Queries: Data, Texts 5) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 12:16:52 -0500 From: gb661@csc.albany.edu (BROADWELL GEORGE AARON) Subject: e-prime -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1992 11:11 CST From: FIONA@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu Subject: Re: 3.169 Queries: Chinese, Dictionary, Final Devoicing To Ron Southerland: Regarding your query, this book may be of interest to you, although it deals with a specific historical period. Fabian, Johannes. 1986. Language and Colonial Power: The Appropriation of Swahili in the Former Belgian Congo 1880-1938. Cambridge UP has it in hard back and U of California has it in softback. Fiona Mc Laughlin -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 92 08:36 EST From: "Barbara.Abbott" Subject: 3.169 Queries: Copacetic Was the famous, now dead, PBS commentator on words John Ciardi? -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1992 12:49 EST From: Robert D Hoberman Subject: Copacetic State University of New York at Stony Brook Stony Brook, NY 11794-3355 Robert Hoberman Comparative Studies Dept. 516-632-7462, -7460 24-Feb-1992 12:25pm EST It's been suggested that "copacetic" is from the Hebrew /hakOl be-sEder/ 'everything's OK', literally 'everything in-order' (capitals indicate stress, and the /h/ is variably elided). The Hebrew expression is a calque on European ones like "Alles in Ordnung". Where this modern Israeli Hebrew expression could have gotten into American Black (?) slang I can't imagine. Lots of YIDDISH expressions, some of them ultimately derived from Hebrew, have gotten into English slang, but /hakOl be-sEder/ was never borrowed into Yiddish. HArdly any colloquial Israeli Hebrew was known by American Jews, even those who knew literary Hebrew, until the 1970's, and copacetic, no doubt, was old by then. Bob Hoberman -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 92 08:50 EST From: KINGSTON@cs.umass.EDU Subject: Re: 3.167 Queries: Data, Texts Reply to Aaron Broadwell's question about burps: I would guess, but don't know, that the sound produced in a burp is from the bubbling of the stomach gas through the upper opening of the esophageus (into the pharynx). If this is correct, then it is the same mechanism essentially as used by what are called "esophageal" speakers. These are people who have learned to swallow air into the stomach and then control its expulsion through the upper esophageal opening so as to cause the edges of that opening to vibrate, thus providing a sound source for vocal tract resonances. (These are people who have had to have their larynges removed.) The mechanism that causes this vibration is identical to that that causes vocal fold vibration; the only essential difference being that the vibration is much slower, yielding a "voice" with a much lower pitch. John Kingston kingston@cs.umass.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 12:16:52 -0500 From: gb661@csc.albany.edu (BROADWELL GEORGE AARON) Subject: e-prime There is a (possibly unintentionally) amusing discussion of e-prime in this month's Atlantic. E-prime is English without the verb 'to be', and it is one of the components of General Semantics. GS was invented by someone Polish (Korbynski??) but its best known advocate in the US is S.I. Hayakawa. General Semantics is based on a strong version of the Whorfian hypothesis, and believes that by changing our language to avoid `sloppy thinking' we can eliminate many social problems like racism/anti-Semitism/sexism, etc. I occasionally have students who have been influenced by Hayakawa in my classes. ****************************************************************************** Aaron Broadwell, Dept. of Linguistics, University at Albany -- SUNY, Albany, NY 12222 gb661@thor.albany.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Linguist List: Vol-3-183. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-184. Thu 27 Feb 1992. Lines: 215 Subject: 3.184 All's, Not Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1992 19:21 EST From: MORGAN@LOYOLA.EDU Subject: Re: 3.179 All's, Not 2) Date: Wed, 26 Feb 92 11:11:25 EST From: Larry Horn Subject: Re: 3.179 All's, Not 3) Date: Wed, 26 Feb 92 11:02:11 GMT From: Dr M Sebba Subject: NOT and related items 4) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 92 19:07:30 MST From: Subject: Re: 3.173 Register, Linguistics In The Press 5) Date: Wed, 26 Feb 92 10:22:47 EST From: Larry Horn Subject: Re: 3.173 Register, Linguistics In The Press -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1992 19:21 EST From: MORGAN@LOYOLA.EDU Subject: Re: 3.179 All's, Not The comment on "ways" struck a chord; I think there is a final "s" not generally accepted in the US on many spatial adverbs; I grew up saying "towards" only to be rudely corrected upon reaching graduate school. (There are no British in my family, and I lived all up and down the East coast, so I'm not sure where it came from.) L Morgan (Loyola in Md.) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Wed, 26 Feb 92 11:11:25 EST From: Larry Horn Subject: Re: 3.179 All's, Not A comment and a query in response to the postings on "not". Dale Savage cites a Zane Grey story from 1918 with the sarcastic observation "You an' Dad are great hunters, I don't think!" In a 1978 article on negation for the Stanford anthology "Universals of Human Language", I cited an instance of the same turn from a post-WWII British novel by Joyce Cary: "Girls are a lot of good, I don't think." These are clearly related to retro-NOT, as Dale points out, and specifically serve as counterexamples to the general requirement that negative parentheticals appear only in negative sentences in a position following the main clause negation to which they are in apposition: They are not, I (don't) think, going to be able to get here on time. They are, I (*don't) think, not going to be able to get here on time. Does anyone have any firsthand experience with these retro-parentheticals? Martin Wynne, also in 3.179, mentions the use of "much", which evidently has spread now at least in some parts of Britain to a generalized retro- cancellation following even affirmatives (he gives the constructed example - I'm going to get a job in the City. - Much!) If anyone has any actual citations of this use, I'd love receiving them. What I'm familiar with is the use of "not much" as a negative form of retro negation to cancel one's own or someone else's negative assertion. It's less dramatic than "NOT", more ironic than sarcastic (although please don't ask me to define the difference). If anyone recalls the pop song from a while back that goes something like I don't miss my arms around you No, not much. or has other reflections on the transition from "not much" to "much", I'd love hearing them. (LHORN@YALEVM.bitnet) --Larry Horn -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Wed, 26 Feb 92 11:02:11 GMT From: Dr M Sebba Subject: NOT and related items The contribution from Dale Savage reminded me that my mother (born in London, grew up before World War II) uses this "I don't think" construction, as in: He'll bring it when he says he will, I don't think. I don't believe I often use it, but I have a feeling it's quite standard for people of her generation. There may be more than one variant, though: in my mother's variety, there is not much pitch movement in the three words in question, but there is some, on the last word, so the sentence above comes out like: He'll BRING it when he SAYs he will, I don't THINK. I think, though, that I've heard people say He'll BRING it when he SAYS he will, I DON'T think. Does anyone reading this use either of these, and what do they think? -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 92 19:07:30 MST From: Subject: Re: 3.173 Register, Linguistics In The Press > > 3) > Date: Mon, 17 Feb 92 15:06:57 EST > From: Sarah Jones > Subject: the Popular Press discovers NOT > 3) > Date: Mon, 17 Feb 92 15:06:57 EST > From: Sarah Jones > Subject: the Popular Press discovers NOT > > Lately, it's seemed pretty easy to bash the popular press for > its treatment of linguistic/pseudolinguistic issues. The other > side of the coin appeared in this morning's paper--the Indianapolis > Star ran an article from the Orlando Sentinel, by Linda Shrieves... > a report of the varying theories of the origin of post affirmative > NOT. > > It's quite a nice article, surely with great appeal to the "mass > market" with its light tone and references to Wayne's World and > the 70's Steve Martin SNL skit in which he used NOT (the appearance > of which she refers to as "a linguist's archaeological find") > > In trying to track down somebody to comment on the phrase, the author, > getting nowhere with the various SNL folks, ends up with Pamela Munro > and none other than our own Larry Horn and references to our own > LINGUIST discussion. It was a very faithful treatment of the whole > matter, yet still very "readable". > > So, maybe there's hope for a "pop" linguistics that doesn't make us > cringe, after all. > > --Sarah Jones > saajones@ucs.indiana.edu > saajones@iubacs.bitnet > This has been something that I have been wondering about since it appeared in discussion, and it has occurred to me that an early user of the juxtaposed not might have been e.e. cummings pity this busy monster man unkind not .. of course this discussion is well dead, but I feel better for having sent this. philip -- ********************************************************************** --The most convincing evidence that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none has ever tried to contact us. Calvin ********************************************************************** pbernick@nmsu.edu Las Cruces, New Mexico -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5) Date: Wed, 26 Feb 92 10:22:47 EST From: Larry Horn Subject: Re: 3.173 Register, Linguistics In The Press The rewards and perils of fame... Yes, as Sarah Jones notes, the popular press has discovered retro-NOT with a vengeance. The Orlando Sentinel piece by Linda Shrieves, appearing February 12, complete with a user's guide (i.e. a minigrammar of the construction), was picked off the wire service by the New Haven Register, yielding if nothing else a nice headline: YALE PROF. STUDIES 'NOT'? NO WAY. WAY!! --little did they know I work on negative polarity phenomena in my spare time. Anyway, these articles triggered various responses, including some totally irrelevant contributions (Jack Paar's "I kid you not", the expression "'fraid not") from the non-linguist readership. I also had a curious conversation from a reporter from the Bridgeport Post who wanted to send a photographer over to take my picture standing next to the "bulletin board" on which responses were posted--I had to explain that Linguist List is not the sort of bulletin board that makes for great photo opportunities. But I did get one remarkable citation from someone in Orange, Connecticut named John Wildanger. This is the opening of a 1955 short story mystery by Rex Stout, "Immune to Murder" (reprinted in Three for the Chair, Bantam, 1957). As the story opens, Nero Wolfe has been summoned by the State Department to join a fishing party in an Adirondacks lodge so that he might cook fresh trout for the Ambassador of (apparently) Greece, but has become immobilized by a putative attack of lumbago. I stood with my arms folded, glaring down at Nero Wolfe, who had his 278 pounds planted in a massive armchair... "A fine way to serve your country", I told him. "Not. In spite of a late start I get you here in time to be shown to your room and unpack and wash up for dinner, and now you tell me to go tell your host you want dinner in your room. Nothing doing. I decline." The speaker is of course Wolfe's factotum Archie Goodwin, who (as Louis Goldstein reminds me) hails from Chillicothe, Ohio, just down the pike from the Illinois headquarters of Wayne and Garth. --Larry Horn -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-184. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-185. Thu 27 Feb 1992. Lines: 91 Subject: 3.185 Dwight Bolinger Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 26 Feb 92 15:49:23 -0600 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Re: 3.182 Dwight Bolinger: In Memoriam 2) Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1992 15:51 MST From: STEELE@CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU Subject: Re: 3.182 Dwight Bolinger: In Memoriam 3) Date: Wed, 26 Feb 92 23:19 PST From: Ed Keenan Subject: Re: 3.182 Dwight Bolinger: In Memoriam -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 26 Feb 92 15:49:23 -0600 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Re: 3.182 Dwight Bolinger: In Memoriam I want to second John Haiman's touching tribute to Dwight Bolinger. I never met him, but had brief contacts with him via correspondence on a number of memorable occasions and have always admired him not only for the astuteness of his observations but for the panache with which he delivered them. No doubt it is this which inspired Jane Hill, in her 1970 review of *Aspects of Language* (Lg. 46.667-670) to describe him as 'up to his elbows in the muck of language' -- a marvellously apt characterization. I think of something someone said after the death of the pianist Glenn Gould, which applies as well here: he's gone, and the rest of us are just going to have to get used to it. Michael Kac -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1992 15:51 MST From: STEELE@CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU Subject: Re: 3.182 Dwight Bolinger: In Memoriam I have a story also about Dwight's kindness to fledglings. I had been out of graduate school for about a year when I met Dwight. I went up to introduce myself to him at some kind of gathering and he said, "Oh, yes, I just quoted you in a paper I'm working on." susan steele -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Wed, 26 Feb 92 23:19 PST From: Ed Keenan Subject: Re: 3.182 Dwight Bolinger: In Memoriam Dear colleagues, Like John Haiman I cannot attend a memorial service for Dwight Bollinger, but I will gladly and sadly take a moment to recall a man whose delight in the discussion of language was so evident. I met Dwight only once, and recall him clearly. I feel now that a little light up the road that we are all travelling has just gone out. Talmy -- thanks for letting us know. Peace, Ed Keenan -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-185. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-186. Thu 27 Feb 1992. Lines: 194 Subject: 3.186 Software available Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 92 10:40:00 -0500 From: david@snowhite.cis.uoguelph.ca (David C. J. Leip) Subject: Lexicon Construction 2) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 92 9:35:10 CST From: evan@utafll.uta.edu (Evan Antworth) Subject: concordance program for Macintosh 3) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 92 10:08:35 CST From: evan@utafll.uta.edu (Evan Antworth) Subject: English lexicon available -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 92 10:40:00 -0500 From: david@snowhite.cis.uoguelph.ca (David C. J. Leip) Subject: Lexicon Construction Re: Christopher Brewster's Query regarding Lexicon Construction Software I am presently working on a software tool to help computer speech recognition interface designers build acoustically distinct vocabularies. Don't know if this interests you or not. (?) - David Leip. +------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | David Leip University of Guelph | | david@snowhite.cis.uoguelph.ca Computing & Information Science | | (519) 824-4120 ext.3709 Guelph, Ontario, Canada N1G 2W1 | | | +------------------------------------------------------------------------+ -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 92 9:35:10 CST From: evan@utafll.uta.edu (Evan Antworth) Subject: concordance program for Macintosh Conc is a program for the Macintosh that produces keyword in context concordances. It can handle both ordinary flat text and multiple-line interlinear text. In the case of interlinear text, it can concord correspondences between two annotation lines. It can also do letter concordances to facilitate phonological analysis. Conc permits the user to limit the concordance to just those words that match a specified pattern (GREP expression). Concordances can be saved to disk, printed, and exported to a plain text file. As for performance, producing a concordance of Moby Dick (1,177KB) on a Mac IIci takes about 13 minutes and requires about 2,500KB of memory. Documentation is included on-line in a Microsoft Word file. Conc was written by John Thomson of SIL. Conc version 1.70 is a beta test version offered as 'freeware'. If you use it, we only ask that you send us your comments, complaints, and wishlist. You can affect the shape of the final product! Conc is available in either of two way: 1. Conc can be downloaded by anonymous FTP from the Consortium for Lexical Research at clr.nmsu.edu [128.123.1.11]. In the directory pub/tools/concordances/conc you will find the file conc170.hqx, which is a binhexed, Stuffed archive. Send e-mail inquiries to lexical@nmsu.edu. (While you are connected, I recommend downloading the file catalog-short from the top directory.) 2. Conc can be ordered on disk from: International Academic Bookstore 7500 W. Camp Wisdom Road Dallas, TX 75236 U.S.A. phone: (214)709-2404 Cost for media and shipping is $4 to North America and $6 overseas. (Checks *must* be drawn on a U.S. bank. They do not accept credit cards, but will bill by invoice.) 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 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 92 10:08:35 CST From: evan@utafll.uta.edu (Evan Antworth) Subject: English lexicon available Englex is a morphological parsing lexicon of English intended for use with PC-KIMMO and/or KTEXT. It's 20,000 entries consist of affixes, roots, and indivisible stems. Both inflectional and derivational morphology are analyzed. Englex will run under Unix, Macintosh, or MS-DOS (the files are plain ascii and are identical for all three versions). Because of memory requirements, to run Englex under MS-DOS you will need a 386 cpu and the new 386 versions of PC-KIMMO and KTEXT. These 386 versions will use all available extended/expanded memory and virtual memory. They support VCPI-compliant memory managers such as DOS 5.0's EMM386 and Quarterdeck's QEMM. They do not support (or need) Windows. All of this software can by downloaded by anonymous FTP from the Consortium for Lexical Research at clr.nmsu.edu [128.123.1.11]. Send e-mail inquiries to lexical@nmsu.edu. (For a listing of their holdings, get the file catalog-short in the top directory.) Here are the subdirectories and file names: Directory: pub/tools/ling-analysis/englex_pckimmo englex10.zip Zipped MS-DOS file of englex10 englex10.tar.Z Compressed UNIX tar file of englex10 englex10.hqx Stuffed, binhexed Mac file of englex10 Directory: pub/tools/ling-analysis/morphology/pc-kimmo pckim108.zip Zipped MS-DOS file of pc-kimmo108 (inc. 386 version) pckim108.tar.Z Compressed UNIX tar file of pc-kimmo108 sources pckimmo108.hqx Stuffed, binhexed Mac file of pc-kimmo108 Directory: pub/tools/ling-analysis/morphology/ktext ktext103.zip Zipped MS-DOS fiel of ktext103 (inc. 386 version ktext103.tar.Z Compressed UNIX tar file of ktext103 sources ktext103.hqx Stuffed, binhexed Mac file of ktext103 Englex, PC-KIMMO, and KTEXT are offered as 'freeware' to the academic community; your feedback is welcomed. 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 | U.S.A. | -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-186. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-187. Thu 27 Feb 1992. Lines: 98 Subject: 3.187 Devoicing Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 92 11:46:32 EST From: Henry Kucera Subject: Re: 3.169 Queries: Chinese, Dictionary, Final Devoicing 2) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 92 09:15 EST From: KINGSTON@cs.umass.EDU Subject: Re: 3.169 Queries: Chinese, Dictionary, Final Devoicing -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 92 11:46:32 EST From: Henry Kucera Subject: Re: 3.169 Queries: Chinese, Dictionary, Final Devoicing The two pronunciations of final (normally) voiceless consonants in Russian and Czech (as voiced and voiceless, depending on the morphology) is certainly well established. It occurs in cases when the distinction between homophones (e.g. Russian "rot" and "rod") needs to be conveyed. Since the spelling in these languages is morphophonemic, this kind of articifical pronunciation is simply a variety of spelling pronunciation under specific circumstances. It should be also noted that in Czech and Russian (in contrast to German, for example), the voice-voiceless opposition in final word position is "suspended" -- as Trubetzkoy called it-- BUT the actual realization of a morphophonemically voiced consonant can be either voiced or voiceless, and vice versa, depending on the environment that follows the word or preposition boundary. For a discussion of these facts in generative phonology, cf. Halle, The Sound Pattern of Russian, initial chapters. For Czech, where the situation is very complicated, a description is given in my Phonology of Czech (out of print). Henry Kucera -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 92 09:15 EST From: KINGSTON@cs.umass.EDU Subject: Re: 3.169 Queries: Chinese, Dictionary, Final Devoicing Regarding Alexis Manaster-Ramer's query about final devoicing. Two points: 1) Thai is well-known for having just a single series of stops syllable- finally, neutralizing an initial contrast between prevoiced, voiceless unaspirated, and voiceless aspirated stops (though prevoiced stops are only found at the bilabial and alveolar but not palatal and velar places of articulation). The usual phonetic description of the final stops is voiceless unreleased, though some maintain that they also have constriction or closure of the glottis (I don't recall the references on this last point, but can dig them up if asked). However, the stops are written (most of them anyway, see below) with the symbols used in initial position to represent prevoiced stops, and not with what would seem the "logical" choice, the symbols for the voiceless unaspirated stops (there's an illogic to that choice, too, what I won't go into). Furthermore, Mary Haas, whose understanding of Thai I would hesitate to question, also insisted that the choice of symbol represented some kind of phonetic reality, citing the pronunciation of a consultant of the loan word _cheed_ as (approximately) [tSh@@d^] where [@] is a mid back unrounded vowel, and the final stop is voiced, with a voiced release. The force of this example is that it's the English word "shirt" which of course has a voiceless final consonant in the source language. One caveat, this pronunciation is cited as occurring when the consultant was emphasizing the proper pronunciation of the word. [Perhaps irrelevant notes on Thai orthography: Final stops are also written with symbols that represent other kinds of consonants; in initial position, e.g. stops with with other laryngeal articulations, fricatives, and even [r], but these are less common and are largely restricted, I think, to learned vocabulary, which are largely imports/ adpatations from Pali. 2. There have a series of investigations, largely by people at Indiana (Dan Dinneson, Jan Charles-Luce, Bob Port, Louisa Slowiaczek), which puport ot show that final neutralization of voicing in German, Polish, and Catalan is phonetically incomplete, in that speakers produce stops which are underlyingly [+voice] differently than those which are underlyingly [-voice]. While I believe that much of the early work on this possibility was seriously marred by flaws in method (mostly a matter of drawing the speakers' attention to the possibility of a difference), the more recent work has been more careful in this regard, in particular a paper by Port in, I believe, Journal of Phonetics, in the last two years. John Kingston kingston@cs.umass.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-187. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-188. Thu 27 Feb 1992. Lines: 155 Subject: 3.188 Spanish la -> el Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 92 20:45:26 EST From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Spanish la -> el 2) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 92 18:26:46 CST From: GA5123@SIUCVMB.bitnet Subject: Spanish "la Ana": correction 3) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 92 17:08:19 CST From: weinberg@ils.nwu.edu (Michele Weinberg) Subject: Re: 3.180 Queries: Fonts, Lexicon, Phase Verbs 4) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 92 23:00:33 CST From: GA5123@SIUCVMB.bitnet Subject: "la Ana" in Spanish -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 92 20:45:26 EST From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Spanish la -> el Is there anybody out there who can say el azucar blanca or el avestruz africana (i.e., a feminine usage with 'el' as the article)? -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 92 18:26:46 CST From: GA5123@SIUCVMB.bitnet Subject: Spanish "la Ana": correction With reference to the Spanish definite article "el" and feminine nouns, I must retract a speculation that I sent for posting 24 hours ago. In particular, contrary to the impression I gave, place-names have _no_ special status with regard to the phenomenon; thus "el Africa contemporanea" ('contemporary Africa'), "el Atica antigua" ('ancient Attica'), etc. Meanwhile, not only given-names of women (la Ana) but also women's surnames when used with the article (a separate issue in itself), exceptionally, take "la", e.g. "la Alvarez". Further, the Royal Spanish Academy, in its latest volume on grammar, seems to leave the matter quasi-optional for nouns referring to persons or animals "if one wishes to distinguish the sex" -- e.g. (all these nouns with accent mark on initial /a/, omitted in this medium) la arabe 'the Arab woman' la anade 'the (female) duck' la acrata 'the anarchist woman' Additionally, we must mention the exceptional case of the place-name La Haya ('The Hague'). Also, Butt and Benjamin (1989) add "This rule should apply to those rare feminine compound nouns whose first element would have begun with a stressed /a/ had it stood alone: el aguamarina 'aquamarine'; un avemaria 'an Ave Maria'." This last assertion would seem to call for "el avestruz". ---- Lee Hartman ga5123 @ siucvmb.bitnet -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 92 17:08:19 CST From: weinberg@ils.nwu.edu (Michele Weinberg) Subject: Re: 3.180 Queries: Fonts, Lexicon, Phase Verbs >Date: Sun, 23 Feb 92 14:17 EST >From: "E_Dean.Detrich" <22743MGR@msu.edu> >Subject: Re: 3.169 Queries: Chinese, Dictionary, Final Devoicing > > >> Date: Fri, 21 Feb 92 21:18:56 EST >> From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu >> Subject: Spanish la -> el >> >> I am informed that the words azucar and avestruz are optionally >> feminine, but always take the article el. Are there any Spanish >> speakers who would care to send me their feelings about this. > >I am not a Spanish speaker and cannot answer the query, but I would like >to add to the query on behalf of a colleague not on e-mail. She asks: >"How do the Spanish speakers on the network say "[the] a personal" when >referring to that preposition in Spanish?" > I have always heard of the "personal a" referred to as "el a personal." In a similar situation are the letters "a" and "h", which I have heard with either the el or the la. "Azucar" and "avestruz" (and other words like them, like "alma" and "aguila" for example) are not "optionally feminine." They are feminine nouns that take the masculine definite article in the singular to prevent the liason equivalent to the French "l'." In the plural, however, they are regular feminine nouns, taking the feminine plural article (las almas, las aguilas, etc.). Any other takers? Shelli Weinberg Institute for the Learning Sciences Northwestern University weinberg@ils.nwu.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 92 23:00:33 CST From: GA5123@SIUCVMB.bitnet Subject: "la Ana" in Spanish Standard grammars of Spanish recognize specific exceptions to the rule that the definite article is "el" before (and adjacent to) feminine nouns that begin with stressed /a/ (el agua 'the water', el hacha 'the axe' -- but "la preciosa agua" 'the precious water'). How these exceptions are characterized, varies slightly from one grammar to another. For example Ramsey and Spaulding (1956) -- which is all I have immediately at hand -- remark on p. 47 as follows: "This change [i.e. to "el" with feminine nouns] is not made properly before adjectives of like form: la alta casa 'the high house'. Cf. also _la Ana_, _la Angela_, etc., in women's names." Elsewhere I have found the exceptional class characterized as all proper nouns. For example, I would venture "la Africa del norte" (but check this with native speakers, which I am not). This source, whatever it was, classified "la hache" (the letter "H") as a proper noun. The use of "la" with women's names is _not_ simply due to their reference to human beings: cf. "el ama de casa", 'the housewife'. "El" is not used before "substantivized adjectives", as in "la casa baja y la alta". Those interested should consult the Royal Academy Grammar and _A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish_, by John Butt and Carmen Benjamin (Edward Arnold, 1989). ----------------------------------- Lee Hartman ga5123@siucvmb.bitnet Department of Foreign Languages Southern Illinois University Carbondale, IL 62901 U.S.A. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-188. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-189. Thu 27 Feb 1992. Lines: 148 Subject: 3.189 Summary: On-Line Spanish Resources Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 92 15:12:49 MST From: Subject: Summary: On-Line Spanish Resources -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 92 15:12:49 MST From: Subject: Summary: On-Line Spanish Resources About six weeks ago I posted a request on behalf of the Computing Research Laboratory for on-line Spanish resources: dictionaries and texts (mono- and bi-lingual), spell checkers and parsers, term banks. Things keep slowly turning up, but it seems like this might be a good time to summarize the results to the list. BILINGUAL DICTIONARIES: 1) The Harper-Collins Bilingual Spanish Dictionaries. These must be purchased directly through Collins. Here is what they have available: Dictionary References Format Price ea* Gem > 40,000 Mag tape $1,000 Pocket > 40,000 Mag Tape $1,000 dbase III $1,000 Pocket Reference > 40,000 Mag tape $1,000 Paperback > 70,000 Mag tape $1,250 dbase III $1,250 Concise >l00,000 Mag tape $1,500 Large >200,000 Mag tape $2,000 The Collins dictionaries will also be available through the CLR (Consortium for Lexical Research). For more information about the CLR, send a request to lexical@nmsu.edu. 2) There is a Spanish/English dictionary in the "Languages of the World" CD-ROM of many linked bi- & multi-lingual dictionaries. MONOLINGUAL DICTIONARIES: 1) There is an electronic version published by VOX, but we have had no luck in getting a contact there. 2) Supposedly there is an on-line electronic dictionary that is being prepared in Mexico. BILINGUAL CORPORA: (see note at end of summary) MONOLINGUAL CORPORA: 1) Spanish text is available in the financial domain from Instituto Tecnologico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrery (ITESM). The cost is $4 per text if the text is available electronically, and $8 + $1 per sheet if the info is not available electronically and has to be sent by FAX. 2) There are several Spanish newswires which can provide Spanish text, usually for a subscription fee. There is EFE, Spanish AP, and two from Reuters. 3) The American Bible Society Reference Bible (on CD-ROM) includes the Reina-Valera version of the Spanish Bible (1960 revision), Price: $195 Format: IBM Source: American Bible Society PO Box 5656 Grand Central Station New York, NY 10164-0851 Phone: 212-408-1499; (orders) 800-543-8000 Item no. 104766 4) The FABS Reference Bible (also on CD-ROM) contains these plus something called the "LBLA" version of the Spanish Bible. Price: $349 Format: IBM Source: Foundation for Advanced Biblical Studies PO Box 427 DeFuniak Springs, FL 32433 Phone: 904-892-6257 5) It was suggested that we contact Carmen Restoy at the Sociedad Estatal Quinto Centenario, who are setting up a large Spanish corpus as part of the 500th anniversary of Columbus' discovery of America activities. Her full address: Industrias de la Lengua Aravaca, 22 Bis 28040 Madrid Fax: 535-01-29 MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYZERS: 1) As part of a doctoral dissertation (Un modelo computacional basado en la unificaci'on para el an'alisis y generaci'on de la morfolog'ia del espan~ol, Autonomous University of Madrid, 1991), Antonio Moreno-Sandoval has written a demo program (GRAMPAL), which analyzes Spanish morphology and generates correct Spanish morphological forms. He may be reached as follows: Antonio Moreno-Sandoval Computer Science Department New York University 715 Broadway, 7th Floor New York, NY 10003. e-mail: morenoa@bloomfied.cs.nyu.edu 2) MORFOGEN has a morphological analyzer for Spanish. SPELL CHECKERS: 1) Microsoft Word 5.0 and Windows version 2.0 offer spelling checking in Spanish. It is available at an initial offering price of $89.95 plus shipping. The Nos. are 1-800-669-9673, Fax 206-286-2785. It is supposed to be fully integrated and to include a thesaurus. The CRL continues to be interested in the acquisition of on-line Spanish resources. If you are or become aware of any such resources, please contact me at shelmrei@nmsu.edu. Conversely, if you are interested in more detail about some of the resources mentioned above, also please contact me at shelmrei@nmsu.edu. Not all detail were included in the above message since some negotiations are at delicate stages. For example, we may be able to obtain a 200,000 word bilingual corpus that we MAY be able to redistribute. Thanks to Louise Guthrie, Maria Christina Gvidorizzi, Richard Sproat, Antonio Moreno, Mark Mandel, Richard Piepenbrock, Paul Schaffner, and Henry Kucera. Stephen Helmreich Computing Research Laboratory PO Box 30001/3CRL New Mexico State University Las Cruces, NM 88003 USA -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-189. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-190. Thu 27 Feb 1992. Lines: 60 Subject: 3.190 Introductory Texts Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 92 16:25:47 EST From: "E. Laurencot" Subject: Re: 3.172 Responses: Marr, Phonics, Texts 2) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 92 09:51:21 EST From: "Judith Klavans" Subject: Texts -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 92 16:25:47 EST From: "E. Laurencot" Subject: Re: 3.172 Responses: Marr, Phonics, Texts I would just like to "second" anyone's (including V. Fromkin's) suggestion that Fromkin & Rodman's introductory linguistics text is definitely worth checking out. That was the text required when I took intro lx, and I think I finished reading the whole book before we were 2 weeks into the term. It is informative AND entertaining----and that's the combination you need to capture the attention of undergrads/students who've never been exposed to lx before. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 92 09:51:21 EST From: "Judith Klavans" Subject: Texts As the author of the Chapter on Computational Linguistics in the textbook Contemporary Linguistics, I was not pleased to hear that, although the text is popular, there have been problems with the workbook. In the interest of improvement, it would be appreciated if those of you who have used the text and have comments on the workbook could send them to me. I will collate them and distribute them both to the editors, to you, and to anyone who requests. Also, I just read Vicki Fromkin's entry on Fromkin and Rodman, a text I have used too. The two texts are geared to slightly different audiences, and cover material in a very different way. It's hard to recommend a "general text" because it very much depends on the student type. I'd be interest in hearing comments from those of you "in the field". Judith Klavans -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-190. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-191. Thu 27 Feb 1992. Lines: 141 Subject: 3.191 Conferences, Calls for Papers Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1992 11:09:32 -0800 (PST) From: Harold Schiffman Subject: Southeast Asian Languages Institute 2) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 92 13:34 PST From: Subject: Sign Language: Call for papers -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1992 11:09:32 -0800 (PST) From: Harold Schiffman Subject: Southeast Asian Languages Institute 1. SEASSI TO BE HOSTED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON The Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute (SEASSI) will be hosted by the University of Washington during the summers of 1992 and 1993. The institute will offer intensive language instruction in Burmese, Indonesian, Javanese, Khmer, Lao, Tagalog, Thai, and Vietnamese. Many of these languages will be taught at three levels. This summer's institute will be from June 15,- August 14, 1992. In addition to the language classes, seminars on the countries of Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnamese are also slated. A Student Conference is scheduled July 11, and a Lao Symposium July 25-26. Some financial aid is available. The FLAS fellowship deadline was January 15, 1992 and the Tuition Waiver Fellowship deadline is April 1, 1992. The final deadline for applications is May 1, 1992. For more information on SEASSI or the events surrounding it contact: Laurie Thomas, Coordinator, SEASSI, Thomson 320, DR-05, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, Telephone: (206) 543-1816 or (206) 543-9606, FAX: (206) 685-4256. 2. CONFERENCE ON LAOS: Laos: Cultural Crossroads of Asia On July 25-26, 1992, a symposium on "Laos: Cultural Crossroads of Asia" will be held in conjunction with the Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute (SEASSI) on the University of Washington campus. The goal of the symposium is to make the cultural traditions of Laos better known to a wider public in the United States and to provide scholars working on Laos a forum to discuss current research on the country. A public event focusing on the cultural heritage of Laos will be held on Friday evening, July 25th. For more information, contact Professor Charles Keyes, Southeast Asian Studies, DR-05, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195. 3. SOUTHEAST ASIAN STUDIES SUMMER INSTITUTE (SEASSI) Graduate Student Conference "Works in Progress: Historical and Contemporary Issues In Southeast Asian Studies To be held at: The University of Washington July 11, 1992 The conference welcomes papers on any subject (including Linguistics) in Southeast Asian Studies from graduate students or those who have just completed dissertations. Please send paper title, abstract (of one page or less), and a brief academic biography (to include institutional affiliation, department, degree sought, geographical and topical areas, and dissertation or thesis topic, in known) to: Eric Thompson Conference Coordinator Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute, DR-05 University of Washington Seattle, WA 98195 Deadline for Submissions is April 21, 1992 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 92 13:34 PST From: Subject: Sign Language: Call for papers CALL FOR PAPERS Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research University of California, San Diego August 5 - 8, 1992 SESSION TOPICS: Phonology Morphology and Syntax Language Acquisition Neurolinguistics and Psycholinguistics Narrative and Poetry Sociolinguistics ABSTRACTS DUE MARCH 15, 1992 Abstracts must be one page, single spaced (500 words); one copy with title, names and affiliations of all authors and six copies without names or affiliations. On a separate cover sheet, include the address of the first author, indicate which session topic(s) the abstract addresses, and if a poster or paper presentation is preferred. SEND ABSTRACTS TO: Dr. Karen Emmorey Laboratory for Language and Cognitive Studies The Salk Institute for Biological Studies 10010 North Torrey Pines Rd. La Jolla, CA 92037 FOR REGISTRATION MATERIALS CONTACT: Lena Hartman Conference Manager/SLR Conference Services UCSD 0513 La Jolla, CA 92093-0513 (619) 534 - 4220 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-191. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-192. Thu 27 Feb 1992. Lines: 134 Subject: 3.192 Jobs: Arabic, Discourse, Japanese Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 92 13:44:58 CST From: Gregory K. Iverson Subject: UWM Arabic Lang/Ling job 2) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1992 21:51 EST From: FASOLD@GUVAX.bitnet Subject: POSITION IN DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 3) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 92 15:48:35 EST From: SOEMARMO@OUACCVMB.bitnet Subject: Tenure track position - Japanese language instructor -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 92 13:44:58 CST From: Gregory K. Iverson Subject: UWM Arabic Lang/Ling job Faculty Position Opening THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MILWAUKEE Department of Linguistics Arabic Language. The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is seeking an Arabic-language instructor to begin in the fall of 1992. This is a tenure-track position to be filled at the level of assistant professor in the Department of Linguistics. In addition to teaching introductory and intermediate Arabic, there will be opportunities to teach other courses, including advanced Arabic and English-language offerings in the candidate's general area of specialization. Applicants should have the Ph.D. by summer of 1992 and some language instruction experience. Native or near-native proficiency in modern standard Arabic and in English is required. Although applications are encouraged from individuals with training in any relevant discipline, including Near Eastern Languages and Literature, preference will be given to candidates with formal linguistics training and research interests. Salary is competitive and UWM offers an excellent package of employee benefits. The successful applicant will also benefit from an association with the newly established Center for International Studies of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Marquette University. This is a Title VI National Resource Center supported by the U.S. Department of Education. Candidates should submit a letter of application, curriculum vitae, three letters of recommendation, and one sample of research no later than March 20, 1992. Additional materials, including teaching evaluations and reviews of scholarly work, are also welcome. All applications will be acknowledged. Women and minority candidates are especially invited to apply: AA/EOE. UWM is required to release the names of applicants upon request. Materials should be sent to: Prof. Mark Tessler, Chair Arabic Language Search Committee Center for International Studies 668 Bolton Hall University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53201 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1992 21:51 EST From: FASOLD@GUVAX.bitnet Subject: POSITION IN DISCOURSE ANALYSIS Georgetown University The Linguistics Department at Georgetown University anticipates hiring a linguist for the 1992-1993 academic year. We are seeking a linguist with a background and evidence of research in the area of interactive discourse analysis. The appointment will be for a one-year visiting post at the assistant professor rank with the possibility of conversion to a permanent position. Applications, including three letters of recommendation, should be sent to: Search Committee Department of Linguistics Georgetown University Washington, DC 20057-1068 Applications due on April 1, 1992. Georgetown University is an Equal Opportun~i ty/Affirmative Action employer. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 92 15:48:35 EST From: SOEMARMO@OUACCVMB.bitnet Subject: Tenure track position - Japanese language instructor Ohio University, Athens, Ohio. The Department of Linguistics has a term position ,instructor of Arabic, beginning September 1, 1992. ABD in Linguistics or Foreign Language Education is required. Native or near native competence in Modern Arabic. Primary duty is to teach Arabic language courses, develop teaching materials. Salary is $22,000 plus benefits. Sendvita, transcripts, and three letters of recommendation to: Dr. Marmo Soemarmo, Chair, Department of Linguistics, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio 45701. Deadline of application: APRIL 15, 1992. Tel.: (614) 593-4564 -- FAX: (614) 593-4577. Ohio University is an equal opportunity & affirmative action employer. Women and minorities are strongly encouraged to apply. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-192. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-193. Thu 27 Feb 1992. Lines: 75 Subject: 3.193 Queries: Machine Readable Corpora, Address Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 92 12:12:09 GMT From: Steve Fligelstone Subject: Machine Readable Language Corpora in Teaching 2) Date: 26 Feb 92 09:33:54 EST From: EJLESBB@engfac.indstate.edu Subject: address -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 92 12:12:09 GMT From: Steve Fligelstone Subject: Machine Readable Language Corpora in Teaching We would like to undertake a preliminary survey of the way in which Machine Readable Language Corpora are currently being used in teaching, especially, but not exclusively, in higher education, whether at undergraduate or postgraduate level, whether as part of Linguistics courses or in some other context. We would be as interested in hearing about courses where corpora form a central focus (courses in corpus linguistics for example!), as in courses where they are a more 'invisible' resource, e.g. underlying instruction in language use or grammatical studies. We are likewise interested in any practical instruction offered in corpus access of various kinds - including details of software (whether in-house or proprietary) and the kinds of computing support required by these activities. The main criterion for inclusion is that the activity can be seen as lying within the domain of 'teaching', rather than as a strictly research activity. A short response only is sought at this stage, but in addition to a brief descripton of the genral aims and methods of the course, we would be grateful for details about a) length of time course (or similar course) has been running b) level and experience of students c) failed initiatives in this field as well as successful ones. Depending on the response we may choose to progress to a more thorough and detailed survey. Either way we would hope to publish some results and anlysis of the enquiry and to summarise some of the findings on linguist. Please write to: Steven Fligelstone and Tony Mcenery Unit for Computer Research on the English Language Linguistics Department Bowland College Lancaster University LA1 4AD email: eia002@uk.ac.lancaster -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: 26 Feb 92 09:33:54 EST From: EJLESBB@engfac.indstate.edu Subject: address Does anyone have an address (e-mail or regular mail) for Russell Campbell? He wrote an article about using hypnosis to retrieve language knowledge, and I would like to know more about what he found out. Please reply directly to me (ejlesbb@engfac.indstate.edu). Thanks, Leslie Barratt Linguist List: Vol-3-193. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-194. Thu 27 Feb 1992. Lines: 61 Subject: 3.194 Parsing Problems Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1992 20:36 GMT+1000 From: "LLOYD HOLLIDAY, LA TROBE UNIV, EDUCATION" Subject: Re: 3.181 Parsers 2) Date: Wed, 26 Feb 92 15:36:55 CST From: DBEDELL3@UA1VM.bitnet Subject: Parsing challenges -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1992 20:36 GMT+1000 From: "LLOYD HOLLIDAY, LA TROBE UNIV, EDUCATION" Subject: Re: 3.181 Parsers Can someone parse "The player kicked the ball kicked him"? I feel idiotic but to me the sentence is not even ambiguous but bad. It has not been parsed on the list since first mention, or maybe I missed it. Thanks. edulh@lure.latrobe.edu.au -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Wed, 26 Feb 92 15:36:55 CST From: DBEDELL3@UA1VM.bitnet Subject: Parsing challenges Enjoyed the French "Si six scies ..." challenge from Martin Haase. How about the Chinese tongue-twister: Si shi si, shi shi shi, shisi shi shisi, sishi shi sishi, sishisi shi sishisi. (4 is 4, 10 is 10, 14 is 14, 40 is 40, 44 is 44). In many dialects there is no s/sh distinction, so it becomes: Si si si, si si si, sisi si sisi, sisi si sisi, sisisi si sisisi. Of course, to be fair, there are tone distinctions between si ("4") and shi or si ("10"). With the tones marked, it would be: Si4 si4 si4, si2 si4 si2, si2si4 si4 si2si4, si4si2 si4 si4si2, si4si2si4 si4 si4si2si4. As in the French sentence, Chinese orthography makes it all clear. --David Bedell, U. of Alabama (dbedell3@ua1vm.ua.edu) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-194. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-195. Thu 27 Feb 1992. Lines: 126 Subject: 3.195 FYI: HUMGRAD, ICAME Text Corpora on CD Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 26 Feb 92 10:34 GMT From: Gavin Burnage Subject: HUMGRAD list: change of address 2) Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1992 19:51:02 +0100 From: Knut Hofland Subject: ICAME text corpora available on CD-ROM -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 26 Feb 92 10:34 GMT From: Gavin Burnage Subject: HUMGRAD list: change of address HUMGRAD, the UK-based list recently set up for Humanities postgraduates, will shortly be changing its address. This is due to a re-organization at Mailbase in Newcastle (the role of Mailbase in the UK is more or less equivalent to that of Listserv elsewhere). >From March onwards, the new address of the Mailbase machine is MAILBASE@MAILBASE.AC.UK. The difference is that Newcastle is no longer mentioned in the address. In future to subscribe to HUMGRAD please send the message SUBSCRIBE HUMGRAD Your Name to MAILBASE@MAILBASE.AC.UK Messages for broadcasting should be sent to HUMGRAD@MAILBASE.AC.UK. The listowners, Gavin Burnage and Stuart Lee, can be contacted at GBURNAGE@VAX.OX.AC.UK or STUART@VAX.OX.AC.UK, or via the MAILBASE machine with the address HUMGRAD-REQUEST@MAILBASE.AC.UK. Mailbase technical staff can be contacted at MAILBASE-REQUEST@MAILBASE.AC.UK. Note too that while Mailbase is busy implementing these changes at the end of February (they're plumbing in all their lists on a new computer), there will be no Mailbase service. This means that you should wait until March 1st before trying to subscribe to HUMGRAD or writing to it. We're sorry this change should have to be made so soon after setting up and advertising HUMGRAD, but we hope that users old and new will quickly get used to it. The response to the list so far has been good: there are well in excess of 100 subscribers already, and on average 10--15 messages are posted each day on a reasonably broad range of topics. A few have found the volume of traffic excessive, but most have stayed around and seem to be enjoying it. So if you haven't done so already, please could we ask you to tell postgraduates working in the humanities about the existence of the list. Stuart Lee & Gavin Burnage (Listowners, HUMGRAD) [With apologies for any irritation caused by cross-posting this note] -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1992 19:51:02 +0100 From: Knut Hofland Subject: ICAME text corpora available on CD-ROM The ICAME Collection of English Language Corpora on CD-ROM is now available. The CD-ROM is ISO 9660 formatted and have directories for MS-DOS, Macintosh and Unix. The CD-ROM contains the following text corpora in the original formats: Brown Corpus, untagged version, 1 million running words LOB Corpus, tagged and untagged versions, 1 million running words London-Lund Corpus, 0.5 million words (spoken) Helsinki Corpus, diacronic part, 1.5 million running words Kolhapur Corpus, 1 million running words (Indian English) All the corpara are also indexed with WordCruncher 4.4 for MS-DOS. The retrieval part of WordCruncher, WCView, is included. All the corpora, except Kolhapur, are also indexed with TACT for MS-DOS. Brown, LOB and London-Lund corpora are indexed with "Free Text Browser" for Macintosh. The CD-ROM also has information about network resources like discussion lists, FTP sites, Netnews lists, text projects and archives, on-line services and contain some linguistic freeware/shareware programs. The CD-ROM is available to bona fide researchers for non-commercial research, the buyer has to state this on the order form. The price of the disc is 3000 NOK (about 470$). It is possible to see the disc at the ALLC-ACH conference in Oxford. Since there are no general sessions for demonstrations, this will be more or less informal, either on our own equipment or on available equipment at the conference site. Contact Knut Hofland, either before or under the conference. More information about the CD-ROM can be fetched from our file servers, either by mail to the automatic mail responder FILESERV@HD.UIB.NO with the following line in the BODY: send icame info.cd or by anonymous FTP to NORA.HD.UIB.NO (129.177.24.42), and retrieving the file info.cd in the directory pub/icame. Knut Hofland E-mail. knut@hd.uib.no / fafkh@nobergen.bitnet / knut@x400.hd.uib.no Norwegian Computing Centre for the Humanities, P.O. Box 53 Universitetet, N-5027 Bergen, Norway Tel. +47 5 212954, Fax. +47 5 322656 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-195. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-196. Thu 27 Feb 1992. Lines: 57 Subject: 3.196 Phase Verbs Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 92 09:56:14 -0800 From: slobin@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Dan I. Slobin) Subject: Re: 3.180 Queries: Fonts, Lexicon, Phase Verbs 2) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1992 11:56:46 -0500 (EST) From: Paul Hopper Subject: Re: 3.180 Queries: Fonts, Lexicon, Phase Verbs -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 92 09:56:14 -0800 From: slobin@cogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Dan I. Slobin) Subject: Re: 3.180 Queries: Fonts, Lexicon, Phase Verbs Phase Verbs: This notion has been developed by Coseriu (e.g., in 1976, _Das romanische Verbalsystem_. Tuebingen: Narr). He gives the following definition (p. 103): "Bei der Kategorie der Phase handelt es sich um ein Verhaeltnis zwischen dem Augenblick der Betrachtung und dem Grad der Entwicklung (des Ablaufes) des betrachteten Verbalvorgangs." He distinguishes the following phases: imminent/ingressive, inceptive, progressive, continuative, regressive, conclusive, and egressive. Dan Slobin (slobin@cogsci.berkeley.edu) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1992 11:56:46 -0500 (EST) From: Paul Hopper Subject: Re: 3.180 Queries: Fonts, Lexicon, Phase Verbs Ad 'Phase Verbs' (Jeroen Wiedenhof's inquiry): 'Phasenaktionsarten' were one of Hermann Hirt's divisions of "aspect" [Aktionsarten], see Idg Gramm. 1921-37 vol VI:227ff; he may have gotten it from M. Deutschbein 1920 (Engl. Stud. 54:80ff). 'Phasenverb' seems a natural extension of this term. - Paul Hopper -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-196. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-197. Thu 27 Feb 1992. Lines: 97 Subject: 3.197 Responses: Lexicon, Speech Therapy, Loss of -ed Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 92 10:29:08 CST From: evan@utafll.uta.edu (Evan Antworth) Subject: Re: Lexicon construction software 2) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 92 15:23 BST From: MURRAY@hprg.psychology.cardiff.ac.uk Subject: Acquisition 3) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 92 13:22:03 CST From: ward@pico.ling.nwu.edu (Gregory Ward) Subject: m*a*s*h potatoes -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 92 10:29:08 CST From: evan@utafll.uta.edu (Evan Antworth) Subject: Re: Lexicon construction software >I would like information on lexicon build-up software. There's DIMAP (DIctionary MAintenance Programs), available from CL Research, 20239 Lea Pond Place, Gaithersburg MD 20879, USA. I got a demo from Compuserve. (No evaluation or recommendation, just information!) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 92 15:23 BST From: MURRAY@hprg.psychology.cardiff.ac.uk Subject: Acquisition I've already replied direct, but wish also to reply publicly to the posting from jarea@ukcc.uky.edu which included the following about a speech therapist: "Apparently these people have no knowledge of the characteristics of American speech varieties and are willing to place the label 'handicapped' or 'inferior' on those who speak certain of these varieties." If by 'these people' he means all speech therapists, I take great exception to this sweeping comment. The suggestion that any given therapist would make the judgement this particular therapist made, let alone blithely 'label' the child 'handicapped' is offensive and untrue. And no therapist would ever under *any* circumstances describe a child as 'inferior'. The views he expresses are certainly not applicable to the profession in Britain, and I am quite certain they do American therapists an equal disservice. Alison Murray University of Wales, Cardiff. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 92 13:22:03 CST From: ward@pico.ling.nwu.edu (Gregory Ward) Subject: m*a*s*h potatoes George Fowler discusses `mashed' and `iced' as examples of prenominal adjectives that {are losing/have lost} their past participial ending before `potatoes' and `tea', respectively. May I add to that list the following (attasted) items: roast beef/pork corn beef steam clams ice cream/milk pop corn I hope the diagnosticians in question didn't take any of their subjects out to lunch... Gregory Ward ward@pico.ling.nwu.edu p.s. Speaking of mash(-ed), I remember fondly my favorite waitress at Lil Pete's (a Greek luncheonette in Philadelphia), who always asked if I wanted `fries or mash' with my broil(-ed) chicken. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-197. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-198. Mon 02 Mar 1992. Lines: 172 Subject: 3.198 Queries: Long Vowels, Flapping, Aphasia Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 92 15:37:22 GMT From: Martin Wynne Subject: Laugh and the world laughs with you 2) Date: 27 Feb 92 19:20:49 EST From: Michael Sikillian/Annotext <76264.1323@compuserve.com> Subject: 3.189 Summary: On-Line Spanish Resources 3) Date: Fri, 28 Feb 92 14:29:43 EST From: sxy646@HUXLEY.anu.edu.au Subject: Lang. with no final long V 4) Date: Sun, 1 Mar 92 17:03:30 EST From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Query: Flapping 5) Date: Fri, 28 Feb 92 14:02:11 CST From: Mary Howe Subject: Recording equipment 6) Date: Fri, 28 Feb 1992 11:30:46 +0000 From: SHLONSKY@uni2a.unige.ch Subject: Phonetic font 7) Date: Fri, 28 Feb 92 10:35:51 -0600 From: edding@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Dave Eddington) Subject: Natural Languages 8) Date: Mon, 2 Mar 92 07:33:51 CST From: battiste@cis.uab.edu (Ed Battistella) Subject: Query -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 92 15:37:22 GMT From: Martin Wynne Subject: Laugh and the world laughs with you How to describe the initial verb in the following sentences? (1) Laugh and the world laughs with you. (2) Go and I'll never speak to you again. They look like imperatives, as in: (3) Go and never come back. but the second clause in (1) and (2) is declarative. What is more, the meaning is not that of a normal imperative. Is it a case of imperative in form, but conditional in content? Or is it not an imperative at all? Also, is there something odd about the coordination of two different sentence types in this way? So perhaps it isn't really coordination (as in "Go and tell him"). Someone tells me that Jesperson calls this ellipsis, with 'if...then' elided. But where does 'and' come from then? -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: 27 Feb 92 19:20:49 EST From: Michael Sikillian/Annotext <76264.1323@compuserve.com> Subject: 3.189 Summary: On-Line Spanish Resources I would like some information about the CLR, specifically, dictionaries available in electronic form. Thank you. Michael Sikillian Annotext -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Fri, 28 Feb 92 14:29:43 EST From: sxy646@HUXLEY.anu.edu.au Subject: Lang. with no final long V I am looking for languages in which long vowels are found only in non-final position, like modern colloquial Arabic. Can any body help me? -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Sun, 1 Mar 92 17:03:30 EST From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Query: Flapping I would appreciate any references to experimental work on the problem of flapping in English, bearing on the issue of whether forms like beating vs. beading are homophonous. The only work I know of is a paper by Fox and Terbeek from the 1970's. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5) Date: Fri, 28 Feb 92 14:02:11 CST From: Mary Howe Subject: Recording equipment I'd like to know what kind of recording equipment other people use for recording conversation. I've used a Walkman-type tape recorder with an external microphone from Radio Shack in the past, but my mike broke recently. It was really good because it was flat, black, and about the size of a credit card and therefore quite unobtrusive. Unfortunately, Radio Shack doesn't make this kind anymore. Although I let people know ahead of time that I will be recording their conversations, I want the tape recorder to be as unobtrusive as possible. My local stereo & music equipment stores have suggested either lapel mikes, which are DEFINITELY too obvious, or big flat omnidirectional mikes (which I can't remember the name of). Any ideas? -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6) Date: Fri, 28 Feb 1992 11:30:46 +0000 From: SHLONSKY@uni2a.unige.ch Subject: Phonetic font Does anybody know where I can obtain a font of phoentic (ie.g. IPA) characters than I can use with Wordperfect and print on a HP Laserjet III? Thanks, Ur Shlonsky -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7) Date: Fri, 28 Feb 92 10:35:51 -0600 From: edding@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Dave Eddington) Subject: Natural Languages What exactly is meant by the term 'natural languages?' Is this used to exclude Esperanto and other synthetic languages? In this case, why is it so important to say, for example, 'devoicing of word final obstruents is common in natural languages,' instead of saying 'languages' period? -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8) Date: Mon, 2 Mar 92 07:33:51 CST From: battiste@cis.uab.edu (Ed Battistella) Subject: Query A while ago I recalled seeing an article dealing with the portrayal of aphasic speech in John Irving's The World According to Garp vis a vis Jakobson's Child Language, Aphasia, and Phonological Universals monograph. But unfortunately, I can't remember where I saw this paper or who the author was. Does anyone know? I'm also curious if anyone knows of any video resources on aphasia suitable for showing to an undergrad class? If people send reply to me directly, I'll summarize and post to the group. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-198. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-199. Mon 02 Mar 1992. Lines: 236 Subject: 3.199 Conferences: SALT II, SOLE, Second Language Acquisition Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 27 Feb 92 18:42:09 EST From: Chris Barker Subject: SALT II conference preliminary schedule 2) Date: Fri, 28 Feb 1992 11:29 MET From: Harry van der Hulst Subject: for the listserv 3) Date: Sat, 29 Feb 1992 14:44 EST From: RDK1@vms.cis.pitt.edu Subject: For the Listserv -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 27 Feb 92 18:42:09 EST From: Chris Barker Subject: SALT II conference preliminary schedule PRELIMINARY SCHEDULE Semantics and Linguistic Theory II Ohio State University 1-3 May, 1992 Ohio State Sponsors: College of Humanities Linguistics Department Center for Cognitive Science The names of invited speakers appear in CAPITALS. Friday 1 May 8-9 Registration 9-9:10 David Dowty, Ohio State University Welcome 9:10-10:10 ANGELIKA KRATZER, University of Massachusetts at Amherst Free and Incorporated Thematic Roles 10:10-10:50 Yasunari Harada, CSLI, Stanford University & Waseda Naohiko Noguchi, CSLI, Stanford University & Matsushita Semantics and Pragmatics of "DAKE" and "only" 10:50-11:10 Break 11:10-11:50 Massimo Poesio, University of Rochester Alessandro Zucchi, Stanford University On Telescoping 11:50-12:30 Manfred Krifka, University of Texas, Austin A Framework for Focus-Sensitive Quantification LUNCH 2-2:40 Dan Hardt, University of Pennsylvania Verb Phrase Ellipsis and Semantic Identity 2:40-3:20 Jean Mark Gawron, SRI International Focus and Ellipsis in Comparatives and Superlatives: A Case Study 3:20-3:40 Break 3:40-4:20 Pauline Jacobson, Brown University Antecedent Contained Deletion in a Variable-Free Semantics 4:20-5:20 ANNA SZABOLCSI, University of California, Los Angeles Weak Islands and Scope Saturday 2 May 9-10 JEROEN GROENENDIJK, University of Amsterdam TBA 10-10:40 Henriette de Swart, University of Groningen Intervention Effects, Monotonicity and Scope 10:40-11 Break 11-11:40 Matthew D. Stone, Brown University "Or" and Anaphora 11:40-12:20 William Philip, University of Massachusetts, Amherst Distributivity and Logical Form in the Emergence of Universal Quantification LUNCH 2-2:40 Almerindo Ojeda, University of California, Davis The Semantics of Number in Arabic 2:40-3:20 Veneeta Srivastav, Rutgers University The Singular-plural Distinction in Hindi Generics 3:20-3:40 Break 3:40-4:20 Cleo Condoravdi, Stanford University Strong and Weak Novelty and Familiarity 4:20-5:20 WILLIAM A. LADUSAW, University of California, Santa Cruz Expressing Negation 5:20-6:00 Business Meeting Chair: Craige Roberts, Ohio State University Sunday 3 May 10:00-10:40 Geoffrey Nunberg, Xerox PARC Varieties of Indexicality 10:40-11:20 Barbara Abbott, Michigan State University Definiteness, Existentials, and the "List" Interpretation 11:20-11:40 Break 11:40-12:40 LAURENCE R. HORN, Yale Univerisity The Said and the Unsaid -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Fri, 28 Feb 1992 11:29 MET From: Harry van der Hulst Subject: for the listserv PLEASE POST - PLEASE POST - PLEASE POST - PLEASE POST - PLEASE POST * * * * * * The Student Organisation of Linguistics in Europe announces CONSOLE 1 (formerly LCJL) University of Utrecht - December 15-18, 1992 * * * * * * CALL FOR PAPERS * * * * * * SOLE, the Student Organisation of Linguistics in Europe, announces its first conference, the successor of the Leiden Conferences for Junior Linguists. CONSOLE 1 will be held at the University of Utrecht on December 15-17, 1992. The conference will be followed, on December 18, by workshops on the following topics: The semantic and syntactic analysis of Focus Phonological and phonetic aspects of prosodic Minimality For the conference, PhD-students in linguistics are invited to submit five copies of a two-page abstract for a thirty-minute talk, one of which should bear name and affiliation. Abstracts dealing with issues in syntax, semantics and phonology are equally welcome, as long as they are interesting from a theoretical point of view. For the work- shops, five copies of abstracts of 3 to 4 pages for a twenty-minute presentation may be submitted. Submissions by E-mail will also be accepted. Free accommodations for speakers will be provided. Speakers will be partially reimbursed for their travelling expenses. All abstracts should have reached the local organisers by August 31, 1992. Late September, prospective participants will be notified whether their paper has been accepted for presentation. * * * * * * Abstracts and requests for further information about the conference and workshops should be addressed to: CONSOLE 1 - Peter Ackema & Maaike Schoorlemmer Research Institute for Language and Speech - University of Utrecht Trans 10 - 3512 JK Utrecht - The Netherlands E-mail: console@let.ruu.nl - Phone: +31-30-394319/392068 * * * * * * For information about the Student Organisation of Linguistics in Europe please contact: SOLE - Department of General Linguistics - University of Leiden P.O. Box 9515 - 2300 RA Leiden - The Netherlands E-mail: dikken@rulcri.leidenuniv.nl * * * * * * -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Sat, 29 Feb 1992 14:44 EST From: RDK1@vms.cis.pitt.edu Subject: For the Listserv CALL FOR PAPERS The 13th annual Second Language Research Forum March 19 to 21, 1993 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania "Cognitive Perspectives on Second Language Acquisition" Deadline for submission of abstracts is October 15, 1992. Please submit 12 copies of a one-page 200- to 250-word abstract, double spaced, without name. Attach a 3" x 5" card with name(s) of author(s), title of paper, affiliation, address, phone number, and e-mail address to: Marion Delarche & Dawn McCormick SLRF Conference Co-Chairs Linguistics Department 2816 Cathedral of Learning University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh PA 15260 phone: (412) 624-5900 fax: (412) 624-6130 e-mail: (BITNET) mldst9@pittvms (INTERNET) mldst9@unix.cis.pitt.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-199. ________________________________________________________________ [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. 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(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.) 14) 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-3-200. Wed 04 Mar 2002. Lines: 56 Subject: 3.200 Tributes to Dwight Bolinger Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 27 Feb 92 21:35:31 EST From: cam@unagi.cis.upenn.edu (Cynthia McLemore) Subject: Re: 3.185 Dwight Bolinger 2) Date: Thu, 27 Feb 92 15:44 PST From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: 3.185 Dwight Bolinger -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 27 Feb 92 21:35:31 EST From: cam@unagi.cis.upenn.edu (Cynthia McLemore) Subject: Re: 3.185 Dwight Bolinger I'd like to add my sentiments to those expressed by colleagues for Dwight Bolinger. He was an especially important scholar to me because my work is on intonation. I feel so very lucky to have been able to meet and talk to him -- in spring of 1990, when I was in Palo Alto for a brief visit, he invited me to his home for a meeting, because he was too weak to attend my talk. We had a wonderful conversation, full of performed examples of contours, delighted glimpses of recognition as we exchanged observations ... and when we politely noted our dis- agreement on certain issues, he shook my hand with both of his. It was a memorable experience; I left his house feeling like he embodied a standard in scholarship. We have lost a remarkable man. Cynthia McLemore -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Thu, 27 Feb 92 15:44 PST From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: 3.185 Dwight Bolinger Yes -- linguistics has lost a great scholar and the human race a magnificent human being. To misquote an old union song, Dwight would no doubt now be saying "Don't mourn for me, work and teach and save the environment." Vicki Fromkin -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-200.