HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne)
Subject: Re: Linguistics TV Schedule
Keywords: Dixie
Organization: Computer "Science" Dept, Yale University
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 07:11:36 GMT

In article <29EB50AC.28579@noiro.acs.uci.edu>, cortese@hepxvt.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese) writes:
<In article <7041@amsaa-cleo.brl.mil> matt@amsaa-cleo.brl.mil (Matt Rosenblatt) writes:
<
<>Wait a minute!  If this last still counts as a national anthem, why did
<>Mr. Horne leave out
<>
<>       "I wish I was in the land of cotton . . ."?
<
<The lack of the subjunctive probably gave him hives ;-).

No, that's the "correct" way to sing the song.  Actually, `wuz' is probably
correct.

You can't expect good English from rednecks who wrap themselves in the
Confederate flag.

					--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
Shao2shan1 sheng1 de tai4yang2 yong3 bu2 luo4!
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne)
Subject: Re: inventing a writing system?
Organization: Computer "Science" Dept, Yale University
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 23:46:00 GMT

Friends, it's high time to move this out of `sci.lang'.

In article <1992Apr10.182652.14911@cbnewsi.cb.att.com>, hlin@cbnewsi.cb.att.com (hua.t.lin) writes:
<In article <1992Apr10.173113.5044@cs.yale.edu> horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne) writes:
<
<>The digits we use are not *Arabic*, but *Hindu-Arabic*.
<
<To be more precise, the 10 symbols we use today for the digits
<(0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9) were of arabic origin.

And the Arabic numerals (not the same as the ones you see on your computer
screen right now) are of Indian origin.

					--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: Latin self-study
Originator: alderson@leland.Stanford.EDU
Reply-To: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Organization: Stanford University LOTS Computer Facility
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 92 20:03:56 GMT

In article <1992Apr4.192658.5610@cs.yale.edu>, horne-scott@CS (Scott Horne) writes:
>In article <ARA.92Apr4121215@camelot.ai.mit.edu>, ara@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Allan Adler) writes:

><Scott Horne reports that he reads Greek correctly, right down to the tonal
><accents.
>
>Of course, there's some dispute as to the values of various phonemes, so
>one can't claim "reads Greek correctly".
>
><Can he be persuaded to distribute a tape recording of noun and
><verb paradigms ?
>
>With some six or seven hundred finite verb forms (not to mention infinitives,
>participles,...)?!  Why not just ask me to tape all of Plato?  (The answer is
>no.  :-))

Besides, paradigms are all well and good, but some examples of connected text
are better.  Maybe Plato, after all... :)  And some Homer, and Euripides.

>W. Sidney Allen mentions a few recordings in _Vox Graeca_.

Personal preference:  I don't like the Daitz tapes--too Koine for my taste,
with it's fronted upsilon and high (rather than mid-high tense) omicron-upsilon
for example.

The record had been stolen from the library copy of Stanford that I looked as
an undergraduate--does anyone know if it was any better?
-- 
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_
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: JAREA@UKCC.UKY.EDU
Subject: Re: Latin alphabet (was: Inventing a writing system?)
Organization: UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1992 02:27:03 GMT
X-Bytes: 

Scott suggests that, "combinations of Cyrillic....letters can be used to
represent....English" (or any other language).  True, but even so it is
of historic interest to note that Russian Cyrillic (Scott will know at
least 2 reasons I must use the limitation) formerly had a character that
was the equivalent of Greek 'theta', which would have been handy for
representing the interdental fricative (as was the 'thorn' in earlier
English) without need for "digraphs".  Unfortunately they discarded this
(probably during some cruel Stalinist purge), and names that are the
equivalent of 'Theodore' and 'Thomas' end up like 'Fyodor' and 'Foma' with
a character the equivalent of Greek 'phi' instead of 'theta'.  I have often
speculated as to whether this might eventually lead to the abandonment of
the dissertation requirement for the doctorate requirement in Russia on the
basis that it has become more difficult to distinguish between 'theses' and
'feces'.  {please supply your own smiley, or equivalent, as Cyrillic lacks one.
From: e343mh@tamuts.tamu.edu (Michael Hand)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: NegV vs. NegQ
Date: 9 Apr 92 20:51:26 GMT

David A. Johns writes:
     >My position is that the data you are using are not legitimate.  All
     >the theory in the world is of no use if you can't decide what it's a
     >theory of.

Let me introduce some terminology: an s-interpretation (semantical 
interpretation, reading, etc.) is an interpretation of a sentence 
generated by a compositional semantics on the basis of the syntactic 
structure (LF, s-structure, whatever you like) of the sentence.  
A p-interpretation is what a hearer might take to be the "intended 
content" of the utterance.  (I know this is imprecise, but a huge 
amount of work is being devoted to these issues and it would be unfair 
to insist that I be perfectly precise.  If I'm not clear enough, I'll 
try to clarify.)
	Now, you seem to think this is a *datum*: negQ is an 
s-interpretation (maybe the only s-interpretation) of the sentence 
in question.
	But this isn't a datum.  The datum is that negQ is the 
preferred p-interpretation.  But no *data* require that all 
p-interpretations be s-interpretations.  This is an issue about 
how to cut up semantics and pragmatics in the theory.  My suggestion 
was that the preferred p-interpretation is not an s-interpretation, 
and that the only s-interpretation is negV.  Then pragmatics explains 
why the preferred p-interpretation is negQ despite the semantical fact.
	You can't argue against my suggestion by merely insisting, as if 
it is a matter of data alone, that negQ is an s-interpretation.  You
and I agree that it's the preferred p-interpretation -- we agree on the 
data.  The theoretical issue is whether this preferred p-interpretation 
is an s-interpretation, and that's a highly theoretical question.
	So *please* stop suggesting that I'm ignoring data.  I grant 
all the data, I just refuse to grant certain theoretical claims that 
you cite as data (but aren't), such as that negQ is an s-interpretation.
	One more time: yes, everyone interprets the sentence in question
as negQ.  That's a datum.  It does not follow without nontrivial
theoretical premises that negQ is therefore a (the?) s-interpretation.
	Okay?  (Bear in mind I don't advocate the suggestion I made, but
I certainly do think that whether it's a good suggestion depends
on more than data alone.  You seem to think that the data settle
the question, but that's the mistake I'm diagnosing: data + theory
settle the question.  Data + different theories settle the question
in different ways.  Data alone don't even come close.)

B-o} Michael
From: cortese@hepxvt.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese)
Subject: Re: feminine as the generic case
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Organization: University of California, Irvine
Date: 11 Apr 92 00:25:00 GMT

In article <506@tdatirv.UUCP> sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) writes:
>In article <17612@sbsvax.cs.uni-sb.de> simon@fsinfo.cs.uni-sb.de (Julia Simon) writes:
>|kovach@austin.cogsci.uiuc.edu (Edward Kovach) writes:
>|> What languages use the feminine as the unmarked or generic case?
>|> How sexist do the speakers of these languages appear to be?
>|> Please reply directly to me, I may miss posted replies.  Thanks in advance!
>|
>|Could you please post your replies as well? I'm sure I'm not the only one
>|interested in this subject here in Netland!
>
>Actually, I doubt if there will be much.
>

Wrong.  It sounds neat. 

>As far as I know, only Indoeuropean languages have a three-way, gender-based
>noun classification system.  Most other noun classification systems involve
>more categories, and often treat gender as a very minor factor (if at all).
>[though the classification system may still be just as arbitrary as in I.E.].

I think that the original poster was not talking about noun gender so
much as the issue that pops up, for instance, with personal pronouns.
You know -- "ellas" is a million women, "ellos" is a million women and
one man.  That type of thing.

Anyone check out any extinct languages, like REALLY early Greek or
Egyptian?

Regards,
Janis C.

Janis Cortese           ||   "The United States is the only country to  
U. C. Irvine            ||    have gone from barbarism to decadence  
cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu ||    without passing through civilization."            
========================||                 -- H. L. Mencken
From: IO11412@MAINE.MAINE.EDU
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Optative and Admirative
Date: 3 Apr 92 21:09:25 GMT
 <1992Apr3.033748.1220@leland.Stanford.EDU>
 <ARA.92Apr3101834@camelot.ai.mit.edu>
Distribution: sci
Organization: University of Maine System

Bulgarian has a mood that is used to describe an event which is known
to the narrator indirectly (the narrator has not been a witness of the
event.
The Bulgarian term is : preizkazno (reported) naklonenie (mood)
For more details: ask me, or read (in Bulgarian) the book of Prof.
Lyubomir Andreychin on Bulgarian Grammar.
If there is interest, I can post some details on the Net.

Cheers,

Dragomir R. Radev

e-mail : Io11412@MAINE.BITNET ,     or
         radev@gandalf.umcs.maine.edu
From: cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese)
Subject: Re: Latin alphabet
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Organization: University of California, Irvine
Date: 11 Apr 92 01:02:52 GMT

In article <1992Apr5.015317.4875@athena.cs.uga.edu> mcovingt@athena.cs.uga.edu (Michael A. Covington) writes:
>The presupposition of some recent postings seems to be that the emergence
>of any world standard is an unfortunate and Politically Incorrect thing.
>
>The Latin alphabet does seem to be the preferred character set for hitherto
>unwritten languages, just as the metric system is the preferred system of
>weights and measures where there is no strong tradition of anything else.
>

I don't think you can compare writing system and weights and measures.
No one has ever been thrown out of school for "speaking" MKS or had a
wooden shoe tied around their neck for talking in British units.

*I* think it's just because most people that study this junk use a
Latinate alphabet, and use computers that have those kinds of keyboards.
It's probably better for a language to work on its OWN writing system,
though, or else they might get stuck with a lousy one that was a poor
fit.

Regards,
Janis C.


Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne)
Subject: Spelling bees (Re: Latin alphabet (was: Inventing a writing system?))
Organization: Computer "Science" Dept, Yale University
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1992 01:41:40 GMT

In article <29E63A12.8419@noiro.acs.uci.edu>, cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese) writes:
<
<I shared an office with another grad from Argentina a
<while back, and she was floored when she heard of the concept of a
<"spelling bee."

French has them, too.  I remember reading about one that took place two years
ago.  Apparently the German priest who won it was the first ever to get a
perfect score.

(Which other languages have spelling bees?  Irish?  Tibetan?  Greek?
Not Chinese.)

(Incidentally, the article you're reading was written by a noted spelling-bee
champion.  :-)  Haven't lost one yet.)

<Let's face it.  Every language has to have a peeve to make it hard for
<nonnative speakers to learn it.

Not every language.  You should try Indonesian.  :-)

<English doesn't have genders,

On nouns.  Anymore.  (Old English had three genders.)

<or that many irregular verbs (at last count, I heard it was a
<mere 144),

I think I can produce a list of 310.  Anyway, most languages don't have *any*
irregular verbs.  I can't think of a modern Indo-European language with more
irregular verbs than English.

<All this makes it too easy, so we HAD to have a
<screwed up system of writing it just to make the furriners go nuts
<learning it.

BZZZZZZZZT.  There's a hyphen in `screwed-up', and you misspelled
`foreigners'.  :-)  (Well, you said you were a good speller.  :-))

[About English:]
<It tends to invent words a bit too often
<instead of exploring metaphor, but then that's a personal taste.

One I happen to share.

<ANYway, don't flame me on this.

Too late.  :-)

<I LIKE English, but I'm also damned
<glad I learned how to write and speak it natively, or else I'd go nuts.

Why?  Our very own Ivan Derzhanski isn't a native speaker of English,
but he spells better than the great majority of natives.

					--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: Written and Spoken Language(s)
Originator: alderson@leland.Stanford.EDU
Reply-To: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Organization: Stanford University LOTS Computer Facility
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 92 17:36:39 GMT

In article <204689@unix.cis.pitt.edu>, djbpitt@unix (David J Birnbaum) writes:
>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.

YO!  Back up.

I don't consider my posts to have been flamage, but let that drop.  However, I
did *not* announce anything *at all* resembling "writing is not a proper object
for linguistic study."  As an Indo-Europeanist, written materials are one of
the major tools at my disposal.

However, I'd prefer a spoken source if such were available.  Since it isn't, I
have to turn to languages *spoken* now, for evidence on how to interpret the
written records which are all I have to work with.

>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?

Written language is a different beast from spoken language.  One finds longer,
more complete sentences/phrases, more polished phrasing, a larger vocabulary,
etc., than in *typical* spoken language.  (I've just side-stepped the issue of
traditional oral compositions.)

But the spoken form of the language is still of primary concern, because the
written form may be heavily influenced by cultural forces originally expressed
in a different language, or may have a traditional status that acts conserva-
tively to keep current usage out for long periods.  (Example:  Written French
pronominal usage vs. spoken French on the streets of Paris.  Extreme example:
Written Chinese vs. the languages of modern China.)

But the written form is a worthy object of study.  Just don't be confused by
its social and cultural importance into thinking that is is more important than
the spoken form.
-- 
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_
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: pautler@ils.nwu.edu (David Pautler)
Subject: Re: Is ambiguity functional?
Organization: The Institute for the Learning Sciences
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 15:06:07 GMT

In article <1992Apr9.045946.7714@sunb10.cs.uiuc.edu>, epstein@sunc2.cs.uiuc.edu (Milt Epstein) writes:
> In <70140@bcsaic.UUCP> rwojcik@atc.boeing.com (Richard Wojcik) writes:
> 
> I agree with pretty much everything that is stated in the above
> paragraphs, with the exception of the following two statements.
> 
>      >However, my point was that ambiguity plays the functional role
>      >of allowing the linguistic system to be relatively compact.
> 
>      >Ambiguity is a design feature of language, not a flaw.
> 
> These still trouble me, and I'm wondering if they're not a confusion
> of cause and effect.  What evidence is there that ambiguity is a
> design feature of language?  Is it not just as plausible to say that
> since we are able to deal very well with ambiguity in language, there
> was never any pressure for language to evolve to not be ambiguous?  Or
> perhaps even that it is not possible for language to be unambiguous,
> but that is not a problem for us in comprehension and production, and
> ambiguity is just a nice feature that people take advantage of (as
> opposed to it being a design feature).

Any claim that some feature of a natural language is a "design feature"
makes me suspicious also.  Lamarckianism in biology and functionalism
in cognitive science are suspect for nearly the same reason.  Who is the
designer?  How likely is it that he or she would have the influence to
institute such a change?  Perhaps Rick meant that speakers unconsciously
tend toward preferring ambiguity, but then we disagree on the meaning of
"design".

Some small amount of design is sure to creep in -- the grammarians who
shaped English to fit the Latin model succeeded to some degree.  But
ambiguity is so basic and widespread that I doubt it was introduced or
significantly modified through intentional action.

	-dp-
From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Latin alphabet (was: Inventing a writing system?)
Date: 13 Apr 92 21:31:59 GMT
Article-I.D.: spss.1992Apr13.213159.33940
Organization: SPSS Inc.

In article <1992Apr13.193823.14562@athena.cs.uga.edu> mcovingt@athena.cs.uga.edu
(Michael A. Covington) writes:
>In Spain, ll/y and c/z/s are perfectly predictable.  (C and Z are the same
>sound; C is used before e and i, Z elsewhere, if memory serves me right.)

Which is fine for (most of) Spain, but these letters cause plenty of
confusion in Latin America.  A few weeks ago there was a tongue-in-cheek
proposal for a "reforma ortografica" in soc.culture.latin-america.

>G and J are no problem.  G before i or e is the same sound as J elsewhere.

J can occur before i or e.  (Come to think of it, so can Z.)

>X is quite rare and formerly denoted a 'sh' sound (Don Quixote is known in
>French as Don Quichotte; Mexico used to be called Meshico and our word
>'chicano' is probably short for 'meshicano' -- here I use 'sh' to denote
>the sound that is written in English with those letters, since Spanish has
>no way to write it.)

Sure it does-- it uses sh.  (Or at least it does in Peru, where it occurs
in some words borrowed from Indian languages.)

Mexico is now pronounced Mejico, of course, and in Spain it's spelled that
way, much to the annoyance of the Mexicans.  X provides a few other
exciting moments in the spelling of Mexican place names, e.g. Xochimilco.
From: grossi@capsogeti.fr (Thomas Grossi)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Why are English infinitives so different?
Date: 15 Apr 92 08:22:18 GMT
Reply-To: grossi@capsogeti.fr (Thomas Grossi)
Organization: Cap Gemini Innovation, Grenoble, France

In article <1992Apr13.165644.31274@spss.com>, markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
|> Spanish is a nice example of a language with a rich system of conjugation
|> *and* a rich system of auxiliary verbs.  I wonder if you could suggest
|> a distinction made with English verbs which is not made in Spanish?

Spanish and the other Romance languages have no equivalent of the progessive
tenses, except in the past (the imperfect).  This always causes a lot of
problems for my French colleagues, who never quite understand the situations in
which one would say "I have been eating...".
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne)
Subject: Chugdush on the rocks (Re: Spoken English as she is Writ.)
Organization: Computer "Science" Dept, Yale University
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 22:24:08 GMT

In article <1992Apr16.193556.8472@newshost.lanl.gov>, ttw@beta.lanl.gov (Tony Warnock) writes:
< 
<                            Art for Art's sake is as stupid as
<                            Chugdush for Chugdush's sake.

I'll drink to that.  :-)

					--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
Shao2shan1 sheng1 de tai4yang2 yong3 bu2 luo4!
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: hlin@cbnewsi.cb.att.com (hua.t.lin)
Subject: Re: Devanagari: Syllabary or Alphabet?
Organization: AT&T
Distribution: usa
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1992 15:12:54 GMT

>In article <1992Apr13.063234.7830@cs.yale.edu> horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne) writes:
>>In article <1992Apr13.051025.430@midway.uchicago.edu>, bon6@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
>><In article <1992Apr13.012514.4510@cs.yale.edu> horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne) writes:
>><
>><>as is the fact that
>><>an inherent vowel (namely [@]) is not written.  (It is written as the "null
>><>grapheme".  :-))
>><
>><Indeed, this is an inherent
>><vowel, inherent to the syllabic graph.
>>
>>The lack of any other vowel-letter indicates the presence of this
>>vowel-letter (which, as it happens, is written with no ink).

The devanagari script uses a spelling system which is quite different from
the roman alphabets. Dividing the letters between consonants and vowels
can be very misleading. Unfortunately, for lack of better terms, the
Devanagari consists of a set of Vowels and Consonants. Learners are usually
presented with a set of syllables which we can Vowels and Consonants. Each
Vowel or Consonant can be used as a part of a word as a syllable representing
the exact sound as you will read them in the Devanagari (unlike Roman where
`s' is read as `es' in the Alphabet). Each Consonant as written in the
Devanagari has a default vowel (given as [@] by other poster). To change
the default vowel in a Consonant, a vowel symbol (part of a Vowel) is written
`above/below/left/right' of the Consonant. To write a consonant without the
default vowel, the Consonant is written without the right-half (yes, you
write the left-half of the Consonant, and write it attached to the next
Consonant).
Syllabary or alphabet? Call it whatever you want, cellery or elephant!
- Lin