HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: jbm@hal.trl.OZ.AU (Jacques Guy)
Subject: Subject/object ambiguity in Breton (was: bhasa etc.)
Organization: Telecom Research Labs, Melbourne, Australia
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1993 22:56:45 GMT


My reference is Pierre Tre'pos' "Grammaire bretonne" (Imprimerie Simon,
Rennes, undated, probably ca 1975)

Page 187, Tre'pos discusses verbal particles. Of "a", paragraph
422, he writes:

Elle a la valeur du _pronom relatif_ A: qui, que et ne s'emploie
que lorsque le _sujet_ ou le _comple'ment d'objet_ direct 
_pre'ce`de_ le verbe: [his emphasis]

         tad-koz a bren eur pakad butun beb sul (eur pakad
         butun a bren tad-koz beb sul), grand-p`ere ache`te un
         paquet de tabac chaque dimanche.

In English, literally:

[Verbal particle A] is equivalent to the relative pronoun: who,
whom, which, and is used only when the _subject_ or the _direct
object_ complement _precedes_ the verb:
        
         tad-koz a bren eur pakad butun beb sul (eur pakad
         butun a bren tad-koz beb sul), granddad buys a packet
         of tobacco every Sunday.


Interlinear translation:

         tad    -  koz    a   bren   eur   pakad    butun
         father    old        buys    a    packet   tobacco

         beb   sul
         every Sunday


In the alternative construction, in parentheses, subject and
direct object have switched positions.  Disambiguation is
purely by meaning.

Tre'pos points out that, in the part on syntax, that the passive
is extremely frequent in Breton. There is no ambiguity in passive
sentences, the agent being marked by the preposition "gand". E.g.
(p.243, paragraph 575):

        drailhet eo bet   e    vraoig   gand     ar   paotr bihan
        broken   is been  his  toy      (agent)  the  boy   little.
        The little boy has broken his toy




 

         
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com (Richard Wojcik,snake)
Subject: Re: Subject and object confusion (Was: Re: "n'ha"...)
Reply-To: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com
Organization: Research & Technology
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 16:49:10 GMT

>In article <1993Jan21.052233.17711@trl.oz.au>, jbm@hal.trl.OZ.AU (Jacques Guy) writes:
> Breton has
> a very strange phonology, by the way, and, if I read correctly 
> between the lines of Pierre Trepoz's Grammaire Bretonne, stranger
> points of grammar: in certain types of phrases, you cannot distinguish
> between subject and object. The only other language I know of that
> does that, and is famous for it, is Lisu, spoken somwhere in Nepal,
> is memory serves..

I saw only this fragment from the original source, so I'm not precisely clear
on what data from Trepos you're referring to.  I should mention that Trepos is
considered notoriously unreliable by some Breton scholars.  Particularly in the
area of some of the word orders he gives.  I have studied Breton in the field,
and I have never been able to come up with good examples of the confusion.  You
have a potential for confusion in topicalized sentences and relative clauses,
but speakers almost always claim that the sentences with preposed objects are bad
in those cases.  Apparently the perceptual confusion influences what speakers
think of as being grammatical.  Although I don't have any hard data to support my
suspicions, I believe that object preposing is legal only in contexts where 
there can be no mistake that the NP in question is the direct object of the verb--
analogous to the "reversible" and "irreversible" passive cases that psycholinguists
talk about.

-----
Disclaimer:  Opinions expressed above are not those of my employer.

    Rick Wojcik   (rwojcik@boeing.com)   Seattle, WA
From: connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Tones in PIE?
Date: 25 Jan 93 09:58:39 -0600
Organization: Memphis State University

In article <1993Jan24.114225.28870@enea.se>, sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) writes:
> Rich Alderson (alderson@cisco.com) writes:
>>First, lets make our terminology more precise:  Lithuanian, Latvian, certain
>>Slavic languages, ancient Greek, and Vedic Sanskrit are supposed to have (or
>>have had) *pitch contours*, rather than *tones* as that term is usually used.
> 
> So let me ignorant layman ask: how would you describe the two
> different accents in Swedish, are they tones or pitch contours?
> Not that I'm questioning anything, I just want to be able to relate
> to something I know. From where you wrote elsewhere, I would guess
> the answer in the latter.

Right.  "Tone" is reserved for describing systems such as that of
Chinese.  Swedish, like other Germanic languages, has a dynamic (stress)
accent.  At least: it's *primarily* one of stress: a stressed syllable
is louder, or at least, is perceived as louder.  But a pure stress
system probably doesn't exist: there is always a pitch contour involved
as well.  Swedish and Norwegian are unusual among Germanic languages
in that there is more than one possible pitch contour, and they contrast.
English has pitch contours too, but any variation never involves a
contrast.  Or in other words, if you change the pitch contour, you
still have the same word in English.  You wouldn't in Swedish or
Norwegian.

>>The final upshot of all this is that we usually reconstruct the PIE accent
>>as a pitch rise based on the Greek and Sanskrit evidence for its pitch nature.
>>In addition, the oldest Indo-European languages do not show the kinds of vowel
>>reductions we expect from a stress accent, as in the history of Germanic or
>>Latin, or the Romance languages.
> 
> Again, I want something to relate to. Do I understand right that none of
> the accents in ancient Greek are the same as the one single accent as
> Romance and West-Germanic languages? (And which is one of the two
> possible in Swedish?)

Ancient Greek apparently had a pitch accent, with two or three (depending
on what you do with the grave) contrasting contours.  If this syllable
was louder, it was apparently not perceived as such, which is why the 
vowels in unstressed syllable aren't reduced, and the stress was totally
ignored in poetry.

As I already explained, the contrasting contours of Greek seem to be a
peculiarly Greek development.  Late Indo-European probably had a pitch
accent, but without the contrasting contours.

All Germanic languages have abandoned the Indo-European accent system,
replacing it with a strong dynamic accent on the first syllable (except
that verb prefixes were not stressed; noun prefixes were).  So the Swedish
system has nothing whatsoever to do with the Indo-European one.

--Leo Connolly
From: swf@tools3teradata.com (Stan Friesen)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Correlation Lengths of Language Changes
Date: 25 Jan 93 21:29:28 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: NCR Teradata Database Business Unit

In article <Jan.18.22.30.55.1993.10130@pilot.njin.net>, hubey@pilot.njin.net (Hubey) writes:
|> 
|> I think personal pronouns were an innovation in language and could
|> and probably did get borrowed. They're probably short for 'this_man', 
|> 'this_woman', 'that_man', etc... I think you give too much credit
|> to primitive man busy chasing lizards to sit around inventing
|> pronouns as if he did not have anything else to do.

Stone age man spent more time sitting around the camp fire talking than anything
else.  It turns out that hunter-gatherer economics requires *less* intensive
effort than anything since.  A hunter had *far* more spare time than *we* do.

And, *third* *person* pronouns may well have originated as you say - many times
over (for instance from Latin to Romance).  First and second person pronouns
are far more fundamental - their lack would indicate a lack of the concept
of 'self' and 'other'.  This perception is *fundamental* to consciousness itself,
it is central to human experience.

|> Man, when did camels get domesticated ? Horses ? Cattle? When did
|> they get out of the stone age?  What condition were the
|> American Indians in around 1500 CE? How about Australian
|> aborigines ?

What has domestication to do with anything?  A hunter-gatherer invaraibly has
a better natural vocabulary than a farmer or rancher.

Talk to an Australian aborigine sometime - you will be surprised at thier
sophistication!

-- 
sarima@teradata.com			(formerly tdatirv!sarima)
  or
Stanley.Friesen@ElSegundoCA.ncr.com
From: connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Vowel systems of ....
Date: 22 Jan 93 22:51:24 -0600
Organization: Memphis State University

In article <Jan.21.22.05.32.1993.1068@pilot.njin.net>, hubey@pilot.njin.net (Hubey) writes:
> 
> Hello again :-)
> 
> Can anyone direct me to a book which might have vowel systems
> including dipthongs of all languages (and maybe hopefully of
> consonants).

You must be joking.  *All* languages?  How many thousand is that?  Wish
I had a book like that!

--Leo Connolly
From: koontz@cam.nist.gov (John E. Koontz X5180)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Subject and Object confusion
Date: 25 Jan 93 18:34:31 GMT
Organization: National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD

In article <1993Jan24.101810.46688@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>, miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:
|> We will have to consult John Koontz on whether this happens elsewhere
|> in Siouan (John, where are you?)

I believe that in Dakotan sentences taken out of context are interpreted 
as Agt. Pat. Verb automatically.  Dakotan is very strict about "SOV" order,
but has no morphological means for distinguishing agent and patient (of two
third person nouns).

In Dhegiha the case of the associated (foregoing) noun is determined
by the article, for the most part, though there can be ambiguities
when the subject is obviative, or inanimate.  Dhegiha tends to be SOV
(Agt. Pat. Verb) in context-free transitive clauses, but in text
variations like OVS and SVO or VSO are fairly common.  I don't know
what the controlling factors are.

I don't know the situation in Ioway-Otoe.

That rounds out Mississippi Valley, which is the only branch I can claim
much familiarity with.

----
John E. Koontz (koontz@bldr.nist.gov)

Disclaimer:  Views and recommendations, express or implied, are my own, and
do not reflect the opinion or policy of my employers.
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: question of 'fluency'
From: bthurman@unca.edu
Date: 25 Jan 93 11:24:26 -0500
Organization: University of North Carolina at Asheville

since the term 'fluency' seems so subjective, it has been my practice in
dealing with students who ask "are you fluent in greek?" or the like to reply:
sometimes, especially when i'm over there, persons will come and speak to me in
greek in my dreams.  if a person dreams, one may suppose that one could be
approaching fluency when this happens.
would welcome critique of this as a response, if reasons accompany response.
thanks, bearded Bill Thurman
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: dasher@well.sf.ca.us (D Anton Sherwood)
Subject: Re: "n'ha" == "daughter of" ? Language?
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 11:56:18 GMT

In article <1742@tdat.teradata.COM> swf@tools3teradata.com (Stan Friesen) writes:
>In article <1993Jan7.235358.14797@trl.oz.au>, jbm@hal.trl.OZ.AU (Jacques Guy) writes:
>|> As someone remarked earlier on, suggesting that it might be of
>|> Celtic origin, there is in fact in Irish a preposition "na"
>|> which translates the genitive plural. So  "x na y" is "x of the y's".
>|> Perhaps that is where Marion Zimmer Bradley drew her "n'ha" from,
>|> but it needs not be a conscious memory.
>
>I think it is though.  She developed the Darkover languages very carefully, as
>reasonable developments from the lnaguages spoken by the original colonists.
>[Check out the story about the foundation of Darkover, it shows what her
>basis was - I think it was a mixed Spanish and Celtic group that crashed
>on the planet].

Carefully?  Hah.  The aristocrats' language ("casta") is Romance in flavor,
and the commoners' language ("cahuenga", the name of a pass in the Hollywood
Hills!) is said to be Anglo-Gaelic; but it's clear from "Darkover Landfall"
(the beginning of the history of Darkover, but written rather late I think)
that the red-haired aristocrats are descended from a clique of romantic
Scots.  The word "bredu" is said to mean `betrothed' or `extramarital lover'
or (possibly) `homosexual lover' depending on the inflection, forsooth --
so is casta a tone language, and did it get that feature from Spanish,
Gaelic or English?  The ritual phrase "z'par servu" obviously means
something like "I am at your service," but where does that `z' come from?
And so on.  I seem to remember hearing MZB quoted as denying that she put
any serious thought into constructing the languages.  It looks as though she
just put some Romance words in to give it a touch of authentic flavor, but
otherwise made it all up as she went along -- which would be consistent with
the fact that she wrote the books in no particular order over a couple of
decades.

Well, I do run into members of her family now and then, I suppose I could
ask the next one I see about the history of casta.
(Makes sense to ask someone with red hair, right?)

Back to the matter at hand, though.  In at least one of the Darkover books,
it is mentioned that "n'ha" is short for "nekhya ha".  "Nic", of course, is
Gaelic for `daughter'.  But, again, where does "ha" come from?  Hebrew?
-- 
Anton Sherwood                                       dasher@well.sf.ca.us
+1 415 267 0685              1800 Market St #207, San Francisco 94102 USA
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: user@computer.uio.no (PC Jorgensen)
Subject: Re: Esperanto a natural language?
Followup-To: sci.lang
Organization: UiO
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 12:13:36 GMT

I've never learned much Esperanto myself, but wasn't/isn't one of the
points of the syntax that you could, to some extent, construct sentences
according to the rules of your native language (Germanic/Slavic/Baltic
users can put the
adjective before the noun, and Romance speakers the noun first)?

And secondly, apart from the literature written in Esperanto, isn't the 
syntax one can find in both written (letters, for instance) and spoken
Esperanto very straightforward (for IE speakers, that is)? (as determined
by the context and the nature of the situations where people who speak/know
Esperanto actually use it?)

At least, most of the examples I've seen of Esperanto in letters is of the
kind - My name is X. I live in Y. I study Z/work as a R. I wish for peace
between all peoples. 

:-)

Hope for clarification,


PC
From: koontz@cam.nist.gov (John E. Koontz X5180)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Vowel systems of ....
Date: 25 Jan 93 18:15:59 GMT
Organization: National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD

In article <1993Jan23.083328.46668@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>, miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:
|> For instance if you wanted to include Amerindian vowel systems (the
|> poster did say "all languages") you might discover Joel Sherzer's _An
|> Areal-Typological Study of American Indian Languages North of Mexico_
|> (North-Holland, 1976).  This attempts to give sound inventories of
|> many languages, but it's rather disastrous.  ...

As I recall, another sort of gaffe that Sherzer made was that he lists a
language as having aspirates, ejectives, etc., if his source describes
these as unit phonemes, but not if his source treats them as clusters.
This was true for his Plains section, anyway.

The fundamental problem, though, was that he deduced linguistic areas
from late postcontact culture areas, some of which are less culture 
areas than holding bins, anyway, so the books says virtually nothing of
use about linguistic areas, and certainly nothing of use about culture 
areas.

----
John E. Koontz (koontz@bldr.nist.gov)

Disclaimer:  Views and recommendations, express or implied, are my own, and
do not reflect the opinion or policy of my employers.
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: pcj1@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Pierre Jelenc)
Subject: Re: Subject and object confusion (Was: Re: "n'ha"...)
Reply-To: pcj1@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Pierre Jelenc)
Organization: Columbia University
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 18:03:30 GMT

In article <38367@uflorida.cis.ufl.edu> bro@elm.circa.ufl.edu (John Bro) writes:
># By the way, aren't there some French constructions where it's unclear
># whether a noun following an infinitive is an object or subject?  
># 
>#         Wir lassen ihn nicht operieren.
>#         'We won't let him operate.'
>#         'We won't let him be operated on.'
># 
>The French translation is equally ambiguous:
>
>	On ne le laissera pas operer/opere'  (no phon. distinction)
>

        Except that one would not say "on ne le laissera pas ope're'".
        The verb must be expressed somewhere, thus:

     On ne le laissera pas ope'rer
     On ne le laissera pas e^tre ope're'


Pierre Jelenc                        pcj1@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu 
                                    Columbia University, New York
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: alderson@cisco.com (Rich Alderson)
Subject: Re: Esperanto a natural language?
Originator: alderson@leland.Stanford.EDU
Reply-To: alderson@cisco.com (Rich Alderson)
Organization: Cisco Systems (MIS)
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 93 17:52:22 GMT

In article <1993Jan20.160900.46570@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>, miner@kuhub writes:
>In article <C14BzL.9B@spss.com>, markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
>
>>>For example it has a complete set of participles;
>> 
>>For those not familiar with Esperanto, I'll slip in a gloss: the language has
>>both active and passive participles in past, present, and future.  Is it true
>>that *no* other language has at least these participles?
>
>Gloss correct.  No, to my knowledge no natural language has a full set.  I may
>be wrong.

Attic Greek, as an example, had the following:

	present active
	present medio-passive
	future active
	future middle
	future passive
	aorist active
	aorist middle
	aorist passive
	perfect active
	perfect medio-passive

Note that the future and aorist have different formations for their middle and
passive, while in the other tenses these are identical.
-- 
Rich Alderson   'I wish life was not so short,' he thought.  'Languages take
                such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.'
                                                        --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@leland.stanford.edu                              _The Lost Road_
From: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Esperanto a natural language?
Date: 22 Jan 93 11:52:18 GMT
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK

In article <C14BzL.9B@spss.com> markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
>In article <1993Jan16.100356.46440@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:
>>However, E does violate some universals; at least it has features which no 
>>"natural" language, IE or otherwise, has.  
>
>Hmm, those are two very different statements.  Surely every language has
>*something* that distinguishes it from all others.  Whether that something is
>important or worth calling the UG Police in on is another question.

The UG police may sometimes point out that a feature which appears
exotic under one analysis doesn't appear so under a different one.

>Do any of the features of Esperanto you cite violate any "language universal"
>any linguist has formally claimed to exist?

Or can it be said to have any features which are so blatantly
unnatural (that is, un-NL-like) that no linguist has even bothered to
express their failure to occur in natural languages in the form of a
universal?  Such as the brackets and subscripts of Lojban?

>> For example it has a complete set of participles;
>
>For those not familiar with Esperanto, I'll slip in a gloss: the language has
>both active and passive participles in past, present, and future.

Rather, what matters is that its participles of both voices distinguish
between exactly as many tenses as its finite (synthetic) verb forms.
Remarkable, but not exactly disturbing.

I would, however, suggest that it is unusual for a language to have an
equal number of past and future tenses.  The default appears to be for
the pasts to strongly outnumber the futures.

>-- in how many Romance languages would _Esperanto_
>in "he speaks Esperanto" naturally appear as an adverb?

In none, unless we manage to prove that Hungarian is a Romance language
(which shouldn't be too difficult: to begin with, the `flea' words are
obviously related, so everything else follows).

>> it is completely regular in its inflection.  
>
>Is this *linguistically* significant?  If I'm not mistaken, Persian 
>approaches this ideal (to say nothing of languages which have no
>inflectional irregularities because they have no inflections).

I'm told that Aymara' comes closest to the ideal, but of course
Persian is fairly close too, as is Hindi.

>What I find most striking about Esperanto is its Victorianness, which can
>be seen not only in Zamenhof's inattention to non-European languages, but in
>his relative lack of interest in syntax.  (Would any modern linguist dream
>of fully describing the syntax of a language in 16 rules?)

Fewer, actually, because not all of those 16 are about syntax.

-- 
 `D'ye mind tellin me whit the two o ye are gaun oan aboot?' (The Glasgow
Ivan A Derzhanski  (iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk; iad@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu)    Gospel)
* Centre for Cognitive Science,  2 Buccleuch Place,  Edinburgh EH8 9LW,  UK
* Cowan House, Pollock Halls, 18 Holyrood Park Road, Edinburgh EH16 5BD, UK
From: st891487@pip.cc.brandeis.edu (Schwartzberg, Queen of Spades)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Subject and object confusion (Was: Re: "n'ha"...)
Date: 26 Jan 93 21:31:24 GMT
Reply-To: st891487@pip.cc.brandeis.edu
Organization: Brandeis University

I'd like to thank the person who posted the explanation of n'ha as a 
fictional construct by Marion Zimmer Bradley. It doesn't matter anymore,
but I think it's important for all bigshot linguists out there to tip
their hats to the Real Answer before getting sidetracked. While this is
really interesting, I am rolling on floor laughing at all those who 
had such a wonderfully serious debate about it. I didn't remember the
answer either. Now say "thank you for unconfusing us" and go on to 
the other discussion, which looks to me like a desperate attempt to 
cover for the fact that nobody caught on. Next thing someone will ask 
about Klingon. Please, please, please someone admit they felt just a wee
bit silly about the whole thing. It was a good question.

  -Schwartzberg
From: connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Tones in PIE?
Date: 26 Jan 93 12:14:40 -0600
Organization: Memphis State University

In article <1993Jan26.155215.9787@leland.Stanford.EDU>, alderson@cisco.com (Rich Alderson) writes:

[splendid stuff omitted]

>  After all, it wasn't until 1925 that Kurylowicz put forth
> convincing evidence that Hittite h and PIE shwa were connected.

Wasn't it 1927?  No matter; it was convincing.  What I've never understood
was why towards the end of his life he backed away from these early
findings almost totally, attributing scores of things to analogy that he
had once -- rightly, I think -- connected with laryngeals.
 
--Leo Connolly
Organization: Doctoral student, Psychology, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 21:05:54 -0500 
From: James Hoeffner <jh6s+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Wanted: Kucera & Francis On-line

I'm loooking for an on-line version of Kucera and Francis's "Frequency
Analysis of English Usage". Can anyone help out?
Thanks,
-JHH