HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: peeters@tasman.cc.utas.edu.au (bert peeters)
Subject: Re: Why are English infinitives so different?
Organization: University of Tasmania, Australia.
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1992 00:15:28 GMT

sharder@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Soren Harder) writes:

>ritley@uimrl7.mrl.uiuc.edu writes:

>> ... infinitives in English are referred to with the word 'to',...

>>Might anyone know why this is so, or whether there are
>>other languages which refer to their infinitives as English does?

>Yes, the Scandinavian languages (Danish, Swedish, Norwegian). E.g. in
>Danish 'at se' (to see) or (are there any better examples, when
>explaining Danish infinitives in English :-) ): 'at vaere eller ikke
>vaere' (to be or not to be).

The Danish translation of *to be or not to be* shows that *to* and *at*
are not equivalent (there is no *at* in front of the second *vaere*).
Would it be impossible to have either of the following?

- At vaere eller at ikke vaere
- At vaere eller ikke at vaere

Just curious...
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Bert Peeters                         Tel: +61 02 202344
Department of Modern Languages               002 202344
University of Tasmania at Hobart        Fax: 002 207813
GPO Box 252C                            Bert.Peeters@modlang.utas.edu.au
Hobart TAS 7001
Australia
From: bon6@quads.uchicago.edu (rahul  bonner)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Devanagari: Syllabary or Alphabet?
Date: 13 Apr 92 05:10:25 GMT
Reply-To: bon6@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations

In article <1992Apr13.012514.4510@cs.yale.edu> horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne) writes:
>In article <1992Apr12.225857.21555@midway.uchicago.edu>, bon6@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
>
><The fact is that Devanagari is neither purely syllabic nor purely
><alphabetic.  It is not a pure alphabet because the basic unit of
><representation is the syllable, usually one or more consonants
><with a vowel sign above, below, to the right or to the left.
>
>Devana^gari^ is an alphabet, period.  Each letter represents a sound.

You are begging the question.  These "letters" you speak of are
nothing of the sort, because they do not occur independently (more
on this below).  They are components of complex syllabic graphs.

>The
>fact that not all letters come in sequence is irrelevant,

It is highly relevant.  If we take the syllable as the basic unit,
then the order of reading Devanagari is simple: left to right.

>as is the fact that
>an inherent vowel (namely [@]) is not written.  (It is written as the "null
>grapheme".  :-))

You have destroyed your own position.  Indeed, this is an inherent
vowel, inherent to the syllabic graph.  And your smiley admits the
ludicrousness of positing the existence of an invisible letter,
something you are forced to do if you hold that Devanagari is an
alphabet. 

>It can also be regarded as a syllabary--a very large one--but what is the
>point of that?

This is a straw man argument.  I have not claimed that Devanagari is
a syllabary, only that the basic unit of representation is the 
syllable.

><But the <e>-component
><of <ke> can not occur independently, unattached to a consonant
><sign.
>
>Yes, it can.  It just has a slightly different form.
>
>					--Scott

You are wrong: the form is completely different.  You might also
compare the <i>-component of <ki> with the syllabic graph <i>.

Before you continue this argument, please consider this: when people
write Devanagari vertically downward, as on a shop sign, where do
they break the words, between your "letters" or my syllabic graphs?

                                            -- Rahul
From: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Linguistics TV Schedule
Keywords: Dixie
Date: 15 Apr 92 19:43:11 GMT
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK


I see that this anthem story is about to degenerate into a political debate.

STOP IT.  <reaching for flametorch>

-- 
---- --- -- -  Long Live the Rose and the Heather!  - -- --- ----
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: jkorpela@vipunen.hut.fi (Jukka Korpela)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Latin alphabet (was: Inventing a writing system?)
Date: 6 Apr 92 09:20:59 GMT
	<JKORPELA.92Apr2113217@vipunen.hut.fi>
	<1992Apr3.133137.1729@memstvx1.memst.edu>
Organization: Helsinki University of Technology, Finland


In article <1992Apr3.133137.1729@memstvx1.memst.edu> connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu writes:

   The 26-letter alphabet isn't particularly English, and I won't be so
   ethnocentric as to claim our shared heritage for my native tongue.

Maybe I should have inserted a couple of :-)'s, since my notes were
not to be taken too seriously. But I *was* serious about the point
that the "26-letter alphabet" *is* the English alphabet, and it is
ethnocentric (or glossocentric) to call it "the Latin alphabet".

Among the languages I know to some extent (more than a dozen),
the English language is the only one that is written using exactly
"the 26-letter alphabet".

Conceptually, it is better to view the English alphabet as one
member of the family of Latin-based alphabets than to regard
it as *the* Latin alphabet. Practically, I always call it "the
English alphabet" when e.g. teaching what characters are allowed
in identifiers in programming languages, since the term is unique
and easily understood. People tend to know English better than
Latin, regretfully :-)

Jukka "Yucca" Korpela
From: peeters@tasman.cc.utas.edu.au (bert peeters)
Subject: Re: Why are English infinitives so different?
Organization: University of Tasmania, Australia.
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 1992 07:38:40 GMT

jimmay@csuchico.edu (Jim May) writes:

>In article <ARA.92Apr5160327@camelot.ai.mit.edu> ara@zurich.ai.mit.edu 
>(Allan Adler) writes:
>> Well, although in German "tun" is the the infinitive, to have to do is
>> "haben zu tun". The zu tun seems to correspond to English usage.

>This example is really not very appropriate because the infinitive almost 
>always does NOT have "zu" in front of it.  Even in this case the "zu" does 
>not correspond to the "to" in the English infinitive.  It's just a 
>coincidence.

Correct. In Dutch and in Afrikaans it is exactly the same. However, I am
not prepared to go as far as to say that the appearance of *to* in front
of an English infinitive and of *zu* in front of a German one (etc.) is
a pure coincidence. There is something like genetic relationship, isn't
there?
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Bert Peeters                         Tel: +61 02 202344
Department of Modern Languages               002 202344
University of Tasmania at Hobart        Fax: 002 207813
GPO Box 252C                            Bert.Peeters@modlang.utas.edu.au
Hobart TAS 7001
Australia
From: lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Albanian Resources, and befuddled GB/PSG semantic content query
Date: 11 Apr 92 08:09:22 GMT
Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Labs, Livermore CA

In article <9210214.22059@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU> nsn@mundil.cs.mu.OZ.AU (Nick Stavros NICHOLAS) writes:
				... The author also wants to use Greek and
:Norwegian as examples of a peaceful-coexistence diglossia, as a model for
:Albania. I'm not that clued in about Nynorsk, but what you have now in
:Greek is no longer a diglossia (just a very messy range of demotic registers,
:with instances of katharevousa grammar limited to the church), and the 
:coexistence was never peaceful.

	That sounds rather interesting. Any details, anyone?
From: krogers@javelin.sim.es.com (K. Rogers)
Subject: Sources of serious language courses (was Re: Albanian Resources)
Reply-To: krogers@javelin.sim.es.com
Organization: Evans & Sutherland Computer Corp., Salt Lake City, Utah
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 15:50:18 GMT

mnu@INEL.GOV (Rick Morneau) writes:

>My old catalog (1989) from the US Defense Language Institute lists
>an Albanian Basic Course with about a dozen texts and 55 cassette
>tapes for $150.

I have catalogs from Audio Forum and Audio Language & Knowledge
Institute.  These small companies seem to be mostly clearing houses
for language courses developed by the Defense Language Institute and
the Foreign Service Institute of the Dept. of State.  However, I doubt
they have a full offering of what either one has developed.

Thanks to Rick for supplying the address for the DLI.  What I'd like
to know is if the FSI will also supply directly to people so I could
bypass the middlemen who have undoubtedly jacked up the price quite a
bit as well as not offering the courses of more obscure languages.  If
so, can anyone supply their address?

BTW, if you're only familiar with the Language/30 and Living _________
type courses you'll be amazed at how large and complete DLI and FSI
courses are.  Most of the courses have some 20 hours of cassette time
with the major European language getting up to 100 hours of just
cassette material along with thousands of pages of written material.
-- 
Keith Rogers
Evans & Sutherland Computer Corp.
krogers@javelin.sim.es.com
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Why are English infinitives so different?
Date: 13 Apr 92 16:56:44 GMT
Organization: SPSS Inc.

In article <66@steiny.UUCP> steiny@steiny.UUCP (Don Steiny) writes:
>	Because English uses "helping verbs" to express tense, mood, and
>aspect, it is unusually rich in distinction and it is hard to compare to
>other langauges.

It's not so hard.  Most European languages use auxiliary verbs, including
Latin, French, German, and Russian.

Spanish is a nice example of a language with a rich system of conjugation
*and* a rich system of auxiliary verbs.  I wonder if you could suggest
a distinction made with English verbs which is not made in Spanish?
From: horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: What is a dialect?
Date: 10 Apr 92 23:56:53 GMT
Organization: Computer "Science" Dept, Yale University

In article <1992Apr10.204823.18888@cbnewsi.cb.att.com>, hlin@cbnewsi.cb.att.com (hua.t.lin) writes:
<In article <1992Apr10.200823.9953@kakwa.ucs.ualberta.ca> userisra@mts.ucs.ualberta.ca (Mark Israel) writes:
<>
<>   Written Mandarin and written Cantonese are virtually identical.  

No.

<>That seems to imply that there is a one-to-one mapping between Mandarin
<>words and Cantonese words.
<
<Yes, there is a one-to-one mapping.

NO!!!!!!!!  This is simply not true.

<However, when spoken they tend to use
<different vocabulary which are still meaningful when literally translated.
<
<Actually, a texan in the middle of an english village would have
<as much a language problem as a cantonese visiting northern china.

The latter would have a much bigger problem than the former.

					--Scott

-- 
Scott Horne                               ...!{harvard,cmcl2,decvax}!yale!horne
horne@cs.Yale.edu      SnailMail:  Box 7196 Yale Station, New Haven, CT   06520
203 436-1848                Residence:  Rm 1848 Silliman College, New Haven, CT
ZANG4 HAN4 YI4 JIA1 / GONG4 JIAN4 ZHONG1HUA2!
From: cctimar@athena.cas.vanderbilt.edu (Cary Timar)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Tenses
Date: 13 Apr 92 04:52:38 GMT
Organization: Vanderbilt U. Math Grad Student

In article <66@steiny.UUCP> steiny@steiny.UUCP (Don Steiny) writes:
> is paraphrased.     There really cannot be more than three tenses because
> there is only now, the future, and the past.  Maybe some languages use
> a different metaphor for time, but not Latin.  I think you are confusing 

I beg to differ.  "Now" is not always well defined.  A problem one runs into
periodically with written media, or with taped messages, is that there are
two "now"s - the writer's and the reader's.  This suggests a 5 tense
system - writer's past, writer's present, interval, reader's present, and
reader's future.  In practice, the last three may be difficult for the
writer to distinguish, as future events are less predictable than past.
(I deliberately exclude all the science-fiction possibilities.)

This has, to the best of my knowledge, never arisen, because most
linguistic evolution occurs in oral communication, that is, face-to-face.
For anything more than three tenses to arise requires delayed
communication.

This means we have to make do with, "By the time you read this, I will
have already .... , and Pat will be about to ...."
-- 
	-- Cary Timar, Mathematics Department, Vanderbilt University
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: peeters@tasman.cc.utas.edu.au (bert peeters)
Subject: Re: Chomsky is Citation Champ
Keywords: Chomsky
Organization: University of Tasmania, Australia.
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 07:30:58 GMT

>From MIT Tech Talk Wednesday April 15, 1992 page 3

>Chomsky is Citation Champ

>	In fact, his 3,874 citations in the Arts and Humanities
>Citation Index between 1980 and 1992 make him the most cited living
>person in that period and the eight most cited source overall -- just
>behind famed psychiatrist Sigmund Freud and just ahead of philosopher
>Georg Hegel.

>	But that isn't all.  From 1972 to 1992, Professor Chomsky was
>cited 7,449 times in the Social Science Citation Index -- likely the
>greatest number of times for a living person there as well, although
>the research into those numbers isn't complete.  In addition, from
>1974 to 1992 he was cited 1,619 times in the Science Citation Index.

These numbers give one an idea of how often Chomsky is quoted - but
none of the three indexes is anywhere near exhaustive. The man must
surely have a team of collaborators who read all the stuff (including
mine :-)) that's written about him and report. 

>	"What it means is that he is very widely read across
>disciplines and that his work is used by researchers across
>disciplines," said Theresa A. Tobin, the Humanities Librarian who
>checked the numbers.  "In fact," she added, "it seems that you can't
>write a paper without citing Noam Chomsky."

Oh yes you can. I often have. But then again, who reads me? :-)

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Bert Peeters                         Tel: +61 02 202344
Department of Modern Languages               002 202344
University of Tasmania at Hobart        Fax: 002 207813
GPO Box 252C                            Bert.Peeters@modlang.utas.edu.au
Hobart TAS 7001
Australia
From: horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Latin alphabet
Date: 9 Apr 92 06:25:39 GMT
Organization: Computer "Science" Dept, Yale University

In article <1992Apr9.135903.2995@darwin.ntu.edu.au>, salter_duke@darwin.ntu.edu.au writes:
<
<If one's looking at writing as a system, there's something to be said
<for getting away from the arbitrary symbols of the alphabet I'm
<using at the moment, and having one where similar sounds have
<similar symbols.  Two alphabets I can think of which do this are
<Pitman's Shorthand, which has identical curves for pairs of sounds
<like "s" and "z", but differentiate them by making the voiced one
<of the pair a different thickness.  

I think that is a very bad idea.  Note that Pitman's shorthand (and even
my favourite Gregg) is much less readily legible than the conventional
English script.  Shorthand systems are used when rapid writing once is more
important than rapid reading later.  That's why they're full of ambiguity
and generally offer many chances for error.  (It's easy to write `f' instead of 
`s' in Gregg shorthand:  just slip a bit and make the stroke too long.)

I never have been able to understand how anyone could write Pitman's shorthand
quickly, what with constant differences in pressure on the pen.  (Thickness of
stroke matters in Pitman.)

<An even more logical alphabet is the one used for Korean (sorry, can't 
<remember its name).

_Han'gu<l_, about which see the flamefest going on over on
`soc.culture.korean'.

<It starts with a few basic shapes, according to the 
<position of the lips & tongue, then adds markers to the basic shapes, 
<systematically, to show the way they are sounded.

I'm not sure what you mean.  Are you saying that ten of the consonant letters
are somehow "basic", five of them being modified slightly (duplication or
addition of a stroke) to produce others?  (The "double" letters indicate
tenseness; those with an extra horizontal stroke are strongly aspirated.)

					--Scott

-- 
Scott Horne                               ...!{harvard,cmcl2,decvax}!yale!horne
horne@cs.Yale.edu      SnailMail:  Box 7196 Yale Station, New Haven, CT   06520
203 436-1848                Residence:  Rm 1848 Silliman College, New Haven, CT
ZANG4 HAN4 YI4 JIA1 / GONG4 JIAN4 ZHONG1HUA2!
From: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Latin alphabet (was: Inventing a writing system?)
Date: 9 Apr 92 22:00:37 GMT
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK

In article <1992Apr8.234856.1966@cs.yale.edu> horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne) writes:
>In article <8918@scott.ed.ac.uk>, iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski) writes:
><In article <1992Apr7.175015.16769@cis.ohio-state.edu> schuyler@violin.cis.ohio-state.edu (Carlton Schuyler) writes:
><
><[Hungarian:]
><<	gy, ty, ny are palatal (I don't know which of these are
><<                                coronal; I suspect that gy is not and
><<                                the other two are)
><
><Wrong, whatever you mean by "palatal".  /gy/, /ty/ and /ny/ have the
><same place of articulation.
>
>Post-alveolar, that is.  (Damn, Ivan, why won't you let me use the word
>`palatal'?)

Ouch.  I meant ``whatever you mean by "coronal"''.  They are all palatal.
I don't know why "gy" is not written "dy".

><The letter "y" is reserved to be used only
><as a second element in digraphs.
>
>... and pseudo-foreign spellings of names, and a few loan-words, and old
>Hungarian spellings, and....

Well, all of these have nothing to do with the Hungarian orthography
as such.  The letter "y" is reserved to be used only as a second
element in digraphs, full stop.  This doesn't mean that it can't show
up in a word which, by virtue of being a non-naturalised loanword or a
foreign or Old Hungarian name, doesn't follow the rules of Hungarian
spelling.  (``Hungarian spelling is such a nightmare.  They write
"Shakespeare" and pronounce it as "Sekszpir".''  :-))

I remember having read two acrostycha on the name of Arany Ja1nos a
few years ago.  Imagine the task of finding a first word for the fifth
line.  One of the poems went "<...> / Yale egyetemet, / Jancsi, nem
ve1gezted, / A1m <...>"  `You didn't graduate from Yale University,
Jancsi, but... [nevertheless became a great man, or something to that
effect]'.  (Hello, Scott.  :-))

>The voiced and voiceless (inter)dental fricatives don't occur
>in any Indian languages.  (Now Ivan is going to refute that statement with
>a long list of Indian languages.  :-))

No, I'll leave that to Rahul Bonner.  :-)
-- 
---- --- -- -  Long Live the Rose and the Heather!  - -- --- ----
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: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Latin alphabet
Date: 9 Apr 92 23:36:28 GMT
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK

In article <167C313728.JAREA@UKCC.UKY.EDU> JAREA@UKCC.UKY.EDU writes:
>     What's _historically_ interesting here is that one of the major
>ingredients (often overriding geography) in the selection of a writing
>system <...> is religion.
>     Thus many "Orthodox" countries chose, say, the Greek based Cyrillic,

Not that many.  The Cyrillic alphabet (as the Glagolitic one before
it) was designed for the Slavic language.  (In the Western Slavic
countries its use was suppressed for religious reasons.)  The only
case of a non-Slavic language written in Cyrillic for which the
Orthodox religion can claim credit is Rumanian.

Generally, the Orthodox idea was that the Scriptures had to be
translated into every language spoken by Orthodox Christians, and
usually a new alphabet was designed for this purpose,

>while their "Roman Catholic" counterparts chose the "Roman" alphabet, and
>Muslim ones Arabic script.

Yes, and even that was too much in the eyes of the official religions,
which insisted that their gods be addressed only in Latin/Arabic.  I
wonder how this is connected with the fact that the script was never
modified too much (not nearly as much as in the cases of Gothic,
Coptic and Cyrillic).
-- 
---- --- -- -  Long Live the Rose and the Heather!  - -- --- ----
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: richwing@leland.Stanford.EDU (Rich Wingerter)
Subject: Re: Latin alphabet
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 92 07:06:39 GMT

In article <1992Apr3.213258.1731@memstvx1.memst.edu>, connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu writes:
...
|> You guys are missing the point.  The topic began with discussion of an
|> appropriate orthography for a hitherto unwritten language of Taiwan.  
|> Cyrillic is simply not an option: it has no status there.  The choices are 
|> (1) Traditional Chinese characters, (2) Latin letters, (3) a character set
|> created from scratch.  The third option seems unrealistic: why bother? 
|> Chinese characters would have a certain tradition, but why use a system that
|> would ignore pronunciation entirely and make computer input more complicated?
|> Furthermore, typewriters don't usually come with multiple chartacter sets. 
|> (I know, I've seen a Brother Japanese typewriter, but it's a beast to use,
|> and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.)

Option 4: IPA.  IPA has all of the lowercase roman characters plus others. 
Without any evidence that this particular language has exactly, let us say, 26
phoneme, it is more likely (statistically) that the sounds will match the 80 or
so characters in IPA.  Where they match characters from the latin alphabet, you
would get the equivalent character.  Where they didn't, there would probably be
a character in IPA already, obviating the need to invent one or add a
diacritical mark.

...
|> Finally, I reject -- indeed, resent -- the insinuation that my proposal of the
|> Latin alphabet makes me unforgivably Eurocentric.  The Latin alphabet is simply
|> the most commonly recognized writing system world-wide.  Sure, imperialism has
|> made it such -- but then, how did Cyrillic spread throughout northern Asia, or
|> Chinese into Eastern Asia?  Political correctness has nothing to do with the
|> case.  In most parts of the world, nothing competes with Latin.  I will concede
|> that Cyrillic might be preferable for languages from the former Soviet Union,
|> but elsewhere?  No way!

Would it be impolitic to bring up China?    1 billion :-)s


--Rich Wingerter
Newsgroups: sci.lang