________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-451. Tue 02 Jun 1992. Lines: 210 Subject: 3.451 Queries: presupposition, dialect, idioms, etc. Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 29 May 92 16:22:05 MEZ From: Uwe Hauck Subject: Presuppositions and NL-Generation 2) Date: Fri, 29 May 1992 19:01:00 +0200 From: Robin Clark Subject: American Dialect Question 3) Date: Fri, 29 May 1992 12:02 EST From: TRUESDA@prism.clemson.edu Subject: Query: Rate of Speech 4) Date: Fri, 29 May 92 13:32:08 -0400 From: gb661@csc.albany.edu (BROADWELL GEORGE AARON) Subject: scanners 5) Date: Sun, 31 May 92 07:22:34 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Query: Idioms 6) Date: Sun, 31 May 92 17:21:46 CDT From: andy@tivoli.com Subject: Inquiry 7) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 1992 15:39 PDT From: HSLAPOLLA@ccvax.as.edu.tw Subject: French causatives 8) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 92 16:36:32 +0100 From: Dr M Sebba Subject: Query: relative clauses, Arabic -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- [Reminder: We'd like to remind readers that the responses to certain kinds of queries (lists, bibliographies, etymologies, etc.) are best posted to the individual asking the question. That individual is then strongly encouraged to post a summary to the list. Of course, so much depends on the specific query that we can only ask readers to use their own judgment. But this policy was instituted to help control the huge volume of mail on LINGUIST; so we would appreciate your cooperating with it whenever it seems feasible. Thanks, Anthony & Helen] ______________________________________________ 1) Date: Fri, 29 May 92 16:22:05 MEZ From: Uwe Hauck Subject: Presuppositions and NL-Generation The above Subject is the exact title of a paper I am actually working on in which I am trying to establish a new theory about the role of presuppositions in the context of Generation for multiple audiences. I am searching for literature about Presuppositions and the way we recognize and handle them, expecially about the effects of presuppositions in dialog.... Thanx a lot for any hints in advance Uwehauck at dosuni1.bitnet uwehauck at dosuni1.rz.uni-osnabrueck.de -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Fri, 29 May 1992 19:01:00 +0200 From: Robin Clark Subject: American Dialect Question There is, according to rumor, a dialect of American English where the following is acceptable as a conditional: (1) she were an ice cream I would eat her. We would like to hear from any speakers of this dialect. In particular, a colleague was wondering whether the string in (2) is acceptable as a conditional: (2) I would eat her she were an ice cream. Send replies to: clark@uni2a.unige.ch Merci buckets! -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Fri, 29 May 1992 12:02 EST From: TRUESDA@prism.clemson.edu Subject: Query: Rate of Speech I'm passing the following query along from a colleague not on the list: "According to Bill Bryson in THE MOTHER TONGUE (Wm. Morrow Co., 1990), 'In normal conversation [English speakers] speak at a rate of about 300 syllables a minute' (p. 90). My question is, how does this rate compare to Spanish, French, Chinese, etc.? Is the average rate of speech about the same across languages? Have there been any comparative studies? --Skip Eisiminger" My comment to Skip re this query was: It seems the info usually given out in undergrad linguistics classes is that rates of speech are about the same across languages, although we may *perceive* certain languages as "faster"--e.g. Spanish, since its intonation patterns make it sound staccato or "machine-gun-like" to some English speakers. But I join Skip in this query: Could someone point to major comparative studies on rate(s) of speech. A personal reply would be fine; I'll post a summary if there is interest. Thanks! --Vance Truesdale, Clemson U. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Fri, 29 May 92 13:32:08 -0400 From: gb661@csc.albany.edu (BROADWELL GEORGE AARON) Subject: scanners Our university recently acquired a scanner, and in using it I found that it needed to know what language it was scanning (the only possibilities were some European lgs -- English, Spanish, French, German, Finnish). I would like to scan texts in other, less familiar, languages. Can someone more technologically literate tell me whether there are scanners on the market that can scan text without knowing what language it is in? ****************************************************************************** Aaron Broadwell, Dept. of Linguistics, University at Albany -- SUNY, Albany, NY 12222 gb661@thor.albany.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 5) Date: Sun, 31 May 92 07:22:34 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Query: Idioms Does anyone have a bibliography or reading list on idioms? -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6) Date: Sun, 31 May 92 17:21:46 CDT From: andy@tivoli.com Subject: Inquiry An Inquiry on Speech Synthesis Can anyone point me in the right direction to find out what kinds of hardware and software are currently available for converting softcopy ascii English text to some sort of auditory output ? What I'm after is putting together a system which would allow the visually impaired to have access to hardcopy text, preferably PC, Mac, or workstation-based. I have a reasonable idea of how to get from hardcopy text to softcopy text via scanning (although any suggestions there are welcome as well), but I'm too far removed from current work on softcopy to auditory output to have a clue where to start. Perhaps Vicki F., Peter L. or other phoneticians can point me in the right direction. I will be happy to post a summary for whoever is interested. Andy Rogers TIVOLI Systems 3706 Robinson Ave. 6034 W. Courtyard Drive, Suite 210 Austin, Texas 78722 Austin, Texas 78730 512 476 4257 Vox: 512 794 9070 Fax: 512 794 0623 andy@tivoli.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 1992 15:39 PDT From: HSLAPOLLA@ccvax.as.edu.tw Subject: French causatives I have a quick question for experts on the history of French (and other Romance) grammar: Was there ever a time in the development of the 'faire + V' causative (and similar forms in Spanish and Italian) when the causee appeared between the two verbs instead of after them in a dative or other prepositional phrase? (I.e., was it ever like the laisser + V construction?) Thanks. Randy LaPolla Institute of History & Philology Academia Sinica hslapolla@twnas886.bitnet hslapolla@ccvax.as.tw -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 92 16:36:32 +0100 From: Dr M Sebba Subject: Query: relative clauses, Arabic For a student who is writing on relative clauses in Arabic, I am looking for references on nonrestrictive relative clauses (in general, not confined to Arabic) and on relative clauses of all types in Arabic. The student is an Arabic native speaker. I would be grateful for any suggestions. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-451. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-452. Tue 02 Jun 1992. Lines: 152 Subject: 3.452 Query: X-bar and VP Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 28 May 92 13:07:23 MDT From: mnu@inel.gov (Rick Morneau) Subject: X-Bar Theory and the Verb Phrase -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 28 May 92 13:07:23 MDT From: mnu@inel.gov (Rick Morneau) Subject: X-Bar Theory and the Verb Phrase I'm currently reading "On the Definition of Word" by Anna-Maria DiSciullo and Edwin Williams (MIT Press, 1987) and I'm running into some problems. Although it was certainly not the authors' intent, the book raises difficult questions (for ME, at least) about X-Bar Theory and the validity of the Verb Phrase (VP). I'm hoping that someone on Linguist List can help. In one part of the book, the authors discuss the formation of compounds - how some arguments (i.e., theta roles) are projected from the head word of a compound to the resulting compound, and how an argument of the head can be satisfied by the non-head. They use X-bar theory to explain their conclusions. The claims they make that are relevant to my confusion are: 1. The non-head word of a compound can satisfy only the INTERNAL argument of the head word - it can NOT fill the EXTERNAL argument. 2. Only the external argument of the head word (but NOT the internal argument) can become an argument of the resulting compound. In other words, the internal argument of the head word can be filled by the non-head word, and the external argument of the head word can become the argument of the resulting compound. They use the following examples to illustrate their points: destruction story *It was boy-slept. John bar tends. *tree-eating of pasta Unfortunately, I did not find their examples very illuminating, so I came up with a few of my own that illustrate what they say CAN be done: land-grabbing tycoons house-hunting newlyweds beer-drinking buddies Note that the external argument of the head word becomes an argument of the whole compound, while the internal argument of the head word is filled by the non-head word, as the authors claim. They justify these conclusions using X-Bar Theory (page 31), stating that: "[A non-head] cannot satisfy the external argument, because that argument must pass its index up the X-bar projection to the maximal projection, and satisfying the external argument within the maximal projection would lead to a contradiction: the maximal projection would bear an index indicating that it contained an unsatisfied argument, but that argument would in fact be satisfied... [The fact that only the external argument of the head can become part of the argument structure of the resulting compound] follows from the fact that the external argument passes up the X-bar projection, but the argument structure as a whole does not..." It all sounds very reasonable. Unfortunately, it is quite easy to come up with examples which contradict both claims: man-made hill customer-selected colors snake-infested swamp Here, the EXTERNAL argument of the head is satisfied by the non-head, and the INTERNAL argument of the head becomes the argument of the new compound. Thus, it would seem that EITHER argument, internal or external, can be supplied by the head word to the resulting compound. It would also seem that EITHER argument of the head word, internal or external, can be filled by the non-head word. This bothers me because it implies that the distinction between internal and external arguments may not be valid. And yet, this distinction is crucial to many current analyses within Government-Binding Theory. (Actually, what really worries me is that the explanation is SO obvious that I'll be embarrassed when I find out what it is. :-) This whole line of thought reminded me of a directly related problem that has remained buried in the recesses of my brain since I studied Transformational Grammar (TG). It bothered me then, but I never pursued it. Specifically, one of the strongest reasons why a verb phrase is considered a constituent is because it can appear in coordinated structures: John (washed the dishes) and (vacuumed the carpet). This example gives credence to the widely (universally?) accepted assumption that S => NP VP. However, counter-examples come easily to mind: (John washed), (Bill waxed) and (Mike buffed) the floor. (John just left for) and (Bill just arrived from) Boston. Which constituents are being coordinated here? More importantly, is coordination still considered a meaningful test by syntacticians, or is it just a language-dependent form of elision at S-structure? I'm not sure why I didn't pursue this earlier. I think I just assumed that the textbooks were correct about S => NP VP, and that it would all sink into my thick skull eventually. Now, though, DiSciullo and Williams have resurrected my earlier doubts about the validity of VP and the internal/external argument distinction. It also raises the question (in MY mind, at least) of why we must forsake X-Bar theory at the sentence level, when it has proven to be so useful everywhere else. Didn't someone (Ray Jackendoff ???) once try to show that the main verb is the head of a sentence, and that ALL arguments of the head (internal, external and adjunct) are sisters? If so, what ever came of it? Anyway, I apologize if this is old hat for anyone who reads this, but it sure would be nice if someone could straighten me out on this matter. Sincerely befuddled, Rick -- *=*= Disclaimer: The INEL does not speak for me and vice versa =*=* = Rick Morneau Idaho National Engineering Laboratory = * mnu@inel.gov Idaho Falls, Idaho 83415, USA * =*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*= NeXT Mail accepted here! *=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*= -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-452. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-453. Tue 02 Jun 1992. Lines: 74 Subject: 3.453 Zellig Harris Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 30 May 92 15:49 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: 3.445 A Tribute to Zellig Harris 2) Date: Sun, 31 May 92 22:37:28 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Re: 3.445 A Tribute to Zellig Harris -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 30 May 92 15:49 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: 3.445 A Tribute to Zellig Harris Many thanks to Bruce Nevin for the tribute to Zellig Harris, one of the giants on whose shoulders all linguists of any stature stand. Vicki Fromkin -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Sun, 31 May 92 22:37:28 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Re: 3.445 A Tribute to Zellig Harris I read with great interest Bruce Nevin's eloquent tribute to Zellig Harris and applaud him not only for his unique insights into Harris's character but also for a number of ways in which he is able to set a confused and sometimes misleading record straight. I was myself a student of Harris's for a brief time (1965-67) and insofar as I can judge Bruce's comments against the background of my own experience I would have to say that he presents an absolutely fair and accurate picture of of an extremely unconventional and in someways troubling man. I sometimes found it difficult and frustrating to deal with him, but I derived inspiration from him too. At the risk of appearing defensive, I'd like to suggest that Bruce's summary of my review of Harris's collective writings is unfairly summed up in the question 'Why bother?' But the review is accessible, and anyone interested can come to an independent decision. I will tell one story that I think illustrates very well what kind of a man Harris was. In the summer of 1969 I decided, for a variety of reasons (some having nothing to do with anything academic), to leave the graduate program in linguistics at Penn and finish my Ph.D. elsewhere. I did regularly attend Harris's course that following fall, knowing that this would likely be my last chance to have any sort of personal contact with him. But I did not have a paper ready by the end of that semester and an outstanding item of business during the few months that intervened between my departure from Penn and my arrival at UCLA in March of 1970 was to produce one. This I did, and shortly after getting to Los Angeles I finished it and sent it off. No more than a day or two later -- soon enough so that it was clear that it had crossed my paper in the mail -- I received my last transcript from Penn indicating that I had received an A for the course. It struck me as a very Harrisian thing to do and I would have a bad conscience about it but for one thing: I did write the paper! Michael Kac -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-453. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-454. Tue 02 Jun 1992. Lines: 202 Subject: 3.454 Adjectives Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 92 17:40:05 CDT From: Eric Schiller Subject: Re: 3.446 Queries: Lists, Adjectives, Comma, Unhappier, Gopnik 2) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 92 19:37:36 EDT From: rws@mbeya.research.att.com (Richard Sproat) Subject: 3.446 Unhappier -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 92 17:40:05 CDT From: Eric Schiller Subject: Re: 3.446 Queries: Lists, Adjectives, Comma, Unhappier, Gopnik Re: Adjectives Jerry Sadock and I have been wrestling with this issue, and especially the semantic side of it, for some time and he has come up with some interesting thoughts on the semantic end which i hope will be worked out well enough for presentation soon. I have been concentrating on the syntactic end, and in my CLS paper from April (co-authored with Barbara Need) we proposed a significant revision ot X-bar theory which separates predicative adjectives, which are projections of a head A, from pre-nominal modifiers which are not, being an adverbial sort of category N1>>N1 (combine with N-bar to form N-bar. I will not deluge the list with the argumentation, but will happily send copies of the article to those who want it. Applied directly to the question at hand, the point is that the sets of lexical items which can be A[0] or [N1>>N1] are largely overlapping, though not entirely. In some languages, such as those of Southeast Asia, there is no morphological marking to distinguish adjectives from stative verbs, and the NP has the form head_noun - modifier - [numeral+classifier] - demonstrative with the order varying widely among languages. Should the modifier be analyzed as V or A? This is a common question. In my own work, it is neither, but is rather of the category [N1>>N1] when it is internal to the NP, and is a V when predicative, as there are absolutely no tests to suggest that there are two categories (V or A) involved. On the other hand, this assumes that words like 'very' subcategorize on semantic, and not syntactic grounds. When it comes to English, you might want to consider the Autolexical view, which separates syntax from morphology from semantics in the lexicon as well as in grammar. Thus the question of whether something is an adjective gets different answers depending on which of the three perspectives is adopted. I have found that teaching English grammer gets much easier when you look at things this way. Semantic operators in english include 'seem' (a verb), 'likely' (an adjective) and 'probably' (an adverb). Don't blame me! This is just a fact, and trying to map syntactic categories onto semantic categories, as Croft (among others) does, just won't work all of the time. The same problems arise when you try to map morphology onto syntax. Sadock (1991: Autolexical Syntax. University of Chicago Press) is a good introduction to this multi-modular point of view. My 1989 BLS paper (Syntactic Polysemy and Underspecification in the Lexicon) deals with the part of speech problem in Southeast Asian languages. The issues as they pertain to parts of speech are pretty much theory independent and can be implemented in other frameworks which are largely word-driven. Eric Schiller University of Chicago -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 92 19:37:36 EDT From: rws@mbeya.research.att.com (Richard Sproat) Subject: 3.446 Unhappier Gregory Stump expresses four concerns about my analysis of _unhappier_ in LI 23 (1992:347-352). I think one of those concerns is exactly on target and the other three are less clearly so. 1. Stump's first point questions whether the comparative form of a scalar adjective is itself scalar. I guess it rather depends upon definitions here, but if by `scalar' one means `scalar predicate' in the sense of Horn (1972) or Hirschberg (1991), then surely _unhappier_ is scalar. Certainly it does not occur in the environments 'very ____', 'less ____' or 'as ____ as', but it isn't clear why one should assume that these constitute an exclusive diagnostic set. (Note that `very' fails for clear scalars like `very', so perhaps what is really tested by `very' is gradability rather than scalar-hood. Thanks to Gregory Ward for this and other points.) For what it's worth though, earlier stages of English (as is well-known) did allow constructions like _less_happier_, though what one wants to make of that is unfortunately not clear to me: Or as a moat defensive to a house Against the envy of less happier lands; This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, (Richard II) One other point that I mentioned in the squib, which Stump did not mention, is that _un-_, in its contrary interpretation, has the same meaning as 'the opposite of ____'. Consistent with that, both 'the opposite of happier' and _[un_[happier]]_ (assuming that structure) have the same meaning. 2. Stump's second point involves the observation that in adjectives with inherently comparative meaning (_superior_, _inferior_), _un-_ is interpreted as having contradictory rather than contrary reading, suggesting that the interpretation in the case of the structure _[un_[happier]]_ should by no means be expected to have the contrary reading. So for Sandy wants to find someone uninferior to her at chess. we get the interpretation that Sandy wants to find someone who is (merely) not inferior to her at chess. It is interesting that Stump picked _inferior_ as his example, because I believe that _superior_ displays the opposite behavior. I should point out that I don't find either _uninferior_ or _unsuperior_ to be acceptable on any interpretation (they are just ill-formed for me), but if I had to force an interpretation for Sandy wants to find someone unsuperior to her at chess. I would have to say that it means that Sandy wants to find a weaker player than herself, not that she wants to find a player who is at most as good as herself. If this is right, then this suggests a possible reason for Stump's results other than the conclusion that comparative-sense adjectives are compatible only with the contradictory reading of _un-_. Two properties of _un-_ have been noted in the literature dating back (at least) to Zimmer 1964: i) with scalar adjectives _un-_ typically has a contrary reading; ii) _un-_ tends not to occur with bases that have a negative sense. Zimmer gives a handful of exceptions to the second generalization: _uncorrupt_, _unobnoxious_, _unmalicious_, _unvicious_, _uncruel_ ... Interestingly, although the examples that I have listed here all seem to have (at least potentially) scalar bases, it is by no means clear that in these cases _un-_ is getting the contrary interpretation. That is while I can surely refer to a person as _unkind_ and mean that they are cruel, I don't think that I can felicitously refer to a person as _uncruel_ and by that mean that they are kind. There is presumably some pragmatic basis for this, possibly related to the ultimate reason for the tendency expressed in (ii): conceivably, if you use a negative adjective, you automatically implicate something negative about the thing or person to whom the adjective is applied, and this negative sense cannot be cancelled by the contrary reading of _un-_, hence (following a suggestion of Horn) _un-_ reverts to the weaker contradictory reading. This is not intended to be a well-thought out analysis of the issues (neither do I sense that I am saying anything particularly novel), but I think there is sufficient reason to doubt the significance of Stump's example to the issue he intends to apply it to. 3. Stump's third point is that even when both ADJ and un-ADJ coexist, distinct phonological and semantic structures must be assumed. So, while _uneasier_ must presumably have the phonological structure _[_un_[_easier_]]_ for familiar reasons, its interpretation ('more uneasy' and *not* 'less easy') suggests that it can never have the *semantic* structure _[_un_[_easier_]]. I think Stump is right here. To the list add _unwiser_. 4. Finally Stump points to his recent paper in Language as presenting a framework in which _unhappier_ ceases to be paradoxical. The problem here is not with Stump's assertion that _unhappier_ is no paradox in his framework: this is true. What bothers me is the repetition of the refrain that I have seen now more times than I can remember; namely that bracketing paradoxes cease to be paradoxical if you view them in such and such a way. The point is that, *all* analyses of bracketing paradoxes have presented what seemed to the authors at the time to be well-motivated theories wherein bracketing paradoxes ceased to be such. Indeed, it would be bizarre if things were otherwise, since presumably nobody who treats an apparently paradoxical construction wants to argue that the construction in question remains a paradox in their theory. Bracketing paradoxes ceased to be paradoxical long ago, as soon as it was understood that their solution involved the positing of at least two distinct levels of analysis for words in some sense. The debate ever since has been about what those levels might be in any particular case, not about how to make Bracketing Paradoxes cease to be paradoxical. Richard Sproat Linguistics Research Department AT&T Bell Laboratories tel (908) 582-5296 600 Mountain Avenue, Room 2d-451 fax (908) 582-7308 Murray Hill, NJ 07974 rws@research.att.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-454. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-455. Tue 02 Jun 1992. Lines: 80 Subject: 3.455 FYI: publications available Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 27 May 92 15:31:53 EDT From: cphill@Athena.MIT.EDU Subject: Chomsky '92 Paper 2) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 1992 16:22:11 +0100 From: toussain@irit.fr -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 27 May 92 15:31:53 EDT From: cphill@Athena.MIT.EDU Subject: Chomsky '92 Paper Noam Chomsky's DRAFT of "A Minimalist Program for Linguistic Theory" has been circulating without his permission. The paper is now close to completion, and it will be published by MIT Working Papers in Linguistics, as the first in a new series, "MIT Occasional Papers in Linguistics". The paper should be available by mid-June, priced $5, (plus postage, US $1, Overseas $1.50 surface, $3 airmail per copy) from: MITWPL 20D-219 MIT Cambridge, MA 02139 MITWPL also distributes over 130 titles in the following series: MIT Linguistics Dissertations (60 available so far) MIT Working Papers in Linguistics MIT Occasional Papers in Linguistics Lexicon Project Working Papers Parsing Project Working Papers Center for Cognitive Science Occasional Papers For more information about the Chomsky paper, or for a complete list of titles offered, either write to the above address or send us e-mail at: MITWPL@athena.mit.edu Colin Phillips -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 1992 16:22:11 +0100 From: toussain@irit.fr I received this request from a member of our group in Toulouse,France. (Yannick TOUSSAINT) Could you communicate the forwaded message about the review "Les Cahiers de Grammaire" edited by our group in Toulouse, to the members of linguist network. Sincerely, Michel Aurnague. LES CAHIERS DE GRAMMAIRE "Les Cahiers de Grammaire" is a review edited by the research lab ERSS (Equipe de Recherche en Syntaxe et Semantique) of the University Toulouse-Le Mirail (France) since 1982. The scope of this publication is general linguistics and more precisely descriptions of both syntactic and semantic phenomenons in French and more generally in Romance languages. If you are interested in ordering some issues of "Les Cahiers de Grammaire" (see below the contents of the last four issues) or in submitting some paper to be published, you can contact J.P. Maurel (address : URA 1033, UFR de Lettres Anciennes, Universite de Toulouse-Le Mirail, 5 allees Antonio Machado, 31058 Toulouse) or Michel Aurnague (adress : IRIT, 118 route de Narbonne 31062 Toulouse, email : aurnague@irit.fr, fax : 61 55 62 58). The price of each issue including postage is 45 francs. Moreover, (bank or post office) cheques as well as other administrative payments (order forms, etc) have to be made out to : C.E.C. 13, rue Pierre de Coubertin 31520 Ramonville St-Agne. France Cahiers de Grammaire no 13 (Sept. 1988) : A. BORILLO : "Le lexique de l'espace : les noms et les adjectifs de localisation interne; M. CAMPRUBI : "Les prepositions dans le domaine notionnel : la construction prepositionnelle des verbes et des adjectifs en catalan et en espagnol"; S.-H. KIM : "Construction infinitive du verbe causatif de mouvement"; Ch. MOLINIER : "Un cas de relation metonymique dans une structure predicative adverbiale"; M. PLENAT : "Morphologie des adjectifs en -able". Cahiers de Grammaire no 14 (nov. 1989) : M. AURNAGUE : "Categorisation des objets dans le langage : les noms de localisation interne"; P. CADIOT : "La preposition : interpretation par codage et interpretation par inference"; E. KHAZNADAR : "Le masculin premier"; D. LAUR : "Semantique du deplacement a travers une etude de verbes et de prepositions du francais; D. LEEMAN : "Remarques sur les notions de sexe et de genericite"; A.M. ORLANDINI : "La reference verbale en latin". Cahiers de Grammaire no 15 (nov. 1990) : M. CAMPRUBI : "La relation prepositionnelle entre le nom et son complement nominal en espagnol et en catalan"; A. CONDAMINES : "Les conjonctions de subordination temporelles en francais; F. KERLEROUX : "Du mode d'existence de l'infinitif substantive en francais contemporain; C. MULLER : "Les constructions en tel et la subordinationconsecutive"; M. ROCHE : "'Neutre' et pseudo-neutre en francais"; C. VANDELOISE : "Les frontieres entre les prepositions sur et a". Cahiers de Grammaire no 16 (nov. 1991) : M. CAMPRUBI : "Les prepositions dans les complements circonstanciels ou adverbiaux du domaine notionnel en espagnol et en catalan; J. GIRY-SCHNEIDER : "Noms de grandeurs en avoir (No a Det N-Modif) et noms d'unites; C. JACQUEMIN : "Une grammaire d'unification des noms composes controlee par l'acceptabilite; F. LAMBERT : "Observations sur la coordination par et en francais"; N.J. LEFKOWITZ & S.H. WEINBERGER : "Metathese au premier branchement et parametrisation dans les jeux de langage : le cas du verlan"; P. SABLAYROLLES : "Semantique spatio-temporelle du deplacement en francais : analyse et representation. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-455. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-456. Tue 02 Jun 1992. Lines: 100 Subject: 3.456 Citations, human subjects Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 27 May 92 08:49 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: 3.443 Tone, Relative Markers, Human Subjects 2) Date: Thu, 28 May 1992 2:26:02 -0400 (EDT) From: GIVEN@sbchm1.chem.sunysb.edu Subject: 3.433 Chomsky Citation 3) Date: Fri, 29 May 92 09:42 CDT From: TB0EXC1@NIU.bitnet Subject: human subjects -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 27 May 92 08:49 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: 3.443 Tone, Relative Markers, Human Subjects in response to Sue Blackwell as to why, if Chomsky is so prolific, he is not contributing to this discussion -- obviously he can be prolific because he doesn't spend his time like we do reading and answering on the Net. Wonder how many hours we each spend. Vicki Fromkin -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Thu, 28 May 1992 2:26:02 -0400 (EDT) From: GIVEN@sbchm1.chem.sunysb.edu Subject: 3.433 Chomsky Citation It is aesthetically satisfying to note that the two most heavily cited humanist writers from the 20th century are Sigmund Freud and Noam Chomsky - satisfying because these two have basic traits in common: 1.They elaborated structuralism into a methodology for the human sciences 2. They built large, powerful bureaucracies to carry on their work 3. Despite their pretensions as theorists, their successes were as DESCRIPTIVE scientists. Part of Chomsky's legacy to linguistics is the understanding of which questions are UNprofitable to ask. In particular, questions about ``innateness" are empirical questions for developmental psychology and psycholinguistics, NOT questions of transcendental (in the Kantian sense) philosophy - I think people understand that now, BECAUSE of Chomsky. On the other hand, psycholinguistics research seems to tilt at least as much to Piagetian fantasies (words like "interactionism" and "bootstrap" keep occurring) as to those popularized by Chomsky. Isn't this a reasonable summary? What really fascinates me, as a gerontologist of theories, is the question: how stable are the descriptive formalisms of the Masters (Freud or Chomsky). Will GB exist in a recognizable form in 20 years? Anyone willing to lend their crystal ball? Again, an abiding problem for a scholar of either Freud or Chomsky is that detailed discussions of their influence, histories of the development of their ideas, etc., are almost entirely written by Believers. I saw an interesting albeit brief, asessment of NC's influence on psychology, philosophy, etc. in this discussion. What is his net influence on the vast number of NON-theoretical linguists ( citation data is never specific enough to shed any light on that....) ? JA Given SUNY Stony Brook -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Fri, 29 May 92 09:42 CDT From: TB0EXC1@NIU.bitnet Subject: human subjects Regarding the comments on human subjects, informed consent, copyrighting of linguistic data (speaker output), the most comprehensive treatment I know of is in the most recent number of the Publications of the American Dialect Society (Number 76), 'Legal and Ethical Issues in Surreptitious Recording.' The volume contains two essays, 'The Legal and Ethical Status of Surreptitious Recording in Dialect Research: Do Human Subjects Guidelines Apply,' by Don Larmouth, and an extended treatment 'On the Legality and Ethics of Surreptitious Recording,' by Thomas E. Murray and Carmin Ross Murray. Both make excellent, pertinent reading for any language researcher. Edward Callary Northern Illinois University -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-456. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-457. Tue 02 Jun 1992. Lines: 311 Subject: 3.457 How did we end up linguists, Z. Harris Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 26 May 92 14:22:41 EDT From: dberkley@astrid.ling.nwu.edu (Debbie Berkley) Subject: Re: 3.429 How did we end up linguists? 2) Date: Wed, 27 May 1992 8:36:58 GMT From: MCCONVELL_P@DARWIN.NTU.EDU.AU Subject: The linguist bug 3) Date: Tue, 26 May 92 14:28:45 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Re: 3.429 How did we end up linguists? 4) Date: Wed, 27 May 92 21:22 BST From: ANNA MORPURGO DAVIES Subject: RE: 3.435 Zellig Harris 5) Date: Wed, 27 May 92 10:31:12 EDT From: maxwell@jaars.sil.org Subject: Becoming a linguist 6) Date: Wed, 27 May 1992 15:10 EST From: CL235501@ulkyvx03.louisville.edu Subject: Re: 3.429 How did we end up linguists? 7) Date: Thu, 28 May 92 02:53 MET From: WERTH@alf.let.uva.nl Subject: RE: 3.437 How did we end up linguists? 8) Date: Fri, 29 May 92 12:08:50 EDT From: kaufmann@acsu.buffalo.edu (Kean Kaufmann) Subject: Re: 3.429 How did we end up linguists? 9) Date: Sun, 31 May 92 21:42:27 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Re: 3.437 How did we end up linguists? -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 26 May 92 14:22:41 EDT From: dberkley@astrid.ling.nwu.edu (Debbie Berkley) Subject: Re: 3.429 How did we end up linguists? Are there many others who, like me, excelled at languages and took as many as they could? But when I got into the higher levels of French, my chosen major, I was uncomfortable with the emphasis on literature. What I loved was playing around with sounds and words: making up languages, trying rearrangements of the sounds in words to see if that made another word, finding out the patterns in language. The introductory linguistics course I took my soph. year at UCLA was a revelation--other people actually like this stuff, too! There's not much that can beat the thrill of discovering that you can actually major in--and then devote your life's work to--something you thought was just a game you had sort of made up. Deborah Milam Berkley -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Wed, 27 May 1992 8:36:58 GMT From: MCCONVELL_P@DARWIN.NTU.EDU.AU Subject: The linguist bug For about as long as I can remember - at least since the age of 8 - I have been fascinated with language and languages. At 8 I remember poring over etymological dictionaries and trying to construct Old English sentences in school; longing for the time to come when I could start learning French; having started French being caught by the teacher reading grammars of Caucasian languages in class (at about 12) while he interminably revised material I knew - offering as an excuse the fact that the books I was reading were in French etc. What puzzles me is that my background is absolutely infertile ground for this kind of thing. Strictly monolingual working-class English family; I never even sighted a foreign language speaker until I was 10 or so. Jeff Leer (who was similarly struck down in youth) and I discussed this a couple of years ago when I was visiting Alaska and concluded it must be a virus. Patrick McConvell, Anthropology, Northern Territory University, PO Box 40146, Casuarina, NT 0811, Australia -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Tue, 26 May 92 14:28:45 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Re: 3.429 How did we end up linguists? Zvi Gilbert and Margaret Winters both suggest that the desire to do some- thing that combines elements of the sciences and the humanities is part of what leads people to linguistics, and I agree -- not merely because it de- scribes part of my own motivation (a second language learning experience played a role too) but because I have heard others say much the same thing. Example: some years ago when I taught Introduction to Linguistics I was approached after the first class by a young woman from the class who said that she had always done well in both math and English and thought that maybe this field would be interesting for that reason. She ended up majoring here as an undergraduate and then getting a Ph.D. (elsewhere). She has since left the field, though my impression from the last conversation I had with her was that it was disillusionment with academia and not with linguistics that was responsible. Michael Kac -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Wed, 27 May 92 21:22 BST From: ANNA MORPURGO DAVIES Subject: RE: 3.435 Zellig Harris After Hellen Prince's announcement noone has written anything about Zellig Harris's death. Probably few people knew him. It is natural to say that with him ends an era. But he was also a man of astonishing intellectual power (that he kept to the end), of very wide and deep culture and of total devotion to his subject. In a period when departments of linguistics may be proposed for closure at a moment's notice, we ought to remember that he founded the first department of linguistics in the United States. Those who (wrongly) see Harris as a man only concerned with narrow formalisms may try to read his 45-page long review of Sapir's Selected Writings (Language 1951) and see how natural it is to apply to him what he said of Sapir: " So refreshing is his freshness and criticalness, that we are brought to a sharp realization of how such writing has disappeared from the scene." Anna Morpurgo Davies -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5) Date: Wed, 27 May 92 10:31:12 EDT From: maxwell@jaars.sil.org Subject: Becoming a linguist I N T E R O F F I C E M E M O R A N D U M Date: 27-May-1992 10:30am EDT From: Mike Maxwell MIKE.MAXWELL Dept: Language Center Tel No: 6369 TO: UUCP user linguist@tamsun.tamu.edu ( _linguist@tamsun.tamu.edu) Subject: Becoming a linguist Subject: Becoming a linguist Well, the real reason I took my first semester of linguistics was that I wanted to work in Bible translation, and for that I needed linguistics. At that point I didn't know how to spell "lingrist", three months later I were one. :-) All seriousness aside, before that point I had a general interest in language, but an aversion to learning languages. The structures were interesting, but memorizing the vocabulary was a pain. I had even read a book on linguistics by Mario Pei (which did not, however, make a big impression). But two incidents stand out, both in eighth grade or so. One was when I "discovered" the verb paradigm in Spanish, which in turn made Spanish interesting enough to bring my grade from a "D" to a respectable note. The other was doing sentence diagrams (in English). My English teacher insisted that the major division in the sentence was between the subject and the verb, whereas it was obvious to me that there was an equally major division between the verb and its objects. Twenty years later, my PhD thesis was on that topic (among other things). I hereby publicly confess that Mrs. Shellenbarger was right. Like Vicki Fromkin said, there are probably as many reasons why people become linguists as there are linguists. ******************************************************** Mike Maxwell Phone: (704) 843-6369 JAARS Internet:maxwell@jaars.sil.org Box 248 Waxhaw, NC 28173 ********************************************************  -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6) Date: Wed, 27 May 1992 15:10 EST From: CL235501@ulkyvx03.louisville.edu Subject: Re: 3.429 How did we end up linguists? I wound up studying linguistics because of an exceptional (if I may praise myself) facility with both English and foreign languages and a monumental incompetence with just about everything else. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7) Date: Thu, 28 May 92 02:53 MET From: WERTH@alf.let.uva.nl Subject: RE: 3.437 How did we end up linguists? What strange things we do find to talk about in the wee small hours (in my case) . ). Does my career choice have explanatory adequacy? I must join what seems on th e e basis of the answers I've read to be the tiny minority of people who were just plain interested in language (in my case, it was etymology first - nothing to do with my present interests). I'm also with the foot in both camps brigade in that I have lit interests as well (and at the moment am a passive member of PALA and the Assoc. of Lit Semantics) - but I must confess that my main interest in lit now is that it gives you such damn good examples. Much better than the usual John & Mary stuff. Greetings ------- Paul Werth q -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8) Date: Fri, 29 May 92 12:08:50 EDT From: kaufmann@acsu.buffalo.edu (Kean Kaufmann) Subject: Re: 3.429 How did we end up linguists? I concur with the foot-in-each-camp account; for me, the camps were poetry and computer programming. My first conscious awareness of language qua language (form as apart from content) came through poetry. Explaining to my hiskool English teacher why I chose linguistics over lit-crit, I used the analogy of the animal-lover who majors in animal behavior rather than biology: "I want to watch them play, not cut them up." Science fiction was also a significant influence, though I'd rather call it 'speculative fiction' and reserve the modifier 'science' for stuff with equations in the appendices. For instance: Samuel R. Delany's incredible novel _Babel-17_, which takes the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and runs with it. Has anyone else thought of an undergrad course on "Linguistics through Fiction"? Since so many linguists seem to have gotten a boost from s.f. (whatever you want the initials to stand for), and since there are so many works of s.f. dealing directly or indirectly with linguistics, I'd imagine such a class would be ideal for recruitment purposes. Kean Kaufmann (kaufmann@acsu.buffalo.edu) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9) Date: Sun, 31 May 92 21:42:27 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Re: 3.437 How did we end up linguists? One quick correction to Mark Hansell's attribution to me of the claim that linguists are superior language learners. For the record, what I hypothesized was that it was typical for linguists to have been strongly affected by a second language learning experience. But another observation he makes is, for me at least, very telling, namely his description of the language learning process as dreary and inefficient without shortcuts. Ah yes, exactly. Here's my own story. In the fall of 1955, at the age of twelve, I found myself in a public school in Geneva, Switzerland not knowing a word of French. I had a classic immersion experience, which is a tale in itself, but not the one I wish to tell here. In the second half of the year, we began the arduous process of memorizing the paradigms of the notorious French irregular verbs. This included having to learn the dreaded imperfect and pluperfect subjunctives, despite the fact that these forms were completely obsolete. To the surprise of everyone, I soon be- came one of the best performers on the regularly administered exams in this subject. And it was for precisely the reasons that Hansell mentions: I began to see patterns even among the irregular verbs and the task of learning the paradigms became simplicity itself. Actually, what is truly shocking about this episode was the fact that if *I* could discern these patterns for myself surely they were known to the teacher and the designers of the materials that we used. But no, the whole task was treated as one of rote memorization which one began de novo as each new verb was considered. Which brings me to another possible common characteristic of linguists -- cer- tainly one that I see in a great many of my own friends and colleagues in the field: an inherent rebelliousness and a sense of having a vision that others (especially in the world of education) either can not or will not see. Let's see if we get any takers on that one. Michael Kac -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-457. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-458. Tue 02 Jun 1992. Lines: 255 Subject: 3.458 Conferences: ECCAI, Cog Sci, Comparative Germanic Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 26 May 1992 11:55:28 +0200 From: ECAI92 Vienna Conference Service Subject: ECCAI 2) Date: Sat, 30 May 92 18:19:35 BST From: Donald Peterson Subject: Philosophy and the Cognitive Sciences 3) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 92 18:34 CDT From: kkrohn@tamuts.tamu.edu (Katherine Elizabeth Krohn ) Subject: Comparative Germanic Syntax: Chomsky -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 26 May 1992 11:55:28 +0200 From: ECAI92 Vienna Conference Service Subject: ECCAI ======================================================================= Final Programme - ECAI92 - Final Programme - ECAI92 - Final Programme ======================================================================= 10th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 92) August 3-7, 1992, Vienna, Austria organized by the European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence (ECCAI) hosted by the Austrian Society for Artificial Intelligence (OGAI) Programme Chairperson Bernd Neumann, University of Hamburg, Germany Local Arrangements Chairperson Werner Horn, Austrian Research Institute for AI, Vienna [Moderators' note: The full program of this conference is available on the server. To get the file, send a message to: listserv@tamvm1.tamu.edu (if you are on the Internet) OR listserv@tamvm1 (if you are on the Bitnet) The message should consist of the single line: get ECCAI PROG linguist You will then receive the complete file.] -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Sat, 30 May 92 18:19:35 BST From: Donald Peterson Subject: Philosophy and the Cognitive Sciences CONFERENCE REGISTRATION INFORMATION Royal Institute of Philosophy PHILOSOPHY and the COGNITIVE SCIENCES The University of Birmingham September 11-14 1992 ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ The conference will address a variety of questions concerning the foundations of cognitive science and the philosophical importance of the models of mind which it produces. Topics will include: connectionism and classical AI, rules and representation, reasoning, concepts, rationality, multiple personality, the mind as a control system, blindsight, etc. Speakers will include: Stephen Stitch, Terry Horgan, Michael Tye, Margaret Boden, Aaron Sloman, Brian McLaughlin, Andrew Woodfield, Martin Davies, Antony Galton, Stephen Mills, Niels Ole Bernsen. Papers given at the conference will be published in a volume produced by the Cambridge University Press, as a supplement to the journal _Philosophy_. Copies of this document together with titles as they become available can be obtained by emailing the auto reply service: rip92@bham.ac.uk REGISTRATION To attend the conference, please fill in the form below and return it by post (not email) together with payment by cheque in pounds sterling to: Royal Institute of Philosophy Conference, Department of Philosophy, The University of Birmingham, Birmingham, B15 2TT, U.K. Delegates will be considered registered when cheques have been cleared. The total for Registration, Bed and Breakfast and all meals is 122.50 pounds. For registered students and the unwaged, the Registration Fee will be waived if evidence of status is sent. For a limited number of postgraduate students, all other charges will be at half-price: if you wish to apply for this reduction, please write to the organisers indicating your research topic and reason for attending the conference. For bookings received after 7th August we cannot guarantee accommodation, and for bookings received after 10th August an additional charge of 10 pounds has to be made. Organisers: Chris Hookway (Philosophy), Donald Peterson (Cognitive Science). 30 May 1992. ______________________________________________________________________ REGISTRATION FORM Royal Institute of Philosophy PHILOSOPHY and the COGNITIVE SCIENCES The University of Birmingham September 11-14 1992 ______________________________________________________________________ REQUIREMENTS Registration Fee 25.00 _______ Late Registration Fee 10.00 _______ Bed and Breakfast 64.00 _______ Dinner 11 September 7.50 _______ Lunch 12 September 5.50 _______ Dinner 12 September 7.50 _______ Lunch 13 September 5.50 _______ Dinner 13 September 7.50 _______ All Meals 33.50 _______ Total _______ Vegetarian meals (please tick) _______ PERSONAL DETAILS Name ___________________________________________ Address ___________________________________________ ___________________________________________ ___________________________________________ ___________________________________________ ___________________________________________ ___________________________________________ Telephone No. ___________________________________________ Fax No. ___________________________________________ Email ___________________________________________ REGISTRATION I wish to register for the Royal Institute of Philosophy Conference Philosophy and the Cognitive Sciences, and enclose a cheque in pounds sterling payable to C.J. Hookway (Royal Institute of Philosophy Conference) for ________ Signed ___________________________________________ -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 92 18:34 CDT From: kkrohn@tamuts.tamu.edu (Katherine Elizabeth Krohn ) Subject: Comparative Germanic Syntax: Chomsky Second announcement PLEASE POST 8th Workshop on Comparative Germanic Syntax ------------------------------------------- with a parasession on Comparative Germanic Phonology University of Tromso November 20-22, 1992 The 8th Workshop on Comparative Germanic Syntax, with a parasession on phonology, will be held at the University of Tromso, Norway, November 20-22. (This coincides with the arrival of the murkytide.) Invited speakers: Noam Chomsky Guglielmo Cinque Elisabet Engdahl Those who wish to present a paper (30 min. + discussion) are hereby invited to submit an abstract no longer than 2 pages before August 1, 1992. Preference will be given to presentations on parametric (and other) variation concerning / involving the Germanic languages. We expect to be able to meet travel expenses of the speakers. Abstracts should be sent anonymously in tenfold, accompanied by a camera-ready original with name and address of the author(s), to Tarald Taraldsen and Ove Lorentz ISL, University of Tromso N-9037 Tromso, Norway E-mail: Please send us a message if you want further information. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-458. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-459. Tue 02 Jun 1992. Lines: 122 Subject: 3.459 Rules Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 92 15:10:15 EDT From: thrainss@husc.harvard.edu Subject: rules 2) Date: Tue, 02 Jun 92 16:13:09 EDT From: stainton@Athena.MIT.EDU Subject: Normative Rules -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 92 15:10:15 EDT From: thrainss@husc.harvard.edu Subject: rules Re Alexis Manaster-Ramer (Linguist 3-371) >The point that is being made is that a sequence like "man the" >would not constitute an NP even if it occurred in the speech >of an English speaker. There seems to be some need for clarification here. First we havee claimed that a sequence like "man the" or "dog the" or whatever may very wll occur in English but that would not necessarily tell us anything about the structure of NPs. Take for instance an utterance like "He gave the dog the bone". Here we do indeed find the sequence "dog the", but no linguist we know of would take that as a counterexample to the rule that the article precedes the noun in English NPs/ This practice of "sifting" your data in linguistics is, we believe, no different from the practice in other empirical disciplines. Our second point is this: the main issue is not that a sequence like `dog the' *couldn't* be an NP in some sense (intended as one, interpreted as one by someone who was clued in on the word-order game being played, parsed as one by someone whose parser has relaxed the constraint that the SPEC precedes the head, etc.), but simply that the mere fact of the appearance of such a sequence in someone's speech wouldn't in and of itself be evidence about the grammar internalized by English-speakers (or, more precisely, the mental structure that the grammar is an attempted description of). Isolated events, especially without a rich description of the surrounding context, simply aren't useful information, since you can't make sensible judgements about their possible causes. Hence we are not Itkonen-style normativists in principle, although we do believe that grammarians pretty much have to describe linguistic norms in practice, given that there don't seem to be reasonable methods for getting sufficiently extensive and repeatable results about idiolects. And we do agree with Alexis that linguistics needs to distinguish between `normal' and various other kinds of language use, where the constraints of the grammar won't necessarily apply. And, re Nyman (3-441), another way of looking at it is this. In order for the speakers of a language to distinguish the `normal' from the `non-normal', they have to have some `circuit' in their heads that gives a different reading in the two kinds of cases. We regard the nature of this `circuit' as the fundamental question of grammatical theory, with grammatical norms arising as a consequence of its nature and various other things (such as the whatever it is that tends to cause members of a speech-community to assimilate their grammars to each other). -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Tue, 02 Jun 92 16:13:09 EDT From: stainton@Athena.MIT.EDU Subject: Normative Rules I enjoyed Alexis Manaster Ramer's recent posting. And I think he's right that there is a problem. But I would argue that the problem is not limited to linguistics. And this suggests that the solution shouldn't be phrased in terms specific to linguistics. By parity of reasoning, much of psychology would be "normative" in Itkonen's sense: By mistake or as a joke, people can *do* all sorts of things. (Generalization: if deprived of water for 48 hours, subjects will drink upon presentation of water -- unless they don't want to!!) Reflexes might be invariant; but what about everything else? What's more, the predictions of more familiar sciences are subject to "ceteris paribus" clauses. Small physical objects, upon release, will approach the earth -- unless a strong wind comes along, or some bozo catches it, or... Of course when doing experiments, scientists don't list all the things which could have gone wrong, but didn't. (Surely they couldn't give such a list.) They merely leave as background that all else *is* equal. True enough, statements about the behaviour predicted given a particular competence are also subject to ceteris paribus clauses. (For instance, we might have to stipulate that these are "normal" utterances.) But that's a problem which shows up all over the scientific map. And it should be understood as such. Just as water might boil at odd temperatures if it contains impurities, or if the air pressure is changed, speakers might say "Box the". We all agree that this is a problem. But it doesn't single out linguistics. (Nor do I think they differ in a matter of degree, say degree of precision.) And it doesn't, so far as I can see, call into question the notion of competence. Best, Rob Stainton MIT -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-459 ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-460. Thu 04 Jun 1992. Lines: 191 Subject: 3.460 Conferences: Speech Synthesis, Computational Linguistics Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 92 19:38:07 EDT From: rws@mbeya.research.att.com (Richard Sproat) Subject: Conference Announcement 2) Date: Thu, 28 May 92 20:32:19 wst From: ruslan@cs.usm.MY (ruslan mitkov) Subject: Computational Linguistics, Bulgaria -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 92 19:38:07 EDT From: rws@mbeya.research.att.com (Richard Sproat) Subject: Conference Announcement SECOND INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON SPEECH SYNTHESIS September, 1994 Arden House Harriman, New York, USA Preliminary Announcement Given the success of the ESCA Workshop on Speech Synthesis held September 25-28 1990, Autrans, France, we plan to hold the Second International Workshop on Speech Synthesis in September, 1994, at Arden House, Harriman, New York. The focus of this workshop will be the application of novel or theoretically interesting techniques for text-to-speech systems. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to: o Applications of novel signal processing techniques to synthesis. o Techniques for generating inventories for concatenative systems. o Techniques for computing trajectories for formant/articulatory systems. o Models of timing, amplitude, and pitch. o Models of intonation, pitch accent and tone. o Computation of prosodic features from text. o Multi-lingual synthesis. o Evaluation techniques for synthesizers. o Text generation (message-to-speech). o Novel applications of speech synthesis. Planning for the workshop is in its early stages, so we welcome input on form or content, addressed to any one of us: Julia Hirschberg (julia@research.att.com) Richard Sproat (rws@research.att.com) Jan van Santen (jphvs@research.att.com) AT&T Bell Laboratories Murray Hill NJ 07974 USA -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Thu, 28 May 92 20:32:19 wst From: ruslan@cs.usm.MY (ruslan mitkov) Subject: Computational Linguistics, Bulgaria Machine Translation Project Fax (60-4) 873335 School of Computer Science Telex MA 40254 University of Science Malaysia Tel (60-4) 877888 ext. 2156 11800 Penang, Malaysia Residence (60-4) 846158 ************************************************* SEMINAR "CONTEMPORARY TOPICS IN COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS" Tzigov Chark (Batak Lake), Rhodope Mountains, Bulgaria 24 September - 29 September '92 SECOND ANNOUNCEMENT The seminar "Contemporary topics in computational linguistics" will take place from 24th to 29th September 1992 in Tzigov Chark, Batak Lake, Bulgaria. It is intended (but not limited to) university students and will consist mainly of introductory courses. Considering the nature of most of the courses, undergraduate students are especially welcome. Furthermore a student session is envisaged within the tutorial, and students who would like to report on their research activities or final year projects will be given this opportunity (if volunteers are available, the student session programme will be compiled on site, each talk lasting approximately 15 minutes). Those who would like to extend their stay in Bulgaria can join the Bulgarian National seminar on mathematical and computational linguistics that will take place from 27th September to 4th October '92 at the same place. The seminar is organized by Incoma-TD Co, Ltd, Shumen, Bulgaria. The preliminary programme of the tutorial will include the following courses (two or three more lectures will probably be added): P. Seuren (University of Nijmegen, Holland) - Language and logic; Introduction to the study of language M. Zock (LIMSI, Orsay, France) - The problem of language and thought; A crash course in linguistics D. Estival (ISSCO, Geneva, Switzerland) - Unification formalisms in NLP; Reversible grammars M. Kudlek (Hamburg University, Germany) - Formal grammars and languages J. Haller (University of Saarbrucken, Germany) - Introduction to Machine Translation; Student training in MT J.P. Descles (University of Paris Sorbonne, France) - Categorial and applicative grammars H. Horacek (University of Bielefeld, Germany) - Pragmatic issues in natural language generation H. Somers (UMIST, Manchester, United Kingdom) - Corpus-based approaches to MT: challenging the orthodoxy Costs: The special participation fee at the seminar is 100 USA dollars for full-time students, 140 USA dollars for academic employees and 200 USA dollars for other participants. The fee includes attendance at the seminar, abstracts of the lectures, refreshments and a reception party as well as meals and accommodation in a 2-star hotel (two-bed rooms). Participants will be requested to pay in cash on site (any currency accepted). Seminar venue and Accommodation: The participants will be accommodated in Hotel "Orbita", Tzigov Chark. The courses will be given in the lecture hall of the hotel. Deadlines: The registration forms should arrive not later than 09.09.1992 at the address given below. On site registration is also possible. Further information: Participants who have sent their registration form, will receive at the latest in June 1992 the second announcement for the seminar and supplementary materials incl. information on how to get to the conference place. For further information you can also contact until10.07.92 Ruslan Mitkov at ruslan@cs.usm.my or after 10.07.92 Dominique Estival at estival@divsun.unige. ch or Mr.Nikolov Tel. (359-54)56948, Fax (359-54)56881. -------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-460. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-461. Thu 04 Jun 1992. Lines: 86 Subject: 3.461 Queries: Chinese, Lenneberg, Tags Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 03 Jun 92 19:12:50 SET From: Pier Marco Bertinetto Subject: Chinese diachrony 2) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 92 17:21:44 EDT From: rapaport@cs.Buffalo.EDU (William J. Rapaport) Subject: Lenneberg reference needed 3) Date: Thu, 04 Jun 92 19:13:41 +0000 From: tomoko@sccs.chukyo-u.ac.jp (INAGAWA Tomoko) Subject: Re: Query: tag-questions -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 03 Jun 92 19:12:50 SET From: Pier Marco Bertinetto Subject: Chinese diachrony Hallo! A student of mine needs informations concerning the diachronic study of Chinese languages. I would greatly appreciate a private answer; I shall of cou rse summerize the result in a later issue of the list. Thank you. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 92 17:21:44 EDT From: rapaport@cs.Buffalo.EDU (William J. Rapaport) Subject: Lenneberg reference needed I have a reference to an article by Lenneberg describing an experiment in which high school students were given Sarah the chimp's symbols to manipulate: E. Lenneberg, "Neuropsychological Comparison between Man, Chimpanzee, and Monkey," Neuropsychologia 13 (1975) 125. Yet my library tells me that neither author nor title are in the index to Vol. 13. Can someone please give me a correct reference? Thanks. William J. Rapaport Associate Professor of Computer Science and 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 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Thu, 04 Jun 92 19:13:41 +0000 From: tomoko@sccs.chukyo-u.ac.jp (INAGAWA Tomoko) Subject: Re: Query: tag-questions Dear All, A senior student is writing a paper on tag-questions in English. Could anyone suggest me a reading list on the topic? Thanks in advance. Tomoko Inagawa Faculty of Letters Aichi Prefectural University E-mail: tomoko@sccs.chukyo-u.ac.jp -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-461. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-462. Thu 04 Jun 1992. Lines: 143 Subject: 3.462 How did we become linguists? Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: 2 June 1992, 18:57:33 CST From: Margaret.E.Winters.GA3704.at.SIUCVMB@tamvm1.tamu.edu Subject: How did we become linguists 2) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 1992 11:00 MDT From: REBWHLR@cc.usu.edu Subject: on becoming a linguist 3) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 1992 13:40 EST From: MORGAN@LOYOLA.EDU Subject: Re: 3.457 How did we end up linguists, Z. Harris 4) Date: 4 Jun 92 12:05:00 EST From: "ALICE FREED" Subject: RE: 3.457 How did we end up linguists, Z. Harris -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: 2 June 1992, 18:57:33 CST From: Margaret.E.Winters.GA3704.at.SIUCVMB@tamvm1.tamu.edu Subject: How did we become linguists I have just suddenly remembered a comment made to me when I told my plans to a Latin faculty member at Brooklyn College when I was finishing up my senior year there - "Philology (by which she and I meant linguistics)! - I thought you were interested in substantive issues." Oh well. Margaret -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 1992 11:00 MDT From: REBWHLR@cc.usu.edu Subject: on becoming a linguist Some years before I entered grad school in Linguistics (I'd never heard of linguistics at that point), I lived in DC. One afternoon, feeling kinda low, I envisioned the perfect pick-me-up. I went into a local bookstore and bought for myself a hardcover Roget's Thesaurus. (that was back in the days when it was a 'real' thesaurus, exhibiting conceptual categories, and analyzed by conceptual categories -- not like the current frequent alphabetized version) I immediately found a shady bench and lengthily pored over the conceptual analysis of English vocabulary. And felt MUCH better. Perhaps that it was also unusual that when in my early 20's, a man I was seeing asked me what I wanted for my birthday -- what I wanted was a Webster's Third International. So, now I'm a lexical semanticist -- Ph.D. dissertation was on the Lexical Entry of the English verb 'understand'. Just collected data from CD for 'analyze' last night. love it. rebecca wheeler rebwhlr@cc.usu.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 1992 13:40 EST From: MORGAN@LOYOLA.EDU Subject: Re: 3.457 How did we end up linguists, Z. Harris Reading the "how I became a linguist" stories is fascinating. Some of us may have been fated-- with a Classicist for one parent and an English teacher for the other, what else does one do if not languages? In my case, it has turned out to be primarily historical linguistics, but the impulse is the same-- patterns over time. L. Morgan -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: 4 Jun 92 12:05:00 EST From: "ALICE FREED" Subject: RE: 3.457 How did we end up linguists, Z. Harris Two recent though different topics, "How did we end up as linguists," and "Tributes to Zellig Harris" take me back to the exact same time and place so I feel compelled to comment. How we ended up as linguists is quite a different question from how we actually discovered linguistics. I prefer leaving aside the psychological and intellectual reasons for "ending up" as a linguist. But the story that I like to tell is that as a 2nd semester freshman at the University of Pennsylvania in the mid-sixties, I sat down with the college catalog to see what besides English and French literature I might study. (I thought there were too many majors in those departments.) I literally discovered linguistics from the catalog. So at the beginning of my sophomore year I took my first linguistics course to see if I liked it. I became one of only three undergraduate majors in linguistics at Penn. at the time and went on to do my graduate work there as well. I don't know whether Zellig Harris or Henry Hoenigswald or some combination of both of them plus others "created" linguistics at Penn, but I am grateful to them all. I studied with Zellig Harris for two and a half years. Despite his debated standing in our field today, he was an inspiration to me as a student. Whether or not he did us a disservice by his intellectual and professional isolationism, he talked to us about language in ways that were stimulating and exciting. He typically started his seminars, always held in his office, (which was always uncomfortably crowded), by asking if there were any questions. A single question would then become a two-hour lecture. His stream of consciousness lecturing style, which included a description of whatever piece of linguistic theory he was mulling over at the time, was more organized than many carefully prepared lectures I have heard. He covered the small blackboard in his office with his tiny handwriting and dispensed with all classroom formalities such as course requirements, grading and exams. He devoted his life to the study of language and assumed that his students were doing the same. I join others in mourning his death. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-462. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-463. Thu 04 Jun 1992. Lines: 89 Subject: 3.463 Department Closures Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 02 Jun 92 12:27:34 BST From: "Jonathan Kaye 323-6362" (JK at UKACRL) Subject: SOAS closing - update 2) Date: Wed, 27 May 92 12:05:13 EDT From: jsc@mbeya.research.att.com (John S. Coleman) Subject: Department Closures -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 02 Jun 92 12:27:34 BST From: "Jonathan Kaye 323-6362" (JK at UKACRL) Subject: SOAS closing - update 2 June 1992 Dear Friends, First of all, thanks to all of you. On behalf of our entire department we wish to express our appreciation for the overwhelming number of faxes, letters and email messages of support that we have received. It has done much to boost our morale and our colleagues from other departments have found your comments most enlightening. Because of our complex legal situation I am not at liberty to reveal much of what is going on. These constraints will certainly be lifted fairly soon and I will fill you in on the entire situation at that time. Briefly, we are still at risk. The administration is proceeding with the steps necessary to close down the department in October. I can give you some information that has not yet been widely publicised. (1) While the school is facing a budgetary "shortfall" there is no urgent financial crisis that would REQUIRE the administration to act as precipitously as it did. (2) The Administration has presented no evidence that closing the department will indeed have the effect of reducing the current deficit. (3) The ultimate motivations for these actions may not be primarily financial in nature; questions of Academic Freedom do enter into the current situation. Once again, thanks to you all for your support. I will be issuing further updates in the near future. Jonathan Kaye JK@UKACRL (BITNET) JK@UK.AC.RL.IB (JANET) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Wed, 27 May 92 12:05:13 EDT From: jsc@mbeya.research.att.com (John S. Coleman) Subject: Department Closures These latest announcements have reminded me of an idea I once had for protecting linguistics departments better. Will all heads of departments, deans etc. please SERIOUSLY consider, for the sake of the future of our discipline, changing the name of any department of linguistics to department of GRAMMAR. Not only would this be historically reasonable, but it would, I believe, advance our public image many times over. Nit-picking objections from colleagues whose specialisations lie somewhat outside the ``core'' components of grammatical theory should not oppose such a change of name if it protects their career prospects! After all, they wouldn't DARE to close down the GRAMMAR department, would they? And aren't politicians always calling for a return to the teaching of GRAMMAR? How could they possibly face the scandal of closing down GRAMMAR departments? This is a serious suggestion. It could be your department next! --- John Coleman -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-463. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-464. Thu 04 Jun 1992. Lines: 102 Subject: 3.464 Innateness and Rules Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 92 12:53:36 PDT From: andrews@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Avery Andrews) Subject: innateness 2) Date: Wed, 03 Jun 92 09:13 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: 3.459 Rules 3) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 92 20:24:30 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: 3.459 Rules -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 92 12:53:36 PDT From: andrews@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Avery Andrews) Subject: innateness I would like to clarify the point that I am not at all skeptical of something like UG being innate (I find the `poverty of the stimulus' argument entirely convincing, in spite of `motherese', etc.). What I do find unmotivated on purely linguistic grounds (and probably unmotivatable on such grounds) is that idea that what is innate is specific to language. I believe that this is also the issue that Joe Stemberger has trouble with. Avery.Andrews@anu.edu.au -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Wed, 03 Jun 92 09:13 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: 3.459 Rules Re the discussion on 'normative' rules etc. Anyone who listens for or notates or works with speech errors will affirm I am sure that all kinds of ill-formed stuff is produced. What is important is that speakers of the language know it is illformed. Otherwise there is no sense to the notion 'slip of the tongue' or 'error'. Try the following on your friends,students,even enemies and see how many will (in a decision task) agree that something is wrong' or the sentences are 'ungrammatical' or 'funny' or.... 1) the last I know about that 2) where is the grandballroom, by any chance? 3) it would be of interesting to see 4) she was waiting her husband for 5) how he can get it done it time? 6) does it hear different? (for 'does it sound different?) 7) she made him to do the assignment over 8) she promised me to secrecy 9) did you stay up very last night? 10) it took you longer to read it than it took me to wrote it. The knolwedge that these are ill-formed in English has nothing to do with normative rules -- just grammatical constraints. V -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 92 20:24:30 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: 3.459 Rules Thanks to Hoslkuldur Thrainsson and Rob Stainton for addressing the issue I raised of how we identify 'normal' vs. 'abnormal' utterances. I think we all three agree that linguistics should be able to defend its ability to make this distinction. However, I do not think that this as easy as either of you seem to think. Thus, the status of abnormal utterances cannot easily be compared to that of water boiling at other 100 degrees C when mixed with impurities. For, physical theory predicts precisely at what temperature it will boil depending on the kind and amount of the impurities. Likewise, physical theory can explain why a small object, when dropped, does not always fall. However, linguistic theories, as normally stated, simply ignore abnormal utterances. For this reason, I also find Hoskuldur's position a little too optimistic: when we throw out abnormal utterances, we are not just sifting the data. We are making crucial decisions which must either be justified in some way or else they do make normativists. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-464. ________________________________________________________________ make-up of the LINGUIST List: where the majority of subscribers are, or even whether there are others from the subscriber's country on the list. Since the academic year has ended here in the northern hemisphere, we actually had some time to interrogate the Listserv about LINGUIST, and this is the result. We thought that it might be of sufficiently general interest to justify posting the result here. Anthony & Helen * Country Subscribers * ------- ----------- * ?? 12 * Australia 55 * Austria 5 * Belgium 11 * Brazil 4 * Canada 155 * Columbia 1 * Costa Rica 1 * Czechoslovakia 2 * Denmark 10 * Egypt 4 * Finland 42 * France 25 * Germany 101 * Greece 5 * Hongkong 14 * Hungary 4 * Iceland 5 * India 1 * Ireland 4 * Israel 18 * Italy 14 * Japan 45 * Korea 4 * Malaysia 1 * Mexico 3 * Netherlands 121 * New Zealand 7 * Norway 18 * Poland 2 * Saudi-Arabia 1 * Singapore 11 * South Africa 3 * Spain 19 * Sweden 16 * Switzerland 15 * Taiwan 11 * Turkey 4 * United Kingdom 110 * USA 1512 * USSR 2 * Yugoslavia 1 * Zimbabwe 1 * * Total number of users subscribed to the list: 2402 * Total number of countries represented: 44 (non-"concealed" only) * Total number of nodes represented: 1039 (non-"concealed" only) * ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-465. Sat 06 Jun 1992. Lines: 355 Subject: 3.465 Adjectives, Compounds Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: 03 Jun 1992 08:58:05 EDT From: Robert Beard Subject: 3.454 Adjectives 2) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 92 13:16:04 EDT From: rws@mbeya.research.att.com (Richard Sproat) Subject: _unhappier_ 3) Date: Fri, 05 Jun 92 16:40:35 EST From: Greg Stump Subject: the _unhappier_ paradox 4) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 1992 15:45 +0800 From: MATTHEWS@HKUCC.bitnet Subject: Re: Query: X-bar and VP 5) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 92 12:59:21 GMT From: Arnold D J Subject: 3.452 Query: X-bar and VP -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: 03 Jun 1992 08:58:05 EDT From: Robert Beard Subject: 3.454 Adjectives I would like to do two things in response to the Stump- Sproat debate: (1) present a simple explanation of the relation of comparison and negation and (2) take issue with Sproat's point (4), that all morphological theories render bracketing paradoxes for cases like _unhappier_. Obviously theories without bracketing have no bracketing paradoxes; the question is: do they have comparable problems. I don't see any. 1a. There are only two logically possible bracketings for _unhappier_: (a) [unhappi]er and (b) un[happier]. (a) implies the neutral, lexically negated adjective _unhappy_ is compared; (b) implies that the compared adjective _happier_ is lexically negated. (Syntactic negation is marked by the particle_not_ in English. The evidence that it is syntactic derives from the facts that _not_ (a) moves in syntax and (b) simply negates; it doesn't involve such conditioned variables as contrariness, reversivity, etc.) 1b. Comparative and Superlative forms are never lexically negated because Comparison is an inflectional category and is therefore formed after lexical (L-) derivation. Evidence: many languages have an analytical comparative, _more happy_, _less happy_, which require syntactic structure. Since inflectional rules apply in syntax (please don't risk much of your career on the assumption that it doesn't), Comparison must apply after all L-derivation is complete. It follows that *un[happier] is impos- sible for the same reason that *_unbetter_, *_unsicker_, *_unfaster_, *_untaller_, etc. are. 1c. Conclusion: The only grammatically possible bracketing for _unhappier_ is [unhappi]er], precisely what we get. Phono- logy has to work with that and, as long as we are not trying to salvage lexical phonology, it can. Given the Peripherality (Outward Sensitivity) Constraint, there are always only two ways to bracket any word and those two ways are determined by whether the affixation involves a prefix or suffix. Moreover, bracketing makes no sense at all with infixation, revowelling, stem muta- tions. How do you bracket the noun _cook_ so that the corres- pondence rules interprets it identically as _baker_? The question makes no sense. As Steve Anderson, Mark Aronoff, P. H. Matthews, myself, and many others have long argued, there is no bracketing therefore there can be no bracketing paradoxes. That is, all bracketing is predictable from the minimum definitions of the morphemes involved. 2. It is not true therefore wrong that all theories predict that _unhappier_ is a bracketing paradox and therefore produce a story for it. Lexical morphology predicts paradoxes here but Lexeme-Morpheme Base theories (LMBM) do not. The lexicon under LMBM contains all and only open-class items, i.e. N, V, A excluding pro-N, pro-V, and pro-A: the same division Garrett gets in his production model, the same division which haunts aphasio- logical studies. The Separation Hypothesis now derives from the architecture of this model and the strongest form of modularity which keeps all lexical categories and operations in the lexicon, all syntactic categories and operations in the lexicon and all morphological operations, the grammatically empty modification of lexemes conditioned by features added by lexical and syntactic operations, in an autonomous morphological spelling component. So long as derivational operations apply in the appropriate order, spelling operations--affixation, revowelling, mutation, nothing--apply blindly and come out in the correct order, stra- tally or not, this makes no difference. The data. Phonological principles alone cannot define the distribution of _-er_. Here's why: the distribution of synthetic comparision in English cannot be predicted purely on phonological principles. (What sort of natural class is "all monosyllabic stems and disyllabic stems ending on an open syllable with a light vowel" anyway?) In fact, PRODUCTIVELY, only disyllabic lexemes containing the morphemes -_y_ and -_ly_ (when used on adjectives but not adverbs: _friendlier_ but *_quicklier_) form synthetic comparatives. Phonology alone certainly does not determine that synthetic forms are allowed only if two adjectives are not compared: My car is redder than yours *My car is redder than orange My car is more red than orange So when comparative constructions arrive at Phonology, the deci- sion as to which comparative is synthetic and which, analytic has already been made and it is a syntactic and/or lexical, not phonological, decision. The question as to what kind of features condition this distinction, therefore, is wide open and clearly the lexicon and syntax are involved. If we allow morphology to handle all affixation, the prefix _un_- is simply added to the modest list of two affixes, -_y_ and -_ly_ which permit _-er_ within syllabic limits. LMBM inflection has already inserted a grammatical feature, say, [+Comparative] into Spec\A and how that feature is used, i.e. where and with what phonological substance is spelled in depends upon the morphology. The decision between /mor/ in Spec position or reading Spec and suffixing the head is the same decision involved in cliticizing the head under Anderson's (_A-Morphous Morphology_, chapter 8) combined principles of clitic-affix distribution. An autonomous morpholgy can read the phonological matrix or the grammatical representation of the lexeme, certainly its derivational history. Since both inflectional and derivational morphology is handled by the same component, there is no possibility that a marker of some lexical derivation feature will be placed outside an inflectional marker. No, I'm afraid that there are far grander differences between morphological theories than Sproat leads us to believe (see what Carstairs-McCarthy and Spencer, for example, think). -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 92 13:16:04 EDT From: rws@mbeya.research.att.com (Richard Sproat) Subject: _unhappier_ For those who care, please emend my nonsensical parenthetical to read: (Note that `very' fails for clear scalars like `all', so perhaps what is really tested by `very' is gradability rather than scalar-hood. Thanks to Gregory Ward for this and other points.) Richard Sproat Linguistics Research Department AT&T Bell Laboratories tel (908) 582-5296 600 Mountain Avenue, Room 2d-451 fax (908) 582-7308 Murray Hill, NJ 07974 rws@research.att.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Fri, 05 Jun 92 16:40:35 EST From: Greg Stump Subject: the _unhappier_ paradox The following is a reply to Richard Sproat's reply to my comment on his _unhappier_ squib (LI 23 (1992), 347-352). Responding to my question of whether the comparative form of a scalar adjective is itself necessarily scalar, Richard says I guess it rather depends upon definitions here, but if by `scalar' one means `scalar predicate' in the sense of Horn (1972) or Hirschberg (1991), then surely _unhappier_ is scalar but offers no justification for this conclusion. I think, though, that my original question is more subtle than this somewhat glib response gives it credit for being. I don't have access to Hirschberg's dissertation, but Horn's (1972) conception of scalar predicates is intuitively this: scalar predicates are predicates that designate contrasting points or intervals on some scale; thus, _warm_ and _hot_ are scalar predicates, because they designate contrasting intervals on a scale of temperature. Clearly _happy_ is scalar in this sense; but whether _happier_ is scalar in this same sense is far from clear, and it is precisely this question that my earlier posting was intended to raise. The simplest examples of scalar adjectives are gradable adjectives (i.e. those denoting properties which one may possess to a greater or lesser degree), and it is pretty clear that _happier_ isn't gradable. As an analogy, consider the following model: (i) A B C Is B any less on A's right than C is? No, because the `right of' relation is one of direction, not of distance. (One could, of course, say that C is FARTHER to the right of A than B is, but this is because _far_ interjects the parameter of distance.) Thus, in the one-dimensional model in (i), _right of_ is a non-gradable predicate; B doesn't possess the property of being on the right of A to any lesser degree than C does. Now, suppose that (i) represents three points on a one-dimensional scale of happiness (where individual A is at the point of abject sadness and individual C at that of delirious elation). On this assumption, the `happier' relation seems simply to be the analogue of the `right of' relation, again pertaining to direction but not to distance: B may be less happy than C, but it's not clear that B possesses the property of being happier than A to any lesser degree than C does; either you're happier than A or you're not. The assumption that _happier_ is non-gradable correctly predicts the ungrammaticality of expressions like *_very happier_, *_less happier_, and *_as happier as Sandy_. Note that while sentences like _C is much happier than B_ might seem to suggest that _happier_ is gradable, they are probably comparable to sentences like _C is farther to the right of A than B is_; _much_, like _far_, seems to add a gradable parameter of distance to a non-gradable parameter of direction. In and of itself, the conclusion that _happier_ isn't gradable doesn't entail that it isn't scalar, since there are scalar adjectives that aren't gradable (e.g. the adjective _universal_). There are, however, independent criteria that can be used to test the claim that _happier_ is scalar. For instance, the semantic properties of scalar predicates associated with the same scale cause them to exhibit an asymmetry with respect to contexts like `_____ if not actually _____' and `not only _____ but _____': (ii) The sandwich was warm if not actually hot. *The sandwich was hot if not actually warm. The sandwich was not only warm but hot. *The sandwich was not only hot but warm. (iii) Their performance was good if not actually excellent. *Their performance was excellent if not actually good. Their performance was not only good but excellent. *Their performance was not only excellent but good. (iv) What ensued was widespread if not actually universal pandemonium. *What ensued was universal if not actually widespread pandemonium. What ensued was not only widespread but universal pandemonium. *What ensued was not only universal but widespread pandemonium. Note, however, that _happy_ and _happier_ do not participate in these asymmetries: (v) Sandy is happier (than she was last year) if not actually happy. Sandy is happy if not actually happier (than she was last year). Sandy is not only happier (than she was last year) but happy. Sandy is not only happy but happier (than she was last year). That is, with respect to these criteria, _happier_ doesn't behave as if it were a scalar adjective associated with the same scale as _happy_. Intuitively, this makes good sense, since unlike _happy_, _happier_ doesn't clearly designate a fixed point or interval on the scale of happiness; if anything, it designates a direction on that scale. But if _happier_ isn't scalar, then Richard's claim that the structure [ un [ happi er ]] is semantically workable becomes rather hard to defend. In response to my assertion that the _unhappier_ paradox becomes completely unparadoxical in the Paradigm Function Theory advocated in my article in _Language_ 67 (1991: 675-725), Richard says The point is that, *all* analyses of bracketing paradoxes have presented what seemed to the authors at the time to be well- motivated theories wherein bracketing paradoxes ceased to be such. Indeed, it would be bizarre if things were otherwise, since presumably nobody who treats an apparently paradoxical construction wants to argue that the construction in question remains a paradox in their theory. But the point in my earlier posting is that the _un-ADJ-er_ construction doesn't actually cease to be paradoxical in the approach envisioned in Richard's squib. On the approach he advocates, _unhappier_ is given a single structural analysis (viz. [ un [ happi er ]]), valid both for phonological and for semantic purposes; by contrast, cases like _uneasier_ and _slaphappier_ each have to have two different structural analyses ([ un [ easi er ]] and [ slap [ happi er ]] for phonological purposes, but [[ un easi ] er ] and [[ slap happi ] er ] for semantic purposes). Thus, the paradox remains, though in a somewhat disguised form: despite the obvious parallelism between the three expressions, _uneasier_ and _slaphappier_ have to be analyzed differently from _unhappier_. This paradox vanishes in the Paradigm Function Theory, in which the three expressions receive a uniform analysis at all levels. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 1992 15:45 +0800 From: MATTHEWS@HKUCC.bitnet Subject: Re: Query: X-bar and VP Concerning Rick Moreau's query, the same claim about internal arguments being incorporated into compounds is made (in a finer form appealing to the thematic hierarchy) in Jane Grimshaw's recent book, "Argument Structure" which may well contain discussion of Rick's counterexamples. The solution surely has to do with the fact that examples like "man-made hill" contain passive participles. It is questionable whether "man" here is an external argument of the verb "make". In one GB account of the passive developed by Ian Roberts, the optional object of the by-phrase is an "implicit argument". Under a lexical approach to the passive, it would clearly not be an external argument. At any rate, the relevant argument structure underlying "man-made hill" is that of "hill (is) made by man" rather than that of "man makes hill." Osvaldo Jaeggli's paper on the Passive in Linguistic Inquiry (1986) deals with the status of the agentive by-phrase. IT may be that the compounding theorists would have to modify the definition of internal argument to deal with these cases. Stephen Matthews, University of Hong Kong -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 92 12:59:21 GMT From: Arnold D J Subject: 3.452 Query: X-bar and VP Some (I hope) helpful remarks for Rick Moreau: I think the reason Rick Morneau's example are not (necessarily) counter-examples to claims about how internal and external arguments operate in compounds is that the verbs that are the heads of the compounds are actually passive. These are his examples: man-made hill customer-selected colors snake-infested swamp In `man-made', you may seem to have a verb (make) getting its exeternal argument (man) inside the compound (cf `men make X'), but in fact, what you have is a passive (made), and an internal argument (made by man). This is clearest with the last example: ?snakes infest the swamp vs. the swamp is infested by/with snakes. As regards the (non-) existence of VP, and coordination facts, there has been a good deal of work in Categorial Grammar recently: Steedman's paper in Language is a starting point ( J. Steedman, "Dependency and coordination in the Grammar of Dutch and English," Language, vol. 61, pp. 523-568, 1985). --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Doug Arnold, doug@uk.ac.sx (Janet) Dept. of Language & Linguistics, doug%essex.ac.uk@ean-relay.ac.uk (ean) University of Essex, doug%essex.ac.uk@cunyvm.cuny.edu (arpa) Wivenhoe Park, doug%essex.ac.uk@ac.uk (earn) Colchester, CO4 3SQ, UK. ...!ukc!essex.ac.uk!doug (uucp) Tel: +44 206 872084 (direct) Fax: +44 206 872085 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-465. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-466. Sat 06 Jun 1992. Lines: 180 Subject: 3.466 Rules Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 1992 08:10:10 +0000 From: Dyvik@hf.uib.no Subject: 3.464 Innateness and Rules 2) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 92 17:32:03 HST From: David Stampe Subject: 3.459 Rules 3) Date: Fri, 05 Jun 92 18:24 PDT From: benji wald Subject: Re: 3.464 Innateness and Rules -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 1992 08:10:10 +0000 From: Dyvik@hf.uib.no Subject: 3.464 Innateness and Rules Vicki Fromkin gives a list of ten ill-formed constructions and comments: "The knowledge that these are ill-formed in English has nothing to do with normative rules -- just grammatical constraints." The fact that I immediately read this as a contradiction in terms indicates that some clarification of our concepts is in order. If 'normative rules' in this discussion is taken to mean 'explicitly formulated statements by prescriptive grammarians', Fromkin's statement makes sense - but that is not what I have taken the discussion to be about. Perhaps we should use the term 'prescriptive rules' for this phenomenon, and reserve the term 'norms' for the implicit (i.e., not explicitly formulated) social conventions that we have to assume in order to account for people's ability to distinguish between correct and incorrect behaviour. We should also distinguish between questions concerning these norms and questions concerning the way knowledge of them comes about and is structured in the individual. Even strictly descriptive linguists are 'normative' in the sense that they are describing a norm-based phenomenon. This does not make their task less empirical (in spite of Itkonen) - as opposed to that of the prescriptive grammarians, who try to impose would-be norms of their own or someone else's creation on us. Helge Dyvik -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 92 17:32:03 HST From: David Stampe Subject: 3.459 Rules This whole discussion of normal and abnormal data seems abnormal. Is "dog the" a noun phrase? It might happen, if you were talking about noun phrases. But who would talk about noun phrases? Niemann & Noone's _Generative description of an abnormal variety of English_ provides a formal description of the syntax of an isolated community where, due to Scandinavian influence, English sentences like "Beware of the dog" have been replaced by sentences like "Beware of dog the". Although older speakers only change the order of the definite article, Niemann & Noone note that young speakers change the order of the indefinite article as well, e.g. "Take hike a". They argue that this provides strong support for recent work in syntactic theory. They admit that their grammar occasionally fails to conform to their corpus (1) ---------------------------------------------------------------- (1) The entire corpus is available in machine readable form for a nominal license fee from the Oxford Text Hoard, who kindly granted permission to quote these examples for educational purposes, provided that no one else reads them. ---------------------------------------------------------------- e.g., EXPECTED OBSERVED cat the in hat the cat in hat the the Hague The The Hague another thing nother thing a apple an day a apple day an a B A C's A B C's Arbor Ann Ann Arbor but they convincingly dismiss these cases as performance abnormalities. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Fri, 05 Jun 92 18:24 PDT From: benji wald Subject: Re: 3.464 Innateness and Rules I missed the discussion leading up to the exchange of June 3,4 re: subject 3.459. Therefore, I am not sure exactly what is meant by 'normative' rules. However, it seems clear that it means either rules that are overtly taught, or more relevantly to the discussion, rules which discriminate between what (some) people say (not clearly distinguishing speech errors from nonstandard stigmatised forms) from notions of correctness or grammaticality (in the nonlinguistic popular sense) -- however the latter are obtained. In any case, I have to agree with Alexis' message of 4 June, that crucial decisions are made in sifting the data, and justification is not always as easy as many linguists seem to think. Vicky's suggestions of 3 June are a case in point. Without even questioning whether or not her list consist exclusively of bona fide speech errors, the METHOD itself will not allow discrimination of speech errors from stigmatised, commonly used, and grammatically constrained rule-governed behavior which result in the following in some dialects of English. 1) hold your cards where can't nobody see them 2) it don't be dark yet 3) I wouldn't did that (which can only have a habitual reading in the dialect considered here, i.e., it means "I didn't used to do that", or would you prefer "I used not to do that"? , and not "I wouldn't have done that". not to mention banalities like: 4) he ain't got none Do the same experiment as Vicky suggests with the above, and you'll get lots of agreement that there is something "wrong", "funny" and/or ungrammatical. This being the case, what does Vicky's suggestion prove? It does not distinguish speech errors from stigmatised nonstandard normative rules/grammatical constraints. The issue here is not whether or not there are speech errors, but how to develop a scientific method to distinguish them from stigmatised rule- governed forms. To show how difficult this may be, even Labov, who may have been the first to make the argument that I am calling attention to here, made a mistake when he held up the following structure as non- English, and thus he would presumably have considered it a speech error if he had encountered it: 5) anybody doesn't know that (meaning "nobody knows that") It didn't take long before he got jumped on by Irish English speakers. It turns out to be perfectly acceptable in the English spoken in Ireland. Thus, the distinction between speech errors and stigmatised norms/rules is far from obvious IN PRACTICE. The interesting questions have to do with what is a speech error when said by one speaker but not when said by another. The implication is that a speech error may anticipate linguistic change (and eventually prescriptive change). That is, change which either relaxes or adds further constraints on grammatical rules. I think Vicky would agree with this, because her most common use of speech errors is to show what they reveal about the nature of linguistic rules. Where someone may anticipate linguistic change in making a speech error, maybe we have an indication that the rule is "fragile". That is, regardless of how a particular speaker feels about the "error", the rule which makes him/her feel that way is not supported by other grammatical rules which would help it resist change. CF. the old controversy about the status of quantifiers like "every" under negation, e.g., whether "everybody doesn't know that" can mean "nobody knows that" vs. the other meaning. There are speakers who insist that only the other interpretation is acceptable, and yet have actually used the "nobody knows" in speech. Error? Who knows? Is there really a constraint, or is this an example of the limits of the depth to which "constraints" penetrate into a grammar, beyond which we just have preferred and non-preferred STRATEGIES, which might result in such reactions as "Yeah, maybe when somebody else says everybody doesn't know that, they mean nobody knows that, but when I say it I mean some do, some don't. If I meant "nobody..." I would say "nobody..." But, in the heat of conversation, would this speaker do so? And if not, is it a grammatical error for the speaker, or "just" a strategic error, in terms of the speaker's (overtly?) preferred strategies? Finally, with regard to the question of whether linguistic capacity is something specific or a mainfestation of something else, the errors or anticipations of change discussed above may be quite different from other kinds of errors which "noone" would dispute or expect to become "norms" in some community, e.g., long-range metatheses like "a cuff of coppee" -- but the blends depending on lexical constraints are more problematic. Most of Vicky's examples either are, or are intended to be, of this type. It is not clear to me that long-distance metatheses are motivated by any more of an innate linguistic capacity than typing letters in the wrong sequence or putting the jelly on before the peanut butter. The line between strategies and grammar is possibly the best place to look for innate linguistic capacities. Blends may be unclear because they have different possible motivations, both linguistic and non-linguistic. Does this make any sense? -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-466. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-467. Sat 06 Jun 1992. Lines: 160 Subject: 3.467 FYI: Idioms, Harris, Tags, OULIPO Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 92 16:44 -0300 From: WTGORDON@AC.DAL.CA Subject: Re: 3.451 Queries: presupposition, dialect, idioms, etc. 2) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 92 13:31:37 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: correction of Harris date 3) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 92 13:31:29 PDT From: rubba@bend.UCSD.EDU (Johanna Rubba) Subject: joke of the week 4) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 92 22:49:22 CDT From: Eric Schiller Subject: Re: 3.461 Queries: Chinese, Lenneberg, Tags 5) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 92 12:41 BST From: Lou Burnard Subject: RE: 3.450 OULIPO 6) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 92 08:52:01 MET DST From: amblard@imag.fr (Paul Amblard) Subject: Re: 3.450 OULIPO -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 92 16:44 -0300 From: WTGORDON@AC.DAL.CA Subject: Re: 3.451 Queries: presupposition, dialect, idioms, etc. Re: bibliography of idioms--see my Semantics: A Bibliography 1965-1978 (1980) and Semantics: A Bibliography 1979-1985 (1987). I have an update to the end of 1991 in press and will send hard copy of the idiom section, if you will supply your address. W.T. Gordon/WTGORDON@ac.dal.ca -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 92 13:31:37 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: correction of Harris date I have been of two minds whether to post this correction, as it isn't of substantial importance. I confounded the year of Harris's birth with the story about his choice of name at age 4. I should have verified, I can plead only that my extracurricular writing is done in slices of time after I put the children to bed and after I should have put myself to bed. Harris was born in 1909 and was (as Ellen said) 82. Bruce Nevin bn@bbn.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 92 13:31:29 PDT From: rubba@bend.UCSD.EDU (Johanna Rubba) Subject: joke of the week This from an ad in the back section of the NY Times magazine for one of those learn-French-by cassette-outfits -- "We offer introductory and advanced materials in most of the world's languages: French, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, Greek, Russian, Arabic, Korean, and others. 215 courses in 76 languages." Audio-Forum, Guilford CT. Their number is 213-453-9794 if anyone would like to offer a small correction. Jo Rubba, UC Riverside/UC San Diego -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 92 22:49:22 CDT From: Eric Schiller Subject: Re: 3.461 Queries: Chinese, Lenneberg, Tags Tag Questions: As always, when dealing with English, Jim McCawley's Syntactic Phenomena of English (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press) is a worthwhile source of data, analysis, and references. Although I do not do transformational syntax, I use it as a constant challenge. In each chapter there are dozens of cases where I have to ask myself: can my framework handle that? It is an excellent tonic! Eric Schiller University of Chicago schiller@sapir.uchicago.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 92 12:41 BST From: Lou Burnard Subject: RE: 3.450 OULIPO How nice to see Linguist discussing some of my favourite authors for a change instead of ranting on about its own identity and othger professional anxieties. Has anyone else come across Stefan Themerson? His London-based Gabberbochus Press (the name is supposedly Latin for 'Jabberwock') was for a long time the only publisher of Jarry's work in English translation, which I always imagine allowed it to finance the publication of Themerson's own bizarre novels, two of which (Bayamus and the Theatre of Semantic Poetry) are distinctly OULIPesque in inspiration and achievement. Furthermore, may I take this opportunity to announce the availability of an electronic version of Queneau's Exercices de Style from the Oxford Text Archive? By one of those strange coincidences, I had been working on it for an entirely other reason (the preparation of a demonstration French text using draft TEI recommendations) when this notice appeared. As previously announced here, you can access the OTA by ftp at black.ox.ac.uk [129.67.1.165]. The Queneau text is in directory \ota\french\ and, although not yet finally validated and checked, is worth a look if you're interested in problems of text encoding, though I say it myself. Lou Burnard -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 92 08:52:01 MET DST From: amblard@imag.fr (Paul Amblard) Subject: Re: 3.450 OULIPO Reponse au courrier suivant de The Linguist List en date du 2 Jun : * Objet : "3.450 OULIPO" About OULIPO and Raymond QUENEAU, do not forget to read his arithmetical works : Sur les suites s-additives, Journal of combinatorial theory (A) 12, 31-71 (1972) ed :academic press,inc. -- Paul AMBLARD L.G.I. I.M.A.G. BP 53X F 38041 GRENOBLE Cedex Tel (33) 76514600 ext 5144 amblard@imag.fr -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-467. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-468. Sat 06 Jun 1992. Lines: 56 Subject: 3.468 Job: Applied Linguistics Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: 4 June 1992, 08:45:27 CST From: Geoffrey.S.Nathan.GA3662.at.SIUCVMB@tamvm1.tamu.edu Subject: Last minute Position -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: 4 June 1992, 08:45:27 CST From: Geoffrey.S.Nathan.GA3662.at.SIUCVMB@tamvm1.tamu.edu Subject: Last minute Position Please note the early application deadline on the following: SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY AT CARBONDALE Temporary Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics, effective August 1992. Applicants should have a strong background in Applied Linguistics with a TEFL/TESL focus and will be expected to teach a variety of courses within the department's M.A. programs in EFL and Applied Linguistics, and B.A. program in Linguistics. Candidates with specializations in Classroom Research, Discourse Analysis or Pragmatics are preferred. Preference will be given to those who have completed all requirements for the PhD by the time of employment. Applications will be accepted until the position is filled, but primary consideration will be given to those who submit complete applications including letter of application, curriculum vitae, and three letters of reference before July 1, 1992 to: Chair, Search Committee Department of Linguistics Southern Illinois University at Carbondale Carbondale, IL, 62901 Telephone: (618) 536-3385 E-mail: GA3606@SIUCVMB.SIU.EDU Fax: (618) 457-4356 SIUC is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer Women and Minorities are encouraged to apply. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-468. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-469. Sat 06 Jun 1992. Lines: 90 Subject: 3.469 X-Bar and VP's Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 1992 11:44 PDT From: Scott Delancey Subject: Re: Query: X-bar and VP 2) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 92 11:25:57 CDT From: Eric Schiller Subject: Re: Query: X-bar and VP -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 1992 11:44 PDT From: Scott Delancey Subject: Re: Query: X-bar and VP Responding to Rick Morneau: The suggestion that the verb is the head of its clause and all its arguments codependent is the basis of dependency representation, as originated (as far as I know ?) by L. Te`sniere, and used more recently by R. Hudson, John Anderson, and others. I'm not aware that Jackendoff ever pursued such a suggestion, but in any case it predates his birth. Scott DeLancey -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 92 11:25:57 CDT From: Eric Schiller Subject: Re: Query: X-bar and VP If you are seriously interested in getting the GB/Barriers/Economy/ Minimalist particular version of X-bar to work, you should look at Lieber's new book "Deconstructing Morphology", University of Chicago Press 1992. That said, I think there are a huge number of problems with her analysis, not all of them limited to the problems of thje framework as a whole. I am working on a review and may post bits as I go along. But don't lose sleep over the fact that you are befuddled. The research program of the principles and parameters framework ios is not really geared toward producing complete and coherent analysis of real language facts. The judgements of English seem to change frequently, and those in Lasnik's recent LI article were rejected by virtually everyone we have checked with here at UC. The notion that case and theta theory apply accross some sort of bridge between syntax and morphology is one which needs better working out. Morphology played a significant role in Syntactic Structures but disappeared from the framework during the 1960's and 1970's. It has come back with a passion, but one should expect a normal amount of meandering before any consensus is reached. The Principles and Parameters framewkork is intended to encompass a wide range of language facts, and correspondingly has more problematic areas than frameworks which focus on a single aspect of language, such as RG. Although I don't agree with most of the mechanisms they employ, being an Autolexicalist, I certainly appreciate the problem. Morphology does seem to have a lot of superficial resemblance to syntax, but I think that it is wrongheaded to employ a model identical to syntax, as Lieber does. It is a good hypothesis, but, like the Projection Principle, recently abandoned, it will eventually fall in the face of overwhelming problems with the data. I will not post a lot ov verbiage here trying to prove the point, but will end with a simple bit of food for thought: Why do we always hyphenate material which would be syntactically ill-formed but which we seem to find OK as morphology, e.g. non-head final prenominal modifiers, phrasal compounds (devil-may- care). I think it is an indication that our rules for morphology are not the same as our rules for syntax. Eric Schiller University of Chicago -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-469. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-470. Sat 06 Jun 1992. Lines: 177 Subject: 3.470 Queries: Lx and Lit, Software, Nat. Phonology, SF Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 92 16:29:40 CDT From: Pamela A Downing Subject: Linguistics and Literature 2) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 92 16:38:10 CDT From: Pamela A Downing Subject: Software 3) Date: Thu, 28 May 1992 3:40:27 -0400 (EDT) From: GIVEN@sbchm1.chem.sunysb.edu Subject: 3.441 Natural Phonology? 4) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 1992 00:19:04 -0400 From: zgilbert@epas.utoronto.ca (Zvi Gilbert) Subject: Science Fiction and Linguistics -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 92 16:29:40 CDT From: Pamela A Downing Subject: Linguistics and Literature I am scheduled to teach a seminar on "Linguistic Perspectives on Literature" for our fairly cutting edge English Department graduate students next spring. Never having taught a pure stylistics course before, I'm wondering what other folks out there have used as readings for similar classes. I'd greatly appreciate your suggestions, and I'll summarize for the list. Thanks. Pamela Downing Dept. of English and Comparative Literature UWM P.O. Box 413 Milwaukee, Wi. 53201 e-mail: downing@convex.csd.uwm.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 92 16:38:10 CDT From: Pamela A Downing Subject: Software Yes, another software question. I have a PC with Windows 3.1 and WP for Windows, and an HP IIIP printer. What's the best way to get all the IPA symbols and American variants (for English primarily)? I've looked at the new Adobe Stone phonetic font, but I'm irritated about having to switch between the IPA and Alternative fonts, or use the overstrike feature, to get all the symbols I need to keep my Intro students from flipping out because my symbols don't match those in their books. Any other suggestions from satisfied users? Also, does anyone know of software capable of producing Japanese kanji with the configuration of hard and software listed above? Heartfelt thanks! Pamela Downing Dept. of English and Comparative Literature UWM P.O. Box 413 Milwaukee, Wi. 53201 e-mail: downing@convex.csd.uwm.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Thu, 28 May 1992 3:40:27 -0400 (EDT) From: GIVEN@sbchm1.chem.sunysb.edu Subject: 3.441 Natural Phonology? NATURAL PHONOLOGY? I was delighted to read here that natural phonology still lives! I thought the (CLS Parasession on the Interplay of Phonology, Morphology and Syntax) effort by Donegan and Stampe to integrate phonology and syntax was rich with possibilities. Did natural phonology regroup after 1980's attacks by formalists (I have in mind, e.g. those attacks summarized in S.R. Anderson, "Phonology in the Twentieth Century", p. 345 ff. I would be grateful to learn of a recent summary of the status of that discussion (and that of natural phonology.) In particular, the role of phonology in any putative "bootstrap" mechanism for the early acquisition of language (such as that discussed by S. Pinker et. al.) seems poorly understood - are there any psycholinguistics or developmental psychologists that think natural phonology is interesting enough to apply it to studies of the acquisition of language? Dan Dennett, in his book on consciousness, trades heavily on what used to be called the emergent nature of language - the fact that a child's talking or lalling to itself (and listening) is a highly non-trivial encounter. Can this encounter constrain "universal natural processes" and thus contribute to the acquisition of language? J.A. Given SUNY Stony Brook -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 1992 00:19:04 -0400 From: zgilbert@epas.utoronto.ca (Zvi Gilbert) Subject: Science Fiction and Linguistics On the Linguist List, Kean Kaufmann writes: "Science fiction was also a significant influence, though I'd rather call it 'speculative fiction' and reserve the modifier 'science' for stuff with equations in the appendices. For instance: Samuel R. Delany's incredible novel _Babel-17_, which takes the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and runs with it. "Has anyone else thought of an undergrad course on "Linguistics through Fiction"? Since so many linguists seem to have gotten a boost from s.f. (whatever you want the initials to stand for), and since there are so many works of s.f. dealing directly or indirectly with linguistics, I'd imagine such a class would be ideal for recruitment purposes. Kean Kaufmann (kaufmann@acsu.buffalo.edu) I have done some reading and research with regards to science fiction and linguistics... I gave an informal talk on it once. Besides the connections that have been discussed on the list in terms of them both being fields "between" in some sense the sciences and the humanities, there is another place of overlap, as Kaufmann mentioned, where speculative fiction (SF) meets linguistics. There are some very interesting works of SF out there that use linguistic themes, or have linguistic elements in their world creation. Delany's _Babel-17_, as Kaufmann mentioned, is an example of the former, while Frank Herbert's _Dune_ is an example of the latter, with carefully worked out historical derivations of Arabic religious language set thousands of years in the future. If anyone is interested in seeing my (admittedly incomplete) list of such SF books, please e-mail me. Two books for anyone interested in the linguistics in SF: Delany, Samuel R. The Jewel-Hinged Jaw: Notes on the Language of Science Fiction. --Contains some essays that talk about the way sentences work in SF as distinct from other kinds of writing. The backbone structure of the language of SF... an impressive early critical achievment. (Professor Delany teaches at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, as well as writing SF and fantasy.) Meyers, Walter E. Aliens and Linguists: Language Study and Science Fiction. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1980 --A scholarly work analyzing the linguistics in SF... how plausable it is, frequent errors that SF authors make when talking about linguistics, and examples of good linguistics. --Zvi Gilbert zgilbert@epas.utoronto.ca @epas.toronto.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-470. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-471. Sat 06 Jun 1992. Lines: 263 Subject: 3.471 Adjectives and Morphology Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 92 12:26:51 CDT From: Eric Schiller Subject: Re: 3.465 Adjectives, Compounds 2) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 92 20:21:58 EDT From: rws@mbeya.research.att.com (Richard Sproat) Subject: even more _unhappier_ -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 92 12:26:51 CDT From: Eric Schiller Subject: Re: 3.465 Adjectives, Compounds Adjectives: Robert Beard writes: "1b. Comparative and Superlative forms are never lexically negated because Comparison is an inflectional category and is therefore formed after lexical (L-) derivation. Evidence: many languages have an analytical comparative, _more happy_, _less happy_, which require syntactic structure. Since inflectional rules apply in syntax (please don't risk much of your career on the assumption that it doesn't), Comparison must apply after all L-derivation is complete. It follows that *un[happier] is impos- sible for the same reason that *_unbetter_, *_unsicker_, *_unfaster_, *_untaller_, etc. are." I will continue to risk my career by taking the position that morphology is morphology and syntax is syntax, and that inflection is morphology and not syntax. In a non-derivational system such as Autolexical Syntax there is no rule ordering, either explicit and stated as applying between components, or implicit and covert. There is much data in this set of posts, and I am not going to try to deal with it all in a quick note. But once again I find that major claims are made on the basis of data which involves grammaticality judgements which are by no means universal. Not only do I find My car is redder than orange. acceptable but if there is any oddity for other speakers I suspect it is semantic, since much money was spent on convincing us that our clothes could become Whiter than white! by using a certain detergent. My point is not that the data is flawed, or, as some would claim, grammaticality judgements are useless, but rather that theories which are built upon these judgements must have the flexibility to allow for the kinds of variations we find, and not insist that dialects which violate these supposedly universal rules are somehow "abnormal". If a theory can account for variation, either by using parameters or by keeping variation in the lexicon, fine. But I do find it uncomfortable to hear papers which imply that as a speaker of what might be described as a liberal New York dialect (both readings fine!), I am some sort of freak of nature with a defective language mechanism! Eric Schiller University of Chicago Note: this is not directed at any particular framework. In fact, my initial thoughts along these lines were inspired by Jim McCawley's syntax courses as a 1st year student at Chicago many years ago. Our judgements rarely matched on the complicated data, and I was constantly trying to think up derivations which allowed for my dialect. To the credit of his analytical framework, I usually could, though not always... -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 92 20:21:58 EDT From: rws@mbeya.research.att.com (Richard Sproat) Subject: even more _unhappier_ In response to Greg Stump's and Robert Beard's postings on the _unhappier_ issue, I want to clarify a few issues. First, in response to Greg, I didn't think I was being glib in my response to the issue of whether _happier_ is scalar. Rather, I was trying to convey the sense of the term `scalar' that I was assuming. Quite possibly I wasn't successful in that attempt; I am perfectly prepared to accept the possibility that my assumption was too simplistic and ultimately wrong; and I fully accept the further possibility that I missed various subtle issues in Greg's response on this point. But by presenting a simple answer, I do not think I was being glib. And I agree that Greg's new examples do seem to suggest that _happier_ should not be considered scalar, at least not clearly so. As to whether this all means that my analysis of _unhappier_ becomes unworkable, I can only repeat for a third time my other piece of evidence, namely that contrary _un-_ means roughly the same as _the opposite of_, and that _John is happier than Bill, whereas Sam is the opposite (of happier than Bill))_ -- where _the opposite_ must presumably be `bracketed' outside _happier_, means that Sam is unhappier than Bill. In other words, the bracketing I proposed for the semantic interpretation of _[un [happier]]_ is at least consistent with the possibility of interpreting _un-_ in the strongest way possible, i.e., with the sense of _opposite of_. In response to my quibble about use of phrases like ``cease to be paradoxical'' Greg has the following to say: On the approach [Sproat] advocates, _unhappier_ is given a single structural analysis (viz. [ un [ happi er ]]), valid both for phonological and for semantic purposes; by contrast, cases like _uneasier_ and _slaphappier_ each have to have two different structural analyses ([ un [ easi er ]] and [ slap [ happi er ]] for phonological purposes, but [[ un easi ] er ] and [[ slap happi ] er ] for semantic purposes). Thus, the paradox remains, though in a somewhat disguised form: despite the obvious parallelism between the three expressions, _uneasier_ and _slaphappier_ have to be analyzed differently from _unhappier_. But note that my squib did not say that all three *have* to be analyzed differently: one would still get the right interpretation for _unhappier_ assuming the semantic bracketing _[[un happi]er]_, and if one can force that bracketing -- something Pesetsky was not able to do, for example, but something that would follow from Beard's points (see below) -- then there would be no problem. All I suggested was that it was not necessary to assume that bracketing in order to get the right interpretation. The problem with my assuming such complete freedom of brackeing, as I conceded in the previous posting, is that one could not explain why _uneasier_ does not mean the same as _harder_ (consistent with the bracketing _[un [easier]]_), but only has the interpretation consistent with the bracketing _[[uneasy] er]_. I concur that this is a problem if one does not assume that, one way or another, _-er_ must be interpreted `outside' _un-_; and however one chooses to derive this constraint would also necessarily derive _[[unhappy]er]_ as the only possible bracketing. Fine. Point taken. But if one *were* to allow the other bracketing, then I would still derive the correct interpretation for _unhappier_ (assuming my semantic analysis holds). Turning now to Beard's points, I agree that the assumption that inflectional rules apply in syntax and therefore after the application of derivational rules effectively rules out _[un [happier]]_ as a possible bracketing. Of course, I had thought the jury was still out on the issue of whether in fact inflection applies `in the syntax', at least on the more obvious interpretations of that phrase: presumably the fact that Anderson, Zwicky and others argue so strongly that it does is some indication that there must somewhere be a contingent of morphologists who aren't convinced. But as Beard suggests I won't ``risk much of [my] career on the assumption'' that inflection does not apply in the syntax (an odd injunction, since it is possible to be both well-respected and much-cited despite having made claims that are far more transparently false than that). Indeed, I will sidestep the issue slightly and say that I don't actually find very interesting the question of whether inflection should be separated from derivation or whether one should apply in the syntax and the other in the lexicon, but that I am perfectly prepared to believe that there are morphological operations like comparative -- call them inflectional if you wish -- that are sensitive to particular syntactic contexts and that therefore must apply after lexical operations like _un-_ affixation, which do not have the same kinds of syntactic sensitivity. In other words, I concede Beard's point. (Still I am puzzled by Beard's claim that "phonology has to work with [the structure _[[unhappy]er]_] and, as long as we are not trying to salvage lexical phonology, it can", since the paradoxicality of _unhappier_ never had anything to do with any of the issues raised by lexical phonology, unlike examples such as _ungrammaticality_.) And I think Beard's claim about the affixes with which productive `lexical' comparatives may be formed is an excellent one. It is certainly true that, given that the only disyllabic adjectives that productively allow _-er_ and _-est_ are (somehow) derived with _-y_ and _-ly_, adding _un-_ to the list does not cost much. In other words, _-er_ and _-est_ will attach productively to monosyllables, plus any monosyllables that (somehow) end in _-y_, _-ly_ or begin with _un-_. It's not clear that this is any more esthetically pleasing a solution than the claim that _-er_/_-est_ attaches to "all monosyllabic stems and disyllabic stems ending on an open syllable with a light vowel", which Beard dismisses, but at the very least it may not be any more costly. Still, I don't find everything that Beard says to be equally agreeable. First of all, I don't know if the differences between morphological theories are ``grander'' than I led people to believe: indeed, I wasn't presuming to lead people to believe anything about morphological theories in the large. And I don't think I said and I certainly did not mean that bracketing paradoxes are literally that -- *bracketing* paradoxes -- in all theories of morphology. All I said was that in all approaches to morphology where people have treated bracketing paradoxes _qua_ bracketing paradoxes, the authors have attempted to argue that their solution renders the constructions non-paradoxical, and that IN THOSE THEORIES WHERE ONE AT FIRST GLANCE SEEMS TO HAVE A PARADOX, the solution has always involved two levels of structure, or two levels of analysis. Of course if you have a theory where words don't have bracketings or anything equivalent, then none of this is an issue. Fine. But in theories where words *do* have bracketings, bracketing `paradoxes' are not a problem as long as one can motivate two levels of analysis at which these words have representations. Beard also asks a more pointed question about the viability of the notion that words have bracketings: it makes no sense, he claims, to say that one can bracket a word derived by infixation, revowelling, stem mutations, or (I infer) similar operations. The simple response to that idea is to assume, following various people such as Marantz, Lieber (i.e., her work on autosegmental morphology, and also her latest book), McCarthy and Prince, and others that apparently non-concatenative morphology can be understood if instead of mere concatenation, one allows into the inventory of options for the phonological spell out of morphology (its exponence, if you prefer) other kinds of autosegmental associations. Then the only difference between English prefixation and Tagalog infixation, for example, would be at the level of phonological spell out, not at the level of real morphological representation. I try to make exactly this point in my book _Morphology_and_Computation_ (1992 MIT Press), but other earlier work (including my own) has expressed this view. So while one may not, for various reasons, be satisfied with this answer, at the very least the idea of providing a bracketing for a morphological construct which on the surface involves, say, infixation is not as non-sensical as Beard implies. As for _cook_ and _baker_, as Beard contends, it probably doesn't make sense to assume parallel bracketings. But this seems like a desirable result, since the relationship between _cook_ (noun) and _cook_ (verb) is different from the relationship between _baker_ and _bake_ in one regard: while _baker_ seems to be able to assign _bake_'s arguments to an NP -- _baker of French pastries_ -- cook cannot: *_cook of French cuisine_. Zero-derived deverbal nouns (putting myself at some risk by using the term `zero-derived') usually don't seem to be able to assign the verb's roles -- at least not with _of_ complements -- and perhaps they should be formally distinguished from overtly derived forms like _baker_. To summarize this necessarily rather long-winded response: 1. Beard and Stump both present good reasons for thinking that the bracketing of _unhappier_ must be _[[un happi] er]_ after all. 2. Nonetheless, and noting Stump's points about scalarity, there is still some evidence that _unhappier_ should be interpreted correctly, even with the other bracketing -- and hence from a purely semantic point of view, it wasn't a particularly convincing example of a bracketing paradox in the first place. 3. There was some misunderstanding of what I actually said in my previous message, which I hope I have clarified. 4. Some of Beard's objections to bracketing-based theories of morphology should not be taken uncritically. Richard Sproat Linguistics Research Department AT&T Bell Laboratories tel (908) 582-5296 600 Mountain Avenue, Room 2d-451 fax (908) 582-7308 Murray Hill, NJ 07974 rws@research.att.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-471. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-472. Tue 09 Jun 1992. Lines: 393 Subject: 3.472 Comparatives Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 92 18:17:32 HST From: David Stampe Subject: 3.465 Adjectives, Compounds 2) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 92 20:03:26 METDST From: Jacob Hoeksema Subject: Re: 3.471 Adjectives and Morphology 3) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 1992 11:22-0400 From: Allan C. Wechsler Subject: 3.471 Adjectives and Morphology 4) Date: 9 Jun 1992 11:00:35 +1200 From: Carstairs-McCarthy Subject: _unhappier_ etc. 5) Date: Tue, 09 Jun 92 11:56:35 EST From: mark Subject: Re 3.465 Adjectives 6) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 1992 11:22-0400 From: Allan C. Wechsler Subject: 3.471 Adjectives and Morphology -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 92 18:17:32 HST From: David Stampe Subject: 3.465 Adjectives, Compounds Regarding stems that can take the English morphological comparative, Robert Beard asks: What sort of natural class is "all monosyllabic stems and disyllabic stems ending on an open syllable with a light vowel" anyway? It is the class of stems which, with unaccented -er is added to them, are pronounceable as one beat ("measure", "accent", etc.) in English. English resists more than three syllables per beat (a musical triplet). A larger number may be suffered (classifica tory, labiali zation) if there is no alternative, but not gladly. David Stampe , Dept. of Linguistics, Univ. of Hawaii/Manoa, Honolulu HI 96822 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 92 20:03:26 METDST From: Jacob Hoeksema Subject: Re: 3.471 Adjectives and Morphology The current discussion on Linguist on the proper treatment of un-comparatives raises a question which I think has not been addressed so far: Why is it that comparatives such as 'unhappier', 'uneasier' and the like are so exceedingly rare? While I do not have an answer to this question, I think it is relevant for the debate at hand. In an 8-million+ word corpus of English texts, I found more than 14,000 tokens of comparatives, not a single one of which was of the form 'un-A-er'. For three items with high frequency in the corpus, 'easy', 'happy', and 'likely', I counted the following numbers of occurrences (for 'easy', I also counted the relevant numbers for its antonym 'difficult'): 1. Easy. easy: 798 easier: 334 more easy: 1 less easy: 1 uneasy: 30 uneasier: 0 more uneasy: 2 less uneasy: 1 difficult: 798 -- more difficult: 60 less difficult: 1 2. Happy happy: 994 happier: 37 more happy: 3 less happy: 1 unhappy: 122 unhappier: 0 more unhappy:0 less unhappy: 0 3. Likely likely: 1082 likelier: 1 more likely: 143 unlikely: 256 unlikelier: 0 more unlikely: 2 It is clear from these data that there is a great resistance to use comparatives of un-adjectives. The data for 'difficult' show (and other data could be added here) that this resistance does not generally concern the "negative" member of a pair of antonyms, but more likely precisely the class of un-adjectives. A comparison of happy/easy and likely shows that the results are comparable for forms that favor a morphological comparative and those that favor a syntactic comparative. If this is so, what causes it? Here, a number of answers could be given, depending on your general position in the Sproat/Stump debate. Let me sketch a few, and also indicate what my position in this debate is. A. If un-A-er derives from A-er by un-prefixation (Sproat's suggestion) then one could say that un- does not like to attach to comparatives (although it CAN, given that 'unhappier' etc are not ungrammatical, just rarely used). This would put the blame on 'un-'. However, the numbers for 'more un-A' are also quite low, which would then call for a separate explanation. B. The old phonological story: -er only attaches to short adjectives; un-adjectives are too long. This, however, fails to explain why some forms are impossible (such as '*acceptabler') while the un-A-er forms are grammatical but avoided. It also does not tell us why the periphrastic or syntactic comparative is rare. C. There is a resistance to forming comparatives of un-adjectives (both of the form un-A-er and more-un-A). If this is correct, then un-A-er forms must be derived from un-A, rather than A-er. For now, I would consider this the most likely option, and thus reject Sproat's interesting suggestion, although I don't know what causes the resistance. Maybe someone can enlighten me here. Some final points: 1. Litotes. If un- is the outermost operator in un-A-er formations, one would expect to find un-A-er forms in the well-known 'not-un-A' construction (cf. a not unfriendly gesture, a not unimportant remark). However, this does not seem to be the case: *a not unhappier fellow than him, *a not unlikelier outcome than this one. (Where the result is better, as in _The outcome was not unlikelier_, we clearly deny something, rather than weakly assert something, as in a regular litotes case like _The outcome was not unexpected_.) Again, this pleads against treating un- here as the outer affix. 2. Actual forms. As far as I can see, un-A-er is possible only if un-A is possible. If un- is prefixed to a comparative, one might also expect to find cases where un-A does not exist. On the other hand, if un-A-er is derived from un-A, then this follows. 3. Gradability. One might also use exclamative sentences to test for gradability. Compare: Boy, is she smart! and *Boy, is she asian/unmarried/presbyterian ! or: What a smart/*presbyterian guy ! At least according to this test, comparatives are not gradable: *Boy is she smarter! *What a smarter guy! ------------ Jack Hoeksema University of Groningen -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 1992 11:22-0400 From: Allan C. Wechsler Subject: 3.471 Adjectives and Morphology I confess that I don't understand many of the technical (and, I suspect, ideological) issues in this debate about "unhappier". Still, I think there is a misunderstanding developing about the example (1) ? My car is redder than orange. Robert Beard stars (1) unambiguously, while Eric Schiller says it is completely acceptable to him, and cites as a comparable example (2) [Your clothes will become] whiter than white. which I imagine we all accept, if only due to repeated inoculation. But I suspect that Beard and Schiller are attempting to get two different readings of (1): (1a) * My car is redder than [it is] orange. (1b) My car is redder than [the color] orange [is]. In (1a), which I think is the reading Beard tried unsuccessfully to get, "orange" is an adjective, while in (1b) it is a noun. My intuition is that (1b) is parallel to (2), and when I try to read (2) as parallel to (1a), I have to reject it. I don't want to speak for Beard, but I think his point is that the "it is" can be deleted from (3a) My car is more red than it is orange to get (3b) My car is more red than orange without changing meaning; but "it is" cannot be deleted from (4) My car is redder than it is orange to get (1) without changing meaning. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: 9 Jun 1992 11:00:35 +1200 From: Carstairs-McCarthy Subject: _unhappier_ etc. Can I add my pennyworth to the debate between Sproat and others? Much of the puzzlement over bracketing paradoxes stems from the assumption that, if a morphologically complex word has a meaning which is not plainly idiosyncratic or opaque, then that meaning must be derivable from its morphological composition fairly directly. But this neglects the factor of lexical-semantic pressure (or, in some cases, inflectional-morphological pressure) to supply a word(-form) with a certain meaning, by hook or by crook, no matter how it is formed. For example, if one tries to derive the meaning of _electorate_ and _constituency_ just from their morphological components, one misses the fact that there is lexical-semantic pressure to provide a word which means 'geographical area relevant for legislative electoral purposes'. Apart from any other meanings they have, _electorate_ and _constituency_ realise this meaning in New Zealand and Britain respectively. The fact that, from the point of view of its morphological composition, _electorate_ especially seems more or less appropriate for this meaning is mnemonically useful, perhaps, but not essential - contrast the Canadian equivalent term _riding_, which is quite opaque. Similarly, there is pressure (whether we call it lexical or inflectional doesn't matter) to provide morphological comparatives, if possible, for _unhappy_ and _uneasy_. And, given the existence of _happier_ and _easier_, _unhappier_ and _uneasier_ are obvious candidates to do the job, irrespective of whether their internal bracketing 'fits' this meaning exactly. My account here is analogous to Spencer's (1988) account of _nuclear physicist_ etc. We need a term for 'someone who does nuclear physics', and in using this term we use a mnemonically appropriate one without bothering about its bracketing. I am not suggesting that all bracketing paradoxes or morphosemantic mismatches involve lexical semantic pressures of this kind, but I suspect many of them do. I am also not suggesting (a` la Anderson and Beard) that word-internal bracketings don't exist. What I *am* suggesting, though, is that, even if such bracketings do exist, they can easily be overridden by lexical-semantic pressures in determining a word's meaning; also that morphologists need to pay more attention to lexical semantic relationships - and not just ones which are mirrored fairly directly in word-shape. Some relevant references: Carstairs, A. 1988. Some implications of phonologically conditioned suppletion. Yearbook of Morphology 1, 67-94. [On 'meaning-driven' versus 'expression-driven' morphology.] Spencer, A. 1988. Bracketing paradoxes and the English lexicon. Lg 64, 663-82. Carstairs-McCarthy, A. 1992. Current morphology. London: Routledge. [Pages 47-51, 92-7] Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5) Date: Tue, 09 Jun 92 11:56:35 EST From: mark Subject: Re 3.465 Adjectives Two comments, one on Beard/Schiller and one on Beard/Sproat. Eric Schiller disputes Robert Beard's starring of My car is redder than orange. >From reading the surrounding text in each of their postings, it is clear that they are taking two different readings of this string. Beard's starred reading is a paraphrase of (*B) My car's color is closer to red than to orange. while Schiller's acceptable reading is a paraphrase of (S) My car's color is closer to red than orange is. To express the distinction graphically, consider a scale of hue. (m is "the color of my car"). The unacceptable reading (*B) looks like this: (*B') R m O (distance mR < distance mO) The acceptable reading (S) looks like this: (S') R --------m--------- O (mR < OR; m can be anywhere in the dashed range) The geometry also points out an alternative interpretation of (S): (S") m R O (mR < OR; R is between m and O) In this interpretation, the car may be a purplish-red, which the speaker asserts is more like (an "ideal") red than (an "ideal") orange is. I agree with both Beard and Schiller: I find reading (*B) unacceptable and reading (S) OK. I'm happier with (S), though, if there's emphatic stress on "redder" than if there isn't: "My car is REDDER than orange." I think I could also accept (S) for geometry (S"), the purplish-red car that is closer to red on one side than orange is on the other side. For what it's worth, I don't like reading (*B) for geometry (S") any more than I like it for geometry (*B'). -- At this point I'm getting scanted out on the variations, so I'd better drop the subject while I'm still a native speaker. * * * On Beard and Sproat re "cook" vs. "baker": My first reaction to (1) cook of French cuisine in the context of deverbal nouns and their possible arguments, was "ugh! unacceptable". Then came the double-take: "yes, that IS OK"; and then the synthesis: "But it's not an argument of the noun: it works the same way as (2) chef of French cuisine does." IOW [in other words], the "of" in the acceptable readings of (1) and (2) doesn't serve the same function as the "of" in (3) baker of French pastries which governs an underlying object; rather, in (1) and (2) the "of" is a looser connector, to which I don't think we can assign a relation at any level lower than semantics. In short, with a brief lemma I agree with Sproat on these judgements. Mark A. Mandel Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 965-5200 320 Nevada St. : Newton, Mass. 02160, USA -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 1992 11:22-0400 From: Allan C. Wechsler Subject: 3.471 Adjectives and Morphology I confess that I don't understand many of the technical (and, I suspect, ideological) issues in this debate about "unhappier". Still, I think there is a misunderstanding developing about the example (1) ? My car is redder than orange. Robert Beard stars (1) unambiguously, while Eric Schiller says it is completely acceptable to him, and cites as a comparable example (2) [Your clothes will become] whiter than white. which I imagine we all accept, if only due to repeated inoculation. But I suspect that Beard and Schiller are attempting to get two different readings of (1): (1a) * My car is redder than [it is] orange. (1b) My car is redder than [the color] orange [is]. In (1a), which I think is the reading Beard tried unsuccessfully to get, "orange" is an adjective, while in (1b) it is a noun. My intuition is that (1b) is parallel to (2), and when I try to read (2) as parallel to (1a), I have to reject it. I don't want to speak for Beard, but I think his point is that the "it is" can be deleted from (3a) My car is more red than it is orange to get (3b) My car is more red than orange without changing meaning; but "it is" cannot be deleted from (4) My car is redder than it is orange to get (1) without changing meaning. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-472. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-473. Tue 09 Jun 1992. Lines: 209 Subject: 3.473 Rules, Innateness Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 06 Jun 92 11:16 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: 3.466 Rules 2) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 1992 9:55:56 GMT From: MCCONVELL_P@DARWIN.NTU.EDU.AU Subject: Rules: abnormal constructions 3) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 92 16:46:05 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Re: 3.459 Rules 4) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 92 10:32:44 CDT From: ryberg@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Stephen Ryberg) Subject: innateness and simplicity -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 06 Jun 92 11:16 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: 3.466 Rules re Helge Dyvik: I was defining 'normative' as equivalent to 'prescriptive' -- Sorry. Re Benjy Wald -- Of course what counts as a speech error in one dialect will not necessarily count as a speech error in another. The examples I cited were all spoken (and most corrected) by speakers of what some would call standard American English although two were produced by speakers of British RP. When checking as to what people consider speech errors we obviously have to test with speakers of the same dialect unless we are interested in the differences in dialecta grammars. My point is simply that in order to judge something as an error, one must have a set of principles/rules/constraints in one's mental grammar which determine what is or is not ill formed according to that grammar (not someone else's). An addendum to this comment: One can accept the 'reality' of rules (or whatever one wishes to call them) -- that is the existence of a mental grammar, or if you like I-Language, without accepting the notion of innateness. They are two separate questions. I happen to accept both but many will accept the fact that knowing a language (however acquired, UG + parameter values + lexicon etc; or all acquired with no innate UG) means having in memory, in one's mind, a cognitive system which is called a grammar by a lot of us. Vicki Fromkin -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 1992 9:55:56 GMT From: MCCONVELL_P@DARWIN.NTU.EDU.AU Subject: Rules: abnormal constructions So nice a leg-pull from David Stampe that we may forget that real borderline-normal grammar can be almost as weird. A case in point is the very widespread double-be phenomenon that got some airplay on Linguist a while back e.g. The main point is is that... What I want to stress is is that... This is becoming close to normal in most English speaking countries (I saw a speaker of Indian English in India produce one the other day on TV). It may have some explanation in terms of blending (various scenarios have been suggested including by me) but the point is more the extreme difficulty of coping with it in a standard type English grammar or even any plausible variant of it. Hence we would like to keep it in the "performance error" basket. In terms of categorising it, it still has some behavioural characteristics associated with "abnormality" e.g denial by speakers that they say it, or statements that it is odd while using it. However I think younger speakers are losing any reaction to it as weird. Bolinger suggested to me that this is a phenomenon that has been bubbling away for years but has never made it to acceptable status. If we wanted to be bold we could hypothesise that there is a principled reason for this e.g. it is highly marked in terms of some UG principle and/or it creates unacceptable contradictions in some key parts of English grammar. We would have to be bold because we could soon wake up and find 90% of English speakers using it, although it may still not feature in English grammars. Talking of some new "abnormal" forms as "anticipations of change" as Benji Wald does, brings in a dangerous teleology. As in the above case, how do we know that the phenomenon is leading towards categorical change? (It may be that Wald is just using a convenient way of talking, but it is risky nonetheless). A theory of linguistic development somewhat along the lines of Lightfoots' where UG (among other things of a communicative nature, I would say) imposes restrictions not on everything that turns up in a language, but on what gets solidly incorporated in the long term would be useful, and parallel to some evolutionist thought. Such a theory would allow us to legitimately refer to "abnormalities" as "anticipations of change" by hypothesis using whatever predictive power the theory has. There seem to be currently big differences between linguists about how much idiomaticity-constructionism-rule flouting a language can tolerate and some claims that some languages do very much more of it than others, however. Patrick McConvell, Anthropology, Northern Territory University, PO Box 40146, Casuarina, NT 0811, Australia -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 92 16:46:05 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Re: 3.459 Rules Re Rob Stainton's observation about the normativity of psychology: Itkonen, in the first pages of *Grammatical Theory and Metascience* makes exactly this point (thousgh he does so via the notion of intention rather than desxire). And yes, there are disciploines other than linguistics (or psychology) in which normativity plays a part: logic, e.g. Michael Kac -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 92 10:32:44 CDT From: ryberg@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Stephen Ryberg) Subject: innateness and simplicity Dick Hudson writes: > For those of us who are sceptical about > innateness, it's really worrying if we have to postulate some very > abstract and complicated principle in our theory. Sometimes you have > to admit defeat, but you at least recognise it as defeat, and a sign > that something is badly wrong with your general theory. But if you > believe in innateness, there's no problem - on the contrary, you can > be pleased to have discovered yet more evidence that language is weird > (i.e. unique) and unlearnable. I agree with the notion that innateness can be too easy an escape hatch when it comes time to sit back and judge a particular model of language. I'd like to mention two related points on which I believe there is some confusion. On the one hand there is the basic connection between abstract/ complicated/weird principles and innateness that Mr. Hudson mentions. But I have heard linguists who are _not_ skeptical about innateness make statements to the effect that the simplest model of language is the most desirable, in order to make aspects of language acquisition and use easier for the learner. This has always struck me as being odd: one would think that if language was innate, the learner wouldn't have a reason to care how complex its principles were. Perhaps such statements are merely not well thought out or too loosely worded. Or perhaps they indicate that some who profess not to be skeptical of innatism show their true colors in nevertheless worrying about the level of complexity and abstraction currently in a given model. I think there's a third possible source for such statements, and this relates to the second point I wanted to bring up for discussion. It seems to me that quite a number of linguists confuse the distinction between the desire for the simplest model of language, and language in reality. The former is based solely on principles like Occam's Razor, heuristics by which we construct models of reality in order to better grasp and understand reality. The latter, language in reality (like anything in reality), can operate however it wants to (for lack of a better phrase), and is in no way required to operate according to Occam's Razor, or our heuristics. This is not to say that we should junk those heuristics, just to point out that that's what they are, and that there's an important distinction between them and reality. When we make the leap to discussing language in reality by positing innatism, we must be careful not to simply carry the results of our heuristics wholesale into our discussion of reality. Yet I have heard this being done by linguists, and I think this misguided notion that language the reality _is_ subject to our heuristics is the most likely cause of statements in which simplicity of the model is linked to such real-world issues as making things easy for the learner. I believe it's important to clear up the confusion on this point, because I don't think it concerns just a few statements which have not been thought out too well. From my experience as as student, I don't believe I'm the only one who has found this confusion rather difficult to recognize and work out. (Though maybe you'll all show me that I still haven't done that!) In fact, I think it's this confusion, coupled with insufficient discussion of the grounds for innatism in general, that has led to the somewhat bizarre view (which I've heard on multiple occasions) that simplicity in a model is also an argument for innatism. (I'm not sure I could work out the unusual logic behind this view.) Stephen Ryberg ryberg@casbah.acns.nwu.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-473. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-474. Tue 09 Jun 1992. Lines: 164 Subject: 3.474 NELS, ACL-92, Survey Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 05 Jun 92 15:04:46 EDT From: Lisa Reed Subject: NELS 23 CALL FOR PAPERS 2) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 92 17:10:37 -0400 From: walker@flash.bellcore.com (Don Walker) Subject: Demonstrations and Exhibits at ACL-92 3) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 92 15:14:39 -0400 From: bonnie@umiacs.UMD.EDU (Bonnie Dorr) Subject: Survey of Computational Linguistics Courses -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 05 Jun 92 15:04:46 EDT From: Lisa Reed Subject: NELS 23 CALL FOR PAPERS NELS 23 UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA October 16, 17 and 18, 1992 CALL FOR PAPERS Abstracts are invited for twenty minute papers on any aspect of theoretical linguistics. ABSTRACT DEADLINE: JULY 15, 1992 Abstracts should be anonymous, one page (8 1/2" x 11"), single spaced, with at least one inch margins on all sides, in 12 point (or 12 pitch) type or larger. An additional page with references only may be included. No more than one individual and one joint paper per person can be considered. Abstracts RECEIVED after the deadline will not be considered. Send ten copies of the abstract together with a typewritten 3" x 5" card showing the title of the paper, author's addresses and affiliations, phone numbers and e-mail addresses to the following address: Lisa Reed, coordinator NELS 23 Department of Linguistics University of Ottawa 78 Laurier Ave., East Ottawa, Ontario K1N 6N5 CANADA PREREGISTRATION: Preregistration fees are $15 for students, $25 for others. PREREGISTRATION DEADLINE: SEPTEMBER 16, 1992 Please send check or money order in Canadian dollars (US dollars will NOT be discounted), payable to NELS 23, to the above address. Registration at the meeting will be $25 for students, $40 for others. E-mail: NELS23@acadvm1.uottawa.ca Phone: (613) 564-9082 FAX: (613) 564-9067 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 92 17:10:37 -0400 From: walker@flash.bellcore.com (Don Walker) Subject: Demonstrations and Exhibits at ACL-92 We are encouraging exhibits and demonstrations at ACL-92, the 30th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, which will be held from 28 June through 2 July in Newark, Delaware, in the United States. Authors of papers or academics without grants or contract support may present their demonstrations without making a donation, but universities and research labs that demo research rather than commercial software, and small entrepreneurs, are requested to donate $125 to cover expenses. Commercial software and hardware enterprises are requested to donate $350. If you are interested or can suggest names to contact, please send email addresses and/or phone numbers to: Daniel Chester University of Delaware Computer and Information Sciences Newark, DE 19716, USA chester@dewey.udel.edu +1-302 831-1955 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 92 15:14:39 -0400 From: bonnie@umiacs.UMD.EDU (Bonnie Dorr) Subject: Survey of Computational Linguistics Courses SURVEY OF COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS COURSES URGENT NEED FOR INFORMATION As a follow-on to the Directory of Computational Linguistics Courses recently compiled by Martha Evens, the Association for Computational Linguistics will publish a new edition of the Survey of Computational Linguistics Courses. (See Computational Linguistics, volume 12 (1986) for the previous version compiled by Robin Cohen.) We are eager to include two types of courses: those that teach computational linguistics as the sole topic and those that teach computational linguistics as one of many topics. The survey will allow us to share with colleagues ideas on how to teach computational linguistics. It will also provide an idea of how the field of computational linguistics is being portrayed to potential new researchers. Our listing will include the name and address of the University and Department(s) offering the course, the name and number of the course, the type of course, and information about the syllabus (e.g., topics, texts used, format, workload, enrollment, duration, and assistance). In addition we will include some statistics on the responses (i.e., total number of courses having particular characteristics) and a bibliography of the most of frequently cited references. Please request guidelines as to content and format and send information to: Ms. Sandy Tsue UMIACS A.V. Williams Building University of Maryland E-mail: cl-survey@umiacs.umd.edu College Park, MD 20742 Tel: (+1-301)405-6722 Re: CL-SURVEY Fax: (+1-301)314-9658 Note: e-mail is preferred. If your institution was listed in the 1986 compilation, you may request a copy of your previous entry. Thank you for your participation in this endeavor. Professor Bonnie Dorr Department of Computer Science and UMIACS University of Maryland -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-474. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-475. Thu 11 Jun 1992. Lines: 50 Subject: 3.475 Why is linguistics in trouble? Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 92 16:34:58 WET DST From: Dr M Sebba Subject: Re: 3.463 Department Closures -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 92 16:34:58 WET DST From: Dr M Sebba Subject: Re: 3.463 Department Closures In spite of smiling inwardly several times on reading those very personal accounts of "how I got to be a linguist", I gave up reading them. It all seemed far too much like fiddling while Rome is burning. When the last few months have seen so many linguistics departments threatened with closure, and the last ten years have seen so many actually closed (in Britain at least, much more serious and difficult questions need to be asked: Why is linguistics transparent? Why does the general public, which unfortunately seems to include the directors/principals of major educational establishments where linguistics is taught, not perceive the value of studying language? What can we do to defend and promote our own discipline? I felt the discussion about linguistics and the media went part of the way to showing how our discipline is misrepresented and misunderstood, but hardly any way to correcting that. I bow to the person (I'm sorry I can't remember who it was) who suggested that our departments should be renamed Department of Grammar. An astute comment on the current political and societal context. Mark Sebba Department of Grammar, Spelling and Phonics Lancaster -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-475. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-476. Thu 11 Jun 1992. Lines: 36 Subject: 3.476 SOAS saved...for now Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 92 14:13:54 BST From: "Jonathan Kaye 323-6362" (JK at UKACRL) Subject: SOAS saved...for now -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 92 14:13:54 BST From: "Jonathan Kaye 323-6362" (JK at UKACRL) Subject: SOAS saved...for now ***We are still here!* The Academic Board at its meeting of June 9 has recommended that *the proposal to close the Phonetics and Linguistics* *Department should be withdrawn*. This recommendation now goes to the Finance and General Purposes Committee on June 10th, and then to the Government Body on June 18th. At the moment, things are not awful. more to follow... -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-476. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-477. Thu 11 Jun 1992. Lines: 95 Subject: 3.477 Linguistics or grammar Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 92 09:35:08 CST From: (Dennis Baron) Subject: please don't call it grammar 2) Date: Sat, 06 Jun 92 19:05:38 BST From: WAB2@phx.cam.ac.uk Subject: Linguistics or grammar? -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 92 09:35:08 CST From: (Dennis Baron) Subject: please don't call it grammar John Coleman suggests (seriously) renaming Linguistics Departments Grammar Departments. He has had the good fortune not to have discovered what a dirty word _grammar_ has become in American society. Not to mention _grammarian_. I have told this story many times in many contexts, but not yet on an e-list. To those of you in particular who work in English departments, this will sound all too familiar. I've just met someone at a party or on a plane or, as was most recently the case, in a dentist's chair (I was in the chair), and the conversation turns to "What do you do?" And I say "I'm an English teacher." And my new acquaintance replies, "Oh, well, er, I guess I better watch my grammar." As the poet Donald Hall so aptly put it, "I leave them in airports, watching their grammar." Look at all the common negative associations of grammar: grammar monger, grammar grinding, even grammaticotaster. Once I was talking to a colleague who teaches in a real live Linguistics Department and she said, out of the blue, "Oh, you probably would have liked to hear that lecture, you're a grammarian, aren't you?" She, of course, was not a grammarian but a syntactician. And what about "The New Grammarian's Funeral"? Grammarian is something you call someone else, like purist, not something you claim as your own profession. Of course, no dictionary records the negative senses of grammar and grammarian. Harmless drudges have enough of their own problems! If you want more info on the negative sense of grammar, I can send you a reference. I'm surprised, by the way, that no one in considering the meaning of _linguistics_ has recapitulated the competition between linguist and linguistician as replacement words for the discredited philologist in the early part of this century. See OED, svv. 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 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Sat, 06 Jun 92 19:05:38 BST From: WAB2@phx.cam.ac.uk Subject: Linguistics or grammar? There is understandable concern about the place of linguistics departments in the administrative priorities of higher education. I do hope that the excellent suggestion made by John Coleman in 3,463 will nevertheless not be overlooked. There would be much more public opposition to the closure of a department of grammar. I have often thought that the name "linguistics" is not too helpful for our discipline, suggesting as it does the mere polyglot. The Guardian must have been aware of this ambiguity when it profiled dear Peter Strevens, on his appointment to the Chair at Essex, as "linguistician". The term would be no better, I think, than "linguist". John Coleman was right to anticipate misguided objections from off-centre specialists. But this is surely not a risk if we understand "grammar" in its proper width, and perhaps at last broaden our mutual comprehension. And there are still places where phonetics claims to be divorced from "linguistics". The main interest in the linguistic postings on the BB of late have been truly grammatical. Bill Bennett. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-477. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-478. Thu 11 Jun 1992. Lines: 288 Subject: 3.478 Comparatives Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 92 06:39:51 CDT From: Barbara Need Subject: Re: 3.472 Comparatives 2) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 92 15:40:31 BST From: Sue Blackwell Subject: Re: 3.472 Comparatives 3) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 92 15:54:28 EDT From: rws@mbeya.research.att.com (Richard Sproat) Subject: comparative frequencies 4) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 92 18:47:22 +0200 From: light@earley.sns.neuphilologie.uni-tuebingen.de (Marc Light) Subject: even more _unhappier_ -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 92 06:39:51 CDT From: Barbara Need Subject: Re: 3.472 Comparatives Both Mark Mandel and Allan Wechsler assume that the difference in acceptability of 1) My car is redder than orange for Eric Schiller (who accepts it) and Robert Beard (who does not) is that the unacceptable sentence is a reduced form of (1a) (Mandel) or (1b) (Wechsler) and that the acceptable sentence is a reduced form of (1c) (from Mandel) or (1d) from Wechsler. 1a) My car's color is closer to red than to orange 1b) My car is redder than [it is] orange 1c) My car's color is closer to red than orange is 1d) My car is redder than [the color] orange [is]^C (Interrupt -- one more to kill letter) However, I also accept (1) as grammatical, and my closest sense of what I mean by it is neither (1c) nor (1d) which compare how close to red both the car and the notion of orange are, but (1a) or (1b), which for me say that, given red and orange, I would describe my car as red rahter than orange (though it may be somewhere in between-- remember Crayola Red-orange and Orange-red?). Barbara Need University of Chicago -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 92 15:40:31 BST From: Sue Blackwell Subject: Re: 3.472 Comparatives Jacob Hoeksema writes: > In an 8-million+ word corpus of English texts, I found more than 14,000 > tokens of comparatives, not a single one of which was of the form > 'un-A-er'. I have just tried this on the Birmingham corpus of written English, which contains about 18 million words, with the following results: "uncannier" has 2 citations (does this count?!) "uneasier" has 2 citations "unhappier" has 3 citations "unluckier" has 2 citations "untidier" has 3 citations "unworthier" has 1 citation I'm afraid I can't tell you how many comparatives there are in the corpus, as it isn't grammatically tagged. But the following figures may be useful: easy 2704 easier 1042 uneasy 320 uneasier 2 difficult 3884 happy 2455 happier 229 unhappy 513 unhappier 3 likely 3328 likelier 1 unlikely 777 unlikelier 0 lucky 846 luckier 24 unlucky 107 unluckier 2 tidy 208 tidier 14 untidy 115 untidier 3 worthy 225 worthier 3 unworthy 61 unworthier 1 Therefore these forms do occur, but they are extremely rare and I would agree with Hoeksema that "there is a great resistance to use comparatives of un-adjectives". Sue Blackwell University of Birmingham, U.K. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 92 15:54:28 EDT From: rws@mbeya.research.att.com (Richard Sproat) Subject: comparative frequencies Jack Hoeksema gives the following data based on an 8-million+ word corpus, and thus raises in the context of the _unhappier_ debate the interesting and, I believe, very relevant issue of the relative productivity of various morphological rules. 1. Easy. easy: 798 easier: 334 more easy: 1 less easy: 1 uneasy: 30 uneasier: 0 more uneasy: 2 less uneasy: 1 difficult: 798 -- more difficult: 60 less difficult: 1 2. Happy happy: 994 happier: 37 more happy: 3 less happy: 1 unhappy: 122 unhappier: 0 more unhappy:0 less unhappy: 0 3. Likely likely: 1082 likelier: 1 more likely: 143 unlikely: 256 unlikelier: 0 more unlikely: 2 Jack asks why _un-X-er_ forms are so rare, as these data would appear to suggest. I think I can answer that (using a larger corpus) but let us first consider just these data. First of all it isn't clear that they show more than that the comparative form of _uneasy_, _unhappy_, _unlikely_ and so forth are rare, no matter how you form them. For example, while _easier_ occurs 334 times, _more uneasy_ occurs but twice, and _uneasier_ never. _More unhappy_ never occurs and _more unlikely_ occurs only twice. So maybe the point is indeed that the comparatives of _un-_ forms are rare (for pragmatic/semantic reasons? who knows?) and the _un-_-er_ construction is then only slightly unlikelier. This is Jack's suggestion (3), which, he notes seems the most likely. But, in addition, looking at the the relative frequencies of _un-_ forms and their bases, and _-er_ forms and their bases, perhaps we would expect _un-X-er_ forms to be rare anyway. >From Jack's data, we can't even begin to estimate the relative likelihoods since the _un-X-er_ forms don't occur. In the 1990 Associated Press newswire, a corpus of 46 million words, both _unlikelier_ and _unhealthier_ occur, and the frequency details are as follows (omitting the _less X_ cases): likely: 6640 likelier: 6 more likely: 669 unlikely: 1207 unlikelier: 1 more unlikely: 5 healthy: 1014 healthier: 146 more healthy: 11 unhealthy: 63 unhealthier: 1 more unhealthy: 0 Normalizing for the frequency of the base, we get: likely: 1.00 likelier: .0009 more likely: .10 unlikely: 0.18 unlikelier: .0001 more unlikely: .0007 healthy: 1.00 healthier: .14 more healthy: .10 unhealthy: .06 unhealthier: .001 more unhealthy: 0 We still don't have enough data to make any statistically significant claims here: 1 token of each desired type is hardly much to go on, so everything from here on should be taken to be somewhat speculative. We can make the following observations, some of which I/we/one can certainly get more data on than I have provided and should provide at some point. (And one should check Baayen & Lieber's paper for corpus-derived data for some of these categories): 1) the _un-X_ form is between 1/20th and 1/5th as common as the _X_ form 2) the _-er_ form has a much wider range of variability (perhaps a prosodic or morphological difference between _healthy_ and _likely_ could be a factor here) but seems to occur at most around .14 times as much as the base. 3) If one were to simply multiply these normalized frequencies we would expect 0.18 * 0.0009 = 0.0002 for _unlikelier_ and 0.06 * 0.14 = 0.008 for _unhealthier_. _unhealthier_ is less frequent than the model in (3) predicts (there should be on order of 8 occurences). On the other hand _unlikelier_ should occur about twice, and it occurs once, which is probably not significantly different given the amount of data we have. But note that _more unhealthy_ doesn't occur at all, which (again) suggests that perhaps there is some other (non-morphological) reason for disfavoring the comparative of _unhealthy_, which could in turn make the morphological form _unhealthier_ somewhat less common than the simple multiplicative model would predict. _more unlikely_ is evidently more likely than _more unhealthy_ (for whatever reason) and this may relate to why _unhealthier_ is more in line with the predictions of the model. So, in answer to Hoeksema's query as to why forms like _unhealthier_ are so rare: They aren't; at least they are aren't rarer than one might expect on the basis of the relative frequencies of the two morphological operations that are involved, also taking into account the apparent disfavoring of some _more un-X_ forms. Richard Sproat Linguistics Research Department AT&T Bell Laboratories tel (908) 582-5296 600 Mountain Avenue, Room 2d-451 fax (908) 582-7308 Murray Hill, NJ 07974 rws@research.att.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 92 18:47:22 +0200 From: light@earley.sns.neuphilologie.uni-tuebingen.de (Marc Light) Subject: even more _unhappier_ I presented a paper entitled "Taking the paradoxes out of bracketing in morphology" at FLSMII May 1991. Instead of using multiple strata coupled with a rebracketing mechanism, I showed how the constraints in conflict (for "unhappier", "uncertainity", "transformational grammarian") can be refined so that they account for the relevant data and work in harmony at the same level of representation. In what follows, I summarize the main points of the paper relevant to "unhappier". Bracketing paradoxes indicate one of two things: either a) the constraints in conflict need to be refined or b) the constraints in conflict need to be confined to separate levels of representation. I believe that one should always assume (a) is the case until the constraints in conflict become extremely elegant and descriptively adequate (and remain in conflict). Only then should one move to assuming (b). However, in Pesetsky85, Sproat85, Hoeksema85, and Stump92 (b) is assumed. I feel that this move to (b) is premature. In all of the cases discussed in the works mentioned above, insights can be gained by reanalysing the constraints in conflict. The methodological point I am trying to make is that one should not use two levels of representation or special mechanisms whenever possible simply because they are needed for other independent phenomena. One should be sure that there is no better way to handle the current phenomenon before the special mechanism is used. In Sproat's LI squib on "unhappier", (a) is assumed and the constraint on semantics of "un-" is reformulated. The discussion up to now has been whether or not this reformulation of the semantic constraint is correct. I feel that this is a step in the right direction methodologically. In my paper mentioned above, I present data that points towards a reformulation of the other constraint involved in the conflict: "Roughly speaking, it [-er] may attach to monosyllabic adjectives and to a limited class of possibly disyllabic adjectives with a very light second syllable (a syllabic sonorant or the glide [y])." (Pesetsky85) I claim that when we look closer at the morphophonological constraint on the comparative suffix "-er", we see that "unhappier" must be bracketed as [[un happy] er] which is required for the semantics. Thus the bracketing paradox dissolves. The first thing to notice is that comparative forms such as "unhappier" are less felicitious than corresponding forms such as "happier". happier unhappier holier unholier abler unabler timelier untimelier manlier unmanlier healthier unhealthier hardier unhardier steadier unsteadier worthier unworthier tidier untidier .. I did an experiment which indicated that the comparative suffix degraded the felicity more when the prefix "un-" was present than when it was not present. However all of the "unXer" forms had marginal felicity. In fact, comparative forms have graded felicity. For my midwestern dialect of American English the following graded judgements are produced. BAD MARGINAL GOOD ---------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-478. y ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-479. Thu 11 Jun 1992. Lines: 186 Subject: 3.479 Queries: TV, Software, Predicates, Good, X-Bar Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 92 20:04:48 EDT From: Ron Smyth Subject: TV programme 2) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 92 16:10:36 -0700 From: zbarlev@sciences.sdsu.edu Subject: Re: 3.470 Queries: Lx and Lit, Software, Nat. Phonology, SF 3) Date: Tue, 09 Jun 92 09:19:59 EST From: Ronnie Wilbur Subject: Query on predicate nominals 4) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 92 12:30 EDT From: "Barbara.Abbott" Subject: "that good of..." 5) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 1992 11:21:01 -0400 From: Judith Dick Subject: Re: 3.469 X-Bar and VP's -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 92 20:04:48 EDT From: Ron Smyth Subject: TV programme I had a call today from Susan Perry-Ettel, a writer/producer for TV Ontario, which is an educational network. She wants to do a programme on language and thought, and has received the go-ahead from her producer. Given the recent discussions about how linguistics is portrayed in the media, I thought this would be a good opportunity for us to affect what goes into the programme. I spoke with Susan for about an hour, and spent much of that time trying to convince her of what NOT to do. She was interested in the fact that German makes you wait until the end of the sentence for the verb, so you have to have a good memory and maybe that's why they have such success in technical domains .... So I told her about the Whorfian hypothesis, the colour term work, and so on, but I really tried to steer her away from that and into the innateness issue, syntactic complexity in people with low IQ's, universal constraints that also don't show up as children's errors, and the whole question of modularity. Then I suggested that instead of trying to settle the issue in one conversation we should broadcast her request to the nearly 2500 subscribers to LINGUIST for ideas. Let us put the question as follows: given the opportunity to provide TV Ontario with a set of issues for a programme on language and thought, how should the linguistics community respond? I will receive responses (smyth@lake.scar.utoronto.ca) and turn them over to Susan, then summarize to the list. Please give this some careful thought, and try to keep your replies short. Ron Smyth smyth@lake.scar.utoronto.ca -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 92 16:10:36 -0700 From: zbarlev@sciences.sdsu.edu Subject: Re: 3.470 Queries: Lx and Lit, Software, Nat. Phonology, SF does anyone know of software for speech synthesis on the MacIntosh, especially with HyperCard? i am especially interested in anything comptatible with systems 6 OR 7, i.e. just about anything. this includes information on MacInTalk, which i was once able to obtain, but couldn't get to work -- partly because of no documentation. if i was just missing some simple piece of information (like where to click), that would be a big help. the basic english-phoneme via special spelling approach of MacInTalk (which fortunately included [x]) is basically all i need. but of course i need something that works! (we once had a "store-boughten" synthesizer in the dept., but it disappeared terminally from the disk.) if anyone knows of a more modern solution, but hopefully as simple as possible. but really, anything will help! thanks in advance! zev bar-lev, san diego state u. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Tue, 09 Jun 92 09:19:59 EST From: Ronnie Wilbur Subject: Query on predicate nominals In ASL, predicate nominals have no overt verb: ____hn JOHN DOCTOR the predicate nominal has a head nod on it (without the head nod, the sequence is supposed to mean "John's doctor"). The facts about ASL predicate nominals appear to be very similar to those of Russian, as far as I am able to determine. Essentially, you can negate the predicate nominal ("John is not a doctor") or you can modify the nominal itself ("John is a good doctor" ) but attempts to modify the "missing" verb (with tense-aspect-modality, for example) are unacceptable without an overt verb. My question concerns what the analysis of e.g., the Russian case would be. Is there a V slot that is unfilled? There is a related construction in ASL: _____________rhq ___hn JOHN PAINT WHAT? CHAIR "What John painted is the chair". I contend that this is a single sentence with a sentential subject (which happens to be in the form of a rhetorical question). Is CHAIR dominated by VP? The facts parallel the predicate nominal - can't modify missing verb, can modify the chair. The prosodic facts support this as a single sentence, and there exists a version which is clearly NOT a single sentence (for example, inserting "I think" before CHAIR). What I am after is analyses from people who wish to offer alternatives to the traditional approach, because people have challenged my analysis (without offering alternatives) and I don't know how to have a sentence without a V somewhere. Please respond to me directly (wilbur@vm.cc.purdue.edu) and I'll summarize the results if there is sufficient interest. Thanks. ANY SYNTACTIC APPROACH WELCOME! -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 92 12:30 EDT From: "Barbara.Abbott" Subject: "that good of..." My brother just noticed his son saying something like "I didn't know they had that good of advertising", and realized he had heard a lot of that construction lately. Anyone got the low-down on this kind of thing? -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 1992 11:21:01 -0400 From: Judith Dick Subject: Re: 3.469 X-Bar and VP's In response to the following: > Date: Tue, 2 Jun 92 11:25:57 CDT > From: Eric Schiller > Subject: Re: Query: X-bar and VP > > framework as a whole. I am working on a review and may post bits > as I go along. Pls do post - I am also befuddled and liked the sound of your suggestions. The notion that case and theta theory apply accross some sort of bridge between syntax and morphology is one which needs better working out. Morphology played a significant role in Syntactic This is the problem that interests me in particular. I would be interested also in any comments on some of the more complex case systems, eg. Finnish, as well, if they occur to you. Many thanks, Judy Dick dick@cs.toronto.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-479. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-480. Thu 11 Jun 1992. Lines: 187 Subject: 3.480 Rules, Innateness Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 1992 09:00:38 +0200 From: Swann Philip Subject: 3.473 Rules, Innateness 2) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 92 16:37:11 PDT From: Rick Wojcik Subject: Re: 3.473 Rules 3) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 92 20:22 PDT From: benji wald Subject: Re: 3.473 Rules, Innateness 4) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 92 00:32:27 EDT From: stainton@Athena.MIT.EDU Subject: Innateness and Linguistic Theory -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 1992 09:00:38 +0200 From: Swann Philip Subject: 3.473 Rules, Innateness The penultimate issue of Behavioral & Brain Sciences contains two articles on the innateness issue with extensive peer commentary and bibliographies. Highly recommended! Philip Swann University of Geneva -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 92 16:37:11 PDT From: Rick Wojcik Subject: Re: 3.473 Rules Vicki Fromkin writes: >...When checking as to what >people consider speech errors we obviously have to test with speakers of >the same dialect unless we are interested in the differences in dialecta >grammars. My point is simply that in order to judge something as an >error, one must have a set of principles/rules/constraints in one's >mental grammar which determine what is or is not ill formed according >to that grammar (not someone else's). ?1;2c It is possible that judgments about well-formedness can come from a variety of sources--not just a single system of principles/rules/constraints. For example, you might judge something ill-formed because you can't imagine yourself saying such a thing. On the other hand, you might judge something well-formed because, even though you wouldn't say it, you've heard others say it. When linguists distinguish between 'acceptability' and 'grammaticality' judgments, they explicitly recognize the possibility that not all judgments about linguistic form have a monolithic origin. It is possible that well-formedness judgments are really epiphenomenal--based on mental operations that play some other role than just to supply the speaker with knowledge about good form. So the question is whether there exists a coherent psychological 'grammar' in the generative linguist's sense. Do we need to define a set of principles that gives rise to grammatical judgments directly, or do we need to define knowledge sources about several things--e.g. language production, expected production from others, social dictums, etc.--that give rise to grammatical judgments indirectly? Is my judgment that somebody is speaking with a southern accent (or fake southern accent) based on the same type of knowledge as my judgment that the speaker is not speaking my dialect? The former is based on what I expect to hear, but the latter on what I know I can say. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 92 20:22 PDT From: benji wald Subject: Re: 3.473 Rules, Innateness issue 3.473. In response to McConvell's reservations about my last comment, I guess I have to make it clear that I think it is most unlikely that speech error is ever a source of change. My intention was to distinguish speech errors which may be so for one speaker, but be "rule-governed" norms for another, from those which cannot be "rule-governed" in a linguistic sense for anybody -- because language "doesn't work that way". Examples of speech errors which have no parallel in any empirically observed grammar are such things as those long distnace metathese I mentioned in a "cu/f/ a co/p/ee". No language has a grammatical rule "to form the past tense, plural, or whatever, first you need two words, and then you must take a specified segment of the two words and exchange them". The question had earlier been raised about whether errors were strictly linguistic or not, I think, or maybe it was whether the rules which they violate are based on some innate linguistic capacity, or from some more general capacity which the particular linguistic capacity also happens to exemplify. I don't really know what speech errors as a global phenomenon have to do with this question -- but the question suggested to me that different kinds of speech errors may have different motivations, some more obviously nonlinguistic than others. Vicky's blends are borderline, because dialect geography shows us that in some cases blends can become linguistic changes NOT!!!! THAT THEY STARTED OUT AS SPEECH ERRORS, please understand. That is, there is a blending process in some types of linguistic change. On the other hand, I'm sure Vicky's intention in the examples to which I was responding was to exemplify planning/execution errors, resulting in reordering of intended activities -- something which occurs quite apart from language in other activities, and which I expect also occurs in the behavior of other animals as well. Does it, Vicky? and if not, is that part of your point about what speech errors reveal about ling-cognition? Problem with blends is that in some cases more than one possible explanation for the source of the behavior may be possible, "by any chance". In any cases, clearly nonlinguistic and problematic cases should be distinguished for methodological purposes from cases in which a constraint is lost or "relaxed" on a linguistic "rule". The problem remains to my mind whether a speaker's reaction should have any bearing how we analyse the behavior. As opposed to how we analyse reaction to the behavior. Socially, of course, it is of interest that the speaker, or some other speakers, describe the behavior as a mistake. But in terms of "heavy" stuff like human cognition, innate capacities, psycho logical reality, and so on, I think what need other ways of testing what the behavior means in terms of linguistic rules and human capacities. Beyond that, I have no idea what the discussion, which I entered late, is all about, and what is disputed. Whether "speech error" is a viable concept? -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 92 00:32:27 EDT From: stainton@Athena.MIT.EDU Subject: Innateness and Linguistic Theory Vicki Fromkin suggests, in effect, that one can buy mental realism in linguistics, without buying innate structure. At first glance, this is a reasonable idea. In fact, it's one I was wont to hold. But I now wonder whether the two really are independent. The central problem, I think, is what we're to count as knowledge of language if we don't posit an innate language faculty. This issue has, of course, been raised by Chomsky many times. I'm coming to think that he's right. Consider the following cases of "knowledge": 1. Anaphors must be bound in their governing category 2. Poodles are a kind of dog 3. "The President of the U.S." refers to George Bush 4. In Montreal, it's illegal to display English-only signs outdoors 5. It's rude to say "shit" in a formal gathering 6. The French pronoun "vous" is more formal than the pronoun "tu" 7. A brown house is brown on the *outside* 8. Ideas are not the sort of things which are colored 9. A person's handwriting style is not related to their philosophical abilities 10. In conversation, one should have sufficient evidence for one's statements Which of these are "knowledge of language"? I presume this is something we discover, by doing research. It's not just a matter of decision. Now, if there is a language faculty, and if it incorporates information about some of 1 - 10, but not about all of them, then *that* is what determines the boundaries of linguistic knowledge. But if there is not innate structure that develops, and ends up in a certain state, then I at least can't imagine how we'd *discover* which of 1 - 10 is "truly" knowledge of language, rather than just knowledge about the world. The lines we draw between syntax, semantics and pragmatics; between competence and performance; between language faculty and the conceptual system; all can be drawn if the language facutly is an innate structure. But how are they to be even sketched if knowledge of language is distributed across cognitive systems? Best, Rob Stainton -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-480. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-481. Thu 11 Jun 1992. Lines: 201 Subject: 3.481 How we became linguists Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 1992 19:23 MST From: CAROLG@CC.UTAH.EDU Subject: Re: 3.457 How did we end up linguists, Z. Harris 2) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 1992 21:35:17 -0600 From: will@ils.nwu.edu (Will Fitzgerald) Subject: How did we become linguists? 3) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 92 17:47 GMT From: HILTONM@mole.pcl.ac.uk Subject: RE: 3.462 How did we become linguists? 4) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 1992 17:32:25 GMT From: jcj@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Jason Johnston) Subject: Re: The Make-up of LINGUIST 5) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 92 18:22:38 PDT From: rubba@bend.UCSD.EDU (Johanna Rubba) Subject: Re: 3.462 How did we become linguists? 6) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1992 11:24 PDT From: HSLAPOLLA@ccvax.as.edu.tw Subject: why we became linguists -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 1992 19:23 MST From: CAROLG@CC.UTAH.EDU Subject: Re: 3.457 How did we end up linguists, Z. Harris I think Michael Kac has come the closest -- behind all the other reasons that have been given for why we become linguists, the aptitude in language learning, the interest in language per se, the interest in puzzles, cryptograms, etc., the frustration with literary analysis and the rest, is an aptitude for *abstraction*, the actual fondness for abstract analysis, however it first presented itself. As I think Gerald Gazdar said, "Linguists are people who like to take out their brains and play with them." Carol Georgopoulos -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 1992 21:35:17 -0600 From: will@ils.nwu.edu (Will Fitzgerald) Subject: How did we become linguists? Here's how I got interested in linguistics ... my freshman year at college, one of the guys on our dorm floor would make these incredibly odd sounds while he was in the shower. Turns out he was taking Articulatory Phonetics (Dean MacIntyre, are you out there?), which led to a discussion of linguistics in general, which led to a change of major. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 92 17:47 GMT From: HILTONM@mole.pcl.ac.uk Subject: RE: 3.462 How did we become linguists? An interesting discussion this. For me the wheel has come full circle. At school, the only thing I felt capable of doing at our A-level was languages, and yet I was not a literary type of person, spending my time reading psychology mostly. I then read Chinese at Cambridge which included during the first year a course on the linguistic description of Modern Standard Chinese, which I enjoyed. However I talked myself out of Linguistics as my part two option as I couldn't bear the thought of a two year specialised course wheethroughoutre my sole fellow student would have been a charming man who had driven me mad throughout the first two years with his inability to understand the structural differences between MSC and say the language of Confucius' Analects! Pity really. It was only some years later that I took a post-graduate course in linguistics in the hope of extricating myself from the dead-end EFL teaching job I was doing at the time. Little did I know that a) I would end up teaching linguistics. Not only that, but my interest gravitated towards Generative Grammar - which only later, did I realise combines my original interests in languages and psychology. Mark R. Hilton hiltonm@uk.ac.pcl.mole -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 1992 17:32:25 GMT From: jcj@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Jason Johnston) Subject: Re: The Make-up of LINGUIST I'm curious about the discrepancies between the numbers of subscribers- per-country and the population of that country. Australia (55) and Finland (45) seem over-represented when you consider that the UK has 110 - only twice as many as Australia with, surely, at least three times the population. Most remarkably, the Netherlands has more subscribers than Germany! What are the factors - access to the English language, to the Internet, to computers? Cultural differences re the validity of this sort of computer-mediated discussion? Jason Johnston University of Sydney, Australia. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 92 18:22:38 PDT From: rubba@bend.UCSD.EDU (Johanna Rubba) Subject: Re: 3.462 How did we become linguists? I have to put myself not in the category of a-foot-in-both-worlds, but more in the category of disheartened lit majors. I began college (never having heard the word linguistics before then) as a German major, but my interest was done in by all the Sturm und Drang -- it was just out and out too depressing! 'Der Schimmelreiter' was the last straw -- we hadn't even gotten near Kafka yet!! (Apologies to lovers of German lit ..) I had a French prof, on the other hand, who let us in on this nifty code (IPA) for representing how French was _really_ pronounced, and who drew little Chinese pictures on the board during exams. (The latter had nothing to do with linguistics, but reinforced his image as a human being rather than a Professor). He let me do a little paper on how English has disjunctive pronouns just like French, and he praised it to the skies (whether he should have is another matter ...) -- I changed my major to an invented one called 'language studies' (Rutgers didn't have a ling program or a dept at the time). I went on to take phonetics, psycholinguistics, anthropho-sociolinguistics, ESL applications, etc etc, and did the U of Manchester's first year linguistics course, and was completely enthralled. Phonetics, morphology, and historical captivated me the most. I remember how the regularity of sound changes, and how the same change affected a whole class of sounds, for some reason evoked in my mind the image of a certain game/toy that was around back then, in which marbles trickled down a plastic board through various little gates and around obstacles that changed their course ... the mechanical nature of this device somehow seemed akin to that of the consonants all following similar, predictable paths to a new identity. Strange how our minds work! Well, I think I always had a fascination for languages, starting with the time my sisters and I bought a German-English dictionary so we could decode the things the Germans said on 'Combat', but I didn't discover my own potential for captivation with linguistic analysis until somebody showed me that it (i.e. lc analysis) was there. From that point on it was clear that this was a major interest. I think it ties in, too, with a strong interest in anthropology -- how and why we humans behave. The ultimate mystery, within the cosmos of our own minds. Jo Rubba - UC Riverside/UC San Diego -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1992 11:24 PDT From: HSLAPOLLA@ccvax.as.edu.tw Subject: why we became linguists Science might be said to be the search for relationships, for the connections between one thing and another, and the relationships we see give us our view of the universe. As the relationships we see change, so does our view of the universe. For me linguistic knowledge is a key for opening the door to a whole range of connections that would otherwise be hidden from view. This is true of second language learning, as it allows us to understand another culture, to see the connections as that culture sees them, and it is true of knowledge of "Language" and also of language history, particularly etymology. For this reason linguistic knowledge has always been to me like a kind of mystical knowledge: just as the mystic sees things others cannot, so does the linguist see connections and principles where others cannot. What makes it somewhat different from some of the other sciences (though similar to some aspects of physics, bilology, and chemistry) is the fact that the knowledge we get is about something we are involved in every day, and something that is very much a part of us, so gives us a window toward understanding ourselves. Of course I really went into linguistics for the big money. Randy LaPolla Institute of History & Philology Academia Sinica Taipei 11529 Taiwan Linguist List: Vol-3-481. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-482. Thu 11 Jun 1992. Lines: 191 Subject: 3.482 FYI: Funding, Thanks, IT Upgrade Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 92 13:18:11 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: politicization of research funding 2) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 1992 15:03:47 -0400 From: Ron Smyth Subject: What language? 3) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 92 9:05:47 CDT From: evan@sil.org (Evan Antworth) Subject: Interlinear Text program for DOS upgrade -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 92 13:18:11 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: politicization of research funding Although this does not directly bear on linguistic research, the concern is relevant for all US government funding. I apologize to those who have seen this already on another email distribution, and to list members not in the US. -=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=- Date: Tue, 5 May 1992 15:16:27 EDT [from] Cheri Fullerton Subject: ACTION ALERT - Psychology Funding Cuts! PUBLIC POLICY OFFICE ACTION ALERT [to] APA Funding Bulletin Recipients [from] Barbara J. Calkins Associate Director, Public Policy Office DATE: May 5, 1992 RE: Threatened Cuts to Funded Research Programs & Attack on Peer/Merit Review Last week the Senate Appropriations Committee passed a bill taking back, or "rescinding" in Washington jargon, $8.3 billion in already-approved Fiscal Year 1992 funding. The rescissions included specific grants, identified by title, that had already been peer-reviewed and, in some cases, awarded by federal agencies including the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Related legislation developed by the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee sets broad rescission targets, allowing federal agencies the latitude to take cuts from new and as yet unfunded programs rather than reneging on commitments to ongoing research. The Senate bill poses serious problems, and WE NEED YOUR HELP NOW. BACKGROUND The most frightening aspect of the Senate bill is its direct assault to American science's peer/merit review system. Heretofore it has been the business of scientists, not Congress, to decide the merits of individual grant applications. Such decisions have traditionally had a scientific basis, and have been made by other researchers who carefully consider each proposal. The Senate, on the other hand, has apparently combed through lists of grant titles and culled out the ones with trivial-sounding titles, targeting them for termination. This is an alarming precedent. Another alarming precedent set by the Senate's action is the rescission of funds that have already been committed or awarded. Scientists use these commitments to make agreements with their supporting academic institutions, with colleagues, and with graduate students, in order to ensure a stable and productive research enterprise. While these particular Senate-proposed rescissions may affect a relatively small number of scientific investigations, the fact that Congress can arbitrarily reverse scientifically- based research funding decisions threatens the stability of the scientific research process in a manner that could cripple many research programs. An additional concern is the apparent focus of the Senate rescissions on behavioral and social science. Many of the grants targeted by the Senate for rescission are from the new Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Directorate of the National Science Foundation. Other proposed cuts come at the expense of behavioral and social research being supported by the National Institutes of Health-- specifically, the dental pain and fear work of the National Institute of Dental Research. Clearly, we must protect psychological research by better educating Members of Congress about its nature and significance. We need your help in doing so. HOW YOU CAN HELP As a constituent, yours is an important voice in the development of federal science policy and funding decisions. Your contacts to Congress MAKE A DIFFERENCE. We need you to: 1) Contact your Senators and Member of Congress and ask them to: Oppose the Senate budget rescissions bill (S.2403), and the politicization of science. Tell them that if these rescissions must occur, then the House approach is more appropriate; and 2) Contact Senate and House Appropriations Committee members with the same message. These individuals are in key positions to influence the final outcome on this critical issue: Senate House of Representatives Robert Byrd (D-WV) William Natcher(D-KY) Tom Harkin (D-IA) Carl Pursell (R-MI) Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) Bob Traxler (D-MI) Brock Adams (D-WA) Bill Green (D-NY) Slade Gorton (R-WA) In such contacts you should identify yourself as a scientist and, if appropriate, as a constituent. You can raise the issues outlined above to make your point, and you can develop them further with details of your own experiences. You can make your contact by telephoning, or by Western Union "Public Opinion Message". Telephone - You can reach any Congressional office in Washington by dialing 202/224-3121 and asking to be connected with your legislator's office. Ask to speak with the staff member who handles research appropriations. Give your name, affiliation, and the purpose of your call. At the conclusion of the conversation, offer yourself as a contact in the future and give your telephone number. Western Union - Call Western Union at 1-800-325-6000 and ask to send a "Public Opinion Message." The cost is $9.95 for 20 words or less and $3.50 for each additional 20 words. Address your message: The Honorable (Member's Name), U.S. (Senate or House of Representatives), Washington, D.C. (20510/House or 20515/Senate). If you need additional information, or help in identifying your Senators or Members of Congress, then send a BITNET message to: APASD@GWUVM. Thanks for your help and support. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 1992 15:03:47 -0400 From: Ron Smyth Subject: What language? Thank you to all who wrote in my response to my query about the language on the label on the ball of wool found in the purse of the woman who was arrested for shoplifting in Toronto. The language was Rumanian, and a native speaker was located to call the police station and speak with the woman. The interpreter was able to convince her that all the police wanted to do was to chastise her and send her home to her family. Ron Smyth smyth@lake.scar.utoronto.ca -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 92 9:05:47 CDT From: evan@sil.org (Evan Antworth) Subject: Interlinear Text program for DOS upgrade Version 1.2 of _IT_, SIL's Interlinear Text program for MS-DOS, is now available. This new version fixes all known bugs and offers several enhancements. Registered users of _IT_ are entitled to receive a free upgrade package and have already been notified by mail. If you own _IT_ (i.e. you bought the printed manual) but have not heard from us about the upgrade, contact us at this address: Academic Computing Department | phone: 214/709-2418 Summer Institute of Linguistics | fax: 214/709-3387 7500 W. Camp Wisdom Road | Internet: evan@sil.org (Evan Antworth) Dallas, TX 75236 U.S.A. | Those who wish to obtain the new _IT_ 1.2 manual and software (full release, not the upgrade) should contact: International Academic Bookstore Summer Institute of Linguistics 7500 W. Camp Wisdom Road Dallas, TX 75236 U.S.A. phone: 214/709-2404 fax: 214/709-2433 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-482. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-483. Thu 11 Jun 1992. Lines: 125 Subject: 3.483 Natural Phonology Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 92 13:00 CDT From: Joe Stemberger Subject: Re: 3.470 Queries: Lx and Lit, Software, Nat. Phonology, SF 2) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 1992 03:11 EET From: Martti Arnold Nyman Subject: Re: Natural Phonology -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 92 13:00 CDT From: Joe Stemberger Subject: Re: 3.470 Queries: Lx and Lit, Software, Nat. Phonology, SF In 3.470, J.A. Given makes the following query about Natural Phonology: << Are there any psycholinguistics or developmental psychologists that < Subject: Re: Natural Phonology In Vol-3-470, J.A.Given asks about Stampean natural phonology: > I was delighted to read here that natural phonology still lives! I thought > the (CLS Parasession on the Interplay of Phonology, Morphology and Syntax) > effort by Donegan and Stampe to integrate phonology and syntax was > rich with possibilities. Did natural phonology regroup after 1980's attacks > by formalists (I have in mind, e.g. those attacks summarized in S.R. Anderson, > "Phonology in the Twentieth Century", p. 345 ff. I would be grateful to > learn of a recent summary of the status of that discussion (and that of > natural phonology.) I know Natural Phonology mainly through its integration in the (European) Natural Morphology by Wolfgang Wurzel (see his book Inflectional Morphology and Naturalness, pp.1-8. Dordrecht/Boston/London:Kluwer 1989); see also: Wolfgang Dressler; Willi Mayerthaler; Oswald Panagl; & Wolfgang Wurzel: Leitmotifs in Natural Morphology. Amsterdam: Benjamins 1987. Though Wurzel is mildly (= constructively) critical of the Stampean approach, its virtues stand out very clearly. I think a re-assessment of Natural Phonology would certainly be in order. (And I wish David Stampe would spend part of his summer vacation for such an aim too ...). Martti Nyman General Linguistics, University of Helsinki, Finland -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-483. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-485. Fri 12 Jun 1992. Lines: 167 Subject: 3.485 Linguistics vs. grammar, ling. dept. troubles Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 92 12:46 CDT From: ASHELDON@vx.acs.umn.edu Subject: Re: 3.475 Why is linguistics in trouble? 2) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 92 13:46:36 EDT From: jsc@mbeya.research.att.com (John S. Coleman) Subject: 3.477 Linguistics or grammar? 3) Date: 11 Jun 92 14:11:44 EST From: South Asia Regional Studies Subject: 3.477 Linguistics or grammar? 4) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 92 14:37:18 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Re: 3.477 Linguistics or grammar? 5) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 92 16:51:13 EDT From: Michael Covington Subject: Re: 3.475 Why is linguistics in trouble? 6) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1992 07:32:16 +0200 From: Swann Philip Subject: 3.477 Linguistics or grammar? 7) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 92 09:53:48 +0100 From: Dr F Katamba Subject: Re: 3.476 SOAS saved...for now -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 92 12:46 CDT From: ASHELDON@vx.acs.umn.edu Subject: Re: 3.475 Why is linguistics in trouble? I second Mark Sebba's call to reflect on why Linguisticx is in the difficulties we have seen. I want to add that it is not only the general public that can benefit from knowing more about linguistics, but more importantly our colleagues who are make these decisions to close linguisticsd at our universities who seem to know little about linguistics, or to be negatively disposed to it. On more than one occasion I have been told that a colleague took "one or two courses in graduate school" as part of some requirement, and the impression I got was that they did not come away with a positive feeling about it. These colleagues, 20 or so years later, are now in influential positions at a university, and their understanding or attitude to linguistics has not changed much over the years. Amy Sheldon -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 92 13:46:36 EDT From: jsc@mbeya.research.att.com (John S. Coleman) Subject: 3.477 Linguistics or grammar? My suggestion was a purely mercenary one, to do with names of departments, not the name of the subject, or what you call yourself at parties etc. I think that when a department is faced with closure, as a great many linguistics departments are, what matters is the opinion of the people doing the closing-down, not general public attitudes. `Grammar' may be a dirty word to some people, but in my opinion it seems to be quite highly respected amongst politicians and policymakers in Britain and the US. If it's an entertaining suggestion you want, then how about Department of Trivia (= Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric). Seriously though, a change to Department of Grammar may be a bit hard to swallow (question of swallowing our pride, perhaps?), but unemployment with diminishing possibilities for relocation is harder. --- John Coleman -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: 11 Jun 92 14:11:44 EST From: South Asia Regional Studies Subject: 3.477 Linguistics or grammar? Dennis Baron's experience in the dentist's chair is, of course, a common one. It isn't difficult to understand or explain the attitude expressed by the dentist. One only has to think about his/her childhood experience at the hands of the secondary school English teacher. Apparently the "tradition" of turning off our children to language study is alive and well, as my thirteen-year-old son and his peers have recently informed me. If we're going to change the name of Linguistics Departments to "Dept. of Grammar," let us also change the way we teach grammar to our children. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 92 14:37:18 -0500 From: "Michael Kac" Subject: Re: 3.477 Linguistics or grammar? An addendum to Dennis Baron's list of contexts in which ' grammar' is used as a dirty word: In the Russ Rymer article on Genie which recently occasioned so much omment on LINGUIST, there is a sen- tence containing the phrase 'as much blood as can be squeezed from grammarians ...' Michael Kac -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 92 16:51:13 EDT From: Michael Covington Subject: Re: 3.475 Why is linguistics in trouble? It seems that the general academic public is unaware that linguistics deals with fundamental issues in language teaching, grammar, speech therapy, you name it. I've found that a lot of academics think of linguistics as a (pseudo?)scientific outgrowth of a lot of solid fields that would get along fine without it. In fact a surprising number of people think linguistics = structuralist literary theory. ------------------------------------------------------------- 6) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1992 07:32:16 +0200 From: Swann Philip Subject: 3.477 Linguistics or grammar? Come on! You guys can't be serious. All kinds of people study language from all kinds of perspectives (biology, neuropsychology, computation, history, philosophy etc) - it is a thriving interdisciplinary field. If "theoretical" linguists want to survive, they have to demonstrate that their theoretical constructs actually serve some purpose. Otherwise they will go the way of zoologists who continued to classify stuffed animals while the rest of the world was discovering molecular biology and ecology... Philip Swann University of Geneva -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 92 09:53:48 +0100 From: Dr F Katamba Subject: Re: 3.476 SOAS saved...for now I am delighted to see that sense has prevailed - for now. What a relief! Best, Francis -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-485. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-486. Fri 12 Jun 1992. Lines: 129 Subject: 3.486 Comparatives Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 92 14:33:45 EST From: mark Subject: Re: 3.472 Comparatives 2) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 92 14:13:46 EDT From: rws@mbeya.research.att.com (Richard Sproat) Subject: 3.478 Comparatives -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 92 14:33:45 EST From: mark Subject: Re: 3.472 Comparatives A slight correction to Barbara Need's reading of my comment on "My car is redder than orange": I didn't mean to say that its readings were *reduced* forms of the somewhat longer sentences (her 1a, 1c) by means of which I distinguished those readings. I meant those sentences only as *paraphrases* of the readings. The misunderstanding may be because the two sentences My car's color is closer to red than to orange (1a) and My car's color is closer to red than orange is (1c) can both reduce to My car's color is closer to red than _ orange _ , which is therefore ambiguous. I am not currently interested in theories of how (or whether) one sentence is reduced to another! Mark A. Mandel Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 965-5200 320 Nevada St. : Newton, Mass. 02160, USA -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 92 14:13:46 EDT From: rws@mbeya.research.att.com (Richard Sproat) Subject: 3.478 Comparatives Thanks to Sue Blackwell for this substantially better set of data: easy 2704 easier 1042 uneasy 320 uneasier 2 happy 2455 happier 229 unhappy 513 unhappier 3 likely 3328 likelier 1 unlikely 777 unlikelier 0 lucky 846 luckier 24 unlucky 107 unluckier 2 tidy 208 tidier 14 untidy 115 untidier 3 worthy 225 worthier 3 unworthy 61 unworthier 1 Given the simple-minded method I suggested in the previous posting the `expected' frequencies of the _un-X-er_ forms, assuming E(_un-X-er_) = F(_un-X_)/F(_X_) * F(_X-er_)/F(_X_) * F(_X_) = F(_un-X_)/F(_X_) * F(_X-er_) Actual Expected uneasier 2 123 unhappier 3 47 unlikelier 0 0.2 unluckier 2 3 untidier 3 7 unworthier 1 .8 _unlikelier_, _unluckier_ and _unworthier_ are about as frequent as expected. _untidier_ is only half as frequent as expected. Interestingly, _unhappier_ is indeed an order of magnitued less frequent than expected. _uneasier_ is two orders of magnitude less frequent, but note that _uneasy_ and _easy_ are not the same lexeme, and given that _uneasier_ must be derived from _uneasy_ (following the earlier discussion there is simply no other possible conclusion in this case), it is pretty clear that the multiplicative model *shouldn't* be the right model in this case: given that _easy_ and _uneasy_ are simply different words, we wouldn't expect to find _uneasier_ sensitive to the relative frequency of _uneasy_ and _easy_. But why is _uneasier_ *so* infrequent. Is it possible that _uneasy_ has drifted lexically so far from _easy_ that people are beginning to lose the fact that it is morphologically derived via _un-_ prefixation from _easy_? In that case, maybe it is beginning to be treated as an unanalyzable trisyllabic adjective and thus has a stronger resistance to _-er_ suffixation. If that is right, then it suggests that we still need the prosodic condition on _-er_ affixation (contra Beard). That leaves us with _unhappier_ and to a lesser degree _untidier_ as going against the multiplicative model. But note two things: we don't have the frequencies of the _more un-X_ constructions here, so the frequency of the operation of comparison of the negative adjectives is unknown. Secondly, for both _unhappier_ and _untidier_ obvious close synonyms (_sadder_, _messier) with monomorphemic bases spring immediately to mind, but not so clearly for the other cases. (Note that I am *not* saying that there aren't possible synonyms in these other cases, just that they don't spring to my mind as clearly as in these two cases. And note that this doesn't explain why _unhappy_ -- close synonym _sad_ -- should be as common as it is.) Things become slightly _untidier_ then: 1) E(_un-X-er_) = F(_un-X_)/F(_X_) * F(_X-er_) is roughly the right model, BUT 2) the frequency of the F(_un-X-er_) forms may be weighted by the observable likelihood of forming _more_ comparatives of the _un-X form, AND 3) obvious synonyms may probabilistically `block' formation of the `_un-X-er_' forms. Again, if this is right, then we might have an answer as to why the _un-X-er_ forms appear to be rare. Crucially, I do not believe that they are rare for formal *morphological* reasons; not that anyone was necessarily suggesting that, but I just want to make that point clear. Richard Sproat Linguistics Research Department AT&T Bell Laboratories tel (908) 582-5296 600 Mountain Avenue, Room 2d-451 fax (908) 582-7308 Murray Hill, NJ 07974 rws@research.att.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-486. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-487. Fri 12 Jun 1992. Lines: 199 Subject: 3.487 New linguistics dept. Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 92 12:01 From: EDMONDSONWH@vax1.bham.ac.uk Subject: new linguistics dept.: some questions -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 92 12:01 From: EDMONDSONWH@vax1.bham.ac.uk Subject: new linguistcs dept. I see from the LINGUIST list that I am not alone in feeling distressed and depressed at the recent news of yet another linguistics department under threat of closure (but recently reprieved - see 3.476). Fortunately (or otherwise) my innate optimism eventually surfaces and I start to think of possible courses of action. After making a few informal enquiries I have come to the view that there is a non-zero possibility of creating a new Linguistics department here at The University of Birmingham. However, I need some help in preparing a case - hence this posting to LINGUIST. The situation at present is that there is some teaching and research in linguistics. Some of this done in the School of English, some of it in the School of Computing (for example as part of a new M.Sc. course in Cognitive Science). There is growing demand for a wider range of topics than those covered by the few people involved, and there is growing concern to be able to offer linguistics at various levels - undergraduate, M.Sc/M.A., Ph.D. Within the university the 'market forces' ethos underpins much of the decision-making about courses, staffing levels, resources, etc., but - and this is important - if a good case can be made for starting something then central 'pump-priming' resources can be made available (viz. Cognitive Science). My plan is to build a case out of independently good components/arguments. The help I would like probably sensibly falls into three categories, and the materials I assemble may make use of attributed as well as unattributed data, opinion... so please indicate if you do/do not/ want to be quoted on something. I am looking for factual 'INFORMATION' (student numbers, trends etc; probably quotable without problem); 'SUGGESTIONS' (of any sort, but typically ranging from - 'you must be mad' through to 'great idea, perhaps you should...'; I probably won't need to quote any of these(!) but will do so where necessary - e.g. if I act on a really good idea from someone); and lastly 'COMMENTS' (I suspect I may get a few long essays on the role of linguistics in ..., or the best name for such a department, or whatever, and I would definitely be interested in quoting from such materials in support of a case - being careful not to take things out of context). >>Please also send course brochures.<< Obviously I will be collating data from many different sources - and I haven't provided a standard format for anyone to use when sending me details of their courses, experiences... - so how can I be sure to get the sort of information I need? I may want to follow up some points with individual respondents - so please make sure when you send stuff to me (and not to LINGUIST) that you give sufficient contact details. I am happy to receive email (see the details on this posting - but be sure to spell my name correctly - we have a dumb mailer), or by FAX:- +44-21-414-4281 or by snail-mail to me: Dr William Edmondson, Cognitive Science Research Centre, School of Computer Science, The University of Birmingham, B15 2TT, Britain. (NB the speed is really molluscan if you send stuff from abroad without the airmail stickers.) I suspect that no-one has collected the sort of information I am gathering so some sort of general purpose summary document might be more useful to the linguistic community than a specific set of papers in support of a particular case. I will produce something for distribution via LINGUIST; watch this space for further details. *** In no particular order, then, here are some candidate components on which I'd like some feedback (I have views, of course, but don't want to force the feedback into any particular mould):- It might seem that starting something up when 'all around' are closing down is a silly idea. So, just how bad is the situation at the moment? We have heard of three departments in difficulties since last autumn, is that the total or are there others not so widely publicized? And, three out of how many? Is there a trend which needs to be reversed or is it that just a few cases have caused disproportionate noise? To my mind the answers to these questions needn't threaten the enterprise, they simply alter the way the arguments are put. What is the place of linguistics in the wider academic scheme of things? Why should anyone care if there isn't a Linguistics department? How does one persuade a non-academic member of a university council ('governing body') that such a field of study/teaching/research is important? In many ways related - but necessarily so? - what about links with other disciplines? Is it a good idea to point to the value of linguistics in the study of languages, psychology, medicine, anthropology, history...? Another way of looking at the question just raised is - should 'Linguistics' be a department/school 'by itself' or should it be part of a larger grouping and if so what? Is a department/school of English the obvious home (as so often appears to be the case)? Should 'Linguistics' be in the Arts/Humanities sector of university activity, or in the Sciences? Should it be in both (don't worry about how!)? On a completely different tack - how are student numbers in 'linguistics' (define this for yourself) courses around the world? Rising? Falling? Steady? Where do the students come from - direct from school? adult/mature students from all walks of life? And what about postgraduate students - where do they come from? What about the ratio of women:men - is it biased one way or the other? Are there any particular points to note regarding course publicity? And a related issue - how difficult is staff recruitment for posts in Linguistics? Are departments small and overworked? Do Linguistics departments provide course(s) for other departments, etc. Does this strengthen the case for independent existence or weaken it? Changing focus yet again - consider setting up a new course as a 2 stage process. Are there special factors associated with 'start-ups' - special transition problems or benefits? Is the current situation favourable or unfavourable for starting something (e.g. are there well qualified senior staff looking for jobs?). How long should the start-up phase last - is 3 years enough, too long...? Is it a good idea to try and start everything at the same time - undergraduate courses, postgraduate taught courses, research degrees - or should things build more slowly? And when things are 'established' are there problems of student recruitment or whatever which present specific problems for Linguistics departments not likely to be seen in other departments? Resource issues of a technical nature also raise a batch of questions. Some technology may be required for various components in a Linguistics course, for example, computational linguistics, phonetics. Are there any trends in the popularity of various topics within the broad range one could call linguistics which have implications for technical resources? (Are there such trends which have implications for human resources and should one pay attention to them?) *** There are bound to be many questions, or lines of thought, not drawn out explicitly in the above. Please feel free in any responses you make to point these out, and to offer your information, suggestions and comments on them, in addition to your offerings on the above components. In your responses you should assume very little. Of course I have some views, and some training, and even some favoured areas of interest in linguistics. However, I think it best to proceed with as much neutrality as possible, and to assemble the materials in that spirit also. (Note - this is not a discouragement to those of you who have had - are having - survival problems. If you have some particular insights, or some general comments, these could be most valuable, even if the circumstances are necessarily 'special' or 'local' or whatever.) As mentioned earlier, my aim is to assemble a good case out of good components and the themes above are at least one way of slicing that cake. Are there other (better? more persuasive?) ways of factoring the totality of the case for starting/having a Linguistics department? *** This call for information will remain 'open' for about a month, or until I 'stop getting stuff sent to me' - whichever is the longer. I will announce the closure. Please email me if you think this call should be posted on other lists which you know of, and send me the details. Why? I am trying to avoid the situation where 300 of you decide on the same day to send this to some other list which you all just happen to belong to, thus overwhelming the moderators, if there are any, or boring the readers if the list is unmoderated; I would like to know which lists the posting is on - in case I want to make any special efforts to contact people in particular countries, or disciplines...; and also, if I assume responsibility for wider circulation then I can close the call uniformly. Thank you for your help. PS Having prepared this file for emailing to LINGUIST, and having looked at the recent distributions on the list, it occurs to me that many people might want to see the material generated by this posting in 'email discussion mode' rather than in summary form from one subscriber. I leave it to the list moderators either to reaffirm my opening request for the stuff to be sent to me directly, or to welcome wider initial circulations on the list. My problem is that a) I want to be sure of receiving material, and not just via email, and b) I will need to put together my case over the summer (and the discussion may go on and on....), and c) I suspect the email discussion could become repetitive. Of course, you can always send stuff direct to me regardless of whether or not you participate in any email discussion. [Moderators' note: we do think this is an interesting topic for discussion on the list, so please feel free to send LINGUIST copies of your responses to Edmondson. However, we also think Edmondson's summary will be interesting and useful to subscribers, so we'd appreciate his posting it, even if some of the responses have already been aired over the list. -Helen & Anthony] -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-487. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-488. Sat 13 Jun 1992. Lines: 96 Subject: 3.488 Queries: Research, Discourse, Linguistics, Syllables Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 09 Jun 92 11:58 EDT From: John_E_JOSEPH@umail.umd.edu (jj36) Subject: Creation of "research institutes" 2) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 92 16:24:19 -0400 From: ysl@linc.cis.upenn.edu (Young-Suk Lee) Subject: query 3) Date: Sat, 13 Jun 92 00:34:20 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Linguistics vs. Grammar 4) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 92 16:44:58 -0700 From: hubbard@garnet.berkeley.edu (Kathleen Hubbard) Subject: superheavy syllables -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 09 Jun 92 11:58 EDT From: John_E_JOSEPH@umail.umd.edu (jj36) Subject: Creation of "research institutes" According to the endpiece of the June 2 _Chronicle of Higher Education_, a number of American universities are creating separate "teaching tracks" for faculty, with the understanding that they will be evaluated on the quality of their teaching rather than research and publication. In still other institutions, the research faculty are being segregated off into "research institutes" that are loosely affiliated with their corresponding academic departments. Both of these options seem to have some promising and some frightening aspects. I wonder whether any LINGUIST readers have direct experience with institutions that have taken or are taking either of these paths, and can comment on some of the pros and cons. --John E. Joseph, Dept. of French & Ital., Univ. of Maryland, College Park MD 20742 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 92 16:24:19 -0400 From: ysl@linc.cis.upenn.edu (Young-Suk Lee) Subject: query I am looking for articles/books which discuss pragmatic/discourse factors affecting word-order variation (scrambling) in Korean or Japanese. If you know any such work, could please send me a message at the following address? ysl@linc.cis.upenn.edu I will post the list of references which I have collected. Thanks. Young-Suk Lee -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Sat, 13 Jun 92 00:34:20 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Linguistics vs. Grammar Does anybody know how it came about that people started talking about 'Sprachwissenschaft', 'linguistique', or 'linguistics' instead of 'grammar'? -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 92 16:44:58 -0700 From: hubbard@garnet.berkeley.edu (Kathleen Hubbard) Subject: superheavy syllables I'm working on the phonetics of duration and moraic theory, and need data on "superheavy" or "trimoraic" syllables of the sort (C)VVCC (as opposed to (C)VVC and (C)VCC) -- perhaps in Finnish, Japanese, etc. If anyone is familiar with recent phonetic work on the durations of segments and syllables in such languages, I'd be grateful for references or findings. Kathleen Hubbard U.C. Berkeley -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-488. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-489. Sat 13 Jun 1992. Lines: 227 Subject: 3.489 FYI: Obituary, Geneva Reports, Systemic Papers Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 92 15:40 EDT From: John_E_JOSEPH@umail.umd.edu (jj36) Subject: Obituary: P.H. Furfey (1896-1992) 2) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1992 11:17:00 +0200 From: Robin Clark Subject: Geneva Technical Reports 3) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 92 15:41:53 +0200 From: noel@BANRUC60.bitnet Subject: OPSL -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 92 15:40 EDT From: John_E_JOSEPH@umail.umd.edu (jj36) Subject: Obituary: P.H. Furfey (1896-1992) Paul Hanly Furfey, a pioneer of sociolinguistics, died at age 95 on June 8, 1992 at Providence Hospital. Monsignor Furfey taught in the Sociology department at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., from 1925 until his retirement in 1966, serving as department chairman from 1934 on. That same year he became associated with Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker group, and worked closely with Day through the 1930s and again during the Vietnam-era peace movement. In 1943 Furfey gave the first known course on the Sociology of Language, and in 1944 published two articles on sociolinguistic topics in the American Catholic Sociological Review. In the early 1950s two of his doctoral students, Father George N. Putnam (1909- 1991) and Edna M. O'Hern (b.1919), undertook a pioneering sociolinguistic study of a Washington, D.C. ghetto dialect, and their dissertations were published jointly as a supplement to Language in 1956 (The Status Significance of an Isolated Urban Dialect, Lg 31, no. 4, Part 2, supplement). A fuller account of Furfey's life and career, as well as of other pre-1960 work in sociolinguistics, may be found in my article "Paul Hanly Furfey and the Origins of American Sociolinguistics", forthcoming in the next issue of Historiographia Linguistica (probably in July). It was my good fortune to get to know Monsignor Furfey during the preparation of the article, and I am sorry that he did not live to see it appear. --John E. Joseph -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1992 11:17:00 +0200 From: Robin Clark Subject: Geneva Technical Reports Technical Reports in Formal and Computational Linguistics Robin Clark, Luigi Rizzi, Eric Wehrli Editors Department of Linguistics University of Geneva No 4: Late Empty Subjects in German Child Language ---Cornelia Hamann (54 pages) Acquisition research has shown that in german the use of 0-subjects does not drop from about 50% to 5% in a very short space of time, but that there is a drop from about 45% to 10-20%. The present paper investigates this 10-20% 0-subject stage in 3-year-olds. It shows that this stage is surprisingly long but not final. Moreover, the two children under investigation used structures in this phase which are neither found in the state of early 0-subjects nor in the target. The striking result of the study is that there 10-20% of 0-subjects occur even after the full acquisition of inflection and Verb Second, and that during this phase children use post-verbal referential 0-subjects. An analysis is proposed admitting competing strategies for a time, a strategy of topic-drop and a strategy of licensing 0-subjects in government configurations. Price: 10.-- SFr (within Switzerland) 15.-- SFr (outside Switzerland) No 3: Adverbial Positions and Second Language Acquisition ---Liliane Haegeman (50 pages) The paper is a generative approach to the issue of L2 acquisition. The paper examines the acquisition of English adverb positions by native speakers of French in the light of Pollock's split INFL hypothesis. It is proposed that for a certain group of adverbials there is a correlation between the position of the adverb w.r.t. the direct object and the null object parameter. In this way the paper offers insights both in the problem of L2 acquisition and in the domain of the syntax of English and French. Price: 10.-- SFr (within Switzerland) 15.-- SFr (outside Switzerland) Also Available: No 1: Papers on Learnability and Natural Selection ---Robin Clark (144 pages) Price: 15.-- SFr (within Switzerland) 20.-- SFr (outside Switzerland) No 2: Residual Verb Second and the Wh Criterion ---Luigi Rizzi (28 pages) Price: 7.50 SFr (within Switzerland) 12.50 SFr (outside Switzerland) To order, or for further information, contact: FCLREP@uni2a.unige.ch Technical Reports Department of Linguistics University of Geneva CH-1211 Geneva 4 We accept either Mastercard or Eurocheques, made payable to ``Technical Reports''. Please include the following information with your order: Name: Address: Volume(s) Requested: Mastercard #: Expiration Date: Please indicate whether you want the volume(s) sent by Airmail (the default is surface mail). For airmail, add 10.-- SFr per volume to the total price. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 92 15:41:53 +0200 From: noel@BANRUC60.bitnet Subject: OPSL Now available from the Nottingham English Language and Linguistics Research Group (N.E.L.L.): OCCASIONAL PAPERS IN SYSTEMIC LINGUISTICS 6 (1992) Contents: Jonathan Fine (Bar-Ilan, Israel): Functions of probabilities on linguistic systems Elke Teich (GMD-IPSI, Darmstadt): A systemic grammar of German for text generation Meriel Bloor (Warwick) & Thomas Bloor (Aston): Given and new information in the thematic organization of text: an application to the teaching of academic writing Peter H. Fries (Michigan) & Gill Francis (Singapore): Exploring Theme: problems for research Carmen Rosa Caldas-Coulthard (Santa Catarina, Brazil): The representation of speech in factual and fictional narrative: stylistic implications Glenn Stillar (York University, Toronto): Emerging discoursal patterns: a phasal analysis and catalysis of Leonard CohenUs RAlexander Trocchi, public junkie, Priez pour nousS Michael Toolan (Washington): Token and value: a discussion Kristin Davidse (Leuven): A semiotic approach to relational clauses Leiv Egil Breivik (Bergen): Angela Downing on existential sentences Angela Downing (Madrid): BreivikUs accusations: a rejoinder James R. Martin (Sydney): Theme, Method of Development and Existentiality: the price of reply James R. Martin & Christian Matthiessen (Sydney): A brief note on HuddlestonUs reply to Matthiessen & MartinUs response to HuddlestonUs review of HallidayUs Introduction to Functional Grammar Rodney Huddleston (Queensland): On HallidayUs Functional Grammar: a reply to Martin and to Martin and Matthiessen Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen (Ghent): The interactional utility of of course in spoken discourse Marietta Elliott (Charles Sturt) & William McGregor (Melbourne): Syntagmatic relations among texts To receive your own personal copy of this DOUBLE volume send a cheque for 14 Pounds Sterling to: Hilary Hillier Department of English Studies The University of Nottingham NG7 2RD England -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-489. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-490. Sat 13 Jun 1992. Lines: 115 Subject: 3.490 Linguistics in trouble? Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 92 14:55:04 EDT From: pesetsk@Athena.MIT.EDU Subject: ling. dept. troubles 2) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 92 17:23:02 -0500 From: "Larry G. Hutchinson" Subject: Re: 3.475 Why is linguistics in trouble? 3) Date: Sat, 13 Jun 1992 08:35 EST From: MORGAN@LOYOLA.EDU Subject: Re: 3.485 Linguistics vs. grammar, ling. dept. troubles -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 92 14:55:04 EDT From: pesetsk@Athena.MIT.EDU Subject: ling. dept. troubles The positive aspect of this discussion is nothing but healthy. Us (*we) linguists must work very hard to spread the good news about our field. Furthermore, we must work as hard as we can to prevent department closures. But is it the case that linguistics is particularly threatened at the moment? In the US, in the past few years, new departments and graduate programs have been created at Rutgers, UC Irvine, UC Santa Cruz, Princeton, to name only the ones I can think of at the moment. Many other US departments are growing nicely, for example Penn with its new Center. At UMass Amherst, the department has been sheltered in a truly marvellous fashion against budget cuts blowing evilly through the university, and has actually grown slightly. In Western Europe, linguistics appears to be thriving and expanding in Holland and Germany. There are even glimmers of life from France. In Italy, the new linguistics program in Venice is doing fine, and Geneva is an important new center. And these are just some of the departments that I would know about from my corner of linguistics. None of this is to minimize the real dangers facing linguistics departments as University finances turn sour. But I think the perception of widespread closure threats that I see in some of the recent messages on LINGUIST may be an artifact of this marvellous and effective new medium for publicizing such threats. We should work hard to keep our field alive, but I wonder if there is much need for overall, as opposed to localized, concern. If it leads to new energy and new initiative, great, but watch out for (I hope) unnecessary gloom and doom. - -David Pesetsky ------- End of Forwarded Message -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 92 17:23:02 -0500 From: "Larry G. Hutchinson" Subject: Re: 3.475 Why is linguistics in trouble? The great majority of linguists consider themselves to be scientists. It seems to me most outsiders do not, and this includes deans. If these outsiders are wrong, we ought to be able to change their minds by pointing out some recent empirical discoveries. (But if Itkonen and others are right, we won't be able to.) If we could cite the discovery of new languages, new types of languages, new language families, new grammatical phenomena, etc, we should have no trouble convincing other of our status as scientists. (A lot of this was in fact going on in the 19th century.) And if we could point to technological and engineering advances made by linguists, we would also have little difficulty in convincing administrators that we are valuable. There have been advances in natural language understa- standing systems, machine translation, speech recognition and production by machine, etc., but it is not obvious that linguists can claim much credit for any of this. (Rightly or wrongly, linguists in the early forties were able to convince many outsiders that they had made major advances in the teaching of languages, and were esteemed for it.) The perception I have is that outsiders are not impressed with our claims. Apparently, many of them see such phrases as "the scientific study of language" as just so much self- congratulatory back-patting. Without demonstable results of SOME kind, any discipline is likely to be seen as expendable. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Sat, 13 Jun 1992 08:35 EST From: MORGAN@LOYOLA.EDU Subject: Re: 3.485 Linguistics vs. grammar, ling. dept. troubles It isn't only Linguistics which are badly regarded; it is language and language teaching in general. Who hasn't met someone who says, "Oh, yeah, I took two years of Spanish [French, German, whatever] in High School and don't remember a thing." Why is this true of language and language study, but not Math? Because people aren't aware of needing to learn it for use in their daily lives; they think they are already proficient. Foreign languages, of course, seem super- fluous to most US inhabitants. So perhaps the way to change perceptions of language and language learning as unpleasant and useless is to make it useful and necessary daily. This is also the point I would make on the TV program mentioned by Smyth-- perhaps pragmatics and other useful-in-our-daily lives linguistics might help interest people. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-490. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-491. Sun 14 Jun 1992. Lines: 176 Subject: 3.491 Linguistics in trouble? Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 13 Jun 92 09:36 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Linguistics in trouble? 2) Date: Sun, 14 Jun 92 8:09:35 WST From: onghiok@ling.nthu.edu.tw (H.Samual Wang (035)715131-4398) Subject: Re: 3.490 Linguistics in trouble? 3) Date: Sat, 13 Jun 92 12:43:33 -0700 From: zbarlev@sciences.sdsu.edu Subject: Re: Linguistics in trouble? 4) Date: 13 Jun 92 18:36 +0800 From: Hurch Subject: reply AMR 3488 5) Date: Sat, 13 Jun 92 13:09:41 EDT From: Karen Kay Subject: 3.490 Linguistics in trouble? -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 13 Jun 92 09:36 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Linguistics in trouble? Good letter from David Pesetsky re the continued life of linguistics. Let's not overreact while strongly reacting. Yet we do need to be vigilant and it is true that most people including deans and administrators do not know what linguistics is or what we do; they don't know the difference between microbiology and molecular biology either but they reflect society's awe of science and so obviously departments which are science depts are safer than those that the deans do not consider science departments. They suffer from the since we all speak a language we know about language syndrome. But we are very much alive and growing in many places and doing good things and interacting with lots of other disciplines and contributing to aphasiology, neurology, neuropsychology, psychology, speech communication, AI and computer sci, cog sci, as well as the traditional areas of language studies, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, speech pathology Vicki Fromkin -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Sun, 14 Jun 92 8:09:35 WST From: onghiok@ling.nthu.edu.tw (H.Samual Wang (035)715131-4398) Subject: Re: 3.490 Linguistics in trouble? I would like to add to David Pesetsky's list of growing linguistics. In Taiwan, there is a new MA program in linguistics that is going to be instituted in National Taiwan University, and two others being planned in other universities. We here at Tsing Hua University have had an MA program in linguistics for six years and a PhD program for two years. We are working hard to start an undergraduate program in linguistics, which does not exist in Taiwan. The prospectus is dim, but by no means nil. Sam Wang -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Sat, 13 Jun 92 12:43:33 -0700 From: zbarlev@sciences.sdsu.edu Subject: Re: Linguistics in trouble? I'm happy to see that discussion of "why I became a linguist" has begun to touch on issues of the public image of the field vis-a-vis the problems it is having at some places. I don't know whether linguistics is in trouble in a general way. (We're doing fine here.) But many of the comments made over the last month or more seem to imply that it's just the think-headedness of journalists that gives linguistics its sometimes less than wonderful reputation. A recent posting implies that people ought to appreciate us and foreign languages as much as they appreciate math, and another implies that we just have to convince people that we're a real science. But still another noted, if I recall, that some students who may have been turned off in an introductory course have now become our colleagues and our deans, with predictable results. I think people are well enough convinced that linguistics is a science. Whether it's one that has any use or interest for them is more the question. Introductory and other courses that turn people off are simply not helpful in this regard. I think too many of us take too much pleasure in the challenging sides of linguistics, its supercilious aspects, without due regard for nasty feelings that may be engendered. The challenging sides are great for introductory courses -- when the students can overcome the challenges at least partially. But teaching students how little they know about language, period, can leave a nasty after-taste. I think we should be emphasizing our generally interesting implications. Thus, although I've never done any research in psycholinguistics or sociolinguistics, I have long emphasized some of its basic insights for their general interest and appeal. I have also long emphasized the specific possible -- and generally unrealized -- implications of linguistics for foreign language teaching (even when this was not for me, as it is now, a major focus of research). Even specific syntax and phonology can be presented effectively in intro courses -- although rarely in conversation with ordinary people without an implicit put-down; the put-down is implicit in classs too, and if we don't undo it by empowering students somehow, it too may cause bad feelings. In any case, all levels of relevance can be readily argued especially for future teachers: I don't think we will readily convince anyone that every little town in America needs a resident syntactician and phonologist, but it is not hard to argue that every single teacher in that small town ought to have some of the basic insights about the nature of language provided by modern linguistics. This includes the ability to avoid classifying someone as retarded because he has a different "accenT -- there are specific cases of this happening. But here one can easily argue that a teacher of English ought to know something of modern scholarship of grammar, too. (This includes why we are not grammarians, of course!) As a field, we should not disdain applications and implications, even if we don't research them individually. The quote of students' feelings about foreign language courses makes me think of an analogy: Math departments would have more trouble if its students could just repeat multiplication tables, but not do multiplication. This, although math is much more important to more people than linguistics is likely to be. The mere fact that we all have, use, and depend on languages, does not make linguistics interesting to ordinary people -- unless we make it so. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: 13 Jun 92 18:36 +0800 From: Hurch Subject: reply AMR 3488 In reply to Alexis Manaster Ramer on linguist 3488: First: "Sprachwissenschaft is not limited to the treatment of grammar. Thus, the terms are not synonymous. The stdy of grammar is just part of linguistics. Second: The original terms were "grammatologie" in the post-revolutionary French tradition of the Ecole ..., etc. The German counterpart was philology. And these two did not only represent two cultures but two distinct fields of research. "Sprachwissenschaft" did not come in before the Neogrammarians. Derrida's "Grammatologie" obviously is something different. Bernhard Hurch hurch@mvax2.urz.uni-wuppertal.dbp.de -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5) Date: Sat, 13 Jun 92 13:09:41 EDT From: Karen Kay Subject: 3.490 Linguistics in trouble? > High School and don't remember a thing." Why is this true of language > and language study, but not Math? Because people aren't aware of > needing to learn it for use in their daily lives; they think they This *is* true of math...the difference is that math has a kind of mystic power associated w/ it that is respected by administrators, whereas lx does not, for whatever reason. Karen Kay ll23%nemomus@academic.nemostate.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-491. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-492. Sun 14 Jun 1992. Lines: 175 Subject: 3.492 Innateness Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 92 08:35:35 +0100 From: "R.Hudson" Subject: Innate language-specific knowledge 2) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 92 18:31 MET From: WERTH@alf.let.uva.nl Subject: RE: 3.480 Rules, Innateness -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 92 08:35:35 +0100 From: "R.Hudson" Subject: Innate language-specific knowledge Rob Stainton gives a very nice list of 10 different facts, ranging from 1 through 3 to 10. 1. Anaphors must be bound in their governing category. 3. "The President of the U.S. " refers to George Bush. 10. In conversation one should have sufficient evidence for one's statements. He then asks which of these facts belong to "knowledge of language", and presumes that this is something we discover, by doing research. But this is precisely the point that's at issue. Is there such a thing as our "knowledge of language", whose boundaries are waiting to be discovered, or is our knowledge about language just like our knowledge about, say, food - not unified by anything other than being about food, and certainly not constituting an autonomous module of our minds? Some of us have come to the conclusion that knowledge of language is just that - what we know about "language", i.e. about words, word-combinations and word-parts. Crucially, I think there's no major discontinuity between what we know about intra-linguistic facts (how words combine, how they're made up of sound-segments, etc) and what we know about the relations between words and non-linguistic things e.g. that you shouldn't say _shit_ in polite company (Rob Stainton's example). So my guess is that if anyone comes up with a boundary round knowledge of language, they've invented it, not discovered it - i.e. it will turn out to be simply a matter of definition, and the *only* thing which will distinguish knolwledge of language from other kinds of knowledge will be that the former is about language. However, this is presumably a matter of research, as he suggests; but the burden of proof rests with those who believe there is a boundary around knowledge of language, to find the properties which are shared by all this knowledge but by no other kinds of knowledge (other, of course, than the property of being about language). It's very easy to find properties that go the other way - properties which are found in knowledge of language and also in obviously non-linguistic knowledge. Where are these unique properties? (Of course, it all depends on what you think the properties of language are, which depends on your preferred linguistic theory; and what goes into your linguistic theory may well depend on whether or not you think language is unique .... But I don't think it's all completely circular and pointless; we're all constrained by the same data, in the long run.) I think Rob Stainton is probably right in thinking there's a close link between the uniqueness of knowledge of language and innateness. As he says, if there really is a boundary out there, waiting to be discovered, then it's hard to think of any explanation for it other than a genetic one. And conversely, the debate about innateness is *not* about whether we're genetically predisposed to learn language - we clearly are, because we do it - but whether we're genetically equipped with *knowledge of language* - i.e. with this mythical object that I think doesn't exist. Until we have a clear idea of what belongs in knowledge of language (and R S's contribution shows that at least he hasn't yet got one; and I don't think anyone else has either), then we don't know, either, what it is that is supposed to be innate. And to the extent that one doubts the reality of (the boundaries of) knowledge of language, one *must* doubt the reality of linguistic innateness. 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, 12 Jun 92 18:31 MET From: WERTH@alf.let.uva.nl Subject: RE: 3.480 Rules, Innateness I think Rob Stainton is probably arguing logically when he assumes that >the lines we draw between syntax, semantics and pragmatics; between >competence and performance; and between the language faculty and the >conceptual system; all can be drawn if the language faculty is an >innate structure. He could have added several more things to this list: encyclopedic vs. linguistic knowledge; syntax vs. lexicon. All of these distinctions presuppose a more "interior" kind of knowledge vs. a more "exterior" kind. But the problem with this logic is that it's impossible to say what is the premiss and what is the conclusion. You can conclude innateness on the premiss of all those distinctions; but equally, you can draw those distinctions on the premiss of innateness. But notice that every single one of the above distinctions has been hotly disputed and just as fiercely defended. And moreover, the people who most fiercely defend the distinctions are precisely the people who need to postulate that the language faculty is to a greater (rather than lesser) extent innate. So actually you can't use the (alleged) reality of these distinctions to argue for the necessity of innateness - in fact they're part of the same package deal. It seems clear to me that if you're not particularly fired up about linguistic innateness, then you're much more relaxed about there being no semantics/pragmatics border and no syntax/lexicon distinction, while the competence/performance distinction looks downright naive. In fact, the burden of proof is on those who want to claim innateness. (I mean real systematic neurological innateness, not just comparatively superficial physical accommodations like a modified larynx). The null hypothesis must surely be that the language faculty uses existing cognitive systems developed for perception, classification, recognition, storage, not to mention survival, gratification and so on. Language may be several orders of magnitude more sophisticated in its make-up than dolphin calls etc., but cognitively, I don't see how it can be anything other than an extension of the same kinds of response to environmental demands (and presumably much of the increased sophistication must come from the fact that human environments are more complex than dolphin envir- onments). Of course, the conceptual systems must themselves be innate to the extent that we're all born with brains, and the cognitive faculties appear to activate automatically, given the right kind of stimuli. But it's an unjustifiable step from this to postulating a special "language- organ", just as you can't postulate a special "bicycle-riding organ" or "mathematics organ". As somebody said earlier in this correspondence, the innateness people seem to reason that every speaker has to cram into his head such an astronomical number of syntactic, phonological and semantic rules, protocols, constraints and conditions - roughly equivalent, say, to having to learn the entire output of Government-Binding-Case theory, generative phonology and formal semantics since 1980, to take a random date - that we need innateness, or else we've got an immense problem of learnability. In fact, if they but knew it - or would recognise it - it's even worse than that, since humans have also got to learn a vast number of cultural, social, pragmatic and physical "rules" too, not to mention all the non-linguistic knowledge, if you insist on the distinction. In view of this, I would argue that learnability is guaranteed not by having separate, innate sub-systems (more or less autonomous), but instead by ensuring that the learning process uses essentially the same methods and machinery, whatever the nature of the system learned. What I suggest in a forthcoming book, in fact, is that cognition (including language) is essentially "fractal" in nature, i.e. made up of the same kinds of basic elements and relationships at all levels. Remember, folks, you heard it here first! So, let me throw out a challenge to the innateness lobby: if linguistic knowledge can't be distributed around conceptual systems (as Rob Stainton put it), WHY can't it? What's so special about linguistic knowledge that CAN'T be explained by general cognitive processes? The knockdown answer to this used to be 'syntax' - there's nothing else like it, was the assumption. But we know now (we knew it then, but maybe didn't think of it) that the structure of life itself is syntactic in much the same way (and with even more complex results). This is because it too is essentially an information structure. So that no longer seems such a powerful argument. I'm really looking forward to your replies on this. All the best, Paul Werth -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-492. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-493. Sun 14 Jun 1992. Lines: 285 Subject: 3.493 Comparatives, Verb/Adj, X-Bar, Predication Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 92 15:14:16 EDT From: Larry Horn Subject: Re: 3.472 Comparatives 2) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 1992 20:59 MST From: WDEREUSE@CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU Subject: Re: 3.446 Queries: Lists, Adjectives, Comma, Unhappier, Gopnik 3) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 92 12:06:49 CDT From: Eric Schiller Subject: Re: 3.479 Queries: TV, Software, Predicates, Good, X-Bar 4) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 92 15:52:42 EDT From: pesetsk@Athena.MIT.EDU Subject: Re: 3.479 Queries: TV, Software, Predicates, Good, X-Bar -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 92 15:14:16 EDT From: Larry Horn Subject: Re: 3.472 Comparatives Sorry I didn't have a chance to jump into the fray earlier, but I had a few thoughts on the status of comparatives as scalar predicates, and related matters. In his gauntlet-tossing posting of May 29, replying to Rich Sproat's recent LI squib on the a _unhappier_ bracketing paradox, Greg Stump argues contra Sproat that _happier_ and other comparatives (of scalar adjectives) are not themselves scalar values, or not clearly so. Sproat's June 1 reply maintains that comparatives are indeed scalar, although they don't (usually) appear in the frames Stump takes to be diagnostic for scalarity (very ____, less____, as ____ as). In his June 5 rereply, Stump reargues the nonscalarity of _unhappier_, on the basis of frames like Sandy is happier (than she was last year) if not actually happy. Sandy is happy if not actually happier (than she was last year). Sandy is not only happier (than she was last year) but happy. Sandy is not only happy but happier (than she was last year). --where clear instances of scalar predicates (good/excellent, warm/hot, widespread/universal) can only appear in the frames ...W... if not actually ...S... not only ...W... but ...S... with the weaker value in position W and the stronger in S. Thus, he concludes that "_happier_ doesn't behave as if it were a scalar adjective associated with the same scale as _happy_". By June 6, Sproat is ready to concede the point. In the 1972 dissertation cited by both Rich and Greg, what I argue is that comparatives are indeed scalar values, but the relevant scale is not defined by the absolute and comparative but by the equative and the comparative. Thus the relevant test sentences are Sandy is as happy as {Kim/she was last year} if not actually happier. Sandy is not only as happy as Kim, she's happier. --both of which are clearly irreversible. Similarly, Kim isn't even as tall as Sandy, much less taller. Sandy is as tall as Kim, {or even/and possibly (even)} taller. This is to be expected, given that A is taller than B unilaterally entails A is as tall as (i.e. at least as tall as) B. So too, the use of the weaker "A is as tall as B" will quantity-implicate that for all the speaker knows, A is not taller than B. (All of this is discussed in my thesis, and again in my 1989 book "A Natural History of Negation", pp. 386-8 and note 27 on p. 548, citing related work on comparatives as scalars by Fauconnier, Klein, Anscombre & Ducrot, Sadock, Cornulier, and especially Atlas's 1984 paper in Linguistics and Philosophy.) As Greg notes, it's not surprising that there's no scale of the form , given in particular that neither of the two propositions _Sandy is happy_ and _Sandy is happier than X_, for an arbitrary NP or clause X, entails the other. Incidentally, the comparative is not necessarily the strongest value within its scale, since the superlative will unilaterally entail the correspond set of comparatives: Sandy is taller than Kim, {if not/and she may even be} the tallest on the team; This was a better year, if not the best. [again, the frames don't allow reversal] The relevant scale is . I'll come back to superlatives in a bit. The scale is thus defined by comparison of degree, and not by the semantics of the adjective itself. So it's not surprising that these scalar values don't satisfy the frames designed for scalar adjectives per se. This comparative failure is noted not only by Stump but by Jack Hoeksema in a more recent posting that cites substitution possibilities in the frames "Boy, is she ____" and "What a _____ guy", where _happy_ is OK but _happier (than Bill)_ is not. Clearly, too, _as happy as Bill_ is ruled out here, yet various considerations, some cited above, lead us to regard equatives as scalars. Incidentally, these diagnostics seem to allow through some non-obvious scalars, although arguably a scalar reading is then forced: Boy, is she ever {female/dead/perfect/unique}! Boy, is that ever true! Pure contradictories still seem a bit out of sort here: #Boy, is 7 ever odd! Anyway, my point here is that equatives and comparatives are no more at home in this environment, whether scalar (as I continue to insist) or not, than are such clear scalar values as quantificational determiners (some, most, all), cardinals, and ordinals. Now from all of this it does NOT follow that I would endorse Rich's parallel morphological/semantic analysis of _unhappier_ as [un[happy[er]]]. To the contrary, I find it exceedingly counterintuitive if not counterexemplified, partly by some of the arguments raised in earlier exchanges on this topic. Let me just add my own skepticism, fueled by the general consideration that the acceptability of an arbitrary instance of _unXer_ (and, I would add, of _unXest_) seems to be directly linked to the existence of the corresponding example with _unX_, a link which is not directly captured if the negative prefix is added last with the meaning 'opposite of'. Thus, even though we might expect _unsafer_, _uncleaner_, _unclearer_, and of course _unhappier_ to be blocked by the existence of the comparative of the lexicalized negative adjective in the same way that *_untaller_, *_unbetter_, etc. are, they don't sound all that bad, and the reason can only be that the basic uncompared adjectives (or the corresponding equative) are also unblocked, for whatever reason. If we're dealing with the comparison of negative adjectives rather than the negation of comparative ones, that's precisely to be expected. Even more troubling for the Sproat line, I would think, is the existence of un-superlatives. The ONLY way to explain the existence of _unwisest_ along the non-existence of _unsmartest_ and _unbrightest_ is by deriving such forms as superlatives of the un-adjective and not vice versa. Similarly with the unkindest (*unnicest) cut of all. And not only must the existence of _impurest_ be predicted (at least I can imagine referring to _the impurest sample_), but we must be able to predict that this particular superlative will take the marked iN- prefix. Presumably these cases would demand a conventional negation-first analysis, as indeed Sproat readily accepts for other examples that don't fit the new paradigm. But it begins to seem that there's less and less for the new approach to do. (I also have reservations about Rich's use of the notion oppositeness, but I better let those go undiscussed here except to note that (i) whatever its viability with the un-comparatives, it's all the more uncon- vincing for the un-superlatives: to say that Kim is the unhappiest he's ever been is not to say that he's the opposite of the happiest he's ever been, and (ii) it also seems less plausible for clausal un-comparisons, where e.g. _Sandy is unhappier than she's ever been_ comes out as 'Sandy is un [happier- than-she's-ever-been].) So I'd argue that while comparatives (and superlatives!) are indeed scalar, Rich originally claimed for the former, the constituency argument employing that claim remains highly questionable. --Larry Horn (Lhorn@Yalevm) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 1992 20:59 MST From: WDEREUSE@CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU Subject: Re: 3.446 Queries: Lists, Adjectives, Comma, Unhappier, Gopnik To L.M. P. McPherson on Adjectives versus Verbs: There are Native North American languages that do mot appear to make a distinction between the categories "verb" and "adjective". The ones I've done fieldwork on Lakota (Siouan), Sarcee, Apache, and Navajo (Athapaskan), and Siberian Yupik (Eskimo-Aleut) did, on the whole, not make a clear distinction between verbs and adjectives. Rather adjectives are a sort of verb, and are inflected like verbs. Copulas are therefore very rare. In lakota, adjectives are really stative verbs; NPs containing "adjectives" do not really exist: you have to use either a relative clause, i.e. the dog that's big = the big dog, or say: dog-big where the big is a stative verb compounded with dog. There are subtle semantic and pragmatic differences between the two. Compounding is of course not typical of N- Adj sequences in lakota, because you can compound virtually anything with anything in lakota. In the Athapaskan languages, the situation is similar, except that there is a less basic distinction between stative and active verbs, and that NPs with attributive "adjectives" are more often relative clauses; compounding also exists, but the number of stems that can compound with a Noun seems to be a closed class, not an open class as in lakota. Of course, both in Athapaskan and in Siouan, there are some morphological (inflectional) and syntactic characteristics that do distinguish adjs as a subclass within the verbs. The situation is a bit different in Eskimo: most "adjectives" are verbs, inflected as such, thus "big" is a verb "to be big", a situation like the one in Siouan and Athapaskan. However, you also have a small but non- closed class of nouns which are adjectives, translatable as "big thing". The verbs can be used ( as in Athapaskan and Siouan) as attributive adjectives in realtive clauses; the nouns can be used attributively in apposition to another noun, agreeing in case and number with it (none of these languages have gender), thus 'dog big-thing' = 'big dog'. You can also use the nouns precicatively by verbalizing them with the derivational but productive N -> V suffix basically meaning 'to be', so 'dog big.thing-to.be-verb.infl' = 'the dog is big'. But you can also form the equivalent of NPs with attributive "adjectives" by using one of the N > N productive derivational suffixes that semantically correspond to "adjective", such as the ones meaning 'big', 'small', 'new', 'old', 'nice', 'cruddy', and a few dozen others. These are suffixes only, completely unrelated to nouns or verbs, and being suffixes, are also a closed class. I apologize to other authorities for inaccuracies herein; my goal being to compare in three very different Native American families, the things translatable with adjectives in English. Willem J. Reuse Dept. of Anthropology, University of Arizona Tucson, AZ 85721 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 92 12:06:49 CDT From: Eric Schiller Subject: Re: 3.479 Queries: TV, Software, Predicates, Good, X-Bar re: that good of In my recent CLS Paper (Eric Schiller & Barbara Need: The Liberation of Minor Categories: Such a Nice Idea!) I set forth an autolexical analysis of a variety of constructions, concentrating on predeterminers and to a lesser extent degree terms. this construction can be handled in the same way as 'too good a', if one wants to assume that 'that' is a degree term (in our system, something which combines with an adjective to form a predeterminer) and that 'of' is acting as an article (syntactically combines with N-bar to form NP). The latter assumption is reasonable, given the a/of variation seen in sorta/sortof, and the 'of' could be motivated here by some form of hypercorrection. I am not sure this is the best analysis, but I toss it into the arena so that interested parties can play with it. No intellectual or theoretical investment undertaken - it is just a thought. Eric Schiller University of Chicago -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 92 15:52:42 EDT From: pesetsk@Athena.MIT.EDU Subject: Re: 3.479 Queries: TV, Software, Predicates, Good, X-Bar Ronnie Wilbur writes: >In ASL, predicate nominals have no overt verb: > ____hn > JOHN DOCTOR >[...]] >the predicate nominal has a head nod on it (without the head nod, the >sequence is supposed to mean "John's doctor"). The facts about ASL predicate >nominals appear to be very similar to those of Russian, as far as I am >able to determine. Essentially, you can negate the predicate nominal ("John >is not a doctor") or you can modify the nominal itself ("John is a good doctor" >) but attempts to modify the "missing" verb (with tense-aspect-modality, for >example) are unacceptable without an overt verb. > >My question concerns what the analysis of e.g., the Russian case would be. Is >there a V slot that is unfilled? One datum that might become an argument for an empty verb is that Russian, like Black English as described by Labov, does not allow the empty verb before a movement site. My Russian is becoming somewhat rusty but I think relevant examples are things like the following: *Masha -- xoroshij lingvist, kakov Misha tozhe. Masha good linguist, which Misha also Masha -- xoroshij lingvist, kakovym Misha tozhe byl. which Misha also was [I used to give these examples with WH-words other than 'kakov', but the examples in something like this form were suggested to me by Elena Paducheva, a Russian linguist. Native speakers, please correct any errors.] As Labov noted in the BEV context, this is a familiar (and still unexplained) property of contracted auxiliaries in English ("*...which Misha also's"). If the explanation for the contraction facts should turn out to presuppose the existence of a verb position, then presumably the same will carry over to Russian. You might want to look at an MIT dissertation from 5 years ago or so by Tova Rapoport, however, which analyses the zero copula in Hebrew as simply not there. I do not know whether the Hebrew zero copula otherwise acts like contraction in English. > >[...] >Please respond to me directly (wilbur@vm.cc.purdue.edu) and I'll summarize >the results if there is sufficient interest. Thanks. ANY SYNTACTIC APPROACH >WELCOME! I've been wishing that someone would sort these things out for a long time, so I took the liberty of posting my remarks myself. Russian syntax is so woefully underdeveloped for a language with a rich descriptive tradition! Maybe someone will read this and write something interesting. -David Pesetsky -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-493. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-494. Mon 15 Jun 1992. Lines: 157 Subject: 3.494 Natural Phonology, English Stress, Macintalk Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: 15 June 1992, 08:12:19 CST From: Geoffrey.S.Nathan.GA3662.at.SIUCVMB@tamvm1.tamu.edu Subject: The last gasp of Natural Phonology 2) Date: Sun, 14 Jun 92 16:42:30 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: English Stress 3) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 92 13:27:46 EDT From: John.M.Lawler@um.cc.umich.edu Subject: Software, Good -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: 15 June 1992, 08:12:19 CST From: Geoffrey.S.Nathan.GA3662.at.SIUCVMB@tamvm1.tamu.edu Subject: The last gasp of Natural Phonology As one of the few surviving Natural Phonologists left on the North American continent let me say a few words in its defence. Unfortunately I'm off today to the Phonologie-/Morphologietagung in Krems, Austria, and consequently have little time to discuss issues in depth. I appreciate Joe Stemberger's comments about the child language data, but Stampe never argued (unless he wants to argue here himself) that WHICH processes a child would use to solve a particular articulatory or acoustic puzzle was predictable, since the vocal tract offers alternatives. If it didn't, all languages would end up the same, which they clearly don't. The difference between predictable choices and optional ones is considered at length under the heading `motivation' in the Cognitive Grammar literature, which I have argued in a forthcoming paper is compatible with NP. But the fact that children (and adult second language learners, and people talking at the same time they eat and...) come up with similar replacements that they have never been exposed to in the environment but are explicable articulatorily/acoustically (and that's all that NP means by `process') is not the only valuable insight that has been lost with the demise of NP as a viable theory. In his classic paper `Yes, Virginia..' Stampe showed that phonemes and morphophonemes were not just structurally defined points in an abstract pattern but represented facts about the nature of phonological perception and storage. It is a theory which makes specific predictions about abnormal language behavior (especially early second language acquisition stages), and is the only theorythat has any interest in any level of representation below the level of the surface phoneme (most discussions of post-lexical rules do not include ANY of the interesting (inneressin) things that happen in real speech production, even though they are rule governed and language specific. I could go on, but I realize that the interests of phonologists have moved on to other issues, some of which, such as the geometry of features and the parameters of stress theory are also directly useable by we embattled few. There will be a book coming out later this year on recent research in Natural Phonology, edited by Bernhard Hurch and Rich Rhodes. Contact either of them, or me for further information. (Incidentally, if someone could store any list answers to my ranting here over the next month, it would be greatly appreciated. Or is there some way to snoop in the archives?) Geoff Nathan Southern Illinois University at Carbondale -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Sun, 14 Jun 92 16:42:30 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: English Stress Some time ago there was a discussion of English stress on LINGUIST. All those who took part seemed to agree about the following (this is with reference to Northern, white US usage only): Words with zero stress on their last three syllables are only possible in case we are dealing with inherently unstressed suffixes, e.g., admiralty. However, it would seem that some (many?) speakers also have such pronunciations in the case of words like in -ery, e.g., dysentery, stationery (as opposed to words in -ory or -ary, which always have a secondary stress on the penult). While it is obviously possible to come up with various excuses for such forms (e.g., treating the final vowel as "underlying" /y/), it still seems interesting that this apparently exceptionless generalization may have exceptions after all. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 92 13:27:46 EDT From: John.M.Lawler@um.cc.umich.edu Subject: Software, Good In response to Zev Bar-Lev's request for information on speech synthesis (LINGUIST 3.479.2), here's what I know: Macintalk is "not supported"; this means Apple doesn't care whether you can get it working or not. However, it does work with HyperCard, on System 6.x - but *not* with System 7, although I have heard rumors that a version now being supplied with Talking Moose (q.v.) has been hacked to work with Sys7. The way you get it working with HyperCard - and incidentally a nice tutorial on how to use it - is to use HyperMacInTalk, a stack with XCMDs and XFCNs by Dennis C. Demars. It's widely available on the network for anonymous ftp (for instance, try ftp'ing archive.umich.edu) and it's quite nicely done. You can install the relevant XCMDs in your stacks and thus run it any way you want. That's what I did in my "World of Words" stacks that I showed at the LSA Software Exhibit in January. It is possible, though not easy, and not altogether satisfactory, to force Macintalk to sound like it's speaking another language. Oddly, it's easier to make it speak Homeric Greek than Old English (it doesn't do front rounded vowels, though it does have a /x/). Now for the bad news. Apple has been busily developing a "text-to-speech" manager for Sys7. I expect to hear more about it in a little bit, but my initial guess is that it's what the name implies - i., useless for linguists because it's based on somebody's phonemic analysis of English (which always ends up with English having precisely 64 "phonemes" - t he term should be taken ironically, because they're exactly *not* what any linguist would mean by "phoneme"), without phonetic hooks to (e.g.) lengthen vowels, raise pitch, compress attack, partially devoice, etc. When I've heard more, I'll post it here. I response to Barbara Abbott's inquiry about "that Adj of NP" (ibid.4), I've been hearing this all my life. The construction derives from the more conventional count versio: How good (of) a doctor is he? I didn't know he was that good (of) a doctor. The problem is that with a mass noun, one can't use the indefinite article, and the "of" becomes obligatory, though still awkward. But the sense is clear enough, and it's useful. So it's used. Cheers, -j -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-494. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-495. Mon 15 Jun 1992. Lines: 208 Subject: 3.495 Linguistics in trouble? Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 14 Jun 92 16:01:20 EDT From: "Gilbert Harman" Subject: Princeton linguistics 2) Date: Sun, 14 Jun 92 18:23:51 CDT From: andy@tivoli.com Subject: Re: 3.490 Linguistics in trouble? 3) Date: Sun, 14 Jun 92 20:09:28 EDT From: Ron Smyth Subject: Re: 3.487 New linguistics dept. 4) Date: Sun, 14 Jun 92 22:59:50 GMT From: "J. Jenkins and W. Strange 813 778 9357" Subject: 3.491 Linguistics in trouble? 5) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 92 13:15:30 PDT From: orlandoc@zimmer.CSUFresno.EDU (Akbar 'n' Jeff) Subject: Why we became linguists -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 14 Jun 92 16:01:20 EDT From: "Gilbert Harman" Subject: Princeton linguistics This is just to make a slight correction to David Pesetsky's remark: "In the US, in the past few years, new departments and graduate programs have been created at Rutgers, UC Irvine, UC Santa Cruz, Princeton, to name only the ones I can think of at the moment." We don't yet have a Linguistics Department at Princeton, nor do we offer a Ph. D. in Linguistics. We do have a Linguistics "Program," with faculty including R. Freidin (Head), E. Williams, M. A. Browning, S. Soames, L. Babby, and others. The University has been fairly supportive of Linguistics; several of these are relatively recent appointments (Williams, Browning, and Babby). Gil Harman -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Sun, 14 Jun 92 18:23:51 CDT From: andy@tivoli.com Subject: Re: 3.490 Linguistics in trouble? As a former linguist now doing something else (technical writing), I will have to agree and, for the sake of argument, extend to an extreme position, Larry Hutchinson's line of response, that it is not obvious that linguistics produces anything of substance beyond more linguists. If it does, we would all love to hear about it. There was a time, in the late fifties and early sixties, when generative grammar managed to convince many of us that it would help us discover something substantive about the workings of the human mind, but that all seems like so much hype in retrospect, as evidenced by the long discussion on Chomsky citations, in which those who weren't bristling against Chomskyean hegemony in linguistics were scurrying about trying to come up with something substantive they could say had come out of that movement and failing pretty miserably. I am afraid that to the man in the street who is footing the bill, creating interest in yet more topics for academics to endlessly argue about to no apparent avail is unlikely to create much of a positive impression. By and large, I'd have to say that the flurry of interest in the sixties has long since turned into a sort of colossal shell game in which the participants keep trying to guess which shell the "true theory" lies under, only to have the "true theory" change to the "revised true theory" under some other shell whenever the audience got close enough to see that it was largely bunkum. Does anyone out there really *believe* that we know anyhing substantially more about the nature of language than we did 35 years ago ? If they do, I certainly hope they will tell us what it is, as do, no doubt, those linguists who are trying to enlist support for the continuance of linguistics programs. Andy Rogers TIVOLI Systems 6034 W. Courtyard Dr., Suite 210 Austin, Texas 78730 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Sun, 14 Jun 92 20:09:28 EDT From: Ron Smyth Subject: Re: 3.487 New linguistics dept. I find it extremely interesting that although most linguists abhor being called 'grammarians' by the general public, they (we) think nothing of identifying our theories as grammatical models, speaking of the grammar of a language, and so on. 'Grammar' is a common word in linguistics; we just hate what other people THINK it means. So why don't we take a cue from various liberation movements and expropriate the 'dirty' word for our own uses, and bring about a change in its currently misconstrued meaning? I feel a bit odd calling myself a grammarian now, but a few years of popularization should do the trick. Ron Smyth smyth@lake.scar.utoronto.ca -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Sun, 14 Jun 92 22:59:50 GMT From: "J. Jenkins and W. Strange 813 778 9357" Subject: 3.491 Linguistics in trouble? As an outsider (a psychologist) who has been intimately interested in linguistics for 40 years, I presume to comment on this discussion. I think linguists are among the brightest people I know. I find them interesting and provocative. I also have found a small subset of them to be the most arrogant and intolerant academics I have met...including even the philosophers. In terms of the on-going discussion, I think Z Barlev and L. Hutchinson have written most tellingly. Linguistics is not going to make friends and influencepeople by "destroying young minds" in introductory courses to show the superiority of the instructor. I have argued repeatedly that a good course in linguistics , (and especially anthropological linguistics) does more for one's understanding of other cultures and other languages than two years of study in a foreign language (usually required in our universities). Linguistics is "good for" a lot of applications. It is no sin to appeal to application and to interest in "the nature of the mind" to generate interest in a field. It surely IS a sin to put students down in an introductory course and shut them out of the field for the rest of their academic experience. Linguistics won its academic position as philology by showing that it could do marvels in unpacking relations between languages and reconstructing "dead languages". It fit the Zeitgeist that was scientific and evolutionary in the last century. We know (and we ought to let others know) that it fits the current Zeitgeist of cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and theories of the mind...in addition to the practical work of second language instruction, translation, formal modeling, and so on. Isn't it OUR task to convince others that this is the case? James J. Jenkins...one-time psycholinguist. Jim and Winifred (Bitnet: dlnaoaa@cfrvm) (Internet: dlnaoaa@cfrvm.cfr.usf.edu) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 92 13:15:30 PDT From: orlandoc@zimmer.CSUFresno.EDU (Akbar 'n' Jeff) Subject: Why we became linguists As a recent MA graduate in linguistics, it is interesting to reflect on how we all got started in this thing called linguistics that brings moans, smiles, and an occasional 'eeewww' when the subject is brought up in any circle. I started as a pre-med student at the University of California, Irvine, with naive dillusions of becoming a medical doctor. After my first quarter there, I quickly changed my mind on the advice of the Biological Sciences department and with the welcome of the Humanities department. I didn't know what I wanted to study, but I accidently landed in an introductory linguistics class and I fell in love with linguistics. I didn't realize that some of the greatest minds in the field where there like Ken Wexler, Peter Cullicover, Mary Key, Robert May, and many other well respected linguistists (this was circa 1986-89) as well as the late Tracy Terrell. I didn't do very well as an undergraduate there, but the influence of these people made an impression on me that created a drive to know more about all the different aspects of linguistics. It wasn't until I got to Fresno State University to begin my graduate work that this drive turned into an obsession in trying to understand what language in general has to do with the world in general. The only bad side effects of studying linguistics is watching your spelling going down the tubes :^) It breaks my heart to see the State of California butcher our public university and college systems here, and to see brilliant minds in our linguistics department fall victim to poor political and economic maneuvering. It is also a sad state to see linguistics departments around the world close and fold due to a variety of reasons. On more scholarly note, I am collecting language and expressions used in electronic communications, such as this 'face' phenomena used in live interaction and e-mail. If anybody has anything they would like to contribute to my compilations, please feel free to e-mail me. I also am interested in knowing what is in other peoples' 'electronic lexicon' which from what I have seen looks like another language altogether! Thanks to all the linguists out there for everything. Orlando Cordero orlandoc@zimmer.csufresno.edu -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-495. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-496. Mon 15 Jun 1992. Lines: 148 Subject: 3.496 Jobs: Tromsoe, York Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 15 Jun 1992 16:23:13 +0200 From: maritrw@mack.uit.no Subject: Jobs at the University of Tromsoe 2) Date: Mon, 15 Jun 92 18:07:23 +0100 From: sjh1@tower.york.ac.uk (Steve Harlow) Subject: Job in French and Linguistics -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 15 Jun 1992 16:23:13 +0200 From: maritrw@mack.uit.no Subject: Jobs at the University of Tromsoe VACANT POSITIONS IN ENGLISH LINGUISTICS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TROMSOE At the School of Languages and Literature, University of Tromsoe, the following two positions in English linguistics are vacant: 1. LECTURER/SENIOR LECTURER (ASST./ASSOC. PROFESSOR) IN ENGLISH LINGUISTICS (permanent position) Salary: NOK 251,606/196,541-242,509 per year For further information, contact senior lecturer Marit R. Westergaard (Tel: 47.83.44256, e-mail: maritrw@mack.uit.no) or administrative leader Anne Cathrine Andersen (Tel: 47.83.44242) 2. RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP IN ENGLISH LINGUISTICS/CIVILIZATION (temporary position for 4 years) Salary: NOK 203,093 per year For further information, contact senior lecturer Fredrik Chr. Broegger (Tel: 47.83.44276) or administrative leader Anne Cathrine Andersen (Tel: 47.83.44242) Application deadline for both positions: June 23, 1992 Applications with CV, attested copies of transcipts and list of publications (5 copies) should be sent by the application deadline to: University of Tromsoe Universitetsdirektoeren Breivika N-9037 Tromsoe NORWAY Publications/scholarly works (3 copies of each) should be sent *by July 23* to: School of Languages and Literature University of Tromsoe Breivika N-9037 Tromsoe NORWAY -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Mon, 15 Jun 92 18:07:23 +0100 From: sjh1@tower.york.ac.uk (Steve Harlow) Subject: Job in French and Linguistics UNIVERSITY OF YORK DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGE & LINGUISTIC SCIENCE Lectureship in French Language and Linguistics I Applications are invited for a lectureship in French Language and Linguistics in the Department of Language and Linguistic Science from 1 October 1992. II Candidates should have a good first degree (or equivalent competence) in French and a strong commitment to research in a branch of linguistics relevant to the Department's work. They must be able to teach French language at all levels (in a course which lays special emphasis on oral/aural skills), and also to teach courses on the history and linguistic structure of the French language. The department has 13 academic members of staff whose research interests span phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics, socio-linguistics, computational linguistics, conversational analysis, historical linguistics, dialectology and second language acquisition. The department houses a major research project into high quality speech synthesis which is funded by British Telecom Plc. The organisation of French teaching within the department - including the placement of students at French Universities, monitoring their progress and making periodic contact visits - is shared among the French staff and applicants must be willing to take part in the associated administrative work. This post will be an addition to the currents staffing of the department's French section, which currently consists of two full-time lecturers and one full-time language assistant. The annual undergraduate intake of the department is between 50 and 55 students, of whom up to 30 will be specialising in French. The successful candidate will also be expected to contribute to the general linguistics teaching of the department and to participate in general tutorial teaching of linguistic theory, socio-linguistics and psycho-linguistics. The precise duties of the post will be by arrangement with the Head of Department. The courses offered in the Department are described in the enclosed brochures. III The salary will be within the Lecturer A salary scale, currently 13,611 to 17,827 per annum (pay award pending), according to age, qualifications and experience. The University will meet the full cost, within reason, of removal of furniture and household effects within the United Kingdom. The extent of payment of removal expenses of similar members of staff coming from overseas is at the discretion of the Vice-Chancellor. Three estimates of removal costs (one of which should be from a York firm) must be obtained and the University will meet the cost of the lower estimate. IV Six copies of applications (one only from overseas candidates) with full curriculum vitae and naming three referees, should be sent by 13 July 1992 to Registrar's Department (Appointments), University of York, Heslington, York YO1 5DD, UK. There are no printed application forms. June 1992 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-496. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-497. Mon 15 Jun 1992. Lines: 138 Subject: 3.497 Natural Phonology Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 15 Jun 92 16:54 GMT From: Richard Ogden Subject: natural phonology 2) Date: Mon, 15 Jun 92 11:40:25 EDT From: jsc@mbeya.research.att.com (John S. Coleman) Subject: 3.494 Natural Phonology 3) Date: Mon, 15 Jun 92 09:38:53 PDT From: Rick Wojcik Subject: Re: 3.483 Natural Phonology -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 15 Jun 92 16:54 GMT From: Richard Ogden Subject: natural phonology Geoff Nathan says that natural phonology is "the only theory that has any interest in any level of representation below the level of the surface phoneme". I would liketo say that this is not true. Firthian Prosodic Analysts were always interested in minute phonetic details and were never interested in phonemes as phonlogical objects. They constructed analyses without the mediation of such units, directly from the 'phonic material', which was usually far more detailed than ever appears in most 'modern' phonological analyses. Richard Ogden University of York England -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Mon, 15 Jun 92 11:40:25 EDT From: jsc@mbeya.research.att.com (John S. Coleman) Subject: 3.494 Natural Phonology Geoffrey.S.Nathan writes > [Natural Phonology] is the only theorythat has any interest > in any level of representation below the level of the surface > phoneme This is untrue. > (most discussions of post-lexical rules do not include > ANY of the interesting (inneressin) things that happen in real > speech production, even though they are rule governed and language > specific. A matter of opinion about what are the interesting things that happen in real speech production. I venture to predict that Nathan cannot name more than one or two "interesting things that happen in real speech production" accounted for by Natural Phonology but not addressed by someone else in some other framework. --- John Coleman -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Mon, 15 Jun 92 09:38:53 PDT From: Rick Wojcik Subject: Re: 3.483 Natural Phonology Joe Stemberger writes: > The main problem seems to be with the notion of Natural Process. There > seems to be an implication that there are processes that should be common > to all children. Stampe says that there are phonological items/sequences > that are hard to pronounce, and that the natural processes get the children > over these difficulties. Bear in mind that the historical basis for this observation goes far beyond Stampe. The seminal work was Jakobson's Child Language, Aphasia, and Phonolo- gical Universals, and even Baudouin de Courtenay had some remarks about the universal similarities found across languages in babytalk. Don't forget that these observations were also the basis for markedness theory in generative phonology. So more is at stake here than just Stampe's theory. > But there is very little uniformity across children in terms of the > processes that they use. There is a fair amount of uniformity in terms of > what children find difficult. For English-speaking kids, at least, we can > say that syllable-final consonants are difficult, that unstressed syllables > are difficult, that voicing in final obstruents is difficult. But children > seem to "solve" the same problem in different ways. This is fully compatible with what Natural Phonology says. One might expect more similarity if children were required to solve exactly the same articula- tory problems in exactly the same sequence, but the theory does not claim this. The same is true in L2 acquisition--not all foreign accents are the same and some people have more difficulty suppressing native processes than others. This doesn't mean that English speakers, e.g., all start out with different phonological systems. All NP says is that the pristine set of processes is the same, not that children all arrive at the same phonology via the same route. I suspect that part of the problem lies in the fact that different vocabulary presents different articulatory problems. Does everyone learn the same vocabulary at the same stage of acquisition? > Consider final voiced obstruents. Some children devoice them. Some children > delete them (while not deleting final voiceless obstruents). Some children > prenasalize or postnasalize them (or, rarely, nasalize them completely). > Some children epenthesize vowels after them. Some (rare) children replace > them with a reduplicated syllable; e.g. PICK is [bik], but PIG is [bibi]. > This list is probably not exhaustive. Natural Phonology does not take the position that a given phonetic target is attacked by one, and only one, process. The NP literature goes to great lengths to say just the opposite. For example, those sounds which Jakobson found to be rarest from a cross-linguistic perspective are those sounds that are impeded by more processes than the common ones. But perhaps Joe is arguing that there is a purely random distribution among children as to which consonants and vowels will be mastered first. Jakobson's observations were absolutely contrary to what language acquisition specialists observe today. Is this true, Joe? If not, then what is the most likely explanation for the general trends observed in child pronunciations? (I agree that Jakobson could not explain variation, but I am asking for acknowledgment that there was *some* validity underlying his observations.) Stampean theory, unlike Jakobson's, can explain both the generalizations and the variation. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-497. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-498. Mon 15 Jun 1992. Lines: 119 Subject: 3.498 Queries: Bib. Software, Reality, Etc. Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 13 Jun 92 09:36 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: bibliography software 2) Date: Sat, 13 Jun 92 18:54:12 BST From: WAB2@phx.cam.ac.uk Subject: Reality and rules 3) Date: Mon, 15 Jun 92 11:56:44 CST From: (Dennis Baron) Subject: etc. -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 13 Jun 92 09:36 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: bibliography software Query: Does anyone outthere have a recommendation for bibliography software that can be used with Word for Windows. I am now using Notebook/Bibliography and find it in the neanderthal age of software -- it is unwieldy, unfelicitous, user unfriendly and I will be eternally grateful for any sggestions. Vicki Fromkin -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Sat, 13 Jun 92 18:54:12 BST From: WAB2@phx.cam.ac.uk Subject: Reality and rules Concerning the recent cathartic interest in the reality of linguistic rules, my reading today in Tilkov's discussion of French _schwa_ made me wonder what colleagues would make of the following (my translation) from 1973: "It is therefore appropriate to make precise what belongs to physical reality and what is functional in linguistic reality." Are there then two realities for us to contend with (or more)? Bill Bennett. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Mon, 15 Jun 92 11:56:44 CST From: (Dennis Baron) Subject: etc. I am posting this on 3 lists; please excuse the (re)duplication. A couple of years ago I noted what I perceived to be a new speech phenomenon, an equivalent of etcetera, etcetera, etcetera or blah blah blah. It usually sounds something like this: da 'dah da dah' da dah' da dah' da dah' (the vowel in the 1st syll is usu. a schwa) -- that is to say, a set of iambic syllables used to complete a list, often reporting something someone said or did. For example, "And then, she goes, like, `brown'? and I'm like `Really' and you know, and, da dah da dah da dah. For want of a better term I called this a completive in a note I published in _American Speech_. William Safire picked it up in his NYTimes "On Language" column and termed it a "dribble off" which is certainly descriptive. It isn't particularly clear what the origin of this item is. Some have suggested the Morse code dit dah. Others a slurring of and on and on and on. Certainly both can be supported from pronunciation evidence (often the di dahs are nasalized). Anyway, while I hadn't found any in print at the time, I predicted it wouldn't be long before this particular completive would appear. And it has. In Tom Kakonis's novel _Criss Cross_ (shows you what my summer reading runs to) NY: St. Martin's Press 1990 (paper ed. 1991), p. 103, we find a sole instance of the phenomenon, clearly influenced by the Morse Code etymology: " . . . so Darlene don't show up and I'm coverin' two stations, really bustin' butt, and this old fart flags me down and starts in his eggs is runny and his toast is burned and his hash browns cold and it's all _my_ fault, if you can swallow that, and he's not gonna pay, da-dit, da-dit, da-dit. And I'm like, wow, pardon me for bein' on the same planet." So, now, two questions: 1. Has anyone else dealt with this form in speech or writing, and if so what do you think is going on? 2. Anyone got any more printed examples? PS, though Kakonis is of the hard-boiled school of dialogue writing, the jacket blurb says he has been a professor in several Midwestern colleges, so perhaps his hint at Morse code is an over-intellectualization of the speech sounds? 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-3-498. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-499. Mon 15 Jun 1992. Lines: 153 Subject: 3.499 Linguistics in trouble? Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 15 Jun 92 10:51:26 -0400 Subject: Re: grammar and what we do From: "Ellen F. Prince" 2) Date: Mon, 15 Jun 92 11:30:23 EDT From: jsc@mbeya.research.att.com (John S. Coleman) Subject: 3.490 Linguistics in trouble? 3) Date: Mon, 15 Jun 92 11:49 CDT From: Joe Stemberger Subject: Re: 3.475 Why is linguistics in trouble? -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 15 Jun 92 10:51:26 -0400 Subject: Re: grammar and what we do From: "Ellen F. Prince" i'm writing this in response to the issue of calling what we do 'grammar' and also to andy rogers' depressing assessment of how the public views or should view our expertise. a number of years ago, i was called for jury duty. during the jury selection, the judge, having seen the form i'd filled out, asked me what i, as a professor of linguistics, do. rather than go into a story about studying the inferences that marked syntactic forms trigger in various discourse contexts, above and beyond their truth-conditional meanings, i simply said, 'uh, grammar.' i was put on a jury. after the 3-week trial (for breach of promise, between two large companies), the lawyer for the defense called me to get my opinion, as i was the only juror who'd stayed awake in the courtroom. i gave him my thoughts, mostly about all the misleading implicatures that the plaintiff's lawyer had generated and that weren't corrected. he seemed very impressed and then, all of a sudden, blurted out, 'is THIS what you meant by 'grammar'???' i said yes. he laughed hysterically and assured me that i would not have been put on a jury if anyone had realized that that's what i meant. he said 'we thought you conjugated verbs or something.' so, i don't think 'grammar' is a great p.r. name for our field, but i also don't think the picture is so bleak. by the way, at penn at least, the term 'linguistics' is not at all despised, quite the contrary, and i don't think the situation here is unique. by the way, since then, i've been called for jury duty about 5 times and, when asked, *do* tell them what i do. and the only time i was put on a jury was the one time i wasn't asked what i did. since i stopped believing in the jury system during that first trial, this is just fine with me and i'm happy to have learned how to get out of it so easily. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Mon, 15 Jun 92 11:30:23 EDT From: jsc@mbeya.research.att.com (John S. Coleman) Subject: 3.490 Linguistics in trouble? Larry G. Hutchinson writes: > There have been advances in natural language understa- > standing systems, machine translation, speech recognition and production > by machine, etc., but it is not obvious that linguists can claim much credit > for any of this. One of the principal differences between more sophisticated and technologically superior text-to-speech systems, and less sophisticated 20-digitized-words speech chips is the incorporation of purely linguistic knowledge, such as morphological and syntactic analysis, and use of pronouncing dictionaries (the result of phonological analysis). Likewise, machine translation has only recently become feasible partly as a result of computationally tractable theories of grammar, such as LFG, GPSG and others. I think linguists can claim their share of the credit for their input to such fruits of multi-disciplinary research. --- John Coleman -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Mon, 15 Jun 92 11:49 CDT From: Joe Stemberger Subject: Re: 3.475 Why is linguistics in trouble? A lot of people have been asking why Linguistics Departments seem to be targets for closure when money gets tight at a university. Several people have suggested that it might be because people in general don't understand what we do. I think that that's part of it. Here at Minnesota, we have tried for years to educate our deans as to what we do, but we never succeeded. They never did understand why we have a lot of interactions with people in departments like Psychology, Child Development, and Communication Disorders, but relatively few interactions with people in English, Spanish, German, etc. --- and that lack of understanding clearly contributed to their closing us down. (But no amount of explanation or trying seemed to get through to them. Last June, they were caught completely by surprise to find that we consider ourselves to be more of a social science than a humanity.) But I'd like to suggest that there is a second problem: lots of people in other fields DO know what we linguists do. Most psychologists feel basically that they can ignore developments in linguistic theory without any danger of problems arising. In 1987, I went to a morphology conference which had about 10 linguists and 10 psychologists; at one point, they were at each other's throats, and questions that amounted to "why should I pay any attention to what you're doing" were common, on both sides. Several years ago, in the "Topic ... Comment" column in NLLT, Ray Jackendoff asked why people in other fields say such bad things about us and feel they can ignore us. Two years ago, there was an exchange between Stephen Anderson and George Miller in LANGUAGE, partially addressing this issue as well. My impression is that a lot of people in psychology and related disciplines took a close look at Linguistics about 20 years ago. They were not impressed. Our methodology was one problem. But it was also a problem that the answers that linguistic theory gave for English seemed to be crazy. Articles on English syntax used grammaticality judgements that people outside the field found mysterious. The SPE analysis of English phonology looked pretty crazy. They didn't feel that they could believe the results. Those people in other fields have not come back for a second look, and more recent generations in those fields have been taught that it's not worth it, or have had similar experiences themselves. Further, we badmouth other disciplines a lot too; I can't count the number of times that I've heard linguists say that the theories that psychologists come up with are totally uninteresting. That doesn't help get them to listen to us. We have a SERIOUS problem with getting people in related fields to accept and like what we do, and to feel that it's important for their own work. I have come to believe that this is part of the problem for why linguistics can become a financial target. We get less support from other related disciplines than we should, because they do not feel that our work is relevant. Some people feel that the attitudes of people in related disciplines is THEIR problem, and we should ignore it. But when the wolves attacked my department, we got only mild help from related disciplines; there were particular people they felt that they needed to have around, but they did not feel that they could make a case that the field of linguistics as a whole was all that necessary. We have fences to mend and bridges to build. And if we don't do anything about it, we'll continue to be a target. ---joe stemberger -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-499. ________________________________________________________________ Linguist List: Vol-3-500. Tue 16 Jun 1992. Lines: 136 Subject: 3.500 What has linguistics achieved? Moderators: Anthony Aristar: Texas A&M University Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan University Assistant Editor: Brian Wallace: bwallace@emunix.emich.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 16 Jun 92 08:41:38 +0100 From: "R.Hudson" Subject: What we've achieved 2) Date: Mon, 15 Jun 92 20:17 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: 3.495 Linguistics in trouble? -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 16 Jun 92 08:41:38 +0100 From: "R.Hudson" Subject: What we've achieved Some of you feel linguistics hasn't achieved anything, so here's my list of things that have changed for the better in the last two decades (since the time when people are saying that other disciplines got interested in us, before losing interest again): 1. Phenomena: we now have a vast range of phenomena we all know about, but which were unknown or completely uncharted territory 20 years ago: e.g. in syntax:- raising, extraction, islands, gapping, unaccusativity, clitics, heads, depictives. I acknowledge that most of these phenomena were first explored by Chomskyan linguists, though a few came from e.g. RG. 2. Facts: we know vastly more about languages of the world, thanks to the activities of the typologists. 3. Context: we now have sociolinguistics (which hardly existed 20 years ago) and pragmatics (ditto), and we can talk seriously about the ways in which language structure interacts with context. It may be that in this respect linguistics has only achieved the same as the person-in-the-street with their common sense, who knew about the effects of context all along; but I think we understand it all a bit more deeply than the person-in-the-street, and certainly a lot more than the-linguist-of-the-60s did. 4. Scholarly consolidation: we've reached the point where it makes sense to try and tie all the threads together, because the subject has grown to the extent that no linguist can cope with the whole of it (whereas in the 60s it was still just about possible to teach across the whole range). Hence the various scholarly compilations of the last few years - Newmeyer's Cambridge Survey, Shopen's Typology trilogy, and Bright's International Encyclopedia (which I think is a terrific work that should make us all feel proud to be linguists). 5. Popularisation: Unlike the 60s we now have a wide range of books that are both scholarly and accessible, which we can recommend to novices. The two names that spring to mind first in UK are David Crystal (especially his splendid Encyclopedia) and Jean Aitchison. We're all very much in the debt of these people, but of course they couldn't have produced such good books unless linguists had first produced the discoveries (I think that's the right word to use) which they report. 6. Schools: here I'm only talking about UK, but there are enormous changes here, largely due (ultimately) to linguistics, though the word `linguistics' is unwelcome (it frightens school teachers). Under the new National Curriculum every UK child will have to learn something about language (e.g. about grammatical differences between standard and non-standard English), which I think is largely the outgrowth of the grass-roots `language awareness' movement among teachers, which in turn rests on various bits of linguistics. And we now have an Advanced-level exam (i.e. for 18-year olds, taken after two years study) in English Language which has proved extremely popular among both teachers and pupils - to the extent that in some areas it seems set to replace the traditional A-level English Literature! It contains a lot of linguistics (though in a form which most academic linguists would find very unfamiliar), and the satisfied customers are now turning up in quite large numbers in university linguistics departments. Putting it negatively, if you think we're a shambles now, we you should have seen us in the 60s! That's progress. A thought to put it all in perspective: if living beings are the most complex physical structures in the universe, as (real) scientists tell us, and language is the most complex mental structure of which we humans are capable, is it possible that language is the most complex structure in the universe? If so, we could perhaps feel less badly about not having wrapped it up in the first 30 years of serious theoretical work. 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: Mon, 15 Jun 92 20:17 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: 3.495 Linguistics in trouble? How sad I was to read Andy Roger's note. Is this what you learned at UCLA, Andy? But the view that linguistics does not produce anything but more linguists is (a) wrong (b) reflective of the general pragmatic (and I must add, philistine) views so prevalent in the U.S. As to our production or contribution -- as I said in an earlier note, we contribute in a major way to speech synthesis, speech recognition (or the attempt at such), natural language processing, AI, neuro psychology, philosophy, aphasiology, neurology, speech pathology, second language acquisition, developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, sociology, language planning, study of humor and on and on. As a linguistic consultant in two major neurology departments in two major medical schools I know that some people think we have something to contribute, both to the theoretical understanding of the brain/mind/languagecognition interface, and the clinical diagnosis and treatment of language disorders. 2) But suppose none of the above were so. What do literary critics produce? What do art historians produce? What do dance theorists or philosophers or comparative lit people or ???? Only an enhancement of life, a raising of questions which are of interest in themselves even if the answers are very very difficult, an understanding when we are fortunate enough to come up with some plausible ideas of questionshe that have been asked about the human animal since time began. Sorry this went on so long. I had pledged to myself never to be so wordy on LINGUIST. But obviously I have felt my life and love attacked and had to respond from the depths. Vicki Fromkin -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguist List: Vol-3-500.