HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: alderson@cisco.com (Rich Alderson)
Subject: Re: Definitions of terms that have bothered Mark Hubey
Originator: alderson@leland.Stanford.EDU
Reply-To: alderson@cisco.com (Rich Alderson)
Organization: Cisco Systems (MIS)
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 93 01:56:34 GMT

In article <memo.851489@cix.compulink.co.uk>, petex@cix (Peter Christian) writes:
>In-Reply-To: <1993Jan8.002157.20841@leland.Stanford.EDU> alderson@cisco.com (Rich Alderson)

>> regular:  Predictable by historical or comparative expectation.
>
>I'm not querying the definition, but some people might be a bit baffled by the
>use of the word `predictable' refering to something in the past, where
>prediction in the normal sense doesn't apply. Perhaps you could add an extra
>gloss, something along the lines of:
>
>   `occurring (generally!) without exception in identical
>   circumstances'

In private e-mail, which I include with his permission, Leo Connolly had this
to say:

>Date: 8 Jan 93 08:35:00 CST
>From: "CONNOLLY LEO A" <CONNOLLY@memstvx1.memst.edu>
>Subject: Re: Definitions of terms that have bothered Mark Hubey
>To: "alderson" <alderson@cisco.com>
>
>I like your post very much, but I think this item is misleading because
>it's incomplete:
>
>>regular:  Predictable by historical or comparative expectation.
>
>No one could say that the Junggrammatiker thought sound change was rule-
>governed in exactly the same way we do.  Nevertheless, their whole terminology
>suggests that they believed *something* of the sort.  German _regelmaessig_
>'regular' literally, and obviously, means 'according to the rule(s)' (_Regel_
>'rule', _Mass_ 'measure', _gemaess_ 'in accordance with').  Further, they
>established "sound laws" and postulated that they operated without exception
>("die Ausnahmslosigkeit der Lautgesetze").  So I'd suggest a definition:
>"apparently produced by the processes postulated to account for the same
>development in other words".  Still, for your purposes, that's probably too
>much, which is why I'm not posting this.  (Do so yourself if you like.)
					   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I would like to thank both of you for your additions and clarifications.
Perhaps we can yet define this field so that non-practitioners can understand
what we do, and why.
-- 
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: pautler@ils.nwu.edu (David Pautler)
Subject: Re: Works on WHO,WHEN,WHAT,WHERE...
Organization: The Institute for the Learning Sciences
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 21:28:40 GMT

Paolo Leva says:
>  I'm working on a project which is trying to analyze text in terms of WHO,
>WHAT, WHERE, WHY etc. (that is, each part of the text is classified as being
>WHAT, WHO, WHEN, WHERE and so on). What I'm looking for is some
>bibliographical source on this subject.

Someone from Milan asked this same question here just a few months ago.  I
remember suggestions of Levinson's chapter on deictic expressions in
_Pragmatics_ and the story-grammar/schema body of work of Prince, Schank,
and others.

BTW, your choice of 'slots' seems pretty arbitrary to me -- maintaining
a distinction between WHO's and WHAT's at this level seems unimportant
compared to the loss of information due to collapsing all actors, recipients,
patients, etc. to WHO's and all causes, intentions, etc. to WHY's.

	-dp-


Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: jbm@hal.trl.OZ.AU (Jacques Guy)
Subject: Re: "n'ha" == "daughter of" ? Language?
Organization: Telecom Research Labs, Melbourne, Australia
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 23:53:58 GMT

zornow@hpcc01.corp.hp.com (Claudia Zornow) writes:


>The "n'ha" usage comes from Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover series
>of science fiction novels.  I don't know whether she made it up or
>got it from some known language.  She has a set of female characters
>called Renunciates, or Free Amazons, who have made themselves
>independent of the strictures normally imposed on women of Darkover,
>and who change their names to show matrilineal descent.

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.
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Origin of English?
Keywords: clobbered; zillions; cut-plug
Date: 12 Jan 93 10:34:39 GMT
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK

In article <C0nK88.4Gn@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:
>That speakers of Chinese have difficulty with English grammar is not
>all that surprising; Chinese is, to my knowledge, the only major language
>with fewer grammatical forms than English.

Or one of two, the other one being Malay/Indonesian, which I think
also belongs to the top dozen by number of speakers.

I don't quite see why it matters how many grammatical forms the
learner's own language has, though.

>But the English formal structure is on the very simple side in the Indo-
>European language family.

On the whole, yes, but if compared to Persian or Hindi, it appears
bewilderingly complex.

-- 
 `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
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: petex@cix.compulink.co.uk (Peter Christian)
Subject: Re: Morphological development of the genitive case in German
Reply-To: petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1993 00:28:00 +0000



> But the question is why the masculine i-stems adapted only partially
> to the o-stem paradigm.  Seems an awkward way to proceed, though I know
> perfectly well that morphological change in generally tends to be messy
> in exactly this way.

Yes, I agree. The way this sort of change *ought* to work is that
phonological change reduces some measure of distinctiveness and then
analogy finishes the job off. Perhaps the vowel differences between
the declensions in the plural were just too striking.

Peter

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Christian                         
  Dept of European Languages              peter@gold.ac.uk
  Goldsmiths' College, London.            petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: The Days Of The Week In Latin
Date: 6 Jan 93 16:21:26 GMT
Organization: Memphis State University

In article <memo.842603@cix.compulink.co.uk>, petex@cix.compulink.co.uk (Peter Christian) writes:
> In-Reply-To: <1993Jan5.085724.4860@memstvx1.memst.edu> connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu
> 
>> The phonology of *all* of these, and of their
>> German analogues, points to borrowing during the period of the Roman
>> conquest.

Let me refine this: during the period of early Roman *contact*.

>>  A later borrowing of _vinum_ would have yielded *_vine_,
>> _strata_ > *_strate_, etc.
> 
> I didn't understand the phonology here, Leo. Do you mean they would
> have been borrowed from some late Latin forms with reduced vowels?

No.  _Wine_ with [w] reflects the pronunciation before 200 AD.  Later
the inscriptions and manuscripts confuse consonantal <v> with <b>,
indicating that both had become labial fricatives in at least some
environments.  The fricative is, of vourse, what we find in Italian
_vino_, French _vin_, etc.

The vowels are another matter.  The Latin vowels were (mostly) borrowed
in their classical form.  _Stra:ta_ (with a long a:, I should have
noted) was borrowed as such by the Germanic peoples, and thus we find
German _Strasse_, Dutch _straat_ etc.  But inherited long a: appears
in West Saxon Old English as [ae:], in other dialects as [e:] -- in
both native words and old borrowings.  (The conventional explanation
is different: that Proto-Germanic had long [e:], which turned to
[a:] in Scandinavian, Dutch, and German.  Maybe so if we go farther
back; but only a shift of [a: > e:] in English and Frisian can
explain the treatment of Latin loanwords such as _street_ and
_cheese_ (Dutch _kaas_; German _Kaese_ has Umlaut)).

--Leo Connolly
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: petex@cix.compulink.co.uk (Peter Christian)
Subject: Re: Locus of change (was Re: Bulgarians - descendents of a Finn..).
Reply-To: petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 13:23:00 +0000


> I share this scepticism. I do think there's any need to appeal
> specifically to language learning.

Too right, all speakers make mistakes: for "do" read "don't".

Peter
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Christian                         
  Dept of European Languages              peter@gold.ac.uk
  Goldsmiths' College, London.            petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: jbm@hal.trl.OZ.AU (Jacques Guy)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Ah, Pazis (was: Re: Chaire -> chaise)
Date: 10 Jan 93 21:27:39 GMT
Organization: Telecom Research Labs, Melbourne, Australia

mcovingt@aisun3.ai.uga.edu (Michael Covington) writes:


>What was the phonetic value of /r/ in French just before the change?
>Was this odd change something that happened along the way from an
>apical to a uvular r ?


Perhaps it was an apico-dental flap -- as in today's Spanish, or
the local pronunciation in Toulouse -- rather than the apico-
alveolar pronunciation described in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.

The evolution seems fairly natural: from flap (a "quick" stop,
as it were) to fricative, (fairly similar to English th, but
apico-dental instead of interdental), then grooved sibilant
([z]).

The evolution of an alveolar flap or trill into a uvular is
strange, but seems fairly widespread. It has taken place, 
for instance, in the language of Hiw Island (Vanuatu), and
is definitely not the effect of a French influence.
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: rcj@engin.umich.edu (R o d Johnson)
Subject: Re: HAPPY NEW YEAR in 100 Languages...
Date: Fri, 08 Jan 93 13:26:41 EST
Organization: Lost Tribes of Gazebo
Followup-To: soc.penpals

In article <1993Jan8.034758.1@climat.geology.yale.edu> zhang@climat.geology.yale.edu writes:
>	Speak HAPPY NEW YEAR in 100 languages? Yes. Some one started this
>thread in SOC.PENPALS, [. . .]
>	Please *FOLLOWUP* this post to add your language(s) to this list.

Yeesh!  Please *don't*, for God's sake.  Email to this person, or if
you must post, post to soc.penpals (where I've set followups to this
article).  Don't clutter up sci.lang with this stuff, and if you need
to know how to say HAPPY NEW YEAR in 100 languages (and who doesn't?
:), send Zhang some email.

-- 
       Rod Johnson  *  rcj@caen.engin.umich.edu  *  (313) 764-3103
    
                "What I do doesn't happen in a warehouse"
                                          --Jim Dickinson
From: koontz@cam.nist.gov (John E. Koontz X5180)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Origin of English?
Date: 7 Jan 93 02:31:55 GMT
Organization: National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD

In article <memo.846118@cix.compulink.co.uk>, petex@cix.compulink.co.uk (Peter Christian) writes:
|> > |> one of the striking features of English is its lack of conjugations
|> > |> and declensions. 
|> > 
|> > Actually, English still contains conjugations, though the personal inflection
|> > of most verbs is very simplified....
|> 
|> I don't think Eric meant absolute lack, but relative lack,
|> considering its origins in a highly inflected language, and compared
|> with its nearest cognates. ...

Sorry, this wasn't my point.  I wasn't talking about the extent of
inflection at all.  What defines the notion of conjugation and
declension in the classical languages is not the presence of
extensive inflection, but the ability to classify what inflectional
behavior there is into patterns, the various patterns being called
conjugations (for verbs) or declensions (for nouns).  I think what
Eric meant was not "lack of conjugations and declensions," but
"(relative) lack of inflection," or not quite so well put,
"(relative) lack of conjugation and declension."  English has much
less inflection that standard German, but about the same number of
verb conjugations (or paradigms).  

On the other hand, Omaha-Ponca (a Siouan language) has about the same
number of inflected forms for each verb as Mandan (another Siouan
language), but Omaha-Ponca has significantly more conjugations (or
verb paradigms) than Mandan.  In Mandan, simplification has taken
the form of regularizing most verbs on the model of a single
paradigm.

----
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: dbt@cellar.org (Marquis de Freud)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Future of Languages
Date: 12 Jan 93 06:40:59 GMT
Organization: The Cellar BBS and public access system

Tying a few threads together here -- dealing with "plausible" lingusitics -- 
I wonder if anyone has tried to *predict* language change. I know many rules 
exist for classifying linguistic drift, but have there been any notable 
attempts to extend these observations into the future? (Even if they have 
been *wrong*).

I know that for several years, Esperantists have noticed some definite, 
unplanned changes in their (our) language. And I have heard anecdotally that 
the "language" spoken in the south-eastern USA -- the old Confederacy -- is 
heavily flavored with forms once prevalent in northern British, Scotc Gaelic 
and Irish Gaelic.

Any info? Explanations? Rude remarks in obscure non-IE languages?

dbt@cellar.org aka David Twery
        e'osai ko sarji la lojban
        Lernu Paroli Esperanton
        Please Speak Louder, I Can't Hear You!

------
dbt@cellar.org (Marquis de Freud)
The Cellar BBS - (215) 539-3043
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: leva@ghost.dsi.unimi.it (paolo leva)
Subject: Re: Works on WHO,WHEN,WHAT,WHERE...
Organization: Computer Science Dep. - Milan University
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 13:06:58 GMT

Pautler Says:

>BTW, your choice of 'slots' seems pretty arbitrary to me -- maintaining
>a distinction between WHO's and WHAT's at this level seems unimportant
>compared to the loss of information due to collapsing all actors, recipients,
>patients, etc. to WHO's and all causes, intentions, etc. to WHY's.

>	-dp-

I will try to explain WHY we choose to start a new taxonomy from those six
items. The reason is so simple that it is difficult to make it sound worth
a scientifical research. If you think of what can be asked about any situation
that is possible to describe with language, you will find out that you have
to use one of the wh-words, among those the following six seem to be the most
essential: WHO, WHAT, WHY, HOW, WHERE, and WHEN. We are ignoring the yes/no
questions as you surely noticed.

The power of this taxonomy (to be developed, of course) is in its intuitive
power. There is no problem explaining somebody how to recognize a WHO, a WHAT
and so on. The biggest problem is to convince people trying to approach the
language from a perspective (apparently) so down to earth.

Think about it a little,

Thanks a lot
Paolo.
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: petex@cix.compulink.co.uk (Peter Christian)
Subject: Re: Origin of English?
Reply-To: petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 01:30:00 +0000


The short answer to your question is: Modern English comes from Old
English (5th - 11th Century AD) which comes from Germanic (spoken in
Northern Germany/Southern Denmark from perhaps 1000 BC? onwards),
which comes from Indo-European (perhaps 3000 BC).

That much is agreed by everyone - well, perhaps not the dates.

Quite a lot of people argue for an intermediate sub-grouping of
Germanic called North-Sea Germanic (basically the language of the
Angles, Saxons, Jutes & Frisians in modern Friesland). Where the speakers of
Indo-Europeans lived is a long-standing matter of dispute, but
probably not west of the Black Sea. And what came before
Indo-European is a matter for idle speculation and/or ferocious
argument according to taste.

Of course particular *bits* of English come from elsewhere as a
result of contacts with Vikings, Normans, Christianity etc. But an
enormous amount of the basic vocabulary can be traced back at least as
far as Germanic, the same for the basic grammar.

Peter


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Christian                         
  Dept of European Languages              peter@gold.ac.uk
  Goldsmiths' College, London.            petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: gvanmoor@nrao.edu (Gustaaf Van Moorsel,,,)
Subject: Re: Origin of English?
Reply-To: gvanmoor@nrao.edu
Organization: National Radio Astronomy Observatory
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 93 17:25:20 GMT

In article 1ie5i1INNlgr@bHARs12c.bnr.co.uk, sizex@bnr.co.uk (Eric Barber) writes:
>one of the striking features of English is its lack of conjugations
>and declensions. these seems to have been lost as various brands
>of Germanic, e.g. Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, sharing the same basic
>vocabulary but with their own systems of conjugation and declension,
>learned to communicate with each other in Britain.
>

Then why has modern Dutch lost most of their conjugations and declensions, too,
where there was not such an obvious mix of Germanic languages? Granted, the
simplification has not gone as far as in English, but when compared to German
the lack of 'grammar' is striking. It would also be interesting to see other
instances of rapid simplifications (Bulgarian vs. Russian ?)

Gustaaf

Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin)
Subject: Re: Bah! to bhaashaa
Organization: Purdue University Statistics Department
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1993 19:25:28 GMT

In article <1993Jan8.141523.4947@memstvx1.memst.edu> connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu writes:
>Two comments:

>1. If you consult any professor of education, you will discover that it
>has long been known that people read English by recognizing whole words.
>In fact, it was at one time usua;lly taught that way: the "look-and-say"
>method.  And most teachers do teach a lot of sight words.

You have misstated even the educationists; the claim is that good readers
read by recognizing whole words.

And if you consult somebody else, you will be told that this is utter
nonsense.  The "look-and-say" method of teaching produced a generation
of illiterates, and set of the one successful revolution against the
excesses of the educationists.  

Now I do know how their the "reasoning" behind the educationists' claim.
It has long been known that good readers take in even several words at a
glance.  But this does not mean that the brain processes things this way.

Also, I believe that most readers of this group are aware that, no matter
what language is being read, the brain carries out the processing which
recognizes roots and modifications.  It is this ability to use structure
which enables the efficient learning and use of language, not memorizing
lots of minor variations.
-- 
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
Phone: (317)494-6054
hrubin@snap.stat.purdue.edu (Internet, bitnet)  
{purdue,pur-ee}!snap.stat!hrubin(UUCP)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
From: swf@tools3teradata.com (Stan Friesen)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: why (evolutionarily) are zebras striped?
Date: 4 Jan 93 20:18:33 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: NCR Teradata Database Business Unit

In article <1i5gf2INN7ea@shelley.u.washington.edu>, jespah@carson.u.washington.edu (Kathleen Hunt) writes:
|> 
|> 6. Individual Recognition
|> Zebras have individually distinct stripes, so these social animals may
|> be able to recognize individuals by stripes.  I imagine this might be one
|> function of stripes, but not the function they originally evolved for.
|> (teleologically speaking. Of course stripes only evolved because of some
|> increase in fitness enjoyed by zebras with stripes, not with any goal in 
|> mind...let's nip that "Evolution Is Not Goal Oriented" flame war in the bud...)

But this does provide a good example of why teleonomic (*not* teleologic) language
is useful in describing evolution.  Let's try to recast the above without using
teleonomic language:
	  I imagine this might be one function of stripes, but not the function
	  that provided the original fitness increase that caused the stripes
	  to evolve.

Blech - a doubly embedded subordinate clause.  This sort of locution is hardly
conducive to clear communication.

[For a description of the distinction between teleonomic and teleologic, see
"Towards a New Philosophy of Biology" by Ernst Mayr].

-- 
sarima@teradata.com			(formerly tdatirv!sarima)
  or
Stanley.Friesen@ElSegundoCA.ncr.com
Newsgroups: sci.bio
From: nsmca@acad3.alaska.edu
Subject: Brain Size. Modern vs Neanderthal
Organization: University of Alaska Fairbanks
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 03:55:12 GMT

Brainsize..If I remember correctl Neanderthal man had a larger brain cc than
modern man on the adverage. Itsnot how big, its how you use it.. Neanderthal
seemsed to be more peaceful or less vicious as modern humans..

==
==
Michael Adams alias Ghost Wheel/Morgoth NSMCA@acad3.alaska.edu
From: eamg052@orion.oac.uci.edu (Matthew Wesley Spitzer)
Subject: Re: "Falling" Asleep
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Organization: University of California, Irvine
Date: 8 Jan 93 06:48:54 GMT

In article <C0Io7F.BrH@iat.holonet.net> ken@iat.holonet.net (Ken Easlon) writes:
>In article <1993Jan6.182906.23437@spruce.pfc.forestry.ca> ,
>rwinder@PFC.Forestry.CA (Richard Winder) writes quoting Easlon:
>
>I think we're in total agreement here, it's just a matter of clarifying the
>terminology. I distinguish the sense of "down" from the perception of
>gravity (pressure, effort) because I believe the sense of "down" in dreams
>is imagined, coming from the direction of my feet when I dream I am
>standing, where gravity perception when I drift back to wakefulness is
>coming from another angle.


Some time back in this thread there was some discussion of "gravity sensors"
being disconnected during sleep.  The closest thing to a gravity sensor in 
the human brain is the vestibular system. Although I don't know of any data
concerning the sleep states, it is fairly routine to record vestibular 
evoked activity in the brainstem of deeply anesthetized animals. But I think
the real question being addressed in this discussion is whether vestibular 
information from the brainstem makes its way up to the cerebral cortex during
sleep.  I have no idea what the answer is, and for that matter, I don't
think very much is known about cortical processing of vestibular information
in general.  Hope this helps some.

Matt Spitzer, UC-Stepford  eamg052@orion.oac.uci.edu





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A
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Matt Spitzer, University of California, StepfordD
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Matt Spitzer  eamg052@orion.oac.uci.edue