HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: pesetsk@athena.mit.edu (David M Pesetsky)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Chomsky's 'Minimalist' paper
Date: 18 Aug 92 19:11:35 GMT
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

In article <1992Aug18.033810.23837@athena.cs.uga.edu> mcovingt@athena.cs.uga.edu (Michael A. Covington) writes:
>Is there anyone here who has read Chomsky's new "minimalist" paper and
>would care to comment on it?
>
>(It's obtainable from the Dept of Linguistics, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. 02139,
>for $6 postpaid in the USA.  My copy hasn't arrived yet.)
>

I posted a lengthy (if not deathless) set of remarks on the subject
about three weeks ago in response to a harrumph from Jack Hoeksema here
on sci.lang.  I was rather surprised to receive zero response to these
remarks -- in particular, nothing from Hoeksema, who asked the question
to which I responded.  I drew the conclusions one would be inclined to
draw from this.

But your query now leads me to suspect that my remarks never made it out
of MIT (unlike the Minimalist paper itself). Is this the case?

-David Pesetsky
From: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Karandash/Caran d'Ache
Date: 20 Aug 92 11:22:52 GMT
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK

In article <DEEB.92Aug19152956@splinter.coe.northeastern.edu> deeb@splinter.coe.northeastern.edu (Stephen Humble) writes:
>I think I saw "karanda,s" < "kara" (black) + "ta,s" (rock) in a
>Russian dictionary.

Yes; such as Max Vasmer's _Ehtimologicheskij slovar' russkogo jazyka_.
It says that the word is of Turkic (!) origin, `black stone'.

>That would explain why "-da,s" isn't the same as
>in "arkada,s" etc.

No, _that_ doesn't explain it, but evidently `stone' is _da,s_ in the
Turkic language whence the word comes.  (Turkmen, for example, often
has voiced initial stops where Turkic has unvoiced.)

>I have no idea where the n comes from.

Neither have I.  Turkish has a word _karanl1k_ `darkness', but
reportedly no word *_karan_ `dark'.

>This would be more convincing if "karanda,s" also maens "graphite" in
>Russian.  Does it?

No, it doesn't (`graphite' is _grifel'_), but so what.  Maybe it did
in that same Turkic language.

>As for the English for kar1nda,s, I prefer "womb-mate". >:-)

That's what I meant.  :-) (I'm just back from a month's stay at home;
give me a couple of weeks to recover my English skills.  :-))
-- 
 `If ye hiv ears oan yer heid - then use them tae lissen.' (The Glasgow Gospel)
Ivan A Derzhanski   (iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk;  iad@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu)
* Centre for Cognitive Science,  2 Buccleuch Place,  Edinburgh EH8 9LW,  UK
* Cowan House, Pollock Halls, 18 Holyrood Park Road, Edinburgh EH16 5BD, UK
From: 00prneubauer@bsu-ucs.uucp (Paul Neubauer)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Gender neutral pronouns
Date: 17 Aug 92 18:17:04 GMT

In article <MICHALJ.92Aug13230130@fizyk2.fuw.edu.pl>, 
 michalj@fuw.edu.pl (Michal Jankowski) writes:
>>>>>> On 11 Aug 92 16:13:06 GMT, 
> 00prneubauer@bsu-ucs.uucp (Paul Neubauer) said:
> 
> Paul> 	Singular:
> Paul> 	Masculine:		Feminine:
> Paul> 1st	by{\l}em		by{\l}am
> Paul> 2nd	by{\l}esz		by{\l}asz
>                      ^^                      ^^
> 
> Wrong. The correct forms are: "by{\l}e\'s" and "by{\l}a\'s".

If usenet postings could be color-coded, this one would be as red as
my face.  Oops!  I don't know what got into me.  :-)

-- 
Paul Neubauer	00PRNEUBAUER@BSUVAX1.BITNET 	00prneubauer@leo.bsuvc.bsu.edu
                00prneubauer@bsu-ucs.UUCP       neubauer@bsu-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: sci.lang,soc.culture.esperanto
From: JAREA@UKCC.UKY.EDU
Subject: Re: Esperanto's embedded sexism
    <1992Aug14.162847.42358@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> 
    <1992Aug16.002920.3039@memstvx1.memst.edu>
Organization: University of Kentucky
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 01:25:11 GMT

In article <1992Aug16.002920.3039@memstvx1.memst.edu>
connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu writes:
 
>Come, come!  Not one of its sources derives 'mother' from 'father'
>via an affix.  That was Zamenhof's decision, and it certainly could
>have been otherwise.
>
This is an assertion, and thus dangerous.  It has also been asserted
that words such as:
 
     ma+ter
     pa+ter
    fra+ter
 
and others (including the word for daughter) result from an earlier
combining of stem and affix.   I do not accept this, but am too
timid to deny it, and thus would not haave made the above assertion.
>
>Of course, the whole discussion is otiose.  The world has made its
>choice. It's learning English, not Esperanto.
>
Just to demonstrate that I can be sweet and non-contentious, I agree with
this entirely.  Earlier the "world" chose Latin, of course, and may in some
future millenium choos another language (say Chukchi), but that's the breaks!
 
>--Leo Connolly
From: goer@ellis.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Zero morphem (was: Re: Esperanto's embedded sexism)
Keywords: Zero morphem
Date: 22 Aug 92 15:12:37 GMT
Reply-To: goer@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations

knappen@obelix.kph.Uni-Mainz.DE writes:

>Zero mophems can in fact appear, even without having allomorphs. All examples
>I know are from inflecting languages (czech, latin, german).
>
>Consider the situation, that there is a paradigma of forms, and there is one
>_obviously marked_ form, marked by the absence of a specific ending, whereas
>other forms are having some ending. The notion of markedness is crucial in this
>argument, it makes no sense to speak about zero morphemes in an unmarked
>context.

Does the morphologically unmarked member of an opposition necessarily
have to be viewed as having a zero morpheme?  By at least some classic
theories of markedness, this would be incorrect.  Equipollent distinc-
tions are less likely than privative ones.

-- 

   -Richard L. Goerwitz              goer%midway@uchicago.bitnet
   goer@midway.uchicago.edu          rutgers!oddjob!ellis!goer
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: evan@hpl.hp.com (Evan Kirshenbaum)
Subject: Re: English Orthography (was "easy to learn?")
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 17:53:02 GMT
Organization: Hewlett-Packard

In article <1992Aug18.150433.13794@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> dgary@ecsvax.uncecs.edu (D Gary Grady) writes:

>I'm sure most people on this network who regularly hear spoken
>English have heard the conventionally silent H in "vehicle" and
>"forehead" pronounced.  Hence perhaps we are already moving in this
 ^^^^^^^^^^

Some of us each time we (or any of our friends) say the word.

Evan Kirshenbaum
    HP Laboratories
    3500 Deer Creek Road, Building 26U
    Palo Alto, CA  94304

    kirshenbaum@hpl.hp.com
    (415)857-7572

Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: knappen@obelix.kph.uni-mainz.de (Joerg Knappen)
Subject: Rechtschreibereform
Reply-To: knappen@obelix.kph.Uni-Mainz.DE
Organization: Institute for Nuclear Physics, Uni Mainz, FRG
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1992 13:38:04 GMT

(If you don't speak german, feel free to ignore this posting)

In der Presse erscheinen immer wieder (zum Beispiel heute in der
,,Tageszeitung'') Artikel "uber eine geplante Rechtschreibereform des
Deutschen. Leider enthalten diese Artikel wenig Informationen dar"uber, was
nun eigentlich anders werden soll. Werden die Reformvorschl"age irgendwo
ver"offentlicht ? Wenn ja, wo ?

Vielen Dank im voraus.

J"org Knappen.
From: dchung@efi.com (Daniel Chung)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Lam=Lin=Lum=Lim [Cantonese romanization systems]
Date: 19 Aug 92 16:42:06 GMT
Article-I.D.: efi.9208191642.AA25216
Organization: Electronics For Imaging, Inc.


     For those interested in a Romanisation system of the Guang-Zhou
dialect of Chinese, please refer to "Soc.Culture.Hongkong", probably
the original source of postings.

					*Zhong* Qi-Iao, Wednesday, U.S.A.
From: dgary@ecsvax.uncecs.edu (D Gary Grady)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: English Orthography (was "easy to learn?")
Summary: speak as you spell?
Date: 18 Aug 92 15:04:33 GMT
Organization: Datalytics, Inc.

An interesting alternative to spelling reform is pronunciation reform.
I.e., continue to spell things the same way, but pronounce them as they
are spelled.  Fowler talks about a "speak as you spell" movement in his
Modern English Usage and gives various examples.  I'm sure most people
on this network who regularly hear spoken English have heard the
conventionally silent H in "vehicle" and "forehead" pronounced.  Hence
perhaps we are already moving in this direction.  Of course,
pronunciation reform would do nothing to solve the problem with
irregular stress accent (sometimes significant to meaning, as in "Are
you content with the content of what I said?") and would be a net loss
in inflecting "read" into the past tense, etc...
-- 
D Gary Grady
(919) 286-4296
dgary@ecsvax.uncecs.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog)
Subject: Re: New words for gender neutral pronouns in English
Organization: Enea Data AB
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 20:50:58 GMT

Qing Guo (qcg@casbah.acns.nwu.edu) writes:
>Example
>Old style: Someone left his or her wallet on my desk but I don't know who he or
>she is.
>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."

Inventing pronouns is a silly game. "He" serves the mission quite
well. Of course, if you find it more important to be politically
correct than to be clear and stringent, then, by all means, use 
"they", "he or she" or whatever.
-- 
Erland Sommarskog - ENEA Data, Stockholm - sommar@enea.se
Life is wonderful when the wonderlife is full
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: bratt@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Harry Bratt)
Subject: "Basic English" list?
Summary: looking for a word list of Basic English
Keywords: Basic English
Organization: Stanford University CSLI
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 19:45:40 GMT


Would anyone have a list of all of the words in Basic English, or know
where I could ftp one from?  Please reply by email - I don't read this
group regularly.

Thanks!

 -Harry

  harry@speech.sri.com
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: richwing@leland.Stanford.EDU (Rich Wingerter)
Subject: Re: English Orthography (was "easy to learn?")
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 92 05:36:49 GMT

In article <1992Aug17.181705.6973@spss.com>, markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
|> In article <1992Aug15.081820.25427@leland.Stanford.EDU> richwing@leland.Stanford.EDU 
|> (Rich Wingerter) quotes Sven Hauptfeld:
|> >> But there is a bigger problem. English has a very different set of sounds.
|> >          1  2 3          4      5                6     7          8
|> >> Anyway, what is really so wrong with English spelling? Apart from rare 
|> >      9   10                11                           12
|> >> exceptions, like "yacht" or "aisle", I don't see any problems.
|> >   13                                  14
|> >> Sven
|> >   15
|> 
|> and then lists a number of "inconsistencies."

Sven's claim was that spelling exceptions are rare.  Egregious ones are rare,
but the spelling isn't all that consistent, either.  But I readily admit to
taking this to extremes.

I can remember learning to spell.  It wasn't a pleasant chore and I suppose I'm
above average intelligence.  (Let's not debate this, okay?)  I still think a
few minor simplifications could be slipped in every year and no one would
notice.


--Rich Wingerter
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: davidba@carmel.technion.ac.il (David Ben_Ami)
Subject: Re: Gender neutral pronouns
Organization: Technion, Israel Inst. of Technology
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 1992 11:00:24 GMT

In article <36734@uflorida.cis.ufl.edu> djohns@elm.circa.ufl.edu (David A. Johns) writes:
>
>Can we assume, then, that Hebrew doesn't mark gender in plural
>pronouns and that it doesn't have generic or hypothetical first and
>second person pronouns?

No, you can't. Hebrew has gender specific pronouns for II and III 
persons (singular and plural). The first person has a single pronoun
for both sexes.

I    - Ani (male/female)
You  - Ata (male) / At (female)
He   - Hu'  (male) /  She - Hi' (female)
We   - Anachnu (male/female)
You  - Atem (male) / Aten (female)
They - Hem  (male) / Hen  (female)

As you can see that except for the first person any gender has different
pronouns in the singular and plural. 

This is reflected in the conhugation system with differnt suffixes for
the genders. 

Hebrew as no Neuter gender (the English it/ German es).
Every now is assigned a gender whether logically (father/mother etc.)
or arbitrarily (very few rules with vast exceptions).
for example the word for car 'Mechonit' is assigned feminine gender 
because of its form, the borrwed word 'auto' is assigned male gender.

Gender agreement is very strict in Hebrew in all areas. 

> David Johns

David Ben-Ami.
-- 
=============================================================================
  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: komives@lamar.ColoState.EDU (Robert Komives)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: English IS easy to learn
Date: 19 Aug 92 02:02:50 GMT
Organization: Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO  80523

In article <1992Aug18.163817.16916@news.cs.brandeis.edu> rath@binah.cc.brandeis.edu writes:
>... I have commonly encountered
>documents which spell the same word several different ways, sometimes 
>within a line or two of each other.  ...

Bad spellers still do that. I do that. Good spellers just do not seem to
understand that bad spellers do not make mistakes on purpose nor always. Why
look up a word in the dictionary if you know you spelled it correctly last
week? Its nice to know from all these posts that there is something natural
about this.
Xref: sparky sci.lang:6453 soc.culture.esperanto:1429
From: EZ-as-pi@cup.portal.com (Bruce Robert Gilson)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,soc.culture.esperanto
Subject: Re: [Anglolingvo/English] easy to learn English?
Date: 16 Aug 92 22:37:47 GMT
  <1992Aug12.181330.3716@midway.uchicago.edu> <64057@cup.portal.com>
  <1992Aug16.025821.5613@sol.cs.wmich.edu>
Organization: The Portal System (TM)

Steve Brewer seems to think there is
no way of saying "Mr." in Vorlin other
than "Ren" and makes a Ran & Stimpy
joke about that. In fact the word is
"vonzan" meaning literally "man +
honorific-suffix." If Steve had looked
at the Vorlin writings in "vidpuni"
he would have seen "vonzan" used
frequently.
From: swf@teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Can I axe you a question?
Date: 18 Aug 92 16:06:50 GMT
Reply-To: swf@tdat.teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Followup-To: alt.usage.english,sci.lang
Distribution: usa
Organization: NCR Teradata Database Business Unit

In article <1992Aug18.033717.13510@news.columbia.edu> gmw1@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Gabe M Wiener) writes:
|In article <1992Aug17.004116.42389@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:
|
|I really have to wonder if the "axe" in Black English Vernacular is really
|derived from _acsian_ or if it's just laziness in pronouncing "ask."
|
It is *not* lazy, it is a phonologically regular phonetic variant of "ask".
In certain dialects of English (not only in Black English) the sequence 'Vsk'
is forbidden, and is regularly altered to 'Vks'.  This is a normal linguistic
process.  It, or somothing similar, has happened many time in the past.

For instance, "thru" (spelled 'through') used to be pronounced 'thurkh', but
the vowel and the 'r switched places in much the same way as the 'ks' switch
we are now talking about.  (We also stopped pronoucing the 'difficult' final
palatal fricative).
-- 
sarima@teradata.com			(formerly tdatirv!sarima)
  or
Stanley.Friesen@ElSegundoCA.ncr.com
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: cockburn@edieng.enet.dec.com (Craig Cockburn)
Subject: Re: New words for gender neutral pronouns in English
Organization: Digital Equipment Co. Ltd., Reading, England
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 07:11:32 GMT


In article <1992Aug18.183143.12463@news.acns.nwu.edu>, qcg@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Qing Guo) writes...
>There have been some discussions about gender neutral pronouns in English in
>this news group. Since we feel inconvenient with the wordy expressions 'he or
>she', 'his or her', etc., why don't we make some new words to make it easier?
> 
>My basic idea is to use 'e', which is the last letter of both 'he' and 'she',
>as gender neutral third person singular pronoun. Let:
> 
What waste our time with this when "they" and "their" are being used for
the same purpose already?

I don't understand why many Americans find the singular usage of "they"
and "their" so unacceptable. It's been used in English since at least
Shakespeare's time (and he used it himself).

I have a very long list of quotes from famous authors to back this up
if anyone's interested.

Craig

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Craig Cockburn, Digital Equipment Co. Ltd, Reading, England.     Suas
  Internet: cockburn@edieng.enet.dec.com                           leis
  UUCP:..!decwrl!edieng.enet.dec.com!cockburn                      a'
                                                                   Gha\idhlig!
  Views here are my own, and are not necessarily those of Digital
From: bbeer@milton.u.washington.edu (Bob Beer)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: inclusive/exclusive
Date: 21 Aug 92 22:34:04 GMT
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle

In article <AA01895.199208210842.ttypd@turing.ncl.ac.uk> R.S.Hunt@newcastle.ac.uk (R.S. Hunt) writes:
>gmw1@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Gabe M Wiener) writes (20 Aug 92 20:42:42 GMT):
>
>
>> Can any linguists out there tell me which languages (if any) make the
>> distinction between:
>>
>>               the inclusive and exclusive "we"
>>               	 and
>>               the inclusive and exclusive "or"
>
Khmer (Cambodian) has an inclusive and exclusive "we" - 

"yoeung" = inclusive
"puok yoeng" - exclusive

(excuse the transcription/transliteration - I never got the hang of any of
the latin systems...too many vowels to do it gracefully!)

"Yoeung" would be used for "you and me" or "you and the rest of us"      

In the sentence "We (including you) are going to the market", "Yoeung"
would be used. (In other words, you are coming with us.)

If "puok yoeung" were used, the meaning would be "We (excluding you) are
going to the market" (i.e. you are not coming with us).
From: hau4@ellis.uchicago.edu (sven  hauptfeld)
Subject: Re: [Anglolingvo/English] easy to learn English?
Reply-To: hau4@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Distribution: usa
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 05:21:47 GMT

In article <2A89A85E.17288@noiro.acs.uci.edu> cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese) writes:
>
>What a dead language then.  You suppose that NO ONE ever talks about
>emotions in Esperanto?  If it is that limited, then as a lingua franca,
>it sucks.
>
>Regards,
>Janis C.
> 

Actually, there is poetry written in Esperanto. What I've seen (which is too
small a sample, and besides, my knowledge of Esperanto is limited) wasn't very
impressive artistically, but most certainly it was not void of feelings.

Your viewpoint seems very personal so there's no point in arguing. You know
best if you'd like to know Esperanto or not and neither you nor I know what
other people would like. Nothing more to say.

Yet, sometimes things are not the way they appear to be. Perhaps emotionally
"dead" languages may add some life. I believe that most people would agree
that it is easier to say "I love you" or something similar in a language one
has learned as a foreign language than in the one they have spoken since
childhood.

Sven
From: miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Why are you still *axeing* questions?
Date: 18 Aug 92 02:00:41 GMT
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services

Messages about "axe" for "ask" are still assuming "axe" is a *new* form
resulting from metathesis, or transposition of SK to KS.

As I pointed out (14940 Aug 17), "axe" is the *original* form.  It is
the standard form, "ask" that is new.  Old English for this verb was
_acsian_.  The change in the standard dialects was KS to SK; the non-
standard dialects kept the original form.

	- Ken <miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: richwing@leland.Stanford.EDU (Rich Wingerter)
Subject: Re: English Orthography (was "easy to learn?")
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 92 07:24:49 GMT

In article <1992Aug12.141030.11222@blaze.cs.jhu.edu>, pjt@newton.cs.jhu.edu (Paul Tanenbaum) writes:
|> In article <2A885C3B.10024@noiro.acs.uci.edu> Janis Cortese writes:
|> >All natural languages have irregularities; English isn't so bad on this.
|> >It's worst characteristic is monumentally stupid spelling.
|> 
|>      I presume your complaint against English orthography is that it does not
|> provide a particularly elegant encoding of pronunciation.  This lament is
|> heard frequently, and I grant that a bijection between pronunciation and
|> spelling is a nice feature in any alphabetic writing system.  But on further
|> consideration we find that such a bijection is problematic even in theory.
[nice diagram of model deleted]

It just seems that English could come closer.  When I think of Spanish, it
doesn't seem to have the same wild spelling, but it nonetheless serves hundreds
of millions of people.  There is an obvious difference in pronunciation
between, say, Spain and Mexico.  But Spanish spelling seems to more closely
reflect Spanish pronunciation than English spelling reflects English
pronunciation.

|> In a nutshell, whose pronunciation should our orthography encode?  QE2's?
|> Walter Cronkite's?  Nelson Mandela's?  (Mandar, don't answer that question!)

Mine, of course.   :-)    I'd settle for Walter's.  Or E's.  Or even Nelson's.

|>      A second, more basic issue is that we can't have it both ways.  While
|> the sound of a word is a good thing for its written form to capture, it is
|> not the only feature of the word worth capturing.  Another very valuable
|> thing to be ascertained from the spelling of a word is the word's origins
|> and meaning.  Here we must choose, and the tension between these two valuable
|> types of information pretty well explains the current state of English
|> spelling.
|>      Now if you require that pronunciation be paramount, then I hope for your
|> sake that you never find yourself on a drawbridge while laborers are debating
|> whether to "raise" or "raze" it.  And I fear that many adults will conclude,
|> as I did in sixth grade, that "democracy" and "hypocrisy" must have similar
|> meanings, since they sound so similarly (Out of the mouths of babes...).

If we get along without the pronunciation carrying the history and meaning of
the word, why can't the spelling get along without this?


--Rich Wingerter

Newsgroups: sci.lang,soc.culture.esperanto