HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang,sci.cognitive
Subject: Re: Cognitive linguistics [was Re: Prototypes]
Date: 26 Aug 92 06:29:51 CDT
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services

In article <peeters.714802234@tasman>, peeters@tasman.cc.utas.edu.au (bert peeters) writes:

> So, are some of us smarties
> and put "cognitive" in front of the stuff we've been doing for ages in
> order to attract the magic dollar, or am I missing something?

This does happen.  Jonathan Kaye has written a book on "cognitive
phonology" which merely sums up recent work in phonology.  But we must
remember that publishers rather than authors are sometimes responsible
for things like this... In grant proposals, another story!
-- 
********************************** +.............................+
*- Ken <miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>* :All opinions expressed herein:
*There is no privileged position.* :are my own and are not to be :
*	-God, Derrida, others    * : attributed to my employer   :
********************************** +.............................+

Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich)
Subject: Altaic? (was Re: Agglutinative languages)
Organization: LLNL
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 23:27:36 GMT

	The Altaic family, by minimum definition, comprises three main
groups: Turkic, Mongolian, and Manchu-Tungus. Whether or not they are
truly related has been a contentious question over the last several
decades, with the naysayers proposing massive borrowing. But my guess
would be that they are related; there is an advocate of common descent
in Lamb and Mitchell's _Sprung from a Common Source_, 1991, an
advocate who suggests comparing to other putative Altaic languages
such as Korean and Japanese.

	One broader relationship suggested in the past is Ural-Altaic;
but more recent research suggests that Altaic probably has no special
relationship with Uralic; both are members of a larger family called
"Nostratic", essentially coequal with other members, like
Indo-European, Kartvelian, and Dravidian.

	For anyone interested in reading more about the subject, I
have a list of references on Nostratic and related matters that I can
either post or e-mail.
From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com (Richard Wojcik,snake)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Cognitive linguistics [was Re: Prototypes]
Date: 27 Aug 92 16:19:51 GMT
Reply-To: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com
Organization: Research & Technology

In article 42562@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu, miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu () writes:
>In article <peeters.714802234@tasman>, peeters@tasman.cc.utas.edu.au (bert peeters) writes:
>
>> So, are some of us smarties
>> and put "cognitive" in front of the stuff we've been doing for ages in
>> order to attract the magic dollar, or am I missing something?
>
>This does happen.  Jonathan Kaye has written a book on "cognitive
>phonology" which merely sums up recent work in phonology.  But we must
>remember that publishers rather than authors are sometimes responsible
>for things like this... In grant proposals, another story!

Does cognitive linguistics attract "magic dollars?"  Anyway, I haven't read
Kaye's book and don't want my remarks to reflect on it.  I do think that
so-called cognitive linguistics has not served itself well by attempting to
recast generative phonology in its own image.  (I witnessed such an effort a
few years ago in an LSA presentation given by Lakoff.)  Geoff Nathan and I
have been trying, with limited success, to make the point that Stampean
Natural Phonology, is far more compatible with the basic principles of the
cognitive approach.  In particular, Natural Phonology takes linguistic 
theory to be grounded in linguistic behavior, rather than intuitions of well-
formedness.  The phonological system plays the behavioral roles of coordinating
articulatory gestures during speech production and helping to categorize sounds  
during speech perception.  The problem with generative theory is that it con-
fuses pure phonology with operations that play a very different role in language--
viz. the manipulation of speech sounds (phonemes) associated with morphemic
identities, so-called morphophonology.  From a generative perspective, it only
matters whether your analysis accounts for distributional patterns, not
whether it accounts for the behavioral mechanisms that create the patterns.

If one were to take cognitive linguists at their word and attempt to construct a
functionalist model of phonology, it would look very much like what Natural 
Phonologists have already proposed.  If all we get is warmed over generative
phonology, then it is the "cognitive phonologists" who are barking up the wrong
tree.

-----
Disclaimer:  Opinions expressed above are not those of my employer.

    Rick Wojcik   (rwojcik@atc.boeing.com)   Seattle, WA
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: chungdan@leland.Stanford.EDU (Zhong Qi Iao (Daniel))
Subject: Re: [alfikso] Re: icx
Followup-To: soc.culture.esperanto,sci.lang
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 92 06:00:34 GMT

     In kemio (h^emio), jam estas multo da ne-standardaj alfiksoj,
ekzemple "-ik" kaj "-id" por kemiaj kombinaj^oj.  Tial, nov-alfiksismo
*ne* estas nova.  Cetere, mi opinias, ke la enkonduko de "-ic^" ne
estas "feminisma" -- tio estas nur por seks-egalismo.

					*Zhong* Qi-Iao (s-ic^o), Usono
				 ||| \ /  /       /   |  \/   |  / / /  
				 |+|  X  /       <    |       |  \/     
				 --- / \ ---      \   |       |  --|    

Newsgroups: sci.lang
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: mstede@cs.toronto.edu (Manfred Stede)
Subject: Re: Cognitive Linguistics & History
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
Date: 30 Aug 92 18:19:54 GMT

pesetsk@athena.mit.edu (David M Pesetsky) writes:

>....  Carlotta Smith somewhere in the dark ages (1960s)
>noted the same sort of fact concerning relative clause modification of
>proper nouns:

>	*the Paris
>	the Paris that I love

>Yet it seems to me that these relative clauses can only be restrictive,
>not appositive.  Certainly "the Paris, which I love, was just destroyed"
>is impossible, vs. "the Paris that I love was practically destroyed by
>Hausman".  The adjective "The insightful John Smith" can be appositive
>or restrictive but "the John Smith that I know" does not have an
>appositive counterpart "the John Smith, who I know".  I wonder why.

Being only a second-hand linguist, I can merely offer a guess, but here it is.

First, literal translations of the above examples into German yield the same
un/well-formed results, indicating that the phenomenon is not an oddity of
a particular language.  The appositive reading of the equivalent of "the 
insightful John Smith" sounds slightly unusual, but it certainly works.

My guess: The primary function of placing the determiner in front of a proper 
name is to signal a *contrast* between the object the speaker has in mind and 
the version of the object that is generally being referred to by the name 
("Paris" vs. "the Paris that I knew").  Hence every definite NP resulting from 
this motivation has to be restrictive.

Which leaves the well-formedness of the appositive reading of "the insightful 
John Smith" to be explained.  Well, maybe it was produced by a different
recipe: not to signal any contrast, but merely to shorten the lengthy "John
Smith, who is insightful," and (probably more important) to place emphasis
on the particular property-ascription.  Moving the adjective in front of the 
name then requires a determiner, otherwise the NP is not well-formed:
I met John Smith, who is insightful.
*I met insightful John Smith.
I met the insightful John Smith.

The question why "the John Smith that I know" does not have an appositive
counterpart could then be answered: Determiners in front of proper names do
either signal the contrast (and the NP is restrictive), or they are filled
in to restore well-formedness after moving an adjective in front of the NP.
For "*the John Smith, who I know", none of these reasons applies.  

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Manfred Stede                                 mstede@cs.toronto.edu				
Dept. of Computer Science                      o              
University of Toronto                         <\ 
Toronto M5S 1A4, Canada                       />   
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: v187ef4y@ubvmsd.cc.buffalo.edu (Patrick J Crowe)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.usage.english,soc.culture.usa
Subject: Re: Problem with 'they' (etc) as 3p singular common gender pron.
Date: 23 Aug 92 18:18:00 GMT
Organization: University at Buffalo
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41

In article <1992Aug23.023626.22025@midway.uchicago.edu>,
 gal2@midway.uchicago.edu writes...
> 
>I don't think anyone has mentioned yet that in today's English 'they' /
>'them' / 'their(s)' cannot refer to (some?) specific singular antecedents:
> 
>* Every good chef knows their ingredients.
> 
>  Everyone in the kitchen knows their ingredients.
> 
>Any thoughts on why? I haven't spent much time on this. Does anyone have
>an argument putting this phenom in the syntactic realm? Is it because
>antecedents which are specific people (ie, introduce a cognitive model
>or frame or whatever) somehow require a commitment / assumption in regards
>to their sex?
> 

I don't know; I have no problem with "Every good chef knows their ingredients."
Maybe it all has to do with how much attention we payed to our English teachers.
I still can't figure out why they put _me_ in Honors English in 9th grade ;-).

Pat Crowe, SUNY at Buffalo
Disclaimer: If you claim I represent my department's views, you'll be laughed
out of acedemia.
From: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Zusammenfassung: Rechtschreibereform
Date: 30 Aug 92 17:01:31 GMT
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK

In article <1992Aug29.231941.3148@memstvx1.memst.edu> connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu writes:
>In article <PMH6HTI@minnie.zdv.uni-mainz.de>, knappen@obelix.kph.uni-mainz.de (Joerg Knappen) writes:
>> * Die Regeln zur Kommasetzung sollen ge"andert werden.
>
>Das verstehe ich nun wirklich nicht, denn die Regeln sind ja sehr
>konsequent (viel konsequenter als etwa im Englischen) und daher relativ
>leicht zu lernen.

Gibt es im Englischen ueberhaupt Regeln zur Kommasetzung?  Es gibt ja
so viele Faelle, wo man ein Komma beliebig setzen oder weglassen darf.
Ich finde es etwas unbequem, dass im Deutschen und im Niederlaendischen
verschiedene Kommaregeln benutzt werden, obwohl die Sprachen sonst
syntaktisch so nahe sind.  Aber.

>(<zh> kommt mir zu "undeutsch" vor, aber das ist halt Geschmackssache.

Es ist nur im Albanischem der Regel nach so gebraucht.

>English ist es eigentlich auch nicht, denn der zh-Laut wird im Englischen
>nie so geschrieben, sondern nur 
 (pleasure, division, etc.) bzw. am
>Wortende, in ganz wenigen Woertern nur, <ge> (garage, rouge)).

Aber wenigstens hat "z" im Englischen einen "verwandten" Laut
(stimmhaft und frikativ), und `"zh" : "z" :: "sh" : "s"' sieht logisch
aus, obwohl "s" auch stimmhaft ausgesprochen werden kann.  Mit dem
deutschen "z"-Laut, der stimmlosen Affrikate, hat der zh-Laut
ueberhaupt nichts zu tun.

Wuerdest Du lieber "sh" haben?

>> * Phonetische Schreibung von Fremdw"ortern (wie im Niederl"andischen).

Was geschieht denn im Niederlaendischen?  Soweit ich weiss, ist dort
z.B. "c" statt "k" oefter als im Deutschen behalten.

-- 
 `If ye hiv ears oan yer heid - then use them tae lissen.' (The Glasgow Gospel)
Ivan A Derzhanski   (iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk;  iad@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu)
* Centre for Cognitive Science,  2 Buccleuch Place,  Edinburgh EH8 9LW,  UK
* Cowan House, Pollock Halls, 18 Holyrood Park Road, Edinburgh EH16 5BD, UK
From: gal2@ellis.uchicago.edu (Jacob Galley)
Subject: Categorizing by use as well as physical form
Reply-To: gal2@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 20:39:18 GMT

In article <2AA40FA3.1118@orion.oac.uci.edu> cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese) writes:
>There's something I think people are missing when they talk about
>language catagories and junk like that.
                         ^^^^ 		Huh?? Can you elaborate?

>The category depends on the context in which it was developed; in other
>words, whether or not you put two or more things in a common category
>depends on what you want to use them for.

Isn't this obvious?

>Categories are fluid and only MODEL the world -- and depend on the
>categorizer's point of view. 

Are you implying that some[waving-hands-around]THING out there does
more than "only" modeling the world? Or does it better?

I'm trying to be frank, not abusive. I haven't been following the
"Cognitive" thread, so maybe I'm knee-jerking out of context.



By the way, in the past few weeks I have posted two articles
that I thought would start up some interesting discussion here. The
first was about Charles Ruhl's treatment of linguistic elements like
syntactic transformations, semantic units and pragmatic rules as
being of the same kind. The second (posted only two days ago) was
a little thought I had about why 'they' works to different degrees
as an anaphoric device referring to a singular third person antecedent
of unknown or irrelevant sex. Is this the right place for posts like
this? (Is squabbling like my post above more welcome?) Would it help
if posters of articles about theory put "THEORY:" in the Subject: line?

Probably.

Jake.
-- 
"What's so interdisciplinary about studying lower levels of thought process?"
				  <-- Jacob Galley / gal2@midway.uchicago.edu
Xref: sparky sci.lang:6764 alt.usage.english:6972 soc.culture.usa:6923
From: roger@crux.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.usage.english,soc.culture.usa
Subject: Re: Problem with 'they' (etc) as 3p singular common gender pron.
Date: 27 Aug 92 16:16:52 GMT
Organization: Princeton University
Originator: news@nimaster

In article <1992Aug26.211044.2221@nosc.mil> sampson@nosc.mil (Charles H. Sampson) writes:
>In article <1992Aug26.183558.5583@Princeton.EDU> roger@crux.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig) writes:
>
>>At any rate, we only gender-inflect to describe sexed things: humans,
>>animals.
>
>     And ships?

In an all-male society with long periods of no contact with women, funny
things happen to your language, to say nothing of your outlook.  You can
feel quite wedded to your ship...

Roger
Xref: sparky sci.lang:6775 alt.usage.english:6984
From: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: New words for gender neutral pronouns in English
Date: 27 Aug 92 09:57:30 GMT
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK

In article <1992Aug27.024249.8843@fulcrum.oz.au> steve@fulcrum.oz.au (Steve Taylor) writes:
>In <1992Aug24.025341.12877@Princeton.EDU> roger@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig) writes:
>>However, the "age" argument itself is necessary, to counteract all the
>>"PC" bullshit.
>
>It isn't for me.

But it is for some.  And it is for you, too.  See below.

>People on both sides of this question are arguing from 
>historical usage and searching for older and more convincing precedents
>to show each other.

Not necessarily for older ones.  It matters little whether singular
"they" has been around since the sixteenth century or the eighteenth,
but it is very important to know that it is not the recent invention
of some weightlifting female.

>In my case I use "they" as a gender neutral singular because....

(arguments somewhat rearranged)

>	ii) Other attempts at non sexist language ("hir", "he/she", use
>	of "she" to include both sexes) sound horrible to me.

And why do they?  Because they are artificial.  So you see, the
age/continuity argument works for you, even though you don't admit it.

>	i) I perceive a need for some form of non sexist language,

Are you listening, Mr Lustig?  Taken alone, this sounds very much like
an argument from political correctness.

>	as I think "he" does imply maleness, even when used in a gender
>	neutral context.
>
>	iii) Using "they" sounds fine to me. It fits into my own personal
>	model of how the language works. It was only a few months ago
>	that I found out there was even any fuss about using it.

Fine.  "He" is masculine (implies maleness).  "They" is plural
(implies two or more of 'em).  Now let's suppose you know that you are
talking of only one person of unknown sex.  If you use "he", the odds
of your being right or wrong are about equal.  On the other hand, if
you use "they", you are a` priori wrong.  Where is the logic?

Ah, but your personal model of the language is able to ignore the
plurality of "they", while insisting on the masculinity of "he".
Here's the catch.  You can't really rationalise your intuitions in
this matter; they are, as you said it yourself, your own "model of how
the language works", and the way language works is largely determined
by usage, not by logic alone.

<...>
>the point I'm trying to make is that the historical arguments don't have
>any meaning to me, and I suspect that they're not very useful for convincing
>people on either side of the argument.

On the contrary, you ended up illustrating that the historical
arguments are the only valid ones.

-- 
 `If ye hiv ears oan yer heid - then use them tae lissen.' (The Glasgow Gospel)
Ivan A Derzhanski   (iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk;  iad@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu)
* 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: siobhan@microsoft.com (Siobhan Harper)
Subject: Re: inclusive/exclusive
Date: 24 Aug 92 19:08:17 GMT
Organization: Microsoft Corporation

In article <AA01895.199208210842.ttypd@turing.ncl.ac.uk> 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)"

Vietnamese makes the distinction between "chung ta" (corresponds to
"tatou" above), and "chung toi" (= "matou").

Sorry about the lack of diacritics, but this is ASCII, after all...

--Siobhan


Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Subject: Right sorts of posts (was Re: Categorizing...)
Originator: alderson@leland.Stanford.EDU
Reply-To: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Organization: Stanford University Academic Information Resources
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 92 19:02:49 GMT

In article <1992Sep2.203918.1917@midway.uchicago.edu>, gal2@ellis (Jacob Galley) writes:
>By the way, in the past few weeks I have posted two articles that I thought
>would start up some interesting discussion here. The first was about Charles
>Ruhl's treatment of linguistic elements like syntactic transformations,
>semantic units and pragmatic rules as being of the same kind. The second
>(posted only two days ago) was a little thought I had about why 'they' works
>to different degrees as an anaphoric device referring to a singular third
>person antecedent of unknown or irrelevant sex. Is this the right place for
>posts like this? (Is squabbling like my post above more welcome?) Would it
>help if posters of articles about theory put "THEORY:" in the Subject: line?

Your articles would seem to be the sort of thing which is intended for this
newsgroup.  I don't know whether one should describe the [deleted] squabbling
as more welcome--perhaps simply more common?

I gave up being a syntactician years ago, for all practical purposes (meaning,
I took my exams and don't have to do that any longer if I choose not to), so
I'm not equipped to comment on Ruhl's work.  (Believe it or not, I try not to
get involved in areas in which I don't think I have anything to say.)

I would have missed your article on "they" because I grew tired of the topic
long ago, and have been killing all the related articles.

But do continue to post here; the more, the merrier (marrier, Mary-er).
-- 
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: jcl@sactoh0.sac.ca.us (John C. Laviolette)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Esperanto's embedded sexism
Date: 4 Sep 92 06:50:59 GMT
Organization: Sacramento Public Access Unix

<1992Aug16.002920.3039@memstvx1.memst.edu>
<1992Aug16.080712.42380@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>
Followup-To: 
Distribution: 
Organization: Sacramento Public Access Unix, Sacramento, Ca.
Keywords: 
 
 
    concerning Esperanto's pair "patro/patrino", and whether "patrino" is
thus derivative of a male noun:
         Is "patro" really male, or is it merely being used for a male
role?  Maleness, as I recall, is expressed in Esperanto by the prefix
"vir-", so "father" should strictly speaking be "virpatro".  But one might
argue that there is nothing really specially about a male parent (contrary
to Quayle;) any parent can fill the role of a father towards a child
(we're speaking in terms of internal social structure of the family, not
the very fleeting male reproductive role.)
         "Mother", on the other hand, is a distinct parent role, because a
human being who carries someone inside her body for nine months and
breastfeeds the child thereafter will act in a way no other human being
will act.
         So, "patro" as "parent" would seem sufficient for "father", but
"patrino" is a special kind of "patro".
         The pair "viro/virino" would seem to be closer to a gender bias
than "patro/patrino"  --  although I can see an argument in favor of that
division as well ("ino" could be used as an independent word for "woman",
but "virino" stresses the relationship to "viro"  --  as opposed to such
words as "homino/virhomo", which do not stress the connection at all.  So
Esperanto gives a choice of words to use in place of "virino"; its overuse
is a flaw of the speakers, not the language.)
-- 
 ,-----------------------------------------------------------,
 !  "pay no attention to     !         John Laviolette       !
 !   the man behind the      ! InterNet=jcl@sactoh0.SAC.CA.US!
 !       curtain!"           ! or:     p.o. box 1493         !