________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-501. Sat 30 Apr 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 121 Subject: 5.501 New Books: Phonetics, Phonology Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace ------------------------------- Note ------------------------------------------ Additional information on the following books, as well as a short backlist of the publisher's titles, may be available from the Listserv. Instructions for retrieving publishers' backlists appear at the end of this issue. ------------------------------New Books------------------------------------- PHONETICS Jennifer J. Venditti (ed.) PAPERS FROM THE LINGUISTICS LABORATORY OSU Working Papers in Linguistics, Vol. 44, April 1994. 223 pp. $15 payable to "Ohio State University". Send orders to OSU WPL, Dept. of Linguistics, 222 Oxley Hall, 1712 Neil Ave, Columbus, OH 43210-1298. 9 papers on experimental phonetics and psycholinguistics, the fourth issue from the Linguistics Laboratory, the Ohio State University. Authors: Gayle M. Ayers, Mary E. Beckman, Julie E. Boland, Kim Darnell, Stefanie Jannedy, Sun-Ah Jun, Kikuo Maekawa, Mineharu Nakayama, Shu-hui Peng, and Jennifer J. Venditti. Details from lingadm@ling.ohio-state.edu. PHONOLOGY Dunlap, Elaine. (University of Massachusetts, Amherst); Issues in the Moraic Structure of Spanish, Pb. xiii + 280 pp. Ph. D. diss., 1991. $16 + S/H. Graduate Linguistics Student Association (GLSA), University of Massachusetts, Amherst. This work addresses the role of the mora in the stress system and syllable structure of Spanish. It is shown that an analysis in which morification precedes syllabification accounts for both stress assignment and the syllabification of high vocoids. For further info contact glsa@linguist.umass.edu -----------------------How to get a publisher's backlist----------------------- Simply send a message to: Listserv@tamvm1.tamu.edu (Internet) or Listserv@tamvm1 (Bitnet) The message should consist of the single line: get publishername lst linguist For example, to get more information on a book published by Mouton de Gruyter, send the message: get mouton lst linguist At the moment, the following lists are available: benjamin lst (John Benjamins) erlbaum lst (Lawrence Erlbaum) kluwer lst (Kluwer Academic Publishers) mouton lst (Mouton de Gruyter) sil lst (Summer Institute of Linguistics) ucp lst (University of Chicago Press) uma-glsa lst (U. of Massachusetts Graduate Linguistics Association) osuwpl lst (Ohio State Working Papers in Linguistics) cornell lst (Cornell University Linguistics Dept.) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-501. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-502. Sat 30 Apr 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 58 Subject: 5.502 TOC: Linguistics and Philosophy Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace ___________________________________________________________________ [Moderators' note: though we don't have a formal "Article Discussion Forum," current journal articles are very appropriate topics for net discussion, and we would like to encourage readers to post such commentary. This year we will publish the tables of contents of current journal issues if they are reduced to 20 lines or less; and we will maintain journal backlists on our listserv. Our resources, however, do not allow us to post the tables of contents of either working papers or books. Available journal backlists include: LI lst (Linguistic Inquiry) compling lst (Computational Linguistics) To retrieve a backlist, simply send the message get linguist For ex: get LI lst linguist to Listserv@tamvm1.tamu.edu (Internet) or Listserv@tamvm1 (Bitnet) __________________________Table of Contents________________________ LINGUISTICS AND PHILOSOPHY VOLUME 16, ISSUE 6 PHILIP HUGLY and CHARLES SAYWARD / Theories of Truth and Truth-Value Gaps PAUL DEKKER / Existential Disclosure PAUL BERCKMANS / The Quantifier Theory of Even JOHAN VAN DER AUWERA / "Already" and "Still": Beyond Duality The aims and scope, instructions for authors, and ordering information for this journal, as well as a complete listing of past and forthcoming tables of contents are available free of charge via our anonymous ftp server at ftp.std.com in the directory Kluwer/journals/linguistics. Published by Kluwer Academic Publishers email: emkluwer@world.std.com (for NA), Services@wkap.nl (for Rest of World) Fax: (31)-78-183273, Tel: (31)-78-524400, P.O.Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, The Netherlands. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-502. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-503. Sat 30 Apr 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 58 Subject: 5.503 TOC: Journal of East Asian Linguistics Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace ---------------------------Note-------------------------------------- Although we don't have an "Article Discussion Forum," current journal articles are excellent topics for net discussion, and we encourage readers to post such commentary. This year we will publish the tables of contents of current journal issues if they are reduced to 20 lines or less; and we will maintain journal backlists on our listserv. Our resources, however, do not allow us to post the tables of contents of either working papers or books. Available journal backlists include: LI lst (Linguistic Inquiry) compling lst (Computational Linguistics) To retrieve a backlist, simply send the message get linguist For ex: get LI lst linguist to Listserv@tamvm1.tamu.edu (Internet) or Listserv@tamvm1 (Bitnet) ___________________________Table of Contents________________________ JOURNAL OF EAST ASIAN LINGUISTICS VOLUME 3, ISSUE 1 BEOM-MO KANG / Plurality and other Semantic Aspects of Common Nouns in Korean MASATOSHI KOIZUMI / Secondary Predicates DINGXU SHI / The Nature of Chines Emphatic Sentences The aims and scope, instructions for authors, and ordering information for this journal, as well as a complete listing of past and forthcoming tables of contents are available free of charge via our anonymous ftp server at ftp.std.com in the directory Kluwer/journals/linguistics. Published by Kluwer Academic Publishers email: emkluwer@world.std.com (for NA), Services@wkap.nl (for Rest of World) Fax: (31)-78-183273, Tel: (31)-78-524400, P.O.Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, The Netherlands. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-503. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-504. Sat 30 Apr 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 59 Subject: 5.504 TOC: Natural Language Semantics Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace ---------------------------Note---------------------------------------- Although we don't have an "Article Discussion Forum," current journal articles are excellent topics for discussion, and we encourage readers to post such commentary. This year we will publish the tables of contents of current journal issues if they are reduced to 20 lines or less; and we will maintain journal backlists on our listserv. Our resources, however, do not allow us to post the tables of contents of either working papers or books. Available journal backlists include: LI lst (Linguistic Inquiry) compling lst (Computational Linguistics) To retrieve a backlist, simply send the message get linguist For ex: get LI lst linguist to Listserv@tamvm1.tamu.edu (Internet) or Listserv@tamvm1 (Bitnet) -------------------------Table of Contents-------------------------------- NATURAL LANGUAGE SEMANTICS VOLUME 2 ISSUE 1 ANDREA BONOMI and PAOLO CASALEGNO / Only: Association with Focus in Event Semantics KEN SAFIR / Perception, Selection, and Structural Economy ANITA MITTWOCH / The Relationship between Schon/Already and Noch/Still: A Reply to Lebner The aims and scope, instructions for authors, and ordering information for this journal, as well as a complete listing of past and forthcoming tables of contents are available free of charge via our anonymous ftp server at ftp.std.com in the directory Kluwer/journals/linguistics. Published by Kluwer Academic Publishers email: emkluwer@world.std.com (for NA), Services@wkap.nl (for Rest of World) Fax: (31)-78-183273, Tel: (31)-78-524400, P.O.Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, The Netherlands. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-504. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-505. Mon 02 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 189 Subject: 5.505 Sum: Syntax books Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 30 Apr 1994 20:21:16 -0400 (EDT) From: Ali Aghbar Subject: Summary: Syntax Books -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 30 Apr 1994 20:21:16 -0400 (EDT) From: Ali Aghbar Subject: Summary: Syntax Books About a month ago, I sent out a request for recommendations for an introductionn to English syntax for ESL teachers in training. I added that the book did not necessarily have to be for ESL teachers, but provided the following wish list: 1. Be based on some of the most recent discoveries about the syntactic structure of English (no commitment to a particular school of linguistics required) 2. But at the same time introduce some of the significant categories and relations of traditional grammar 3. Be understandable by graduate students with little or no background in syntax 4. Encourage discovery and problem solving 5. Use tree diagramming 6. Have plenty of exercises 7. Have discussions on function as well as form 8. Generate an appreciation for the intricacies of the English language 9. Have discussions of interest for ESL teachers. Thanks to all who responded. Below, I will list the references I have received. The numbers in parentheses refer to the above features, which I have included only when recommenders had explicitly mentioned them or I had first-hand knowledge myself. I welcome additinal comments and suggestions. Alexander, L. G. (1988) LONGMAN ENGLISH GRAMMAR. Longman. (2) Additional comment: Is presented as a handbook. Baker, C. L. (1989) ENGLISH SYNTAX. MIT Press. (1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8) Additional comment: Watch out for typos. Burton-Roberts, Noel (1986) ANALYSING SENTENCES: AN INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH SYNTAX. London/New York: Longman. (1, 2, 3, 5, 6) Celce-Murcia, Marianne and Diane Larsen-Freeman. (1983) THE GRAMMAR BOOK: AN ESL/EFL TEACHER'S COURSE Newbury House. (1, 2, 3. 5, 7, 8, 9) Additional comment: This text is unique in that it has been written with primarily with ESL/EFL teachers in mind though it is useful with Native speakers as well. many of the linguistic discussions are based on discourse data analysis. Expect a 1995 edition of this book. If you are interested in piloting some pre-publication portions of the text, contact David Lee (Editorial Director) at Heinle and Heinle: David_Lee@Heinle.com Crystal, David. (1988) REDISCOVER GRAMMAR. Longman. (2, 3) Additional comment: It is organized and presented like a brief handbook. Napoli, Donna Jo. (1993) SYNTAX: THEORY AND PROBLEMS. Oxford U. Press. (1, 4, 5, 8) Additional comment: Based on government and binding theory, this text embodies and exemplifies methodology of scientific linguist inquiry. It is said to be comprehensive but accessible. Paperback, $35. Fradkin, Bob. (1991) STALKING THE WILD VERB PHRASE A SELF-PACED, SELF-CORRECTING ADVENTURE INTO THE GRAMMAR OF ENGLISH FOR ENGLISH SPEAKERS LEARNING OTHER LANGUAGES. University Press of America. Additional comment: It is not a study in English syntax, per se. Is designed as an out-of-class exercise book in linguistic sensitivity for college students who don't know what subordinate clauses are or why it would be useful to know them, and for L-2 teachers who either don't know how to talk about these things are don't believe L-2 class should be the place for it. Greenbaum and Quirk (199?) A STUDENT'S GRAMMAR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (Longman, ?) Kaplan, Jeffrey P. (1989) ENGLISH GRAMMAR: PRINCIPLES AND FACTS. Prentice-Hall. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8) Additional comment: Has chapters on phonology and morphology as well. Klammer and Schulz. (1992) ANALYZING ENGLISH GRAMMAR. Allyn and Bacon. Kolln, Martha. 1994. UNDERSTANDING ENGLISH GRAMMAR (4th Edition). Macmillan. (2, 3, 4, 6) Additional comment: Has a section on rhetorical grammar. Has a useful glossary of grammatical terms and two appendices on phonology and transformational grammar. Leech. AN A-Z OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR. Malmstrom, Jean and Constance Weaver (1973) TRANSGRAMMAR: ENGLISH STRUCTURE, STYLE, AND DIALECTS. Scott, Foresman. Additional comment: Chapter 1, "Grammatical Definitions," has been found useful. Master, Peter (Due to be released late 1994 or early 1995) SYSTEMS IN ENGLISH GRAMMAR. Prentice-Hall. It is designed for people who are new to English grammar while still embracing most of the complexities. However, it leaves out all uses of trees as the author has found they often intimidate students who are still unsure what a noun or a verb is. Odlin, Terence (ed.) (1994) PERSPECTIVES ON PEDAGOGICAL GRAMMAR. Cambridge University Press. Additional comment: It looks very promising for a course on "pedagogical grammar" although it could be too theoretical... depends on what is needed. Just to give a few titles of articles in that book: ==> Universal Grammar and the learning and teaching of second languages / Non-transformational theories of grammar: Implications for language teaching / Rules and pedagogical grammar / Grammatical consciousness-raising and learnability / Functional grammars, pedagogical grammars, and communicative language teaching / linguistic theory and pedagogic practice etc. Quirk and Greenbaum. (1973) A CONCISE GRAMMAR OF CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH (Harcourt, Brace, 1973). Sedley, D. (1990). ANATOMY OF ENGLISH: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STRUCTURE OF STANDARD AMERICAN ENGLISH. St. Martin's Press. (2, 3, 4, 6) Additional comment: The approach is good but it is poorly written after the third chapter. Silva, Marilyn (To be published December 1994) GRAMMAR IN MANY VOICES. Lincolnwood IL.: National Textbook Company. (1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8) Additional comment: Takes examples from actual discourse; hence, the many voices. (Marilyn Silva's e-mail and address: msilva@s1.csuhayward.edu Department of English, California State University, Hayward CA 94542) Tescher, Richard and Evans, Eston. (199?). ANALYZING THE GRAMMAR OF ENGLISH: A BRIEF UNDERGRADUATE TEXTBOOK. Baltimore, MD: Georgetown University Press. (2, 3) Additional comment: The publisher states,"This comprehensive textbook presents a descriptive analysis of the indispensible elements of English grammar.... Written for prospective teachers of ESOL, upper-division undergraduates in linguistics, and advanced ESOL students..." However, an examination of the text revealed it was not sophisticated enough for a graduate course. Thomas, Linda. (1993) BEGINNING SYNTAX. Oxford UK/Cambridge USA: Blackwell Veit, Richard (1986) DISCOVERING ENGLISH GRAMMAR. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-505. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-506. Mon 02 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 106 Subject: 5.506 Qs: Transformations, Pidgins, Functional load, Hiberno-English Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 30 Apr 94 09:37:44 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Query: Chomsky on Transformations and D(eep) Structures 2) Date: Sat, 30 Apr 1994 15:43:40 +0100 From: KNAPPEN@VKPMZD.kph.Uni-Mainz.DE Subject: German based pidgins and creoles 3) Date: Sat, 30 Apr 1994 16:11:23 +0000 (GMT) From: Ahlqvist@ucg.ie Subject: Functional load: consonants vs. vowels 4) Date: Mon, 2 May 1994 14:40:46 +22300129 (EDT) From: "Joseph F. Eska" Subject: -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 30 Apr 94 09:37:44 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Query: Chomsky on Transformations and D(eep) Structures Does somebody recall where Chomsky says that the question of whether there are transformations may not be empirical? (And what the exact quotation was?) Also, where deep structure first became D-structure? -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Sat, 30 Apr 1994 15:43:40 +0100 From: KNAPPEN@VKPMZD.kph.Uni-Mainz.DE Subject: German based pidgins and creoles For a friend of mine, I'm looking for information about german based pidgins and creoles, especially of New Guinea and the pacific islands, but also from other places. Yours, J"org Knappen. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Sat, 30 Apr 1994 16:11:23 +0000 (GMT) From: Ahlqvist@ucg.ie Subject: Functional load: consonants vs. vowels I am looking for a reference.It has been said that vowels carry rather less functional load than consonants, so that vowels can be left out and the message still get through, as in fnctnl ld whereas the converse doesn't hold, as in uioa oa I saw this written up somewhere recently, but cannot for the life of me remember where. Thus, I should be most grateful for any references, pre- ferably to widely available, recent and basic books. Anders Ahlqvist University College Galway Ireland E-mail: Ahlqvist@UCG.IE -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Mon, 2 May 1994 14:40:46 +22300129 (EDT) From: "Joseph F. Eska" Subject: /t/ in Hiberno-English I am cross-posting this to LINGUIST and CELTLING; apologies for duplication. I have noticed that native speakers of Hiberno-English very frequently articulate /t/ as an affricate, i.e., as [ts], at least in intervocalic position. I would really appreciate it if anyone with first-hand knowledge could answer any of the following questions: (1) What is the distribution of this articulation? Is it only in intervocalic position? Is it only before certain vowels? (2) Is there a voiced counterpart to this articulation, i.e., does /d/ ever come out as [dz]? I have not noticed this before. (3) Is this phenomenon also found in Irish? If so, does it occur in the same environment(s) as in Hiberno-English? Thanks in advance for the assistance. I will post a summary should sufficient interest be generated. Joe Eska eska@vtaix.cc.vt.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-506. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-507. Mon 02 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 247 Subject: 5.507 Sum: /s/ -> [sh] in 'str' clusters and other environments Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 2 May 1994 09:28:19 +0800 From: dalford@s1.csuhayward.edu (Dan Alford) Subject: Summary: /s/ -> [sh] in 'str' clusters and other environments -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 2 May 1994 09:28:19 +0800 From: dalford@s1.csuhayward.edu (Dan Alford) Subject: Summary: /s/ -> [sh] in 'str' clusters and other environments A few weeks ago, I posted a query to LINGUIST regarding ess -> esh changes I { had been watching for some months in words such as Street, Straight, deStroy, conStruct, inStructor, etc., where TSU is either a full esh or something similar. Beyond this /s/->[S] /__tr set of words, more anomalous ones include deScribe, reSpect, anniverSary and State. Thirty people replied within about a week. My thanks to the following respondents: Laurie Bauer (VUW, NEW ZEALAND), Henry Churchyard (UTEXAS), Don Churma (BSU), Pat Crowe (SUNY, BUFFALO), Willem de Reuse (UARIZONA), Michael-Jean Erard (UTEXAS), Maik Gibson (READING, UK), Gladney (UIUC), Guy Haas (Informix), Mike Inouye, Gregg Kinkley (UHCC, HAWAII), Randy LaPolla (USINICA, TAIWAN), Paul Listen (BERKELEY), Jules F. Levin (UCR), Maryellen MacDonald (USC), Jack Martin (WM), Thomas Maxfield (UMASS), Marjory Meechan (UOTTOWA, CANADA), Marlene Abrams Miller (BERKELEY), Amoena Norcross (CLEMSON), David Parkinson (CORNELL), Marc Picard (CONCORDIA, CANADA), Karen Robblee (PSU), Henry Rogers (UTORONTO, CANADA), Bob Rothstein (UMASS), Mary Ellen Ryder (IDBSU), Hal Schiffman (UWASHINGTON), Steve Seegmiller (MONTCLAIR, NJ), Linda Shockey (READING, UK), Joseph Stemberger (UMN). My apologies to those few above I didnUt post my thanks to personally when their postings arrived. NOTICING THE PHENOMENON One respondent copped to being a native speaker of this after trying it out in his/her own mouth; background = predominantly Cape Cod (via mother), with Western PA, Brooklyn (via dad) and NYCUs northern suburbs. RI realize IUve been giving a [Str] to RstrS words, probably for all my life.S (Crowe) I mentioned Tdoing Christian SlaterU as a term some students use in describing the phenomenon, to which Parkinson replied that substituting s->sh/_tr gives him a dead ringer Slater voice in his head. Others mentioned hearing this in Holly Hunter, possibly Eddie Murphy, Luci Tapahonso (a Navajo poet writing in English) (de Reuse), and even Richard Nixon (Miller) -- while in a more general manner still others mentioned hearing it quite often on NPR & local affiliates (Rothstein), in young (15-25) speakers (Listen), and in the entire male cast of R90210S (Inouye). Shockey remembers hearing the phenomenon at Ohio State in early 60s-70s, especially in students from Connecticut and New Jersey, though never before /pr/ or /kr/. Maxfield remembers hearing, in T89, a Jewish woman and other friends from Forest Hills (some as early as T78), especially TstreetU and TstraightU; many people noticed it in their pronunciation of TinStructorU, and wondered if there were any Yiddish influence going on. Martin, inspired by the posting, says a quick hand count of students, mostly from Virginia, showed that a number of them do indeed have [S] in TrestrainU. In a more global dialectal vein, Bauer writes from down under that R[S] for [s] is common in New Zealand where the last sound in the cluster is a palatal or [r].... I have not noticed it over stops other than /t/, which would figure if it really is regressive assimilation of place.... Incidentally, it has been suggested to me that this feature is regional within NZ.S Kinkley notes, Rthe retroflexion phenomenon you allude to...is well-known and widely-spread...in Hawaii. It is one of the ways to tell native-born, but TcorrectU English-speaking TnativesU around here. Even newscasters will be caught saying ThishtoryU or TshtreetU without realizing it. I lived in Honolulu from 1975-1982, when it was already well-established...it still abounds. I did not hear it on the mainland though (So. Indiana and No. Illinois) in an 8-year hiatus.S From England, Gibson notes that beyond the [shtr] found especially in non-standard South-Eastern varieties, a broad Cockney accent seems to have some backing of ess in RstS, especially strong when /r/ is involved. And, back in mainland U.S., Seegmiller notes that the phenomenon Ris one of the shibboleths of our speech departmentUs Taccent reductionU course. Pronunciations like TshtreetU have long been on the list of impermissible features, which leads me to believe that it has been around for a long time.S Stemberger says itUs been around for a long time, and wonders why it is that IUm just now noticing it, while MacDonald reports its existence in central and northern Texas, in fairly upper class dialects -- noting that most politicians have it, and that itUs been around for a few decades. On the negative side, reacting to my proffered possibility of this as a southern-based phenomenon, Norcross notes that, living in South Carolina for 7 years, sheUs never heard it in coastal, midlands, or mountain regions there, and a couple of natives of such she checked with Rfound it hard to doS. Rogers argues that since /sh/ -> [s] in shrimp, shrine, shroud, etc., in much of the US south, this is probably NOT a southern retroflex assimilation. As you can clearly see, these citations are from all over the map, as it were, suggesting that while this phenomenon may be found in local dialects, this is not merely a local dialect issue. POSSIBLE MOTIVATIONS/EXPLANATIONS Stemberger and Martin both see this as a straightforward assimilation of /s/ to the palatoalveolar place of articulation of /r/, and /t/ also assimilates, starting with /tr/ as [ch], then extending to the assimilation of /s/ as [S]. Stemberger adds that this is not fully general in the US, that there is no tendency for all dialects to have [sh], but it is nonetheless a long-standing pronuncation in some dialects. Others also mentioned /tr/ -> [chr] as in RchrainS & RchruckS, but allowed that it is hard to explain some of the other examples. (Parkinson, Shockey, Meechan) Picard mentioned the same /t/->[ch]/_r as showing up in KahnUs _Syllable-Based Generalizations in English Phonology_, adding the pasture/mixture/gesture examples mentioned by others. Churma notes, RIUm not sure IUd refer to this as an TalternationU: it seems quite systematic for a given speaker.S I agree, though I meant TalternationU in a dialectal rather than idiolectal sense. And in a particularly poignant response, Miller (realizing that this Ris the sort of hypothesis that would have guaranteed being shot down in flames when I was in schoolS) was Rwondering how much this is a sound change. Projecting from my own history, I wonder if what these people have in common is that they used to lisp and had some sort of speech therapy somewhere along the line...[where] they were drilled more on syllable-initial and isolated occurences of ess than in complex clusters.S Counterbalancing SeegmillerUs shibboleth, she reasons that since especially newscasters Rhave been evaluated, however subconsciously, by their producers and found to speak acceptably,... I think that argues for good old allophonic alternation, if I may use so old-fashioned a phrase, that in whatever this environment is, esh is accepted as ess. Maybe it isnUt new at all.S RELATED PAPERS Robblee reports that RMichael Shapiro has an article coming out in American Speech (TA Case of Distant Assimilation: /str/ > /shtr/U). His description is consistent with your observation that the phenomenon is not regional, and he suggests that the initial fricative may be a retroflex assimilating to /r/ without any such change in the /t/.S Stemberger has a half-written paper on the phonological representation of liquids and glides in English, and Churma adds, concerning my Rforay into pharmacological linguistics,S that the interested reader may check RThe Phonology of DrunkennessS by Lester & Skousen in a 1974 CLS paravolume on Natural Phonology, where /s/->[S] everywhere. RELATED SIDE-ISSUES Levin wonders if this has any relation to the lateral [s] of Bogart, while Parkinson goes further with what he calls STHE (Standard Thirties Hollywood English) of Bogart, Cagney, Jimmy Stewart, etc.: RShay you wizheguyzh, thereUzh gonna be some changezh around here, shee?S. He wonders whether STHE was real or merely a Hollywood invention. (or does this relate to pharmacological linguistics?) In a related reply, Schiffman notes lots of [S] for /s/ in the southwest cowboy sort of macho voice from Texas, NM, etc., and as well in professional and other women who want to sound tough, such as social workers. He also writes: RLabov reports [S] before /t/ in South PA dialect, which is considered highly stigmatized; it has been proposed that it comes into this dialect from the Neapolitan dialect of Italian.S He notes Richard Valeriani at NBC doing this, as in Rshtate departmentS, and wonders about his possible S. Philly background. Various people noted ess/esh distinctions in words like grocer(y, ies), anniversary, and sociology/sociolinguistics, although I always thought the last came from the unofficial contraction in class designations such as SOC 101. CONCLUSION Finally, no respondent mentioned this next possibility for the RstrS phenomenon, which came from the students in my RStudy of LanguageS class -- and actually, it seems to fit the facts quite nicely, and can be tried out on your own. If you hold your jaws clenched together and attempt to pronounce the suspect words, the tongue does not reach the target [s] position, instead tipping up slightly into an apical-ess, which can easily be confused acoustically with a full esh. Some dialects may have a clenched-jaw phonetic set of the mouth, and this effect can also occur through mandibular swelling and, as one student mentioned, prolonged use of methamphetamine (TwiredU); one student, a nurse, couldnUt even hear the str/Str difference until she mimicked having her own jaws wired shut. All in all, this was a wonderfully exciting romp in the mouth -- an unfolding discovery process with input from around the globe. Thanks again to the contributors for fascinating reading. -- Dan Moonhawk Alford ny relation to the lateral [s] of Bogart, while Parkinson goes further with what he calls STHE (Standard Thirties Hollywood English) of Bogart, Cagney, Jimmy Stewart, etc.: RShay you wizheguyzh, thereUzh gonna be some changezh around here, shee?S. He wonders whether STHE was real or merely a Hollywood invention. (or does this relate to pharmacological linguistics?) In a related reply, Schiffman notes lots of [S] for /s/ in the southwest cowboy sort of macho voice from Texas, NM, etc., and as well in professional and other women who want to sound tough, such as social workers. He also writes: RLabov reports [S] before /t/ in South PA dialect, which is considered highly stigmatized; it has been proposed that it comes into this dialect from the Neapolitan dialect of Italian.S He notes Richard Valeriani at NBC doing this, as in Rshtate departmentS, and wonders about his possible S. Philly background. Various people noted ess/esh distinctions in words like grocer(y, ies), anniversary, and sociology/sociolinguistics, although I always thought the last came from the unofficial contraction in class designations such as SOC 101. CONCLUSION Finally, no respondent mentioned this next possibility for the RstrS phenomenon, which came from the students in my RStudy of LanguageS class -- and actually, it seems to fit the facts quite nicely, and can be tried out on your own. If you hold your jaws clenched together and attempt to pronounce the suspect words, the tongue does not reach the target [s] position, instead tipping up slightly into an apical-ess, which can easily be confused acoustically with a full esh. Some dialects may have a clenched-jaw phonetic set of the mouth, and this effect can also occur through mandibular swelling and, as one student mentioned, prolonged use of methamphetamine (TwiredU); one student, a nurse, couldnUt even hear the str/Str difference until she mimicked having her own jaws wired shut. All in all, this was a wonderfully exciting romp in the mouth -- an unfolding discovery process with input from around the globe. Thanks again to the contributors for fascinating reading. -- Dan Moonhawk Alford %->) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-507. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-508. Mon 02 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 195 Subject: 5.508 FYI: Corrections, Language testing list, Fun Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 28 Apr 1994 11:35:22 -0400 (EDT) From: Peter Lasersohn Subject: SALT address correction 2) Date: Sat, 30 Apr 94 12:02:15 MST From: Mary Ellen Ryder Subject: Ulster is not a County 3) Date: Sat, 30 Apr 1994 20:22:30 -0500 (EST) From: "Leslie Z. Morgan" Subject: ltest-l (language testing list) 4) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 1994 11:26:20 +0800 (PST) From: alan harris Subject: a laugh a day etc. -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 28 Apr 1994 11:35:22 -0400 (EDT) From: Peter Lasersohn Subject: SALT address correction A recent posting gave an incorrect email address for people wanting information about the upcoming Conference on Semantics and Linguistic Theory at the University of Rochester. The correct address is: slt4@troi.cc.rochester.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Sat, 30 Apr 94 12:02:15 MST From: Mary Ellen Ryder Subject: Ulster is not a County In my posting last week, I referred to Ulster as a county. A number of people have pointed out to me since that this is a serious error; Ulster is a province containing counties in both the Republic and in the area controlled by the British in northern Ireland. As it was clear that this error also offended a number of people (almost certainly including some who haven't written to me), I wished to make this a public correction and apology. Needless to say (I hope) I had no intention to offend anyone. This is not my own research project, or I would have done enough background reading to get the facts straight. I was simply passing along a request from a colleague in Theatre Arts who is the dialect coach for a play taking place in Belfast. She just mentioned a need to know about Ulster and especially Belfast, and I made the assumption that Ulster was a county. Again, my sincere apologies, Mary Ellen Ryder -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Sat, 30 Apr 1994 20:22:30 -0500 (EST) From: "Leslie Z. Morgan" Subject: ltest-l (language testing list) Dear Linguists, I am re-posting a message from slart-l (second language learning list) because I think others may be interested in this list. Hope you find it of interest. Leslie Morgan, Loyola College in Md. >> -----asked for the address for ltest-l, a list concerned >>with issues in language testing. Sorry I didn't respond earlier, >>I had wiped all my messages from there, and couldn't remember >>their new address. It is: >>Bitnet: ltest-l@psuvm >>Internet: ltest-l@psuvm.psu.edu >>Of course, to subscribe to the list you write to LISTSERV, not >>LTEST-L, at the same address. >>The list has not been terribly active of late. Normally there >>are discussions of test methodology, sampling, statistical pro- >>cedures, some on computer-adaptive testing, etc. Come on board >>and liven it up! There's some great minds there. Wake them up, or >>bring their attention back from whatever trifles, to their true >>vocation of offering wonderful free advice on ltest-l! >>Ah, well. >> Cindy H-G >>Dr. Lucinda Hart-Gonzalez >>Foreign Service Institute >>National Foreign Affairs Training Center >>U.S. Department of State >>lhart@gmuvax.gmu.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 1994 11:26:20 +0800 (PST) From: alan harris Subject: a laugh a day etc. insurance excuses?????????????????????????? The following are [purportedly] actual statements found on insurance forms in which drivers attempted to summarize the details of an accident in the fewest words possible. Coming home I drove into the wrong house and collided with a tree I don't have. The other car collided with mine without giving warning of its intentions. I thought my window was down, but I found out it was up when I put my head through it. I collided with a stationary truck coming the other way. A truck backed through my windshield into my wife's face. A pedestrian hit me and went under my car. The guy was all over the road. I had to swerve an number of times before I hit him. I pulled away from the side of the road, glanced at my mother-in-law, and headed over the embankment. In my attempt to kill a fly, I drove into a telephone pole. I had been shopping for plants all day and was on my way home. As I reached the intersection, a hedge sprang up, obscuring my vision and I did not see the car. I had been driving for forty years and fell asleep at the wheel and had an accident. I was on my way to the doctor with rear end trouble when my universal joint gave way causing me to have an accident. As I approached the intersection a sign suddenly appeared in a place where no stop sign had ever appeared before. I was unable to stop in time to avoid the accident. To avoid hitting the bumper of the other car in front, I struck the pedestrian. My car was legally parked as I backed into the other vehicle. An invisible car came out of nowhere, stuck my car, and vanished. I told the police that I was not injured, but on removing my hat I discovered that I had a fractured skull. I was sure the old fellow would never make it to the other side of the road when I struck him. The pedestrian had no idea which direction to run, so I ran over him. I saw the slow moving, sad faced old gentleman as he bounced off the roof of my car. The indirect cause of the accident was a little guy in a small car with a big mouth. I was thrown from my car as it left the road. I was later found in a ditch by some stray cows. The telephone pole was approaching, and I attempted to swerve out of its way when it struck the front end of my car. Thanks to: Maggie Zarnosky,User Education Librarian,Virginia Tech (703) 231-4125, bruin@vt.edu =============================================================== [Please bear with me while using this temporary HUEY system] =============================================================== Alan C. Harris, Ph. D. TELNOS: main off: 818-885-2853 Professor, Communication/Linguistics direct off: 818-885-2874 Speech Communication Department California State University, Northridge home: 818-366-3165 SPCH CSUN FAX: 818-885-2663 Northridge, CA 91330-8257 Internet email: AHARRIS@HUEY.CSUN.EDU =============================================================== --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-508. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-509. Tue 03 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 171 Subject: 5.509 Varia: This & that, Go-past Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 1994 10:49:42 From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz) Subject: Re: 5.480 Sum: This & that 2) Date: Tue, 26 Apr 1994 09:09:10 -0500 (CDT) From: Ronan_Collis Subject: Re: 5.480 Sum: This & that 3) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 94 12:04:08 +0100 From: Manuel Perez Saldanya Subject: go-past -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 1994 10:49:42 From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz) Subject: Re: 5.480 Sum: This & that > Finally, David Denison (d.denison@man.ac.uk) posed an interesting question: > "Why, when responding to an unfamiliar voice on the phone, do Americans > typically say 'who is this?', British people [always?] 'who is that?'" > any takers? Well, my American perspective is, we ask "Who is this?" because "Who is that?" implies that the answerer detects the presence of a third party, e.g., an eavesdropper, or somebody in the room with the caller, and wants the caller to identify them. Alternatively, the caller has somehow already posed a question concerning the identity of a person (which seems unlikely) and the answerer wants to know who that person is. "This" is the caller; "that" is someone else. I suppose that British speakers suppose a different deictic (social) context for the caller and answerer. For what it's worth, while I always say "Who is it?" when calling through a closed door, "Who is that?" or "Who is there?" might be appropriate, too, while "Who is this?" or "Who is here?" wouldn't be. I suppose I act as if I am already face to face with an interlocutor on the phone, but not someone I can't see through a door. John Koontz koontz@bldr.nist.gov -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Tue, 26 Apr 1994 09:09:10 -0500 (CDT) From: Ronan_Collis Subject: Re: 5.480 Sum: This & that My answer is that for Americans the proximity of the voice conveys the context of proximate conversation. When you introduce someone you say "this is Jim" (if Jim is beside you). But "that is Mary" (if she is further away than the distance between the speakers). In British English, if you can not see a person but you can hear them you ask "who is there?" or "who is that?" because if the person is invisible he or she is considered non-proximate. Whether this is true or not for people without sight speaking BE or AE is a matter I have not yet observed. Ronan_Collis@MBnet.MB.CA -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 94 12:04:08 +0100 From: Manuel Perez Saldanya Subject: go-past Modern Catalan has a verbal periphrasis with the verb "anar" 'go', which has developed a past value and has substituted the simple past in oral language in most parts of the territory. Joan va escriure ahir la carta John goes write yesterday the letter 'John wrote the letter yesterday' This construction is quite surprising if we think that some languages very close to Catalan (i.e. French, Spanish, etc.) use similar periphrasis as future: "Juan va a escribir manana la carta" (Spanish),"Jean va ecrire la lettre demain" (French) 'John is going to write the letter tomorrow'. Concerning the use of the "go-past" in other languages, Karen Watson-Gegeo has pointed out that in Hawai'i Creole English it is possible to use "wen" (went) as a past marker ("ai wen giv da ki to Shalin"= 'I gave the key to Charlene') as well as a go-future ("wi go teik om hom tude" = 'we will take her home today'). In addition, Steven Schaufele comments that many Modern Indo-Aryan languages (Hindi, etc.) use verbs of motion as auxiliaries for past tense. On the other hand, John Koontz shows that there could be a parallelism between the Catalan "go-past" and the colloquial American English construction "goes and ..." ("So then he goes and tells me to get lost." = 'Then he told me to get lost.') , used in a continuous oral narrative. I am working on it this same hypothesis. My point is that the Catalan "go-past" origin is similar to that of constructions such as "goes/takes and." frequent in many Western languages. It is true that this kind of constructions has a paratactic character which contrasts whith the hypotaxis in Catalan. Nevertheless, all of them share two important features: (1) the use of the historic present (and therefore, the preterite sense); and (2) the function as markers of unexpected event subsequences. This narrative function seems to be the original meaning of the Catalan "go-past", and probably in the Hawai'i Creole English "wen-past" too. I believe that this narrative function could be considered a "space to sequencing" metaphor: the meaning of accomplished motion from a source to a goal that characterizes the use of "go" both in past (as in Hawai'i Creole) and in historic present (as in Catalan) is reinterpreted in a narrative discourse as an emphatic marker of sequencing. If this is true, the Catalan "go-past" should have gone through the following evolution (diachronic path): accomplished motion > narrative marker of sequencing > past marker. As Joan Bybee has pointed out, the fact that the auxiliary "go" in present sometimes adds an "r", which typically characterizes the past tense morphology (vas > vares) could have contributed to the reinterpretation of the narrative marker as a past marker. In order to verify the validity of these hypoteses, I would like to know if anyone has notice of any other languages which have got a similar "go-narrative" or "go-past". I will be very grateful of having any information about it or any suggestion on the hypothesis formulated above. Manuel Perez-Saldanya psaldanya@mac.uv.es Universidad de Valencia Facultat de Filologia Avda. Blasco Ibanez, 28 46010, Valencia (Spain) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-509. y ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-510. Tue 03 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 143 Subject: 5.510 Qs: PC software, Language Acquisition, MAC software Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 2 May 94 13:15:55 METDST From: Marta Carulla Subject: specification of my question 2) Date: Mon, 2 May 94 11:51:52 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Query: Books on Cross-linguistic Language Acquisition 3) Date: Mon, 2 May 94 12:09:14 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Query: Some things that don't make sense 4) Date: Mon, 2 May 94 14:53:29 BST From: Dr Judy L Delin Subject: Mac Linguistics Software -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 2 May 94 13:15:55 METDST From: Marta Carulla Subject: specification of my question Recently there has been a query on the list concerning Chinese software for the MAC. I am very interested in also knowing what software is available for PC. If this issue has not been on the list before, I will, of course, put a summary on the list of all the information received. Thank you Marta Carulla Facultat de Traduccio Universitat Pompeu Fabra e-mail: carulla@upf.es -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Mon, 2 May 94 11:51:52 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Query: Books on Cross-linguistic Language Acquisition Could anybody recommend some books--or survey or other important articles--on the topic of language acquisition from a cross-linguistic perspective. That is, I am after the question of the extent to which the language being learned influences the way that the learning itself takes place. To put this in context, I am looking for arguments for the view that language is largely the way it is because of the way it was before, i.e., that the language learner is heavily weighed down by the burden of history. This is intended, among other things, to explain drift and such remarkable facts as the persistence of the same basic types of syntax in large groups of genetically related languages (e.g., Western Austronesian). Please send replies to me and I will post a summary. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Mon, 2 May 94 12:09:14 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Query: Some things that don't make sense I am wondering if anybody knows of any explanations that have proposed--or have any ideas--regarding the following apparent contradictions implicit in some widely held ideas: (a) There is all that research that says that infants can hear all the possible adult phonological distinctions, even those which are irrelevant to the language they are exposed to, but it is also widely held that sound change arises because children do not learn all the adult distinction. Does this mean that children in some parts of the US could perfectly well hear the distinction between _cot_ and _caught_ but did not choose to make it and then lost the ability to hear it? And if so what is the age at which a child loses the ability to hear the distinctions which it has not acquired EVEN THOUGH adults in his/her community are making the distinction all the time? (b) Language change is supposed to be the same everywhere (since the laws of language are all the same for all humans), yet certain changes seem to occur only in certain areas (e.g., the development of rich tonal systems from consonantal distinctions). How is this explained? (c) Some features of a language are supposed to be marked and others unmarked. Why then are there features which appear to be marked in some languages and unmarked in others? I have in mind, for example, the click consonants? If they are unmarked, why are they no found all over the earth? And if they are marked, why are they so darn frequent in the languages in which they do occur? -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Mon, 2 May 94 14:53:29 BST From: Dr Judy L Delin Subject: Mac Linguistics Software We have a small (one person, one year) grant to develop integrated linguistics teaching software for a mid-range Macintosh, and are keen to use existing Mac-based software as much as possible. We are aware of a fair amount of software already, but there is a lot out there---especially in-house productions that may not be widely known. I would be very grateful for information on software for teaching and learning in whatever area of linguistic study that we might be able to look at and consider for possible inclusion in a workbench for linguistics. This may be a FAQ, but I would like the information to be as up to date as possible, which is why I am asking again. There may be a lot of interest: we will willingly summarise to the net. We have some funds for buying in likely-looking software, so don"t hesitate to get in touch if you are selling some! We can also get things via gopher, ftp, mosaic, or whatever. Many thanks in advance Judy Delin, Lecturer in Language and Linguistics, University of Stirling Stirling FK9 4LA UK Tel +44 (0)786 467974, 466086 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-510. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-511. Tue 03 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 85 Subject: 5.511 Books Available for Discussion: Child Lang Acquisition Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace ------------------------------- Note ------------------------------------------ Once again, we are posting notices of new books and/or software which are available for discussion. If you would like to lead a discussion on one of the available works, you should contact Barbara Johnstone at: bcj@tamuts.tamu.edu We expect that commentary will be informal and interactive, and we we hope that the author(s) of the works will join in. Additional information on the following books, as well as a short backlist of the publisher's titles, may be available from the Listserv. Instructions for retrieving publishers' backlists appear at the end of this issue. ------------------------------New Books------------------------------------- CHILD LANG ACQUISITION Language Acquisition: Core Readings edited by Paul Bloom A Bradford Book The MIT Press $22.50 paper, $45.00 cloth to order, call 800.356.0343 or 617.625.8569 LANGUAGE ACQUISITION offers work by prominent researchers in the fields of language onset, development, word learning, syntax and semantics, morphology, acquisition in special circumstances, and alternative perspectives. Each section serves as an introduction to a specific area and provides sufficient background for further reading. AVAILABLE FOR DISCUSSION. The Development of Speech Perception: The Transition from Speech Sounds to Spoken Words edited by Judith C. Goodman and Howard C. Nusbaum A Bradford Book The MIT Press $42.50 Cloth to order, call 800.356.0343 or 617.625.8569 This collection of current research in the development of speech perception and perceptual learning documents the changes that take place both in early childhood and throughout life and speculates about the mechanisms responsible for those changes. The findings reported from this field address the role of growing linguistic knowledge and experience and demonstrate that speech perception develops in a bidirectional interplay with several levels of linguistic structure and cognitive process. AVAILABLE FOR DISCUSSION -----------------------How to get a publisher's backlist----------------------- Simply send a message to: Listserv@tamvm1.tamu.edu (Internet) or Listserv@tamvm1 (Bitnet) The message should consist of the single line: get publishername lst linguist For example, to get more information on a book published by Mouton de Gruyter, send the message: get mouton lst linguist At the moment, the following lists are available: benjamin lst (John Benjamins) erlbaum lst (Lawrence Erlbaum) kluwer lst (Kluwer Academic Publishers) mouton lst (Mouton de Gruyter) sil lst (Summer Institute of Linguistics) ucp lst (University of Chicago Press) uma-glsa lst (U. of Massachusetts Graduate Linguistics Association) osuwpl lst (Ohio State Working Papers in Linguistics) cornell lst (Cornell University Linguistics Dept.) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-511. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-512. Tue 03 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 72 Subject: 5.512 TOC: Reading and Writing Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace ---------------------------Note---------------------------------------- Although we don't have an "Article Discussion Forum," current journal articles are excellent topics for discussion, and we encourage readers to post such commentary. This year we will publish the tables of contents of current journal issues if they are reduced to 20 lines or less; and we will maintain journal backlists on our listserv. Our resources, however, do not allow us to post the tables of contents of either working papers or books. Available journal backlists include: LI lst (Linguistic Inquiry) compling lst (Computational Linguistics) To retrieve a backlist, simply send the message get linguist For ex: get LI lst linguist to Listserv@tamvm1.tamu.edu (Internet) or Listserv@tamvm1 (Bitnet) -------------------------Table of Contents-------------------------------- READING AND WRITING VOLUME 6, ISSUE 1 B. A. Blachman, E. W. Ball, R. S. Black and D. M. Tangel / Kindergarten teachers develop phoneme awareness in low-income, inner-city classrooms: Does it make a difference? D. L. Mahony / Using sensitivity to word structure to explain variance in high school and college level reading ability N. A. Badian / Do dyslexic and other poor readers differ in reading-related cognitive skills? B. R. Foorman and D. J. Francis / Exploring connections among reading, spelling, and phonemic segmentation during first grade M. Alarcon, J. C. Defries and J. J. Gillis / Familial resemblance for measures of reading performance in families of reading-disabled and control twins V. W. Berninger, A. C. Cartwright, C. M. Yates, H. L. Swanson and R. W. Abbott / Developmental skills related to writing and reading acquisition in the intermediate grades: Shared and unique functional systems B. Maughan, A. Hagell, M. Rutter and W. Yule / Poor readers in secondary school P. T. Sowden and J. Stevenson / Beginning reading strategies in children experiencing contrasting teaching methods F. E. Tonnessen, T. Hoein, I. Lundberg and J. P. Larsen / Immune disorders and dyslexia: A study of asthmatic children and their families Published by Kluwer Academic Publishers Additional information on this journal is available free of charge via our anonymous ftp server at ftp.std.com in the directory Kluwer/journals/linguistics. email: emkluwer@world.std.com (for NA), Services@wkap.nl (for Rest of World) Fax: (31)-78-183273, Tel: (31)-78-524400, P.O.Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, The Netherlands. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-512. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-513. Wed 04 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 120 Subject: 5.513 Qs: Count nouns, False faults, Farsi, Spanish immersion program Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 3 May 94 20:31:43 JST From: jewellgp@numazugw.cc.u-tokai.ac.jp (Gregory Jewell) Subject: +/-countable 2) Date: Tue, 3 May 94 11:49 EDT From: "Karen Robblee 814 863-8963," Subject: False faults 3) Date: Tue, 3 May 1994 20:35:18 -0700 From: fried@garnet.berkeley.edu Subject: Farsi word processor 4) Date: Tue, 03 May 94 17:02:02 EDT From: Joachim Knuf Subject: Help with partial Spanish immersion program -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 3 May 94 20:31:43 JST From: jewellgp@numazugw.cc.u-tokai.ac.jp (Gregory Jewell) Subject: +/-countable I received a number of messages re: my query on +/-countable nouns in English between 3 p.m. May 2nd and 8 p.m. May 3rd, Japan time. Unfortunately, these messages were deleted before I had a chance to read them! Arrrgghhh. If you were one of those who sent me a message, please try sending it again. My apologies to all. This is the first time such a thing has happened! I will post a summary of replies after the traffic slows down. Many people have expressed an interest in this issue. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Tue, 3 May 94 11:49 EDT From: "Karen Robblee 814 863-8963," Subject: False faults A colleague has asked me to post a question regarding the pronunciation of the words "false" and "faults": Are there native speakers for whom these two words would be homonymous (possibly in rapid speech), and if there are, is the adjective "false" ever pronounced with an epenthetic [t]? Does anyone know of any other language in which the auslaut cluster /ls/ is produced with an epenthetic [t]? If appropriate, I'll post a summary of the responses I receive. Thanks. Karen Robblee Slavic & East European Languages Penn State -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Tue, 3 May 1994 20:35:18 -0700 From: fried@garnet.berkeley.edu Subject: Farsi word processor Does anyone know of a decent Farsi word processor for a PC? Thanks in advance for any kind of information. Mirjam Fried (fried@garnet.berkeley.edu) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Tue, 03 May 94 17:02:02 EDT From: Joachim Knuf Subject: Help with partial Spanish immersion program Dear Colleagues: I am seeking your advise and help in a matter that is quite challenging and new. The local school district has a partial immersion program in Spanish, where children spend about half of their day with a native Spanish speaker, the other half with an English teacher. Both teachers are certified, of course. The program started four years ago at elementary level, and this fall there will be the first 5th grade. Expansion into middle school is assured. The problem we derives from the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA), which requires that children spend a significant period of their day in multi-age groups. The teachers in our program are now having a very hard time figuring out how to take a group of nonspeakers (formerly first graders) and mix them with second-year speakers in a fashion that does not jeopardize the learning goals of either group. Simply separating them into groups is not an option. I hope that somewhere out there there are some folks who have had to address such a problem before, or those who have ideas for us. Alteratively, if separation is the only reasonable solution, is there empirical evidence published that argues that second language acquisition in partial immersion situations necessarily develops in stages, that the group environment of similarly advanced learners is crucial to their success, so that we could try for an exemption, if necessary in the courts. Any and all ideas, suggestions, curricula, references etc. are most welcome. Our teachers have not really faced this problem before and need all the support they can get. Thanks for being a good virtual bunch and taking the time to help out! Joachim Knuf Communications and Information Studies University of Kentucky Lexington, KY 40506-0042 606-257-7805 jknuf@ukcc.uky.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-513. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-514. Wed 04 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 185 Subject: 5.514 Qs: Metaphor, Functionalist problems, Translation, Developmental Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 3 May 94 17:55:38 -0400 From: lll@isr.harvard.edu (Lynn Lesueur) Subject: metaphor 2) Date: Tue, 3 May 1994 16:04:41 -0600 (MDT) From: Johanna Rubba Subject: Functionalist problems 3) Date: Tue, 03 May 1994 15:58:45 +0200 From: sl16wwur@rz.uni-sb.de (Hr. Reinke) Subject: evaluation of integrated translation systems 4) Date: Mon, 02 May 1994 16:13:07 +0100 From: wcli@vax.ox.ac.uk Subject: developmental linguistics -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 3 May 94 17:55:38 -0400 From: lll@isr.harvard.edu (Lynn Lesueur) Subject: metaphor hello out there. has anyone been keeping up with the literature on cognitive research on metaphor comprehension? if so, what have you seen of interest in the past four years? please send along references. thanks. L. Lynn LeSueur MGH, Harvard Med School, Boston -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Tue, 3 May 1994 16:04:41 -0600 (MDT) From: Johanna Rubba Subject: Functionalist problems I would like to start compiling a collection of homework/exam problems in functionalist/cognitive syntax/semantics. I am wondering if anyone out there has formulated some such problems and would be willing to share them with me. I have a few that I have made up and would be willing to pass them along to anyone interested. Please direct your answers to: jrubba@selway.umt.edu I will post a summary to the list. Jo Rubba The University of Montana -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Tue, 03 May 1994 15:58:45 +0200 From: sl16wwur@rz.uni-sb.de (Hr. Reinke) Subject: evaluation of integrated translation systems There is a recent tendency in machine-aided translation to develop systems that enable the translator to "recycle" former translation units. Besides a terminological database these memory-based translation systems - or integrated translation systems, as I prefer calling them - contain a database, the so-called translation memory, that stores translation units and compares source-language units currently to be translated to the units in the memory in order to find exact matches or "similar" sequences and make the former translation available again. This leads to the question whether and how translation units that are "similar" to a section currently to be translated are found in the memory. An even more interesting and fundamental question is "what does 'similarity' of translation sequences mean to the machine and what does it mean to a human being? And what kinds of 'similarities' are there in different types of texts?" These are some of the questions I would like to deal with in my PhD-thesis in order to find ways for the evaluation of integrated translation systems. So far, I tried to analyse the linguistic performance of two commercial translation memory systems (IBM's "Translation Manager/2" and Trados' "Translator's Workbench II"). As a first start, I tried to name some broad types of syntactic/semantic similarities, such as paradigmatic alterations, expansion of phrases by further attributes, altered position of phrases in a sentence, changed position of clauses, changes from passive voice to active voice etc. I used these types as categories for the analysis. The major results are contained in a paper that will be published by Langenscheidt in one of the next issues of "Lebende Sprachen". One major topic I would now like to focus on, is the aspect of "likeness" of (sentence) patterns in technical documentation. This would enable me to find a more detailed classification of semantic and syntactic "likeness" and to compare human understanding of this phenomenon to the performance of the different systems. At the moment, my major problem is to collect a suitable amount of machine-readable texts in English, German and French. This is, why I would like to find out, whether there might be some list-members who could perhaps help solving this problem. The kind of texts I am looking for could be roughly described as follows: - "follow-up versions" of texts (i. e. different texts of the same text type belonging to the documentation of a newer and an older version of the same product) - texts with different structures and/or functions belonging to one and the same product (e. g. online-help and user manual of a software) - texts with similar functions belonging to different products of the same kind (e. g. a manual for a car produced by company A and a manual for a car produced by company B.) I am basically interested in source-language texts. If I could also get hold of translations this would help testing the alignment tools now on the market, which are used to create translation memory databases from machine-readable source- and target-language texts. I know that asking for text material - particularly for translations - might be quite a problematic thing. But as the material will be used for scientific purposes only, I think there may be some people around who might be able to contribute to my text corpus or might have some ideas where to get further assistance. In case you also know something about research that has been or is being done on the alignment of sentences in parallel corpora, I would be grateful for any kind of information. I would really very much appreciate your support. Yours Uwe Reinke Please use my private e-mail address for replies ! *********************************************** * * * Uwe Reinke * * Universitaet des Saarlandes * * Fachrichtung 8.6 * * D-66041 Saarbruecken * * Tel.:++49/681/302-2929 * * Fax: ++49/681/302-4440 * * E-Mail: reinke@rz.uni-sb.de * * * *********************************************** -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Mon, 02 May 1994 16:13:07 +0100 From: wcli@vax.ox.ac.uk Subject: developmental linguistics Hi, Does anyone know of any networks, societies or associations for developmental linguistics? Chris Li -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-514. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-515. Wed 04 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 113 Subject: 5.515 Varia: Cognitive, Flat earth, Bubba Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 26 Apr 94 08:08:11 +0100 From: Richard Hudson UCL Subject: signs 2) Date: Tue, 3 May 1994 09:34:08 +1000 (EST) From: j.guy@trl.oz.au (Jacques Guy) Subject: Was "mainstream", now "flat-earth" (New Scientist, 23/4/94) 3) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 94 17:59 PDT From: benji wald Subject: Re: 5.458 Bubba -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 26 Apr 94 08:08:11 +0100 From: Richard Hudson UCL Subject: signs Both Cognitive Grammar and HPSG claim that the fundamental linguistic category is the sign, a combination of a phonological and a semantic structure. I understand this as applied to lexical items, but not when it's applied to word-classes, which certainly lack any distinctive phonology, and arguably lack semantics. Dick Hudson Dept of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT (071) 387 7050 ext 3152 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Tue, 3 May 1994 09:34:08 +1000 (EST) From: j.guy@trl.oz.au (Jacques Guy) Subject: Was "mainstream", now "flat-earth" (New Scientist, 23/4/94) Not my words, but Johanna Nichols's as reported by Kurt Kleiner ("Echoes of ancient Africa in our speech?", New Scientist, 23 April 1994, p.10) Quote: An outspoken minority of linguists have tried to go back even further -- to the point of trying to reconstruct a "mother tongue", the origin of all languages. Mainstream linguists dismiss their methods as unsound, saying the correspondences they claim to find are mere statistical noise. Nichols calls it "flat Earth linguistics". Who the proponents of flat-earth linguistics are is not entirely clear from Kleiner's article, only the assertion of their existence. Strange, even members of SIL I met who believed in the literal truth of the Bible and that the world was created some 6,000 years ago did not mention a flat earth. I will not summarize the New Scientist article. New Scientist is an otherwise excellent publication, and cheap. So buy it. Will Nichols succeed in snowing the editor of Scientific American? I think yes, very likely. It's all the current rage: the Great Mother Tongue out of Africa, as Restituted to 50,000 years BP, Corroborated and Corroborating Wilson and Cavalli-Sforza's Mitochondrially Revealed Great Mother Eve. Definitely publishable. . -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 94 17:59 PDT From: benji wald Subject: Re: 5.458 Bubba I just sent a message attached to a later Accents discussion where I noted there was a point 3, but I had forgotten what I wanted to say. It's about "bubba". Southern "bubba" is pronounced with the stressed vowel of "cub". I have always thought that it is an adaptation from a baby-talk word for "brother" (also used as such by many Black English speakers), and "bub", as in "what's all the hub-bub, BUB?" (I think I'm quoting Bugs Bunny here) is the short form. Unlike "bub", "bubba" has become a Southernism for some unclear reason, cf. Southern diminutive Junie for Junior, not used in North (outside of Black English, cf. "June Bug" as a Black nickname). In contrast, Jewish "bubba", dim "bubbeleh" etc is pronounced with a stressed vowel closest to the vowel of "put", "butch" etc, as the spelling suggests (since "wedge" would be identified with the spelling "o" or "a" in transliterating Yiddish). "Southern" bubba and Yiddish bubba thus constitute a minimal pair in American English, just like "put" and "putt" This is nice, because there aren't too many minimal pairs for these two vowels (for historical reasons). I would be most interested if anyone out there disagrees and thinks Southern "bubba" can have the vowel of "put", or Yiddish "bubba" can have the vowel of "putt" (or "putz", to contradict what I just wrote about transliterating Yiddish above -- I think it has to do with Yiddish dialects and Americanisation of words like that one,"shmuck",cntr. the German pronunciation,and maybe a few others, since the historical tendency in English is to lower short "u" to "wedge" -- [south or west of the merger line in the British Midlands]. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-515. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-516. Wed 04 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 170 Subject: 5.516 Varia: Dia- vs. idio-lectal allophony, This & that Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 2 May 94 21:52:44 EST From: H.Stephen Straight Subject: Q: Dia- vs. idio-lectal allophony? 2) Date: Mon, 2 May 1994 17:36:34 -0500 (CDT) From: Angus Grieve-Smith Subject: Shtrange speech 3) Date: Tue, 3 May 1994 16:21:04 +0200 (cedt) From: Steven Schaufele Subject: Re: 5.509 'this' vs. 'that' 4) Date: Tue, 3 May 1994 10:47:28 -0500 (CDT) From: Subject: Re: 5.509 This & that -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 2 May 94 21:52:44 EST From: H.Stephen Straight Subject: Q: Dia- vs. idio-lectal allophony? In his _exemplary_ /s/ -> [S] summary (5.507), Dan Moonhawk Alford quotes Don Churma's posting to him: "I'm not sure I'd refer to this as an 'alternation': it seems quite systematic for a given speaker." To this Alford responds: "I agree, though I meant 'alternation' in a dialectal rather than idiolectal sense." Other postings Alford received, and my own experience with the phenomenon, do suggest that individuals can indeed systematically assimilate the places of articulation of /s/ /t/ and /r/ in the /str/ cluster [N.B.: that's _my_ interpretation of the instances I've heard] without realizing that others who speak their "dialect" do not do so. Another instance of this is the [sandwIch], [samwIch], [sandrIch], [sangwIch] tetrotomy observed in at least one nuclear family of my acquaintance. Unless I'm mistaken, this distinction between dialectal and idiolectal allophony has not been widely noted or cogently discussed, although it would appear to have profound implications for the claim that phonology describes what the speaker knows about the sound system. For if "allophony" can be merely dialectal, reflecting phonetic variation within a group even though that variation is found in no single speaker in the group, then what is the psychological status of the description itself, especially if speakers show no sign of recognizing the allophony, even when it sets their _own_ speech off from their con-dialectals? Any ideas about how to handle this? H. Stephen Straight Binghamton University (SUNY) P.S.: I'm grateful for Schiffman's posting to Alford citing Labov to the effect that the /s/ -> [S] process may be a Neapolitan Italian contact effect: The people I know who do it are from Italian-American communities, but not in S.Phila. but rather upstate NY. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Mon, 2 May 1994 17:36:34 -0500 (CDT) From: Angus Grieve-Smith Subject: Shtrange speech I regret being too busy to contribute before the summary went out, but I was going to say that the pronunciation of esh in "street" is definitely associated in my mind with the Long Island suburbs of New York. I wish I could say I'd done a comprehensive survey of the pronunciation of young people from this area, but perhaps someone at any East Coast university could help. I would definitely call it dialectal based on my impressions, though. This is not to say it can't exist in more than one area, though. If it's a solution the mind finds to a phonological problem, there's no reason minds in two places can't think of it. I've actually heard it in the acrolectal speech of a Chicago Black woman who had never set foot on the Island, although Black English scholars have told me that in more relaxed speech, Blacks in Chicago say "skreet." The Hollywood English phenomena I would call retroflex coarticulation, actually, which I've also heard in the East Texas speech of Ross Perot ("Now y'shee, ah love thish country..." :-)). Any documentation on this? -- -Angus B. Grieve-Smith grvsmth@uchicago.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Tue, 3 May 1994 16:21:04 +0200 (cedt) From: Steven Schaufele Subject: Re: 5.509 'this' vs. 'that' John Koontz recently reported, > Well, my American perspective is, we ask "Who is this?" because "Who is > that?" implies that the answerer detects the presence of a third party, > e.g., an eavesdropper, or somebody in the room with the caller, and wants > the caller to identify them. Alternatively, the caller has somehow already > posed a question concerning the identity of a person (which seems unlikely) > and the answerer wants to know who that person is. "This" is the caller; > "that" is someone else. For what it's worth, i remember a long-distance phone conversation -- must be almost 20 years ago now -- between myself and a friend, both of us native speakers of American English, at the beginning of which were several iterations of the following loop: 'This is Steve.' 'No, this is Bob.' 'No, this is Steve.' 'No, this is Bob.' etc., with each instance of 'this' apparently referring to the speaker. Given that my friend (Bob) was known for his sense of humour, it's rather difficult for me at this late date to judge at what point in this cycle the whole thing became a deliberate joke on his part, or whether it was ever anything else. Sincerely, Steven -- Dr. Steven Schaufele fcosws@nytud.hu Room 119 Research Institute for Linguistics (Department of Theoretical Linguistics) Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Eotvos Lorand University) P. O. Box 19 1250 Budapest Hungary *** O syntagmata linguarum liberemini humanarum! *** *** Nihil vestris privari nisi obicibus potestis! *** -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Tue, 3 May 1994 10:47:28 -0500 (CDT) From: Subject: Re: 5.509 This & that More than once I've engaged in a telephone dialogue like this: Me (answering the phone): Hello. Caller: Hello. Who's this? Me: Who's _this_? Caller: Oh, sorry; this is X. Me: This is Anne. This, obviously, wouldn't happen to a British speaker. Anne Loring University of Minnesota -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-516. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-517. Thu 05 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 84 Subject: 5.517 TOC: LANGUAGE 70/2 (June, 1994) Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace ---------------------------Note---------------------------------------- Although we don't have an "Article Discussion Forum," current journal articles are excellent topics for discussion, and we encourage readers to post such commentary. This year we will publish the tables of contents; and we will maintain journal backlists on our listserv. Our resources, however, do not allow us to post the tables of contents of either working papers or books. Available journal backlists include: LI lst (Linguistic Inquiry) compling lst (Computational Linguistics) To retrieve a backlist, simply send the message get linguist For ex: get LI lst linguist to Listserv@tamvm1.tamu.edu (Internet) or Listserv@tamvm1 (Bitnet) -------------------------Table of Contents-------------------------------- The moderators of LINGUIST have asked me to post tables of contents of forthcoming issues of LANGUAGE for the benefit of LINGUIST subscribers who often get U.S. journals only after months of delay. Accordingly, the contents of the next issue are listed below. This list includes everything except Book Notices (which are usually so numerous that listing them would take up too much space) and the Editor's Department column (which appears in most issues and is primarily designed to describe and explain journal policies and procedures). Sarah Thomason Editor, LANGUAGE Articles: Betty J. Birner, `Information status and word order: An analysis of English inversion' Helen Smith Cairns, Dana McDaniel, Jennifer Ryan Hsu, & Michelle Rapp, `A longitudinal study of principles of control and pronominal reference in child English' David Odden, `Adjacency parameters in phonology' Discussion Note: Richard Hudson, `About 37% of word-tokens are nouns' Reviews: Nancy C. Dorian on Glyn Williams' SOCIOLINGUISTICS: A SOCIOLOGICAL CRITIQUE Susan D. Fischer on David McNeill's HAND AND MIND: WHAT GESTURES REVEAL ABOUT THOUGHT Wallace Chafe on Jan Firbas' FUNCTIONAL SENTENCE PERSPECTIVE IN WRITTEN AND SPOKEN COMMUNICATION Robbins Burling on Zdenek Salzmann's LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY: AN INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY Elizabeth Zsiga on John Laver's THE GIFT OF SPEECH: PAPERS IN THE ANALYSIS OF SPEECH AND VOICE Marilyn N. Silva on Donna Jo Napoli's SYNTAX: THEORY AND PROBLEMS Richard Sproat on D. Gary Miller's COMPLEX VERB FORMATION Wayne Cowart on Ray Jackendoff's LANGUAGES OF THE MIND: ESSAYS ON MENTAL REPRESENTATION Salikoko S. Mufwene on Claude Hage`ge's THE LANGUAGE BUILDER: AN ESSAY ON THE HUMAN SIGNATURE IN LINGUISTIC MORPHOGENESIS George Yonek & Lyle Campbell on James Milroy's LINGUISTIC VARIATION AND CHANGE: ON THE HISTORICAL SOCIOLINGUISTICS OF ENGLISH -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-517. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-518. Thu 05 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 191 Subject: 5.518 Review: Saussure Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Review Editor: Barbara Johnstone: Texas A&M U. REVIEW EDITOR'S NOTE: What follows is another discussion note contributed to our Book Discussion Forum. We expect these discussions to be informal and interactive; and the author of the book discussed is cordially invited to join in. If you are interested in leading a book discussion, look for books announced on LINGUIST as "available for discussion." (This means that the publisher has sent us a review copy.) Then contact Barbara Johnstone at bcj@tamuts.tamu.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 2 May 94 11:10 CDT From: bcj@tamuts.tamu.edu Subject: reviews -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 2 May 94 11:10 CDT From: bcj@tamuts.tamu.edu Subject: reviews Book Review: de Saussure, Ferdinand. 1993. Saussure's third course of lectures on general linguistics (1910-1911), from the notebooks of Emile Constantin/Trosie`me cours de linguistique ge'ne'rale (1910-1911) d'apre`s les cahiers d'E'mile Constantin. Eisuke Komatsu and Roy Harris, ed. and trans. Oxford: Pergamon Press. 173 pp. x 2. UK&49.00/ US$78.50. Reviewed by Karen S. Chung (karchung@ccms.ntu.edu.tw), Dept. of Foreign Languages and Literatures, National Taiwan University, Taipei. The academic community was surprised to find after Mongin-Ferdinand de Saussure's death in 1913 that he left no manuscript or even notes for the course in general linguistics he taught for three years between 1907 and 1911 at the University of Geneva. Apparently Saussure had destroyed his lecture notes after teaching from them, greatly complicating the task of publishing a posthumous work of his ideas. Many had encouraged him to publish his course notes, but he felt that organizing the material would have been too time-consuming. (Still, he must have had such a project in mind when teaching the course, since he structured his lectures into 'chapters', e.g. p. 92: 'The second chapter could have as its title...'.) Eventually this task fell to Saussure's colleagues, Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye (abbreviated B/S in this review), who collected and organized the notes of eight of Saussure's students into a coherent work. So what acquaintance most of us have with the ideas of 'the father of twentieth-century linguistics' is based on a reconstruction, one that is not without its gaps and controversies. In 1958, another set of notes from Saussure's third teaching of his course on general linguistics surfaced: those of Emile Constantin. Constantin's notes proved to be the most thorough of the four sets available for the course. And assuming that the French text reprinted in Komatsu and Harris' _Trosie`me cours_ is indeed a mere transcription of Constantin's notes, with marginal notes incorporated and minor corrections made, the text is positively remarkable. Anyone who has ever been a student or teacher would gasp in admiration at class notes this detailed and complete. Constantin was obviously a gifted and highly motivated student who took his professor's instruction seriously, to an extent perhaps seldom seen in academia--who writes down everything the lecturer says in mostly grammatically complete sentences? So this book is nearly as much a tribute to Constantin as to his mentor. At the same time the reader becomes aware of just how much restructuring and tidying up went into the B/S version. As Harris suggests, this less 'tidy' version is perhaps more interesting, in that we can follow almost firsthand how Saussure tries out and develops his ideas. It's not so much the material itself that is new--most of it will sound familiar to those who have read the B/S version; the differences tend rather to be in arrangement, presentation, highlighting and development of key points. And for this reason, this review will concentrate more on questions of form rather than of content. The original French and English translation are presented on facing pages numbered 1, 1a, 2, 2a, etc. so the book is actually twice as long as the page numbers would lead you to believe. This aspect of the physical format is a central feature of this new edition. The original French is available for the reader to either read directly or to refer to whenever the translation seems to call for it. In this way, the reader is him/ herself responsible for the final interpretation, and the English is more a reference than a translation the reader must either take or leave. The English translation reads surprisingly smoothly. In some places a glance over to the French will reveal that a verb or other element has been added to make the English into a complete sentence where the original is more telegraphic, though in no case is the meaning changed. There were maybe five or six places where a confusing or unusual English idiom made me wonder what the French was (e.g. '...an omission must be made good' is in French '...il faut re'parer une omission' [p. 78]; or what was the French for 'lock, stock, and barrel' [p. 96a]?--in each case the original cleared up my question), one or two where there was a disparity in verb tense I couldn't rationalize, and one 'translation' that took a phone call to a French colleague to figure out ('The'a^tre franc,ais' is used in the French, 'Come'die Franc,aise' in the English [p. 59]). My suggestion, at least for The'a^tre/Come'die and similar puzzles: footnotes. Other reader helps could include English glosses for _all_ the French examples (missing, e.g., on p. 121a), plus transliterations and English glosses for the Greek examples, and glosses for the Latin ones. Not everybody interested in Saussure is necessarily a classicist! The introductory material of the book, especially the foreword and translator's preface, helps the reader put together a mental picture of the development of the _Cours_, and also the difficulties inherent in it. In many cases, translation requires interpretation, taking a stand, Harris points out, and a case in point is the infamous set of contrasting terms 'parole', 'langage', 'langue'--and 'langues'. Harris rightly asks if the categories in Saussure's mind represented by these words were not partly or mainly attributable to the peculiarities of Saussure's working language, French; they certainly don't match up with handy English equivalents. Saussure is aware of the issue himself (e.g. on p. 70 the French terms are compared to the German 'Sprache' and 'Rede'), but evidently not to the point where it made a difference in his theories. The figure drawings in the book are simple, regularized and clear, with a number differing from the B/S edition I have. There is a useful index of key French linguistic terms, though a fuller index, including, e.g. names of linguists mentioned in the text, might have been a helpful addition. And there is no English index, though the large number of French-English cognates makes that not as serious a lack as it might otherwise be. I would also have appreciated short bios on the editor and translator. This book is clearly for specialists, and probably only specialists and libraries will be ready to fork out almost US$80.00 for a short-to-medium-length volume like this. Yet it is a rich and important resource, a 'must- read' for anybody doing serious research on Saussure and his work. The next task maybe should be a thorough comparison of both editions--something beyond the limits of this review--to discover exactly what is new in Constantin's notes, and of this, what if anything needs to be added or revised concerning current knowledge and beliefs about Ferdinand de Saussure and his ideas. Or maybe it's time for a new edition of Saussure's _Cours_ that incorporates all material from both B/S and Constantin, perhaps keeping the basic B/S structure, and inserting Constantin's notes, minus redundancies, where they fit in. This should be quite feasible now that an easily procurable edition of Constantin's notes is on the market. References: de Saussure, Ferdinand. 1959. Course in general linguistics. Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye, ed. Wade Baskin, trans. New York: Philosophical Library. Repr. by Taipei: Bookman. Sampson, Geoffrey. 1980. Schools of linguistics. Stanford: University Press. P.S. The format looked great when I input it, but glitches have appeared in the course of uploading. K. Chung -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-518. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-519. Fri 06 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 156 Subject: 5.519 Qs: Mathematics, Intonation, Word freq, Conjoining nominals Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 4 May 1994 16:35:28 GMT From: mfleck@xerxes.cs.uiowa.edu (Margaret M. Fleck) Subject: mathematical English 2) Date: Wed, 04 May 94 19:29:46 EDT From: Loren Allen Billings Subject: Intonation in multiply fronted wh constituents in Slavic 3) Date: Thu, 5 May 94 16:44:59 EDT From: Ron Smyth Subject: word frequencies 4) Date: Thu, 5 May 94 20:19:42 WST From: h9290030@hkuxa.hku.hk (R.Y.L. TANG) Subject: Conjoining of Nominal Elements -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 4 May 1994 16:35:28 GMT From: mfleck@xerxes.cs.uiowa.edu (Margaret M. Fleck) Subject: mathematical English In mathematics, the following construction is common: We have that X is a 3-manifold. I got that X subtends an angle of 30 degrees. This is parallel to sentences such as I know that X is a linguist. I showed that X is corrupt. except that the range of main verbs in mathematical English seems to be wider than I recall hearing in standard English. Question: is this exclusively confined to mathematicians and mathematical writing? Margaret Fleck mfleck@cs.uiowa.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Wed, 04 May 94 19:29:46 EDT From: Loren Allen Billings Subject: Intonation in multiply fronted wh constituents in Slavic I'm interested in finding out if any of you out there know about any work done on the prosodic phrasing of multiply fronted wh constituents, especially in Slavic, particularly in Bulgarian. I have one source so far and will provide an excerpt to let you know what I have in mind: "Syntactic constituents often correspond to intonational phrases (cf. Selkirk 1980 ["Constraints on coordination." _Lg_ 53, 83-103.]) so that boundaries between major constituents are marked by certain tones. The following intonation facts relevant to wh-word sequences have been observed by G[rzegorz] Dogil (personal communication). (14a) * _ __ _ -_ -_ _ Kto komu co daL? [who to-whom what gave NOM DAT ACC M-SG] (14b) _ _____ -_ -----_ Kto komu co daL? 'Who gave whom what?' These representations indicate that breaks in intonation contours occur after the first and third wh-words but not after the second. The implica- tion is that the second and third wh-words belong not to separate constitu- entsbut to one. . . ." [CICHOCKI, Wladislaw (1983) "Multiple wh-questions in Polish: A two-Comp analysis." _Toronto working papers in Linguistics._ vol 4., pp. 53-71; quote taken from sec. 2.4 "Intonation", p. 58.] I would appreciate it greatly if anyone could provide me with addresses for either Cichocki or Dogil, preferrably e-mail. Any other assistance would be greatly appreciated. Loren A. Billings (billings@pucc.princeton.edu) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 3) Date: Thu, 5 May 94 16:44:59 EDT From: Ron Smyth Subject: word frequencies A colleague in speech pathology is doing PET scans while subjects read words aloud; he wants to use word frequency data to balance his lists across experimental conditions. Can anyone advise on the most practical way of obtaining frequency data on nouns, and on which kinds of data bases would give the most appropriate frequency counts for this type of study? Please send replies to my address: smyth@lake.scar.utoronto.ca -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Thu, 5 May 94 20:19:42 WST From: h9290030@hkuxa.hku.hk (R.Y.L. TANG) Subject: Conjoining of Nominal Elements Dear netters, Consider the sentence (1) My interests include swimming, reading and playing chess. 3 NPs are conjoined by 'and'. Consider another example which is unacceptable: (2) * My interests include swimming, reading and to play chess. Why is 'to play chess' not allowed in this nominal slot, considering the fact that it can function as a nominal in the subject position: (3) To play chess is what I want now. and in the complement position: (4) His only pastime is to play chess. I am having the notion of 'to-infinitive nominal clause' (Quirk and Greenbaum 1973) in mind when positing this problematic case. Can anyone explain the above unacceptability using a non-GB framework? Please reply to me at h9290030@hkusub.hku.hk or h9290030@hkuxa.hku.hk. Many thanks. Regards, Raymond Y.L. TANG Dept. of English University of Hong Kong -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-519. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-520. Fri 06 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 242 Subject: 5.520 Greenberg - Simulation of chance resemblance Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 5 May 1994 13:59:23 +1000 (EST) From: j.guy@trl.oz.au (Jacques Guy) Subject: Greenberg: simulation of chance resemblance -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 5 May 1994 13:59:23 +1000 (EST) From: j.guy@trl.oz.au (Jacques Guy) Subject: Greenberg: simulation of chance resemblance Jane Edwards (edwards@cogsci.berkeley.edu) sent me some e-mail this morning saying: "This is not my area, but the appended may be of interest." The appended was an exchange on Linguist about Greenberg's use of probabilities in his Sci.Am. article "Linguistic Origins of Native Americans" (Nov. 1992). I had never paid any attention to that exchange, nor to Greenberg. I curse Jane Edwards because I have better things to do, but curiosity, as usual, took the better of me, and I read the "appended" and even went and photocopied Greenberg's article. To cut a long article short, Greenberg says, p.64 "say there is one chance in 250 of accidental resemblance, if we see the same word in six language families, like we see my *mlk, that's one chance in 250 to the power 6 of an accidental resemblance, so it's not accidental". (Not in those terms, but that's what he means). Now I don't think my maths are going to convince anyone, but a little simulation might. It goes like this: 1. Pick a number of languages, say 50. 2. Pick a size of sample wordlist, say 200 items. 3. Pick a chance of accidental resemblance, say one chance in 250. Now generate 50 sample wordlists, completely unrelated. Easy: for each word in each language you draw a random number in the range 1 to 250. So the same word in any two language has exactly 1 chance in 250 of being the same. Clear enough so far? Good, now you just count how many times you observe exactly two languages to have the same word; and how many times three languages have the same word; and four languages, and five, and six, and so on. And you repeat the simulation to your heart's content, keeping a tally. So I have written a simple little program to do that, and I have "appended" it to this post. Before I let you off the hook, one more word: it does not take into account semantic shifts (you'll notice that Greenberg is happy with suck=breast=udder=milk= throat=nape=swallow=chew), because I had no idea how to do that. Unfortunately, I just found out as I was writing this. Curiosity will probably get the better of me again, and I'll write a simulation of semantic shifts into it, but enough is enough for to-day. Here is the program, in Turbo Pascal. Have fun with it. Uses crt; const MaxItems=2000; MinItems=1; MaxLangs=200; MinLangs=2; MaxChance=Maxint; MinChance=2; MaxMatches=10; MinMatches=2; type aWord=array[1..1] of integer; (* careful there! This was a trick to save RAM and to obviate the 64K data segment limit. But the program assume that aWord=array[1..MaxLangs] of integer *) pWord=^aWord; var Hits,SumHits: array[MinMatches..MaxMatches] of longint; LastItem,LastLang,Chance,iter: integer; WordNo: array[1..MaxItems] of pWord; procedure Sort(VAR a: aWord; n: integer); (* this is a Shell sort *) var i,j,k,m,tmp: integer; swap,yes: boolean; begin m:=1; while m<=n DO m:=m+m; m:=(m-1) DIV 2; while m>0 DO begin FOR j:=1 TO n-m DO begin i:=j; k:=i+m; swap:=true; repeat if a[k]>a[i] then begin tmp:=a[i]; a[i]:=a[k]; a[k]:=tmp; i:=i-m; k:=i+m; swap:=i>0; end else swap:=false until not swap end; m:=m DIV 2 end; end; function GetRAM: boolean; var RAMNeeded: longint; i: integer; begin RAMNeeded:=longint(LastLang)*2*LastItem; if MaxAvail=MinMatches then if sum>MaxMatches then inc(Hits[MaxMatches]) else inc(Hits[sum]); sum:=0; thisWord:=w[lang] end until lang=LastLang; if w[lang]=thisWord then inc(sum); if sum>=MinMatches then if sum>MaxMatches then inc(Hits[MaxMatches]) else inc(Hits[sum],1); end; for i:=MinMatches to MaxMatches do inc(SumHits[i],Hits[i]); end; function GetParameters: boolean; begin {$I-} GetParameters:=false; ClrScr; write('How many languages? (min ',MinLangs,' max ',MaxLangs,'): '); readln(LastLang); if (IOResult<>0) or (LastLangMaxLangs) then exit; write('How many words? (min ',MinItems,' max ',MaxItems,'): '); readln(LastItem); if (IOResult<>0) or (LastItemMaxItems) then exit; write('Accidental match: one chance in how many? (min ',MinChance, ' max ',MaxChance,'): '); readln(Chance); if (IOResult<>0) or (ChanceMaxChance) then exit; {$I+} GetParameters:=true; end; procedure ShowResults(iter: integer); var i: integer; begin Gotoxy(1,10); writeln('Simulation #',iter); writeln('':32,'Languages showing same word'); write(' Hits '); for i:=MinMatches to MaxMatches-1 do write(i:7); writeln(MaxMatches:6,'+'); write('This simulation:'); for i:=MinMatches to MaxMatches do write(Hits[i]:7); writeln; write(' Total so far:'); for i:=MinMatches to MaxMatches do write(SumHits[i]:7); writeln; end; function done: boolean; var ch: char; begin done:=false; Gotoxy(1,20); ClrEol; write('Press Esc to stop simulation, Space bar to pause.'); if Keypressed then begin ch:=ReadKey; case ch of #27: done:=true; ' ': begin Gotoxy(1,20); ClrEol; write('Simulation paused. Press any key to resume.'); repeat until Keypressed; while Keypressed do ch:=ReadKey; Gotoxy(1,20); ClrEol; write('Press Esc to stop simulation, Space bar to pause.'); end; else while Keypressed do ch:=ReadKey; end; end end; begin Randomize; FillChar(SumHits,SizeOf(SumHits),0); if GetParameters and GetRam then begin iter:=0; repeat inc(iter); BuildLexicon; CountMatches; ShowResults(iter); until done; FreeRAM; end; end. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-520. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-521. Fri 06 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 113 Subject: 5.521 Greenberg - Simulation with semantic shift Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 5 May 1994 13:59:23 +1000 (EST) From: j.guy@trl.oz.au (Jacques Guy) Subject: Greenberg: simulation of chance resemblance -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 5 May 1994 13:59:23 +1000 (EST) From: j.guy@trl.oz.au (Jacques Guy) Subject: Greenberg: simulation of chance resemblance (This is a follow-up to my previous message) I had to implement semantic shifts in the simulation, curse my curiosity. That involved rewriting the program from scatch. I will not post the source code this time, because it is quite intricate, and one cannot clearly see how the simulation works without detailed explanations. But here is the main principle: Note that Greenberg allows these semantic shifts: to suck, breast, udder, milk, to milk, to chew, throat, to swallow, cheek, neck, to drink, nape of the neck. That is, the semantic shifts cover 12 words. Call this a fudge factor. No semantic shifts allowed is fudge factor = zero. Here, the fudge factor is strictly 11. Grant that equating breast, udder, milk, and to milk is not a fudge, ditto for neck and nape of neck. We are left with: to suck, breast etc., to chew, throat, to swallow, cheek, to drink, neck. Eight meanings: fudge factor 7. All right. I rum my simulation 130 times on 20 languages each represented by 300 words, a 1/200 chance of accidental resemblance for every word, and a fudge factor of 5. Out of those 130 experiments there were: 2605 cases of 3 languages with the same word i.e. on the average, you had 20 items which should up as identical by pure accident in 3 languages 642 cases of 4 languages. So, 4.9 items showing up as identical in 4 languages by accident every time. 121 cases of 5 languages, an average of 0.93 items. 23 cases of 6 languages 2 cases of 7 languages 1 case of 8 So you should expect to see the same word in 6 languages out of 20, by pure accident, 23 times out of 130, under conditions about as stringent as those used by Greenberg. That is almost one chance in five, a far way from the one chance in 10 billion calculated by Greenberg. And to think that I have wasted a whole afternoon to demonstrate a point that ought to be intuitively obvious. I know, you are getting sick of it. Well, complain to Jane Edwards, she's the one responsible for starting me on this. Results of 200 simulations of 500 words in 50 unrelated languages, with a fudge factor of 7 (same as Greenberg's Proto-World *milk), chance of accidental resemblance 1/250 (same as Greenberg's figure). 38.45 words found in 6 languages (that is a mean. Not the total cases in the 200 simulations. In other words, every time, you are likely to find 38 words looking like cognates between 50 unrelated languages each represented by a 500-item list) Found in 7 languages: 21.02 Found in 8 languages: 11.40 Found in 9 languages: 4.95 Found in 10 languages OR MORE: 3.35 "The way the protoworld crumbles," as James Hadley Chase might write if he were still of this world. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-521. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-522. Fri 06 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 209 Subject: 5.522 Jobs: Japan, University of Potsdam, Budapest, Utrecht University Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 03 May 1994 18:29:04 -0400 (EDT) From: YUKIE HORIBA Subject: position in JPN 2) Date: Wed, 04 May 94 15:52:00 +0100 From: Subject: processing position at the University of Potsdam 3) Date: Thu, 5 May 1994 12:17:03 +0200 (cedt) From: Jeffrey Goldberg Subject: Visitor Job in Budapest 4) Date: Fri, 06 May 1994 13:06:32 +0000 (GMT) From: "MARTIN EVERAERT, LINGUISTICS DEPT. UNIVERSITY OF UTRECHT" Subject: job announcement -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 03 May 1994 18:29:04 -0400 (EDT) From: YUKIE HORIBA Subject: position in JPN POSITION AVAILABLE The Department of Asian Languages and Literatures invites applications for a one-year Visiting Assistant Professorship in Japanese language starting in September 1994. Preference will be given to candidates with expertise in proficiency-oriented language instruction, innovative technology use, native speaker level competency in Japanese, Ph.D. (or near completion; discipline open) and teaching experience. Salary is commensurate with qualifications. Position is funded in part by a grant from the US Department of Education through the Five-College Center for East Asian Studies. Send vita, statement of teaching and research interests, 3 letters of recommendation, and any representative publications by May 14, 1994 to: Dr. William E. Naff, Chair, Japanese Search Committee, Asian Languages and Literatures, Box 37505, 26 Thompson Hall, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003-7505. Applications will be reviewed until position is filled. The University of Massachusetts is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Wed, 04 May 94 15:52:00 +0100 From: Subject: processing position at the University of Potsdam The University of Potsdam (Germany) has advertised the position of a C3 professor for psycho-/neurolinguistics with a focus on language processing. This tenured position is part of the Institute of Linguistics at the University of Potsdam which will be composed of 10 professsorships, five of which have already been filled (syntax, computational linguistics, comparative grammar,language acquisition, cognitive neurolinguistics). Forming part of the Center for Cognitive Studies, the Institute is currently developing interdisciplinary curricula in collaborataion with the departments of psychology, computer science and mathematics. Linguistics is one of the four domains which the University of Potsdam has given special priority with respect to future development Applicants should have expertise in currentnt experimental techniques of language processing and have a strong background in current syntactic and semantic theory. Applicants interested in cross-linguistic research who have had expertise in ERP technology will receive special consideration. Applications should be sent to Rektor der Universitaet Potsdam Hern Prof Dr. Rolf Mitzner Universitaet Potsdam Postfach 60 15 53 D-14415 Potsdam Germany before the 12th of May 1994 If you fear your application might not reach the university in time, you might consider announcing your application to the chairman of the search committee by facsimilie IN ADDITION TO sending your full application to the above address. Gisbert Fanselow, Chair, Search Commitee Department of Linguistics University of Potsdam 49 331 977 2761 The Potsdam e-mail system still does not work opimally Your application should include: a Curriculum Vita a list of publications information about your teaching experience -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Thu, 5 May 1994 12:17:03 +0200 (cedt) From: Jeffrey Goldberg Subject: Visitor Job in Budapest Visitor Position Announcement at the Theoretical Linguistics Department of the Lorand Eotvos University (ELTE), Budapest, Hungary tlp@nytud.hu The Theoretical Linguistics Department of the Lorand Eotvos University (ELTE) in Budapest, Hungary expects to have money to support a visiting professor for the Spring term (February through June) 1994. At this point it is impossible to say how much money will be available, but in the past we have had 10,000 USD for this position. The position is ideally suited for linguists on sabbatical and who would like to work with members of the department in Budapest. However, all applications will be considered. The visitor will be expected to teach two courses (each 1.5 hours per week) to undergraduate students. Any area of theoretical linguistics is welcome, but to better integrate the visitor into our curriculum we ask applicants to list what courses (with very brief descriptions) they would be willing to teach. We are especially interested in those who could provide our students with knowledge otherwise not accessible to them. Balancing this concern is the desideratum that the visitor will be able to work with our permanent staff. The permanent staff of the department includes Zoltan Banreti, Michael Brody, Katalin E. Kiss, Laszlo Kalman, Ferenc Kiefer, Andras Komlosy and Miklos Torkenczy. In addition, there are a number of individuals who, although not full time members of the Theoretical Linguistics Department, regularly teach in course and participate. These include Miklos Kontra and Csaba Pleh, among others. Electronic inquires and applications should be directed to tlp@nytud.hu. To apply send a CV and a list of courses you would be willing to teach to tlp@nytud.hu or, Theoretical Linguistics Department HAS Linguistics Research Institute PO Box 19 H-1250 Budapest Hungary We would like all applications to be in by September 1, 1994. Even if you yourself are not interested, please pass this notice on to others who may be. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Fri, 06 May 1994 13:06:32 +0000 (GMT) From: "MARTIN EVERAERT, LINGUISTICS DEPT. UNIVERSITY OF UTRECHT" Subject: job announcement The following job announcement appeared in Dutch newspapers: The Research Institute for Language and Speech (OTS) of Utrecht University has vacancies for 2 POST DOC researchers for a three-year period, starting Fall 1994. The Post Doc researcher must carry out one of the following three research projects: -1- The Robustness of the Interpretive System: grammatical or extragrammatical? -2- Underlying Representations in Surface-Oriented Phonology -3- Static and Dynamic perspectives on Linguistic Structure For further information about the advertisement and the research proposals, please contact Eric Reuland (project 1), Rene Kager (project 2), Michael Moortgat (project 3). By phone: (+31)-30-536006 By fax: (+31)-30-536000 By email: OTS@let.ruu.nl / Reuland@let.ruu.nl / Kager@let.ruu.nl / Moortgat@let.ruu.nl -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-522. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-523. Fri 06 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 92 Subject: 5.523 TOC: Jeal, Diachronica, vol 11 no 1, Spring 1994 Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 26 Apr 1994 10:21:44 +0200 From: Anton van Kempen Subject: Table of Contents JEAL 2) Date: Thu, 05 May 94 14:08:05 EDT From: Sheila Subject: TOC: Diachronica, vol 11 no 1, Spring 1994 -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 26 Apr 1994 10:21:44 +0200 From: Anton van Kempen Subject: Table of Contents JEAL VOLUME 3 ISSUE 2 CARLOTA S. SMITH / Aspectual Viewpoint and Situation Type in Mandarian Chines 107 HIROTO HOSHI / Theta-Role Assignment, Passivization, and Excorporation 147 JAMES D. McCAWLEY / Remarks on the Syntax of Mandarin-No Questions 179 The aims and scope, instructions for authors, and ordering information for this journal, as well as a complete listing of past and forthcoming tables of contents are available free of charge via our anonymous ftp server at ftp.std.com in the directory Kluwer/journals/linguistics. Published by Kluwer Academic Publishers email: emkluwer@world.std.com (for NA), Services@wkap.nl (for Rest of World), Fax: (31)-78-183273, Tel: (31)-78-524400, P.O.Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, The Netherlands. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Thu, 05 May 94 14:08:05 EDT From: Sheila Subject: TOC: Diachronica, vol 11 no 1, Spring 1994 Table of Contents for Diachronica, volume 11, number 1, Spring 1994 Editorial Articles: Thomas Cable, "Syllable Weight in Old English Meter: Grids, morae and Kaluza's law". Christopher B. McCully & Richard M. Hogg, "Dialect Variation and Historical Met rics". Donka Minkova & Robert P. Stockwell, "Syllable Weight, Prosody, and Meter in Ol d English". Seiichi Suzuki, "Breaking, Ambisyllabicity, and the Sonority Hierarchy in Old E nglish". Review Article: Alexander Vovin, "Long-Distance Relationships, Reconstruction Methodology, and the Origins of Japanese". Reviews: Garry Davis & Gregory Iverson eds, "Explanation in Historical Linguistics", rev iewed by Terence Odlin. Johanna Nichols, "Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time", reviewed by Mary Nie pokuj. Joe Salmons, "Accentual Change and Language Contact", reviewed by Ilse Lehiste. Kenneth Shields, "A History of Indo-European Verb Morphology", reviewed by Mich ael Weiss. Plus Notes/Reports by John Charles Smith and Alexis Manaster-Ramer, and brief n otices on 27 books. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-523. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-524. Fri 06 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 165 Subject: 5.524 Sum: Computational models of parameter setting, Black holes Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 03 May 1994 14:01:51 BST From: Alison Henry Subject: Computational models of parameter setting 2) Date: 5 May 94 10:12:49 SAST-2 From: ROGER@beattie.uct.ac.za Subject: black holes: summary -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 03 May 1994 14:01:51 BST From: Alison Henry Subject: Computational models of parameter setting Some time ago I posted a request for information on recent work on computational models of parameter setting. Thank you to all who replied: Bill Turkel, Carole Tenny Boster, Paul Chapin, Bill Idsardi, Jeff Lidz, David Leblanc, Simon Kirby, Shalom Lappin, Andi Wu, Beatrice Santorini, Tod Wareham, Philip Resnik, Eleanor Olds Batchelder, Kevin Broihier (apologies if I have omitted to mention anyone). Here is a list of the main references suggested. Clark, R & Roberts, I (1993) A computational model of language learnability and language change LI 24 (299-345) Clark, R (1992) The selection of syntactic knowledge Language Acquisition 2 (83-149) Wexler, K & Gibson 'Triggers" (to appear in LI) Wu, A (1994) UCLA PhD dissertation Dresher, Elan & Kaye (1990) A Computational Learning Model for metrical phonology Cognition 34 (137-195) Turkel, B a paper on genetic algorithms as a model of acquisition in Optimality Theory, available by anonymous ftp from hivnet.ubc.ca Alison Henry -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: 5 May 94 10:12:49 SAST-2 From: ROGER@beattie.uct.ac.za Subject: black holes: summary Thanks to everybody who replied to what was not as inocuous a question as I thought. I have probably thanked everybody individually, so if your name doesn't appear in the summary it's not through ingratitude. The 'proper' summary should wait till I've digested all the responses and done all the assigned reading, but I may not live that long. 1. My original wuery was whether there were other pheromena like the English his-genitive (John his book, etc.), where an affix apparently climbed the grammaticalization hierarchy the wrong way and became a word. That is, is grammaticalization (or the mere fact of being 'grammatical') a black hole or a sink in the dynamical systems theory sense. It certainly is the latter in the sense of 'flow lines' converging on it. Lots of people questioned my analysis: the mere fact that the his- genitive is later than than the -'s genitive doesn't mean it's a reanalysis of it (the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy). This of course is true. Also many respondents (especially Hartmut Haberland, Tom Shannon, Martin Haspelmath) pointed out a postposed pronominal possessive in other Gmc languages, e.g. the German meinem Vater sein Haus with dative of the first possessive, Dutch mij vader zijn huis, and the further reduced Afrikaans clitic type my vader se huis. None of these could be from an old affixal form, but are new alternative creations, what Meillet would call 'renouvellement' rather than degrammaticalization. The fact that -'s has the phonological shape it does then may trigger the choice of 'his' as the postposed form; this is also a good story because at this stage his is not only masculine but neuter (its doesn't arise till much later). 2. As pointed out by Martin Haspelmath and Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy, my analysis of the modern -'s genitive as an affix is faulty: it's now best taken as a clitic. If this is so, then in fact it is itself a better example, since the modern -'s is itself then a clitic that has exited from the affix sink (it's been a suffix as long as anybody knows). In fact the affix-to-clitic move is so well known and patent that I wonder why I didn't think of it. Until well into Middle English times what Jespersen calls the 'group genitive', i.e. '[the king of England]'s' nose did not exist, bu the usual type was '[the king]'s nose of England'. In Old English the usual structure, before the use of the of-possessive would have been 'the king's nose England's'; Jespersen (Modern English Grammar 17.1) cites one that would parse as 'Aethelwulf-gen.sg daughter West-Saxon-gen.pl king- gen.sg.', i.e. in the later form [Aethelwulf King of the West Saxons]'s daughter'. It is therefore clear that the modern status of the genitive is the kind of case I was looking for. 3. Several people (Linda Colemean, Kevin O'Donelly) have pointed out the case of the Modern Irish -muid, which apparently is a verbal concord on its way to becoming a fre pronoun, and a number of Uralic cases appear in Lyle Campbell's paper in the Traugott & Heine 1991 collection. Hartmut Haberland has also suggsted Greek ksana 'again', which derives from a complex verbal prefix. 4. Somewhat similar phenomena (but in a sense less 'erious') have been suggested by others: e.g. what might be called neoclassical affixoids > words in collocations like 'I'm anti that', 'Your argument is becoming very meta' (Stephen Spackman), or '-ism' as a noun (Robert Beard); and of course there's always 'pros and cons'. Others suggested bus < omnibus as a kind of cross-linguistic example, but this is more in the nature of learned word-play to begin with or deliberate clippling (like mob < mobile vulgus). But this kind of thing (and metanalysis in general) do show an ability and willingness to segment the unsegmentable, and reify the unreifiable. ALso of course pseudo-affixes like -kini (bikini = bi-kini, hence monokini for a topless one), similarly '-tique' = 'shop'. 5. I was not trying to claim of course that the 'proper' hierarchy is not the commonest direction, and for good reasons. Grammaticalization is a normal attractor, annd like all point attractors it takes a special kick to get something out once it's fallen in. But is not a black hole in the strict sense. What I was interested in is how common the phenomenon of reversal is, and it seems that the answer is as I suspected not very. But it can't be discounted. 6. As a final pint, along the lines of something brought up by Jason Johnston, how does one treat movement along a sequence where say a thematic noun-class marker that was once (possible) a derivational affix becodmes more 'informative' by turning into an inflection? E.g. the -Vn- formative that occurs in Latin n-stems like homo, hom- in-is is in Latin (whatever it might have been earlier) mainly a declension marker; but in Germanic this thing gets reconstrued as a case/number morph. So in the cognate OE guma 'man', gen/dat/acc sg, nom/acc pl guma-n, what's left of the declension marker has syntactic functions. Is an inflection more 'lexical' than a class-marker? I'd say yes. Of course again the opposite is comoner, e.g. if as is commonly believed the -s- in cleanse (< OE claen-s-ian) is some kind of descendant of the IE -s- aorist marker. I have found the whole thing very interesting and informative, and would be delighted by further public or private discussion. Thanks again to everybody who replied, and whose replies occupied a rather small amount of disk space in relation to the queries about the 'real story' of the South African election, which occupied more of my time lately than linguistics. What you got on CNN and Sky News is as close as you'll get for the moment. Roger Lass -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-524. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-525. Sat 07 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 271 Subject: 5.525 Sum: Origin of Case systems Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 06 May 94 18:30:21 CDT From: "William J. Griffiths" Subject: Sum: Origin of Case systems -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 06 May 94 18:30:21 CDT From: "William J. Griffiths" Subject: Sum: Origin of Case systems In what seems like eons ago--enough time has elapsed for a language to go from analytic to synthetic and back to analytic again--I posted a query about the origin of case systems and the shift from analytic to synthetic. I apologize for the delay in posting this summary and I would like to thank the following who responded to my query: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar Lunk Lagerwerf Fritz Heberlein Janne Bondi Johannessen Martin Haspelmath Sheila Geoffrey S. Nathan John E. Koontz Harold Schiffman Scott C DeLancey Steven Schaufele Lynne Hewitt Ian MacKay Gregory V. Gouzev STEVE SEEGMILLER Randy LaPolla In response to that part of my query dealing with shifts from analytic -> analytic and vice versa, it was brought to my attention that the issue of grammatical shift had already been addressed on LINGUIST (LINGUIST List: Vol-4-256 Sum: Grammar Shifts). On the origin of cases, it seems clear that and there is the most evidence for case systems arising from adpositions which become grammaticized--and to a lesser extent, adverbs and independent words. In the excerpts and the list of recommended works that follow, the origin of case endings in Turkish, Finno- Ugric languages, Proto Indo-European, Manda, Dravidian languages, Common Slavic, and Sino-Tibetan languages is discussed. ================================================================= Anthony Rodrigues Aristar writes: " . . There's a great deal which most linguists believe, but which no-one can--or has taken the trouble to--prove. One example: case-affixes arise when adpositions cliticize to their arguments, and these clitics through time become interpreted as bound. I can easily give examples of this occurring--the Turkish affix -le (roughly "with") can still appear as a postposition. But I know of no serious study that tries to understand this process well." Martin Haspelmath writes: ". . The best introduction to grammaticalization (using case marking as prime example) is Christian Lehmann's paper in Lingua e Stile 1985. You really need the theoretical background and the comparative evidence to understand the grammaticalization of case markers. The best special study is still Joan Caspar Kahr's 1976 paper in the Stanford Working Papers on Language Universals, where she cites lots of examples of case markers arising from adpositions. The best-attested system is probably the rich Hungarian case system, which was only incipient in Old Hungarian. However, I know of no attested case where a whole language turns from soltating to (case-)inflecting." Geoffrey S. Nathan writes: "Gordon Fairbanks, an Indo-Europeanist whom I studied with in the seventies, believed that PIE had only four original cases, and that the other ones (ablative, locative, instrumental etc.) were later developments. Unfortunately he only wrote one paper on the subject: Case Inflections in Indo-European. Journal of Indo-European Studies. 5.1-31. I found his arguments quite persuasive. He argued that case inflections arose from reanalysis of postpositions and postposed adverbs, at least in Sanskrit and a few other languages." John E. Koontz writes: "- Generally oblique case markers seem to originate from postpositions or (in the case of locatives) from old noun+poss_case+local_noun, i.e., in-house might be from house's-interior or, less abstractly, house's-chest. I think postpositions are essentially what are proposed for the origin of local cases in PIE, while in the Eskimo languages the local cases are transparently constructed from the ergative/possessive case + particle. Naturally, as a system of this or these sorts is morphologized, it is possible to get different systems prevailing in singular and plural, especially if the number category is itself (re)morphologizing at the same time, which accounts for the lack of transparent relationship between singular and non-singular case forms in, e.g., PIE, as well as syncretization of case-number forms. - The PIE nominative/accusative marking scheme, particularly the masculine and neuter genders of forms like o-stems, are considered by some to result from reanalysis of an original ergative/absolutive system. In general, the forms of case marking with ergative and accusative cases in ergative/absolutive and nominative/accusative systems can result from reanalysis of old obliques as these two types of systems are interconverted. For example, as if a nominative/accusative system develops by generalization of the antipassive construction in an ergative/absolutive system, the "new" accusative may be the "old" dative, even if the old dative has been replaced by a new one." Harold Schiffman writes: "I have spent a lot of time thinking about this issue with regard to the Dravidian languages, which are traditionally analyzed as having 7 cases, but most people admit that the 7 case framework was borrowed from Sanskrit along with its tradition of grammatical analysis. In the earliest grammar of Tamil, the Tolkaappiyam, the grammarian expressed his discomfort with the 7 cases and showed that Tamil either had fewer cases, more cases, or needed a different configuration altogether. Many of the original case suffices were free forms, but by the modern period have become bound, and the line between bound case markers and unbound (free form) postpositions, derived from nouns, verbs, or whatever, is in the modern language very fluid. If I take a very traditional approach to case I would have to say that Tamil, e.g. either has 20-some cases, or very few, maybe 4 cases but there are many problems and dilemmas with this analysis. I tried to write this up some years ago, and am stalemated; maybe I'll get back to this. What I would say is that there is a core of a case system, then some case-like morphemes that are free forms in the literary lg. but bound in the spoken lg. and then there are lots of postpositions that sometimes occur WITH case markers, sometimes WITHOUT, raising the total into the dozens. There are also lots of syntactic issues, e.g. if you use the instrumental with certain modals it implies being able but not nec. willing; using the dative with same modal means able and willing; this is a feature of spoken Tamil but not allowed in literary,etc. Anyway I think the system was once much smaller and more analytic, and has become more synthetic, and continues to get more synthetic all the time." Scott C DeLancey writes: "Maybe the Munda languages--within Austroasiatic, Mon-Khmer languages are isolating, Munda agglutinative. Patricia Donegan and David Stampe say something about this in a paper in the CLS Interplay volume (1983). Somewhere or other Sapir argues that Athabaskan is another example." Steven Schaufele fcosws@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu writes: "There has been some speculation (going back to the 19th century) that the agglutinative case-markers in the Dravidian languages developed out of what were originally independent lexemes, in many cases not merely adpositions but full-fledged nouns with real-world referents." Lynne Hewitt writes: "Joan Bybee has for a number of years been working on a project in quantitative cross-linguistics called the GRAMCATS project, whose purpose is to determine the lexical sources of grammatical material, using a stratified random sample of the world's languages." Gregory V. Gouzev writes: "Cases emerged when there was a need to mark off the different roles that words play in different narrative situations. The most common roles are subject, object, instrument, location, recipient, source, beneficiary, and so on. Not all roles have corresponding cases. Originally, the first cases to appear were the Nominative and Accusative when the subject and the object were separated in human's mind (NB! Indo-European languages only). Gradually Genitive, Dative and Locative developed over the centuries. The roles conveyed by these cases are so in demand that the expressors, originally being other words, ossified in endings, stress shifts, etc. thus forming cases. In fact, this is described in the literature pretty well, and I don't think you'll find many different points of view. As of a shift from analytic to synthetic, there is some weak evidence. First, when Chirch Slavonic from tri-case system (Nom., Gen.,(?) Dat.) developed into six-case system, which is well documented. Second, even today more roles occasionally get different forms, thought to be new case forms. E.g. in Russian there is second Genitive and Locative case forms, physically different from the canonical ones. Also, some people outline Inclusive case when Accusative plural takes the position of Nominative plural. Lastly, with numerals 1-4 same words must have different forms, e.g. 4 oficerA but 5 oficerOV (bad transliteration). This all broadens the family of the case forms, making some think that the shift from analytic to synthetic structure takes place. In fact, the other trend can be demonstrated as well, and it is not clear which is more powerful in the long run." Steve Seegmiller writes: "The Turkic languages contain some pretty clear cases of the evolution from (relatively) analytic to agglutinative structure. Turkish, for example, has six cases, and some or all of the suffixes clearly come from what used to be particles, prepositions, or things of that sort. It is just a step from agglutintive structure to synthetic, although I don't know offhand of any attested cases." Randy LaPolla writes: "I have been working on the origin of morphology in Sino-Tibetan, and so far have worked on verb agreement and two types of case marker (agentive and anti-agentive). On the latter, the origin can usually be traced back to a body part or other locational noun, with the former deriving in general from an ablative (which itself may derive from a locative plus directional verb) or a genitive plus ablative or locative marker. No form is reconstructable to Proto-Sino-Tibetan or even Proto-Tibeto-Burman." RECOMMENDED LITERATURE Anttila, Raimo & Eeva Uotila, (1984) "Finnish OVELA 'sly, cunning' and the Baltic & Finnic outer local cases". Ural-Altaische Jahrbuecher 56, 121-128. Antilla, Reimo. (1989) Historical and Comparative Linguistics. Amsterdam/Pjhiladelphia: John Benjamins Publishing co. Fairbanks, Gordon. (/) "Case Inflections in Indo-European." Journal of Indo-European Studies. 5. 1-31 Heine, B., U. Claudi and F. H nnemeyer. 1991. Grammaticalization. A conceptual framework. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Hopper, P.J. and E.C. Traugott. 1993. Grammaticalization. Cambrudge Textbooks in Linguistics. Cambridge. Kahr, Joan. (1976) "The renewal of case morphology: Sources and constraints" Stanford Working Papers on Language Universals_ 20:107-151 Lehmann, Chr. Latin case relations in typological perspective. in Touratier, Chr. (ed.), Syntaxe et Latin (actes du IIeme congres international de linguistique latine) Aix-en-Provence 1985, 81- 104. Odo Leys. (1993) "Reflections on the German Case System." in LEUVENSE BIJDRAGEN, volume 82.3, pp. 305-328. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-525. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-526. Sun 08 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 158 Subject: 5.526 Qs: E-mail language, Monographs, Agni, OCR for Cyrillic Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 4 May 1994 10:57:47 -0500 (CDT) From: Shannon M Walbran Subject: E-mail language itself 2) Date: Wed, 04 May 1994 09:36:57 -0400 (EDT) From: Ali Aghbar Subject: Q: Language Awareness Monogrphs 3) Date: Fri, 6 May 1994 16:37:15 UTC+0100 From: "Williams J. Ekou" Subject: Agni language 4) Date: Sat, 07 May 1994 12:14:48 -0500 (EST) From: ADGERW@HOPE.CIT.HOPE.EDU Subject: OCR packages for Cyrillic -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 4 May 1994 10:57:47 -0500 (CDT) From: Shannon M Walbran Subject: E-mail language itself Dear thinkers, What do you think are the primary distinctions of language used in e-mail conversations? How is e-mail language different from corresponding on paper? I'm thinking about abbreviations, informality, and other quirks of the medium. Thanks for thinking. Shannon Walbran Hamline University , St. Paul, MN -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Wed, 04 May 1994 09:36:57 -0400 (EDT) From: Ali Aghbar Subject: Q: Language Awareness Monogrphs I am going to teach a course on language awareness this fall to a group of non-language major students. I am looking for a recent MONOGRAPH that would cover the areas listed below: I. Human language A. Human language vs. animal communication B. Human language vs. artificial languages C. Humans and robots II. Ground rules for interactions A. Language as part of its speakers B. Unconscious nature of politeness rules C. Words as actions D. Maxims of conversation E. Presuppositions III. Strategies of Communication A. The speakable and the unspeakable B. Verbal dueling C. Creative playing with language D. Linguistic Chauvinism IV. Language and thought A. Humans at the mercy of Language B. The problem of meaning C. Multiple ways of expressing the same intention and their effects V. Humans and Language A. Humans as talkers B. The language of children C. The power of the spoken word D. The way words are combined to make new meanings VI. Language and Change A. Language in flux B. Language and diversity VII. Language variety A. Dialects as complete systems of communication B. Registers and styles There is already a good monograph in the market from which I have taken most of the items in my outline. It is: Farb, Peter. (1973, reprinted 1993). WORD PLAY: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN PEOPLE TALK. Vantage Books. However, this book has not been revised since its original 1973 publication. I was wondering if someone could recommend a more recent monograph with SIMILAR contents. I already know about the following edited collections, which come close: Eschholz, P., Rosa, A., and Clark, V. (eds.) 1994. LANGUAGE AWARENESS. New York: St. Martin's Press. Davis, Boyd H. (ed.) (1993) DIMENSIONS OF LANGUAGE. New York: Macmillan. What I am looking for is a clearly written MONOGRAPH. I know that there are dozens of introduction to language texts that cover many areas including phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics... To save you the trouble of mentioning them, I am not interested in such texts. If I get some good responses, I will summarize. I would greatly appreciate your assistance. Ali ================================================================================ Ali-Asghar Aghbar, Dept. of English, Indiana U. of PA, Indiana, PA 15705 Bitnet: aaghbar@iup Internet: aaghbar@grove.iup.edu Phone: 357 2262 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Fri, 6 May 1994 16:37:15 UTC+0100 From: "Williams J. Ekou" Subject: Agni language Hello! Iam doing my thesis on Agni language of Ivory Coast(it is spoken in Ghana too) and am looking for all king of information,especially bibliographies in Spanish,French,English or Portuguese. Many thanks. Williams. Williamsj@cpd.uva.es Williams jacob Ekou resid.Univ.Alfonso VIII c/Real de Burgos s/n 47011 Valladolid SPAIN. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Sat, 07 May 1994 12:14:48 -0500 (EST) From: ADGERW@HOPE.CIT.HOPE.EDU Subject: OCR packages for Cyrillic Does anyone know of a satisfactory or semi-satisfactory OCR package that can handle non-Latin character sets with training? Do you, if you know of such a beast, know what its error rate is like? thanks a lot Adger Williams adgerw@hope.cit.hope.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-526. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-527. Sun 08 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 188 Subject: 5.527 Accents, Estuary English Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 03 May 1994 11:58:49 -0500 (EST) From: 00dgchurma@leo.bsuvc.bsu.edu Subject: Re: 5.497 Accents 2) Date: Fri, 06 May 94 17:01:22 +0100 From: jgp@ukc.ac.uk Subject: accents (Estuary English) 3) Date: Fri, 6 May 1994 21:58:40 +0100 (BST) From: Paul Kerswill Subject: Estuary English (fwd) -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 03 May 1994 11:58:49 -0500 (EST) From: 00dgchurma@leo.bsuvc.bsu.edu Subject: Re: 5.497 Accents Speaking of Australian sandwiches, I recently noticed a different odd (to me) pronunciation of this word in the song "The Land Down Under" (I think that's the title) by the Austr. group Men at Work: it has a VOICED affri- cate at the end. Is this fairly general, or is it just because it's supposed to rhyme with (!) "language" (as in "I said `Do you speak-a my language?'/He just smiled and gave me a Vegamite (sp.?) sandwich.")? It didn't sound forced at all. Don Churma -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Fri, 06 May 94 17:01:22 +0100 From: jgp@ukc.ac.uk Subject: accents (Estuary English) I am mailing this for my colleague Paul Coggle, who appears to be the only person who has published to any length on the matter. Estuary English Further to the recent mention of Estuary English, readers of Linguist may like to know that my book `Do you speak Estuary?' was published in November 1993 by Bloomsbury ISBN 0-7475-1656-1. It did receive a certain amount of media attention at the time, probably because it refers to a number of prominent media personalities who are EE speakers. EE exists between RP and Cockney and is, I claim, serving as a bridge between the various classes in SE England. So, for instance, upper class speakers can move `down market' from RP towards Cockney (by adopting some, but not all the features of Cockney) and Cockney speakers can move `up market ' towards RP, discarding certain Cockney features and retaining ers. I hope to establish whether or not individual features are adopted or discarded in any particular order (it seems that they *are*). An interesting aspect is that EE seems to be pushing out the traditional accents (of Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire, Essex etc). Most young people in the SE now speak a version of EE - presumably because it is an urban and not a rural accent and lends `street cred'. When the University of Kent was established in 1965 the predominant accent amongst our students was RP (tending towards conservative RP). Regional accents were also on their way in, but people tended to modify these towards RP. Now, 29 years later, the tendency is definitely towards EE. Of course other accents are represented, but these tend to get modified towards EE rather than towards RP. Even many of our foreign students are picking up EE features (and sounding all the more English for it!). I suspect that EE will push out RP in the long run or at least will modify very substantially. For more details see my book (which as far as I know is the only book so far on this topic)! I welcome any comments, discussion, further observations etc. Paul Coggle (University of Kent at Canterbury) pc1@ukc.ac.uk -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Fri, 6 May 1994 21:58:40 +0100 (BST) From: Paul Kerswill Subject: Estuary English (fwd) First, the main source is David Rosewarne 1994 'Estuary English: tomorrow's RP?', in English Today 37, Vol. 10 No. 1, pp. 3-9. My view is that Rosewarne misguided in very many respects. For a start, it's is not a new variety, it's just a standardised form of speech with Southeastern phonology. People have spoken like that for years and years. EE retains some regional low-level phonetic features. What MAY be new is the fact that the non-standard urban dialects are being levelled in the whole SE region, so that it is increasingly hard to tell even where nonstandard speakers come from. Rosewarne completely misleadingly tries to associate EE with certain discourse features, such as stressing prepositions and using tags. This is nonsense, and seems to be based on his dependence on local radio for his data. What we can say is that, although attitudes to it are still not positive, it is becoming more and more used in high-status occupations, including broadcasting. It lacks the snobbery associated with some forms of RP. Second, I and a colleague, Ann Williams, have just finished a funded (ESRC) research project on something related, in a rather complex way, to Estuary English. This is the speech of children and adults in the New Town of Milton Keynes, founded from scratch in 1969 60 miles north of London and now with a population of 170,000. We used quantitative methods to study phonological features. To cut a long story short, we have found that it is very difficult to say that there is a distinctive variety growing up. This is because we have a levelled variety there with no strongly regional features (i.e. no strongly Cockney vowels, no rhoticity, but plenty of glottal replacement and l-vocalisation). Using a Principal Components analysis, we found that our oldest subject group, the 12 year olds, form a relatively homogeneous group linguistically, different from both the 8 and the 4 year olds. What they have converged on is precisely this hard-to-place accent, that is less distinctive than say that of similar children in our home town of Reading or indeed London itself. This is where the relationship with EE comes in: people who speak this are often highly mobile, socially and geographically; they can converge on it from 'above' (RP) or 'below' (local dialect). Milton Keynes forms a microcosm of this mobility; dialect contact is intense there, as a morning spent in the shopping centre and the market will testify. The result is a range of varieties used by the children - the natives of the new town - that contains fewer geographically marked forms than elsewhere. This means that working class speakers there sound much less 'broad' than people elsewhere, and consequently sound like EE speakers, with non-standard grammatical features. If people would like me to send them copies of our papers on MK, I will be willing to oblige. Incidentally, do you know anything about Scholtemeier's Polders project? If so, I'd love to get the references. I met him several years ago but have heard nothing since. Please could you forward this message to accent-interested parties? Thanks. Paul Kerswill Dept. of Linguistic Science University of Reading Reading RG6 2AA, England -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-527. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-528. Sun 08 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 225 Subject: 5.528 Confs: International Conference on Language in Ireland Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 4 May 94 19:30 BST From: FEBH23@ujvax.ulst.ac.uk Subject: Conference details -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 4 May 94 19:30 BST From: FEBH23@ujvax.ulst.ac.uk Subject: Conference details DRAFT PROGRAMME INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON LANGUAGE IN IRELAND / COMHDHA/IL IDIRNA/ISIU/NTA AR THEANGACHA IN E/IRINN 22-24 June 1994 / Meitheamh 22-24 1994 UNIVERSITY OF ULSTER AT JORDANSTOWN / OLLSCOIL ULADH AG JORDANSTOWN CONFERENCE PROGRAMME / CLA/R NA COMHDHA/LA Wednesday 22 June 1994 9.30-10.45 Registration & coffee 11.00-11.15 Vice-Chancellor's Welcome to delegates 11.15-12.15 Keynote Address: James McCloskey (University of California, Santa Cruz) 'Title awaited' 12.30-1.30 Lunch 2.00-2.30 Markku Filppula (Joensuu) 'The influence of Irish on perfect marking in Hiberno-English: a reassessment' 2.30-3.00 Colleen Cotter (Berkeley) 'Systems in contact: focus in Irish and English' 3.00-3.30 Terence Odlin (Ohio) 'On a problematic substrate source in Hiberno-English' 3.30-4.00 Tea / Coffee 4.00-4.30 Mehroo Northover & Stephen Donnelly (Ulster) 'A future for English-Irish bilingualism in Northern Ireland?' 4.30-5.00 Peter Slomanson (CUNY) 'Athbheochan no/ Meath? Mi/niu/ ar fhailli/ na hAthbheochana go dti/ seo' 5.00-5.30 Karen Corrigan (Newcastle) 'Language attrition in nineteenth century Ireland: emigration as murder machine?' 6.00.7.00 Dinner 7.30-8.30 Keynote Address and Public Lecture: Ken Hale (MIT) 'On endangered languages and the importance of linguistic diversity' Thursday 23 June 1994 8.00-9.00 Breakfast Session A 9.00-9.30 Ann Mulkern & Nancy Stenson (Minnesota) 'Cognitive status, discourse salience and Irish pronominal forms' 9.30-10.00 Nicole M ller (Queen's) 'Passives and Pronouns in Early Irish' 10.00-10.30 Inge Genee (Amsterdam) 'Between abstract noun and infinitive: on the categorial status of the Old and Middle Irish verbal noun' Session B 9.00-9.30 Ailbhe Ni/ Chasaide (Trinity) 'Stop Asimilation in Irish connected speech' 9.30-10.00 Martin Ball (Ulster) & Joan Rahilly (Queen's) 'Spectrographic analysis of /u-/ and /Au-/ in Northern Irish English' 10.00-10.30 Eugene McKendry (St Mary's) 'Phonetic interference and the learning of Irish' 10.30-11.00 Coffee / tea 11.00-11.30 Siobha/n Ni/ Laoire (DIAS) 'Broadcast News: a stylistic analysis of news reports on Raidi na Gaeltachta' 11.30-12.00 Nigel Duffield (McGill) 'Anyone wouldn't believe that: a predictive account of certain (apparently) idiosyncratic constructions in Hiberno-English' 12.00-12.30 Thomas O'Reilly (St Joseph's) 'Computer programs that conjugate Irish Gaelic verbs' 12.30-1.00 Nicole M ller (Queen's), Patricia Kelly & Elva Johnston (RIA) 'CURIA: Towards a Computer Archive of Early and Medieval Irish texts' 1.00-2.00 Lunch 2.00-3.00 Keynote Address: John Harris (University College London) 'Minimalist Phonology' 3.00-3.30 Kevin Hind (Edinburgh) 'Lenition in articulatory phonology' 3.30-4.00 Tea / coffee 4.00-4.30 Raymond Hickey (Essen) 'Lenition in Irish English' 4.30-5.00 Joan Rahilly (Queen's) 'Intonation in Northern Irish English: a neglected variable' 5.00-5.30 Sharon Millar (Odense) '"By George, she's got it"? Problems of accent modification in Belfast' 5.30-6.00 Rona Kingsmore (Northern Ireland) 'Sexual Equality in Language? Forget it!' 7.15 for 7.45 Reception and Conference Dinner. Irish Music and Late Bar in the SCR. Friday 24 June 1994 8.00-9.00 Breakfast Session A 9.00-9.30 Suzanne McDowell (Ulster) 'The Speech and Language of Visually Impaired Children in Northern Ireland' 9.30-10.00 Greg Brooks (NFER) 'Reading Standards in Northern Ireland Revisited: the 1993 reading surveys' 10.00-10.30 Margaret McAliskey (Ulster) 'Specific spelling difficulties encountered by Dyslexic Children in Ireland' Session B 9.00-9.30 John Kirk (Queen's) 'Northern Irish English: a Research Agenda' 9.30-10.00 John Wilson & Jonathan Rose (Ulster) 'Relevance theory and politics in context' 10.00-10.30 Dorothy Kenny (DCU) 'Talking about the weather in Ireland: a contrastive discourse analytic view of English-language weather bulletins and their Irish-language translations' 10.30-11.00 Coffee / tea 11.00-11.30 Michael Montgomery (S. Carolina) & John Kirk (Queen's) 'The verb be in Hiberno-English and its possible connections to American English' 11.30-12.00 Alison Henry (Ulster) 'Indirect questions in Belfast English and the analysis of embedded V2' 12.00-12.30 Norman Creaney (Ulster) 'Scope, dependency and incremental interpretation' 12.45-1.45 Lunch 2.00-2.30 Aisling Rooney (Ulster) 'Children's response to text of children's books' 2.30-3.00 John Wilson (Ulster) 'Discourse of adolescents in Belfast' 3.00-3.30 Brendan Gunn (N. Ireland) 'The Characteristics of Irish Voice in Drama' 3.30-4.00 Tea / coffee 4.00-5.30 Seiminea/r / Seminar Oideachas tri/ Ghaeilge i dTuaisceart E/ireann / Irish Medium Education in N. Ireland. Parasession on the Generative Grammar of Irish Parasheisu/n ar Theangeolai/ocht Ghimiu/nach na Gaeilge 25 June 1994 / Meitheamh 25 1994 University of Ulster at Jordanstown Ollscoil Uladh ag Jordanstown Programme / Cla/r Saturday 25 June 1994 8.00-9.00 Breakfast 9.00-9.40 Andrew Carnie (MIT) 'Complex Predicates and Deriving Copular Word Order' 9.40-10.20 Cathal O'Docherty (UC Santa Cruz) 'The Syntax of Comparative Adjectives in Irish' 10.20-10.40 Tea / Coffee 10.40-11.20 Raymond Hickey (Universit t-GH Essen) 'The Representation of Palatalization in Irish' 11.20-12.00 Ruben van de Vijver (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) 'Heavy Syllables and Main Stress in Munster Irish' 12.00-12.40 Janet Grijzenhout & Astrid Holtman (Utrecht University) 'Poetic End-Rhyme in Early Middle Irish with special reference to sonority' 12.40-2.00 Lunch 2.00-2.40 Ma/ire Noonan (University College Dublin) 'The that-trace filter in Irish' 2.40-3.20 Siobha/n Cottell (Universite de Geneve) 'Negation and tense in Irish and Standard Arabic' 3.20-3.40 Coffee / Tea 3.40-4.20 Eithne Guilfoyle (University of Calgary) 'Modern Irish VNPs and the internal structure of VP' 4.20-5.00 Nigel Duffield (McGill University) 'Are you right? Pronoun postposing and other problems of Irish word-order' 5.00-5.40 Do/nall O/ Baoill (Institiu/id Teangeolai/ochta E/ireann) 'Double subjects and A-chains in Modern Irish' IF YOU WISH TO RECEIVE A BOOKING FORM FOR EITHER THE MAIN CONFERENCE OR PARASESSION OR BOTH CONTACT THE CONFERENCE OFFICE: febh23@uk.ac.ulster.ujvax / fehn23@uk.ac.ulster.ujvax International Conference on Language in Ireland, Dept Communication, University of Ulster at Jordanstown, Newtownabbey, Co Antrim BT37 0QB. N. Ireland. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-528. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-529. Mon 09 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 212 Subject: 5.529 FYI: TESL-EJ First issue, Second language learning list Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 7 May 1994 18:29:08 -0700 (PDT) From: Margaret E Sokolik Subject: TESL-EJ: First issue available 2) Date: Sun, 08 May 1994 21:37:10 -0500 (EST) From: "Leslie Z. Morgan" Subject: Second language learning list -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 7 May 1994 18:29:08 -0700 (PDT) From: Margaret E Sokolik Subject: TESL-EJ: First issue available The first issue of TESL-EJ is now available. If you haven't heard of us, we are a fully refereed electronic journal, featuring articles on English as a Second or Foreign Language and Applied Linguistics. The table of contents and instructions on retrieving articles or subscribing follows. = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Maggi Sokolik, Editor TESL-EJ msokolik@uclink.berkeley.edu = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = TESL-EJ TEACHING ENGLISH AS A SECOND OR FOREIGN LANGUAGE: AN ELECTRONIC JOURNAL ISSN: 1072-4303 ================================================================== TESL-EJ Vol. 1. No. 1 April 1994 ================================================================== Table of Contents..............................................TOC Front Matter.................................................. FM From the Editor, Editorial Board, Call for Manuscripts, Book Review Policy, Reviews Solicited for Books on L2 Acquisition, Books Received, Media Received for Review, From the Forum Editor Articles _TESL-EJ_: Conception and Potential of an Electronic Journal..A-1 Roland Sussex (60p) Using the Internet............................................A-2 Peter White (11p) The Role of Topic and the Reading/Writing Connection..........A-3 Barbara L. Kennedy (21p) A Guide to Learning Disabilities for the ESL Classroom .......A-4 Practitioner, Christine Root (9p) Reviews _Making Connections: An Interactive Approach..................R-1 to Academic Reading_. by Pakenham, Kenneth J. Reviewed by Thomas A. Upton (3p) _Planning Language, Planning Inequality_......................R-2 by Tollefson, James Reviewed by Ester J. deJong (8p) _Essential Words for the TOEFL_...............................R-3 Matthiesen, Steven J. Reviewed by Marsha Bensoussan (4p) Media Reviews _Learn to Speak English for the Multimedia PC, Ver. 3.0_.....MR-1 by Romeiser, John, and Geoffrey C. Yerem Reviewed by Jim Buell (4p) _A Different Place: The Intercultural Classroom_.............MR-2 Wurzel, Jaime & Nancy Fischman (1993) Reviewed by Carol Houser Pineiro (2p) Forum..........................................................F-1 Whose English Is It? by P. B. Nayar (7p) Response #1, by Barbara Kennedy, Response #2, by Carol Renner The Conference Watcher (17p)...................................CW On the Internet Project Gutenberg (Electronic Text Database).............. ..INT-1 Michael Hart (5p) ======================================================================= RETRIEVING ARTICLES The items listed in the Table of Contents may be retrieved in the following manner: ======================================================================= By Anonymous FTP from archive.umich.edu Directory: celia-ftp/english/teslej 1) Date: Sat, 7 May 1994 18:29:08 -0700 (PDT) From: Margaret E Sokolik Subject: TESL-EJ: First issue available 2) Date: Sun, 08 May 1994 21:37:10 -0500 (EST) From: "Leslie Z. Morgan" Subject: Second language learning list ======================================================================= By gopher to gopher.archive.merit.edu Menu Path: Merit Software Archives CELIA (Language Instruction) Archive English TESLEJ - TESL Electronic Journal (Select the issue you want) (Select the format you want) For those who require it, the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) for the TESL-EJ directory is: gopher://gopher.archive.merit.edu:7055:/11/celia-ftp/english/teslej/ Currently, the plain text (ASCII-only) format, RTF ("Rich text format," readable by MS-Word and other word processors for both DOS & Mac), and MS Word 4.0/Mac (binary) are available. Word Perfect 5.1 and PostScript formats are planned. =========================================================================== By LISTSERV Request Send a request in the following format to LISTSERV@CMSA.BERKELEY.EDU Format of message line GET TESLEJ01 TESLEJ-L F=Mail The code is found in the right margin by the article or feature title. Example: GET TESLEJ01 A-1 TESLEJ-L F=MAIL Will retrieve article 1. If you are not yet subscribed to TESLEJ-L, you can do so first by sending a message to LISTSERV@CMSA.BERKELEY.EDU saying: SUB TESLEJ-L my-full-name-here Example: SUB TESLEJ-L Bill Clinton -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Sun, 08 May 1994 21:37:10 -0500 (EST) From: "Leslie Z. Morgan" Subject: Second language learning list Dear Linguists, After my note on the language testing list a few days ago, I've received a number of requests about slart-l (second language learning list) from which I obtained the information. slart-l is a VERY ACTIVE LIST, so expect mail when you subscribe! The following information comes from their very informative how-to file which is sent out when you subscribe. SLART-L is run on CUNYVM, which is a computer at the City University of New York. To subscribe to SLART-L you send a subscription ("sub") command to listserv@CUNYVM (see note on variant addresses, below) as follows: SUB SLART-L your full name For example: SUB SLART-L HILARY RODHAM CLINTON Subscriptions and all listserv commands should be sent to: listserv@CUNYVM (BITNET variant) listserv@CUNYVM.BITNET listserv@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (INTERNET) Use whichever works -- the last one, the INTERNET variant, is becoming increasingly common worldwide. (Sorry for the copying, but it does prevent typographical errors!) Leslie Morgan Loyola College in Md. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-529. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-530. Mon 09 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 110 Subject: 5.530 Sum: Equative comparison Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 6 May 1994 22:50:49 +0000 (GMT) From: martinha@fub46.zedat.fu-berlin.de (Martin Haspelmath) Subject: Sum: equative comparison -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 6 May 1994 22:50:49 +0000 (GMT) From: martinha@fub46.zedat.fu-berlin.de (Martin Haspelmath) Subject: Sum: equative comparison Summary: equative comparison Thanks to those of you who reacted to my query on equative comparison ("as good as X"). I didn't get very many reactions, which seems to show that equatives are not currently a hot topic of research. Still, below I list the references that I got plus some others that we found ourselves. Larry Horn and Geoffrey Simmons sent comments on the semantics of equatives (equatives as scalar values: are they upward-entailing/monotone increasing or non-monotone or ambiguous? is the as...as construction semantically compositional?) However, we are more interested in the morphosyntax of equatives, as well as in polysemy patters (i.e. we are interested in the semantics mainly to the extent that it is reflected in linguistic form). John Koontz points out that structures like 'so...wie' in German or 'tak...kak' in Russian show a close connection with correlative relative clauses. Thus, the fact that (at least in Europe) equatives are often marked by 'how' words which also function as interrogatives is due to the generally extensive use that European languages make of interrogative pronouns in relative clauses. Since wh-marked relative clauses seem to be a highly specific areal feature of Europe, we should also expect 'how' equatives to be restricted to Europe (is this true?). John Cowan doubts that there is a relation between the 'as' in 'We gave it it to you as a gift' and the 'as' in 'as good as X': "There are about six or seven different "as"es, of which "as...as" is just one." Here Cowan is clearly wrong--on the basis of English alone, one might think of accidental homonymy, but the same polysemy pattern is found in quite a few other languages, e.g. Russian, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Catalan, Dutch, Georgian. This clearly cannot be accidental, and there must be some explanation for it. Matthew Dryer points out that Quebec Inuktitut uses the same morphosyntactic means for expressing equative comparison and for (what we call) similative expressions like 'She is like a man'. This equative/similative polyfunctionality is widespread elsewhere (e.g. in German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Norwegian), and again it needs to be explained somehow. REFERENCES on Equative Comparison Alvre, P. Ju. 1987. "O sinteticheskom ekvative." Voprosy jazykoznanija 1987.4: 132-137. Bierwisch, Manfred. 1989. "The semnatics of gradation." In: Bierwisch, Manfred & Lang, Ewald (eds.) Dimensional adjectives. Berlin: Springer, 71-261. Borsley, Robert D. 1981. "Wh-movement and unbounded deletion in Polish equatives." Journal of Linguistics 17.2:271-288. Buchholz, Oda. 1989. "Zu aequativischen Konstruktionen in den Balkansprachen." Linguistische Studien A, 192:1-45 (Berlin, Akademie der Wissenschaften) Cheremisina, Majja I. 1976. Sravnitel'nye konstrukcii russkogo jazyka. Novosibirsk: Nauka. Horn, Laurence R. 1989. A natural history of negation. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Rivara, Rene. 1990. Le systeme de la comparaison: sur la construction du sens dans les langues naturelles. Paris: Minuit. Rudin, Catherine. 1984. "Comparatives and equatives in Bulgarian and the Balkan languages." In: Shangriladze, K.K. & Townsend, E.W. (eds.) Papers for the Vth Congress of Southeast European Studies, Belgrade, September 1984. Columbus: Slavica. von Stechow, Arnim. 1984. "Comparing semantic theories of comparison." Journal of Semantics 3.1-2:1-78. Thanks to: Hartmut Haberland (hartmut @ruc.dk) John Cowan (lojbab@access.digex.net) John Koontz (koontz@bldr.nist.gov) Matthew Dryer (lindryer@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu) Larry Horn (lhorn@yalevm.cis.yale.edu) Geoffrey Simmons (simmons@informatik.uni-hamburg.de) Martin Haspelmath, Department of English, Free University of Berlin -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-530. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-531. Mon 09 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 153 Subject: 5.531 Qs: Graduate programs, Metaphor, Turkic writing systems, Bridge Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 6 May 1994 14:39:39 -0700 From: pmfarrell@ucdavis.edu Subject: Q: graduate programs 2) Date: Fri, 6 May 94 13:42:59 -0400 From: lll@isr.harvard.edu (Lynn Lesueur) Subject: metaphor 3) Date: 7 May 94 20:40:00 EST From: "STEVE SEEGMILLER" Subject: Query: Turkic Writing Systems 4) Date: Sun, 08 May 1994 17:17:45 -0700 (MST) From: Mike Hammond Subject: bridge language -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 6 May 1994 14:39:39 -0700 From: pmfarrell@ucdavis.edu Subject: Q: graduate programs I would like to find out about the following kinds of graduate programs: 1. That prepare students for careers in publishing/editing. 2. That combine the study of English literature and linguistics. If you know of any such programs, please let me know. Patrick Farrell pmfarrell@ucdavis.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Fri, 6 May 94 13:42:59 -0400 From: lll@isr.harvard.edu (Lynn Lesueur) Subject: metaphor apologies, but the system ejected me in the middle of reading mail received between noon yesterday, the 5th, and noon today. i was, in fact, in the middle of something from berkeley which i was eager to save, so if someone out there knows how to contact lakoff's lab, please do so and repeat my request for any interesting literature on metaphor comprehension since about 1988. anyone else who was kind enough to respond to my request during the past 24 hours, forgive the imposition, but kindly repeat your message at your convenience. thanks again, and apologies. L. Lynn LeSueur, Ph.D. Neurology, MGH/Harvard Boston >Date: Tue, 3 May 94 17:55:38 -0400 >From: lll@isr.harvard.edu (Lynn Lesueur)> >Subject: metaphor >hello out there. >has anyone been keeping up with the literature on cognitive research on >metaphor comprehension? if so, what have you seen of interest in the >past four years? please send along references. >thanks. L. Lynn LeSueur MGH, Harvard Med School, Boston ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: 7 May 94 20:40:00 EST From: "STEVE SEEGMILLER" Subject: Query: Turkic Writing Systems This message is being cross-posted to several lists. I apologize to any list junkies who receive it more than once. For a paper that a colleague and I are working on, I would appreciate receiving any information on recent, current, or projected changes in the writing systems of any Turkic languages. I assume that this will involve only those languages spoken in the former Soviet Union, but if anyone has information about Turkic-speaking groups elsewhere, I would love to receive it. The specific information that we are interested in is the following: 1. What linguistic groups, regions, or political entities do you know of that have decided on or are considering a change in their writing systems? This might be the adoption of an entirely new alphabet (e.g. the replacement of the Cyrillic with the Latin alphabet) or simply a revision of the writing system already in use. We would like as many details as possible, including dates of the changes; the authority that is responsible for the change; the justifications that were offered, if any; published sources of information; and/or people who might have first-hand information on the topic. 2. The phonological implications of the change, if any. What I mean by that is whether the people responsible for the alphabet revision or change have taken into account the relationship between the new writing system and the phonological system of the language, perhaps with an eye toward eliminating any mismatches found in the old system. Again, we would appreciate as many details as possible. We already have information on several Turkic languages, but would not mind duplication because different sources might provide us with different perspectives. Furthermore, although our paper will deal with just the Turkic languages, we would be happy to receive information about any non-Turkic langauges as well, since this is a topic of continuing interest. Thank you in advance for your assistance. If you will reply to me directly, I willl post a summary to the list. Steve Seegmiller Linguistics Department Montclair State University Upper Montclair, NJ 07043 U.S.A. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Sun, 08 May 1994 17:17:45 -0700 (MST) From: Mike Hammond Subject: bridge language Does anyone know if there's been any linguistic analysis done of bidding in the card game "bridge"? (I had a very intriguing discussion of this the other day.) I'd be happy to post a summary if anybody else's interested. Mike Hammond -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-531. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-532. Mon 09 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 249 Subject: 5.532 ONE-YEAR M.SC. COURSE Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 94 16:00:50 BST From: Paul Mc Kevitt -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 94 16:00:50 BST From: Paul Mc Kevitt M.SC. in LANGUAGE, SPEECH AND AUDITORY PROCESSING ONE-YEAR M.SC. COURSE Department of Computer Science in collaboration with Institute for Language, Speech and Hearing (ILASH) Department of Information Studies Department of Psychology Speech Science Unit UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD United Kingdom ** The Aims of the Course ** This advanced M.Sc. programme provides a sound professional education and research training in new areas of information technology concerned with computer perception and processing of human language in all its forms. It is designed to provide an academic and practical grounding in part of what is known in Europe as `The Language Industry'. It aims to provide training for further research in this rapidly growing field in this Department or elsewhere. Language, speech and auditory processing is an inherently interdisciplinary field, involving elements of linguistics, phonetics, computer science, signal processing and artificial intelligence. Graduates generally come into the field with training in a subset of these disciplines, which will vary from person to person. One role of this Master's degree is to fill out the profile of each student in the areas which are appropriate for that person. We therefore aim for a wide choice of modules which can be tailored to individual needs. The course also provides skills in demand in today's world of language and information in electronic publishing, political/economic and scientific information handling, computer aids to translation, speech technology, composition, language learning, and legal retrieval and information handling etc. This course is offered subject to final approval by the University Senate. ** The Academic Profile ** The Department has a substantial research base in these areas, which has now resulted in University funding for ILASH: the Institute for Language Speech and Hearing, with which the MSc. is associated. ILASH has its own machines and support staff, and academic staff attached to it from nine departments. Sheffield is a node on the EU-funded ELSNET (European Network in Language and Speech) network and participates in many Europe-wide programmes that give opportunities to link to work across the Community. We are coordinating the 11-laboratory Human Capital and Mobility (HCM) EU network SPHERE: `Representations in Speech and Hearing' We also participate in EU ERASMUS programmes in speech and language where students can complete their dissertations abroad. ** Staff ** The course teaching will draw on staff in the Computer Science Department and other Departments in the University. The following is a list of current Computer Science academic staff working in Language, Speech and Hearing together with their research interests: Guy Brown: auditory models, sound source separation, audition, speech Martin Cooke: auditory models, sound source separation, audition, speech Robert Gaizauskas: logical models of natural language texts, information extraction from corpora Phil Green: Speech perception, automatic speech recognition. Mark Hepple: Computational linguistics, grammatical formalisms, parsing, categorial grammar Mike Holcombe: formal models of NLP, formal models of user modelling visual formal specification languages Jim McGregor: user modelling, parsing, Prolog, tutoring systems Paul Mc Kevitt: pragmatics, intentions, natural language dialogue, revision in dialogue, user-computer interfaces, hyper/multimedia, user modelling, integration of speech, language and vision processing Bob Minors: Modelling arguments in discourse, illogic of argumentation, belief processing Amanda Sharkey: Connectionist and cognitive models of language: language acquisition, symbol grounding, parsing, translation. Noel Sharkey: Connectionist Natural Language Processing, Neural Network models of Cognition, Neural Representations underlying language and thought, Sensory and Action grounding of concepts. Tony Simons: machine translation, syntactic, chart, and object-oriented parsing Yorick Wilks: artificial intelligence, natural language understanding, belief pragmatics, lexical computation, parsing, information extraction. ** Entrance Requirements ** Applicants will normally be expected to have, or be expected to obtain before joining the programme, a 2-2 or better in any subject, but those with degrees in computing, mathematics, psychology, physics, electrical engineering, linguistics, phonetics and cognitive science will be preferred. Work in an information service, computer department, advanced publishing environment or anything similar is considered advantageous, but candidates without such experience will be given equal consideration. International student applicants whose first language is not English will be required to provide evidence of English language competence. ** Structure and Content ** The course consists of a taught part for two University Semesters, followed by examinations and then a project examined by dissertation and oral examination. The taught part of the course will consist of twelve modules. (A module occupies 1 semester and typically breaks down into 20 lecture hours and 10 practical/tutorial hours). Since? we aim to cater for students coming from multidisciplinary backgrounds, we endeavour to make the course as flexible as possible. Students choose six core modules and six electives. The advice and approval of tutors must be sought before deciding on the choice of elective. The six core modules are 'Natural Language Processing (I and II),' `Speech and Hearing (I and II),' and `Research topics in speech and language' (I and II). `The latter consists of a series of guest lectures and local seminars which students must attend, discuss, analyse and write essays on. Such modules are valuable both for technical content and for research skills, since understanding the research of others is a valuable asset which requires practise. The Elective modules offered from year to year depend upon the availability of staff and the trends in research and professional practice. Among possible electives modules are (with other departments noted where the courses are theirs): `(Psych/CS) Language and Logic', `Knowledge Engineering (I and II)'. `Data Structures', `Connectionism', `Graphics and HCI', `Machine Reasoning ', `Functional Programming', `Logic Programming', `(Speech Science) Phonetics', `(IS) Information Resources I', `(IS) Information Storage and Retrieval I', `(IS) Computers and Information II', `(IS) Information Storage and Retrieval II', and `(IS) Scientific and Technological Information'. The period from June to 31st August will be devoted to the preparation of a supervised dissertation to be submitted on or before 30th September. ** Assessment ** Students will be required to pass continuous assessment and examinations for all twelve modules, and produce an acceptable dissertation. These three hurdles will be independent, in that to pass a student must pass all of them and to get a distinction a student must at least approach distinction standard in all of the continuous assessment, the examinations and the dissertation. ** Fees ** The University charges the standard fees 2260 for EU and 7360 for non EU students (Figures in Pounds Sterling). ** Sheffield ** Sheffield is one of the friendliest cities in Britain and is well-situated, having the best and closest surrounding countryside of any major city. The Peak District National Park is only minutes away. It is a good city for walkers, runners, and climbers. It has two theatres, the Crucible and Lyceum. The Lyceum, a beautiful Victorian theatre, has recently been renovated. Also, the city has three mulitplex cinemas. There is a library theatre which shows more artistic films. The city has a number of museums many of which demonstrate Sheffield's industrial past, and there are a number of Galleries in the City, including the Mapping Gallery and Ruskin. A number of important 'stately homes' are close to Sheffield, such as Chatsworth House and Hardwicke Hall. By 1995 Sheffield will be served by a 'supertram' system: the line to the Meadowhall shopping and leisure complex is already open. Sheffield has outstanding sporting facilities, many constructed for the World Student Games in 1991. We have an olympic standard swimming pool and sports complex that is regularly used for international competition. The Sheffield Arena, is becoming an increasingly important venue for touring rock bands. ENQUIRIES AND APPLICATIONS: Please send enquiries and requests for application forms to: Ms. Liz Compton M.Sc. Admissions Department of Computer Science Regent Court 211 Portobello Street University of Sheffield GB- S1 4DP, Sheffield England. E-mail: liz@dcs.shef.ac.uk Fax: 44 742 780972 Phone: 44 742 825590 ***************************************************************************** -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-532. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-533. Mon 09 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 176 Subject: 5.533 Varia: Binding & coreference, Generative Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 6 May 94 11:12:52 EST From: H.Stephen Straight Subject: Bloom et al. on Binding & coreference in child language 2) Date: Fri, 29 Apr 1994 14:25:07 -0500 (CDT) From: Joseph P Stemberger Subject: Re: 5.488 Generative -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 6 May 94 11:12:52 EST From: H.Stephen Straight Subject: Bloom et al. on Binding & coreference in child language I N T E R O F F I C E M E M O R A N D U M Date: 06-May-1994 11:10am EST From: H. Stephen Straight SSTRAIGH Dept: Anthropology/Linguistics Tel No: Voice: 607-777-2824; FAX:-2477 TO: Remote RSCS/NJE Network User ( _JNET%LINGUIST@TAMVM1) Subject: Bloom et al. on Binding & coreference in child language Subject: Bloom et al. on Binding & coreference in child language Overcoming my reluctance to be the first in the water, I hereby initiate what might indeed become the "Article Discussion Forum" repeatedly but indirectly invited by our dear moderators (may their tribe increase). For this first outing we should stick close to home, so I have chosen an article from the most recent issue of _Language_, specifically: Children's knowledge of binding and reference: Evidence from spontaneous speech, by Paul Bloom, Andrew Barss, Janet Nicol, & Laura Conway, Lg. 70.53-71. BBNC set out to demonstrate that Principles A and B of binding theory inhere in Universal Grammar and are exempt even from the necessity for parameter-setting language input. In support of this thesis, BBNC present child language-output evidence that flaws in performance rather than competence account for those few cases in which even 2-year-olds violate, either in receptive or expressive language processing, the prohibition on local coindexing (Principle B), which rules out 1, and the requirement that reflexives MUST exhibit such coindexing (Principle A), which rules out 2. (1) Thelma touched her ["Thelma" coreferent with "her"]. (2) John hit himself ["John" NOT coreferent with "himself"]. The strongest counterarguments to this position have come from studies of children's language comprehension, which have concluded that even 5-year-olds fail to apply Principle B to sentences like 1, and studies of the production and comprehension of sentences like 1 and 2 under "special pragmatic conditions" in which even BBNC acknowledge that the alleged binding principles do not hold. BBNC purport to demonstrate that these counterarguments fail because the well-documented active use of the pronouns _me_ and _myself_ by three children conforms overwhelmingly to the predictions of binding theory. Three questions emerge from a close reading of BBNC's article: 1. Why did BBNC exclude _you_ and _yourself_ from the targeted database? The second-person pronouns do not exhibit the ambiguity that rightly led BBNC to eliminate third-person pronouns. 2. Why did BBNC reject the possibility that the children's output is based simply on the strong positive input evidence that reflexive pronouns are locally bound while non-reflexive pronouns are not? Knowledge of the principles of intra-clausal coreference would appear to be acquirable from knowledge of what a clause is plus what coreference is plus what a reflexive looks like (myself, ourselves, yourself, yourselves, himself, herself, theirselves--not very challenging, especially if we acknowledge early errors like "ourself", "hisself", and "theirself"). What does binding theory add to this? 3. Why did BBNC dismiss the evidence for dissociation between receptive and expressive language processes (p. 69)? Although BBNC state that "there may be SOME dissociation between production and comprehension," they leave themselves no way to account for this possibility when they ask the dismissive rhetorical question, "if the input grammar is separate from the output grammar, what type of data modifies the output grammar?" Their own study supports the implication that the formulating processes that a child can readily infer from the reflexive vs. nonreflexive input data will indeed resist modification in response to a rather confusing array of exceptions (under "special pragmatic conditions") to the usual coindexing attributes of these two sets of pronouns. Receptive processes, on the other hand, apparently respond to all manner of input variation, much of which gets incorporated into receptive processing without any effect on expressive processing. This situation scarcely results in BBNC's supposed "complete mismatch between the sentence constructions that children (and adults) are able to produce and those they are able to understand", but it DOES result in a wide variety of discrepancies that can only be eliminated through dint of ongoing self-monitoring, which probably never succeeds in eliminating all instances of being able to understand things you would never say or of saying things you yourself would misunderstand. This gradual coordination of receptive and expressive processing, which has been widely explored at least since Eve Clark and Barbara Hecht's 1983 article in the _Annual Review of Psychology_, would appear to offer more satisfying accounts of observed receptive/expressive discrepancies than ad hoc appeals to "response bias and limited attention span." H. Stephen Straight Binghamton University (SUNY) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Fri, 29 Apr 1994 14:25:07 -0500 (CDT) From: Joseph P Stemberger Subject: Re: 5.488 Generative I have a further question about the use of the word 'generative'. Penny Lee points out that Chomsky defined 'generative' to mean "explicit". Steven Schaufele defines a generative grammar as "a set of well-formedness conditions such that one can say 'a string of linguistic elements in Language L is well-formed iff it meets the conditions in W." I have a problem reconciling either definition with the use of the term 'generative' in the 1960's. American structuralist theories of phonology were quite explicit, and included well-formedness conditions that did indeed let you know whether a nonce word was a well-formed word of the language (and what pronunciation would result if you combined Base A with Affix B). Certainly Stratificational Grammar satisfies both definitions. But structuralist theories have been considered "non-generative", in the 1960's and (I thought) still today. And Stratificational Grammar was viewed as non-generative. Are people suggesting that we revise history, so that structuralist theories of phonology are now to be considered "generative"? (I'm not as clear about structuralist syntax, about whether it fits the definitions put forward.) The issue comes up relative to Optimality Theory. Prince and Smolensky subtitle their book: "Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar", and then mostly address phonology. Is there some definition of "generative" that will include just phonological theories of the 1960's on, plus Optimality Theory, without also including all theories of phonology since, say, the 1860's? My guess is that the answer to this question is "no". (Not that it REALLY matters. I like Optimality Theory for what the way it works. It doesn't matter to me whether it's generative or not. I'll make use of it in any event. But I dislike terms that are unclear or undefined, and like to know what they include, and what they exclude.) ---joe stemberger -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-533. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-534. Mon 09 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 147 Subject: 5.534 Varia: Greenberg simulation, Language laws Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 8 May 1994 12:06:12 -0500 From: "Paul Purdom" Subject: Re: 5.521 Greenberg - Simulation with semantic shift 2) Date: Wed, 4 May 1994 14:57:34 +0200 From: aarbakke@isl.uit.no (Jon Hareide Aarbakke) Subject: Re: 5.510 Qs: language laws -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 8 May 1994 12:06:12 -0500 From: "Paul Purdom" Subject: Re: 5.521 Greenberg - Simulation with semantic shift I would like to raise a word of caution for the people that are attacking the word of Greenberg and followers using statistical arguments. It is very difficult to disprove things using statistics. Basically, the attackers set up a model that they believe is similar to the process that Greenberg goes through and show that by chance you get results somewhat similar to Greenberg's (see recent post by Jacques Guy for a good example of this type of work). In general people doing such studies seem to make better use of statistics that Greenberg and followers. Such results should cause one to wonder whether there is any significant reason to believe the results of Greenberg and coworkers. On the other hand, the classification of Greenberg did match up rather well with the genetic relatedness of the speakers of the various languages. This should cause one to wonder whether the statistical models are missing something important. Try to prove or disprove something with statistical models can be quite tricky. Let me refer to an analysis I did of some data of Dana Nau to give a case that I understand completely. These results appear in International Journal of Parallel Programming 15 (1987) pp 163-183 (Nau, Purdom, and Tzeng) and in Analysis of Algorithms (1985) pp 447-449 (Purdom and Brown). Nau measured how two algorithms did at playing a simple game. He had the algorithms play each other 3200 times using random starting positions. Actually, he had 7 series of 3200 games each, because one of the algorithms because one of the algorithm had a parameter, and he wanted results as a function of the parameter. One of the results was that algorithm A won 1640 of 3200 games, significant at the level 0.16 (i.e., not very significant). The other 6 cases also showed method A winning, but with even less significance. One could take two veiws on the data as I have presented it so far. Either method A is not noticably different from method B, or it is strange that method A won in each of the seven series (particularly since the satistical test said the two methods had about the same ability). In this case, it turned out that the second explanation was correct. As Nau explained, his 3200 games consisted of 1600 pairs of games. For each position there were two games, one where method A made the first move and one where method B made the first move. If a particular position stronger favored the first player you would expect that the first player might win even if it was not a very good player. An alternate way to analyze the data is to consider how many pairs where won by algorithm A and how many were won by algorithm B (disregarding the cases where each algorithm won one game of the pair). When the previous case is analyzed this way, we find that algorithm A won 140 pairs of 240 pairs. There is only one chance in 0.00015 that this would happen by chance. Clearly algorithm A is better than algorithm B. (The other six series gave similar results.) Returning to the linguistics data we have Greenberg's analysis which was done before one could do precise studies of how various groups of people where related to each other showing impressive agreement with the later analyses of how people where related to each other, and we have a number of statistical studies of Greenberg's technique suggesting that is results are not significant. I would suggest that those people who are not working in the field keep (such as me) on open mind on these manners. I would urge those that are doing statistical studies of Greenberg's techniques to consider various ways to model the approach that you believe he uses. Small variation in how you model the process may have important effects on your conclusions. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Wed, 4 May 1994 14:57:34 +0200 From: aarbakke@isl.uit.no (Jon Hareide Aarbakke) Subject: Re: 5.510 Qs: language laws I would like to reply to Alexis Manister-Ramer's questions about language change and phonological markedness. Re. b), presumably the reason that language laws do not produce the same results everywhere is that they have a different epistemological status than for instance physical laws. Language laws are descriptive rather than prescriptive, and they have no predictive power. What linguists tend to call laws are simply the observation of some uniformity in or across languages, and to account for their existence a law is posited, post factum. This does not explain why things are as they are, it merely introduces an economy of description. Re. c), the reasons why some features are marked in one language and not in another are that : 1) the idea of markedness is relative to the theory that is being used to carve up the world. It might be called an artifact of the theory, and in a deeper sense than the one in which the concept of "mass" in physics is an artifact of the standard physical theories. The latter generalizes successfully, the former does not. 2) Markedness doesn't generalize because it is also language relative. Markedness appears in different places in different languages, since they each represent their own little world to be categorized. The questions above, that I have attempted to answer from my viewpoint, arise from the assumption that linguistics is an empirical science in exactly the same way as physics is. I would say that linguistics has more in common with anthropology. The object that linguists study exists in the space constituted by human biology and human interaction, that is, human culture. It is as much a cultural as a physical phenomenon, but like all culture, it is shaped by the physical aspect of being. This is not to say that there is no uniformity and no pattern to be observed; it would be surprising if no features were common across languages, since humans tend to spend time together, and equally surprising if everything turned out to be identical. Within the frame given to us by nature, there is room for a bewildering variety, and the linguist tries to find order in this chaos. The Linguist will be disappointed if the Linguist expects everything to fit into the Linguist's theory. The Linguist should not be awed by the Physicist working next door. The project of the Physicist is different, that's all, and it's time we realize that. Linguistics will never change the world the way nuclear physics did. Maybe we should be grateful for that. ********************************************* Jon Hareide Aarbakke Institutt for spraak og litteratur, Universitet i Tromsoe, 9037 Breivika Noreg +47 77644763 "L'Universite le plus au nord du monde connu" ********************************************* -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-534. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-535. Mon 09 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 122 Subject: 5.535 Varia: Signs, Note on "shtreet" dialects, Flat earth Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: 5 May 1994 13:22:46 -0500 From: "DavisJ-SL" Subject: Signs 2) Date: Wed, 04 May 94 09:20:31 EDT From: Larry Horn Subject: A note on "shtreet" dialects 3) Date: Wed, 4 May 94 9:14:48 CDT From: Alex Francis Subject: Re: 5.515 Flat earth -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: 5 May 1994 13:22:46 -0500 From: "DavisJ-SL" Subject: Signs Dick Hudson says he can understand viewing lexical items as linguistic signs--units of signal and meaning--but not "word-classes," which lack consistent phonology and "arguably" semantic content. First of all, sign-based linguistics does not necessarily require the postulation of word-classes. More to the point, it is premature to write something off as meaningless until we attempt to find a meaning for it. If its meaning explains its distribution, then we do not need to appeal to government and the like. Wallis Reid, in _Verb and Noun Number in English__ (Longman) shows that even subject-verb number is meaningful, whether condordant or not. Then grammar begins to look more like lexicon: communicative. Joseph Davis Visiting Assistant Professor Slavic & Eastern Languages Boston College -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Wed, 04 May 94 09:20:31 EDT From: Larry Horn Subject: A note on "shtreet" dialects As a simultaneous confirmation of Angus Grieve-Smith's and Stephen Straight (Shraight?)'s postings in 5.516, one regular practitioner of s-->sh/#__tr... is Mike Francesa, sportscaster on WFAN in New York (of the Mike and the Mad Dog afternoon talk radio show) who also appears occasionally on national radio and TV. Francesa is BOTH Italian-American AND from suburban Long Island, thus nicely supporting the observations of the above two posters (and Labov, as cited by Straight). In fact, he's from Long Beach, L.I., N.Y., which happens to be my own ex-hometown, but the kids in my mostly Jewish cohort didn't share this particular trait to the best of my memory, although we otherwise all co-existed harmoniously on Lung Guyland. (On a different topic, the topic list for the previous Linguist List bundle, 5.515, would make an effective sociological slur in the right context: "YOU COGNITIVE FLAT-EARTH BUBBA!" Of course, the right moment to wield this particular insult might not often arise.) Larry Horn ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Wed, 4 May 94 9:14:48 CDT From: Alex Francis Subject: Re: 5.515 Flat earth j.guy@trl.oz.au (Jacques Guy) remarks (in reference to the "Mother- Tongue" discussion): > > Will Nichols succeed in snowing the editor of Scientific American? > I think yes, very likely. It's all the current rage: the Great Mother > Tongue out of Africa, as Restituted to 50,000 years BP, Corroborated > and Corroborating Wilson and Cavalli-Sforza's Mitochondrially > Revealed Great Mother Eve. Definitely publishable. > . I would just note that the cladogram proposed by Wilson and Cavalli-Sforza's various groups has apparently been demonstrated to be only one of the many more (and certainly not the most) parsimonious solution to the mitochondrial DNA data. In fact, some of the equally or even more parsimonious solutions indicate neither an African origin of modern Homo sapiens nor a 50,000 year BP time depth for dispersal. Apparently the close correspondence of the cladogram presented in Scientific American (Nov. 1991) with Greenberg & Ruhlen's tree of language relations from a single common ancestor (Scientific American, Nov. 1991, and also April 1991) is entirely due to the order in which the DNA data were presented to the cladogram- finding algorithm. A different order of presentation can result in a markedly different tree, and even a more parsimonious one. See Alan Templeton's Technical Comment in Science 255 and the Technical Comment of S. Blair Hedges, Sudhir Kumar, and Koichiro Tamura following it in the same issue for a discussion of more parisimonious trees. For a less technical discussion, See Marcia Barinaga's article " 'African Eve' Backers Beat a Retreat" in Scinece 255 (Feb. 7, 1992) Also, there are two articles in the April 1992 Scientific American each taking one side of this discussion. Allan C. Wilson & rebecca L. Cann "The Recent African Genesis of Humans" Alan G. Thorne & Milford H. Wolpoff "The Multiregional Evolution of Humans" -alex afrancis@midway.uchicago.edu alex francis (312)-752-2340 "Ontology recapitulates philology." - James Grier Miller -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-535. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-536. Mon 09 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 140 Subject: 5.536 Varia: This & that, Position of 'just' Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 4 May 1994 17:20:34 +0000 From: Lindsay Endell Subject: Re: 5.516 Varia: Dia- vs. idio-lectal allophony, This & that 2) Date: Wed, 4 May 1994 18:14:50 +0100 (BST) From: "Max Wheeler" 3) Date: Sat, 07 May 1994 16:06:39 -0500 (CDT) From: Michael M T Henderson Subject: Position of 'just' -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 4 May 1994 17:20:34 +0000 From: Lindsay Endell Subject: Re: 5.516 Varia: Dia- vs. idio-lectal allophony, This & that > Date: Tue, 3 May 1994 10:47:28 -0500 (CDT) > From: > Subject: Re: 5.509 This & that > More than once I've engaged in a telephone dialogue like this: > > Me (answering the phone): Hello. > Caller: Hello. Who's this? > Me: Who's _this_? > Caller: Oh, sorry; this is X. > Me: This is Anne. > > This, obviously, wouldn't happen to a British speaker. > > Anne Loring No, but it's similar :-) Here it goes: Me (answering phone): Hello? Caller: Hello, who's that? Me (Unwilling to give identity to just *anyone*): Who's that? Caller: Oh, sorry, this is X Me: Hello, this is Lindsay. Whether we say 'this' or 'that' we seem to have problems on the phone... Lindsay Endell lie1@unix.york.ac.uk -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Wed, 4 May 1994 18:14:50 +0100 (BST) From: "Max Wheeler" Subject: Re: 5.516 Varia: Dia- vs. idio-lectal allophony, This Anne Loring says: > More than once I've engaged in a telephone dialogue like this: > > Me (answering the phone): Hello. > Caller: Hello. Who's this? > Me: Who's _this_? > Caller: Oh, sorry; this is X. > Me: This is Anne. > > This, obviously, wouldn't happen to a British speaker. And she's right, but not because _we_ would normally say `Who's that?'. The British convention is for the caller to introduce themself by name before being asked, once they've been connected to the person they want to speak to. If the caller doesn't know who has answered, but seeks a specific individual, they will say `Can I speak to X?' (and if X is the answerer X will reply `Speaking'). Otherwise, if the caller wishes to identify the answerer (or if the answerer wishes to identify a caller who has not identified themself) they say `Who is speaking?' or `Who is that speaking?' Now what I'd like to know is, are there other circumstances in which BE but not AE speakers use _this_ or other proximal deictics to refer to an interlocutor not physically present? Such as in letters or by fax or email... Can AE speakers use _here_ to refer to where the non-present hearere is? Or is the difference one involving the `rules of speaking' which apply to initiating telephone conversations, rather than one involving the use of deictic expression in general? Max Wheeler School of Cognitive & Computing Sciences University of Sussex Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QH UK -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Sat, 07 May 1994 16:06:39 -0500 (CDT) From: Michael M T Henderson Subject: Position of 'just' In the last couple of months I've been noticing the position of 'just' appearing to become frozen at the head of the VP, as in He just doesn't sit there; he gets something done (which I would have said with 'doesn't just') or (this one an AP article quoting Bob Dole at R.M. Nixon's funeral, in turn citing the deceased) I just get up in the morning to confound my enemies I didn't see that part of the funeral, so I don't know how Dole actually said it, but I'm confident Nixon put the 'just' after 'morning'. Now, I think that 'just' is starting to cling to initial-in-the-VP position, the way 'only' has migrated to pre-main-verb position in British English (e.g. 'You can only park here on Sundays'). Listen for it. _______________________________________ | \ | Michael M. T. Henderson . | | Linguistics Department \ | University of Kansas | | Lawrence, KS 66045-2140 | | Voice: (913) 864-3450 | | Fax (913) 864-5208 | | Bitnet: mmth@falcon | | Internet: mmth@falcon.cc.ukans.edu | |________________________________________| -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-536. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-537. Mon 09 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 199 Subject: 5.537 Review: H-book of the Linguistic Atlas: Middle & S Atlantic Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Review Editor: Barbara Johnstone: Texas A&M U. REVIEW EDITOR'S NOTE: What follows is another discussion note contributed to our Book Discussion Forum. We expect these discussions to be informal and interactive; and the author of the book discussed is cordially invited to join in. If you are interested in leading a book discussion, look for books announced on LINGUIST as "available for discussion." (This means that the publisher has sent us a review copy.) Then contact Barbara Johnstone at bcj@tamuts.tamu.edu -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 94 13:15:04 -0700 From: bcj@tamuts.tamu.edu (Barbara Johnstone) -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 94 13:15:04 -0700 From: bcj@tamuts.tamu.edu (Barbara Johnstone) _Handbook of the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic States_. Ed. by William A. Kretzschmar, Jr., Virginia G. McDavid, Theodore K. Lerud, & Ellen Johnson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Pp. xv, 454. Reviewed by Terry Lynn Irons, Morehead State University As much as those of us in the American Dialect Society might want to celebrate the recent publication of _Handbook of the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic States_, we need to ask some serious questions concerning what real value a Handbook has at present. As the abstract for Wm. Kretzschmar's (the senior editor) recent talk at the ADS at MLA, printed in NADS 25.3, states, the LAMSAS Handbook "parallels" Kurath's _Handbook of the Linguistic Geography of New England, which accompanied publication of LANE, in many ways (in fact, it quotes sections of it verbatim). Obviously, it thus invites comparison with Kurath's tome. Where appropriate in the following review, these comparisons will be drawn. Chapter 1, History and Nature of the Project, presents a brief overview of the project for a Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada and a more detailed history of the LAMSAS project. The fact that the archives for the project survived intact the moves from Ann Arbor (under Kurath) to Chicago (under McDavid) to South Carolina to Georgia (under Kretzschmar) is itself a testiment to the dedication of those involved. Several publications based on the project have appeared, including Kurath's _A Word Geography of the Eastern United States_ (1949), Atwood's _A Survey of Verb Forms in the Eastern United States_ (1953), Kurath and McDavid's _The Pronunciation of English in the Atlantic States_ (1961), and McDavid and O'Cain's _Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic States_, Fasc. 1-2 (Place Names) (1980). Complete microfilming of the field records was completed in 1986. A project for complete computerization of the field records, following the model of LAGS, is now underway at the Atlas Project at the University of Georgia. Final publication arrangements are incomplete. Chapter 2, Selection of Communities and Informants, discusses the guidelines that were used to ensure a proper distribution of informants and communities in the area from New York to Florida that was surveyed. When the project for computerization of LAMSAS became a reality in the 80s, decisions were made to exclude portions of the fieldwork extending into Ohio and Kentucky, yet to retain the partial areas in Georgia and Florida. Given that the above listed publications make reference to this excluded material and no publication of LANCS seems forthcoming, one has to question the wisdom of the decision, if this handbook, as the preface states, "should serve as an aid for...the many analytical publications based on LAMSAS data" (xi-xii). The chapter concludes with an analysis of the informant sample using census data to demonstrate that the survey was both a representative areal and population sample, an excellent defense of the project against claims made by latter day sociolinguists about the non-validity of the sample procedures. Chapter 3, Tables of Informants and Communities, is simply that, computer generated tables consisting of coded information about each informant and community included in the project. Although these kinds of information arrays can be useful, this chapter is really a redundant recapitulation of more detailed information to be found in chapter 10. The chapter is 34 pages that could be deleted or presented in an electronic diskette format. Chapter 4, Work Sheets and Collection of Information, contains directions for fieldwork, much the same as is to be found in Kurath's _Handbook for the Linguistic Geography of New England_. The worksheets used for the project are printed out by topic, headword, work sheet number, and list manuscript number. The presentation is a masterful illustration of how computer files can be manipulated. In essence, though, the chapter, like much of chapter 3, is redundant, using 50 pages to present what is presented in 12 pages in Kurath's Handbook. Chapter 5, Phonetics and Field Worker Practices, discusses the practices for phonetic transcription used for LAMSAS, which are essentially the same as those used for LANE. The chapter is a detailed discussion of the values of the phonetic alphabet used in the project fieldwork and is worthy of study by anyone interested in the subtleties of narrow phonetic transcription. The chapter concludes with brief discussion of the specific practices of each field worker in the project. Chapter 6, Field Records, List Manuscripts, and Initial Editing, and Chapter 7, LAMSAS Computerization, detail some of the technical aspects of transcribing, editing and computerizing the field records. Of particular interest is the section on LAMSAS Computer Phonetics. The project hasn't found an ideal solution of doing phonetics in computer files, but one that appears workable. More a narrative of problems encountered in the process of editing, these chapters would be more useful if information on how the database files may be manipulated, when and if they become generally available, were provided. For example, can the informant responses be easily plotted and displayed on computer generated maps? (In fact, they can.) Or can they only be used to create list manuscripts? And so on. Chapter 8, Dialects of the LAMSAS Region, is a substantially unaltered prospectus written by Raven McDavid in 1984 and is included because the editors "trust that it is valuable in itself as an expression of the best ideas of classic dialectology and as the mature judgment of its author" (147). In contrast with the parallel chapter in Kurath's Handbook, this chapter does not provide much at all by way of specifics about the dialects of LAMSAS; it is as much about settlement history as dialects; but it does make some observations that are noteworthy in the context of recent controversies about the existence of a distinct South Midland dialect of English. For instance, McDavid asserts that "there is some reason for grouping South Midland and Southern in a macro-Southern. On the other hand, there have been deep-seated differences between the regions since the earliest settlement. The South was plantation, mercantile, and Anglican....The South Midland was yeoman farming (later industrial), Presbyterian, and evangelical....In Virginia proper the differences between the Piedmont and the Shenandoah are apparent when one crosses the Blue Ridge--resulting in one of the sharpest dialect boundaries in the English-speaking world" (150). It is unfortunate that McDavid does not provide more specifics that could be useful in responding to recent claims that South Midland is merely a transition area. Most incisively, McDavid makes clear that work lies ahead: "Further investigations are desirable, in all types of communities, to indicate the direction of change since the LAMSAS interviews.... the task for the next generation of students" (151-52). Implicit here is the notion that the true value of the Atlas projects is not as a description of the language but as a tool for studying linguistic change. It is ultimately in these terms which the projects must be judged. Chapter 9, Settlement History, begins "The settlement history of the Middle and South Atlantic States is far more complicated than that of New England" (154). Yet the Handbook of LAMSAS devotes only 11 pages to the subject, which includes 6 pages of maps, in contrast with the 43 pages on the settlement of New England to be found in the _Handbook to the Linguistic Geography of New England_. Sketches of the waves of settlements and migrations westward are painted in broad strokes, giving a general sense of how the population streams that settled the Appalachian ridge and plateau areas differed in broad social-cultural-economic background from those who settled the piedmont and coastal regions. But the chapter is not rich enough in specific details to provide a sharply focused picture of how settlement history influenced dialect development. Making up for the brevity of chapter 9, chapter 10, Community Sketches and Informant Biographies, provides detailed information on the history and character of the communities surveyed and a vita for each of the informants surveyed, including comments and notes not included in the tables of communities and informants presented in chapter 3. The chapter also contains extensive bibliographical references that may be used by those interested in more intensive study. It remains to be seen what real value this handbook will have. The reason for this statement is that no Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic States per se exists. The Preface states that "The general outline for comprehensive publication of LAMSAS is clear" (xi). The Preface continues with a history of publication of other atlas projects (LANE, LAUM, LAGS), but it provides no indication of what this "general outline" is. The computerization project is somewhere in the neighborhood of 15% complete, and the news is that these materials will soon be accessible at a gopher sit over the Internet. These efforts are extremely laudable and deserve more support. But given the number of publications already available based on LAMSAS data and the fact that nothing substantial has been produced from the LANCS data (likewise archived at Georgia), one must challenge the wisdom of investing so much time, energy, and money in this Handbook. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-537. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-538. Tue 10 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 119 Subject: 5.538 Sum: Robin Hood movie & Accents Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 9 May 1994 12:55:17 -0500 (CDT) From: Joseph P Stemberger Subject: Sum: Robin Hood & Accents -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 9 May 1994 12:55:17 -0500 (CDT) From: Joseph P Stemberger Subject: Sum: Robin Hood & Accents A month ago, I posted a note about a comment about English accents in the movie 'Robin Hood, Men in Tights'. The comment reflected an expectation that people in England in the middle ages spoke with an accent more like modern RP than like modern US dialects. I syggested that since the dialects ancestral to those of the US were spoken in England at the time, that modern US accents are as good (or bad) an approximation of medieval English accents as modern British accents. Or have modern US dialects been alterred by all those non-English-speaking immigrants, so that they would be a worse approximation? I got just a few responses, but here's a summary. Linda Coleman (LC22@umail.umd.edu) reports fielding questions from students about Robin Hood and accents. She notes that standard dialectology textbooks (like Markwardt's AMERICAN SPEECH) state that American English is more conservative phonologically than RP (and most modern British dialects), especially as regards the vowel system. She also notes that the Great Vowel Shift has intervened between Robin Hood and us, so that neither RP nor modern US dialects are particularly like Robin Hood's. (This reminds me of a comment made by Charles-James Bailey, in his book VARIATION AND LINGUISTIC THEORY. He notes that the US dialect spoken from the mid-Atlantic states westward is phonologically in the "middle" of the dialect distribution. If you count up the number of phonological differences between major dialect areas, esp. different international varieties, differences between this mid-Atlantic dialect and all other dialects are relatively small --- at least when compared to the extreme difference between major British dialects and Southern US, for example.) Jacqueline Kowtko (kowtko@cogsci.edinburgh.ac. uk) reminds me that there are all sorts of dialects spoken in England, Wales, and Scotland, many of them different enough that intelligibility problems sometimes arise. (I would add that the Great Vowel Shift hasn't gotten to all of these dialects, yet.) She suggests that some small out-of-the-way dialect somewhere in England is probably the best approximation of medieval English. I expect that this is true. But also expect that film-goers would not approve of using such an accent for Robin Hood. Rob Pensalfini (rjpensal@mit.edu) says that it's well-known among the Shakespearianly inclined (?generally or just the linguists?) that "the English of Shakespeare's time and place would have resembled NE American English considerably more than it would modern dialects of anywhere in Britain (which is not a lot, anyway)". (Which he finds heartening, as an Australian. "Lear with a Crocodile Dundee nasal twang? Blood oath, mate!") L. Jake Jacobson (lcjst2+@pitt.edu) reports playing sound recordings of Chaucer and Shakespeare, with the best reconstructed accents, to some British colleagues who were literature specialists. Both colleagues were horrified at what they perceived as a North American bias (especially in that the reconstructions had postvocalic [r]'s). Carol Moder (clm1011@vm1.ucc.okstate.edu), focusing on the issue of whether all those non-English-speaking people who came to the US could have alterred the English accents here, notes that sociolinguists do report effects along those lines. Wolfgang Wolck has found that different ethnic neighborhoods of Buffalo have different dialect characteristics that derive from their language background (Polish, German, Italian). (To get from such observations to the conclusion that all variants of English in the US are influenced by foreign languages to a significant degree, one has to assume that such characteristics of ethnic neighborhoods then spread to all other neighborhoods and become an entrenched part of the English spoken over whole sections of the US. Possible, but has anyone got any concrete evidence?) Megan Crowhurst (crowhur@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu) takes up my suggestion (widely held here in Minnesota) that the monophthongal vowels [e:] and [o:] are due to Scandinavian influences on the dialect region. She reports that this is a general characteristic of Canadian prairie English, and possibly non-Maritime Canadian English more generally. And there's no Scandinavian influence there ("though there is supposed to be a German influence, at least in Manitoba"). Rosina Lippi-Green (rosina@rosina.german.lsa.umich.edu) passed on some remarks about foreign accents and stereotypes associated with them. "I have thought a lot about the construction of 'accent' by non-linguists." She has a forthcoming article in LANGUAGE & SOCIETY on the way accent is constructed in the US judicial system. (I got one other without a full name associated with it, and I can't find it now. Must have been deleted by accident. Sorry, whoever it was.) As far as Robin Hood goes. Well, all widely-known modern dialects are pretty awful approximations of what he would have spoken. So it probably makes no difference what we use. But, if you're the sort of person who focuses on post-vocalic [r], then you'd probably want to use an "r-ful" dialect of English when playing Robin Hood, whether a North American dialect, or a modern British one (which I have heard primarily in British TV comedies, where the postvocalic /r/ is used as a marker that the speaker is a "hick"; I wonder how the British public would react to such an accent for Robin Hood?) ---joe stemberger -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-538. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-539. Tue 10 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 118 Subject: 5.539 Sum: Chomsky Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 9 May 1994 13:08:23 -0400 From: Dan Hardt Subject: Chomsky (57): summary -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 9 May 1994 13:08:23 -0400 From: Dan Hardt Subject: Chomsky (57): summary thanks to all those who responded to my query for references to discussion of Chomsky's argument in Syntactic Structures chapter three that English is not a finite state language. Below is a summary of those responses. Dan Hardt Villanova University From: David Powers From: David Powers See my comments/critique in Powers and Turk Machine Learning of Natural Language, Springer 1989, Chapters 6 and 10, esp. pp138ff where I discuss Hockett's authorized summary of Chomsky's claims, and p244ff (on TGG assumptions). The key critique is Hockett, Charles F, `Grammar for the Hearer', Proc. Symposia in App. Math. Vol. XII, 1961, p.56f. See also Derwing, Bruce, L. `Tranaformational Grammar as a Theory of Language Acquisition (Cambridge UK, C.U.P., 1973), p7ff You should also see Chomsky's own writings in the Mathematical media in 1963. From: Michael Kac From: Michael Kac Here are a few off the top of my head: P. Reich, The finiteness of natural lg. Lg. 45.831-43 C.F. Hockett, Grammar for the hearer. R. Jakobson ed., Structure of Language and its Mathematical Aspects (Proceedings on f Symposia on Applied Mathematics) Providence: American Mathematical Society. 1961 There's some discussion of the issue in a pop[ular book entitled, I believe, *Symbols, Signals and Noise* by J.R. Pierce. From: raha@watarts.uwaterloo.ca (Randy Allen Harris) From: raha@watarts.uwaterloo.ca (Randy Allen Harris) I just came across an interesting paraphrase of the argument in Stephen Pinker's new _Language Instinct_, pp. 89-103. You know, presumably, of Newmeyer's discussion in _Linguistic Theory_ (pp.22-8 in the 1st ed.). From: Penny Lee (Penny Lee) From: Penny Lee (Penny Lee) Is Hockett, 1967? "The State of the Art" on your list? And his 1987 "Refurbishing our foundations". From: Wim.Zonneveld@let.ruu.nl From: Wim.Zonneveld@let.ruu.nl I think that what you are looking for (I got this from the Linguist system) is in two "Topic.. Comment..." columns that used to be in the journal Natural language and Linguistic Theory say some 8 years or so ago, by Geoffrey Pullum. From: "Victor Sanchez-Valencia" From: "Victor Sanchez-Valencia" Take a look at the collection The Formal Complexity of Natural Language (eds) Walter Savitch et al., Reidel 1987 From: Penny Lee (Penny Lee) From: Penny Lee (Penny Lee) Bechtel and Abrahamsen in their "Connectionism and the Mind" have a most interesting section on finite state grammars. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-539. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-540. Tue 10 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 189 Subject: 5.540 Calls: CGSW 10, ACL-94, "QUEERLY PHRASED" Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 09 May 94 10:44:31 +0200 From: Sally Grobben Subject: CGSW 10 : Call for papers 2) Date: Mon, 9 May 1994 13:57:23 -0700 From: iverson@crl.nmsu.edu (Eric Iverson) Subject: CALL FOR DEMOS: ACL-94 3) Date: Mon, 9 May 1994 22:02:28 -0700 (PDT) From: Anna Livia Julian Brawn Subject: CALL FOR PAPERS: REMINDER -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 09 May 94 10:44:31 +0200 From: Sally Grobben Subject: CGSW 10 : Call for papers TENTH COMPARATIVE GERMANIC SYNTAX WORKSHOP January 17-19, 1995 Catholic University of Brussels *************** CALL FOR PAPERS *************** deadline for submission of abstracts: October 1, 1994 Abstracts are invited for 20 minute papers in all areas of Germanic syntax. The abstract should be at most ONE page long, in at least 12 point type and with one inch margins; references may be added on a separate sheet. Submit 5 anonymous copies, and one camera-ready copy with your name and affiliation. Enclose a card with your name, address, affiliation, telephone number, fax number, e-mail address, and the title of your paper. Send to: CGSW 10 K.U.Brussel Vrijheidslaan 17 B-1080 BRUSSELS Belgium Fax: +32 2 412 42 00 We regret that we cannot accept abstracts by e-mail or fax. Acknowledgment of receipt of abstracts will only happen by e-mail. Speakers will be partially reimbursed for their expenses. Information on registration and housing will be distributed in September. Further enquiries can be directed to the above address, or to haaam08@blekul11.bitnet. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Mon, 9 May 1994 13:57:23 -0700 From: iverson@crl.nmsu.edu (Eric Iverson) Subject: CALL FOR DEMOS: ACL-94 CALL FOR DEMOS ACL-94, JUNE 28-30, 1994 NEW MEXICO STATE UNIVERSITY *************************** The 1994 meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics will be held on June 28-30, on the campus of New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, NM. The local arrangements committee at NMSU is currently looking for exhibits and demonstrations for this conference. Specifically, we are looking for demos in the areas of Machine Translation, Information Retrieval, Computational Morphology, Lexical Semantics, Machine Readable Dictionaries, Speech/Handwriting Recognition, Natural Language Query Systems, or anything else in the area of computational linguistics. People interested in organizing exhibits or in demonstrating programs at the conference should contact Ted Dunning, Box 30001, Dept. 3CRL, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM 88003, USA; +1-505-646-6221; ted@crl.nmsu.edu - AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. Those with papers on the program and academics without grant or contract support can present demonstrations without charge, to the extent that scheduling permits. ************************************************************************* Eric Iverson Internet: iverson@nmsu.edu Computing Research Lab Box 30001/3CRL Life is something to do when New Mexico State University you can't get to sleep. Las Cruces, NM 88003-8001 -Fran Lebowitz VOICE: (505) 646-5856 FAX: (505) 646-6218 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Mon, 9 May 1994 22:02:28 -0700 (PDT) From: Anna Livia Julian Brawn Subject: CALL FOR PAPERS: REMINDER ********************REMINDER******************** (This is a reminder for a Call for Papers sent out in early February. If for some reason you never received the first notice and are interested in submitting an abstract, please contact the editors as soon as possible. Please feel free to forward this reminder to colleagues and students interested in issues of language, gender, and sexuality.) CALL FOR PAPERS for "QUEERLY PHRASED" A Collection of Articles on Lesbian, Gay, and Transgender Language edited by Anna Livia and Kira Hall University of California at Berkeley Please note REVISED SUBMISSIONS DATES: *Deadline for receipt of abstracts: May 31, 1994 *Deadline for receipt of full-length papers selected for anthology publication (20-30 pages, MLA format) : August 15, 1994 ****************************************************************** Feminist discussions of language have brought the topic of gender to the forefront of recent linguistic analysis. In this volume, we seek to extend this analysis to include sexuality and gender identity. The collection will explore the relationship between language and gender positions in a variety of cultures and language groups, representing the diversity of language use within queer culture. We are looking for papers which incorporate recent developments in queer theory and feminist theory, as well as papers which draw on more traditional models of language analysis, in order to establish a place in linguistics for queer studies. ****************************************************************** Abstracts: Abstracts should describe what the paper is about in approximately 1,000 words, outlining the approach, the theoretical base, analytical tools used, and conclusions drawn (however tentative). In addition, authors should submit a biographical sketch of up to 500 words in which they describe their academic or other affiliation, research, and publications. The sketch should include a brief statement relating personal background to the topic of study. Please address all queeries and correspondence to: Anna Livia, Department of French, 4125 Dwinelle Hall, University of California at Berkeley, 94720 (e-mail: livia@uclink.berkeley.edu; fax: 510-642-2194; telephone 510-658-4192); or Kira Hall, Department of Linguistics, 2337 Dwinelle Hall, University of California at Berkeley, 94720 (e-mail: khall@garnet.berkeley.edu). Abstracts due May 31, 1994 Papers due August 15, 1994: 20-30 pages, MLA format ************************************************** -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-540. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-541. Tue 10 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 222 Subject: 5.541 Greenburg simulation Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 10 May 1994 12:31:19 +1000 (EST) From: j.guy@trl.oz.au (Jacques Guy) Subject: Greenberg, simulation, significance -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 10 May 1994 12:31:19 +1000 (EST) Subject: Greenberg, simulation, significance I have received this personal e-mail: >Date: Sat, 07 May 94 00:37:50 +0200 >From: Stephen P Spackman >Maybe there's much more to greenberg than I thought. >When I first saw his stuff those of us in the classroom with a >mathematical background had a severe giggling fit. But if you're coming >out with odds like 0.2 (and not 0.98) of chance resemblances, it looks >like our intuitions were nearly as off as his (albeit in a different >direction...). Stephen Spackman is absolutely right and I owe everyone my apologies. Indeed, when writing the simulation of semantic shifts, I defined semantic domains of size N, N being the number of word-meanings over which semantic shifts were allowed. Thus for instance, with a 200-item wordlist and fudge factor of 7 (i.e. domain size of 8), you had 25 discrete domains within which semantic shifts were allowed. If you think about it, the "within" is pretty silly, because if you allow, as Greenberg does, a semantic shift breast-milk-suck-swallow-drink-chew-throat-neck and thereby define a *closed* semantic domain, you are at the same time disallowing such semantic shifts as breast-nipple, throat-throttle-gag-stench, etc. Thus the figures obtained are a *gross* underestimate! A better solution, and still an underestimate, is to allow for semantic shifts between any one item of the wordlist and the next N items. I have done that, and obtained results which agree with the extraordinary (to some) figure of 0.98 mentioned by Stephen Spackman, namely: Ten languages, 200 words, 1/250 chance of accidental resemblance, fudge factor 7 (i.e. semantic domains of 8 items): 0.76 cases *per simulation* of exactly SIX languages showing the same word. (and 0.05 of seven, and 0.003 of eight, none of nine or more). With twenty languages, and the same parameters, the number of cases of SIX languages showing the same word is... hold onto your hats... an astonishing 12.7 per simulation! (Good Lord, is that right? Let me check. Just a moment...). Yes that *is* right. And 2.0 of seven languages, 0.32 of eight (yes! one chance in three!), 0.036 of nine, and 0.006 of ten or more. When I have some time, I will write a bit of explanation as a documentation file, and upload the lot with the source code in the pc/linguistics subdirectory at garbo.uwasa.fi, so that the simulation method is open to scrutiny, and the experiments reproducible. But another point. > From: "Paul Purdom" > Subject: Re: 5.521 Greenberg - Simulation with semantic shift > > I would like to raise a word of caution for the people that are attacking > the word of Greenberg and followers using statistical arguments. It is very > difficult to disprove things using statistics. Basically, the attackers > set up a model that they believe is similar to the process that Greenberg goes > through and show that by chance you get results somewhat similar to > Greenberg's (see recent post by Jacques Guy for a good example of this type > of work). In general people doing such studies seem to make better use of > statistics that Greenberg and followers. Such results should cause one to > wonder whether there is any significant reason to believe the results of > Greenberg and coworkers. On the other hand, the classification of Greenberg > did match up rather well with the genetic relatedness of the speakers of > the various languages. This should cause one to wonder whether the statistical > models are missing something important. I have already shown here that, even granting the accuracy of the data proffered, the correlation between genetics and language is at best nil, at worst *negative* (see my analysis of Cavalli-Sforza somewhere in the archives of LINGUIST). I am not surprised to see a correlation between Greenberg's linguistic classification and speakers' genes because the linguistic evidence proffered by Greenberg being demonstrably an artifact of allowing for semantic shifts, his classification must have been naturally influenced by what is known of the genetic relatedness of speakers. Indeed, given three informants, one Spanish-speaking Basque, one Basque-speaking Basque, and one Rotokas-speaking Papuan, I would sooner look for, and find, resemblances between Basque and Spanish than between Basque or Spanish and Rotokas. > > Try to prove or disprove something with statistical models can be quite > tricky. Let me refer to an analysis I did of some data of Dana Nau to > give a case that I understand completely. These results appear in > International Journal of Parallel Programming 15 (1987) pp 163-183 > (Nau, Purdom, and Tzeng) and in Analysis of Algorithms (1985) pp 447-449 > (Purdom and Brown). Nau measured how two algorithms did at playing a simple > game. He had the algorithms play each other 3200 times using random starting > positions. Actually, he had 7 series of 3200 games each, because one of the > algorithms because one of the algorithm had a parameter, and he wanted > results as a function of the parameter. One of the results was that algorithm A > won 1640 of 3200 games, significant at the level 0.16 (i.e., not very > significant). The other 6 cases also showed method A winning, but with even > less significance. > > One could take two veiws on the data as I have presented it so far. Either > method A is not noticably different from method B, or it is strange that > method A won in each of the seven series (particularly since the satistical > test said the two methods had about the same ability). Paul Purdom's interpretation is fallacious, but it is such an extremely common fallacious interpretation of statistics that I feel bound to explain it in detail and, doing so, heap even more curses and imprecations on Jane Edwards who started all this. Many poxes and a googolplex curses on thee, Ma'am. First, 1640 wins out of 3200 games (1600 wins expected) has no degree of significance *whatsoever*. I will not go into the statistics of it because to those who know statistics the proof is trivial, and to those who do not it would not be convincing. Oh, stuff it, here is the proof. This is a fair game, so we are expecting 50% wins (like tossing a fair coin). So, using the normal approximation to the binomial distribution we have: standard deviation = ____________ |(0.5)(1-0.5) \|------------ = 0.008839 | 3200 Now, what we have observed is 1640 wins out of 3200, which is 1640/3200=0.5125, i.e. 1.41 standard deviations from expectancy, which means, ... oh pox again, my statistical books are at home and so is my HP41, anyway, it's approximately what Purdom quotes: one chance in six. So what's the big surprise? Remember: the simulation was run SEVEN times. (I'll come to that later). Now for a proof of sort understandable without the slightest knowledge of statistics. Toss a coin 3200 times. Result: 1640 heads. Are you surprised? Now toss a coin 3200 times. Result: 1600 heads. Toss it again 3200 times. Same result. Toss it again 3200 times. 1600 heads again. And again, and again. Aren't you surprised? Yes indeed, there is something very fishy about that coin! Now you will say: yes, but, there were SEVEN simulations and out of seven the same side always won! Well, *none* of those wins were significantly different from chance. The chances of observing seven wins (or losses) in a row in a fair game are one in 2 to the power 7, i.e. 1 in 128. Go to a casino and watch the roulette wheel all evening. You will see many cases of red coming up seven times in a row. In this discussion, I have implicitly gramted that the game is fair, that is, that neither of the two strategies, A or B, is superior to the other. However: >In this case, it > turned out that the second explanation was correct. As Nau explained, his > 3200 games consisted of 1600 pairs of games. For each position there were two > games, one where method A made the first move and one where method B made the > first move. If a particular position stronger favored the first player you > would expect that the first player might win even if it was not a very good > player. An alternate way to analyze the data is to consider how many pairs > where won by algorithm A and how many were won by algorithm B (disregarding > the cases where each algorithm won one game of the pair). When the previous > case is analyzed this way, we find that algorithm A won 140 pairs of 240 > pairs. There is only one chance in 0.00015 that this would happen by chance. > Clearly algorithm A is better than algorithm B. (The other six series gave > similar results.) So what is this? A is better than B? So it should win more than half the time, shouldn't it? Two questions then: 1. Was there a formal proof that strategy A and strategy B were equally good? By formal proof I mean a mathematical proof by combinatorials, exact, not statistical, which is approximate. 2. If there was, then take a look, hard look at your random-number generator: it's showing cycles. That said, Purdom's analogy is beside the point. The A vs B simulation exhibits small significant variations from expectations. 140 out 240 is 58% when 50% would be expected if the two strategies were of equal strengths (but are they?). What we have here, on the one hand, is someone claiming "there is one chance in ten billion of this happening even only *once*", and, on the other hand, a thousand simulations showing it to appear on the average *twelve* times every time. Greenberg says: you will see A win once in 10 bilion games, the simulations show A winning in every single game. What follows is therefore not receivable: > I would urge those > that are doing statistical studies of Greenberg's techniques to consider > various ways to model the approach that you believe he uses. Small variation > in how you model the process may have important effects on your conclusions. > As I have shown in this and the previous postings, large variations in the modelall yield the same result: chance resemblances have (vulgarly speaking) infinitely greater probabilities of happening than Greenberg claims. "Large" variations: from allowing no semantic shifts at all, to allowing roughly as many as Greenberg allowed himself. Bon, maintenant, y'en a marre, ca suffit, j'ai vraiment autre chose a foutre que de discuter des sornettes. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-541. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-542. Thu 12 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 152 Subject: 5.542 Calls: LINGUISTICS AND CLASSICAL LANGUAGES, WECOL Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: 05/11/94 From: JORGE@BRUFPR.BITNET (Jorge F. Pique') Subject: Call for Papers/LINGUISTICS AND CLASSICAL LANGUAGES 2) Date: Wed, 11 May 94 17:52:51 -0700 From: wecol@BIOLOGY.UCLA.EDU (Western Conference on Linguistics) Subject: WECOL final call for abstract -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: 05/11/94 From: JORGE@BRUFPR.BITNET (Jorge F. Pique') Subject: Call for Papers/LINGUISTICS AND CLASSICAL LANGUAGES FIRST MEETING ON LINGUISTICS AND CLASSICAL LANGUAGES (Greek, Latin and Sanskrit) The Department of Linguistics, Classical and Vernacular Languages invites to the First Meeting on Linguistics and Classical Languages (I. ELLC) at Federal University of Parana (Curitiba, Brazil) on may 27th and 28th, 1994. General Rules: Duration of the papers: min. 10 min./ max. 1h Deadline: may 15th. (Note: Participation without physical presence will be possible to North America and others continents only. In this case manuscripts should be no longer than 3 pages double spaced, including tables. Papers must be sent by E-mail and will be exposed in the halls of the meeting. Everyone using this form of participation will receive all other E-mails. Deadline to E-mails: may 26th). Main topics of the meeting: 1. - Synchronic and Diachronic Linguistics of Classical Languages 1.1 Phonetics/Phonology/Metric 1.2 Morphology/Syntax/Syntax-semantics 1.3 Semantics/Lexicology 1.4 Stylistics 2.- Classical Linguistic and other Linguistics 2.1 Classical Languages and Indo-European Linguistics 2.2 Classical Languages and Romance, Germanic or Slavic Linguistics 2.3 Classical Languages and Portuguese 3.- Classical Languages and History of Linguistics 3.1 Theories on Language in the Antiquity 3.2 Traditional Greco-Roman Grammar 3.3 Comparative and Historical Linguistics in the XIX century and Classical Languages 4. Teaching of Classical Languages Note: papers may refer to any other contact points between classical languages (Greek, Latin , Sanskrit) and Linguistics. Please send 1 copy of your paper to: UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO PARANA Depart. de Linguistica, Letras Classicas e Vernaculas (Cod: I. ELLC) R. General Carneiro, n. 460, 11. andar Curitiba-PR 80001-870 or send an e-mail to: ELLC@BRUFPR.BITNET (only) (For further information same address and E-mail) Please send also this information: Full Name:...................................................................... ................................. Directions:..................................................................... ................................. E-mail:......................................................................... ..................................... Occupation:..................................................................... ................................ Teacher / Student (grad. / post.) Institution:.................................................................... ................................. Country:........................................................................ -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Wed, 11 May 94 17:52:51 -0700 From: wecol@BIOLOGY.UCLA.EDU (Western Conference on Linguistics) Subject: WECOL final call for abstract FINAL CALL FOR ABSTRACTS W E C O L '9 4 OCTOBER 21-23, 1994 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES D E A D L I N E: J U N E 1, 1 9 9 4 The deadline is fast approaching for abstract submissions for WECOL '94 at UCLA, as well as for the two workshops to be held in conjunction with WECOL, entitled THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE ACQUISITION OF PHONOLOGY and FORMAL ISSUES IN THE STUDY OF NEGATION. All submissions are welcome. Abstracts may be submitted to: Chair, Abstracts Committee WECOL '94 Department of Linguistics UC Los Angeles 405 Hilgard Ave Los Angeles, CA 90024 USA Specifications: Abstracts are invited for 20-minute talks in all areas of linguistic theory. The abstract should be anonymous, and should be no longer than one page, with one inch margins, in typeface no smaller than 12 characters per inch. An additional page with examples and references may be included. Please provide 10 copies of the abstract. Authors should identify themselves on a separate 3"x5" index card, and should include the title and author's address, affiliation, telephone number and electronic mail address. For more information, contact: wecol@biology.ucla.edu izzy361@mvs.oac.ucla.edu OR bulger@humnet.ucla.edu Don't forget! The deadline is JUNE 1, 1994. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-542. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-543. Thu 12 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 138 Subject: 5.543 Voice Variability in Speech Synthesis Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 11 May 1994 23:15:41 +0200 From: wgh@chh.ikp.uni-bonn.de (Wolfgang Hess) Subject: Voice Variability in Speech Synthesis -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 11 May 1994 23:15:41 +0200 From: wgh@chh.ikp.uni-bonn.de (Wolfgang Hess) Subject: Voice Variability in Speech Synthesis Dear Colleagues: At the last COCOSDA meeting in September 1993 Berlin (during EUROSPEECH-93) the committee for speech synthesis decided to form a small working group to gather information about ongoing research on speaker and voice variability in speech synthesis. I was asked to organize this group (together with Kim Silverman and Nick Campbell) and to initiate it. Well, as almost usual, after the conferences university terms start and with them the work load. Hence I was not active in this matter up to now. However, I want to give some report at the next COCOSDA meeting which is to take place in September during ICSLP-94 and/or the IEEE/ESCA workshop on speech synthesis just before ICSLP. I am thus very grateful for any information which can be provided to me in this matter. I will specify it a little more closely in the following. Recent applications in speech synthesis deal not only with implementing TTS systems and improving their quality on all levels, but also with the question how to bring something of the variety of human voices into the synthesis. A number of typical questions or problems in this domain are -- How can we synthesize emotional speech (happy, angry, sad, etc.)? In which way must the synthetic voice be varied (prosody, voice quality), and what can be achieved with the different approaches [concatenative synthesis, parametric synthesis by rule with a source-filter model (e.g., formant synthesis), articulatory synthesis]? -- How can we synthesize a variety of voices with the same system? How can we, for instance, transform a male synthetic voice into a female one and vice versa? How can we interpolate between several voices (which may be particularly difficult in concatenative synthesis which is based on elements of natural utterances)? What are the specific problems in this respect? -- How can we synthesize a variety of speaking styles (casual, clear, formal)? Which reductions, elisions etc. increase the naturalness of a "neutral" synthesis system (e.g., a reading machine) and should thus be incorporated, and which ones shouldn't because they are not appropriate? -- How can we adapt a synthetic voice to a given natural one (not only with respect to the sex of the natural speaker, but also to fundamental frequency range, spectral properties etc.) when given the task that - for reasons whatsoever - the synthetic voice shall sound as similar to the natural target voice as possible? As I said, these are only a number of questions which are to make it a little bit clearer to you what kind of information we want to receive. This list is thus far from being complete. In order to make it easy to you (and hence hopefully increase the number of responses) I do not circulate a long questionnaire, but I only want to get an answer from you to a few questions when you or some colleague(s) at your institution are active in this domain. Please indicate the type of work done (will be kept confidential if desired) and results achieved so far. If you have publications on this subject, please indicate the references (not necessarily in English!). It will be most important to us to collect references on this subject. To make things more convenient, you may use the following preformatted mailer to me. As I distribute this letter over several (moderated and unmoderated) mailing lists, please use this mailer. PLEASE DO NOT RESPOND TO THE LIST (this might be flooded otherwise, making some people very upset at me!). If you are not yourself active in this domain, but know people that are, please forward them this mail. I apologize to anybody who might receive this letter more than once via different channels. --- Start of Mailer --------------------------------------------------- mail -s "Voice Variability in Speech Synthesis" wgh@uni-bonn.de Your name, institution, address (including fax and e'mail) ... Active in which area of speech (processing and) synthesis? ... Which principle of speech synthesis do you apply ... - concatenative synthesis with parts of natural utterances using PSOLA or some parametric representation - synthesis by rule using a parametric representation (formant synthesis, LPC, ...) - synthesis by an articulatory model What kind of system do you use ... - text-to-speech - dialog system (semantic representation to speech or similar) - other application Which language(s) is your system able to synthesize? Which specific research of yours is particularly related to voice and speaker variability as indicated above? Which questions are covered at your lab? MOST IMPORTANT: If you have relevant publications, please give me a list of references ... --- End of Mailer ----------------------------------------------------- As time is running, I would appreciate to receive this information as soon as possible, but, PLEASE, BEFORE JUNE 15, 1994. I will then compile a list of information and a small bibliography and distribute it to those who respond to this mail. Thank you in advance for your kind cooperation. Sincerely yours, Wolfgang Hess -------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-543. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-544. Thu 12 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 225 Subject: 5.544 Greenberg Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: 10 May 94 16:00 GMT From: ECOLING@applelink.apple.com (Ecological Linguistics,Anderson,PRT) Subject: Sem change, Greenberg 2) Date: Thu, 12 May 1994 13:22:01 +1000 (EST) From: j.guy@trl.oz.au (Jacques Guy) Subject: More Fun with Greenberg -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: 10 May 94 16:00 GMT From: ECOLING@applelink.apple.com (Ecological Linguistics,Anderson,PRT) Subject: Sem change, Greenberg On the discussion of Greenberg simulations: It is indeed true that very small variations in assumptions can have absolutely enormous effects on results of theoretical experiments. And the assumptions which do this are often unconscious and unknown. Put another way, statistics is infallible, or even reasonably valid *when pushed to extreme extrapolations* only in artificially defined contexts with all parameters known. With reference to two recent comments: >> I would urge those >> that are doing statistical studies of Greenberg's techniques to consider >> various ways to model the approach that you believe he uses. Small variation >> in how you model the process may have important effects on your conclusions. >> >As I have shown in this and the previous postings, large variations in the >modelall yield the same result: chance resemblances have (vulgarly speaking) >infinitely greater probabilities of happening than Greenberg claims. "Large" >variations: from allowing no semantic shifts at all, to allowing roughly as >many as Greenberg allowed himself. >if you allow, as Greenberg does, a semantic shift chew - suck - breast - udder - milk - to milk suck - swallow - to drink - throat - neck - nape of the neck >and thereby define a *closed* semantic domain, you are at the >same time disallowing such semantic shifts as breast-nipple, >throat-throttle-gag-stench, etc. Exactly the point is here. Greeberg like ***any*** linguist will at times use semantic shifts which other linguists would disapprove of. The only solution for the field is to attempt to accumulate known cases of semantic shifts. For those who are not aware of this, there is extensive literature on semantic fields. I have myself published two articles giving maps of semantic space, partly simply for the knowledge of what kinds of human meanings can change into what other meanings, and partly precisely to try to objectify controls on such reconstructions of meaning change. I operate with the following general guidelines: ********************************************************************* 1. There are no "closed" semantic domains. There is an highly complex web of semantic interconnections, with highly probable paths of semantic change, rivers along which change naturally drifts. Such an account must be empirically founded on paths of change observed in two or more unrelated cases, not on any abstract or logician's theory of semantic change. Our intuitive assumed knowledge of what is a reasonable semantic change must always be highly suspect, and constantly corrected, educated, and extended by experience of the field as a whole. I have written two papers laying out maps of parts of semantic spaces (noted just below). There is an extensive literature of lexical meaning spaces (cf. James Matisoff on body part terms in Southeast Asia for one highly integrative work). Such maps of spaces need to be factored into any theoretical extrapolation of statistics to estimate probabilities of meaning shifts. The process cannot be done as a general mathematical formula. It must be done based on enormous quantities of tabular data, the kind which is absorbed by any good practicing historical linguist, but with the leavening that they must also have the personality to recognize that their particular experience with the languages they have worked on cannot be a restrictive guide to what is probable in languages of the world. "The "Perfect" as a universal and as a language-particular category" IN: Tense Aspect between semantics and pragmatics, ed. Paul Hopper, John Benjamins, pp.227-264 (includes general maps of tense and aspect spaces as well as of categories related to the Perfect) 1982 "Evidentials, paths of change, and mental maps: typologically regular asymmetries" In Evidentiality, the Linguistic Coding of Epistemology. eds. Wally Chafe and Johanna Nichols, Ablex Publishing Corp. 1982 Compare phonological changes which are "surprising" for a parallel, such as the Japanese glottal stop to /w/, or typologically recurring asymmetries, such as the relative weaker attestations of the opposite corners (p) and (g) in the theoretically neat pattern p t k b d g. Theoretical patterns are simply not relevant here, neither in phonology nor in semantics, as the basis for extrapolating to extremes. 2.There are also idiosyncratic examples where oddities of culture history produced unique results (note I say "unique", with empirical reference, rather than "unpredictable", with reference to an abstract theory.) 3. And there is the very strong possibility that a less dense packing of words into a given semantic space can have an effect on how meaning shifts occur, that is, change may have been more common in the past which are less common now. Once again, a limit on our ability to theorize or extrapolate. 4. When attempting to extrapolate to greater time depths, we can use our knowledge of observed semantic changes in useful ways. We cannot develop an airtight theory. It is in principle possible to assign quantified values to a given hypothesized change from meaning M to meaning N, depending on how many times this change has been observed, and how quickly it occurred (that is, when such information is available, how quickly after a word arrived at meaning M from its previous meaning L did it shift to its next meaning N). 5. Given all of the above, it is not possible to produce axiomatic theoretical proofs of anything, pro or con Greenberg's or any similar hypotheses. Most attempts to provide even plausible estimates of probability either way also founder hopelessly on oversimple assumptions and models. What we can do, and that is a point which again and again is not appreciated, is get some estimates of which language connections seem more or less probable relative to each other, not relative to true or false. All of this with the caveats that certain kinds of sound or meaning changes may cause the brains of our linguist analysts to see or to fail to see resemblances in either sound or meaning either more or less easily, distorting the results we get. The process of reporting and analyzing the data is very fragile, susceptible to our particular personal experiences or lack thereof. ********************************************************************** So why don't people get to dealing with the specifics, improving Greenberg's data and seeing how that affects his results, improving estimates of sound change and meaning change, and seeing how that affects his results, etc. etc.? This is, you may note, exactly the same criticism made by critics of Greenberg who say one should only work within known language families or by already known "methods" (notice they do not say techniques, because that word is positive, "methods" is morally critical). Here this criticism is directed at those who want a theoretical disproof of his works. My answer is that people do not do this for the same reason in both cases, it is long hard work, and no one person can do all of it, or satisfy all of the requirements which another may attempt to place upon their work, especially another investigator with a very different personality and approach to the material. We will make progress on it, gradually pushing deeper. That progress will be due to both the rigid traditionalists, working within their own narrowly defined fields where they can believe they are more secure in their answers will try new things, often unaware of how great the risks are of being flat wrong. It is not that one group cares too much about making mistakes, the other too little. It is that both approaches have always been necessary in all fields of discovery. What ***would*** be nice is greater respect of each side for the other, and a cessation of theoretical attempts to prove anyone right or wrong when the hidden unkown assumptions behind the models are what determines the answer in each case, and the assumptions are mostly wrong when pushed beyond their extremes. Lloyd Anderson -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Thu, 12 May 1994 13:22:01 +1000 (EST) From: j.guy@trl.oz.au (Jacques Guy) Subject: More Fun with Greenberg Have you noticed that Greenberg allows for metathesis? Scientific American, Nov. 92, p.64: Kutenai /u'mqolh/ "to swallow", Faai /mekeli/ "nape of neck", Kaliana /imukulali/ "throat", Mixe /amu'ul/ all evidence for *malq'a. Metathesis between the second and third consonants. This doubles the probability of chance resemblances, and does far, far more than doubling the number of expected spurious cases of evidence for reconstruction. Meanwhile, the documentation of the simulation algorithms mimicking semantic shifts is turning into a full-fledged paper. Tell you what you can do in the meantime. The Pascal program I posted does not allow for semantic shifts. But there is no question of semantic shifts when using grammatical (eg. SVO order) or phonological (tones vs no tones) features to classify languages. So simulate 20 languages each represented by 12 features ("words") with a fudge factor of course of zero. If you consider SVO order the probability of chance resemblance is one in 6 (SVO, SOV, OSV, VSO, VOS, OVS), tone, one in 2 (tones or not). I know, they are not equally probable, but the assumption of equiprobability does in fact result *always* in an understimate, often drastic, of the true probability of accidental resemblance (Greenberg got that bit right). So all in all, a probability of one in 5 should be about fair, shouldn't it? Try and see. Now try the same but with 100 languages this time. See? Now think about how many Jane Nichols used. Three hundred I seem to remember. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-544. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-545. Fri 13 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 271 Subject: 5.545 Confs: ICCS'94 Advance Program Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 12 May 1994 12:47:42 -0400 From: Cecilia Kullman Subject: ICCS'94 Advance Program -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 12 May 1994 12:47:42 -0400 From: Cecilia Kullman Subject: ICCS'94 Advance Program The SECOND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURES ICCS'94 August 16-20, 1994 University of Maryland College Park, MD, USA ADVANCE PROGRAM 10th Anniversary Meeting WELCOME TO ICCS'94 ICCS'94 marks a turning point in the developmental history of conceptual graphs (cgs), a representational language derived from John Sowa's "Conceptual Structures" (Addison-Wesley, 1984). Cgs consist of a logic with a graph notation and integrate features from semantic net and frame representations. Researchers around the world have applied cgs and extended the theory in many domains. As we move into our second decade, we invite you to hear from our guest speakers a historical retrospective of cgs successes and an analysis of the challenges to be faced in the nineties. Quality papers given by a selection of international researchers will present recent results in the application of cgs and the extension of the theory in variant domains including NLU, database modeling and knowledge representation especially with respect to contexts. We anticipate ICCS'94 will be an event not to be missed. In accord with our anniversary theme of future challenges, special emphasis will be placed on student and first-time participants. We look forward to welcoming you to the capital area and to ICCS'94. Honorary Chair General Chair John F. Sowa Judith P. Dick State Univ. of New York Univ. of Maryland, College Park sowa@turing.pacss.binghamton.edu dick@glue.umd.edu Program Chair European Coordinator William Tepfenhart Pavel Kocura AT&T Bell Laboratories Loughborough Univ. of Tech. bill@violin.att.com P.Kocura@lut.ac.uk WORKSHOP CHAIRS PEIRCE Knowledge Acquisition Enterprise Modeling Gerard Ellis D. Lukose Alex Bejan Univ. of Queensland Univ. of New England IBM Corp ged@cs.uq.oz.au lukose@peirce.une.edu.au bejan@vned.IBM.COM PROGRAM COMMITTEE Alex Bejan, IBM Corp. James Hendler, Univ. of Maryland B. Brunson, Scarborough Univ. Graeme Hirst, Univ. of Toronto Michel Chein, LIRMM Fritz Lehmann, GRANDAI Software Peter Creasy, Univ. of Queensland Guy Mineau, Univ. Laval Veronica Dahl, Simon Fraser Univ. Robt. Mohr, PRC Corp Harry Delugach, Univ. of Alabama Bernard Moulin, Univ. Laval Bonnie Dorr, Univ. of Maryland M.L. Mugnier, LIRMM John Eddy, AT&T Bell Laboratories Sung Myaeng, Syracuse Univ. Bruno Emond, Univ. du Quebec Peter Oehrstroem, Aalborg Univ. John Esch, Unisys Ghassan Qada, AT&T Bell Labs Jean Fargues, IBM Corp. Stephen Regoczei, Trent Univ. Timothy Finin, Univ. of Maryland Doug Skuce, Univ. of Ottawa Norman Foo, Univ. of Sydney Dagobert Soergel, Univ. of MD Helen Gigley, Naval Research Lab Eileen Way, SUNY, Binghamton James Hampton, City Univ. of London Amy Weinberg, Univ. of Maryland J. Heaton, Loughborough Univ. Tech M.H. Williams, Heriot-Watt Univ. INVITED TALKS EILEEN WAY, SUNY at Binghamton "Conceptual Graphs - Past, Present, and Future" PAT HAYES, Beckman Institute, Urbana, Illinois "Aristotelian and Platonic Views of Knowledge Representation" JACK MINKER, University of Maryland at College Park "Deductive Databases - A Retrospective" JOHN F. SOWA, SUNY at Binghamton "Representations of Representations" CONFERENCE OVERVIEW Tuesday, August 16 8:00 - 9:00 Registration 9:00 - 9:30 Welcome Address 9:30 - 10:30 Invited Talk - EILEEN WAY 11:00 - 11:30 Session 1: RATIONAL PROBLEM SOLVING 12:00 - 1:30 Lunch 1:30 - 2:30 Session 2: NATURAL LANGUAGE I 3:00 - 3:30 Session 3: NATURAL LANGUAGE II 5:30 Reception Wednesday, August 17 8:00 - 9:15 Registration/Student Breakfast 9:00 - 10:30 Session 4: KNOWLEDGE REP AND APPLICATIONS 11:00 - 12:00 Invited Talk - PAT HAYES 12:00 - 1:30 Lunch 1:30 - 2:30 Session 5: CONCEPTUAL GRAPH THEORY 3:00 - 5:00 Session 6: CONTEXTS AND CANONS Thursday, August 18 8:00 - 9:00 Registration/Officers Meeting 9:00 - 10:30 Session 7: DATA MODELING 11:00 - 12:00 Invited Talk - JACK MINKER 12:00 - 1:30 Lunch 1:30 - 3:00 Session 8: CGS AND DATA CONCEPTUAL MODELING 3:30 - 4:30 Closing Address - JOHN SOWA 4:30 - 5:00 General Meeting 5:30 Reception Friday, August 19 8:00 - 9:00 Registration 9:00 - 5:00 Workshop 1: Third PEIRCE Workshop 9:00 - 5:00 Workshop 2: Knowledge Acquisition Workshop Saturday, August 20 8:00 - 9:00 Registration 9:00 - 5:00 Workshop 1: Third PEIRCE Workshop 9:00 - 5:00 Workshop 3: Enterprise Modeling Workshop CONFERENCE LOCATION ICCS'94 will be held at the Inn and Conference Center at the University of Maryland, College Park. Nine miles from the Nation's capital, College Park is only a short drive from Baltimore and Annapolis, the state capital and home of the U.S. Naval Academy. ACCOMMODATIONS The conference facility is the Inn and Conference Center at the University or Maryland. To make a room reservation at the Inn and Conference Center, please use the registration form on the next page. Additional rooms are available at the Greenbelt Marriott at $97 - $112 for a regular room and $107 - $122 for an upgraded concierge room. Marriott Reservations: (301) 441-3700. Quality Inn has rooms for $44 - $49. Please ask for University of Maryland rates. Quality Inn Reservations: (301) 864-5820. Reservations at these facilities should be made directly. ***************************************************************************** ICCS'94 REGISTRATION FORM Name: ___________________________________________________ Affiliation: ________________________________________________ Address: _________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ Telephone: ___________________________ Tax: ________________________________ e-mail: ______________________________ ___ $325 Conference fee (excl. workshops) before 7/15/94 ___ $370 Conference fee (excl. workshops) after 7/15/94 ___ $125 Student fee (excl. workshops) before 7/15/94 ___ $175 Student fee (excl. workshops) after 7/15/94 ___ $50 PEIRCE Workshop ___ $40 PEIRCE Workshop, student ___ $35 Knowledge Acquisition Workshop ___ $25 Knowledge Acquisition Workshop, student ___ $35 Enterprise Modeling Workshop _ $25 Enterprise Modeling Workshop, student Amount Enclosed: $________________ Conference fee includes proceedings and receptions. Payment must accompany the registration form. Checks must be in US dollars only and payable to ICCS'94. Please do not send cash. CREDIT CARDS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED. Students must provide a copy of a student I.D. card or a letter from an advisor for proof of student status. RETURN BY JULY 15, 1994 TO: Johanna Weinstein UMIACS University of Maryland College Park, MD 20742, USA Tel.: (301) 405-6722. Fax: (301) 314-9658 e-mail: johanna@umiacs.umd.edu ************************************************************************ HOTEL RESERVATION FORM ICCS'94 August 16-20, 1994 The Inn and Conference Center University of Maryland University College Please reserve the following accommodations: ___ $69 Single Occupancy ___ $84 Double Occupancy Arrival Date: ____________ Departure Date: ____________ ___ Smoking ___ Non-smoking ___ Deposit check enclosed in the amount of $ ____________ ___ Credit card guarantee: Credit card number: _____________________________ Credit card expiration date: ____________ Signature: ________________________________ Name: ___________________________________________ Affiliation: _________________________________________ Address: __________________________________________ __________________________________________________ Telephone: _________________________________________ Fax: ______________________________________________ Rates are per room per night. All rates are subject to a 5% occupancy tax. All reservations must be accompanied by a deposit of one night's room rate plus tax, or a credit card guarantee. Guaranteed reservations will be held until 6:00 a.m. the following day. Reservations not canceled prior to 6:00 p.m. on the arrival day will be charged one night's room rate plus tax. SEND BY JULY 15, 1994 TO: Reservations The Inn and Conference Center University of Maryland University College College Park, MD 20742, USA Tel.: (301) 985-7310, Fax: (301) 985-7445 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-545. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-546. Fri 13 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 116 Subject: 5.546 Qs: Eng dictionary, Acquisition, Feature geometry, Scrambling Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 9 May 94 9:27 BST From: Richard Ogden Subject: American English dictionary 2) Date: Sun, 8 May 94 22:21:20 CST From: MERYEM@SIUCVMB.SIU.EDU Subject: Acquisition of present perfect tense by Turkish speakers 3) Date: Mon, 09 May 1994 15:14:19 -0500 (CDT) From: Michael M T Henderson Subject: Feature geometry and acquisition 4) Date: Mon, 9 May 94 15:56:46 -0400 From: lee@timessqr.gc.cuny.edu (lee) Subject: Long-Distance Scrambling -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Mon, 9 May 94 9:27 BST From: Richard Ogden Subject: American English dictionary I would like some information please about machine-readable American English dictionaries which contain pronunciation information. The ideal dictionary needs to have a very wide coverage. It is for a commercial project, so I would also need information about the cost of a licence to use the dictionary. Thanks Richard Ogden University of York, England rao1@tower.york.ac.uk -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Sun, 8 May 94 22:21:20 CST From: MERYEM@SIUCVMB.SIU.EDU Subject: Acquisition of present perfect tense by Turkish speakers Hello! I am planning to work on the acquisition of the present perfect tense by Turkish speakers. What I am looking for is to see if they use the -mi$ particle in Turkish which is used to express the indirect experience, narratives, resultative states etc. to talk about an indirect experience. Since Turkish does not have a counterpart for the present perfect tense, I assume that they will use present perfect to express the events they did not experience themselves. So, when telling a story they will use present perfect instead of the simple past tense. I hope I made myself clear on this issue. I would be glad to have any information about the -mi$ particle in Turkish and its peculiarities and the present perfect tense in English. Has anyone come across a similar study ? I appreciate your help. Meryem Duver Southern Illinois Uni. at Carbondale, IL meryem@SIUCVMB or meryem@SIUCVMB.siu.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Mon, 09 May 1994 15:14:19 -0500 (CDT) From: Michael M T Henderson Subject: Feature geometry and acquisition I'm looking for references on language acquisition and feature geometry (including underspecification). Will summarize what I get. Please reply directly to me: _______________________________________ | \ | Michael M. T. Henderson . | | Linguistics Department \ | University of Kansas | | Lawrence, KS 66045-2140 | | Bitnet: mmth@falcon | | Internet: mmth@falcon.cc.ukans.edu | |________________________________________| -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Mon, 9 May 94 15:56:46 -0400 From: lee@timessqr.gc.cuny.edu (lee) Subject: Long-Distance Scrambling I would like to know if there are any head-initial languages that allow long-distance scrambling across a finite clausal boundary. That is, are there any languages that allow a nominal phrase to scramble out of the embedded clause across an overt complementizer? I would appreciate it if you would forward the name(s) of the language(s) along with some examples with glosses to the following email address: lee@timessqr.gc.cuny.edu Thanks in advance. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-546. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-547. Fri 13 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 147 Subject: 5.547 Qs: Translation, Cognition verbs, Converting text, Complexity Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 10 May 1994 12:22:59 EDT From: Ellen Ricca Subject: Translation Software for English -> Mandarin, Russian & Greek (Q) 2) Date: Tue, 10 May 1994 05:39:15 +0200 SAST From: "Rembrandt Klopper - UZulu, Umlazi Campu" Subject: Verbs of Cognition: seeing, believing, knowing, wishing ... 3) Date: Tue, 10 May 94 17:42:15 EST From: mark Subject: Converting Japanese text from Macintosh to DOS 4) Date: Tue, 10 May 94 18:13:56 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Query: Complexity of Language -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Tue, 10 May 1994 12:22:59 EDT From: Ellen Ricca Subject: Translation Software for English -> Mandarin, Russian & Greek (Q) Hello, Does anyone know of any commercial or free translation software (for Windows, preferably) that will convert a document (Word for Windows, preferably) from English to Mandarin, English to Russian, and English to Greek? I have already explored MicroTac's Language Assistant series for Windows and Exceller's Key Into series. The Language Assistant series appears to fill our needs, however, they only offer translaters for Spanish, French, German, and Italian, not the languages mentioned above. A second question, assuming the first doesn't pan out: Does anyone know where I could get a TrueType Mandarin font and a TrueType Greek font? I already have one for Cyrillic. Please e-mail replies to: ricca@admin.mcc.mass.edu I will summarize back to the list. Thanks in advance for any assistance! Ellen Ricca =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= \ Ellen Ricca |"I had no shoes, and I pitied / / MCC, I.T. Dept, Lowell MA 01852 | myself. Then I met a man who \ \ work phone: 508-656-3306 | had no feet, so I took his / / e-mail: ricca@admin.mcc.mass.edu | shoes." - Dave Barry \ =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Tue, 10 May 1994 05:39:15 +0200 SAST From: "Rembrandt Klopper - UZulu, Umlazi Campu" Subject: Verbs of Cognition: seeing, believing, knowing, wishing ... Dear Neural Network 1. I'm working on a comparative analysis of the Verbs of Cognition in English, Dutch & Afrikaans. 2. I would be grateful for references, particularly recent ones, on how to analize them (a) syntactically & (b) as a lexical corpus (a single semantic domain) within the framework of Cognitive Linguistics. Any new insights on the topic will also be welcome. 3. I am also interested in the relationship between Artificial Intelligence and CL, as well as the relevance of methods of neural eavesdropping (MRI, PET, SQUID, SPECT, ????? & EEG) to CL. 4. Finally, I'm on sabbatical during the second half of 1994 and 1995 and would like particulars of CL conferences, symposia, work groups, etc. Thanks Rembrandt Klopper KLOPPER@SUPERBOWL.UND.AC.ZA 10 May 1994 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Tue, 10 May 94 17:42:15 EST From: mark Subject: Converting Japanese text from Macintosh to DOS I am going to need to convert Japanese texts from Macintosh files, typed in as-yet-unspecified word processor(s), to DOS files in one of the standard two-byte encodings, preferably shifted JIS or EUC. Can anyone recommend conversion software or procedures for doing this? Please answer directly to me. If there is sufficient interest I will summarize to the list. Mark A. Mandel Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 965-5200 320 Nevada St. : Newton, Mass. 02160, USA : mark@dragonsys.com P.S.: This document was generated by voice with DragonDictate v3.0, Classic Edition. Net typing speed was 25 words per minute. 94% of the words were recognized correctly. 2% were on the list of alternate possibilities and were selectable with a single command, 3% required me to spell at least one letter, and 2% (2) were new to my DragonDictate vocabulary. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Tue, 10 May 94 18:13:56 EDT From: Alexis_Manaster_Ramer@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu Subject: Query: Complexity of Language I am sure everyone knows the work showing that color terminologies tend to get more complex as the cultures using the languages in question get more complex. I am wondering if anyone knows of other instances of parts of language becoming more complex in the same sort of unidirectional way. My own examples include the formation and elaboration of a grammatical category of numeral, perhaps the same with respect to adjective (which some languages seem to lack), the respectively-type constructions (which most languages seem to lack), etc. At the same time there seems to be some plausibility to the idea that certain distinctions seem to get lost as cultures evolve (such as the dual number and the inclusive/exclusive distinction), and again I wonder if anybody knows anything relevant on this. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-547. ________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-548. Fri 13 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 176 Subject: 5.548 Qs: Word & Letter frequencies, Voiceless nasals, Clicks Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 11 May 94 11:17:44 +0200 From: ahousen@vnet3.vub.ac.be Subject: Q:English word frequencies 2) Date: Fri, 13 May 94 10:30:40 +0300 From: lcarlson@ling.helsinki.fi (Lauri Carlson) Subject: Letter frequencies in running text for European languages 3) Date: Thu, 12 May 1994 19:49:52 -0600 (EST) From: "Bill (Bello) Anderson" Subject: "Voiceless" nasals 4) Date: Thu, 12 May 1994 18:24:08 -0600 (EST) From: "Bill (Bello) Anderson" Subject: Clicks in Khoisan, Sandawe-Hadzapi and Zulu-Xhosa -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Wed, 11 May 94 11:17:44 +0200 From: ahousen@vnet3.vub.ac.be Subject: Q:English word frequencies Hi, I'm forwarding this request on behalf of a colleague who's not on this list. Please respond directly to him (jbollen@vnet3.vub.ac.be), not to me. Alex Housen ********** "Can anyone tell me where on the net I could find electronic lists of wordfrequencies and/or association-norms for the english language? I need it in electronic form because I will be using the list on a computerised experiment with word-association and semantics. Some FTP or Gopher adress from where I could download the lists would be very helpful. You can contact me on the following adress: jbollen@vnet3.vub.ac.be. Thanks in advance!" __________________________________________________________________________ +++ Johan Bollen Principia Cybernetica Assistant ++++++++++ + Free University of Brussels, Pleinlaan 2, PO, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium + + Phone:+32-2-6412525; Fax:+32-2-6412489; Email: jbollen@vnet3.vub.ac.be + +----> URL(info,bio,pict): http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/infoJB.html <----- + +++++++++++ Het is een monster, maar ik heb het geschapen. +++++++++++++ -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Fri, 13 May 94 10:30:40 +0300 From: lcarlson@ling.helsinki.fi (Lauri Carlson) Subject: Letter frequencies in running text for European languages Linguists, Does anyone have information about letter frequencies in running text for various European languages (English, German, French, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Finnish)? Lauri Carlson professor of linguistic theory and translation University of Helsinki Department of Translation Studies Office: Mail: Alokkaankuja 2 PL 94 45130 Kouvola 45131 Kouvola Phone: Email: +358 0 797 812 (home) lcarlson@ling.helsinki.fi +358 51 8252 206 (office) Fax: +358 0 79 59 61 (home) +358 51 8252 251 (office) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Thu, 12 May 1994 19:49:52 -0600 (EST) From: "Bill (Bello) Anderson" Subject: "Voiceless" nasals Hello, everyone! Recent investigations into the "consonant mutations" in Kpelle have led me to an interesting question: are "voiceless" nasals really voiceless phonologically, or are they aspirated? I remember seeing somewhere nasals in one of the Southeast Asian languages (Hmong, I believe) characterized as "aspirated", rather than "voiceless". Previously the same nasals in the same language had been claimed to be "voiceless", so I'm wondering if there are any good clues to distinguish which they are. Do "voiceless" nasals ever precipitate the devoicing (but not aspiration!) of adjacent segments? Do they ever lead to aspiration of adjacent consonants, or "breathy voicing" in adjacent vowels? Do "voiceless" nasals pattern phonologically with other sonorants or with obstruents? What references are available either on the "voiceless" nasals, or on phonologies of languages that use them (e.g. Hmong, Miao, Yi...)? Do "voiceless" nasals occur outside of Tibeto-Burman? Do they occur outside of Southeast Asia? Thank you, in advance? Have a great day! Bye. Bill Anderson wranders@indiana.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Thu, 12 May 1994 18:24:08 -0600 (EST) From: "Bill (Bello) Anderson" Subject: Clicks in Khoisan, Sandawe-Hadzapi and Zulu-Xhosa Hello, everyone! I am trying to find references (or personal communication) dealing with the click consonants found in Khoisan, Sandawe, Hadzapi and some of the Ngoni Bantu languages, including isiZulu and isiXhosa. The main questions I am trying to answer (or at least begin to answer :-) ) are the following: 1. What are clicks? (phonologically speaking) a. Do they behave phonologically as other obstruents? b. Do they ever alternate (syn- or diachronically) with non-click consonants? c. Do loanwords into "click languages" ever substitute clicks for non-clicks in the source language? d. What recent, "non-linear" phonological analyses of "click languages" are available? 2. Where do clicks in isiZulu and isiXhosa come from? a. Are there any good etymological resources connecting words with clicks in these languages to their presumed Khoisan originals. b. Where do non-initial clicks in these languages come from? Are they from compound words in Khoisan languages? c. Have the clicks become sufficiently integrated into the phonological systems of these languages that there are non-borrowed words containing clicks or words inherited from earlier stages of Ngoni or Bantu in which non-clicks have developed into clicks? 3. What is/are the current model(s) of the internal (and external?) relations within the Khoisan family, especially regarding the status of Sandawe and Hadzapi? Thank you, in advance! Have a great day! Bye. Bill Anderson wranders@indiana.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-548. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-549. Sun 15 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 219 Subject: 5.549 Calls: THE THIRD KENTUCKY CONFERENCE ON NARRATIVE Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 12 May 94 14:39:33 EDT From: Joachim Knuf Subject: Repeat Call & Registration, KY Conference on Narrative -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Thu, 12 May 94 14:39:33 EDT From: Joachim Knuf Subject: Repeat Call & Registration, KY Conference on Narrative Dear colleagues:Please find below a repeat positing of the call for papers and a registration form for the Third Kentucky Conference on Narrative. Please forward this document to your subscribers. Thank you very much. Joachim Knuf TEXTS AND IDENTITIES THE THIRD KENTUCKY CONFERENCE ON NARRATIVE OCTOBER 14 - 16, 1994 DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNICATION UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY The Department of Communication, University of Kentucky, invites you to submit papers and abstracts for a conference on narrative, to be held Friday, October 14, to Sunday, October 16, at the University of Kentucky. THE THEME OF THIS YEAR'S CONFERENCE, TEXTS AND IDENTITIES, suggests topics for our discussions that focus on the ways in which individual and collective identities are created and maintained through narrative, both face to face and mediated. Again, we would like to bring together a wide range of interests, including linguistics, discourse and conversation analysis, language and social interaction, pragmatics, semiotics, and many others. We hope to attract scholars from many disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, such as literary history, philology, folklore, anthropology, linguistics, COMMUNICATION, WOMEN'S STUDIES AND ALL OTHERS INTERESTED IN NARRATIVE. Theoretical or methodological contributions are as welcome as case studies of narrative in context. A registration fee of $50.00 ($15.00 for students) will pay for buffet lunches and refreshments. Included in the regular registration fee is a subscription to the conference volume, to be published by the University Press of America. We are greatly pleased to announce two special conference events: Friday morning: WORKSHOP ON BIOGRAPHICAL NARRATIVE, conducted by Gerhard Riemann of the University of Kassel, Germany. SATURDAY AFTERNOON: KEYNOTE ADDRESS: 'NARRATIVES IN ORDINARY CONVERSATION,' BY SUSAN ERVIN-TRIPP, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT Berkeley. Please send two copies of abstracts or finished papers to the conference organizer: Joachim Knuf, Department of Communication, 127 Grehan Building, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506-0042, (606) 257-7805, E- mail: jknuf@ukcc.uky.edu The deadline for submissions is May 15, 1994. The final program will be sent out to participants in early June. Manuscripts completed by December 31, 1994, will be reviewed for inclusion in a volume of conference proceedings. An e-mail listserve has been set up to facilitate THE CONFERENCE ORGANIZATION. MAIL THE MESSAGE 'SUB NARRATE FIRSTNAME LASTNAME' TO LISTSERV@UKCC.UKY.EDU TO RECEIVE CONFERENCE MAILINGS. Hotel rooms have been reserved; details will follow with registration information. Please circulate this announcement among your colleagues and students! ============================================== (PLEASE PRINT AND RETURN WITH YOUR CHECK!) ============================================== PRE-REGISTRATION FORM TEXTS AND IDENTITIES THE THIRD KENTUCKY CONFERENCE ON NARRATIVE OCTOBER 14 - 16, 1994 UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY 18TH FLOOR, PATTERSON OFFICE TOWER LEXINGTON, KY ============================================== REGISTRATION Please use this form to advance register for the Third Kentucky Conference on Narrative no later than September 30. Thereafter, please register at the conference. The conference site is the 18th floor of the Patterson Office Tower on the University of Kentucky campus. Parking information will be included in the registration confirmation. Please provide the following information: Name to appear on convention badge: Address: CITY: STATE: Zip: DAY TIME PHONE: ( ) - E-MAIL: Institutional affiliation: The regular registration fee is $50.00; students and the unwaged register for $15.00. The registration fee will cover a buffet lunch and refreshments, as well as a subscription to the conference volume (regular registration only). Please make your check payable to THE "UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY" AND MARK IT "1994 NARRATIVE CONFERENCE." Registration confirmation and receipts will be mailed to you as soon as possible. [ ] Please check here if you need parking. ============================================== WORKSHOP INFORMATION A limited number of places are available for the WORKSHOP ON BIOGRAPHICAL NARRATIVE, conducted by Gerhard Riemann of the University of Kassel. The workshop will take place Friday morning, October 14, 1994. Places will be allocated on a first-come basis. A package of materials will be made available to participants who have registered for the workshop. If you are interested in participating in the workshop, please SEND A SEPARATE CHECK FOR $10.00, MARKED "WORKSHOP," to cover the copying and distribution of the materials. Checks that arrive after the available places are filled will be returned. [ ] PLEASE CHECK HERE IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO PARTICIPATE IN THE workshop. ============================================== HOTEL INFORMATION Contingents of rooms are available in two hotels: THE SPRINGS INN 2020 Harrodsburg Road Lexington, KY 40503 Reservations: TOLL-FREE: 1-800-354-9503 FAX: (606) 277-3142 TEL: (606) 277-5751 Room rates (excluding tax): SINGLE: $36.00 DOUBLE: $44.00 The cut-off rate for reservations at this preferred rate is September 14, 1994. Please make your reservations early. RADISSON PLAZA HOTEL LEXINGTON 369 West Vine Street Lexington, KY 40507-1636 Reservations: FAX: (606) 281-3704 TEL: (606) 231-9000 Room rates (excluding tax): SINGLE: $89.00 DOUBLE: $89.00 TRIPLE: $89.00 QUADRUPLE: $89.00 The cut-off rate for reservations at this preferred rate is September 13, 1994. Please make your reservations early. If you need any help with alternative hotel arrangements, please call the Greater Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau at (606) 233-1221. ============================================== For all other information and assistance, please contact: Joachim Knuf, Conference Organizer College of Communications and Information Studies, University of Kentucky 127 Grehan Building, Lexington, KY 40506-0042 (606) 257-7805 JKNUF@ukcc.uky.edu. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-549. ________________________________________________________________ LINGUIST List: Vol-5-550. Mon 16 May 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 137 Subject: 5.550 Qs: Dialect, Foreign language competency, Proper nouns, Typing Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck Brian Wallace -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 13 May 1994 11:04:14 +1200 From: ling003@csc.canterbury.ac.nz Subject: 3rd singular _be's_ for _is_ 2) Date: Tue, 10 May 1994 02:42:44 -0600 (MDT) From: tomills@diana.cair.du.edu (T.F. Mills) Subject: statistics on foreign language competency? 3) Date: Fri, 13 May 94 11:03 CDT From: TB0EXC1@NIU.bitnet Subject: proper nouns and phonological rules 4) Date: Sat, 14 May 1994 10:00:05 +0100 From: wcli@vax.ox.ac.uk Subject: "assimilation" in typing -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Fri, 13 May 1994 11:04:14 +1200 From: ling003@csc.canterbury.ac.nz Subject: 3rd singular _be's_ for _is_ An MA student here is working on nonstandard auxiliary use in New Zealand English. On the West Coast of the South Island, by contrast with Christchurch on the east coast, she finds that an unexpectedly large proportion of teenagers accept (a) without qualms: (a) So Andrew stands on his desk and be's Alexander the Great. The West Coast happens also to be an area where the early white settlers included relatively many Irish, so one is naturally tempted to link this with the 3rd singular _be's_ reported for Hiberno-English. But the sense seems wrong; Hiberno-English _be's_ is said to be habitual, whereas in (a) the sense is rather 'acts, pretends to be'. Anecdotally, we have reports of another nonhabitual _be's_, as in (b) -- this one in Christchurch too: (b) If he be's good, he'll get to go out tonight. Here it seems as if the idiom _be good_ 'behave well' is resisting the peculiar allomorphy of the ordinary auxiliary _be_. Can anyone out there shed any light on nonhabitual 3rd singular _be's_, or point us to relevant publications? Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy Department of Linguistics, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, New Zealand Phone +64-3-364 2211; home phone +64-3-355 5108 Fax +64-3-364 2065 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Tue, 10 May 1994 02:42:44 -0600 (MDT) From: tomills@diana.cair.du.edu (T.F. Mills) Subject: statistics on foreign language competency? This question is cross-posted to Linguist and Flteach. Apologies for any duplication. Dear netters, I am hoping that some of you can point me to reliable and reasonably up-to-date STATISTICS on any or all of the following (either on the net or published elsewhere): * percentage of US college graduates fluent in second language * US college foreign language entrance requirements * US college foreign language graduation requirements * US graduate school foreign language entrance requirements * international comparisons of the above statistics I am not on this list, so please respond to me directly. Thanks for your help. T. F. Mills tomills@diana.cair.du.edu University of Denver Library 2150 E. Evans Ave. Denver CO 80208 USA -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Fri, 13 May 94 11:03 CDT From: TB0EXC1@NIU.bitnet Subject: proper nouns and phonological rules In Introduction to Phonological Theory, Robert Harms mentions the case of Finnish, where proper nouns are exempt from certain phonological rules, not because of their phonetic/phonemic make up but simply because they are proper nouns. Does anyone know, first, if this is a general case - are ALL proper nouns exempt from a 'significant' number of rules, and are there other cases in other languages. You can send responses to me or to the list; I'll summarize if there are sufficient responses -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Date: Sat, 14 May 1994 10:00:05 +0100 From: wcli@vax.ox.ac.uk Subject: "assimilation" in typing When typing e-mail messages, I often observe what seems to be the keyboard equivalent of assimilation in speech, e.g. (1) anticipatory "assimilation": artuculation (articulation) mastakes (mistakes) (2) perservatory "assimilation" I found some software someware (I found some software somewhere) Is it just me or does it also happen to other people? Have there been any psycholinguistic studies done on similar phenomena in typing? Wenchao Li Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-550.