HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: gaojeng@durras.anu.edu.au (J. Gao)
Subject: Is there a mailing list for Japanese news?
Summary: mailing list for Japanese news
Keywords: mailing list
Organization: Computer Services Centre, Australian National University
Date:  7 Apr 92 13:22:00 GMT

Anybody know of a mailing list for news in Japanese?

Thanks,

J. Gao
From: diamond@JIT081.ENET.DEC.COM (07-Apr-1992 1115)
Newsgroups: sci.lang.japan
Subject: Re: Work & Study in Japan
Date: 7 Apr 92 02:26:45 GMT
Reply-To: NIHONGO@mitvma.mit.edu
Organization: The Internet

mgilula@MIASUN.MED.MIAMI.EDU (Marshall Gilula) writes:
[concerning illegal workers in Japan]
>All of the above is TRUE...

(Well, most of it is.  In fact, some laws apply to all employement
situations, regardless of whether the employment is legal or not.
For example, I think health insurance usually must be provided.
I'm not sure if there's a minimum wage law though.)

>and is a dramatic change for the usually well-controlled country.

Hard to say.  When enough money wanted illegal workers in other
"professions," money obtained political assistance in reducing
the level of control.  Dramatic change in visibility, maybe.

>But the dangers in Tokyo at night have already allegedly increased 1000$
>I meant 1000%

1000$ was correct  :-)   :-(   (within about 30%).   However, evidence
suggests that the burglar was Japanese and not an illegal immigrant.
And burglary seems to be as rampant in my neighborhood as in any other
country.  I don't know where Japan's reputation for safety comes from.

[I would prefer to direct followups to soc.culture.japan, but can't do
it by e-mail.]

-- Norman Diamond     diamond@jit081.enet.dec.com
[This message is unrelated to Digital's business and policies.]
From: lunde@adobe.com (Ken Lunde)
Newsgroups: sci.lang.japan
Subject: Re: jiten FAQ?
Date: 10 Apr 92 19:01:41 GMT
Organization: Adobe Systems Incorporated

In article <1992Apr10.173319.5113@cs.yale.edu>, horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott
Horne) writes:

>>Yes, but this is likely to result in a flamefest.  If anyone posts a FAQ
>>with which I disagree, I'll prepare a counter-FAQ.

Gosh! You must be absolutely entertaining at parties and social gatherings!
What a way to make people decide NOT to post anything! If you disagree, great!
However, you don't have to be snotty about it. I suppose I can expect a flame
from you about this. Tact...

>>Spahn and Hadamitsky is annoying.  Frankly, I wish I hadn't bought it.
>>First, it violates Scott Horne's Dictionary Principle No 1:  DO NOT EVEN
>>THINK ABOUT INVENTING YET ANOTHER CHARACTER-LOOKUP SCHEME.  New students
>>of Japanese may (or may not) find S&H's scheme more convenient than the
>>tried-and-true (or at least established; that's good enough for me) scheme
>>of Kang1 Xi1 (the one with 214 radicals); but they're going to have to learn
>>the latter sooner or later, anyway, and they (and we) shouldn't be bothered
>>with using all the various schemes which exist now.

I agree with you on this issue. I own and use S&H as a tool solely for looking
up compounds by any of their kanji. I really don't like how they bunched up
the hard-to-handle radicals into the first section.

In article <molenda.702929026@msi.umn.edu>, molenda@i1.msi.umn.edu (Jason
Molenda) writes:

>>Furthermore, they have managed to find simply the ugliest font around.
>>Ugh.  Makes my eyes hurt.  This is a big deal to me.  They must have
>>spent incredible amounts of effort compiling this thing; why couldn't
>>they have expended a litle more and bought a nice font?  I refuse to
>>believe they actually used this font by choice.

Yes, bitmapped fonts don't quite cut it in their book. At the time they did the
publishing, PostScript Japanese fonts were available (Ryumin-Light and Gothic
BBB-Medium). Any reprints or future versions should make use of better fonts --
even 300 dpi output would be much better.


-- Ken R. Lunde
   Adobe Systems Incorporated
   Japanese Font Production
   lunde@adobe.com
From: cortese@hepxvt.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese)
Subject: Re: Numbers and language
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Organization: University of California, Irvine
Date: 16 Apr 92 17:55:43 GMT

In article <8781@majestix.informatik.uni-kiel.dbp.de> ma@informatik.uni-kiel.dbp.de (Martin Ameskamp) writes:
>Hi there
>
>I just came across this thread (sorry to barge in like this) and I'd like
>to add another thought (I am a native speaker of German and fairly fluent in 
>English):
>I find that in doing mental arithmetic or memorizing phone numbers or things
>like that, I actually _see_ the figures before me, so that the language
>becomes secondary (same with foreign languages - I have to see a word before I
>can remember and use it). Also, I don't find that I convert numbers I read
>in an English text into German (in French, I do, though).
>An experiment that comes to mind is doing arithmetic, either mentally or
>with pen and paper, while singing or reciting poetry.
>I find this much easier than doing mental arithmetic while reading something.
>This seems to confirm the view that arithmetic _is_ a function seperate from
>language - but it also seems to indicate that these things vary widely
>between individuals.
>

This goes well with something from a book by Richard Feynman, the
nuclear and QED guy.  He once wanted to see if his "time sense" was
affected by stuff outside himself; he got the idea from a paper in
psychology that he laughed at, and wondered if he could investigate it
more conclusively.  He did it by counting uniformly, and found that,
every time, he would count 48 seconds or some number in one minute,
uniformly.  

He also found that he was able to read while counting, and that it
wouldn't mess up his counting rate.  However, he could not talk or even
listen to a conversation and TRY to reconstruct what was said.  He
mentioned this to a friend, who told him he was full of it, and that HE
could count to himself uniformly and talk all he wanted, which he then
proceeded to do.  His friend was, however, unable to read a word and
count at an even rate.  

After this little performance, Feynman asked his friend how he was doing
the counting.  It turns out his friend was "watching" a little tape with
the numbers on it scroll by in his head; hence his eyes were busy
"looking" at the tape, and he couldn't read.  His ears were, however,
free to do their thing.

Feynman, on the other hand, was talking to himself while counting.  This
left his eyes free to read all he wanted, but he couldn't talk or listen
because he was already doing it in his head.

Just thought it was a neat example of how, even when people SAY they are
doing the same thing, they may be taking totally different routes.  I
sure as hell hope that the psych types realize this when they perform
their experiments.  Stuff like this that lies under the surface and
remains invisible until pushed out could play hell with experimental
results.

Regards,
Janis C.
 

Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: jmu@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (James M. Unger)
Subject: Re: Written and Spoken Language(s)
Organization: University of Hawaii
Distribution: usa
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1992 08:03:07 GMT

In article <1992Apr16.145737.10539@cbnewsi.cb.att.com> hlin@cbnewsi.cb.att.com (hua.t.lin) writes:
>
>Let me put this question to you: Why is it that spoken chinese
>dialects (or languages as some prefer here) differ only little bit from
>each other, as compared to classical chinese which sticks out like a sore
>thumb from all other chinese dialects/languages? If we are to believe that
>classical chinese was a spoken language, it would have been fair to assume
>that the major chinese dialects which differ little from each other would
>also differ by little from classical chinese! 

Good question.  The answer, in my opinion, is that the earliest forms of
written Chinese were used by persons who followed reading rules whereby
unwritten syllables were supposed to be supplied by the reader.  That is,
in order to save space and effort, there were scribal practices that
dictated that, in the case of common dissyllabic words, it was sufficient
to write only the first syllable--the reader was expected to supply the
unwritten symbol by rule.  As dialects diverged and the number of literate
individuals increased, these reading traditions fell into disuse:
literati began treating wenyan as an unspoken language.  In other words,
classical Chinese is most likely not a record of a spoken language AND YET
its existence does NOT show that writing was ontogenetically prior to
speech in China.

Note also that the punch of your argument depends crucially on the
(correct) observation that a proto-Chinese reconstruction, UNLIKE classical
Chinese, must have contained quite a few dissyllabic words; this is because
the dialects/languages on which the reconstruction must be based themselves
contain quite a few dissyllabic words--precisely the fact denied way back
at the beginning of this string.







--
J. M. Unger, Chairman
Department of E. Asian Languages & Literatures
University of Hawaii
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne)
Subject: Re: Written and Spoken Language(s)
Organization: Computer "Science" Dept, Yale University
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 17:18:58 GMT

In article <1992Apr10.153443.4406@javelin.sim.es.com>, krogers@javelin.sim.es.com writes:
<
<The obvious reason why spoken language is to be considered the chicken
<with writing the egg is to look at what humans do naturally vs. have
<to be formally instructed in.

Not true.  The reason is that languages tend to be spoken before they're
written.

I wonder if a baby would learn to write if its parents communicated with it
and others only in writing.

<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.

					--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!
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Subject: Re: cinq
Originator: alderson@leland.Stanford.EDU
Reply-To: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Organization: Stanford University LOTS Computer Facility
Distribution: sci
Date: Sun, 12 Apr 92 17:34:08 GMT

In article <ARA.92Apr11013944@camelot.ai.mit.edu>, ara@zurich (Allan Adler) writes:
>Why is there no u following the q?

I guess it sank without trace...  :->

The spelling with <q> is based on a knowledge of the etymology; the same
pronunciation could be spelt

	cinc
	sinc
	sinq

to keep the examples to those that look more-or-less French.
-- 
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: cctimar@athena.cas.vanderbilt.edu (Cary Timar)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Why are English infinitives so different?
Date: 9 Apr 92 02:26:48 GMT
Article-I.D.: athena.1992Apr9.022648.29616
Organization: Vanderbilt U. Math Grad Student

In article <12391@umd5.umd.edu> amunn@macbeth.umd.edu (Alan Munn) writes:
> Here the differences become more subtle, and perhaps there is a
> grammatical answer to the question as well.  In English there are
> basically 3 kinds of verbs which do *not* need 'to' infinitives:
> perception verbs (1a), causatives (1b) and  (some) modals (1c).
> 
> In all other cases, the infinitive must have 'to' before it.

There are some ambiguities in this terrain.  For example, I would claim
that "have to" is a causative verb, and takes the bare infinitive, but
others might consider the "to" in "They have to eat" as an infinitive
marker.  I expect that enough verbs have a particle "to" to sustain debate
over a claim like this for quite a while.

And is the "to" in the previous sentence part of an "enough ... to"
construct, or part of the infinitive?
-- 
	-- Cary Timar, Mathematics Department, Vanderbilt University
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: cpshelle@jeeves.waterloo.edu (cameron shelley)
Subject: Re: Ambiguity a goal of language
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Sun, 12 Apr 1992 17:39:53 GMT

amunn@macbeth.umd.edu (Alan Munn) writes:
> In article <167C512EB2.JAREA@UKCC.UKY.EDU> JAREA@UKCC.UKY.EDU writes:
> >Back to the question of "The main purpose of language":  we'd have to
> >ask the originators of human language what they had in mind:  Was it
> >physics?  politics?  commerce?  religion?   poetry?  sex?  swearing?
> 
> British humour.  Definitely.

Didn't one of Tom Stoppard's characters in _Rosenkrantz and
Guildenstern are Dead_ say "English makes up in obscurity what it
lacks in style"?

				Cam
--
      Cameron Shelley        | "Syllogism, n.  A logical formula consisting
cpshelle@jeeves.uwaterloo.ca |  of a major and a minor assumption and an
    Davis Centre Rm 2136     |  inconsequent."
 Phone (519) 885-1211 x3390  |				Ambrose Bierce
From: hubey@pilot.njin.net (Hubey)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Etymology question
Keywords: Asia, Ashkenazi, Aryan
Date: 9 Apr 92 00:12:19 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.



Can someone please either post or email the known or accepted
etmyologies of the words: Asia, Ashkenazi & Aryan.

When where these words first used in print, if known ?

If there is controversy, what are the various theories regarding
the origins of these words ?

Thanks much.
-- 

	mark	


   hubey@pilot.njin.net                   hubey@apollo.montclair.edu
 ...!rutgers!pilot!hubey                  hubey@logos.montclair.edu
From: cortese@hepxvt.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Numbers and language
Date: 14 Apr 92 20:48:57 GMT
Article-I.D.: noiro.29EB4539.27363
Organization: University of California, Irvine

In article <92105.140336SPIT@EVALUN11.BITNET> Werenfried Spit <SPIT@EVALUN11.BITNET> writes:
>In article <29E9ED82.24577@noiro.acs.uci.edu>, cortese@hepxvt.ps.uci.edu (Janis
>Maria Cortese) says:
>>
>>
>>Why is this?  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
>
>One of the reasons might be that numbers are written the same no
>matter the language (sticking to latin and cyrillic alphabets for
>a moment). That makes it just too easy to regard them half consciously
>as words from your own language. It also depends on what you use a
>language for: I have no problem with numbers in english; maybe partly
>due to the fact that almost all physics reading and discussing I do
>is in english -- I see and use the numbers so frequently that I have
>also mastered them, finally.

You are the second person to suggest this, and I am profoundly
embarrassed that I didn't think of it.  This is a very elegant
and quite likely even correct(!) argument.

Regards,
Janis C.
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: JAREA@UKCC.UKY.EDU
Subject: Re: Numbers and language
Organization: UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 01:42:24 GMT
X-Bytes: 

Once when I was dealing with an agent in Rome (Italy, Scott, not Georgia),
he needed to figure his percent of part of a month at whatever the rent
was in lire.  I had begun my contact with him in Italian, but he also
knew English quite well, and we sort of alternated, although he had a
touch of accent on both Italian and English.  When he did his math, he
suddenly switched to French, however!  This led me to ask where he was
from, and what his native language was.  Lebanon, he said.  He replied
to my next query by pointing out that he had gone through what might
be called middle school at a French speaking school in Lebanon, and
had learned math in French, even mentioning that he found it awkward
to do number thinking in his native language, Arabic.  I found on two
different stays in Italy that having learned my phone number in Italian,
I sometimes hesitated on the infrequent occasions when someone asked in
English for it, and, remembering it in Italian, had to translate it into
English.  (Had similar problem in France, but in England was only bothered
by translating 'oh' to 'naught').  At any rate, it's evidently not so much
what your native language is, but what language you learned your figgers
in -- or at least what language one typically does his math in.  Curiouser
and curiouser.  This is also the mirror image of m rosenfelders suggestion
re arabic, in a perverted way!

Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: blehr@idt.unit.no (Anders Blehr)
Subject: Re: Why are English infinitives so different?
Reply-To: blehr@idt.unit.no (Anders Blehr)
Organization: Div. of CS & Telematics, Norwegian Institute of Technology
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 92 17:56:01 GMT

Cindy Kandolf writes:

|> >Might anyone know why this is so, or whether there are
|> >other languages which refer to their infinitives as English does?
|> 
|> Norwegian does, using the infinitive marker "}".  (You probably have a curly
|> brace on your screen.  The letter is an 'a' with a ring over it, the same
|> as the symbol for "angstrom" from chemistry class.)  
|> 
|> As far as i know, Swedish and Danish also have this type of infinitive,
|> with an infinitive marker and then the verb for a total of two words.
|> However, most of my knowledge of Swedish and Danish is through late-night
|> television, so this may not be accurate 8-)

All Germanic languages use infinitive markers:

- West Germanic:

	Afrikaans: te
	Dutch:     te
	English:   to
	German:    zu

- North Germanic:

	Danish:    at
	Faeroese:  \`{a} (I'm not sure about this one)
	Icelandic: \`{a} (I'm not sure about this one either)
	Norwegian: \aa (`}')
	Swedish:   att

I don't know anything about what the infinitive marker in Frisian may
be, though.

|> -Cindy Kandolf

- Anders.

-- 
 Anders Blehr      [blehr@idt.unit.no]       /   "No matter what mind is,
 Division of Computer Systems & Telematics  /   never mind what matter is."
 Norwegian Institute of Technology         /            - Einstein to Freud
    --- "I wish I was a fisherman, tumbling on the sea" (Mike Scott) ---
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: JAREA@UKCC.UKY.EDU
Subject: Re: Devanagari: Syllabary or Alphabet?
Organization: UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1992 03:18:47 GMT
X-Bytes: 

Just in the interest of hair-splitting, re: nagari:

hlin@cbnewsi.... claimed that, "a consonant without any vowel is written
with only the left-half of the consonant, and is ritten attached to the
next consonant."  This is not true if there is no "next consonant", i.e.,
if it is final.  In that case a grapheme (virama) is added.  In the context
of the preceding flames on "null vowel", we could quibble that when there
is no modifying graph added to a symbol, this is the null "allograph" of
the vowel represented in the current discussion as /@/; but when there
is a null vowel (i.e. no vowel) this must, contrariwise be represented
by that little diagonal stroke.  Veddy clever: the vowel /a/ can be
represented by the absence of symbolization, whilst the absence of any
vowel must have overt representation by virama.  Who said language ain't
logical.

By the way, the whole discussion of alphabet versus syllabary presumes
that these are the choices (given a phonologically based writing system
rather than one that is basically ideographic).  This neglects Wm. L.
Poser's paper "The Structural Typology of Phonological Writing," which
"extends" the typology considerably, whilst pointing out the inaptness
of the labels for some of the writing systems they have been applied to.
(He is at Stanford, and presented this at LSA last January.  He begins
a flame free, exemplified discussion  of the whole schmier.  Please
let's us (nice bit of grammar to parse, that) base further discussion
on it or some other principled presentation.
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne)
Subject: Re: Written and Spoken Language(s)
Organization: Computer "Science" Dept, Yale University
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 23:49:40 GMT

In article <1992Apr10.182727.6690@javelin.sim.es.com>, krogers@javelin.sim.es.com writes:
<horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne) writes:
<
<>Not true.  The reason is that languages tend to be spoken before they're
<>written.
<
<I though that's what I said - at least that's what I meant.  We speak
<long before we learn to write (if ever.)

Oops, sorry about the ambiguity.  What I meant was that the development of
a writing system for a language usually follows the development of speech
for that language.

<><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.
<
<Everything's controversial in linguistics.  Which part didn't you
<like, the hardwired in the brain or the writing invented to fit spoken
<language or both?

The former (though the latter is not a, er, universal :-)).

					--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: hlin@cbnewsi.cb.att.com (hua.t.lin)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Devanagari: Syllabary or Alphabet?
Date: 15 Apr 92 14:50:32 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: AT&T

In article <1992Apr15.021008.103@midway.uchicago.edu> bon6@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
>  [ .... ]
>4.  Scott is not hesitant to posit a "null grapheme" when looking
>    at Devanagari as an alphabet.  I am reluctant to do this, and
>    would prefer a theoretical framework that did not force me to.
>  [ .... ]

There is no ``null grapheme'', if you are refering to the first vowel
which is the default vowel for all Consonants. A consonant without any
vowel is written with only the left-half of the Consonant, and is
written attached to the next Consonant.

Example: `school' as is commonly written in Hindi. (Note the Hindi word for
school is `pathshala', this is the same word as `school' spelt in Devanagari).
             _____________________________
              |        |                |
              |     __ | __      __  __ |
              |___ /  \|/  \    /  \/  \|
              |    \__/|   |    |   |   |
             \|        |   |    |   |   |
              \        _        |   |   |
               \      (_)\              
                     \____)              
                                         
              S        K            L    
                       OO                
                                       
        (half Sa)  (Ka, with oo vowel)  (La, donot pronounce as Laa) 
                    replacing the
                    default vowel
- Lin