HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: matt@amsaa-cleo.brl.mil (Matt Rosenblatt)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Origin of English?
Summary: The special virtues of English
Keywords: clobbered; zillions; cut-plug
Date: 7 Jan 93 20:53:34 GMT
Organization: U.S. Army Material Systems Analysis Activity, APG MD

In article <C0Hr0w.159@NeoSoft.com> claird@NeoSoft.com (Cameron Laird) writes:

>. . . That is, I'm saying
>that, *un*like say, French, which picked up bits
>of Arabic, German, Italian, and so on, English
>differs fundamentally from its Germanic ancestors
>in the regular and predictable ways of a creole.
>[Cameron Laird]

Yeah.  When the Normans clobbered the Anglo-Saxons at Hastings,
they and their descendants introduced *zillions* of Old French
(and later French) Romance-type words into the language.  Also,
all manner of declensional inflections that weren't necessary
in French turned out not to be necessary in English, either,
so they went out the window with the Mail Pouch, cut-plug
chawin' by the stove.

English wound up with an easy-to-speak, easy-to-understand 
isolated SVO structure.  That's one of its special virtues.
And thanks to all those French- and Latin-type Romance words,
an Englishman often has two or three ways to say something that
a German, Dutchman, or Afrikaner on the one hand or a Mexican,
Brazilian or Frenchman on the other hand may have only one way
to say.  We've got more words than any other Germanic language.  
We've got more words than any other Indo-European language.  
In fact, we've got more words than any other language, period.
That's another of the special virtues that English has.  

All those words from both the Germanic "ice people" and the Romance 
"sun people" demonstrate that Britain was multi-cultural (in the 
best, hierarchical sense of multi-culturalism, as in the British
India of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen) long before the term "multi-
culturalism" was coined.  That's yet another special virtue of English.

With all its special virtues, it's no wonder that foreigners all
over the globe are learning English to a far greater extent than
French, Arabic, German, Italian or Japanese.

>There are some hazards in this position:
. . . 
>2.  someone will think that, because I'm con-
>    trasting English with most of the other
>    modern tongues of Western Europe (or Use-
>    net, say), I'm claiming special virtue
>    for English.  I am not;  [Cameron Laird]

He doesn't have to; not while there are English chauvinists like me 
on Usenet.

					-- Matt Rosenblatt
					(matt@amsaa-cleo.brl.mil)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
"quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus."
From: sizex@bnr.co.uk (Eric Barber)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: The Days Of The Week In Latin
Followup-To: sci.lang
Date: 5 Jan 1993 09:20:52 GMT
Organization: BNR Europe Ltd, London Road, Harlow, England.
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.199.202.49

In article <8519@charon.cwi.nl> dik@cwi.nl (Dik T. Winter) writes:
>In article <1i9q5iINNk14@bHARs12c.bnr.co.uk> sizex@bnr.co.uk (Eric Barber) writes:
> > In article <1993Jan4.152515.16062@zia.aoc.nrao.edu> gvanmoor@nrao.edu writes:
> > >Whether 'Saterdag' is originally Frisian I do not know. I do know that
> > >'Zaterdag' is THE Dutch word for Saturday.
> > >
> > do you know the derivation of Zaterdag?
> > 
>The same as Saturday.

yes, from Saturn. but I have a friend interested in the names
of the days of the week and he wonders how it is that they
emerged from the Anglo-Saxon-Jute invasions of Romano-Celtic
Britain with 6 Teutonic gods and 1 Roman god. apparently
Saturn would be 1 of about 2 Latin words to have survived
the invasions. (we got a lot of Latin later on to make up for
it though.)

Eric
Eric Barber			E.O.Barber@bnr.co.uk
BNR Europe Limited		6 742 3527
London Road			+44 279 403527/429531
Harlow, Essex CM17 9NA		England
From: hubey@pilot.njin.net (Hubey)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Is (historical) linguistics a science?
Date: 5 Jan 93 18:56:58 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

In article <C0Csxq.A63@spss.com> markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:

> Boy, you guys are really talking past each other.  However, I have the perhaps
> absurd notion that I might be able to address some of the confusion.

You're welcome.


> 
> Only... no, that's not the paradigm; and no, people who are discussing
> relatedness are not describing that.

No it isn't. It's only a small part of it. And it's more abstract
and morgeneral.

> If you really have read Kuhn, you know t hat workers in a paradigmatic science
> have mastered a set of paradigms, and *assume* them in their discussions.
> To know what they're talking about, to say nothing of criticizing them, 
> you have to go master them yourself.

I've read Kuhn eons ago not that there's much in it that can be forgotten.


> In the present case, that means learning how historical linguistics
> really is done.  You are not going to get this through the net, any more
> than you could pick up quantum mechanics from reading sci.physics.  
> You get it by reading historical linguistics textbooks.  I would highly
> recommend Theodora Bynon's _Historical Linguistics_; Hock's book covers
> about the same ground somewhat more thoroughly.

In fact, I have my own copy of Bynon's book.  More general ideas
can give rise to others as instantiations or specific manifestations.
That's the relationship between what I posted and Bynon's .

Sometimes people think making up a word explains something. If the
word is used constantly, then the word becomes the explanation and the
real underlying phenomena is buried. Such is the use of words like
'instinct'. Sometimes it's better not use words whose meaning may
one imply ctain things but in reality don't.


> Historical linguists do *not* ascribe relatedness to languages based
> on either a fuzzy or a precise notion that their words kind of sound alike.

The word fuzzy was not meant as an insult. It seems to have had great
success certain linguistic problems.


[most of the rest of the posting deleted since it's either not germane
or shows a misunderstanding of what I posted. That's OK, since words
are often not sufficient to explain certain things.]



> to replacement by a new paradigm which addresses the problems revealed by
> the crisis, can do that..  Since historical linguistics isn't in a period of 
> crisis, no historical linguist is going to lose sleep over your objections.

This was probably uncalled for but since I do what I do not to disturb
anyone's sleep (except perhaps my own :-)), I won't lose much sleep
over this.
-- 

	mark	

   hubey@amiga.montclair.edu         hubey@apollo.montclair.edu
   hubey@pilot.njin.net               ...!rutgers!pilot!hubey
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: petex@cix.compulink.co.uk (Peter Christian)
Subject: Re: labio-velars to labials, but reverse?
Reply-To: petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 23:24:00 +0000


> 
> In article <memo.842322@cix.compulink.co.uk>, petex@cix.compulink.co.uk (Peter Chri
stian) writes:
> > In-Reply-To: <robrtsnj-311292101210@peirce.byu.edu> robrtsnj@yvax.byu.edu (John S
. Robertson)
> > 
> > I am right in assuming Latin quinque shows assimilation rather than a
> > genuine p > kw?
> 
> It shows a genuine p > kw *by* assimilation!

Yes, that was a careless formulation of mine, but I took it that the
original message was about regular sound changes rather than unique
assimilatory changes.

> The interesting thing is that Late Latin undid it by dissimilating the new
> kw to k: Italian _cinque_ [c^ingkwe], French _cinq_ [sae~k] etc. reflect an
> (unattested?) Vulgar Latin *_cinque_ [kingkwe].

The other interesting thing is that Germanic also had a problem with
*penkwe (or whatever) and assimilated the *other* consonant, i.e. kw
> p (the normal reflex of IE *kw being Gmc. *x). Or pehaps it was
after the First Sound Shift and the assimilation was x > f.

Peter
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Christian                         
  Dept of European Languages              peter@gold.ac.uk
  Goldsmiths' College, London.            petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: German TV in 3 languages now in USA
From: axgolinski@ualr.edu
Date: 4 Jan 93 22:13:09 GMT
Organization: University of Arkansas at Little Rock

On the 1st of November the German television "Deutsche Welle TV" started it's
transmission to North and South America.
The station now broadcasts for 14 hours via satellite. For viewers in Europe
this is more than double the viewing time, which until now, amounted to six
hours.
In North and South America, those who are intersted and who have their own
satellite antenna, can now, for the first time, find out immediately, what is
going on in Germany and the rest of Europe, on a daily basis. The program
travels in the direction of North and South America via satellite, the
INTELSAT-K satellite and can still be viewed in Europe on the usual frequency
of the EUTELSAT II-F1. INTELSAT-K is a KU-Band satellite, which is not very
common yet among direct broadcasters but will become soon. In order to make
direct broadcasting possible for individuals, the 14-hour program is also sent
via the new SATCOM C-4, a high power satellite, which only requires a
a dish size of between 1 metre and 1.50 metres in the traditional C-Band.
Parts of the program, that is sent in German, English and Spanish, is able to
be viewed via domestic television stations and cable networks. This was already
the case with PBS stations or ME/U with "Sports Report" and other programs. In
the meantime, there is a definite agreement with the MindExtension University
- The Education Network (ME/U). The station is taking over the German and
English Jourmal (Daily News) as well as another three and a half hours of
DW television programs. There are many promising  talks in progress with other
partners in the USA, Canada and Latin America.
Deutsche Welle has also been broadcasting to Africa, Asia and Australia since
the 28th of September 1992 for two hours a day via two INTELSAT satellites, in
order to make German television accessible there, with the help of local
television stations.

A  FREE monthly program guide of Deutsche Welle TV can be recieved by
writing to this address:

Deutsche Welle
Postfach 10 04 44
"W"-5000 Koeln 1

Germany

If you have any questions about the program, or technical questions write
to the same address or call the Washington office of Deutsche Welle:
(202) 393 7427

Andreas Golinski (AXGOLINSKI@ualr.edu)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: petex@cix.compulink.co.uk (Peter Christian)
Subject: Re: ..... On bhaashaa, lipi | language, scripts ...
Reply-To: petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 00:05:00 +0000


TITLE: Dialect variation in Esperanto

(Sorry to change topic, but I've got an interesting question)

Q: is there any?
If there, could you please tell us something about it?
If there isn't, how is it prevented or why doesn't it occur?

Peter
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Christian                         
  Dept of European Languages              peter@gold.ac.uk
  Goldsmiths' College, London.            petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: quendi and linguistics
Date: 6 Jan 93 10:04:19 -0600
Organization: Memphis State University

In article <memo.842320@cix.compulink.co.uk>, petex@cix.compulink.co.uk (Peter Christian) writes:
> In-Reply-To: <19935.4267.11618@dosgate> milan.rezac@canrem.com (milan rezac)
> 
>>   I was wondering if anyone out there knows the etymology of the word "elf"
> 
> I have a colleague who's writing a book on elves, both the word and
> the associated folk lore, so I'll pass this posting on to him and
> post any reply. I expect it's a pretty difficult matter, as I
> understand the early sources are rather thin and problematic.

So, usually, are elves.

--Leo Connolly
From: aeb@cwi.nl (Andries Brouwer)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Proto-languages: what are the rules?
Date: 12 Jan 93 21:40:06 GMT

: John Cowan writes:
::
::Something that's always puzzled me:  how do historical linguists decide
::what form should be the standard reconstructed form?

Several reasonable answers have been given. Rich Alderson says:

:In general, appeals are made to plausibility of development, based on such
:things as known histories of languages, proposed linguistic universals, etc.

My favourite answer is the one given by Louis Hjelmslev:
When one compares the various IE languages, one finds certain
correspondences, e.g.,
  Gothic f : Irish 0 : Latin p : Gr. p : Arm. h : OI p : Tokh. p
This correspondence gets a name, for instance *p.
This name is entirely conventional, and does not imply anything
about the phonetics of a parent language.
[Not even that it had as many distinct phonemes as we find correspondences.]

Similarly, de Saussure reconstructed a "quasi-sonante" *A without
trying to define its sound.

This point of view enables one to separate the more-or-less exact
science called IE comparative linguistics from the more speculative
theories that try to assign phonetic reality to formulas like *p
(or semantic reality to reconstructed roots).
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Subject: Re: Bulgarians - descendents of a Finn...
Originator: alderson@leland.Stanford.EDU
Reply-To: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Organization: Stanford University Academic Information Resources
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 93 18:58:52 GMT

In article <Jan.4.14.40.42.1993.18485@pilot.njin.net>, hubey@pilot (Hubey) writes:
>In article <1993Jan4.032130.12753@trl.oz.au> jbm@hal.trl.OZ.AU (Jacques Guy) writes:
>> Off-hand, I can't think of cases of a regular change of
>> sh into l, or of z into r. Could it be that it is Chuvash
>> that has been the conservative one, phonologically?
>
>It's quite possible.
>
>Of course, if we use the same methodology as used for finding the homeland of
>the IE languages, then the Turkic languuage homeland moves northwest from
>Altay region towards the Ural-Siberian region. That puts it towards the Uralic
>homeland, doesn`t it?

Which methodology?  The Indo-European homeland has moved from Central Asia to
Scandinavia and back, depending on current anthropological knowledge and racial
and political fads, for the last 200 years.

Are you talking about Gimbutas' work?  Or the beech/salmon/turtle stuff?  Or
the "ex Oriente lux" of the pioneers?
-- 
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: delancey@darkwing.uoregon.edu (Scott C DeLancey)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Locus of change (was Re: Bulgarians - descendents of a Finn..).
Date: 8 Jan 1993 20:35:08 GMT
Organization: University of Oregon Network Services
NNTP-Posting-Host: darkwing.uoregon.edu

In article <1993Jan8.002127.20670@leland.Stanford.EDU> alderson@cisco.com (Rich Alderson) writes:
>
>But they don't.  Exactly why they do change is an area of research.  Clearly,
>the primary mechanism of change is the transmission problem:  Children learning
>a language from their elders--not simply audlts but anyone more advanced in the
>language than they--do not learn to reproduce perfectly the learning of others.
>
How "clear" is this, really?  It's an old idea (there's a discussion of
it in Jespersen's _Philosophy of Grammar_ which is more intelligent than
most current references to it) but when has it ever been demonstrated as
an actual mechanism of language change?  We know of two *demonstrated*
sources of change--non-native speakers and sociolinguistically motivated
innovations of the kind studied by Labov.  The first involve adults, the
second generally adolescents.  For "imperfect learning" to be a factor
it would have to be a normal thing for child language habits to be
carried on into adulthood--what evidence is there for this?
-- 
Scott DeLancey			delancey@darkwing.uoregon.edu
Department of Linguistics
University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403, USA
From: koontz@cam.nist.gov (John E. Koontz X5180)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Liquids to Fricatives and Vice Versa (was Re: Bulgarians - ...)
Date: 4 Jan 93 16:01:23 GMT
Organization: National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD

In article <1993Jan4.032130.12753@trl.oz.au>, jbm@hal.trl.OZ.AU (Jacques Guy) writes:
|> ... if memory serves, Latin r --> s.

Sorry, it's the other way around, i.e., s > r (via z?) / V__V, cf.
genus (nom. sg.) vs. generis (gen. sg.) (example by memory, Latin not my 
strength)
----
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: ada612@huxley.anu.edu.au (Avery D Andrews)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: quendi and linguistics
Date: 7 Jan 93 10:09:43 GMT
Organization: Australian National University
NNTP-Posting-Host: 150.203.2.12

In article  <1993Jan6.100419.4884@memstvx1.memst.edu>,
 Leo Conolly (connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu) writes:

 >. I expect it's a pretty difficult matter, as I
 >> understand the early sources are rather thin and problematic.
 >
 >So, usually, are elves.

Except perhaps in Iceland, which is very rich in elf-stories, which
impress me greatly with their matter-of-factness, e.g. farmer's wives who
swap baby-sitting with the elf-woman in the back garden.


Avery.Andrews@anu.edu.au
From: sizex@bnr.co.uk (Eric Barber)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: The Days Of The Week In Latin
Followup-To: sci.lang
Date: 4 Jan 1993 16:55:14 GMT
Organization: BNR Europe Ltd, London Road, Harlow, England.
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.199.202.49

In article <1993Jan4.152515.16062@zia.aoc.nrao.edu> gvanmoor@nrao.edu writes:
>Whether 'Saterdag' is originally Frisian I do not know. I do know that
>'Zaterdag' is THE Dutch word for Saturday.
>
>Gustaaf van Moorsel
>
do you know the derivation of Zaterdag?

thanks, Eric

Eric Barber			E.O.Barber@bnr.co.uk
BNR Europe Limited		6 742 3527
London Road			+44 279 403527/429531
Harlow, Essex CM17 9NA		England
From: bongalon@tcad05.intel.com (Ben Bongalon)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Naming Convention for Part of Speech Subclasses
Date: 8 Jan 93 00:28:41 GMT
Reply-To: bongalon@tcad05.intel.com (Ben Bongalon)
Organization: Intel Corporation, Santa Clara, CA USA

Where can I find references for the names of part-of-speech
subclasses.  For example,

for Nouns,
   (subject,object)	???
   (common,proper)	???
   (singular,plural)    case(?)

   Verbs,
   (past,present,future)	tense(?)
   (singular,plural)		case(?)

   ...etc.

Thanks a lot.
Ben Bongalon
From: sizex@bnr.co.uk (Eric Barber)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: The Days Of The Week In Latin
Followup-To: sci.lang
Date: 5 Jan 1993 20:46:34 GMT
Organization: BNR Europe Ltd, London Road, Harlow, England.
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.199.202.49

In article <memo.842319@cix.compulink.co.uk> petex@cix.compulink.co.uk writes:
>In-Reply-To: <1ibjtkINN3bb@bHARs12c.bnr.co.uk> sizex@bnr.co.uk (Eric Barber)
>
>> he wonders how it is that they
>> emerged from the Anglo-Saxon-Jute invasions of Romano-Celtic
>> Britain with 6 Teutonic gods and 1 Roman god.
>
>Good question. Perhaps there wasn't an obvious Germanic equivalent to
>Saturnus - certainly the other equivalences seem very obvious.
>
>But don't the weekday names predate the Anglo-Saxon settlement, i.e.
>didn't the Anglo-Saxons import a full set, so that it really has
>nothing to do with the earlier British population? This means
>Saturday is reintroduced by rather than surviving the invasions.
>
>Peter

ok, that's basically what Leo Connolly (connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu)
was suggesting. any ideas on why Saturday was special. was Saturnus
adopted as a Teutonic god or something? Saturday seems to be
special in a number of European languages, e.g. the Scandinavian
languages where it is derived from the hair wash the Vikings used
at the weekends :-).

Eric

Eric Barber			E.O.Barber@bnr.co.uk
BNR Europe Limited		6 742 3527
London Road			+44 279 403527/429531
Harlow, Essex CM17 9NA		England
From: delancey@darkwing.uoregon.edu (Scott C DeLancey)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Bulgarians - descendents of a Finnis tribe?
Date: 5 Jan 1993 23:57:38 GMT
Organization: University of Oregon Network Services
NNTP-Posting-Host: darkwing.uoregon.edu

In article <Jan.4.16.54.01.1993.22727@pilot.njin.net> hubey@pilot.njin.net (Hubey) writes:
>In article <1993Jan4.205115.8521@leland.Stanford.EDU> alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson) writes:
>
>> In article <1993Jan4.071434.27930@jyu.fi>, ryyti@jyu (Jarmo Ryyti) writes:
>> >Rich Alderson (alderson@cisco.com) wrote:
>
>> In the nineteenth century, one accepted methodology for positing relationship
>> among languages was morphological typology--the famous "inflecting" versus
>> "agglutinating" versus "isolating" spectrum.  However, it was shown *during the
>> nineteenth century* that this is *not* a reasonable methodology.
>> 
>
>
>Would you please explain the basis for the original confidence in
>the methodology and then the later loss of confidence ? What
>makes it unreasonable as a measure.
>
The morphological and syntactic typology of a language can change over
time (e.g. from highly inflected, loosely SOV Old English to fairly
isolating, strongly SVO Modern English).  Therefore it's not unusual to
find considerable typological variation among demonstrably related
languages:  isolating Chinese and agglutinative Tibeto-Burman (both
Sino-Tibetan), isolating Khmer and Vietnamese and agglutinative Munda
(both Austroasiatic), isolating (Modern) English, inflecting Russian,
and agglutinative Bengali (all Indo-European).  Since we don't find
a reliable correlation between typlogical profile and genetic
relationship in cases where we have independent knowledge of
relationship, there's obviously no reason to trust it when we don't.

Scott DeLancey                     delancey@darkwing.uoregon.edu
Department of Linguistics
University of Oregon
From: linnan@batgirl.cs.hut.fi (Matti Linnanvuori)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Bulgarians - descendents of a Finnis tribe?
Date: 7 Jan 1993 23:59:34 GMT
Organization: Helsinki University of Technology, CS lab
NNTP-Posting-Host: batgirl.cs.hut.fi

In <1993Jan6.193601.9179@leland.Stanford.EDU> alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson) writes:
>The next most primitive language is Turkish.  It is agglutinating.  Obviously,
>it must have grown from an isolating language, since those are most primitive,
>by the process of concatenating isolated words into units which
express greater  
>concepts.  It shows more development in the inventory of sounds, as well.

  The Baltic Finnish languages don't just concatenate words. The word
roots change differently in different cases. In Estonian, the
genitive ending -n has worn out completely. The genitive is expressed
by a root change relative to the lexical (nominative) root, if by
anything. 
  Is it still right to say that these languages (Estonian in special)
are agglunative and not inflecting? Where is the boundary?

Newsgroups: sci.lang