HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: renault@CAM.ORG (Pierre Renault)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Immigrated languages
Date: 24 Jan 93 23:37:46 GMT
Organization: Communications Accessibles Montreal, Quebec Canada

I was asked to post this question for a friend for her master's thesis:

Up to what point can a minority's language be retained (within the
context of an immigrant group)? By what methods is the language retained?

Also, I would like to receive any information regading these points, 
either as a straight email letter or by information on where I can 
files through FTP.

Subject:

Immigration and the arabic language

Magrebin immigration: assimilation

Linguistic assimilation (or non-assimilation) of immigrants to Europa
and the Americas.


Any ASCII or PostScript files are fine, or whatever else anyone can 
contribute, I'll print them up and pass them along.

Replies can either be in english or in french.

Many thanks.
From: JAREA@UKCC.UKY.EDU
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Esperanto a natural language?
Date: 23 Jan 93 02:12:29 GMT
Organization: University of Kentucky

In article <12471@sorley.ed.ac.uk>
iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski) writes:
 
>
>express their failure to occur in natural languages in the form of a
>universal?  Such as the brackets and subscripts of Lojban?
>
>>-- in how many Romance languages would _Esperanto_
>>in "he speaks Esperanto" naturally appear as an adverb?
>
>In none, unless we manage to prove that Hungarian is a Romance language
>(which shouldn't be too difficult: to begin with, the `flea' words are
>obviously related, so everything else follows).
>
 
Solely in the interest of "le sport", let's consider first the Latin sentence
"Loquitur latine."  (This is a good sentence, as can be seen from the initial
capital letter and the final period.)  Any Latin grammar will tell you that
the form "latine" is an adverb:  it tells the manner, the how, of the speaking,
and its ending is not that of any of the cases (to save everyone from rushing
for his handy Latin grammar):  the history and prehistory of the ending are
not at issue here, of course.  Aha, you cry, Latin is not a Romance language.
This could get us into a quibble about the definition of Romance languages,
but we could weasel out of that somehow, I suppose.
 
But suppose I take a language often claimed to be Romance, say French.
Let's take a sentence like, "Il parle franc,ais."  (By the by, I used
"latine" in the above example as my Latin reference works do not indicate
to which declension "Esperanto" belongs in Latin.)  I continue.  Having
noted that Latin uses an adverb in sentences the equivalent of "He speaks
x", I shall expect that it might be that modern descendants of Latin do
likewise until I find contrary evidence.  Is there anything in the sentence
"Il parle anglais" (avoiding the discomfort of slipped cedillas) to suggest
modifying or supporting the claim that French likewise is using an adverb.
I'm still specifying how the speaker speaks, and an adverb will do well.
Further, I shall be reluctant to make a silly claim that "anglais" is a
noun, since as any school child knows, French nouns require articles or
similar determiners.
 
This argument must be wrong, however, since English is using a noun, not an
adverb, in "He speaks English", and English grammar underlies all grammars.
Oh, well, it was amusing while it lasted. Now let's go back to serious topicx.
From: miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Subject and Object confusion
Date: 24 Jan 93 16:18:09 GMT
Article-I.D.: kuhub.1993Jan24.101810.46688
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services

In article <1993Jan21.052233.17711@trl.oz.au>, jbm@hal.trl.OZ.AU (Jacques Guy) writes:

[...]

> points of grammar: in certain types of phrases, you cannot distinguish
> between subject and object. The only other language I know of that
> does that, and is famous for it, is Lisu, spoken somwhere in Nepal,
> is memory serves..

As far as I have been able to determine, for at least some speakers
Winnebago, a Mississippi Valley Siouan language spoken in Wisconsin
and Nebraska, regularly tolerates lack of any grammatical distinction
in transitive clauses between agent and patient.  When I did my
fieldwork I devoted some time to pinning this down, and my speakers
concluded that in clauses like

	A B struck
	B A struck

considered in isolation from any context, or in contexts which did not
disambiguate them, both remained ambiguous; i.e. there was no unmarked
interpretation.  The language is verb-final with no morphological
marking of case or role.  Either construction above, however, can be
disambiguated by positioning a third-person pronoun after the agent:

	A 3-p-pron B struck (A struck B)
	B A 3-p-pron struck (A struck B)
	A B 3-p-pron struck (B struck A)
	B 3-p-pron A struck (B struck A)

We will have to consult John Koontz on whether this happens elsewhere
in Siouan (John, where are you?)

-Ken 
-- 
miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu | Nobody can explain everything to everybody.
opinions are my own      | G. K. Chesterton
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: bozo is greek
From: bthurman@unca.edu
Date: 27 Jan 93 11:24:30 -0500
Organization: University of North Carolina at Asheville

an bobo einai lexis ellenike, that phago to ispaniko kapello mou
yi chara, 'bearded bill' vaso me ta metageneia
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: bon6@quads.uchicago.edu (rahul  bonner)
Subject: Re: Tones in PIE?
Reply-To: bon6@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 03:37:53 GMT

In an article on PIE accent, alderson@cisco.com (Rich Alderson) writes:
 
>Vedic Sanskrit had a pitch rise on the accented syllable within a word, with a
>slightly lower than normal pitch on the immediately preceding syllable and a
>much lower than normal pitch on the immediately following syllable. . . .  The
>accented syllable is called _udatta_ "raised" in Sanskrit grammatical
>treatises, and the following is called _anudatta_ "not raised."

Here is a passage from one of those treatises, in my own rough translation:

	The words _uda:tta_, _anuda:tta_, and _svarita_ are well known
	both in the world and in the veda in the sense of a pitch
	(_svara_) that is a quality of a speech sound.  Here (i.e.,
	in this and the next two sutras) they are given as technical
	designations of vowels that possess such a quality.  A vowel
	that is pronounced high is called _uda:tta_.  "High" is not
	to be understood to refer to the force of the sound, as when
	we say, "He speaks 'high,'" i.e., "He speaks out loud," or
	"He recites 'high,'" i.e., "He recites out loud."  How, then,
	is it to be understood?  "High" is with respect to the place
	of articulation; it is a word that modifies the term that is
	here being defined.  Speech sounds are produced at the five
	places of articulation, and these places of articulation have
	different parts; a vowel that is produced in the upper
	part of a place of articulation is called _uda:tta_.  While
	it is being produced, the organs of articulation are tense
	and contracted, the pitch is rough and dry, and the opening
	of the throat is constricted.

This is from the _Ka:'sika: V.rtti_, a fifth century (?) commentary on
Pa:.nini's _A.s.ta:dhya:yi:_.  It is the comment on sutra 1.2.29, _uccair
uda:tta.h_.

What I find noteworthy here is that the accent is being related to the 
places of articulation in the mouth.  Whenever I have thought about
Old Indic accent, which is admittedly not very frequently, I have
imagined it as something more or less musical: the _uda:tta_ was a
few notes higher than the _anuda:tta_.  But this passage clearly says
that a vowel with the _uda:tta_ is pronounced in a different place than
a vowel with the _anuda:tta_.


Rahul Bonner
From: hubey@pilot.njin.net (Hubey)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Correlation Lengths of Language Changes
Date: 22 Jan 93 03:01:58 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

In article <1993Jan20.211604.7948@cs.sfu.ca> jcalder@cs.sfu.ca (Jo Calder) writes:

> 
> Where, in the real world, are the integers?
> 

It was a joke. A famous mathematician once said that 'God invented
the integers and mankind invented the rest of math.'

Finally integers are everywhere.  History of computation probably
begins with people counting on their fingers then toes :-)..
-- 

	mark	

   hubey@amiga.montclair.edu         hubey@apollo.montclair.edu
   hubey@pilot.njin.net               ...!rutgers!pilot!hubey
From: goer@ellis.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: what is a phoneme
Date: 27 Jan 93 04:01:54 GMT
Article-I.D.: midway.1993Jan27.040154.20592
Reply-To: goer@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago

What is a phoneme?  (Not a joke question; I just discovered that
I honestly don't know, and suspect that nobody else does, either.
Perhaps this is just sheer arrogance on my part, though, so I ask
everyone now...).

-- 

   -Richard L. Goerwitz              goer%midway@uchicago.bitnet
   goer@midway.uchicago.edu          rutgers!oddjob!ellis!goer
From: prince@ruccs.rutgers.edu (Alan Prince)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Vowel systems of ....
Date: 27 Jan 93 01:06:33 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:

>Typically there is an early analysis by someone or other, done in a
>framework no longer current.  Someone does a re-analysis in a more
>current framework, which then gives rise to a whole slew of theory
>papers, all of them resting on the original analysis, which their
>authors may not even have read.  The work on theoretical implications
>of nasality in Guarani has gone like this, for example; 
>also current work on metrical analyses of Winnebago accent.
      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Actually, Bruce Hayes's analysis in his widely-circulated 1991 ms
_Metrical Stress Theory_ is based on a thorough study of all available
material on the language.  You may be referring to Halle & Vergnaud
1987, which as interesting as it is has never garnered praise for
depth of scholarship -- but isn't current either.

>Discussions with other linguists suggests the pattern is quite
>general.

Widespread, maybe, but certainly very much tied to individuals, their
graduate students and associates, rather than to any principles of
`doing theory'. Theorists like Bruce Hayes and John McCarthy, to cite
only two, have a fullscale commitment to scholarship, which is visible
in everything they do.  As their work and work of people like them is
more and more taken to be the model, there will be changes in the
general expectations about what counts as respectable work.

>...I do
>tell my students: save yourself some time and check the data/initial
>analysis *first*...

Excellent advice, and I can assure you that you're not alone in giving
it.

- Alan Prince
Dept of Linguistics
Rutgers University
From: alderson@cisco.com (Rich Alderson)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Subject and object confusion (Was: Re: "n'ha"...)
Date: 26 Jan 93 15:52:35 GMT
Article-I.D.: leland.1993Jan26.155235.9959
Reply-To: alderson@cisco.com (Rich Alderson)
Organization: Cisco Systems (MIS)
Originator: alderson@leland.Stanford.EDU

In article <1993Jan25.093751.5191@memstvx1.memst.edu>, connolly@memstvx1 writes:
>In article <1993Jan24.115746.29666@enea.se>, sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) writes:
>> Well, again we can add several languages to the list. Swedish and
>> German are two. In German you only get an ambiguity when none of
>> the words are masculine with articles, so the example above does
>> not translate well to German, since "Hund" is masculine, but take
>> a cat instead:
>> 
>>        "Eine Katze sah Tom"
>> 
>> I leave to Leo Connolly to sort out the fine details for German, but
>> in Swedish:
>> 
>>        "En katt s}g Tom"      ("}" = a-ring)
>> 
>> You don't really know what this is without context. Normally you put the
>> subject first, but then again you are more often talking of what Tom sees
>> than what the cat sees.
>
>I wouldn't be surprised if the fine details for German and Swedish were 
>the same, though I don't know for sure.  German OVS is limited to sentences
>where the object is *topicalized*, i.e. set as the item about which a
>comment is made.  Overwhelmingly this means that the topic is given,
>already mentioned in the discourse.  This is difficult with the indefinite
>_eine_Katze_, though definite _die_Katze_ would be no problem.  Nevertheless,
>if 'a cat' is given, it is probably also known that a cat was seen.  So
>"Eine Katze sah Tom" would the mean 'The one who saw a cat was Tom', or
>less awkwardly: 'It was Tom who saw a cat.'

Wouldn't it rather be "It was *a cat* that Tom saw" under topicalization of the
object?
-- 
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: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com (Richard Wojcik,snake)
Subject: Re: Subject and object confusion (Was: Re: "n'ha"...)
Reply-To: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com
Organization: Research & Technology
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 16:55:01 GMT

In article 4465@trl.oz.au, jbm@hal.trl.OZ.AU (Jacques Guy) writes:
>Yes, so in Latin (e.g. Catullus: dic mi te me amare), but in the
>Breton case, if memory serves me (I can't find my Breton grammar, 
>koc'h!) that confusion could arise in the simplest sentence, i.e.
>a single, main clause. 

Here are a couple of topicalization cases:

	Yann a lenn al lizher.
	Yann (topic) reads the book.

	Al lizher a lenn Yann.
	The book reads Yann.

Unmarked order:  Lenn a ra Yann al lizher
                 Read  does Yann the book

passive:  Al lizher eo lennet gant Yann
          the book (topic) is read   by   Yann

My experience is that Bretons react to the second sentence by reconstructing it
as a passive or laughing at the idea that a book could read Yann.  Nevertheless,
I believe Trepos reports it as legal.

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

    Rick Wojcik   (rwojcik@boeing.com)   Seattle, WA

Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: slie@ulrik.uio.no (Svein Lie)
Subject: Re: Tones in PIE?
Organization: University of Oslo
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 09:17:34 GMT


>From: sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog)
>
>Leo Connolly (connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu) writes:
>>All Germanic languages have abandoned the Indo-European accent system,
>>replacing it with a strong dynamic accent on the first syllable (except
>>that verb prefixes were not stressed; noun prefixes were).
>
>Except of course that since then a deluge of loanwords has distorted
>the system so much, that the naive pronounciation of a foreign word
>is seldom on the first syllable. Guess where Swedes put the stress when
>they pronounce the name of northern Swedish village of Korpilombolo.
>
>(Although, I'm not entirely sure that the reason is foreign influence.
>Swedish words which are not compounds or inflexions are seldom more
>than three syllables long, so putting the stress on the first of five
>syllables probably feels very akward.)
>-- 
>Erland Sommarskog - ENEA Data, Stockholm - sommar@enea.se
>
Your message seems to say that the rule saying that the stress is on the
first syllable is not distorted. That is a huge exaggeration. It is true
that loanwords may have other stress patterns, but these word do not 
amount to a high percentage. And even there, at least in Norwegian, 
whivh for all practical purposes has the same phonology as Swedish 
(but not Danish, thank God!), many dialect have the stress on the
first syllable in words like 'banan' (banana), 'litteratur', 
'professor' etc., because the rule is so strong. (In these dialects
only words with prefixes like 'be-' ('betale' = pay) and some others
have the stress not on the first syllable.
	And the number of syllables seems to be irrelevant. Take 
compunds like (Norw.) 'jernbanearbeiderforbundsledelsen' (the leadership
of the union of the railway workers), which has the stress on the first
syllable, like almost all other compunds - in Norw. and Swedish.
	The same holds for place names, with some exceptions. The name
mentioned by ES seems totally un-Swedish and is consequently of no 
interest to the general pattern. But even old native place names may 
have the stress on later syllables: 'Gteborg' (Sw.), 'Kristiansand' 
(Norway) on the last syllable, 'Stavanger' (No.), 'Kristianstad'
/krishansta/ (Sw.) on the second - among others. 

What has been said about the origin of the tonemes (or whatever they 
are) in Norw. and Swedish, is correct: In principle it is words which
once had one syllable  which now has toneme 1 (akr > }ker ('field'), and
word with two syllables which have toneme 2 (hestar > hester (No.) /
hstar (Sw.) ('horses').
	In some dialects of Norwegian a new toneme distinction has 
arised in one syllable words, the distinction is between old one
syllable word and newer one syllable words, i.e. words which have
lost one syllable. 

Svein Lie
University of Oslo
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: goer@ellis.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz)
Subject: Re: Vowel systems of ....
Reply-To: goer@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 03:51:51 GMT

prince@ruccs.rutgers.edu (Alan Prince) writes:
>miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:
>
>>Typically there is an early analysis by someone or other, done in a
>>framework no longer current.  Someone does a re-analysis in a more
>>current framework, which then gives rise to a whole slew of theory
>>papers, all of them resting on the original analysis, which their
>>authors may not even have read.  The work on theoretical implications
>>of nasality in Guarani has gone like this, for example; 
>>also current work on metrical analyses of Winnebago accent.
>      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>Actually, Bruce Hayes's analysis in his widely-circulated 1991 ms
>_Metrical Stress Theory_ is based on a thorough study of all available
>material on the language.  You may be referring to Halle & Vergnaud
>1987, which as interesting as it is has never garnered praise for
>depth of scholarship -- but isn't current either.

I hope you're not criticizing Bill for not having seen an unpublished
study circulated via informal channels.  Can you clarify one thing
here?  I'm curious whether you're saying that Halle & Vergnaud shows
great depth of scholarship, but was never praised, or that it shows
no depth of scholarship, and justifiably went un-praised.

>>Discussions with other linguists suggests the pattern is quite
>>general.
>
>Widespread, maybe, but certainly very much tied to individuals, their
>graduate students and associates, rather than to any principles of
>`doing theory'. Theorists like Bruce Hayes and John McCarthy, to cite
>only two, have a fullscale commitment to scholarship, which is visible
>in everything they do....

Re McCarthy:

That may be true, but just look at the example of your own disserta-
tion and how he used it in his.  You were using a somewhat outdated
notation (things get outdated in phonology in about a month :-)).  He
recognized this, but by his own admission largely adopted the frame-
work you set up, augmenting it in places, but not as far as I can see
with a greate deal of philological depth.  And in fact when we go to
the basic data for your dissertation, we find a Qimhian vowel system at
its core, seen through the filter of Gesenius-Kautsch-Cowley, Lamb-
din, et. al.

Halle & Vergnaud, incidentally, use a data base that hardly differs
from the framework people like McCarthy set up.  All that really dif-
fers is the theory.

Bill Poser is right on the money, I think.

You can, as you note, tell students to check the facts.  The trouble is
that checking the facts often involves a great deal of training that
theoreticians do not get.

Of course, us data guys are open to equally grave criticisms, so I'm
not trying to call the kettle black.  Or if I am, I admit that the pot
is pretty well singed as well....

-- 

   -Richard L. Goerwitz              goer%midway@uchicago.bitnet
   goer@midway.uchicago.edu          rutgers!oddjob!ellis!goer
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: peterw@lingua.cltr.uq.OZ.AU (Peter White)
Subject: International conference index
Organization: Centre for Language Teaching and Research, Uni of Queensland, AUSTRALIA.
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1993 21:54:35 GMT

The Language and Technology Centre of the National Languages and
Literacy Institute of Australia has prepared an international conference 
list on linguistics, applied linguistics and related topics.  This list is
updated bi-monthly.  The latest update was on 18/1/93.  This list may
be obtained via anonymous ftp from lingua.cltr.uq.oz.au.  

Use ftp lingua.cltr.uq.oz.au 
At the login prompt, use anonymous
At the password prompt, type in your userid
At the prompt, cd nlia

file name is confasci.doc

We would appreciate any conference information on linguistics, applied 
linguistics, or related topics, to be sent to us.  This includes
announcements on seminars, symposia, colloquia, etc, which require a wide
distribution.  

Please sent your materials to the email address below.

Peter White
Information Services Manager
NLLIA/Language & Technology Centre
Centre for Language Teaching and Research
The University of Queensland, Qld 4072
Australia
peterw@lingua.cltr.uq.oz.au
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: poser@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Bill Poser)
Subject: Hokan
Keywords: Hokan American Indian Languages
Organization: Stanford University CSLI
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 22:16:53 GMT

The state of the art in Hokan reconstruction is Terry Kaufman's paper:

``A Research Program for Reconstructing Proto-Hokan: First Gropings,''
in Scott DeLancey (ed.)
Papers from the 1988 Han-Penutian Languages Workshop.
Eugene: Department of Linguistics, University of Oregon.
Univrsity of Oregon Papers in Linguistics. Publications
of the Center for Amerindian Linguistics and Ethnography 1.
pp. 50-168. (1988) 

There is a wide range of opinon on what languages belong to Hokan.
I think it is fair to say that there is agreement that some of the
Californian languages are indeed related. The relationship of the
Coahuiltecan languages is highly questionable, as is that of the languages
of Baja California (such as Waicuri and Maratino). In both of these cases
a major problem is the extremely poor attestation of the languages.
Many of these languages will probably never be classified with any confidence
unless additional data comes to light. The Californian language Esselen and
the Colombian language Yurumangui are also badly documented.

The status of the Chumashan languages is rather different. They are
fairly well documented, and the documentation is improving as people
(currently Marianne Mithun and two of her students at the University
of California at Santa Barbara) work through John Peabody Harrington's
extensive Chumash materials. (He spoke Chumash and corresponded with
Chumash people in Chumash.) Terry Kaufman excludes Chumashan from
Hokan, and I know several other people, including myself, who agree
that it is unlikely that Chumashan belongs to Hokan. In fact, I think
that there is no real evidence that Chumashan is related to Salinan,
with which it has long been subgrouped.

								Bill Poser
From: A5711DAA@vm.univie.ac.at
Subject: Re: HAPPY NEW YEAR in 100 Languages...
Organization: University of Vienna
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 13:56:42 GMT

------------------------- Original Article -------------------------
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Re: <1993Jan8.034758.1@climat.geology.yale.edu>
writes:

> German       Froehliches Neues Jahr !         (Happy New Year)

This is only a literal translation of "Happy New Year", at least in
my Austrian variety of German. Here we say "Froehliche Weihnachten" (happy
Christmas) and "(ein) gutes neues Jahr" ((a) good new year).

Gertraud
A5711daa@awiuni11.edvz.univie.ac.at
Newsgroups: sci.lang