HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: jww@evolving.com (John W. Woolley)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: "Nominative" absolute?
Date: 23 Dec 92 16:27:33 GMT
Organization: Evolving Systems, Inc.
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4

connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu writes:
: In article <1992Dec18.211826.45778@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>, miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:
: The genitive NP + participle in Acts 1:8 seems to be a normal genitive
: attached to the NP _virtutem_, though that is *not* the construction
: in the Greek, which seems to have an absolute.  Perhaps Jerome misunder-
: stood.  Anyway, it reads:
: 
: 	sed accipietis virtutem supervenientis Spiritus sancti in vos...
: 	'but you will accept the power of the Holy Spirit coming over you...'

This is very odd.  My critical Vulgate shows absolutely no variants in
any manuscripts in this verse, so we have to assume it's what Jerome
actually wrote.  (Or did a secretary hear wrong, and it got past them
on proofreading?  Doesn't seem likely.)  But the Greek is simple and
clear, and the same in every respectable modern (i.e. post-Renaissance)
edition -- are there variant early versions of it around?  We can't
seriously believe Jerome misunderstood the Greek, can we?

The Authorized Version has it right; the Douay of course follows Jerome.

Then a further mystery.  The Lutherbibel says:

    ihr werdet aber die Kraft des heiligen Geistes empfangen,
    welcher auf euch kommen wird ...

Was Luther (gasp!) translating from Jerome?  (Or was his Greek maybe bad,
and he was using the Latin to understand it by? -- a practice I would
like to disparage, but have myself indulged in far too often for my scorn
to have any flavour of grace.)  Are there other examples of Luther's
translation being, ah, influenced by the Vulgate?


Then, on the original thread topic.  For what it's worth, I use the
nominative as the subject of English absolute clauses, maybe because the
absolute in English ("I having arrived, she served dinner") usually is
a quite formal-sounding replacement for a more natural phrasing in which
the subject must be nominative ("After I got there" or "When I'd arrived"
or whatever), which after all are the normal way to translate the
classical absolutes.

Felix natalis dies DNIC omnibus.
-- 
Fr. John Woolley (jww@evolving.com); vastly enthusiastic about Augustine,
Austen, babies, Bach, backgammon, baseball, beer, the Bible, Botticelli, Burke,
Chesterton, Dante, Dixieland, hardboiled, Hitchcock, Dr Johnson, Latin, Mozart,
Shakespeare/de Vere, St Teresa, Tolkien, Trollope, Fats Waller, and Washington
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: alderson@cisco.com (Rich Alderson)
Subject: Re: Need help with Mongolian (Urdu)
Originator: alderson@leland.Stanford.EDU
Reply-To: alderson@cisco.com (Rich Alderson)
Organization: Cisco Systems (MIS)
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 92 21:16:01 GMT

In article <1h4ao3INNaeg@coli-gate.coli.uni-sb.de>, simon@fsinfo (Julia Simon) writes:
>tariqh@dcs.qmw.ac.uk (Tariq Hamid) writes:
>>While we're on the subject the Hindi and Urdu languages are almost identical,
>>except for the fact that Hindi is written in Devanagri script and Urdu is
>>written in Arabic/Persian script. This difference is due to the nationalistic
>>tendencies of the rulers of India and Pakistan. After independence, from the
>>British in 1947, the Indians decided to write the language known as
>>"Hindustani" in the Devanagri script, the ancient script in which Sanskrit is
>>written.
>
>I've heard there is another difference - the Urdu-speaking people use more
>words of Persian/Arabian origin than the Hindi-speaking people. The latter, it
>is said, do not only use the Indian word rather than the other one (if there
>are synonyms) but even revive old Sanskrit words in order to have "words of
>their own" and to not have to use the "foreign" ones...
>
>Is this right? Or is it just another rumor spread by my (indeed very small)
>"Teach Yourself Hindustani" book?

This is the theory.  In general, it works about like German, where in the
official version one is supposed to use words like "Flugzeugfahrer", but
instead one uses words like "Pilot".  :-)
-- 
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: aeb@cwi.nl (Andries Brouwer)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Om spr}kenas uppkomst
Date: 23 Dec 92 23:16:45 GMT

sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) writes:

:::Despite Hungarian and Finnish are related, it is supposedly only
:::the numbers 1-6 which are the same. (And you have to look twice
:::to see it.)
What about Hu. v'er / Fi. veri (blood)?

::Actually one has now concluded that Finnish and Hungarian are not
::related.
::One still has a division of Finnish-Ugrian languages, but where the
::parts are not related to each other.
::The reason one earlier believed them to be related, is surely due
::to that that they sound superficially dissimilar.

:I have to say, I am quite surprised over this piece of information.
:Any of you linguists out there who can shed a light on this?
I hardly know anything about Finnish-Ugrian comparative linguistics,
but this does not sound like information at all. Let us see:

Hu. sz'az / Fi. sata (hundred)  [borrowed? cf. satem]
Hu. h'az / Fi. kota (house)  [borrowed? cf. Haus]

Hu. h'arom / Fi. kolme (three)
Hu. hat / Fi. kuusi (six)
Hu. hal / Fi. kala (fish) and Hu. h'al'o / Fi. kalin (net)
Hu. (meg)hal / Fi. kuole- (to die)

Hu. k'ez / Fi. k:asi (hand)
Hu. k"o / Fi. kivi (stone)

So, one might guess a correspondence h-k before a,o,u; k-k elsewhere.

Hu. v'iz / Fi. vesi (water)

Hu. tud / Fi. tunte- (to know)
Hu. l'ud / Fi. lintu (goose)
Hu. ad / Fi. anta- (to give)

It seems to me that it would be very difficult to explain such
correspondences away as coincidences.
From: koontz@cam.nist.gov (John E. Koontz X5180)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re:  Fenno-Ugric
Keywords: Fenno-Ugric, Uralic, Finnish, Hungarian, popular misinformation
Date: 29 Dec 92 16:19:34 GMT
Organization: National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD

In article <1992Dec22.211442.25753@enea.se>, sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) writes:
|> This is a translated conversation from a Swedish-speaking group:
|> 
|> )Erland Sommarskog (sommar@enea.se) writes:
|> ))Despite Hungarian and Finnish are related, it is supposedly only
|> ))the numbers 1-6 which are the same. (And you have to look twice
|> ))to see it.)
|> )
|> )Actually one has now concluded that Finnish and Hungarian are not
|> )related.
|> )One still has a division of Finnish-Ugrian languages, but where the
|> )parts are not related to each other.
|> )The reason one earlier believed them to be related, is surely due
|> )to that that they sound superficially dissimilar.
|> 
|> I have to say, I am quite surprised over this piece of information.
|> Any of you linguists out there who can shed a light on this?

As far as I know, the hypothesis that the Fennic and Ugric languages
are related as Fenno-Ugric is uncontested.  Bjorn Collinder discusses
Uralic (Fenno-Ugric plus Samoyedic) in An introduction to the Uralic
languages (Berkeley, CA:  U of California Press, 1965). and provides
about 100 cognate sets (not all including specifically Finnish or
Hungarian examples), as well as tables of sound correspondences,
lists of cognate inflectional endings and derivational endings, etc.
The cognate sets go far beyond the numerals.  Numerals are actually
not very good places to look for cognates and regular
correspondences.  They are particularly subject to analogical
reformation, and, as cultural vocabulary, they are often borrowed.

Again, as far as I know, the literature on Uralic in English is not
very extensive.  Collinder's Introduction doesn't really discuss the
literature, so I'm not sure what to recommend apart from it.

----
John E. Koontz (koontz@bldr.nist.gov)

Disclaimer:  Views and recommendations, express or implied, are my own, and
do not reflect the opinion or policy of my employers.
Newsgroups: sci.lang,misc.writing,sci.logic
From: jern@visual1.jhuapl.edu (Bob Jernigan)
Subject: Re: Rhetorical question
Keywords: rhetoric why-ask-why
Reply-To: jern@visual1.jhuapl.edu (Bob Jernigan)
Organization: Johns Hopkins University
Distribution: usa
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 92 20:59:17 GMT

In article <6819@npri6.npri.com>, eric@npri6.npri.com (Eric Williams) writes:
|> (I'm surprised there's no group devoted to rhetoric... Maybe we
|> don't get it. Maybe *I* don't get it. Oh, well...)
|> 
|> Does anyone out there know of a rhetorical term (or maybe a logical
|> one) for a statement that may be interpreted two different ways,
|> with the result being the same basic meaning? For instance, a
|> sign reads:
|> 
|> 	"No smoking section inside."
|> 

Try "double entendre".
From: aeb@cwi.nl (Andries Brouwer)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: "Nominative" absolute?
Date: 22 Dec 92 09:28:41 GMT

JAREA@UKCC.UKY.EDU writes:

>I seem to recall that Ulfilas' Gothic uses a Dative Absolute for the Greek
>Genitive Absolute.
Yes, it does.
From: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Need help with Mongolian (Urdu)
Date: 21 Dec 92 19:50:51 GMT
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK

In article <1h4ao3INNaeg@coli-gate.coli.uni-sb.de> simon@fsinfo.cs.uni-sb.de (Julia Simon) writes:
>I've heard [...] the Urdu-speaking people use more
>words of Persian/Arabian origin than the Hindi-speaking people.
[...]
>Is this right? Or is it just another rumor spread by my (indeed very small)
>"Teach Yourself Hindustani" book?

It is true, particularly regarding the written languages.  Written
Hindi is stuffed with Sanskrit words, while written Urdu hardly
contains any.

Spoken Hindi uses a good deal more words of Persian/Arabic origin,
which brings it closer to Urdu.

-- 
 `D'ye mind tellin me whit the two o ye are gaun oan aboot?' (The Glasgow
Ivan A Derzhanski  (iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk; iad@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu)    Gospel)
* Centre for Cognitive Science,  2 Buccleuch Place,  Edinburgh EH8 9LW,  UK
* Cowan House, Pollock Halls, 18 Holyrood Park Road, Edinburgh EH16 5BD, UK
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: alderson@cisco.com (Rich Alderson)
Subject: Re: Om spr}kenas uppkomst
Originator: alderson@leland.Stanford.EDU
Reply-To: alderson@cisco.com (Rich Alderson)
Organization: Cisco Systems (MIS)
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 92 21:18:47 GMT

In article <8464@charon.cwi.nl>, aeb@cwi (Andries Brouwer) writes:
>sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) writes:

<translating a discussion for which he is not necessarily responsible--rma>

>:::Despite Hungarian and Finnish are related, it is supposedly only the
>:::numbers 1-6 which are the same. (And you have to look twice to see it.)

>What about Hu. v'er / Fi. veri (blood)?

>::Actually one has now concluded that Finnish and Hungarian are not related.
>::One still has a division of Finnish-Ugrian languages, but where the parts
>::are not related to each other.  The reason one earlier believed them to be
>::related, is surely due to that that they sound superficially dissimilar.

>:I have to say, I am quite surprised over this piece of information.  Any of
>:you linguists out there who can shed a light on this?

>I hardly know anything about Finnish-Ugrian comparative linguistics, but this
>does not sound like information at all. Let us see:
>
>Hu. sz'az / Fi. sata (hundred)  [borrowed? cf. satem]
>Hu. h'az / Fi. kota (house)  [borrowed? cf. Haus]
>
>Hu. h'arom / Fi. kolme (three)
>Hu. hat / Fi. kuusi (six)
>Hu. hal / Fi. kala (fish) and Hu. h'al'o / Fi. kalin (net)
>Hu. (meg)hal / Fi. kuole- (to die)
>
>Hu. k'ez / Fi. k:asi (hand)
>Hu. k"o / Fi. kivi (stone)
>
>So, one might guess a correspondence h-k before a,o,u; k-k elsewhere.
>
>Hu. v'iz / Fi. vesi (water)
>
>Hu. tud / Fi. tunte- (to know)
>Hu. l'ud / Fi. lintu (goose)
>Hu. ad / Fi. anta- (to give)
>
>It seems to me that it would be very difficult to explain such correspondences
>away as coincidences.

If those were the only correspondences, positing a relationship would be highly
questionable.  However, there are a large number of good correspondences,
outlined for example in the works of Bjorn Collinder, which demonstrate the
relationship conclusively.

(At least, they are conclusive to an Indo-Europeanist.  Those who deny the
relationship between Turkic, Mongolian, and Tungusic languages would probably
not hesitate to deny this one as well.  And Colin Renfrew would show how they
had been in place for 11000 years...)
-- 
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: koontz@cam.nist.gov (John E. Koontz X5180)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Need help with Mongolian (Urdu)
Date: 23 Dec 92 22:37:56 GMT
Organization: National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD

In article <1992Dec23.163017.84829@evolving.com>, jww@evolving.com (John W. Woolley) writes:
|> : >>Greetings!  I am looking for someone who can answer a few questions on Urdu,
|> : >>the language of the Mongols.
|> : 
|> : I think David Salley merely confused "Urdu" and "Ordos". The latter is indeed
|> : dialect of Mongolian. So, Ordos is want you want, David.
|> 
|> *I* think he confused "Mongols" and "Moguls".

`Mogul' is a variant of `Mongol'.  The Moguls considered themselves
to be heirs of the Mongol royal line.  Conceivably the words `Ordos'
and `Urdu' are related, too, though I am unable to verify that.  The
languages, of course, are completely different in affiliation.  I 
expect this is why Stolen Horse referred to the language as Mongol
in the first place.

----
John E. Koontz (koontz@bldr.nist.gov)

Disclaimer:  Views and recommendations, express or implied, are my own, and
do not reflect the opinion or policy of my employers.
From: etg10@cl.cam.ac.uk (Edmund Grimley-Evans)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: English/American
Keywords: SCA, Urdu, Mongolian, Mongol
Date: 21 Dec 92 16:25:22 GMT
Organization: U of Cambridge Computer Lab, UK

|> A similar thing happened in the U.S. during the middle of the last century, 
|> when the Americans to emphasize the fact that they indeed spoke a separate 
|> language from the British, decided to introduced American spellings. 
|> Nevertheless I would say that the two dialects of english are very similar, 
|> and are becoming more so.

What evidence is there for the theory that British and American English are
becoming more similar? I have the impression that the languages are today more
distinct than they were at the time of Edgar Allan Poe, but obviously I am
talking about the written languages, not the spoken languages.
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Subject: Re: Need help with Mongolian (Urdu)
Originator: alderson@leland.Stanford.EDU
Reply-To: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Organization: Stanford University Academic Information Resources
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 92 21:23:24 GMT

In article <Dec.27.22.14.52.1992.1477@pilot.njin.net>, hubey@pilot (Hubey) writes:
>Mogul is a variant of Mongol but in this case it's one of mistaken
>identity. Moguls were Turkic not Mongol.

Were they?  I was under the impression that they were Persian.

Why would an invasion by a Turkic group lead to the wide-spread borrowing of
Persian into the local languages?
-- 
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
From: jbm@hal.trl.OZ.AU (Jacques Guy)
Subject: Re: labio-velars to labials, but reverse?
Organization: Telecom Research Labs, Melbourne, Australia
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 1993 00:14:01 GMT

Perhaps in Austronesian. I say "perhaps" because there are
no ancient written records and I fear that much of the
reconstructions might be nothing but artifacts of the
methodology.

At any rate, for whatever this is worth:

When I attempted to reconstruct Proto-New-Hebridean
10 years ago, I ended up with labio-velars (some 
modern dialects also have labio-velars). In most 
dialects they went to labials. In some dialects
they went to labials, while labials preceding
front vowels went to dental (via apico-labials)
or to interlabials. In some languages outside the
New-Hebrides, labiovelars went to velars. However,
Otto Dahl, Isidore Dyen, Robert Blust et al. do not
reconstruct labiovelars, which makes me suspect that
my labiovelars are artifacts, and might have originated
from labials and velars followed by back rounded vowels
or semivowels.

One fairly good shred of evidence is the cognates 
for "man" in Sakao (New-Hebrides), Kia (Solomon Islands),
and Bau Fijian.

Sakao has aTngo/n < *at(aeo)ng(iu)n(aeo) (T= apico-dental fricative, ng = velar nasal,
	o/ = IPA o-slash))
Kia   has mane
Bau   has ngone "child"

All this seems to point to an original *ngoane or *nguane
rather than *ngwane (*atangwane would have yielded Sakao 
aTman). There's much more side evidence for those reconstructions,
but I won't bore you with that lengthy stuff.

The evidence of New-Hebridean languages are a bit of a nuisance,
as they force eccentric reconstructions. Thus *mwata "snake"
vs *mata "eye" (for which, incidentally, Bau has ngata and mata
respectively). I'd say: case not proven. But I never liked my
reconstruction of labio-velars. It smacks of an artifact of
the comparative method.
Newsgroups: sci.lang,misc.writing,sci.logic
From: fstuart@eng.auburn.edu (Frank Stuart)
Subject: Re: Rhetorical question
Keywords: rhetoric why-ask-why
Organization: Auburn University Engineering
Distribution: usa
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1992 02:53:41 GMT

In article <6819@npri6.npri.com> eric@npri6.npri.com (Eric Williams) writes:
>(I'm surprised there's no group devoted to rhetoric... Maybe we
>don't get it. Maybe *I* don't get it. Oh, well...)
>
>Does anyone out there know of a rhetorical term (or maybe a logical
>one) for a statement that may be interpreted two different ways,
>with the result being the same basic meaning? For instance, a
>sign reads:
>
>	"No smoking section inside."
[etc]

On a related note, what about a term for a statement that has a contrary
meaning?  For example, there is a sign in a local parking lot that reads:

                           NO PARKING
                         PERMIT REQUIRED


Frank Stuart           |   grep: dead.trees: Permission denied
fstuart@eng.auburn.edu |   MMMMmmmmm, Soylent Green
From: adamsd@crash.cts.com (Adams Douglas)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: "n'ha" == "daughter of" ? Language?
Date: 29 Dec 92 00:52:49 GMT
Organization: CTS Network Services (crash, ctsnet), El Cajon, CA

I'm curious about the middle name "n'ha" in the quote I'm using
in my signature file. I'm told it means "daughter of" but I can't
find it in any reference. What language is it? Is there an
equivalent for "son of" in the same language? Inquiring minds
want to know!
 
 

-- 
=====================================================================
Adams Douglas   | Always tell the truth, | You can die like the rest,
adamsd@         | then you make it the   | or be one of the best.
crash.cts.com   | other bloke's problem! | - Cyndi n'ha June, 1992
Chula Vista, CA | - Sean Connery, 1971   |
From: linnan@batgirl.cs.hut.fi (Matti Linnanvuori)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Bulgarians - descendents of a Finnis tribe?
Date: 2 Jan 1993 20:21:58 GMT
Organization: Helsinki University of Technology, CS lab
NNTP-Posting-Host: batgirl.cs.hut.fi

In <1992Dec30.211948.2700@leland.Stanford.EDU> alderson@cisco.com (Rich Alderson) writes:

>The languages most closely related to Finnish are Estonian and Lapp; next most
>closely related are some minority languages of the Volga River basin; 

  The language most closely related to Finnish is Karelian. With
Estonian and a few tiny languages they form the Baltic Finnish
languages. Sami (Lapp) is a bit more distant descendant of the
Proto-Finnish. 

likewise,
>Hungarian's closest relatives are a couple of Volga languages.  

  Hungarian forms the Ugric languages with its closest relatives: the 
Ob Ugric languages Khanty and Mansi. (The Ob is a river in western
Siberia.) The Hungarians are definitely not close to the Ob Ugric
peoples geographically or genetically.
From: news@dime.cs.umass.edu (USENET News System)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Academie Francaise
Date: 31 Dec 92 08:42:07 GMT
Reply-To: krovetz@cs.umass.edu (Bob Krovetz)
Followup-To: sci.lang
Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst

on the French language.  I heard that it is the authority about
what is considered official French, and that no French dictionaries
can be published (at least in France) without their approval.
To what extent does it actually affect the spoken language?
Do French dictionaries under-represent the lexical innovation
going on?  I know that no dictionary can completely cover the
lexicon, but this seems to be a different matter.  Do any other
languages have a comparable organization?
From: krovetz@sydney.cs.umass.edu (Bob Krovetz)
Thanks,
Bob

krovetz@cs.umass.edu
From: hubey@pilot.njin.net (Hubey)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Bulgarians - descendents of a Finn...
Date: 4 Jan 93 00:08:23 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

In article <1993Jan3.164904.6398@desire.wright.edu> nyoung@desire.wright.edu writes:

> On page 44, figure 1 of Roy Andrew Miller's book
> "Japanese and the Other Altaic Languages," the author
> presents a chart showing Old Bulgarian and Chuvash as
> descendants of "Proto-Western Altaic," which is itself
> derived from Proto-Altaic. Although the book, which runs
> for over 330 pages of text, presents evidence that Miller
> believes shows Japanese to be a descendant language from
> Proto-Altaic, I find the Bulgarian/Altaic connection at
> least interesting.

As far as I know the Bulghar/Bolghar language (not Bulgarian
which is a Slavic language) has been accepted to be Turkic
for a while.  The word itself apparently comes from the
Turkic word 'bulgha' which means to mix. The history
book that I remember reading said that the Bulghars were
a mixed Altaic-Iranian group with the Altaic group
predominating.

The Chuvash language is known as a 'lir' Turkish vs almost
all the rest which are 'shaz' languages. The 'sh', 'a' and
'z' in most Turkic languages become 'l','i','r' in this
group.

I can't understand how the 'sh' became an 'l', though. Is
there any occurances of this in other languages ?
-- 

	mark	

   hubey@amiga.montclair.edu         hubey@apollo.montclair.edu
   hubey@pilot.njin.net               ...!rutgers!pilot!hubey    
Xref: sparky sci.lang:8564 soc.culture.french:9371
From: clary@xdata.cnrm.meteo.fr (Olivier CLARY)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,soc.culture.french
Subject: Re: Academie Francaise
Date: 31 Dec 92 15:16:38 GMT
Organization: Cnrm.Meteo-France

In article <58157@dime.cs.umass.edu> krovetz@cs.umass.edu (Bob Krovetz) writes:
>on the French language.  I heard that it is the authority about
>what is considered official French, and that no French dictionaries
>can be published (at least in France) without their approval.
>To what extent does it actually affect the spoken language?
>Do French dictionaries under-represent the lexical innovation

There are lots of different dictionaries with different degrees of
acceptance of slang and innovations, so I think they do not control
our spoken French, only some official usage.

I am cross-posting this to soc.culture.french, perhaps someone there
knows more about it.

-- Olivier Clary