HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: komives@lamar.ColoState.EDU (Robert Komives)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Because be 'cause be cuz
Date: 1 Sep 92 14:31:39 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO  80523

I wrote a sentence yesterday something like:
	That may be because the cat chased the dog.
It seems clumsy.
On the street we (I) are likely to say:
	That may be cuz the cat chased the dog.
Is that a reversion to an old form or movement to a new one?

Bob Komives
From: connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: phonology question
Date: 4 Sep 92 12:02:07 -0600
Organization: Memphis State University

In article <1992Sep4.032626.8708@midway.uchicago.edu>, goer@ellis.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz) writes:
> Why does it seem awkward for an English-speaker to say "ibpag"?
> 
> Is it hard to say because of some problem with the physical mechanisms
> involved in articulating the sequence?  Or do we English speakers just
> not hear words structured in this way, and tend to reinterpret and/or
> repronounce "ibpag"?  I.e. is it a natural mechanism that dictates its
> awkwardness, or a simple matter of well-formedness judgments?  Or is
> it some mixture of both?
> 
> Innocently concrete question.
> 
> -- 
> 
>    -Richard L. Goerwitz              goer%midway@uchicago.bitnet
>    goer@midway.uchicago.edu          rutgers!oddjob!ellis!goer

[ibpag] violates a constraint in English that adjacent stops within
a word must agree in voicing.  (Adjacent combinations of fricative
and stop generally also agree, though there are some marginal exceptions
such as _Aztec_.)  Furthermore, there is a synchronic rule adjusting
the voicing of all such sequences which arise through inflection,
which is why -ed is realized as [t] or [d], -s as [s] or [z], depending
on the environment.  The mechanism is natural in some sense, since
the adjustment rule (however formulated) obviates the problem of timing
the onset resp. offset of voicing, but a language lacking such a mechanism
would be no less "natural".  I doubt that well-formedness judgments have
anything to do with the case.

--Leo Connolly
From: hau4@ellis.uchicago.edu (sven  hauptfeld)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: New words for gender neutral pronouns in English
Date: 24 Aug 92 04:21:49 GMT
Reply-To: hau4@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations

In article <1992Aug21.205058.14757@enea.se> sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) writes:
>Qing Guo (qcg@casbah.acns.nwu.edu) writes:
>>New style: Someone left es wallet on my desk but I don't know who E is.
>
>What's wrong with: "Someone left this wallet on my desk but I don't know whose
>it is."
>

Certainly MUCH better. Anyway, how could we know that SOMEONE left HIS/HER/
THEIR wallet rather than someone else's? That's why 'this wallet' sounds
more logical, too.

Sven
Xref: sparky sci.lang:6884 alt.usage.english:7057
From: sgr@alden.UUCP (Stan Ryckman)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: Ships and countries
Date: 31 Aug 92 17:46:01 GMT
Followup-To: sci.lang
Organization: Alden Electronics, Westboro, MA

In article <1992Aug30.172740.722@mala.bc.ca> epp@mala.bc.ca (Lorne Epp) writes:
 >In article <1992Aug30.185048.26292@enea.se>, sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) writes:
 >> Charles H. Sampson (sampson@nosc.mil) writes:
 >> Roger Lustig (roger@crux.Princeton.EDU) writes:
 >>>>At any rate, we only gender-inflect to describe sexed things: humans,
 >>>>animals.
 >>>
 >>>     And ships?
 >> 
 >> It is not unusual that a country is personified by a woman,
 >> "Mother Russia" or "Moder Svea" (that's Sweden) for instance,
 >> so the use of "she" seems very plausible at least in more poetic
 >> contexts. But is the use of "she" as a pronoun for any country
 >> common among native speakers in every-day language?
 >
 >The impression I have is that countries are almost always feminine in 
 >formal English.  British writers are more likely to use the feminine
 >than Americans are.  In informal English, countries are usually neuter.

Americans use the feminine plenty.  From the song:

        "God bless America, land that I love;
        Stand beside her, and guide her, ..."
		     ^^^            ^^^

--
X-Obligatory-.sig
    Stan Ryckman   sgr@alden.UUCP
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: peeters@tasman.cc.utas.edu.au (bert peeters)
Subject: Re: Nasalisation
Organization: University of Tasmania, Australia.
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1992 02:17:36 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.
>Get an Australian to say the word "sandy" and you'll probably hear one!

I don't think nasal vowels are any more prominent in Australian English than
they are in British English. It strikes me however that in certain varieties
of American English all vowels are nasalised (even those that are not fol-
lowed by a nasal consonant). Whatever the case may be, it should be pointed
out that nasalisation is not phonemic in English, whereas it is in French
(I don't like the generative account which analyses [a~] as [a] + [n]). I
don't know about Portuguese and Afrikaans.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
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
Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.usage.english,soc.culture.usa,soc.culture.british
From: hallam@zeus02.desy.de (Phill Hallam-Baker)
Subject: Re: Problem with 'they' (etc) as 3p singular common gender pron.
Followup-To: soc.culture.british
Reply-To: Hallam@zeus02.desy.de
Organization: Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron, Experiment ZEUS bei HERA
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 22:48:05 GMT

Hey folks! Look what I found, what is significant is the choice of newsgroups:-

In article <2A973690.3322@orion.oac.uci.edu>, cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis
Maria Cortese) writes:

|>Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.usage.english,soc.culture.usa

Huh! what do the yanks know about English, they put a dyslexic in charge of
writting the dictionary and as a result are unable to spell even simple little
words like colour properly to this very day!

|>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.
|>
|>Cannot or should not?  Although I understand that, according to the
|>grammar I learned through 12 long years of catholic school, that
|>sentence is not correct, if I heard it (as I do along with many similar
|>sentences) I wouldn't even trip over it.  Consider "Could the person who
|>parked their car in my space please move it?"  
|>
|>I think your asterisk is motivated just a little by proscription. 

Since the official body which defines the English languageis somewhat tied up on
more important matters (trying to nail down the rules of Mornington Cresent once
and for all), it looks like soc.culture.brit will have to step in and fill the
gap.

Let us consider the form :-

"Is it a good idea to employ a Vice President who does not know their ass from
their elbow?"

Immediately we see something wrong, this grates on the ear, yea verily it
shredeth the very sinews of the soul. An ass is a beast of burden which when
mated with a horse produces a mule. The correct word in this contect is of
course "arse".

"Nowadays a child must get good A levels if they want to get into Cambridge
University"

We immediately see another flaw, leaving aside the question as to whether modern
institutions should be accorded the title "University" the statement is clearly
false since Eddie "Rambo" Windsor and his brother with the ears got in. 


--

Phill Hallam-Baker
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Subject: Re: k and s
Originator: alderson@leland.Stanford.EDU
Reply-To: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Organization: Stanford University Academic Information Resources
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 92 19:05:01 GMT

In article <1992Sep2.224427.12372@news.Hawaii.Edu>, lee@uhunix (Greg Lee) writes:
>In article <81732@bcsaic.boeing.com> rwojcik@atc.boeing.com writes:
>}
>}...  A good example of palatalization is "dija" for "did ya..." ...
>
>Not good.  That's y -> zh.  Obstruentization; not palatalization at all.

I get a lot of palatalization in the stop portion of the affricate, too.  I
would be surprised if you don't.
-- 
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_
Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.usage.english,soc.culture.usa
From: pel@resntl.bhp.com.au (Paul Osborn)
Subject: Re: Problem with 'they' (etc) as 3p singular common gender pron.
Organization: BHP Research - Newcastle Labs
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1992 23:48:40 GMT

In article <baron.34.714927765@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> baron@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Dennis Baron) writes:
>From: baron@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Dennis Baron)
>Subject: Re: Problem with 'they' (etc) as 3p singular common gender pron.
>Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 15:02:45 GMT

>In article <1992Aug26.211044.2221@nosc.mil> sampson@nosc.mil (Charles H. Sampson) writes:
>>From: sampson@nosc.mil (Charles H. Sampson)
>>Subject: Re: Problem with 'they' (etc) as 3p singular common gender pron.
>>Date: 26 Aug 92 21:10:44 GMT
>>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?
>>
>>                               Charlie

>And a lot more than ships.  There are several collections containing
>hundreds of examples of gender attributions for inanimates (all taken
>from edited, printed sources) ranging from cars and ships to guns,
>pencils, tools, books, the weather, and so on.  Of course most of these
>are gendered as feminine, and most of the genderers (probably 105% of them)
>are male.  There are no studies, so far as I know, of how women attribute
>gender to inanimates in English.  That's a bit of research for a nice
>PhD dissertation.

>Dennis


>debaron@uiuc.edu               (\                   217-333-2392
>                               \'\             fax: 217-333-4321
>Dennis Baron                    \'\           __________
>Department of English           / '|         ()_________)
>Univ. of Illinois               \ '/          \ ~~~~~~~~ \
>608 S. Wright St.                 \             \ ~~~~~~   \
>Urbana IL 61801                   ==).            \__________\
>                                 (__)             ()__________)



My wife ALWAYS uses masculine pronouns when referring to animals, even when 
she knows them to be feminine.
-------- PAUL R OSBORN, Research Scientist, Sensing Technology --- /\/\ --
                BHP Research - Newcastle Laboratories, Australia  / / /\
Snail   :       P.O. Box 188, Wallsend, NSW 2287                 / / /  \
Tel     :       +61 49 51-0605  Fax : +61 49 50-2126            / / / /\ \
Telex   :       AA 28768                                        \ \/ / / /
Internet:       pel@resntl.bhp.com.au                            \  / / /
----------------------------------------------------------------- \/\/\/ -
From: t9114148@phillip.edu.au
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: no-self-talk
Date: 3 Sep 92 19:59:56 GMT
Organization: RMIT (Bundoora Campus)


Hi Rich,

I really don't see the benefits of thinking without words.
How can my friend be 'blessed' when he is a bit on the
unquestioning and unanalytic side? He tends to be too innocent 
and good-natured to survive a sometimes cunning and corrupt world. 
However, he is incredibly intuitive and creative. He can see 
a solution to some problems like magic.
        He sure appears to be able to think but he is
not in control of it by way of verbal commands. He
'goes with the flow' of the images and 'unknown processes'
in the back of his head. He thinks almost without effort. 
        It appears you seem to envy the meditation state
but I don't see how the higher state of awareness could help 
a person achieve more. I doubt very much a person who is 
non-verbal could effectively solve logic type problems as well 
as a verbal person. Most scientific theories are embedded
in a specialised language and so are computer languages. 
        Isn't logic founded on words? How can thought be effective 
without words to carry them? What about mathematics - that
relies on symbols and is like a language?
        You are right, though, my friend is reluctant to
change to "private speech". To him it is maddening and
the source of stress and unhappiness. He is 'content' within 
himself. I don't know why he has developed that way.
It's a mystery. 
        Still, I really don't see why a calm and almost
'autistic' state is ideal for people when there is
so much problems to 'solve' that require a deliberate hand
only language can give.       



-Julius Wong
From: goer@quads.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Cognitive linguistics [was Re: Prototypes]
Date: 28 Aug 92 04:05:57 GMT
Reply-To: goer@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations

In article <81455@bcsaic.boeing.com> rwojcik@atc.boeing.com writes:

>In particular, Natural Phonology takes linguistic 
>theory to be grounded in linguistic behavior, rather than intuitions of well-
>formedness.

Come again?  Intuitions of well-formedness plays a big part in syntactic
theory, but its role in phonology is not nearly as prominent as you make
it out to be.  I'd be curious to see if you could support this statement
about Natural Phonology, at any rate.

-- 

   -Richard L. Goerwitz              goer%midway@uchicago.bitnet
   goer@midway.uchicago.edu          rutgers!oddjob!ellis!goer
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: mathias@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Gerald B. Mathias)
Subject: Re: no-self-talk
Keywords: thinking gone wwrong
Organization: University of Hawaii
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 17:38:11 GMT

In article <1992Aug28.043303.12798@phillip.edu.au> t9114148@phillip.edu.au writes:
>hello,
>	I have this problem. I know people that do not think
>using words at all except when you talk with them. They think
>using images and inspiration so I am not surprised that they
>are quite impulsive, emotional, illogical and unorganised.
>	I read in books that people are supposed to verbalise
>silently to themselves because humans have that advantage over
>animals. That is why we are so intelligent.
>...
>	In particular, I know a person who has spent 20 years of
>his life not uttering a word to himself in the back of his mind
>and now has realised that he is different to most people. 
>...
>He is having a hard time dealing with it now and wishes to
>attempt the transition to using words as his primary thought
>process ... 

I can't offer any help, but I doubt if anyone uses words as "their" PRIMARY
thought process; if you have no thought, how can you put it in words?  But
I have seen statements (including some in a textbook [Fromkin and Rodman]
that I am using this semester) that I have trouble interpreting other than
as a belief that language precedes thought, so I was interested to see you
saying essentially the same thing (at least as applied to "normal" people).

I remember making the transition, or rather my astonishment at noticing the
transition, to mentally verbalizing my thoughts, but it just happened; I
wouldn't know how to tell someone how to do it on purpose.

Bart Mathias
From: JAREA@UKCC.UKY.EDU
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Latin 'x'
Date: 2 Sep 92 01:59:28 GMT
Organization: University of Kentucky


 
Not taking time to go back to Sven's reply to my reply to Sven, wherein
he (amongst other places) objects that my counterexamples to his claim
that in French the letter x never (rarely) represents /ks/, in which reply
he laments that my examples (such as 'taxi' and 'Me'xique' are borrowed, it
needs to be pointed out that (as can be readily noted by even a 'students''
type etymological dictionary of French) practically (maybe) all French
words spelt with 'x' are borrowed, regardless of whether they are pro-
nounced as /ks/ or /gz/, some of these borrowings being so called learned
borrowings from Latin.  In dealing with Romance languages we must remember
that both the "inherited" vocabulary, and the "borrowed" vocabulary may
come from Latin.  In non of the Romance languages did the sounds represented
by the latin symbol /ks/ survive and develope into a modern /ks/.  One can
consider as exemplary 'laxare' which yields Spanish 'dejar', Italian 'lasciare'
French 'laisser' as a normal development.  I shall presume those interested
enough to discuss the topic can supply their own phonetic/phonemic writing
better than I can via the net.  One can almost (not quite) claim that a word
in French, etc. that is spelt with 'x' is a borrowing, as is one that begins
with 'z', like English words that begin with 'p' (most of them, to use Sven's
precautionary back exit.).  Howzat for stimulating more dictionary searching
and network static!!
 
Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.usage.english
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: mstede@cs.toronto.edu (Manfred Stede)
Subject: Re: Prototypes
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
Date: 27 Aug 92 15:50:17 GMT

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

>As you may know, the various towns of the Boston area were never
>incorporated into Boston the way the various towns of the New York area
>were incorporated as boroughs of the City of New York.  Brookline, for
>example, flows out of adjoining neighborhoods that belong to Boston, is
>served by the same mediocre public transportation system, would have the
>status of a neighborhood in New York -- yet is a separate town entirely,
>as are Cambridge, Somerville, Belmont, Watertown, etc.  Now if someone
>asks me "Is X (who is from Brookline) from Boston?", there is a clear
>correct answer: no.

>Nonetheless, in the right context, under the right conditions, a person
>might very well say "yes", or list a Brookline restaurant when asked for
>the name of a good restaurant in Boston.  And I could very well believe
>that rigorous experimentation could pick up an extra millisecond or two
>in a decision task that ended up with someone claiming that, yes some
>Brookline restaurant or other is in Boston.  Now there need be no
>prototype here for Boston.  You are either in it or you're not, and
>Brookline is not in it, period.  There are no degrees of Bostonness, no
>better or worse instances of Boston, simply an attempt on a hearer's
>part to evaluate what is being asked and be helpful.

Personally, if I travelled to Boston tomorrow, I would have no idea
where the 'official' city limits are, and moreover I wouldn't care at all.
So let's assume I walk/drive in the area and at some point am inclined to
make a decision on whether I'm in Boston or not, for whichever reason.
As opposed to experiencing the same situation in Toronto, which I know,
in Boston I will probably spend that extra milisecond you mention for 
arriving at a judgement.  So how do I judge?  Maybe an hour ago I
passed by city hall which I take to be in Boston proper, and if I haven't
moved too far since then, I conclude "yes".  It's this kind of fuzzy
reasoning that leads me to my personal answer, and not the evaluation
of a perfect category definition---the god-given, one and only conditions 
for being in Boston.  
While the Bostonians may have such a definition at their disposal, I
don't and for most practical purposes I don't need it.  Reverse situation
when the Bostonians come visiting Toronto.

So I claim it's not context that occasionally softens the "real",
context-independent definition; instead, with very many categories we 
reason without having that "real" definition to begin with.
 
-manfred
From: lgorbet@carina.unm.edu (Larry P Gorbet ANTHROPOLOGY)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Prototypes [was Re: typology of Esperanto]
Date: 26 Aug 92 02:56:36 GMT
Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque

In article <1992Aug26.002755.5143@athena.mit.edu> pesetsk@athena.mit.edu (David M Pesetsky) writes:
>I have looked at Lakoff's recent book, though not with great care, and I
>have heard Lakoff give a long (three-hour) talk on the book.  One
>question that is never addressed, at least not by him, is why we should
>think that our sense that some avians are "better examples" of birds and
>others worse is a fact about the nature of categories instead of a fact
>about our ability to decide what belongs in what category.  

It is not obvious from your post just what kind of ontological status you
are assuming for "categories".  That is, just what do you believe
categories are that we are deciding what belongs to?  That's not a
rhettorical question.  It is not clear, if one is talking psychology or
neurology, how one makes a principled distinction between "categories" 
and "the results of the process of categorization".  Isn't a view of
categories as "classical" sets also about "our ability to decide what
belongs in what category:  given some set of necessary and sufficient
conditions for membership or given an exhaustive listing (or some 
combination thereof), isn't that just a "way to decide what belongs".

One can investigate how real people decide membership a tad more easily than
one can investigate empirically some a priori construct of a philosopher.

BTW, at least two of your assertions about what Lakoff claims are just
factually inaccurate.  First, neither he nor any of his close  associates
anywhere claims that "categories are prototypes".  At least often based
on prototypes, yes; but not themselves prototypes.  About like saying that
in GB, grammars are lexical categories and their projections.  A category
mistake.  Second, Lakoff does not criticize "traditional linguistics" 
because it is based on categories (unless by that assertion you mean to
beg your question about the nature of categories).  Rather the 
criticism is because they are based on an *erroneous* conception of
categories.  [that's my claim about what Lakoff says, not about 
"traditional linguistics"].
From: cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Latin 'x'
Date: 30 Aug 92 20:33:26 GMT
Article-I.D.: orion.2AA13096.25163
Organization: University of California, Irvine

In article <1992Aug30.183114.25788@enea.se> sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) writes:
>Sven Hauptfeld (hau4@midway.uchicago.edu) writes:
>>Also note that the Latin 'x' became 'ss' in Italian
>
>Did it? Always? My Latin is not very good, but didn't "x" in Latin
>in many cases evolve to something else? "Felix" and "pax" are
>"felice" and "pace" in Italian. 

Examining syllable structure should explain this; perhaps word-final x's
became c^'s.

Think about it.  Latin 'x' is not one letter, but the /ks/ about which
w've been waxing eloquent lately.  In Italian, many instances of
velar-coronal consonant clusters became coronal geminates, with the
velar segment moving up.  Doctor or whatever becomes "dottore."  Actor
is "attore."  The lact- root for milk is "latte."  Magdalene is even
Maddalena.  It isn't surprising that when the second member of the
cluster is able to be used as a syllable onset that the cluster
geminates -- especially when it is a velar-coronal cluster becoming an
exclusively coronal geminate.  /ks/ fits the bill.  

In word final position, the /ks/ just blobs together to make one sound
-- the c^ is halfway between them -- and perhaps the final /e/ was added
in a later stage of the language. 

Regards,
Janis C.
Xref: sparky sci.lang:6723 sci.cognitive:371