HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: hlirg@alf.uib.no (Roger Greenwald)
Subject: Re: Dilemma = Dilemna ??
Organization: University of Bergen, Norway
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 92 23:49:22 GMT

In article <5207@shum.huji.ac.il> yair@cs.huji.ac.il writes:
>
[re "dilemna"]
>I think this is a common typo. Since n is next to m on qwerty key keyboards this
>sort of error is very reasonable.  It is also hard to detect beacuse the letters
>look very similar.

Although I am not an expert in this area (there has been some interesting
research on typing and errors in typing), my view is that the proximity
of "m" and "n" on the keyboard would NOT lead to this error. Once
you have hit "m" once, you have no reason to move your finger, and no
way to "miss" the key. It is true that on a _computer_ keyboard,
if your finger landed so it depressed both keys, you might get "mn",
but you would know that you had only pressed down once, and when
you pressed again you would end up with "mnm". If the error were
one in which a single "n" were substituted for a single "m," then
it might be credible as a typo (e.g. "tane" for "tame" etc.).

It is well known, however, that all but the most highly skilled
typographers will substitute their own spellings of words they know
for different spellings of the same word--without being aware
that they are doing so. For example, an American typesetter keying
in a manuscript by a British author will have a hard time making
sure that he writes "colour" every time he encounters this word.
The probability is high that at least a few times he will write
"color." This has been a common problem in Norway, where many
variant spellings of certain words are "permitted" (officially),
where on occasion certain spellings have been "outlawed," and
where authors have varied as to which language reforms they have
adopted. Close examination of published texts reveals that in many
cases an author's spelling has been unwittingly changed by typesetters.

So far the evidence suggests that a certain number of library
cataloguers have simply had the wrong idea about how "dilemma"
is spelled. They may, of coure, have been influenced by a small
number of books in which "dilemna" actually appears on the title page.
>-- 
>					Yair Friedman.
>yair@cs.huji.ac.il
>yair@hujinix.BITNET


-- 
Roger Greenwald
Greenwald@hf.uib.no (address valid only until 10 August 1992)
From: markus@hpscit.sc.hp.com (Markus Jansons)
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1992 15:35:05 GMT
Subject: Looking for Krashen, Dr. Steven
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Santa Clara, CA
Newsgroups: sci.lang



i

    Can anyone provide a phone number or e-mail for
    Steven Krashen of USC?

    I understand that he has done some work on lang.
    learning methods.

   Thanks.

     Markus Jansons    markusj@hpuamsa.neth.hp.com


Newsgroups: sci.lang,sci.classics,sci.anthropology,talk.philosophy.misc,sci.philosophy.meta,rec.arts.books
From: gpivar@maestro.mitre.org (Greg Pivarnik)
Subject: Re: Eyes as Windows of the Soul
Reply-To: gpivar@mitre.org
Organization: The MITRE Corporation, McLean, Va
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1992 11:37:57 GMT

	"The Body reflects the Mind's condition."

			-Author Unknown
		(related to me by Micheal A. Pedretti in 1980)
-- 
Greg 

--  Be still, be silent...the rest is easy.  --
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: schiller@tira.uchicago.edu (Eric Schiller)
Subject: Re: Is "Inner city" English a dialect????
Organization: Center for Information and Language Studies / University of
	Chicago
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1992 21:09:07 GMT

Deciding whether a particular form of speech is a dialect or a distinct
language remains unscientific. The rule of thumb is that if two speakers
can't understand each other, they speak different languages. But there is
so much politicaland sociological interference that the waters are
usually muddied.

I have my own test, which is rather more liberal:
Can a non-native speaker of the standard language understand the dialect?

Another test:
Does a film with this speech require subtitles?
(Remember "The harder they come" (I think), about Jimmy Cliff?,
 and of course teh "Jive" scenes in 'Airplane')

In the end, the question is rather silly, since there is obviously a 
continuum between language and dialect and idiolect (individual
speech). Slice the salami anyway you wish.

Eric Schiller
University of Chicago
From: bobm@Ingres.COM (Bob McQueer)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: English and its Mutilation
Date: 29 Jul 92 00:19:37 GMT

> "I did not get the invite."

Bothersome, but you are fighting a losing battle.  My edition of the AHD
(American Heritage Dictionary) lists this usage as "informal".

> "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 ... .

> "Why Bush cannot be beat". (Instead of .... cannot be beaten).

I agree.  It's obnoxious.  "cannot be beat" as a slang expression is more
normally used to assert that something is superlative ("A cold beer on a
hot day ..."), rather than as a comment on an actual contest.  AHD has no
comment on this.
From: bwalsh@math.rutgers.edu (Bertram Walsh)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: etymol. of the word "Viking"
Date: 31 Jul 92 14:59:48 GMT
Article-I.D.: math.Jul.31.10.59.48.1992.17652
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

Well, just to add a little confusion, the Oxford Dict. of Eng. Ety.
refers to "vik = inlet from the sea" and "OE. wic = camp", but then
asserts that since the word exists in OE and Anglo-Frisian as early as
the 8th century (OE 'wicingsceatha' = pirate), it may be that the
Vikingr themselves adopted the name from the epithet applied to them
by the North Sea islanders whom they attacked.  This would then have
been reinforced by 'vik' or "Viken.'

BTW, Erland Sommarskog posts

> ... derivation from the Anglo-Saxon "wic", army camp, referring to
> the (from the 9th century) permanent camp of vikings
                             ^^^^^^^^^
but Onions thinks that 'wic' refers to a Viking practice of setting up
_temporary_ camps in the course of their raids.

Bertram Walsh  Mathematics Dep't  Rutgers University New Brunswick NJ 08903
  Combien pale et exsangue est le _shit_ anglo-saxon en face de notre
  _merde_ omnipresant et triomphant!   -- Pierre Guiraud in _Les Gros Mots_
From: connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Deep case (theta roles)
Date: 31 Jul 92 20:36:17 GMT
Organization: Memphis State University

It may not be fashionable, but I'm writing a book on (blush!) Case
Grammar.
 
The chapter on the nature of the deep cases (all right, call them theta
roles if you must) is nearly finished.  If anyone wants a copy in a few
weeks or so, let me know and I'll send it along.  (Comments sollicited
but not required.)
 
--Leo Connolly
From: kartik@hls.com (Kartik Chandrasekhar)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: English and its Mutilation
Date: 28 Jul 92 20:34:56 GMT


 Hi

	My mother was a English teacher and I went to a Jesuit school in 
India. The British during their rule brought the English language and 
the way it should be taught to India. Even now we study English
literature the same way as they do in the UK. Many Indians speak
English and it is a matter of pride if you are good at it and a very big 
help when you go abroad to UK or the USA to study. It is not uncommon
for Indian students who give the GRE or TOEFL to score full marks(points).

	Considering the above I was disturbed to see how the language
is used here in the USA. I am in full agreement with the idea of 
American English with colour spelt as color or rumour spelt
as rumor. Hmm.. maybe it makes more sense. What I have really come to 
despise are expressions such as:

"I did not get the invite."
"Dont do drugs." (Seen on billboards all over the country.)

To top it here is an example which appeared as a 3 inch headline in the 
San Jose Mercury News during the heady days of the Bush presidency.

"Why Bush cannot be beat". (Instead of .... cannot be beaten).

There is a lot of difference between the British or Indian Newspapers
who use chaste English and the US newspapers who are careless and 
irresponsible. They have to realize  that it is through thier colomns 
that a language flourishes in todays world and they should not butcher 
the language. The editorial should also provide the everyday lesson in 
English to the people.
 
 I am not trying to compare USA Vs UK or Vs India it is just that 
 when my 1 1/2 year son grows up here and starts reading the newspapers
 he should get more out of it than just the news and the scores.

In conclusion I would like to say that I will gladly accept any flaws 
or corrections in my argument.
 
 kartik
 

Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: baron@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Dennis Baron)
Subject: jury
Keywords: jury
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1992 19:09:21 GMT

According to the OED, the first instance of jury = makeshift, temp-
orary, is early 17c., in the phrase jury-mast.  The etymology is not
clear, though it seems unconnected with jury (legal sense) or
injury. Random House Webster's suggests possible derivation from
Middle English (ultimately OFrench).  Association of the variant
jerry with WW2 Germans is purely folk etymology.
-- 
Dennis Baron                                         debaron@uiuc.edu 
University of Illinois at Urbana                     217-333-2392
From: amunn@macbeth.umd.edu (Alan Munn)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: *** QUESTION ***
Date: 31 Jul 92 18:54:08 GMT
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park

In article <1992Jul30.170048.5864@gdstech.grumman.com> david@gdstech.grumman.com (David Nettles) writes:
>
>WHAT DOES NATIVE AMERICAN MEAN?
>

It's a synonym for 'flame bait'.  We don't want it here on sci.lang

Thanks.

Alan Munn <amunn@umd5.umd.edu>
Dept. of Linguistics, U. Maryland College Park MD 20742
From: djohns@elm.circa.ufl.edu (David A. Johns)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Chomsky's "Minimalist" paper
Date: 26 Jul 92 23:41:33 GMT
Organization: University of Florida, Gainesville

In article <1992Jul23.113534.4232@athena.mit.edu> pesetsk@athena.mit.edu (David M Pesetsky) writes:

# nam est' komu pomoch' yemu
# >
# >mnye   (bylo)   pomoch'     yemu
#  me-DAT was-NEUT help-infin  him-DAT
#  `I had to help him/I was supposed to help him`
#
# [...]
#
# There are more interesting cases, like (cf. Gil Rappaport, Russian
# Linguistics circa 1986):
#
# nam est' komu pomoch' yemu

Here's one I ran into on soc.culture.soviet a couple of months ago:

        v  Kieve ix       bylo          polno
        in Kiev  them-GEN was-NEUT/SING full-NEUT/SING
        'Kiev was full of them (Russians, as I remember)'

David Johns


Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: gal2@ellis.uchicago.edu (Jacob Galley)
Subject: Re: More evidence for "dilemna"
Reply-To: gal2@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1992 22:56:10 GMT

A friend of mine did not believe the correct spelling was "dilemma"
until I explained the Greek origins to her. This might be a bit
naive, but I bet a lot of people who use the word dilemma just
assume that it's the kind of word that'd have a silent "n" in it.

So where does that idea come from? It looks kind of Greekish, and
most Greekish words have silent letters in them . . .

(I'd follow this up to alt.usage.english but I think it's right on
the edge of "bona fide" historical linguistics.)

Jake.

-- 
Reinheitsgebot <-- "Keep your laws off my beer!" <-- gal2@midway.uchicago.edu
From: MICHAEL.WILLETT@OFFICE.WANG.COM ("Michael Willett")
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Minority Languages in the EC
Date: 27 Jul 92 22:57:33 GMT
Organization: Mail to News Gateway at Wang Labs

Regarding Catalan, besides being the dominant language in
Catalunya (Catalonia), it is also the official language of
the prinicipality of Andorra.  I recall driving through
Andorra during the winter and seeing street signs written
only in Catalan.  One read: Perill-Gel, meaning Danger-Ice!

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.

Michael.Willett@OFFICE.Wang.com
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: tony@nexus.yorku.ca (Tony Wallis)
Subject: Re: "-rigged"
Organization: York University
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1992 21:43:18 GMT

Janet M. Swisher (swisher@cs.utexas.edu) :
> A friend who is a Native Texan grew up with the term "nigger-rigged",
> .. referring to the ingenuity of blacks folks with few resources.
> In this more enlightened age, my friend instead uses the term
> "African-American engineering".
> (I cite this for its linguistic interest -- no slur is intended
> against any African-Americans who are professional engineers.)

Of course.  But since this is sci.lang, let's shoot for a little
precision and even-handedness in thought and language.  The
"enlightened" renaming of US citizens of Negroid phenotype/genotype as
"*African*-Americans" might also be quite annoying to Americans whose
roots lie in the northernmost quarter of Africa, e.g.  Morrocco,
Algeria, Tunisia, Lybia, Egypt.

Does "North American" exclude the Inuit ?

--
tony@nexus.yorku.ca = Tony Wallis, York University, Toronto, Canada

Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: amlogan@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Adam M. Logan)
Subject: Re: "Jury-rigged"
Originator: news@ernie.Princeton.EDU
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1992 16:29:31 GMT

In his _Devil's Dictionary_ Ambrose Bierce uses "jury-gods" to mean
makeshift gods and religion, which (I believe he says that this is as a 
sailor would say) is clearly a derivative of "jury-rig".  Bierce disappeared
around 1914, so he couldn't have known about WWI usage.  So this can't
come from"jerry".

Adam
From: connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Russian dative + infinitive
Date: 31 Jul 92 14:25:33 -0600
Organization: Memphis State University

Fascinating stuff about Russian dative + infinitive constructions.
Wish I knew Russian.
 
Tell me: does anything want to connect this to the phenomenon of
English infinitival sentences (or fragments), which appear with
objective pronouns as subjects?
 
        What, me worry?  (Alfred E. Neuman)
        Him learn Russian?  Forget it!
 
The English context is different, and I don't know that there's the
same sort of silent modal (or even one at all), but the case is perhaps
significant: cf. the preposition in the following:
 
        For me to learn Russian would be a miracle.
 
--Leo Connolly
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: schiller@tira.uchicago.edu (Eric Schiller)
Subject: Re: Chomsky's "Minimalist" paper
Organization: Center for Information and Language Studies / University of
	Chicago
	<SCHILLER.92Jul21162632@tira.uchicago.edu>
	<1992Jul22.012952.2118@athena.mit.edu>
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 21:26:08 GMT

I find myself in agreement with much of what David Pestsky claims in his
post (which presumably the reader has seen on the way here), and where
I do not I will need to post more explicit material than would be of
interest to most of sci.lang. I hope that perhaps we will both be
publishing enough explicit analyses to make our points clear.

Yes, the in(famous) draft was ukrazidat indeed, but resembled the
famous Soviet samizdat publications in that as the word got out
that this was not an "official" version, it seemed to gain speed
in distribution. The final version is indeed longer and corrected
(the later was the point of my "sanitized"). It still contains some
amazing rhetorical devices, and I will post some of them here
when I have a copy in front of me.

But as for the substance, the purport of my posting was to encourage
anyone interested in syntax to read the paper, as it will certainly
greatly affect the form, if not the content, of future published
work.

As some of you know, I prefer the Autolexical framework to the current
or previous formalisms of the Principles and Parameters approach. But
I also follow this latter approach closely and am at work on papers which
apply the Minimalist framework, and certainly respect the achievements of
some of its backers.

If at times I seem a bit disrespectful, this is a consequence primarily
of the rather offensive rhetoric I sometimes encounter there (examples
to follow from the paper itself) and especially from the fact that
some (many, even at times perhaps most?) of the GB crowd seem to pay
no attention at all to work done in other frameworks. The content of
the proceedings of NELS can be compared with that of CLS or BLS or
ESCOL, and the reader can judge. Not to mention the content of LI
these days. But the main point remains that the paper is, as with
all of Chomsky's writings, a focal point for discussion in the 
syntax community, and knowledge of the Minimalist framework is
required to understand the papers and articles that will soon
flood the market.

I'll just leave with a teaser for David:
How do you handle the Russian construction:

mnye (bylo) pomoch' yemu

(discussed briefly in George Fowler's dissertation)

I am particularly interested in the case assignment, of course.
From: tysoj@solb1.essex.ac.uk (Tyson J R)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Russian syntax (polno)
Date: 30 Jul 92 18:29:02 GMT
Reply-To: tysoj@essex.ac.uk (Tyson J R)
Followup-To: alt.drinking.post.soviet
Organization: University of Essex, Colchester, UK

In article <3994@blue.cis.pitt.edu.UUCP> djbpitt+@pitt.edu (David J Birnbaum) writes:
>In article <1992Jul29.224806.26059@athena.mit.edu> pesetsk@athena.mit.edu
>(David M Pesetsky) writes:

>>Right?  If I'm wrong, fine, I'll drown my sorrows in Kvas.  But...well
>>you tell me.
>A quick glance at the 4-volume academy dictionary confirms that polno
Ha!  Published by who?  When could we trust them about anything?
>takes a G complement. So you can make the kvas celebratory.

Citizens!  Surely nobody in their right minds is going to drink
kvas now that it is no longer absolutely necessary to be drunk
every night?  Or am I wrong is it more necessary now than ever?

(When I was a kid our Russian teacher at school told us that the
kvas tankers were full of kgb prisoners being moved from prison
to prison.  Made me worry about what the hell people were drinking
from them).

Apologies for complete irrelevance to sci.lang.
From: cms@dragon.com (Spawn of a Jewish Carpenter (Cindy Smith))
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re:  Language Acquisition and Tree Structures
Date: 31 Jul 92 03:27:48 GMT
Organization: Computer Projects Unlimited


 Hi, I'm writing an essay, with a reading notebook, on the subject of 
language acquisition.  Our text for the course I'm taking is Martha 
Kolln's _Understanding English Grammar_, which our professor has said 
is outdated and soon to be replaced.

 Concerning language acquisition:  How do you know the rules of 
grammar?  How do we learn the rules of grammar?  People instinctively 
break up sentences into two parts; English is binary.  I'll be 
studying the differences between langue (competence) and parole 
(performance).  According to our professor, all children go through 
similar stages of development at similar times, regardless of language 
and culture.  I'll be looking at pivot/operational format, i.e., the 
way kids move from "want dog" or cookie me" to more complex sentences. 
Affixes are missing in early kids grammar and these come as classes.  
Adding an "s" is learned as the grammatical concept of plural.  Kids 
learn this before the learn verb affixed such as "boy sings."  Kids 
speak in active voice declaratives with intonations indicating aspect 
or time.  According to my professor, intonations always come first.  
I've been told this is "a very slippery subject."

 So far, someone has recommended to me:  Comsky's _Knowledge of 
Language; its nature, origin and use_, Martin Atkinson's _Explanation 
in the study of child language development_, Robert Berwick's _The 
acquisition of syntactic knowledge_, and a book by Andrew Radford just 
recently published.

 My professor is really big on tranformational grammar theory.  She 
says that kids learn language the way transformational grammar teaches 
it.

 I'm also working on diagramming the following:

	He was extremely polite to Lavinia, scrupulously, formally
	polite; and she had never seen him in anger but once in her
	life, when he lost his temper in a theological discussion with
	her late husband.  With her he never discussed theology, nor,
	indeed, discussed anything; he contented himself with making
	known, very distinctly, in the form of a lucid ultimatum, his
	wishes with regard to Catherine.

		Once, when the girl was about twelve years old, he had
	said to her --
		"Try and make a clever woman of her, Lavinia; I should
	like her to be a clever woman."
		Mrs. Penniman, at this, looked thoughtful a moment.
	"My dear Austin," she then inquired, "do you think it is 
	better to be clever than to be good?"

 Isn't this great to diagram?  I'll post my humble efforts thus far
in my next posting.

 Thanks for any help!

Cindy Smith
cms@dragon.com
Xref: sparky sci.lang:6128 alt.usage.english:5560
Organization: Penn State University
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 15:40:19 EDT
From: Callec Dradja <GRV101@psuvm.psu.edu>
Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.usage.english
Subject: Latin forms in English

I am currently writing a paper on the word 'Data' and how the word
is changing from a count noun to a mass noun. I am also looking at
Latin words in English in general. Does anyone know of any papers
or books on the topic of how Latin words change when used in English.
I am especially interested in plural forms such as English speakers
saying stadiums instead of stadia or the singular data point instead
of datum. I hope someone can help me in that so far all of my searches
have been fruitless.

                              Thanks in advance,
                              Gregson Vaux

********************************************************************
* 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