HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: pesetsk@athena.mit.edu (David M Pesetsky)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Cognitive Phonology (was: Cognitive linguistics...)
Date: 9 Sep 92 11:19:46 GMT
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

In article <82269@bcsaic.boeing.com> rwojcik@atc.boeing.com writes:
>I don't know how the child can escape grammar-testing at some level, no matter
>how sophisticated its set of internal switches.  What is the data that tells you
>to flip the switches?  Generative linguistic theory defines the data in terms
>of well-formedness judgments.  Such judgments are used to test the validity of
>grammatical analyses.  But what do you do when you don't have a grammar to give
>you such intuitions?  

The point of principles-and-parameters conceptions of acquisition is
that the child *always* has a grammar.  From the beginning.

-David Pesetsky
From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com (Richard Wojcik,snake)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Cognitive Phonology (was: Cognitive linguistics...)
Date: 4 Sep 92 16:54:45 GMT
Reply-To: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com
Organization: Research & Technology

In article LI@acsu.buffalo.edu, v187ef4y@ubvmsd.cc.buffalo.edu (Patrick J Crowe) writes:
>This got me playing with pronounciation.  While thinking of how /bn/ sounded,
>I thought of /bn-na-na/ for banana, where the hyphens separate syllables.  This
>is similar to an example someone gave in an earlier thread, of /cn/ for can.

Yes, but the cluster in question is technically [bn], not /bn/.  English does
not tolerate monomorphemic initial /bn/ clusters.  What this means in Natural
Phonology, is that you get [b@n], or some such thing, when you try to say /bn/.
On the other hand, if you try to say "banana" /b@naen@/ casually, a different
type of process optionally reduces unstressed syllable.  I prefer to use
different examples, because one can always dispute what type of processes are
reducing initial /b@n/ clusters.  My favorite example of such a "lenition", or
weakening, process is "cigar", which reduces to [skar], which is homophonous 
with the valid phonemic sequence representing "scar".

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

    Rick Wojcik   (rwojcik@atc.boeing.com)   Seattle, WA
From: miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: debate
Date: 5 Sep 92 08:40:38 CDT
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services

In article <9209041525.AA19457@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>, lucas@WATSON.IBM.COM ("Bruce Lucas") writes:
>> There is a property of linguistic debate (probably true of all science)
>> which goes as follows: most theoretical positions have an extremist face
>> and a human face.  Take the reasonable face of any position, ignore all
>> actual analyses of real phenomena, and it looks just like every other
>> position.
> 
> Phew!  Thank you, I was beginning to wonder what was going on here.  I've
> been skimming the "prototype" discussion for signs of something substantive,
> and as an outsider, it appeared to me to be largely composed of quibbling
> over vague definitions of terms used in a context that implied more
> precision than was shown to be present.  (Sorry for the overly harsh
> characterization.)  In my field (computer science), this happens frequently,
> and is generally the result imprecise terminology and different
> perspectives on the problem.  In my ideal world, when two views are seen
> to be largely equivalent ("in violent agreement"), the particicpants go away
> happy to have learned another way to look at the world.  (Of course, in
> this ideal world I've already banished hunger and war :-)

I once had a colleague who made the following claim: given any two
contenders, if each really understood the other, they would find
themselves in agreement.  This seems to attribute all contention
to failure in communication.  But it seems to me one could also
argue that *agreement* can follow from failure in communication.

A relatively recent pragmatic theory, known as Relevance Theory
(Sperber & Wilson, _Relevance_ and other work), diverges from some
older approaches in acknowledging that communication is not always
successful.  The notion that a communicative system could evolve
having inherent properties that could only be described as failure of
the system has been driving me nuts.  Maybe there's something
conceptually wrong with the whole notion of communication "failing."

********************************** +.............................+
*- 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: lbianchi@sol.yorku.ca (Luigi M. Bianchi)
Subject: Re: Persons without a native language
Organization: York University
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 03:26:32 GMT

In article <adamsd.716490319@crash>, adamsd@crash.cts.com (Adams Douglas) writes:
> 
[original quote deleted]
> 
> Let's say you were working on a problem and were talking to two other
> researchers. One speaks only Italian and the other speaks only English. 
> Would you have any preference as to whom to talk to about any particular 
> problem? Would you feel more comfortable with either of them a a purely
> scientific discussion level? Which would you naturally talk to first? 
> Remember, in this situation you would probably also end up being the
> translator between the two of them.
> 
> I think the answers to this may also start a new thread...

I would definitely tend to talk with the English-speaking person.  So much so
that in fact I might find myself speaking English with the Italian colleague
(it has happened more than once).  On the other hand, if instead of discussing
physics we were chatting about soccer (which I used to play in Italy every
week) or our childhood or the special pies my mother would bake on Sundays,
the reverse would be true.

I might add that I was first married to a German photographer, who was quite
fluent in Italian.  My children--the older came to the US when she was ten
months old, the younger was born in the US--were tri-lingual (English, Italian,
German) until they went to school (when the quickly dropped Italian and German
... not to appear too different!) and could switch instantly among the three
languages.

Doesn't all this suggest that *first*  (not necessarily *early*) experiences are
inextricably bound with the 'context' language?


-- 

	Luigi Bianchi

Xref: sparky sci.lang:7032 alt.usage.english:7190
From: thorinn@diku.dk (Lars Henrik Mathiesen)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: Problem with 'they' (etc) as 3p singular common gender pron.
Date: 5 Sep 92 15:47:35 GMT
Organization: Department of Computer Science, U of Copenhagen

iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski) writes:
>According to my experience, the following universal holds:

>  If a language distinguishes between a masculine and a feminine
>  gender, one of these two [...] is used as gender-unspecific. [...]

>  Exception: English.

Danish is certainly a counter-example as well: There are separate
masculine and feminine 3p sg pronouns ("han" og "hun"), distinct from
the common and neuter ones ("den" og "det"). The latter two cannot be
used for humans (except, sometimes, for babies). However, the generic
use of the masculine has been totally dead for many years (about 100),
and I doubt that it was usable outside of the academic and legal
registers for several hundred years before that.

[On rereading, I realize that the above should be enough to answer
Ivan's question, but I seem to have happened to write down some
further facts, which I'll not withhold from sci.lang in general.]

Actually, in semi-formal and formal registers, Danish does have a
generic 3p sg pronoun, "vedkommende". It's a nouned present participle
which roughly translates as 'the concerned'; it was originally used as
a circumlocution for 'he or she' in bureaucratic texts, but by now it
functions as a ``real'' pronoun.

In many contexts, however, the need for a generic pronoun can be
avoided in Danish. 'Anybody' and 'everybody' construe as plurals(*);
there is a reflexive pronoun (not marked for gender); "man"(+) can be
used to start generic statements (corresponding to 'one', or 'you').

But in non-planned speech you can always get out on a limb where a
gender-neutral pronoun or equivalent is needed---and if you do not
feel that "vedkommende" fits the situation/company, the fallback is
simply "han eller hun" ('he or she'). It happens relatively seldom, so
it's not felt as a problem, I think. (Currently, however, I find
myself using it much more than usual, because I have a small daughter
(30 months), and it seems that when talking to her, I avoid even the
small complications that are needed to get around 'him or her'.)
____________________________________
(*) This can be checked in cases involving the reflexive pronoun,
which has separate singular and plural forms.
(+) Yes, this is the ``same'' Germanic word as English 'man'. In
Danish, it has split into a generic human subject pronoun "man"
(oblique form "en" (= 'one)) and a word for male adult humans, "mand".
I am not aware that anybody has ever complained about this connection,
or refused to use "man" because it was unfair in some sense --- but I
may well have missed it, since the down-with-men type of feminism was
current here some 15 years ago, while I was in grade school.

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@diku.dk> (Humour NOT marked)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: amunn@gibbs.oit.unc.edu (Alan Munn)
Subject: Re: Article before name in Spanish
Organization: University of North Carolina
Date: Sun, 13 Sep 1992 18:25:34 GMT

In article <Sep13.153848.28042@yuma.ACNS.ColoState.EDU> komives@lamar.ColoState.EDU (Robert Komives) writes:
>A question about Spanish if that is appropriate.
>
>My daughter just reported that she hears people refer to others by name in
>Ecuador placing an the article before there name.
>	La Josefina no esta'. The Josefina is not here.
>
>I found the same to be true among farmers in Guatemala but was told by
>college educated people there that this custom is "bad" Spanish. The closest
>expressions I can think of in English are pejorative. "That Josefina
>isn't here". Meaning there is some fault in her that causes her not
>to be here. 

Hmm, I don't get much of a perjorative meaning with names and
determiners.  (We had a few examples a while back:  "Which John?  The
John with the red hair" is surely not perjorative.

>Is this form common in Spanish (or elsewhere)?

It's entirely productive in Portuguese, perhaps with some difference
in meaning. According to some, the name with the determiner can be
used attributively but not refrentially, thus if you see a long line
of people waiting outside a door with a name on it (of a person you
don't know, say Smith) you can say "The Smith must be an important
man" but not "Smith must be an important man".  It wouldn't be
surprising if it were found in various forms of Spanish.

There seems to be a lot of variation in use of determiners with proper
names.  In Brazilian Portuguese you wouldn't use the determiner with
an author's name, (i.e.  *The Chomsky is a linguist), but you could
use it with close acquaintances (The John is on the phone).

Determiners with names are also supposedly found in Modern Greek, but
it's never been clear to me that they're anything more than case
markers rather than 'real' determiners, since they seem to be
obligatory in all contexts.

Alan

<amunn@gibbs.oit.unc.edu>
From: anderson@sapir.cog.jhu.edu (Steve Anderson)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: phonology question
Date: 9 Sep 92 14:49:49 GMT
Organization: Dept. of Cognitive Science, The Johns Hopkins University
In-reply-to: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com's message of 8 Sep 92 18:03:05 GMT

>>>>> On 8 Sep 92 18:03:05 GMT, rwojcik@atc.boeing.com (Richard
Wojcik,snake) said:

	RW> In article 6328@midway.uchicago.edu,
        goer@ellis.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz) writes:

        >[...]  In recently revived terminology, is
        >the change "anthropomorphic" or "natural"; is it a 
        >"process"?  Or is it a matter of "tradition," i.e. 
        >"rule"?  Or is it possible that tradition, once 
        >internalized, cannot always be distinguished from
        >natural "processes"?

	RW> You have been reading Stephen Anderson's writings on
	RW> Baudouin de Courtenay.  Baudouin later abandonned that
	RW> terminology in favor of "physiophonetic"
	RW> (=anthropomorphic) and "psychophonetic" (=traditional).

I'd stay out of this, except that I'm somehow being blamed for leading
Richard Goerwitz into talk about "anthropomorphic" alternations. An
interesting notion, that....but Baudouin's term, to which I referred
in a summary of his 1895 "Versuch" is "anthropophonic". 

Baudouin lived long enough (1845-1929) to have said a lot of things,
and to have used a lot of words - many of which were conscious
neologisms that he later regretted. The distinctions made in the
Versuch, however, and the relations discussed there among different
types of alternation, still seem to me a valuable contribution to
understanding. And if the domain of the Natural Phonology notion of
"process" is equivalent to "anthopophonics", at least as I understand
the scope of that term, its explanatory ambitions are somewhat more
modest than I had thought.

--Steve Anderson
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: davidba@carmel.technion.ac.il (David Ben_Ami)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: compounding
Date: 6 Sep 92 17:18:25 GMT
Organization: Technion, Israel Inst. of Technology

In article <PmBkqB1w164w@jwt.UUCP> bbs-hrick@jwt.UUCP writes:
>
>All the languages that I know of which permit compounding
>are AN (Adjectives usually precede Nouns) (e.g. English, German,
>Mandarin, Esperanto).  In these languages, compounds are
>modifier->head, e.g. "birdsong" versus "songbird."  I'm wondering
>if an NA language would have head->modifier compounds (e.g.
>"mansnow" instead of "snowman"), and if this actually occurs or
>would be a violation of some "universal."
>

Yes, Hebrew have exactly this phenomenon: "Ish-Sheleg" = "Ish"=man+
"Sheleg"=snow and thus the "mansnow" construct.

In Hebrew most of the compunds like this are hyphenated but many are
so frequent that the hyphen disappears and sometimes there other
ommisions as well. for instance: "Tapuz" = "Tapuach" + "Zahav"
                                                ^^^      ^^^^
(orange=apple+gold --> golden apple).

I think that Arabic has similar constructs.

I think that this does not break any universal , on the contrary it is
quite logical that when word-order reverses the order in the compound
reverses too. Word-order is a parameter of a language, so that you
might say that a proposed universal might say that the compund order
is reverse to the compund order. I'm not sure if that universal is 
realistic [in fact I'm almost sure that there are counter-examples].

David.
-- 
=============================================================================
  David Ben-Ami (irc: bigdav)      |   "I can resist anything but Temptation"
  s2780369@Techst02.Technion.Ac.Il |       Oscar Wilde
  davidba@Carmel.Technion.Ac.Il  davidba@Moav.Techniona.Ac.Il
From: alex@lindbrook.math.ucla.edu (Alex Langley)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Finiteness of a proper noun (was Re: Article before name in Spanish)
Date: 14 Sep 92 22:00:46 GMT
Organization: UCLA Mathematics Department

In article <1992Sep14.190453.6303@parc.xerox.com> beesley@parc.xerox.com (Ken Beesley) writes:
>In article <Sep13.153848.28042@yuma.ACNS.ColoState.EDU>, komives@lamar.ColoState.EDU (Robert Komives) writes:
>> A question about Spanish if that is appropriate.
>> 
>> My daughter just reported that she hears people refer to others by name in
>> Ecuador placing an the article before there name.
>> 	La Josefina no esta'. The Josefina is not here.
>> 
>> I found the same to be true among farmers in Guatemala but was told by
>> college educated people there that this custom is "bad" Spanish. The closest
>> expressions I can think of in English are pejorative. "That Josefina isn't here
>> ". Meaning there is some fault in her that causes her not to be here. 
>> Is this form common in Spanish (or elsewhere)?
>
>I've read that the use of the article with proper names is standard in Catalan, even in vocative cases.  E.g. you would call Mary by shouting "La Mari/a!".  Can anyone confirm this?
>
>In Portuguese, use of the article with common names and possessives can convey an added measure of uniqueness or singularity, which in some cases can amount to endearment.
>
>Ken Beesley

I have heard the "article-before-name" usage in Ensenada, Mexico,
but not in other places I've been where Spanish is the predominant
language.  The usage was in listing names of friends who lived nearby.

In Western Armenian (maybe Eastern too, I don't know), names
have the definite article suffixed when in the nominative or
accusative.  Names stand alone in form for the vocative.  In
the genitive/dative, it seems to me that after the gen/dat suffix,
the definite suffix is option.


	Vahe!  Oor es?			Vahe, where are you?
	----

	Vahen oor e?			Where is Vahe?
        ----

	An mishd Vahei(n) masin e.		He/she is always with Vahe-(gen).
                 ----

	Asiga Vahein garrkn e.		This is Vahe's car.
              ----

The name Vahe (a common name) is underlined.  /-i(-)/ is the genitive/dative
suffix. /-n/ is the definite article suffix.

Does anyone have other examples where the definite article is more
common on proper nouns than not, as above?


Alex Langley
alex@math.ucla.edu
From: pesetsk@athena.mit.edu (David M Pesetsky)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Persons without a native language
Date: 13 Sep 92 23:46:34 GMT
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

In article <88796@netnews.upenn.edu> weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener) writes:
>
>Among the deaf, total adult languageless is not uncommon.  See Susan
>Schaller A MAN WITHOUT WORDS for one case history.  The author found
>linguists unhelpful, unfriendly, and skeptical.

But boy can they dance!

-David Pesetsky
From: jgk@osc.COM (Joe Keane)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: no-self-talk
Summary: Verbal thinking is inferior.
Keywords: verbal
Date: 9 Sep 92 07:05:24 GMT
Reply-To: Joe Keane <jgk@osc.com>
Organization: Versant Object Technology, Menlo Park, CA
Weather: sunny, high 88, low 56
Moon-Phase: waxing gibbous (93% of full)

In article <1992Sep3.145956.12855@phillip.edu.au> t9114148@phillip.edu.au
writes:
>I really don't see the benefits of thinking without words.

We know that.

>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.

I know plenty of naive people.  Convince me this has something to do with
verbal vs. non-verbal thinking.

>However, he is incredibly intuitive and creative. He can see a solution to
>some problems like magic.

Doesn't this answer your question about why he's `blessed'?

Besides, how someone can be good at problem solving if they're totally
`unanalytic'?  It doesn't make sense.

>He sure appears to be able to think

Come on, we can never say more than that someone `appears' to think.  You're
just being insulting.  I often run into people that don't seem to be thinking
at all, but i assume there's at least something going on inside their heads.

>but he is not in control of it by way of verbal commands.

Now you're definitely confused.  This is hopelessly circular.  It sounds like
you think your mind is some homonculous that `you' command to think about
things.  But where do the commands come from?  It doesn't work.

>I doubt very much a person who is non-verbal could effectively solve logic
>type problems as well as a verbal person.

I think you're totally wrong.

>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?

No, logic is not founded on words.  Maybe you're thinking of rhetoric?

Similarly, mathematics is based on concepts (e.g. number, set, function), not
symbols.  Symbols and words are part of the way mathematicians communicate
with each other.  They also use diagrams and graphs a lot, if you haven't
noticed.  Have you ever tried to transmit a diagram by describing it over the
phone?  It doesn't work very well.  A fax machine saves a lot of time.

>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.

How do you know what's required?

>Sometimes I wonder if they can think at all or are aware.

I think you're nasty.

Your friend should feel lucky.  Maybe he should work on his naivete but i
don't see how talking to himself in his head is the right way to go about it.

``Words are like fingers pointing at the moon.  Once the moon is found,
fingers are no longer needed.'' --Lao Tsu

--
Joe Keane, amateur mathematician
jgk@osc.com (uunet!amdcad!osc!jgk)
From: swf@teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: historical phonetics (was: ASCII representation of IPA)
Date: 13 Sep 92 04:28:44 GMT
Reply-To: swf@tdat.teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: NCR Teradata Database Business Unit

In article <10697@spark.ed.ac.uk> iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski) writes:
|
|Because in my books (on Quechua, Caucasian languages, and so on) the
|backquote stands for aspiration, which in a way is the opposite of
|glottalisation -- the two exclude one another.

Talking about aspiration vs. glottalization in the context of linguistic
change.

Is a change from a glottalized to an aspirated consonant a reasonable
sequence?

If not, what other paths can a loss of glottalization take?

The question comes up in regards to relating proposed Proto-Nostratic
phonemes to 'typologically corrected' Proto-Indo-European phonemes.
The PN glottalics correspond to the traditional voiceless stop series
if PIE.  One proposed 'normalization' of the PIE stop system treats
these as voiceless aspirates (and the traditional voiced stops as voiceless
unaspirated stops, with the voiced 'aspirates' as ordinary voiced stops).

If the sequence glottalized => aspirated is likely, then the Nostratic
data tends to support this version of PIE phoneme inventory.

-- 
sarima@teradata.com			(formerly tdatirv!sarima)
  or
Stanley.Friesen@ElSegundoCA.ncr.com