HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
Organization: Penn State University
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1992 17:18:40 EDT
From: Callec Dradja <GRV101@psuvm.psu.edu>
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: What lies deep within us?
 <1992Jul21.050802.13225@leland.Stanford.EDU>
 <1992Jul21.184221.375@discus.technion.ac.il>

In article <1992Jul21.184221.375@discus.technion.ac.il>,
davidba@carmel.technion.ac.il (David Ben_Ami) says:
>
>In article <92198.174113GRV101@psuvm.psu.edu>, Callec Dradja <GRV101@psuvm
>writes:
>>My question is, what would happen if you were to raise children in an
>>environment without language? I ran into a similar idea once before. It turns
>>out that there is an old story about two children who were raised, as an
>>experiment, by a deaf woman. The children had no exposure to any type of
>>language whatsoever. At the end of some appropriate period of time, the
>>children were checked on and lo and behold, they spoke fluent Hebrew. The
>idea
>>here, of course, was that Hebrew was the 'unBableized' mode of human speech.
>Here's my 2 Agorot(Israeli equivalent to cents:-):
>--------------------------------------------------
>This experiment was done by King James II of Scotland. my version says
>that the chilfren were raised by a deaf-mute shepard(sp?) and indeed
>the legend is that they spoke Hebrew. I think that is a baloney and
>couldn't be trusted because it's obviously a religious story with
>clear promotional motives. However the story is interesting and is
>similar to what would have been called "urban legend" today. maybe
>"feudal legend"? :-)
>
>Shalom from Israel,
>
>  David Ben-Ami.

Sorry that I was not being clear, but my point in including the story
was not that I thought it was true (I knew it wasn't), my point
was to show that the idea of children being raised in a language
free environment was not new. I was happy however that you knew
the source of this story; my mind is like a sieve.

                                        shalom,

********************************************************************
* If all we do is live and die,           *  Gregson Vaux          *
* then tell me about the birds that fly.  *  Penn State University *
* If all we did was die and live,         *  Semitics & English    *
* would springtime be there to forgive?   *  GRV101@psuvm.psu.edu  *
********************************************************************
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: hlirg@alf.uib.no (Roger Greenwald)
Subject: Re: what has happened to "ascribe" ?
Keywords: logocide
Organization: University of Bergen, Norway
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 92 23:35:36 GMT

In article <1992Jul22.022640.23790@leland.Stanford.EDU> alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson) writes:
>In article <1992Jul21.190619.21438@alf.uib.no>, hlirg@alf (Roger Greenwald) writes:
>>A worse one is that the New York Times usually contains at least a few
>>sentences every day in which the verb does not agree with the subject in
>>number.  The most common case is that of sentences that begin with "There is"
>>or "there was," and then follow up with a list of items, each of which is
>>singular. (There is anger and frustration in Sarajevo tonight.) But there are
>>many other cases as well.
>
>It may be regrettable, but it is also a wide-spread dialect phenomenon.
>Further, the items need not be singular in the list:
>
>	There's cats and dogs and Hallowe'en spooks in the yard!
>
>For a number of speakers of English, this is perfectly grammatical, although it
>may conflict with the usual standards.

Well, even people who are careful writers SAY a great many things
that they wouldn't write (part of what makes talking fun). The New
York Times would like to imagine it represents a more careful
standard of written English than many other publications, so I
don't think the paper itself would justify errors of agreement
on the grounds that they do occur in some dialects.

>
>>You can say the writers can't count from one to two; or you can say that the
>>plural form of "to be" is gradually disappearing from English. The latter is a
>>linguist's type of description. In this case it's probably correct, even if it
>>may be regrettable.
>
>I don't think it is a case of the plural forms disappearing in other than a
>particular context which is syntcatically determined.
>-- 

As I said, sentences that begin with  "There is", "There's", etc.
are not the only cases. I'm sorry I don't have my clippings here
to quote. But in addition to finding "There is anger and frustration
in Sarajevo tonight," you will also find, for example, "The anger
and frustration here in Sarajevo tonight is palpable." Annie Dillard,
a careful writer, writes the following in LIVING BY FICTION (1982):
"All this drama and action appeals to practically everybody" (p. 46);
"If we complain..., these critics can reply that all mental effort
and verbal artifact is artificial, playful, ingenious, and irresponsible"
(p. 129). She would seem to think that "all" changes the number.
I could cite many other cases. Perhaps it is true that if one studied
enough of them, one could come up with rules describing the syntactical
conditions under which singular verbs are tolerated with plural subjects
and vice versa, and the conditions under which traditional agreement is
still observed. But that would not change the fact that the tolerance
of lack of agreement is now greater than it was, say, 20 years ago
in equivalent written documents.
-- 
Roger Greenwald
Greenwald@hf.uib.no (address valid only until 10 August 1992)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: schiller@tira.uchicago.edu (Eric Schiller)
Subject: Re: Mary, merry, marry
Organization: Center for Information and Language Studies / University of
	Chicago
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1992 20:44:18 GMT

The point is not that all speakers of English fail to distinguish between
Mary, merry and marry, simply that some do. When I taught at Wayne State
in Detroit, some of my students were astounded to discover that many of
their classmates did not share their distinction, or lack thereof. There
was even a central city/suburban dialect break, which was especially notable
in the are of slang.

Eric Schiller
University of Chicago
Newsgroups: sci.lang,soc.culture.soviet
From: sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog)
Subject: Ethmylogy for Baltic etc
Organization: Enea Data AB
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1992 22:30:32 GMT

In English we talk about the Baltic Sea and say "The Baltcis"
for the countries Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. In Swedish
we call the sea "\stersj|n" (The East Sea), but we still
talk about "Baltikum" to refer to the area. I never wondered
where this name comes from, it's only a name I assumed.

However, while looking through a Latvian-English dictionary I
found that Whiterussia was "Baltkrevija" in Latvia. "Huh, Baltic
Russia?", I thought. Anyway, I looked up "balt" in the dictionary 
and sure enough "balt" is the Latvian word for "white".

But then comes the question is just "balt" = "white" a random
coincidence, or is there really a connection with name of
the area or the sea?

Speaking of coincidences, the Swedish word for "street" is "gata",
Latvia has "gate" (although "iela" is more widely used) and
Lithuanian has "gatve". Here, however, it must either be a case
of false cognates, or a loan in some direction.
-- 
Erland Sommarskog - ENEA Data, Stockholm - sommar@enea.se
Dabras Laiks!
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: arantamaki@tnclus.tele.nokia.fi
Subject: Re: Finnish question
Organization: Nokia Telecommunications.
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 10:19:29 GMT

In article <1992Jul23.135758.2304@dde.dk>, ct@dde.dk (Claus Tondering) writes:
> ISO standard 6937 mentions that the Finnish language uses two characters
> that look like S and Z with a small v above (a hacek accent).
> 
> I have never seen any Finnish text that uses these two characters.
> Does Finnish use them? Or has Finnish used them in the past?

To my knowledge, these characters are used only when transcribing 
foreign names in languages that do not use the Latin alphabet,
especially Russian, e.g. Gorbatsov, Tsehov or Solzenitsyn.
The Finnish language itself does not have these sounds. In newspapers,
however, they are usually spelt Gorbatshov, Tshehov and
Solzhenitsyn. I don't know about their usage in the past, though.
I'd like to see that standard - what is it about?

Annu Rantamaki (Last a in family name with two dots over it!)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: zgilbert@epas.utoronto.ca (Zvi Gilbert)
Subject: Re: English and its Mutilation
Organization: University of Toronto - EPAS
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 01:14:31 GMT

In article <1992Jul29.001937.5783@pony.Ingres.COM> bobm@Ingres.COM (Bob McQueer) writes:
>> "Dont do drugs." (Seen on billboards all over the country.)
>
>Originally a slang usage that never bothered me because I first heard it as
>slang.  It seems to be finding its way into accepted informal speech as well.
>Doesn't seem to have found its way into the AHD, at least in my edition, but
>it is worth noting that there are other slang / informal usages of "do" -
>slang speech seems to like twisting the verb "do" into new meanings - women
>may "do" their faces, one may "do up" a package or a report ... .

"Do" is one of those multi-purpose underspecified verbs... not only in
our language, but in many others as well.  Take for example
Japanese... there was all that fuss about George Bush puking at a
formal dinner, and it became a slang term in Japan: "Bushusuru" -- to
do a Bush.  The "suru" there is the verb "to do" in Japan, which has
100s if not 1000s of idiomatic and standard grammatical uses.

One of those semantic neat facts that makes you think that we've all
got some of the same wiring in our heads, no matter what we speak.

__Zvi Gilbert              Disclaimer: Use of the technology involved in
zgilbert@epas.utoronto.ca  this post should not be seen as an endorsement
From: sharder@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Soren Harder)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Frisian; Germanic Dialtects (was: Welche Sprache benutzen)
Date: 25 Jul 92 13:12:40 GMT
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK

desmedt@rulfsw.leidenuniv.nl writes:
West- 
>Frisian ('Fries') is spoken in Friesland, a northern province of the
>Netherlands.

North-Frisian is spoken in Slesvig-Holsten (sorry, danish spelling :-)
right up to the danish border. It has been a dying language up to
recently, but some work is put into restoring it. One of its problems
is that it is mainly spoken on the islands off the coast of Germany,
which means that its different dialects have been isolated to some
extent, and hence are mutually unintelligeble. (As far as I know).

I believe something called East Frisian once existed. This language
is as far as I remember traceable further back in time. But it has
been extinct for at least a century.

Soren Harder

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Soren Harder, (MSc student)
Centre for Cognitive Science, 2 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh
E-mail: sharder@cogsci.ed.ac.uk
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: JAREA@UKCC.UKY.EDU
Subject: Re: Minority Languages in the EC
    <1992Jul28.165924.12845@mksol.dseg.ti.com>
Organization: University of Kentucky
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 01:29:18 GMT

In article <1992Jul28.165924.12845@mksol.dseg.ti.com>
martinn@mksol.dseg.ti.com (niels r martin) writes:
 
>
>As I recall, Catalonia was a state in its own right for quite a while, until    the Castillians took them over in the 17th or 18th century (correct
my
>dates if they are way off--I don't have the references at work)  I suppose that the localpeople wo
>uld like to think of themselves as a country--after all many Texans do!
>I also recall driving through Andorra before I was really mindful of the fact   that Catalan was spoken there.  Being fluent in French and able to
get
>by in
>Spanish, I thought that it was interesting that Catalan seemed to be (to the
>outsider) in many instances either a Spaniard spelling French or a Frenchman    tring to spell Spanish.  In any case it was most interesting and
>informative.
>
Actually the Kingdom of Aragon, which included Catalonia and used Catalan
officially, ended with the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella (who are
are better known in US for having gambled on Columbus), which created the
Kingdom of Spain -- thus late fifteenth century.
 
Those of us who learnt French in school can only have positive feelings for
a language whose word for "five hundred" is /sink sents/ (my pronunciation
is that of Alghero, not of Barcelona.
 
Xref: sparky sci.lang:6180 eunet.misc:453
From: jheikkil@ling.helsinki.fi (Juha Heikkila)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,eunet.misc
Subject: Re: Finnish question
Date: 30 Jul 92 11:30:20 GMT
Organization: Dept. of Linguistics, University of Helsinki

In article <1992Jul23.135758.2304@dde.dk> ct@dde.dk (Claus Tondering) writes:

   ISO standard 6937 mentions that the Finnish language uses two characters
   that look like S and Z with a small v above (a hacek accent).

   I have never seen any Finnish text that uses these two characters.
   Does Finnish use them? Or has Finnish used them in the past?


Yes, they are used, but very rarely. S with a hacek represents
the sound marked with SH in English and SCH in German orthography
(voiceless palato-alveolar fricative); Z with a hacek is the
voiced counterpart, the sound marked with J in French
orthography. More typically they are replaced with SH and ZH,
although the hacek versions are actually preferred by some people
because they maintain the almost perfect one-to-one
correspondence between phonemes and letters in Finnish. You don't
come across these characters that often because the sounds
themselves only occur in relatively recent loans (ZH practically
only in transliterations). More acclimatised loans tend to have S
(/s/) instead.

--

  Juha Heikkila            jheikkil@ling.helsinki.fi
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: baron@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Dennis Baron)
Subject: Re: English and its Mutilation
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 15:08:14 GMT

Two Indian correspondents to this newsgroup have now written
to complain about American English.  Much of what they say
is disturbing because it shows a profound ignorance of the
nature of language in general, and of English in particular.

One assumption they need to correct immediately is that the
English used in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Australia, Canada,
New Zealand, or the US is not identical with British English.
If they are interested in how South Asian English has developed
as a legitimate variety of World English (or World Englishes, if
you prefer), one which is different from the English of their
former rulers, they should consult the many books of Braj 
Kachru, for example, _The Indianization of English_, or the
prize-winning _The Alchemy of English_.

Indian English differs from English English in phonology, syntax,
idiom, and much else besides.  Being England-returned does not
really make much of a difference, except perhaps allowing one
to put on airs.

By the way, the Indian community in the United States, a large
and growing one, adapts to American English in the second generation
as rapidly as all American immigrant groups have done.

Dennis (Denesh) (Roy) Baron


-- 
Dennis Baron                                         debaron@uiuc.edu 
University of Illinois at Urbana                     217-333-2392
From: R.S.Hunt@newcastle.ac.uk (R.S. Hunt)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Minority Languages in the EC
Keywords: Catalunya
Date: 28 Jul 92 17:44:13 GMT
Organization: Computing Laboratory, U of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK NE1 7RU.


In article <199207272159.AA27024@tuna.wang.com> MICHAEL.WILLETT@OFFICE.WANG.COM ("Michael Willett") writes:

>Interestingly enough, there is an advertisement by Catalunya
>in this week's Economist news magazine by the Catalan
>development agency, timed to coincide with the olympics.  It
>describes Catalunya repeatedly as a country.  It does also
>make a brief mention once about Catalunya being a country
>within Spain.

Catalunya includes part of France as well: the ancient province of
Rousillon (Rosillo`), with its capital Perpignan/Perpinya`.

When I was last on holiday in Catalunya in 1988, Catalan nationalist
graffiti were to be seen on numerous walls.   The most popular was
"Catalunya no es Espanya."    A rather more punchy one said,
"Si Espanya fos ma mare jo sere un fill de puta!"  (Work this out 
for yourself...



Richard Hunt                                JANET : R.S.Hunt@uk.ac.newcastle
MSc Course in Computing Science
University of Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: govax@wam.umd.edu (Seigneur Tenebreux)
Subject: Re: etymol. of the word "Viking"
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1992 20:20:22 GMT


I did take a course in Old Norse a few semesters ago.  The course used a
relatively decent text (An Introduction to Old Norse, E.V. Gordon, Oxford).

What the text says corroborates some of the previously mentioned conjecture.
I believe Erland Sommarskog quoted an article stating that it appears in 
Anglo-saxon texts earlier than the time period of the viking raids upon
England.

For general curiousity... I found one of the words in question

OE. wicing    is found in OE. uuicingsceada 'pirate'
it also appears in OFris. as 'witsing'

So it probably shouldn't be unexpected to see it crop up in words like
"avvika" 

I tried to avoid looking at this thread at first, thinking it to be
EVIL and FonCusing! :-)

Leben Sie lang und im Wohlstand!!

-andy
govax@wam.umd.edu

Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: goer@ellis.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz)
Subject: Re: Mary, merry, marry--kick it off the air!
Reply-To: goer@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1992 21:44:40 GMT

jimmay@csuchico.edu (Jim May) writes:

>Will someone please cut this discussion of the Mary,merry,marry 
>pronunciation off before it takes over sci.lang like it did a few months 
>ago.  We went for a long period as if English were the only language in 
>the world.  The arguments were exhausted then, ad nauseam.

It may be boring, but let's at least admit that the discussion has been
linguistic in nature.  Regional isoglosses, vowel shifts, etc.:  It's all
been discussed before here, to be sure.  It's relevant, though.

Maybe it's time for all linguists to thank their lucky stars that at
least it's not a spillover from a usage debate in alt.usage.english,
or a cultural ditty from a soc-hierarchy group :-).

-- 

   -Richard L. Goerwitz              goer%midway@uchicago.bitnet
   goer@midway.uchicago.edu          rutgers!oddjob!ellis!goer
From: mathias@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Gerald B. Mathias)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: what has happened to "ascribe" ?
Keywords: meaning change, convince, persuade
Date: 22 Jul 92 19:19:29 GMT
Organization: University of Hawaii

In article <8200@amsaa-cleo.brl.mil> matt@amsaa-cleo.brl.mil (Matt Rosenblatt) writes:
>
>And not only that.  If ignorant people start using "ascribe" to mean
>"subscribe," and no one corrects them, then we'll have two different 
>words with the same meaning, while we lose the word "ascribe" as meaning 
>what it means today.  Not only is that a dumb thing to let happen, it's
>also anti-English.

I watched "convince" take on the sense of (or lose its distinction from)
"persuade" right before my eyes (starting in the Oakland Tribune) from the
late fifties through the early sixties.  Although, stubborn old fogey that I
am, I have yet to join the crowd, I don't think there are a whole lot of
people who use "persuade" much anymore.
    Yet the syntax and context always reveal when "convince" means "persuade"
and when it "really" means "convince," and when I studied French, their
cognates were taught to me as synonyms.  It seems a harmless change, and
"persuade" is perhaps unnecessary baggage.

Would the case be much different with "...scribe"?  It's pretty clear that
ascribing to a belief and ascribing to a magazine would be different.  In
fact, it would be a linguistic (as opposed to a social(?)) problem only when
one couldn't tell that the "wrong" word had been used.

Can anyone think of a case where replacing "subscribe" with "abscribe" comes
out sounding right?

Bart Mathias
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: scotty@netcom.com (J Scott Peter)
Subject: Re: homonym, homophone, homograph
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 92 09:48:41 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)

In article <1992Jul23.211228.29092@news.columbia.edu> gmw1@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Gabe M Wiener) writes:
>I usually regard homonyms to be words such as "pool" or "bridge" which
>are spelled and pronounced identically but have completely unrelated
>meanings.  
>
>The ones that I love are homonyms whose meanings are antonymic, such as
>cleave and sanction.  Can anyone think of any others?

`Sanction' reminds me of `citation', which has at least 3 meanings: a
positive, a negative, and a neutral.
-- 
J Scott Peter XXXIII  // "Instantiating new solutions in the emerging arena
scotty@netcom.com    // of transcending the de-facto horizons of industry-
Las Anjealous       // standard open paradigms."
Newsgroups: sci.lang,sci.classics,sci.anthropology,talk.philosophy.misc,sci.philosophy.meta,rec.arts.books
From: lange@iscnvx.lmsc.lockheed.com (Alex Lange)
Subject: Re: Eyes as Windows of the Soul
Reply-To: lange@lmsc.lockheed.com
Organization: Moving Finger Writes, Inc.
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 92 13:56:02 GMT

zeleny@husc9.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:
: 
: A question for all commonplace experts: what is the earliest occurrence of
: this locution known to you?
I believe the source for this was Plato; who he stole it from, I'm not sure.

Alex Lange
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: mikulska@mira.Princeton.EDU (Margaret Mikulska)
Subject: Re: Dilemma = Dilemna ??
Originator: news@ernie.Princeton.EDU
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 15:22:05 GMT

In article <1992Jul28.195327.14154@alf.uib.no> hlirg@alf.uib.no (Roger Greenwald) writes:
>
>I just checked titles in the Library of Congress catalogue and came up
>with the following:
>
>1. The dilemna <sic> of Mexico. Blitman, Eli Herman (1965).
>(The "<sic>" is in the LC record for this title. The book, it turns
>out, was published in Mexico.)
>2. The dilemna of Eurocommunism. Labour Party of Great Britain (1980).
>
>There is no way of knowing whether the second book actually has this
>spelling or whether the record for it contains an error made by the
>cataloguer. That is, short of examining the book.

I checked the 2nd book in Melvyl, the on-line catalog of the University
of California, and the title is spelled correctly - "The dilemma of 
Eurocommunism".  I'm inclined to think that the cataloguer in the LC
made a spelling error.

The 1st book has the same entry in Melvyl as it does in the LC: "dilemna" 
with a <sic>.

There are a few other entries (seven or so) with "dilemna", published in
Canada, US, and England (without a <sic>, strangely enough).

-Margaret
mikulska@princeton.edu
From: sleator@CS.CMU.EDU (Daniel Sleator)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Oliver Sacks (Was: What lies deep within us?)
Date: 23 Jul 92 17:18:22 GMT
Article-I.D.: SPADE.SLEATOR.92Jul23121822
	<1992Jul21.132952.25443@athena.mit.edu>
	<1992Jul23.095530.1@tnclus.tele.nokia.fi>
	<1992Jul23.114427.4519@athena.mit.edu>
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
Originator: sleator@SPADE.PC.CS.CMU.EDU

I've been skeptical of Oliver Sacks ever since reading "the man who
mistook his wife for a hat".  It contains a story about a pair of
twins in an institution who played a game in which they took turns
naming ever-growing prime numbers.  Sacks neglected to report the
actual numbers, along with numerous other details, and I don't believe
the story.

It appears that Sacks takes liberties to make the stories more
interesting or ironic.  This makes his books more fun to read, but
useless for scientific interpretation.

                             D. Sleator