HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: matt@amsaa-cleo.brl.mil (Matt Rosenblatt)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Problem with 'they' (etc) as 3p singular comm
Keywords: DELENDUS EST FEMINISMUS
Date: 1 Sep 92 12:51:13 GMT
Organization: U.S. ARMY MATERIEL SYSTEMS ANALYSIS ACTIVITY (AMSAA), APG, MD.

In article <1992Aug31.164355.9089@bsu-ucs.uucp> 
00hfstahlke@bsu-ucs.uucp writes:

>Ethical usage aside, and I agree, as I've posted before, that the 
>generic use of masculine gender forms is discriminatory and therefore 
>to be avoided, . . . [Herb Stahlke]

The "therefore" holds only for people who are worried about being
discriminatory.

>as long as we are saying that people _should_ avoid generic masculines, 
>aren't we being prescriptive?  [Herb Stahlke]

Well, yeah -- by definition.

>We are trying [to] change how people use language.  [Herb Stahlke]

Not quite.  What I get out of the discussion is that many people are
themselves changing the way they use language, using constructions
like the singular "they" to avoid the arguably discriminatory connotations
of the generic "he."  Who are the "we" to whom Mr. Stahlke is referring,
who are trying to change how other people use language?  Prescriptivism
doesn't work, and unless people change of their own accord, the
prescriptivists will fail (as they surely deserve to fail here).  
Mr. Stahlke himself recognizes how long and arduous a task this 
kind of prescription is:

>This particular topic will remain in the prescriptive realm until
>young children learn from their peers to avoid generic "he". 
>[Herb Stahlke]

Yeah -- like young boys have been learning from their peers to play
with dolls, and young girls have been learning from *their* peers
to play "Cowboys and Indians" (NB: That's American Indians, not
Indians from India).

					-- Matt Rosenblatt
					(matt@amsaa-cleo.brl.mil)
From: JAREA@UKCC.UKY.EDU
Subject: Re: Problem with 'they' (etc) as 3p singular common gender pron.
    <1992Aug23.035945.25276@Princeton.EDU> <1992Aug30.173343.24488@enea.se> 
    <1992Aug31.022533.3636@news.eng.convex.com>
Organization: University of Kentucky
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1992 00:54:48 GMT

In article <1992Aug31.022533.3636@news.eng.convex.com>
Tom Christiansen <tchrist@convex.COM> writes:
 
>
>From the keyboard of sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog):
>:
>:Neither can we use "they" instead of "he", particularly
>:is the instruction is to be read by non-native speakers.
>
>Hogwash.  This usage should simply be included in lessons
>on English.  It's used so much that not doing so leaves
>non-native speakers handicapped.
>
>--tom
>
>    Tom Christiansen      tchrist@convex.com      convex!tchrist
>
There is an interesting point here, perhaps even two.  Much as we lament
prescriptivism in our grammar courses, we are doing so in those intended
for native speakers:  any rule we try to teach a foreign learner of a
language is, of course, prescriptive and should be (put object pronouns
before the verb in French except....).  Further, especially at the early
stages it is probably well to teach types of usage that will not expose
the foreigner who is still shaky on fundamentals to flames from purists
that will bemuse him.   Indeed, there is a strange psychology that makes
many natives upset as "colloquialisms" (to avoid more precision) that
they overlook in their compeers.  Frenchmen from the 16th will sometimes
explain that it is true that many respectable Frenchmen say /e bE~/ for
'eh bien' (or deny that they do) but tell you that as you are not a
Frenchman, it is unacceptable for you to do so.  This being the case,
it often pays the non-native to be "more correct" than the native, but
it is likewise true that he should be taught to understand the natives
if they should say /skowit/ just at lunch time.
From: connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: X and Y
Date: 29 Aug 92 16:28:14 GMT
Article-I.D.: memstvx1.1992Aug29.222814.3146
Organization: Memphis State University

In article <HBH6TOF@minnie.zdv.uni-mainz.de>, knappen@methusalix.kph.uni-mainz.de (Joerg Knappen) writes:
> In article <1992Aug27.181010.7490@midway.uchicago.edu>, hau4@ellis.uchicago.edu (sven  hauptfeld) writes:
> 
> "> "Anyway, most of your examples are words borrowed from other languages, and the
> "> "name of the letter is not even a word. Or could you find an English word in
> "> "which 'h' is actually pronounced /eitS/ ? (Or Italian word in which it is 
> "> "pronounced /akka/, or a German word in which 'y' is pronounced /Upsilon/...)
> "> "                        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> "> "Let's not split hairs.
> "> "
> "> "	Sven
> 
> Well, here it is:
> 
> Das Y-Chromosom.

Hardly!  But here's one to consider.  In World War I the British soldiers
pronounced the name of the Belgian (?) town Ypres [waip@z], where <y>
is indeed pronounced with its name.

--Leo Connolly
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: turkel@unixg.ubc.ca (Bill Turkel)
Subject: PROPOSAL: *voluntary* subject headers
Originator: turkel@unixg.ubc.ca
Organization: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 16:01:57 GMT


Judging from most of the replies I received, people who use this newsgroup
do not want to split it, but would like some way of finding things that
interest them.  How about a *voluntary*, dare I say it? categorization
on the subject header?  Some suggestions are that theoretical issues 
are marked with THEORY:, and that divisions be along phonology, morphology,
syntax, semantics, pragmatics etc. boundaries, rather than GB vs GPSG
boundaries.

Personally, I am game for anything... well, no distinctive feature matrices
:) :)  Can you see a subject heading like

	[+theory, -content, +hand_waving]:

Bill
turkel@unixg.ubc.ca
From: EZ-as-pi@cup.portal.com (Bruce Robert Gilson)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Lojban: a constructed human language
Date: Sat, 29 Aug 92 04:42:16 PDT
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Distribution: world
  <1992Aug20.071542.42447@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> <10491@scott.ed.ac.uk>
  <1992Aug24.222638.42539@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> <10510@scott.ed.ac.uk>

To my knowledge, NOBODY is fluent in
Lojban. Bob LeChevalier, its developer
(or co-developer), lives near me, and
I've met him, and he will state that
he is more fluent in Lojban than any
living person, but even he does not
really qualify as fluent.

                    Bruce R. Gilson
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: blz1@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Betsy L Zucker)
Subject: Re: Prototypes
Reply-To: blz1@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Betsy L Zucker)
Organization: Columbia University
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 14:34:52 GMT

I think that DP is part right and part wrong on this prototype
thing. D.Peretsky raises good questions, D.Pautler has good but
somewhat off the mark answers.	First, Lakoff never maintains
that *all* categories show prototype effects so whether or not
the Boston example works is beside the point.  Second, both of
you have been looking only at 'direct goodness of example'
definitions of prototypes and are using your own intuitions as
the basis of the fit.  Rosch and others work is based on
psychological experiments published in a number of studies of
broad study samples and includes the following testable measures
of prototyping effects:

    direct rating      (scale of 1-7, how good an example is it)
    reaction time      (how quick do subjects react to true/false)
    producing examples (how often do specifics show up on lists)
    asymmetry	       (consistent results such as U.S. is more similar to
			  Mexico than Mexico is to the U.S.)

The experiments have been replicated by several researchers using
several different content areas.

Peretsky's persistent questioning of mental representation /
behavior is a good question but he's putting up a straw dog --
I'm not aware that anyone has claimed what he is arguing against.
Neither Lakoff nor Rosch argue that prototypes are direct mental
representations, as the quotes below make abundantly clear (my
emphasis added):

       "Such [prototype] effects are superficial.  THEY SHOW
	NOTHING DIRECT ABOUT THE NATURE OF CATEGORIZATION."
		-- Lakoff,1987:136

       "to speak of a prototype at all is simply a convenient
       grammatical fiction; what is really referred to are
       judgments of degree of prototypicality...PROTOTYPES DO NOT
       CONSTITUTE A THEORY OF REPRESENTATION FOR CATEGORIES."
		-- Rosch,1978, quoted in Lakoff, ibid


           %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
             Jeff Zucker  c/o  <blz1@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu>
           %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: dick@cs.vu.nl (Dick Grune)
Subject: Nasalisation
Originator: dick@dick.cs.vu.nl
Organization: Fac. Wiskunde & Informatica, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 11:14:39 GMT


R.S.Hunt@newcastle.ac.uk (R.S. Hunt) writes:
> I am told that nasalised vowels also occur in modern Afrikaans, and they
> are not unknown in some dialects of English, though not widely recognised.
Yes. Even the word "Afrikaans" is pronounced [afrika~:s].

Twents, the dialect of Dutch (actually of Saxon, not Frankish origin) I grew
up with, has a full range of 10 vowels, each short, long and nasal long, i.e.
30 in total. The nasalisation always corresponds to a following -n in Dutch
(if the same word exists in Dutch).

	la~:t	- Du. land			- land
	kra~:k	- Du. ziek / G. krank		- ill
	we~:	- Du. wezen [zijn] / G. sein	- to be

and many others.
					Dick Grune
					Vrije Universiteit
					de Boelelaan 1081
					1081 HV  Amsterdam
					the Netherlands
					dick@cs.vu.nl
----------------------------------------------------------------
Heinlein has given us a simple one-dimensional yard-stick for civilisation:
	1 / infant_mortality .
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: schiller@tira.uchicago.edu (Eric Schiller)
Subject: Re: Prototypes [was Re: typology of Esperanto]
Organization: Center for Information and Language Studies / University of
	Chicago
	<1992Aug24.202419.9164@spss.com> <1992Aug26.002755.5143@athena.mit.edu>
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 20:09:47 GMT

I find myself in total agreement with David Pesetsky here. Lakoff
builds a lot of straw men, and then blows them down effectively.
But, as they used to say, where's the beef?

There is a lot of speculation in Lakoff's work, and though it is
interesting stuff, there is no testing, no prediction, etc. There
is nothing wrong with adopting his ICM (idealized cognitive models)
approach, but also nothing wrong with taking traditional linguistic
work as one particularly interesting and effective ICM. At best,
Lakoff can just say that the linguistic models we use in generative
work are not the whole story. But Chomsky has said all along that
competence is only part of the story.

There is plenty of evidence that syntactic categories do matter,
in a real psychological sense. Allowing that there are lots
of different ways of looking at an object does not mean that
each perspective cannot be developed and refined independently.

Eric Schiller
Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.usage.english,soc.culture.usa
From: eepjm@wombat.newcastle.edu.au (Peter Moylan)
Subject: Re: New words for gender neutral pronouns in English
Organization: University of Newcastle, AUSTRALIA
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 04:02:44 GMT

In article <10511@scott.ed.ac.uk>, iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski) writes:
> In article <1992Aug24.025341.12877@Princeton.EDU> roger@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig) writes:

>>Gendered words (the personal pronouns) were
>>*almost always* used for identification of a person's sex.  That is, the
>>gender-sex connection became far stronger in English than in other
>>languages.
> 
> Not really.  Russian _on_, unlike English "he", can refer to a host of
> inanimate objects, but it can't refer to a female being any more than
> English "he".  In other words, if it has a definite antecedent, it
> can't belong to the female sex.  So there is a clear connexion between
> it and the male sex.  Yet it is, and always has been, the one and only
> gender-neutral pronoun, and I'm not sure that its ability to serve as
> such (that is, to refer to a person who may turn out to be a woman) is
> conditioned by the fact that there are many masculine inanimate nouns.

That's not quite the same as the situation in English.  In a
language where gender is important even for objects which clearly
do not have a sex, the mental link between sex and gender
becomes weaker.

It's true that, in a language which uses grammatical gender, words
which refer to a male person almost always have the masculine gender
and words which refer to a female person almost always have the
feminine gender.  But not always.  Think of German "das Kind"
(neuter, even when the sex of the child is known) or French
"une personne" (feminine, even when referring to a male).  I'm
too rushed at present to look up my Russian dictionary, but I
think there are also examples like that in Russian.

Peter

-- 
Peter Moylan                      eepjm@wombat.newcastle.edu.au
Xref: sparky sci.lang:6761 alt.usage.english:6967
From: thorinn@diku.dk (Lars Henrik Mathiesen)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: New words for gender neutral pronouns in English
Date: 25 Aug 92 23:57:00 GMT
Organization: Department of Computer Science, U of Copenhagen

iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski) writes:
>For the umpteenth time, if English possesses a feature which makes it
>different from all its relatives, it must have acquired this feature
>at some point, whether by evolution or by prescription.  Singular
>"they" is such a feature.  So don't tell me that it was the original
>state of affairs.

English is _not_ the only Germanic language where the male 3p sg
pronoun has ceased to be usable in sex-neutral contexts (for most
people). In Danish, that usage is quite dead, and I would guess that
it has not been perpetrated, even in stilted academic prose, since
before the turn of the century. (In my opinion, neither English nor
Danish have masculine or feminine gender, they just have a few
pronomial forms that indicate the sex of humans and chosen animals.
Danish does have two genders, though: common and neuter.)

However, the need for a replacement is not very strong in Danish: the
problem does not occur as often (the equivalents of "anybody" and
"everybody" are plural, for instance), and there seems to be more ways
of getting around the remaining instances (a genderless reflexive
pronoun among them). Even so, there are some dodgy cases where it
seems acceptable to use plural pronoun with a "somebody" that refers
to a single person; I have been thinking so much about it, however,
that I cannot now say if I would ever _produce_ such a sentence, or if
I have ever heard it from others.

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@diku.dk> (Humour NOT marked)
Xref: sparky sci.lang:6738 alt.usage.english:6946
From: blz1@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Betsy L Zucker)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Prototypes
Date: 31 Aug 92 02:49:54 GMT
Reply-To: blz1@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Betsy L Zucker)
Organization: Columbia University

Sorry to jump into the prototypes thread so late, I seem to
always be out of town when the great threads appear.  Here's
my five cents worth (and don't miss the new reference at the
end of the post):

1) Evidence of syntactic categories illustrating prototype
   effects -- how about the work of Haj Ross on 'nounier' nouns
   showing that some nouns can be used in a full range of
   syntactic transformations while others can only be used in a
   few instances?

2) Context-based explanations as an *alternative* to prototype
   explanations (e.g. Peretsky's Boston example) --  I thought
   that context-based categorization was a central part of
   Lakoff's thesis rather than an alternative.  Lakoff claims
   that categories are the result of a mixture of hard-wiring
   (e.g. color sensitive neurons), logical patterns (e.g. fuzzy
   sets, prototype effects) and contextual patterns influenced by
   given cultures and situations.  Showing that we can all come
   up with ad hoc categorizations based on context is perfectly
   compatible with prototyping effects.

3) In regard to David Peretsky's gap between 'categories' and
   'categorization behavior' -- If context-based ad hoc
   categorizations are simply a function of behavior, and do not
   effect the pure mental categories, on what is this behavior
   based? are there no mental representations of this behavior?
   are there representations but ones other than categories?  are
   there cultural consistencies in these behaviors?

4) If I'm reading Lakoff correctly, he talks about ICMs
   (idealized cognitive models) when he talks about mental
   representations, not about categories or prototypes.  An ICM
   is a mental representation which includes, among other things,
   category structures which are themselves internally structured
   in a variety of ways, including by prototyping effects.

5) I just picked up a fantastic looking book which has articles
   critical of Lakoff from some other directions and includes
   articles by Paul Friedrich, Naomi Quinn and others.	I've only
   skimmed it so far, will post a summary when I've read it:

	Fernandez, James W., editor
	  1991	_BEYOND METAPHOR: THE THEORY OF TROPES IN
		ANTHROPOLOGY_.	Stanford: Stanford U. Press.


           %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
             Jeff Zucker  c/o  <blz1@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu>
           %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Latin x again
From: bthurman@uncavx.unca.edu
Date: 4 Sep 92 12:24:25 -0500
Organization: University of North Carolina at Asheville
Nntp-Posting-User: bthurman

Perhaps the questions did not make the point stick.  Could one not summarize
that, where x appears within the root of the word, x may survive or there may
be alteration, as to ss, but the vernacular abuse (originally abuse, or at
least alternate usage) of oblique cases where the old nominative will have
functioned eliminates the question that x could have devolved into a c/k or the
like?
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: JAREA@UKCC.UKY.EDU
Subject: Re: Nasalisation
Organization: University of Kentucky
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1992 00:36:32 GMT

 
I (mis?)read the original question about words like 'nin~o' being nasalized
as indicating the poster wishing to address the difference in the consonants
represented in Spanish by <n> and <n~>.  Others seem to feel that the topic
was the consonants themselves (both) as nasal, and others that the effect
of those consonants on preceding vowels was the topic.  Interesting.  Just
in case the difference between the two nasals of Spanish (or Portuguese)
was of interest to some, it lies in the fact that the one represented in
Spanish by <n~) and in Portuguese by <nh> (and in Italian by <gn>) is
palatal.
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: inclusive/exclusive
From: comjohn@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz (Mr. John T Jensen)
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1992 20:37:48 GMT
Organization: University of Auckland, New Zealand.

R.S.Hunt@newcastle.ac.uk (R.S. Hunt) writes:

>gmw1@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Gabe M Wiener) writes (20 Aug 92 20:42:42 GMT):


>> Can any linguists out there tell me which languages (if any) make the
>> distinction between:
>>
>>               the inclusive and exclusive "we"
>>               	 and
>>               the inclusive and exclusive "or"

>The Maori language has *four* ways of translating English "we" :

>Dual:  non-inclusive 'maua'  = "he and I"
>Dual:  inclusive     'taua'  = "thou and I"
>Plural: non-inclusive 'matou' = "these people and I (but not you)"
>Plural:  inclusive    'tatou' = "you and I (and others)"

>Latin has an exclusive "or" - 'aut' and an inclusive "or" - 'vel' :

>Aut hoc aut illud = Either this or that.

>Hoc vel illud = This and/or that.

>I would be pretty interested to know about other languages with an
>inclusive and exclusive "we" distinction.   I assume that other Polynesian
>languages will behave like Maori;  the differences between them are little
>more than between dialects of a single language.   I first came across this
>distinction when I started studying Maori; up till then, having only met
>Indo-European languages, none of which as far as I know make it, I was
>blissfully unaware that it was even there to be made.   Shows how language
>moulds your thought-patterns, doesn't it? 

>Richard.
>-- 
>Richard Hunt                                JANET : R.S.Hunt@uk.ac.newcastle
>MSc Course in Computing Science
>University of Newcastle upon Tyne
>Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU
>UK

>               "Homo sum; humani nil a me alienum puto."
>                     - Terence, c.190-159 B.C. -

The distinction was in proto-Austronesian.  Most Austronesian languages make
the distinction, and many add dual (sometimes higher numbers), as indicated
above for Maori.

Mandarin does but the distinction is becoming moribund and modern speakers
tend not to use it.  Cantonese does not and I do not think the distinction
is widespread in Chinese.

Many Amerind languages do.

jj

John Thayer Jensen                      64 9 373 7599 ext. 7543
Commerce Computer Services              64 9 373 7437 (FAX)
Auckland University                     jt.jensen@aukuni.ac.nz
Private Bag 92019
AUCKLAND
New Zealand
Newsgroups: sci.lang,soc.culture.celtic
From: pjn@phsun.uucp (Philip J. Naylor.)
Subject: Re: [pronouns] Re: Other properties of pronoun usage
Organization: King's College London.
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 10:54:42 GMT
X-Posted-From: phsun.ph.kcl.ac.uk
X-Posted-Through: sol.ctr.columbia.edu

In article <1992Aug25.193530.1562@hplabsz.hpl.hp.com> evan@hpl.hp.com (Evan Kirshenbaum) writes:
>In article <1992Aug25.173141.6185@ctr.columbia.edu> pjn@phsun.ph.kcl.ac.uk (Philip J. Naylor.) writes:
>
>>	"you" is plural.  "thee" is singular, and as such is still
>>used frequently in the west of England.  In fact you can still find
>>some of the denizens of Bristol using the Anglo-Saxon "thee bist" in
>>place of "you are".
>
>"thee bist", not "thou bist"?  I thought that the (American) Quakers
>(and related groups) were the only ones who used "thee" in subject
>position.  (And I believe they use "thee art".)
>
	Yes, definitely "thee bist" - it is my native tongue afterall.
Although I must admit that I usually use the rather more modern form
of the verb "to be" - i.e. "I'm", "'e's / she's", "you'm", "we'm", "they'm",
"you'm".  :-)



-- 
| Philip J. Naylor      |  " 'The time has come', the Walrus said, 'to talk   |
| King's College London |   of many things: of shoes -and ships -and sealing  |
|                       |   wax, of cabbages -and King's.' "                  |
| pjn@phsun.ph.kcl.ac.uk|                     -Lewis Carroll (well, almost).  |
From: connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Rechtschreibereform
Date: 29 Aug 92 16:36:21 GMT
Article-I.D.: memstvx1.1992Aug29.223621.3147
Organization: Memphis State University

In article <QEH6XOE@mailgzrz.tu-berlin.de>, paul@opal.cs.tu-berlin.de (Paul Boehm) writes:
> connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu writes:
> 
>>Ja, so ein Bloedsinn (pardon: "bloedsinn").  Auch wenn man einige eben-
>>falls unnuetze "h" entfernen wollte, wozu denn eigentlich?  Und das mit
>>den "hauptwoertern" ist for allem fuer auslaender sinnlos, denn wir sind
>>daran gewohnt, die hauptwoerter eben an den grossen lettern zu erkennen.
> 
> Schoen. Ich habe mir gerade mal die Muehe gemacht, ein Musterdiktat
> abzutippen. Alle Befuehrworter der Gross- und Kleinschreibung sollen
> sich den Text diktieren lassen und anschliessend die Fehler zaehlen.
> Danach sprechen wir uns wieder.

Ja, Mensch!  Ich habe nicht behauptet, dass die Grossschreibung konsequent
durchgefuehrt werde, sondern nur, dass sie nuetzlich sei.  Sprachreformer,
die nichts anderes (wieso nicht _Anderes_?) zu tun haben, sollten die
schlimmsten Unkonsequenzen beseitigen, was in den meisten Faellen darauf
hinausliefe, dass *mehr* Woerter grossgeschrieben wuerden.

--Leo Connolly
Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.usage.english