HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: richwing@leland.Stanford.EDU (Rich Wingerter)
Subject: Re: Latin alphabet
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 92 07:07:29 GMT

In article <1992Apr8.150258.1773@memstvx1.memst.edu>, connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu writes:
...
|> I dunno -- do you think it would be accepted?  Would the literati think
|> it was condescending to use "funny" letters and no upper case instead of
|> "real" letters like English?

I don't think the people in question would have any problems accepting it.  If
they have no pre-existing writing system to compare with, they would probably
think all of the letters were "funny".  Unless they were told that some
languages distinguish upper and lower case, they probably wouldn't miss that
either.


--Rich Wingerter
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: hughes@hercules.cis.udel.edu (John Hughes)
Subject: Re: Numbers and language
Organization: University of Delaware, Newark
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 00:35:23 GMT

In article <1992Apr14.205625.24193@leland.Stanford.EDU> alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson) writes:
>In article <1992Apr13.214920.3874@spss.com>, markrose@spss (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
>>In article <29E9ED82.24577@noiro.acs.uci.edu> cortese@hepxvt.ps.uci.edu 
>>(Janis Maria Cortese) writes:
>>>It seems almost like numbers are kept separate from words in a
>>>brain.  And I'm not talking about not knowing the word for 1,000 either.  I
>>>can say dix-neuf cent blah blah blah, but damn it, when I see 1992, my brain
>>>goes "nineteen ninety two" right off the bat.  When I see words, I have no
>>>immediate brain response that tries to shoehorn them into English.  

>>Could be that we simply never learn the numbers well in a foreign language,
>>because we immediately translate them into our native tongue, while 
>>everything else (at first) has to be decoded.  That is, if you read "42" you 
>>think "forty-two", and the French equivalent isn't reinforced. 

>>A good test of this notion would be to learn Arabic, where the numerals are
>>somewhat different, and see if you learn to count fluently in Arabic.

>More anecdotal evidence:  When looking at numerals next to the lines in
>Sanskrit verse, I *still* read them as English.  That is, it may be written
>very strangely, but it's *still* "42."

I would agree with Alderson: when I'm reading Japanese and I see a date, for
example, I read the "ichi" as a 1, the "kyuu" as 9, and so on, even though the
characters look *nothing* like arabic ones. I imagine if I were in a store
in Tokyo and wanted to buy some things, I would have to convert to english to
find the total-- forget calling the numbers by their Japanese names. It takes 
time to even figure out what shichi plus roku is. Ah, juusan, that's right...
But I have noticed that dates in particular are hard. It took literaly years
to read Spanish dates easily, and only after lots of practicse saying "mil
novecientos ochenta y..."

John
hughes@cis.udel.edu
From: mcovingt@athena.cs.uga.edu (Michael A. Covington)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Animal Grammar
Date: 11 Apr 92 14:27:55 GMT
Organization: University of Georgia, Athens

In article <ARA.92Apr11000727@camelot.ai.mit.edu> ara@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Allan Adler) writes:
>
>We think animals are dumb because they don't speak human languages. Actually,
>some humans apply the same standard to other humans if they happen to speak
>a different language.

Surely that's not the only reason.  Humans have the ability to respond
creatively to new situations, and to preserve knowledge of the response for
future generations, in a way that animals simply never do.  Animals do not
educate their young.  They do not have a continuously growing body of
cultural knowledge to be passed on from generation to generation.

Even a superficial examination of animal communication reveals that, unlike
human language, animal communication is almost always stimulus-bound -- it
is a response to something actually perceived at present or in the recent
past.  Only humans can talk about things that are imaginary or hypothetical.
(There may be exceptions on the part of chimps or dolphins, but surely not
prairie dogs.)

Animal communication _has_ been, and _is_, studied.  (See Akmajian et al.'s
linguistics text, published by your own MIT Press.)  And the study reveals
huge differences between animal communication and human language.

-- 
==========================================================================
Michael A. Covington, Ph.D. |  mcovingt@uga.cc.uga.edu  |  ham radio N4TMI
Artificial Intelligence Programs | U of Georgia | Athens, GA 30602  U.S.A.
==========================================================================
From: dacosta@prl.philips.nl (Paulo da Costa)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Why are English infinitives so different?
Date: 16 Apr 92 09:23:37 GMT
Organization: none

In article <1992Apr15.155419.28862@spss.com> markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
[about "Romance languages lack progressive tenses"]
>
>True for French, false for Spanish and Portuguese.
>
>_Maria esta afinando el carro_, Maria is tuning up the car.
>
>Such expressions are very common.  However, I don't think you can have
>a progressive perfect in these languages.

In Portuguese you can make a perfect with the auxiliary "ter":

_Tenho trabalhado muito_, I've been working a lot.

It looks like the English present perfect, but it isn't. "I've worked a
lot" uses the "preterito perfeito", _Trabalhei muito_.

Portuguese is also the language of the future subjunctive and the
personal infinitive, which are not found in Spanish either.
--
-- Paulo da Costa           /\/\   Minha terra tem palmeiras   /\/\
-- dacosta@prl.philips.nl   \/\/   Onde canta o sabia'...      \/\/
From: nedervol@schaefer.math.wisc.edu (Eric Nedervold)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Devanagari: Syllabary or Alphabet?
Date: 16 Apr 92 20:50:10 GMT
Organization: Univ. of Wisconsin Dept. of Mathematics

I think of Devanagari as a collection of akshara, rather than a syllabary
or an alphabet.  If I have to talk about it in English, akshara may come out
as "letter" or "syllable", depending on the phase of the moon and whether I've
had my tea yet that morning or not. 

The floating vowel marks are matra, which are not akshara, and which usually
get translated by me as "floating vowel marks" or "that squiggle underneath
the 'ka'".

Seems to me that the English terms don't fit especially well.  So I guess
I'm in the in-between camp.  Though my preferred answer to "is it a 
syllabary or an alphabet?" would be "mu."

--Eric
 
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: ara@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Allan Adler)
Subject: cinq
Organization: M.I.T. Artificial Intelligence Lab.
Distribution: sci
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1992 06:39:44 GMT

Why is there no u following the q?

Allan Adler
ara@altdorf.ai.mit.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne)
Subject: Re: Coincidental glosses
Organization: Computer "Science" Dept, Yale University
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1992 01:24:48 GMT

In article <1992Apr10.213017.13795@enea.se>, sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) writes:
<Scott Horne (horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU) writes:
<
<>My favourite is Norwegian _maal_ and Korean _mal_, both meaning `language'.
<
<Is the Korean "a" pronounces as the Norweigan "aa" (which I
<would expect to be written with a-ring)?

No.  Korean _mal_ is pronounced somewhat like Swedish _mal_.  (A Swedish
correspondent recently told me that there is such a word, apparently with
quite a few meanings.)  And sorry about leaving off the `a'-ring (is it
`}' on your terminal?).

In his introduction to _The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European
Roots_, Watkins gives the example of Greek _pneu-_ `to blow' and _pniw-_
`to blow' in some Native American language spoken in the state of Oregon.
I still prefer my example, if only because the two words both mean
`language'.  :-)

					--Scott

-- 
Scott Horne                               ...!{harvard,cmcl2,decvax}!yale!horne
horne@cs.Yale.edu      SnailMail:  Box 7196 Yale Station, New Haven, CT   06520
203 436-1848                Residence:  Rm 1848 Silliman College, New Haven, CT
ZANG4 HAN4 YI4 JIA1 / GONG4 JIAN4 ZHONG1HUA2!
From: idsardi@athena.mit.edu (William J Idsardi)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Chomsky is Citation Champ
Keywords: Chomsky
Date: 16 Apr 92 01:26:23 GMT
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

From MIT Tech Talk Wednesday April 15, 1992 page 3

Chomsky is Citation Champ

	Many are the authors who may wonder is anyone is paying
attention to what they write.
	Professor Noam Chomsky, MIT's preeminent linguistics
authority, doesn't have that problem.
	Recent research on citations in three different citation
indices show that Professor Chomsky is one of the most cited
individuals in works published in the past 20 years.
	In fact, his 3,874 citations in the Arts and Humanities
Citation Index between 1980 and 1992 make him the most cited living
person in that period and the eight most cited source overall -- just
behind famed psychiatrist Sigmund Freud and just ahead of philosopher
Georg Hegel.
	Indeed, Professor Chomsky is in illustrious company.  The top
ten cited sources during the period were: Marx, Lenin, Shakespeare,
Aristotle, the Bible, Plato, Freud, Chomsky, Hegel and Cicero.
	But that isn't all.  From 1972 to 1992, Professor Chomsky was
cited 7,449 times in the Social Science Citation Index -- likely the
greatest number of times for a living person there as well, although
the research into those numbers isn't complete.  In addition, from
1974 to 1992 he was cited 1,619 times in the Science Citation Index.
	"What it means is that he is very widely read across
disciplines and that his work is used by researchers across
disciplines," said Theresa A. Tobin, the Humanities Librarian who
checked the numbers.  "In fact," she added, "it seems that you can't
write a paper without citing Noam Chomsky."

--
Bill Idsardi

MIT Room 20D-219			(617) 253-5794
Cambridge, MA 02139			idsardi@athena.mit.edu
From: arild@milan.philosophie.uni-stuttgart.de (Arild Hestvik)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Animal Grammar
Date: 15 Apr 92 07:58:42 GMT
	<29EB1A80.22713@noiro.acs.uci.edu>
	<1992Apr14.184221.29573@athena.cs.uga.edu> <rqyj+db@lynx.unm.edu>
Reply-To: arild@adler.philosophie.uni-stuttgart.de
Organization: IMS, University of Stuttgart, Germany

lgorbet@carina.unm.edu (Larry P Gorbet ANTHROPOLOGY) writes:
   mcovingt@athena.cs.uga.edu (Michael A. Covington) writes: 
   >  That's exactly the point.  We're not saying animals are stupid; only
   >  that the structure of _human_ language is not found in them.

   *The* structure of human language?  I don't think you or maybe any of
   us reading this newsgroup think human language has some single,
   unifying (abstract) structure -- isn't this a belief shared among
   G-B types and folks who call themselves "cognitive linguists"?  

Watch out--some "G-B types" and other cognitive scientists might be reading
this newsgroup! 

   And
   we certainly don't think its biological underpinnings have a single
   origin (creationism anyone?).  Any more than other body parts of any
   complexity do.  It's also true that the (entire) structure of human
   digestion, locomotion, etc. are not found in any other animal. There's
   no coherent argument I've seen that the evolutionary bases of human
   language are unique.  

What you say about the entire structure of human digestion etc. is of
course true, but apart from that, what do you mean? That chimps have the
same basis for evolving language? That may be true, but they haven't yet.

   So it is at least not something that we can
   rule out a priori that we can learn something about human language by
   comparing it with other communication (and cognitive) systems used by
   non-humans.  Not every human medical researcher cares about non-human
   homologues, but that does not bear on the validity of those comparing
   non-human systems.

In the case of other bodily organs this may be true, but it is pretty clear
that *structure* of language (not its function/effect--you also seem to be 
confusing communication with language) is unique to humans. Give me an
example to the contrary, and we'll talk. 

-Arild Hestvik
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: richwing@leland.Stanford.EDU (Rich Wingerter)
Subject: Re: Latin alphabet
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 92 06:03:40 GMT

In article <1992Apr1.084711.1701@memstvx1.memst.edu>, connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu writes:

Thanks for picking up the torch.

...
|> The best argument for using the Latin alphabet for *any* language is at
|> your fingertips.  You are using a computer with a Latin-alphabet keyboard.
|> All over the workd -- even where Cyrillic, Greek, Devanagari, Kanji, Arabic,
|> or Hebrew characters are usual -- computers and typewriters with Latin
|> letters are available.  Furthermore, through admittedly arbitrary assignments,
|> combinations of letters can be used to represent any sound in any language.
|> There is simply no reason to adhere to the principle of one phoneme per
|> letter, universally applicable to all languages.  An orthography need not
|> be tantamount to a phonemic transcription!  Most aren't, and they work
|> just fine, even though they don't agree with each other.

As pointed out elsewhere, there are plenty of non-latin keyboards around.

The reason I see for adhering to one letter per phoneme is that it is easier to
learn.  Think what this means in terms of the number of people learning the
language for the life of the writing system!  Remember learning to read and
write English?  I'd rather not have to learn spellings like "through",
"physics", "xerox", "know" or "gnu" any time soon.

|> Of course, if you are talking about a system of *hand*writing, my arguments
|> do not apply.  And yes, I am very fond of other alphabets.  I cringe when
|> I see transliterated Greek.  But it is wrongheaded to develop a new ortho-
|> graphy for a hitherto unwritten language which does *not* use the Latin
|> alphabet, which by now is the de facto universal standard.  To use any
|> other system, whether existing or invented specifically to suit the
|> supposed phonemic or phonetic exigencies of the system, is the ultimate
|> condescension, implying (1) that the speakers of that language are somehow
|> too backward to use a European alphabet, and (2) that the language is so
|> inconsequential that no one would ever have occasion to type it on paper or
|> into a computer for any purpose.  While handwriting isn't dead, its
|> utility ain't what it used to be.  Don't condemn any Taiwanese to using
|> ballpoints no matter what!

Computers, widespread as they are, are out of reach of most of the world's
population.  Even in the USA, most people can't type.  The availability of
roman characters on keyboards is a factor, but should not be the deciding one.
Computers are adaptable.  If you invent a writing system that gains support,
someone will eventually make a font for it.  (I believe Adobe Systems is
claiming there are now 10,000 fonts in PostScript(tm) format alone.)  In a part
of the world "unmodernized" enough to need a new writing system, keyboards are
probably not that plentiful.


--Rich Wingerter
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: sf@88opensi.88open.ORG (Steven Finney)
Subject: Re: Method of learning 17 languages
Reply-To: sf@88opensi.UUCP (Steven Finney)
Organization: 88open Consortium Ltd., San Jose
Distribution: sci
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 92 18:26:24 GMT

In article <35012@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> daj@reef.cis.ufl.edu (David A. Johns) writes:
>In article <2786@sersun1.essex.ac.uk> tysoj@essex.ac.uk (Tyson J R) writes:
>
># As to the questions of linguistic theory and ethnocentricity I
># differ again from the judgement I am imputing to Scott: I am afraid
># that I agree with Chomsky on the relative value of the narrow but
># insightful versus the broad but superficial.... but there is also little 
># doubt that Universal Grammar proceeds best from people delving deeper and
># deeper into what they know well (language wise).
>
>I have trouble grasping how this could possibly be true.  Unless you
>believe some specially gifted researchers have access to their own
>underlying abilities independently of the language they speak, there
>is no way for a specialist to distinguish what is universal from what
>is peculiar to his own language, is there?
>

Given a certain approach, it's not that far-fetched. If you accept the 
basic paucity of stimulus idea (that we manage to learn far more about
our language than we are given direct data for), and secondarily accept
a general idea that this suggests some (probably language specific) innate
capacity in the brain which deals with/restricts the types of available
structures for human languages, then detailed study of certain phenomena
in a given language may give more insight into this underlying substrate
(which, in one definition, is called "Universal Grammar") than, say, a
collection of Greenbergian type universals of a large number of languages.
Note that no one would say that you _shouldn't_ study multiple languages, 
and certainly any theory of "Universal Grammar"  which does not (eventually) 
cover all languages is deficient, but the means you choose to come up with
certain theories of aspects of "UG" can be varied.

As much as I dislike some of the marginal (to me) constructions that a
lot of GB work is based on, I think the parasitic gap construction that
Engdahl, Taraldsen, and Chomsky have studied is an interesting example
of a phenemenon which 1) is rare, 2) is not taught (try to find it
in a grammar book), 3) Is kind of bizarre if you have a theory that
postulates gaps/movements, but 4) nonetheless seems to be widely shared
among native speakers. As such, it may provide a spotlight into some
subtle principles of "UG", regardless of what theoretical approach(es)
you take.

e.g. What paper did you throw away [e] without reading[e]?

sf

-- 

<Opinions are my own, you betcha>

..... "absolute chaos is guaranteed."  (SVR4 Programmer's reference).
From: rhh@alice.att.com (r hardin)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Animal Grammar
Date: 11 Apr 92 15:07:05 GMT
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill NJ



My Doberman knows over a hundred words

Among them names for a couple dozen toys.

All her toys have names, chosen for my convenience, that I use
consistently;  I always use the names in phrases.

I notice, when she's standing amid the clutter of toys, I can
say ``Get your tiny ball,'' and she's alert, what is it I'm saying?

I repeat it, and then on the third time I change the verb

``Susie, get your tiny ball. (ears up) Get your tiny ball. (about to act,
but undecided)  Where's your tiny ball? (grabs tiny ball and we go out)''

I think I have probably always done this verb change trick for her.

Incidentally, I don't test her vocabulary, or set up tricks. So she's
quite motivated to listen, it's always about something interesting.
From: djbpitt@unix.cis.pitt.edu (David J Birnbaum)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Written and Spoken Language(s)
Date: 10 Apr 92 12:19:54 GMT
Organization: University of Pittsburgh

In article <1992Apr9.204958.19104@cs.yale.edu> horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU
(Scott Horne) writes:

>Slight addendum to slight correction:  The fact that speakers of all the
>various Chinese "dialects" usually write in the same way does *not* mean
>that they share a writing system.  What they share is a written language
>taught in school.
>
>This can be likened to the (almost exclusive) use of Latin as a written
>language in much of Europe before Italian, French, &c, were commonly written.

Last week, in a discussion of Chinese trees and forests, a contributor
was mercilessly flamed for confusing orthography and morphology. Several
other contributors announced in no uncertain terms that speech is
primary and that writing is not a proper object for linguistic study.

The reference to written Chinese as a written "language," rather than as
the writing system used to record a spoken language, leads me to wonder
whether the emphasis on the primacy of spoken language is appropriate.
I realize that this emphasis has been an article of faith in linguistics
for a good long time, but if spoken and written Chinese can be compared
to a linguistic culture that combined spoken Italian, French, &c. with
written Latin, the relationship between spoken and written Chinese does
not seem obviously comparable to the relationship between, say, written
and spoken modern Italian, French, &c.  If we can speak of morphology
in medieval Latin (synchronically), why can we not speak of morphology
in written Chinese?

Curiously,

David
=======================================================================
Professor David J. Birnbaum         djbpitt@vms.cis.pitt.edu [Internet]
The Royal York Apartments, #802     djbpitt@pittvms.bitnet   [Bitnet]
3955 Bigelow Boulevard              voice: 1-412-687-4653
Pittsburgh, PA  15123  USA          fax:   1-412-624-9714
From: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Why are English infinitives so different?
Date: 8 Apr 92 15:01:15 GMT
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK

In article <1992Apr7.123053.2551@cns.umist.ac.uk< hs@cns.umist.ac.uk (Harold Somers) writes:
<1. The 'infinitive' in Latin is an inflected form of the verb, e.g. amare -
<most usually translated in English as 'to love'. So the 'infinitive' in
<English is 'to love'. Never mind the fact that in English there is no
<distinction in the present tense between finite and non-finite, except in the
<3rd person singular.

There is one verb which breaks this generalisation.  Guess which one.  :-)
But the imperative is really always the same thing as the "infinitive"
without the particle "to".

<3.  Latin has six tenses, all indicated by a complex of verbal suffixes. So
<English must have six tenses,

Hold it.  I don't know about Latin, but I have been taught that
English has sixteen tenses.

<despite the fact that some of the tense
<meanings in Latin (notably future, and all the perfective tenses) are formed
<by the use of modals (shall, will) and/or auxiliaries (have).

What does it matter how they are formed?

<If 'He will go'
<is future 'tense', why isnt 'He must go' called the 'imperative tense'?

"Imperative" means something else.

<4. In Latin the verb 'esse' ('be') takes a complement in the nominative
<case. Therefore, the verb 'to be' must take the nominative in English: 'It is
<I...', 'It was we who ....', despite the fact that in English, as in other
<Germanic languages, the natural tendency on the part of speakers is to prefer
<the accusative form <...> for this function: 'It is me', <...>

Which other Germanic languages do you have in mind?  I tried it in
German, and "Es ist mich" and "Das ist ihn" sound awful.
-- 
---- --- -- -  Long Live the Rose and the Heather!  - -- --- ----
Ivan A Derzhanski   (iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk;  iad@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu)
* Centre for Cognitive Science,  2 Buccleuch Place,  Edinburgh EH8 9LW,  UK
* Cowan House, Pollock Halls, 18 Holyrood Park Road, Edinburgh EH16 5BD, UK
From: dleblanc@kub.nl (David Leblanc)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Written and Spoken Language(s)
Date: 13 Apr 92 12:29:38 GMT
Organization: Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands

In article <1992Apr10.171858.4766@cs.yale.edu> horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne) writes:
#In article <1992Apr10.153443.4406@javelin.sim.es.com>, krogers@javelin.sim.es.com writes:

#<Writing is definitely an invention to
#<fit spoken language where as speaking is hardwired in the brain.
#
#That statement happens to be very controversial.  Don't assume that it's
#true.

Well Scott, I assume you're talking about the hardwiring part of the
statement. So tell me, how does a theory that doesn't posit some inate
knowledge of grammar avoid Gold's Paradox and The Poverty of Stimulus 
Argument?


David LeBlanc

--