HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Subjectless verbs; was: Re: SVO / VSO
Date: 8 Oct 92 23:58:41 GMT
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK

In article <1992Oct6.130812.3550@memstvx1.memst.edu> connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu writes:
<In article <10931@hogg.ed.ac.uk>, iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski) writes:
<> If the inflected verb form in Spanish is treated as a
<> verb-subject complex, and the person/number ending is a pronominal
<> element, then this is just a case of an empty pronoun.
<
<Both of your "if"s are rather debatable, aren't they?

That's why they are "if"s rather than "because"s.  This kind of
treatment has been proposed primarily for polysynthetic languages such
as Abkhaz or Chinook.

<The first is surely awkward when we consider sentences with an overt
<subject.  Verb agreement still applies!

It is not that awkward.  What you call an overt subject I'd call an
apposition, as in _Il l'a-t-il jamais attrape', le gendarme, son voleur?_
-- where are the subject and the object here?

<The second stumbles over exactly the same point.  While
<I'm aware of such things as French _Moi, je voudrais..._, your proposal
<would require positing double subjects in sentences which don't have
<sentences like the French example.

(Sentences which don't have what?)  The French example is instructive:
I've always been taught that French _je veux_ corresponds to Bulgarian
_iskam_, while _moi je veux_ corresponds to _az iskam_ (that's Spanish
_quiero_ and _yo quiero_, respectively).

<I still dislike morphemes which lack
<phonetic realization under any circumstances, and that is true of the
<proposed Spanish 3.sg. present etc. ending.

Well, there is something that makes _llueve_ third person singular,
isn't there?  What is it?  Whether you call it a null morpheme or lack
of a morpheme doesn't change things too much.

<> In any case, if a null morpheme is not a morpheme, then why is Spanish
<> not substantially different from, say, Latin, where the 3Sg ending is
<> _-t_?  The two are pro-drop to the same degree; the nullhood of the
<> Spanish ending doesn't appear to make a difference.
<
<Nor should it, as long as the vast majority of Spanish verb forms are
<not morphologically ambiguous.

It appeared to me that you were attaching a meaning to the fact that
this particular form of the Spanish verb (third person singular) for
most tenses has a null ending.  What I mean is that this null ending
is functionally equivalent to its Latin counterpart _-t_.

-- 
 `If ye hiv ears oan yer heid - then use them tae lissen.' (The Glasgow Gospel)
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
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: clong@remus.rutgers.edu (Chris Long)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,rec.puzzles.crosswords,rec.puzzles
Subject: Polyglot 9-Square
Date: 16 Oct 92 20:24:03 GMT
Followup-To: sci.lang
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

aanslopen : Dutch
adoperavo : Italian
noviciaat : Dutch
spijkerde : Dutch
leckender : German
orientere : Norwegian
paarderas : Dutch
evaderait : French
notereste : Italian

On a related note, what computer-readable lists of foreign words are
available, public domain or otherwise?  I'd be interested in anything,
but I'm particularly interested in Russian, Hebrew, Spanish, Greek,
Japanese and Latin, since I'd like to try to construct a 9-square that
uses 9 different languages.
-- 
Chris Long, 265 Old York Rd., Bridgewater, NJ  08807-2618
From: hughes@mercury.cis.udel.edu (John Hughes)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Les primitifs semantiques d'Anna Wierzbicka
Date: 13 Oct 92 22:33:54 GMT
Organization: University of Delaware, Newark

In article <1992Oct13.160838.688@spss.com> markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
>Voici la liste entiere des primitifs, du livre _Cross-Cultural Pragmatics:
>The Semantics of Human Interaction_:
>
>  je                 ce, ceci      une sorte de          bon
>  tu                 la meme       une partie de         mauvais
>  quelqu'un          deux
>  quelque chose      tous
>
>  vouloir            pouvoir       lieu                  comme
>  ne pas vouloir     si/imaginez   temps                 parce que
>  dire                             apres (avant)
>  penser                           au-dessus (au-dessous)
>  savoir 
>  faire
>  se passer

I'm surprised this list is so long; I seem to remember reading in a book by
Wierzbicka called _Lingua Mentalis_ that she had narrowed "mentalese" down
to only thirteen primitives (which look like they are included in the list
above), and that she had said of her list that though readers would think the
list were shockingly short, she herself suspected the list were too long, and
hoped to remove some or fuse some together. In particular I remember she wanted
to remove the distinction between "don't want" and "bad" in her list, but I see
they are both still there. The list above is more than double that in _Lingua
Mentalis_; I suppose her early idea that there should be very few semantic
primitives didn't pan out too well. 


John
hughes@cis.udel.edu
From: weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Chomsky's last paper
Date: 15 Oct 92 19:04:20 GMT
Article-I.D.: netnews.93276
Reply-To: weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Followup-To: rec.arts.books
Organization: The Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology
In-reply-to: miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu

In article <1992Oct15.072929.43866@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>, miner@kuhub writes:
>> Title : Tout ce que les hommes savent a propos des femmes.
>> The book was completely white...

>Titled, but contentless, books became a fad for a while in the U.S.
>One of my favorites was _Irish Erotic Art_...

My favorite is THE WIT AND WISDOM OF SPIRO AGNEW.  A very brief
chronology, and then the essense of his wit and wisdom.

Actually, MAD magazine used to (still does?) have a double page spread
of imaginary titles for very brief books.  Running into one of them in
real life is always a fun surprise.
-- 
-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu)
From: connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Latin/PIE/Finnish verbs (was:Subjectless verbs)
Date: 13 Oct 92 19:25:36 GMT
Organization: Memphis State University

In article <1992Oct12.220755.27219@s1.gov>, lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich) writes:
> In article <1992Oct12.103446.3624@memstvx1.memst.edu> connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu writes:
>>In article <1992Oct12.093324.19518@s1.gov>, lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich) writes:
> 
>>                   [of verb endings]
> $ 	The ultimate origin ^ is probably from suffixed pronouns.
>>
>>Possible, but it's not easy to prove, since the forms of the pronouns
>>are actually quite unlike verb endings (with the sole exception of
>>1sg verbal -m and pronominal oblique stem m-).
> 
> 	However, the 1p and 2p endings _do_ look like the 1s and 2s
> pronouns *m- and *t- with a suffix. And for the 2s, *-t- > *-s- is
> possible.

Well, so what?  I mean, the resemblance is real, but the meaning
is different.  Caution urges that we call it a coincidence.

By the way, -t- does not go to -s- in most IE languages, which is
why the Latin 3.sg. ending is -t in every active form save the
perfect indicative.  So the -s of the 2.sg. must have some other
origin; it cannot be connected with _tu_ or its Greek reflex
_sy_ < *_tu_.

--Leo
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: aronsson@lysator.liu.se (Lars Aronsson)
Subject: OverseaS -- plural or genitive S?
Organization: Lysator Academic Computer Society, Linkoping University, Sweden
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 18:57:56 GMT

There is a class of composed words made up from one preposition and
one noun, used as an adverb of place: Overseas, outdoors, inside,
downstream.

Some of these end in an s. Why? Is it a plural s (over many seas, out
of many doors), or is it a genitive s (remaining for some strange
historic reason)?

In Swedish, even more of these words end in an s, and also where s
cannot be not used for plural: nedstroms (downstream), inombords
(inside, on board), utomlands (out of the country), hinsides havet (at
the far side of the sea). This suggests the ending s is for genitive.

What really made my mind cross these seas is a word Vastanstang, a
local geographic denominator. Vastanstang is the half of my county
Ostergotland which is west of river Stang. To say "Ostergotland
Vastanstang" is like saying "the British colonies overseas". To me, it
sounds more natural to add an s to Vastanstang. But I need a reason, a
way to motivate this.
--
Lars Aronsson, Lysator, Linkoping University, Linkoping, Sweden
From: aeb@cwi.nl (Andries Brouwer)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: OverseaS -- plural or genitive S?
Date: 15 Oct 92 22:14:34 GMT

aronsson@lysator.liu.se (Lars Aronsson) writes:

#There is a class of composed words made up from one preposition and
#one noun, used as an adverb of place: Overseas, outdoors, inside,
#downstream.

#Some of these end in an s. Why? Is it a plural s (over many seas, out
#of many doors), or is it a genitive s (remaining for some strange
#historic reason)?

It is a genitive occurring in all germanic languages.
E.g. in Old Icelandic one has u'tanlands, innanbords (d=eth), innanhu'ss, etc.
Sometimes one also sees the s from the article (in the genitive), as in Dutch
binnenshuis, binnenskamers.
From: hubey@pilot.njin.net (Hubey)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Subjectless verbs
Date: 16 Oct 92 02:28:39 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

Sorry for the messy posting. I'm having problems with emacs
running in xterm.
-- 

	mark	


   hubey@pilot.njin.net                   hubey@apollo.montclair.edu
 ...!rutgers!pilot!hubey                  hubey@logos.montclair.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: linnan@sandman.cs.hut.fi (Matti Linnanvuori)
Subject: Re: Latin/PIE/Finnish verbs (was:Subjectless verbs)
Organization: Helsinki University of Technology, CS lab
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 09:24:11 GMT

>> 	If I remember correctly, the reconstructed IE paradigm looks
>> something like:
>> 
>> 	-o:/-mi
>> 	-si
>> 	-ti
>> 	-mes
>> 	-tes
>> 	-nti

>> 	Someone mentioned the Finnish verb conjugation once as looking
>> a lot like Latin. What is it, again?

>	puhun		puhumme
>	puhut		puhutte
>	puhuu		puhuvat

  The 1.sg. verb suffix in Finnish possibly evolved from the ancient
1.sg. pronoun 'mi', which looks similar to the IE verb suffix. The
2.sg. likewise from the pronoun 'ti'. The 3. forms evolved from
participle -va (plural -vat). The present 1. and 2. pl. pronouns are
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: pesetsk@athena.mit.edu (David M Pesetsky)
Subject: Re: SVO / VSO
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 13:58:33 GMT

In article <1992Oct6.131431.1211@news.Hawaii.Edu> lee@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Greg Lee) writes:
>In article <1992Oct4.120743.6842@athena.mit.edu> pesetsk@athena.mit.edu (David M Pesetsky) writes:
>}
>}...  Lying behind your remarks, I suspect, is
>}the assumption that the VP has to be a purely structural notion with no
>}semantic underpinnings or consequences.  ...
>
>No, you misunderstand.  The "VP" of the "functional structure" in my
>handout has _only_ semantic underpinnings or consequences.  The
>syntax is a context free phrase structure grammar with no VPs.
>Sentences are generated or not, as the case may be, with no reference
>to VP.  Trees constructed in the ordinary way have no VPs.  By some
>notational tricks, other trees _may_ be constructed with VP-like
>constituents, for your viewing pleasure.  The whole bit was an
>exercise in distinguishing appearance (semantics) from reality
>(syntax).

I haven't studied your construction carefully, so correct me if I missed
something that you made explicit.  But do you think that calling your
set of functional application rules "semantics" as opposed to a "tree"
makes it semantics and not a tree?

As far as I can see, your semantics has a tree structure as well, which
contains a VP.  The fact that you also define a different structure
without a VP can be made into an empirical claim (cf. and has, without
the "semantics" label -- both in early LFG and in GBish papers that
allowed for non-configurational languages) -- but does not eliminate the
observation that, like it or not, your "semantics" has a VP.

If all that's at stake is labels, then, of course, there's no substance
to the discussion. If there is more at stake, then it is the following:
we both agree on the existence of VP in languages of diverse types
(though concensus doesn't equal correctness and you prefer different
terminology) and can now see the real question: whether there are
phenomena that argue for a distinct representation without a VP.

-David Pesetsky
From: bochner@das.harvard.edu (Harry Bochner)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: OverseaS -- plural or genitive S?
Date: 16 Oct 92 22:12:12 GMT
Article-I.D.: das.1992Oct16.221212.212
Organization: Aiken Computation Lab, Harvard University

In article <1992Oct15.123335.3689@memstvx1.memst.edu>, 
connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu writes:
|> So what we seem to have is a genitive ending that's come unsprung
|> and turned into an adverbial formative in Germanic languages.

This reminds me of another adverbial formative I've been puzzled by.
Yiddish has some adverbs in -s, like the ones of other Germanic languages already
mentioned in this discussion, but it also has some in -t. Some examples off the
top of my head:

demolt (then) < dem+mol+t (i.e. at that time)
denstmol (then, in some dialects) < den+s+t+mol (at that time)

and in the construction  fun Xs vegn, meaning for X's sake, we have both a
frozen idiom
fundestvegn (however) < fun+des+t+vegn (originally for the sake of that)

and more transparently
fun maynet vegn (for my sake)
fun ayert vegn  (for your (pl.) sake)

To my knowledge, the forms maynet and ayert never occur outside this construction.

So, the question is, does anyone know what the origin of this -t might be?

Thanks,

-- 
Harry Bochner
bochner@das.harvard.edu
From: aeb@cwi.nl (Andries Brouwer)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Was fuer ein (Was: Case & NP-movement)
Date: 16 Oct 92 22:50:42 GMT

Someone asked - I lost the attribution -
==== ... is there any account of the German "was fuer" or
==== Russian "chto za" (`what kind of`) constructions that explains why the
==== following NP is nominative?

I don't know about Russian, but in German and Dutch the following NP
is traditionally a genitive (partitivus) after words like
Dutch "iemand", "niemand", "iets", "niets", "wat" , "veel".
[iets anders / wat moois / niet veel soeps ]
and this is the only construction in Middle High German
[niht schoeners / waz wunders / waz mannes ].
More recently various replacements for this genitive got into use,
like Dutch "wat voor" / German "was fuer", "was von".
At least in Dutch contamination of the two constructions is
not impossible: "met wat voor moois kom je nu weer thuis?".

connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu wrote:
===German _was fuer (ein)_ can be followed by any of the four cases:
and gives various artificial sounding examples.

A5711DAA@vm.univie.ac.at (Benke Gertraud) writes:
== I did not read your discussion last time and just came across this
== message. However, as a native speaker of German I want to state that
== certainly no one would use the GEN, DAT or ACC construction.

connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu answers:
=I'm not a native, but my German ist pretty darned good, especially since I
=learned it in Innsbruck.   ...   I also
=agree that I would probably use a modal construction for the oblique
=cases when speaking, though it would probably come out
=	Was war das fuer ein Mensch, dem sie Bier gebracht hat?
And indeed this sounds completely natural (to my Dutch ears).
So, my conjecture would be that the previous state of the language
where the NP depended on the pronoun, and the pronoun carried the
case required by the surrounding sentence, is still sufficiently
alive to make the reverse construction sound awkward.
From: connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: OverseaS -- plural or genitive S?
Date: 15 Oct 92 18:33:35 GMT
Organization: Memphis State University

In article <1825@lysator.liu.se>, aronsson@lysator.liu.se (Lars Aronsson) writes:
> There is a class of composed words made up from one preposition and
> one noun, used as an adverb of place: Overseas, outdoors, inside,
> downstream.
> 
> Some of these end in an s. Why? Is it a plural s (over many seas, out
> of many doors), or is it a genitive s (remaining for some strange
> historic reason)?
> 
> In Swedish, even more of these words end in an s, and also where s
> cannot be not used for plural: nedstroms (downstream), inombords
> (inside, on board), utomlands (out of the country), hinsides havet (at
> the far side of the sea). This suggests the ending s is for genitive.
> 
> What really made my mind cross these seas is a word Vastanstang, a
> local geographic denominator. Vastanstang is the half of my county
> Ostergotland which is west of river Stang. To say "Ostergotland
> Vastanstang" is like saying "the British colonies overseas". To me, it
> sounds more natural to add an s to Vastanstang. But I need a reason, a
> way to motivate this.

German has the same phenomenon, but -s is not a plural formative in
native words.  I suspect it derives from the genitive -- but the
pertinent German examples have mostly feminine nouns, which precisely
do *not* have -s in the genitive.  Example: diesseits 'this side of',
jenseits 'beyond' (cf. die Seite 'side).  -s is also used as an
adverbial formative on simple nominals, agaim without reference to
gender: abends 'in the evening' (der Abend), nachts 'late at night'
(die Nacht); strangely, a form with an article is also possible,
yielding a peculiar _des Nachts_.  And German also uses -s- to join
compoinds -- principally, for some reason, when the first noun is
feminine and hence shouldn't have -s (Universitaetsbibliothek from
die Universitaet + die Bibliothek 'library').  And no, German feminine
nouns have never had -s, not even in Old High German of 800 AD.
So what we seem to have is a genitive ending that's come unsprung
and turned into an adverbial formative in Germanic languages.

--Leo Connolly
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: andaling@durras.anu.edu.au (Avery Andrews)
Subject: SVO / VSO --> NP-movement
Organization: Computer Services Centre, Australian National University
Date:  7 Oct 92 07:25:13 GMT

Re: pesetsk@athena.mit.edu (David M Pesetsky),
    <1992Oct2.151844.22435@athena.mit.edu>

>The problem is not a lack of imagination that can develop "accounts",
>but a lack of any real understanding concerning the cross-language and
>language-internal asymmetries found.  I, for one, have yet to see a
>discussion of these matters that looked insightful, ...

Hmm.  It seems to me that Sigurdsson's 1991 NLLT article shows that
case-marking of a position may be necessary for an NP to appear in
it, but *can't* be sufficient.  So maybe the difference between
Icelandic and English is that Icelandic has case-marking rules
that can get at more positions than in English, so Icelandic
(and presumably various other Western European languages) illustrate
the non-case theoretic aspect of NP-licensing.  In particular, one
thing that Sigurdsson shows is that there is a visible case-transmission
effect from `subject-raised-to-object' to `original object' position:

(a)  thad var kosinn  einhver leikari  til forsetaembaettis
     it   was elected some    actor(N) to  Presidency

(b)  their segja hafa    verid kosinn einhvern leikara til forsetaembaettis
     they  say   to-have been elected some     actor(A)

So the post-verbal nominative in (a) could well be getting its case
via transmission from the subject, by a rule/effect that Lasnik argues
doesn't exist in English, but in (b) we can really see that it is
happening.

On the other hand, postverbal nominatives coocurring with dative
subjects do keep their nominative case in `SOR' constructions,
so these might involve nominative assigned by the (lower) verb:

(c)  their segja str'akunum  hafa   verid gefnir hestarnir
     they  say   the-boys(D) to-have been given  the-horses

(some people do accept accusative here, however, suggesting that
case-transmission & assignment by the verb are both possible).

So maybe the difference is that in English the expletive is case-greedy,
& won't share it with the object, while western european expletives
are more generous (or wimpy).

Avery.Andrews@anu.edu.au


Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: ski8032@tamsun.tamu.edu (Suman Kumar Inala)
Subject: How to construct an artificial language?
Keywords: artificial language construction minimal
Organization: Texas A&M University, College Station
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1992 20:34:07 GMT


I'm trying to construct a language flexible and robust enough
to express any arbitrary idea or object, with the ability to
be expanded to include future concepts.  I'd prefer for the
language possess a type of structure and logic similar to that 
of real world languages, as well as its own set of arbitrary 
rules and exceptions.

This language is part of a larger project, so I'd prefer to
find a simple way of constructing such a language.  The
minimal word list is a good start, but since I'm not a linguist,
I don't know how to properly proceed from there.  If you can,
try to avoid linguistic language (like SVO, VSO, NP, etc) and
employ English if possible.

Thank you all.

Till next time,

<>  Sam Inala  <>
From: connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Subjectless verbs
Date: 8 Oct 92 02:44:26 GMT
Organization: Memphis State University

In article ... markross@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
>In article <1992Oct3.074936.3503@memstvx1.memst.edu>
>connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu
>
>(Leo Connolly) writes:
>>By the way: if 3.sg. pronouns are suffixed to the verb, as
>you say,
>>where do they appear?  The 3.sg. ending in most tenses is
>Null!
>
>and in <1992Oct6.130812.3550@memstvx1.memst.edu> adds
>>I still dislike morphemes which lack
>>phonetic realization under any circumstances, and that is
>true of the
>>proposed Spanish 3.sg. present etc. ending.  (The preterite
>-o is,
>>of course, not the same morpheme.)
>
>I'm not sure I understand the theory under which the null
>morpheme appears. The present indicative endings of -ar verbs,
>say, can be given as
>-o, -as, -a, -amos, -a'is, -an.  No 3.sg. null ending.  To get
>one you presumably have to create (say) a present tense
>morpheme -a-, followed by endings -??, -s, -, -mos, -'is, -n.
>There's an obvious difficulty with the 1.sg. ending; the 2.pl.
>ending with its dangling accent is a bit strange; also, for
>that matter, there's the Argentine form (vos) hable's.  Worse
>yet, these endings don't apply nicely to the other tenses (cf.
>the future, preterit, or imperative).  !Que' li'o!  Why would
>one want to do this? What's the advantage over saying that the
>3.sg. ending is -a?
 
If there were only one Spanish conjugation, you'd be right.  But there
are three, and so one can analyze a verb such as _amar_ as having the
root _ama-_ rather than _am-_.  Similarly, second conjugation verbs
would have base forms such as _come-_, and third conjugation verbs
would be _pedi-_.  While allowance must be made for morphophonemic
changes where an ending and the vowel of the root come together, the
simplest explanation would be approximately:
 
        -o      -mos
        -s      -is
        -0      -n
 
To accommodate the third conjugation, the 3.sg. might better be defined
as [-high] than -0, and the 3.pl as [-high]n, but you see the point I
was making.  This analysis permits the endings to be applied to several
different tenses, though not to the preterite.  There is probably a
1.sg. allomorph -0 alternating with -o, but that's quite a different
thing than positing a zero *morpheme*.
 
--Leo Connolly
Newsgroups: sci.lang