HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: hau4@ellis.uchicago.edu (sven  hauptfeld)
Subject: Re: affixes in Esperanto
Reply-To: hau4@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Distribution: usa
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 20:36:54 GMT

In article <1992Aug14.161000.4764@spss.com> markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
>In article <1992Aug13.115242.19031@news.columbia.edu> pcj1@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu 
>(Pierre Jelenc) writes:
>>Esperanto does not have "suffixes" and "prefixes". Those words refer to 
>>languages such as those of the hindo-european family, and have no meaning
>>in Esperanto. "patr" is a root, and so is "in". They are absolutely on the 
>>same footing. Do not get confused by misguided attempts to make Esperanto
>>grammar "more like what you're used to" in beginners' courses.
>
>This is an amazing claim.  Allow me to quote an opposing view, from the
>original (1887) work by L.L. Zamenhof:
>
>         [...]             Tion chi mi atingis per la enkonduko de diversaj
>  *prefiksoj kaj sufiksoj*, per kies helpo chiu povas el uni vorto formi
>  diversajn aliajn vortojn, ne bezonante ilin lerni."
>
>The reference to Indo-European is also strange; I think Esperanto can only
>be described as a member of the Indo-European family, though an artificial
>one.


Let's get this straight. Esperanto does have prefixes and suffixes. "-j"
(the suffix for plural) is clearly a suffix, as it cannot form a word by
itself. However, it is also true that some morphems (is this the right word?)
which we perceive as suffixes, are actually roots. Such are "-ul-" (denoting
a person of certain characteristic) and "-in-" (the notorious "female"); this
is obvious from the existence of words like "ulo" and "ina".

Anyway, while a reform that would introduce a male analog of "-in-" would
bring gender symmetry, it would also bring some redundancy, and one of 
Esperanto's advantages is that it is very economical.

As of being Indo-European, I completely agree. At least 90% of word roots in
Esperanto come from Germanic and Romance languages, most of the rest from
Slavic languages, grammar is a super-economic reduction of Latin principles
with Slavic syntax, and orthography is mainly Slavic. I know of no word or
rule in Esperanto that originates in a non-Indo-European language.

Sven

Newsgroups: sci.lang,soc.culture.esperanto
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
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 21:44:51 GMT

Just to make it clear, I said that Esperanto was not MEANT TO BE the language
in which one would EXPRESS LOVE TO ONE"S MOTHER. I think this is true enough.
It was created by an adult man, with the purpose of easing the communication
between adult people of different nationalities. I doubt that Zamenhof 
envisioned anything like speaking Esperanto at home or as one's first language.

I certainly DID NOT SAY that Esperanto lacked capability for expressing 
emotions. That is entirely J.C.'s (mis)interpretation of what I said.

Once again, I am not very competent in this issue (my knowledge of E. is just
about enough to understand everything that was written in E. in this thread,
or to conduct a simple conversation, that's all), but I don't think I've said
anything wrong about it here - unless someone arbitrarily assumes that I've
said more than I actually have.

Sven
From: amunn@macbeth.umd.edu (Alan Munn)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: "Yes Virginia!" What does it mean?
Date: 13 Aug 92 21:04:44 GMT
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park

In article <1992Aug13.172620.26717@discus.technion.ac.il> davidba@carmel.technion.ac.il (David Ben_Ami) writes:
>I don't know if that is the proper newsgroup to ask it in but I'll
try.

It's not, but we're suckers for punishement.  :)


>I ran into the expression "Yes Virginia!" in several places and couldn't
>find any explanation in dictionraies (either standard or Slang/Americansims
>ones). I guess it's from an American movie.


I don't normally get into these debates, but isn't this one from an
extremely sappy song in the '70s (or earlier), where some guy is
telling his daughter Virginia about Santa Clause the famous Christmas
tree[1], and says Yes, Virginia, there really *is* a Santa Clause.

If you really want the song title and singer etc. you might try one
of the rec.music groups.

[1] Santa Clause:       NP
                      /   \
                    NP     S'
                 [the man] [who delivers presents on Christmas Eve]

>Can someone enlighten me?

Consider yourself enlightened.

Alan
<amunn@umd5.umd.edu>


>Thanks in advance, David.
>-- 
>=============================================================================
>  David Ben-Ami (irc: bigdav)      |   "I can resist anything but Temptation"
>  s2780369@Techst02.Technion.Ac.Il |       Oscar Wilde
>  davidba@Carmel.Technion.Ac.Il  davidba@Moav.Techniona.Ac.Il
From: deeb@splinter.coe.northeastern.edu (Stephen Humble)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Karandash/Caran d'Ache
Date: 19 Aug 92 19:29:56 GMT
Organization: College of Engineering, Northeastern University
In-reply-to: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk's message of 18 Aug 92 16:18:09 GMT

iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski) sez:
> <Karandash means something like having the property of blackening,
> <i.e. a blackening agent.
> 
> No, it can't mean that.  What happened to the cooperativity element
> inherent to the suffix _-da,s_?  It is present in all of your examples
> above, and also in other words such as _karde,s_ < _kar1nda,s_
> `sibling' (`co-womber').  _Karanda,s_ would have to mean `relating to
> the same "karan"' (if "karan" is a noun), or maybe `equally "karan"'
> (if it is an adjective), but not a blackening agent.

I think I saw "karanda,s" < "kara" (black) + "ta,s" (rock) in a
Russian dictionary.  That would explain why "-da,s" isn't the same as
in "arkada,s" etc.  I have no idea where the n comes from.

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

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

Stephen
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: schiller@tira.uchicago.edu (Eric Schiller)
Subject: Re: NEEDED: IPA font, mac format
Organization: Center for Information and Language Studies / University of
	Chicago
	<1992Aug15.072919.23559@leland.Stanford.EDU>
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 1992 22:13:31 GMT

Stone phonetic is not a wonderful font. It is a set of characters,
nicely designed, which do not work with most word processors.
As has been discussed at great length in LINGUIST, it is of
no use to most linguists.

The reason is that it was designed so that all diacritics
must be used with kerning in order to work. Most word processors
do not support kerning, and I have been unable to get the font
to work in Word Perfect, which does support kerning.

In addition, there are no upper case letters (except for some
IPA symbols) so that the font cannot be used for normal text.

I understand Renner (the designer) designed the font as a font,
and not with regard to practical use with contemporary software.
I respect his decision, but it means that this font is not the
general, all-purpose font we need. It is fine for displaying 
examples, and is indeeed beautiful to look at. But you will
get very frustrated if you try to use it in most word processing
environments.

Eric Schiller
From: miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: axe
Date: 19 Aug 92 13:03:13 CDT
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services

In article <9208191614.AA08482@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>, lucas@WATSON.IBM.COM ("Bruce Lucas") writes:
> I'm somewhat surprised at the knee-jerk arguments apparently from
> political correctness against the explanation of laziness for
> the substitution of "axe" for "ask". 

No PC on my part; I don't care for it [the opinion just expressed very
definitely my own and not to be attributed to my employer].  

It's just that "laziness" is a negatively weighted term while, e.g., "ease of 
pronunciation" or whatever, isn't.  Objectivity, not PC.

	- Ken <miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>
From: mathias@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Gerald B. Mathias)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: [Anglolingvo/English] easy to learn English?
Keywords: Japanese, irregularity
Date: 23 Aug 92 03:00:15 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: University of Hawaii

In article <1992Aug20.063622.17036@leland.Stanford.EDU> richwing@leland.Stanford.EDU (Rich Wingerter) writes:
>In article <36768@uflorida.cis.ufl.edu>, djohns@elm.circa.ufl.edu (David A. Johns) writes:
>|> In article <1992Aug15.071008.22450@leland.Stanford.EDU> richwing@leland.Stanford.EDU (Rich Wingerter) writes:
>|> 
>|> # As a language with few irregularities, I'd like to recommend
>|> # Japanese.  There's a lot to be said for a language where the verb
>|> # 'to be' is regular.
>|> 
>|> Maybe so, but you can't say that about Japanese.
>|> 
>|> Assuming you're talking about the copula, it [is very irregular]. 
>
>Actually, I was talking about "iru" and "aru", which seem pretty regular.

In a way, that's not quite fair.  When you consider all the different words
one may or must choose among in Japanese to say the things that some form
of "be" handles in English, that might make up for a lot of regularity.
    "Iru" would seem to be perfectly regular (aside from stative/non-stative
schizophrenia), but "aru" is irregular in the plain negative: "nai," not
*"aranai."

>Other than the minor variations in "desu", what other areas of Japanese are
>irregular?  (Someone pointed out in E-mail all those counters that go on
>numbers.  That would be one thing.)

It's not so much the counters that attach to numerals to form numbers, but
the whole combination.  Especially when you include accent variation (I
have found two things impossible to believe:  1) that Japanese learn how to
say each of the numbers individually.  2) that there are rules that cover
all the irregularities).  Yes, that is one thing.  It is also something
else.  :-)

Japanese verbs are indeed not as irregular as English ones, but there are
more irregularities than the "copula."  The basic verbs (that is, I exclude
the honorific and humble versions) for "do," "come," and "go" do not fit a
pattern.  Ditto "say."  And a small set of honorifics ending in "-aru"
could be considered irregular, unless you want to say that the
four make a "regular" subclass.  But then there's a fifth that should
belong ("gozaimasu" = "be") but is irregular its own way.

Common adjectives meaning "good" and "don't got no" nominalize irregularly.
Etc.

Let's face it, Japanese is just another regular irregular human language.

Bart Mathias
>
>--Rich Wingerter
From: cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: English IS easy to learn
Date: 19 Aug 92 02:49:21 GMT
Organization: University of California, Irvine

In article <Aug19.020250.18491@yuma.ACNS.ColoState.EDU> komives@lamar.ColoState.EDU (Robert Komives) writes:
>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.

It's still a little annoying when you find it in published documents and
stuff like that.  By the time it got to the publisher's, I would hope
that the author -- especially if they knew they were bad spellers --
would have checked the hard stuff.

You can be a bad speller; some good writers can't spell worth a damn.
Just try to proofread the thing before it gets printed or sent out or
whatever.

Regards,
Janis C.
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich)
Subject: Re: typology of Esperanto
Organization: LLNL
Distribution: usa
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 15:11:28 GMT


	I've seen Esperanto called a pidgin constructed from certain
present-day and historical Indo-European languages, though with no
contribution from reconstructed Proto-Indo-European.

	As to specifically "Indo-European" typology, it really must be
pointed out that many present-day IE languages (English, for example),
are typologically very different from PIE, so there is no such thing
as a unifying IE typology.
From: connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Esperanto's embedded sexism
Date: 18 Aug 92 23:24:42 -0600
Organization: Memphis State University

In article <1992Aug17.212205.42412@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>, miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:
> 
>> Morphemes -- in-
>> herited, invented, or accidental [?] -- are all the speaker has to express
>> his meaning.  Either the hearer interprets *them*, or he engages in
>> mind-reading.  Of course they do not *contain* "Austinian meaning" or
>> any other kind, but (especially in invented languages) each morpheme
>> is calculated to conjure up a certain meaning to the hearer.
> 
> Ah!  Now I see our problem.  You are working with the
> encoding/decoding theory of language: the hearer understands the
> meaning of an expression by computing it from the morphemes in the
> expression, which function like little "vehicles" containing bundles
> of meaning.

I just said they didn't *contain* meaning, and in another post (replying
to Ivan Derzhanski) I railed against the tendency of linguists (and too
many linguistics texts) to define, or at least conceptualize, morphemes
as units of meaning.  They're minimal units of word formation, nothing
more, even though most (not all) of them in some sense "have" meaning.
Furthermore, I believe the obvious: that not all meaning in all languages
is associated with a morpheme; much (and not just the "extras" in a word
like _farmer_) is not.  So there's no way I could hold a pure encoding-
decoding theory; I fully accept the necessity of interpretation.  But
what is interpreted?  Those morphemes!  And, as my last post on this
should have added, the syntactic structures in which they occur.

>>> There is much empirical evidence against the notion that grammar
>>> reflects, as you suggest, social attitudes.  This is the crux of our
>>> argument, and I ask you to simply look at the facts: a very sexist
>>> culture can utilize a grammar in which maleness is not "treated as
>>> basic" and vice versa.
>> 
>> Yes, it is the crux, and we may simply have to agree to disagree.
>> French says nothing about the French, none of whom now alive invented
>> it; but Zamenhof did invent Esperanto, and that's the difference.
> 
> But E is spoken now, by quite a lot of people.  Note that E is
> somewhat (merely *somewhat*) like Israeli Hebrew.  Besides, I thought
> we were talking about natural language too.

Unlike Israeli Hebrew, Esperanto has no native speakers.  This means,
possibly, that the L2-speakers (all there are) may be more conscious
of the "literal" meaning associated with Esperanto morphemes than with
the "literal sense of words in their native languages.  It would be an
interesting study.  I teach German; my students are all too aware of
the "literal" meaning of words such as _Handschuh_ 'glove' ("hand shoe")
and even _Koenigin_ 'queen' (formally an -in femininization of _Koenig_
'king').  But that's anecdotal evidence.

--Leo Connolly
From: miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Query: LINGUIST mailing list
Date: 13 Aug 92 18:38:13 CDT
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services

In article <1992Aug13.112607.7008@coli.uni-sb.de>, erbach@coli.uni-sb.de (Gregor Erbach) writes:
> What happened to the LINGUIST mailing list? Does it still exist?
> I haven't received any mail from them for several months now.
> 
> Gregor Erbach
> University of the Saarland
> Computational Linguistics
> Saarbruecken, Germany

It does still exist.  To find out the status of your subscription,
send the message "query linguist" to:

	<listserv@tamvm1.tamu.edu>

If you find out you've been set to Nomail, send the message
"set linguist mail" to the same address.

	- Ken Miner

Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.usage.english,soc.culture.usa
From: gal2@ellis.uchicago.edu (Jacob Galley)
Subject: Problem with 'they' (etc) as 3p singular common gender pron.
Reply-To: gal2@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1992 02:36:26 GMT


I don't think anyone has mentioned yet that in today's English 'they' /
'them' / 'their(s)' cannot refer to (some?) specific singular antecedents:

* Every good chef knows their ingredients.

  Everyone in the kitchen knows their ingredients.

Any thoughts on why? I haven't spent much time on this. Does anyone have
an argument putting this phenom in the syntactic realm? Is it because
antecedents which are specific people (ie, introduce a cognitive model
or frame or whatever) somehow require a commitment / assumption in regards
to their sex?

Hmm.

Jake.
-- 
"What's so interdisciplinary about studying lower levels of thought process?"
				  <-- Jacob Galley / gal2@midway.uchicago.edu
From: ed@wente.llnl.gov (Ed Suranyi)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: English IS easy to learn
Date: 12 Aug 92 16:36:37 GMT
Organization: UC Davis Dept of Applied Science at LLNL

All of my relatives of my parents' generation or earlier have 
Hungarian as their mother tongue.  All of them have had to learn
various languages as adults:  English, French, German, and Russian.
They all agree that English was the easiest.  As my father said,
"Although English spelling can be difficult, it is easy to learn to
speak English well enough to get by."

Ed
ed@wente.llnl.gov

Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: gmw1@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Gabe M Wiener)
Subject: Spanish punctuation
Organization: Columbia University
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1992 02:54:07 GMT

How did Spanish acquire the remarkable punctuation device whereby ?'s and
!'s are also placed upside-down at the beginning of the phrase?

I always wish English had this feature (such wishes have usually surfaced
when trying to read aloud....)


--
Gabe Wiener - Columbia Univ.     "This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings 
gmw1@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu       to be seriously considered as a means of 
N2GPZ in ham radio circles        communication. The device is inherently of
72355,1226 on CI$                 no value to us." -Western Union memo, 1877
From: jost@butch.coyote.trw.com (Patrick Jost)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Korean Books (for learning Korean) for Sale
Date: 13 Aug 92 23:06:22 GMT
Organization: TRW Inc., Redondo Beach, CA

Do you want to learn Korean?


I have the following...

	Myongdo's Korean
	201 Korean Verbs


$20 or best offer. I'll pay shipping in the US.


Patrick Jost



-- 
..suenos perdidos, dolor infinito, ya sin sentido, en el triste fluir, de los
llantos sumergidos, al silencio de un grito en el vacio... (J. L. Velasquez)

              Patrick Jost/jost@coyote.trw.com/(310) 812-2759
Xref: sparky sci.lang:6650 alt.usage.english:6844 soc.culture.usa:6786
From: cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese)
Subject: Re: Problem with 'they' (etc) as 3p singular common gender pron.
Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.usage.english,soc.culture.usa
Organization: University of California, Irvine
Date: 23 Aug 92 06:56:16 GMT

In article <1992Aug23.023626.22025@midway.uchicago.edu> gal2@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
>
>I don't think anyone has mentioned yet that in today's English 'they' /
>'them' / 'their(s)' cannot refer to (some?) specific singular antecedents:
>
>* Every good chef knows their ingredients.

Cannot or should not?  Although I understand that, according to the
grammar I learned through 12 long years of catholic school, that
sentence is not correct, if I heard it (as I do along with many similar
sentences) I wouldn't even trip over it.  Consider "Could the person who
parked their car in my space please move it?"  

I think your asterisk is motivated just a little by proscription. 

Regards,
Janis C.
From: mcovingt@athena.cs.uga.edu (Michael A. Covington)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: "Yes Virginia!" What does it mean?
Summary: There is a Santa Claus...
Date: 18 Aug 92 03:27:37 GMT
Article-I.D.: athena.1992Aug18.032737.23332
Organization: University of Georgia, Athens

In article <1992Aug13.172620.26717@discus.technion.ac.il> davidba@carmel.technion.ac.il (David Ben_Ami) writes:
>I ran into the expression "Yes Virginia!" in several places and couldn't
>find any explanation in dictionraies (either standard or Slang/Americansims
>ones). I guess it's from an American movie.

Actually, it's from a newspaper piece that first appeared c. 1900 and is
often reprinted in American newspapers every Christmas.

A little girl named Virginia wrote to a major newspaper (I don't recall which
one) to ask if Santa Claus (Father Christmas) was real.  The answer was an
eloquent essay titled "Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus," which
essentially urged her to believe in him in a purely symbolic or allegorical
way (rather like modernist theology).



-- 
+ Michael Covington - Artificial Intelligence Programs - U of Georgia - USA 
+ Unless otherwise noted, these are private opinions, not official statements.
+ VOTE NO GEORGIA LOTTERY - don't tie education to an unpredictable income.
Xref: sparky sci.lang:6477 soc.culture.esperanto:1457
From: karl@ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,soc.culture.esperanto
Subject: Re: [Anglolingvo/English] easy to learn English?
Date: 17 Aug 92 22:15:06 GMT
Organization: Interactive Systems, Cambridge, MA 02138-5302

In article <64141@cup.portal.com> EZ-as-pi@cup.portal.com (Bruce Robert Gilson) writes:
>Well, I for one feel Esperanto is so flawed that unless Esperantists concede
>that it needs fixing, and accept the fixes, there will never be a world
>interlanguage.

I'll agree that it's flawed, but the flaws don't seem to be so bad that they
get in the way of using Esperanto for communication.

>Esperanto [is] a fossil because it cannot evolve. Any language that will not
>change is as dead as Latin.

Esperanto *has* been evolving.  (Partly from the coinages of the native
speakers, I'm told.)  It remains to be seen whether it will continue to evolve
in the direction of correcting what you perceive to be its major flaws.

>In 1907, a much improved Esperanto [Ido] was developed

I'd like to examine this claim of improvement.  Could you please list the
differences (other than vocabulary) between Esperanto and Ido?  (Things like
"plural is -i rather than -oj" may be omitted, unless you think it represents
one of the "major flaws" that needed fixing.)

Karl Heuer   karl@ima.isc.com   uunet!ima!karl