HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: baron@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Dennis Baron)
Subject: Re: Ships and countries
Organization: University of Illinois
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 16:31:27 GMT

And they said it couldn't be done.  In Tom Kakonis's novel _Double
Dare_ (1992) a character refers to his membrum virile as "she" in a
heterosexual sex scene (sorry, don't have the page # with me at work
today).

Dennis


debaron@uiuc.edu               (\                   217-333-2392
                               \'\             fax: 217-333-4321
Dennis Baron                    \'\           __________
Department of English           / '|         ()_________)
Univ. of Illinois               \ '/          \ ~~~~~~~~ \
608 S. Wright St.                 \             \ ~~~~~~   \
Urbana IL 61801                   ==).            \__________\
                                 (__)             ()__________)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: lbianchi@sol.yorku.ca (Luigi M. Bianchi)
Subject: Re: Persons without a native language
Organization: York University
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 06:34:50 GMT

I would like to expand this thread to include both some qualifications to
the word 'without', and the case of 'partial loss' of one's native language.

I was born, raised and educated in Italy.  I left for the US and later Canada
when I was almost thirty.  My departure from Italy was motivated by a rather
sharp turn in my academic career--I went from particle physics to theoretical
biophysics.  Most of what I learned since I came to NorthAmerica was in the
English language.  I don't just mean biophysics, but everything else.
Meanwhile, Italy has changed too, and when I visit my family I realize that
I lack not not only new words and idioms, but almost certain types of universes
of discourse--I find it difficult to discuss certain topics in Italian (e.g.
environmental problems).  I experience a sort of selective loss of my native
language.  I realize that it is not really a loss, but rather a lacuna.
The fact is that the social interactions in which I find myself, make it
appear as a loss (my family and friends tease me for my hesitations, for my
sometimes rudimentary or anglicized vocabulary).

The converse is also true.  When I talk with my wife (a Canadian born,
English-speaking painter) about my childhood, about early experiences, etc.
I encounter the same kind of difficulty.  Notice that I am usually considered
to speak English fluently, to have a rather large vocabulary--I still have
a remnant of Italian accent.  I read and write a lot.  In fact, if I *write*
about my childhood, I have no problem expressing anything.

I have a friend who was ping-ponged between Italy and Canada several times.
Her case is even more severe--she truly feels she has no 'native' language.
When we talk, we noticed that we switch between Italian and English, say
four or five times in the course of an evening, and that the switch seems
to be correlated to the topic of our conversation.

In conclusion, I wish to point out that I do not feel that I am in any way
handicapped in terms of my ability to think, to express myself, to understand
others.  What I feel is that, linguistically speaking, I am a sort of jack-
of-all-trades.  This brings me back to the origin of this thread--do we think
verbally or not (or...)?  Especially when I'm working on a research problem
(often of a mathematical nature), I am not aware of thinking 'in words'.  But
the words are right there, immediately, without premeditation, if I tell some-
body what I have been 'thinking' about.  In other words, the 'lacunae' or
'losses' I mentioned above, are absolutely absent when I think.



-- 


	Luigi Bianchi

Xref: sparky sci.lang:7042 alt.usage.english:7201
From: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: Problem with 'they' (etc) as 3p singular common gender pron.
Date: 6 Sep 92 00:16:57 GMT
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK

In article <1992Sep5.154735.28550@odin.diku.dk> thorinn@diku.dk (Lars Henrik Mathiesen) writes:
>iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski) writes:
>>According to my experience, the following universal holds:
>
>>  If a language distinguishes between a masculine and a feminine
>>  gender, one of these two [...] is used as gender-unspecific. [...]
>
>>  Exception: English.
>
>Danish is certainly a counter-example as well: There are separate
>masculine and feminine 3p sg pronouns ("han" og "hun"), distinct from
>the common and neuter ones ("den" og "det"). The latter two cannot be
>used for humans (except, sometimes, for babies).

If they can't be used for humans, what kind of gender-unspecific
pronouns are they?  On reflexion, maybe what I wrote was ambiguous.
It is common for some beings to be referred to by gender-unspecific
pronouns and for others by gender-specific ones, but I was saying that
no pronominal (sub)system in any natural language appears to include a
`he', a `she', and a `he or she' (which would cover the functions of
the other two) at the same time.

So if Danish "den" could replace any instance of "han" and "hun", that
would be a counter-example.  So would (A)zande, if "u" could cover the
functions of both "ko" and "li", and Japanese, if "anohito" belonged
to the same level of formality (that is, the same pronominal
subsystem) as "kare" and "kanojo".

Danish "vedkommende" comes much closer.

>(+) Yes, this is the ``same'' Germanic word as English 'man'. In
>Danish, it has split into a generic human subject pronoun "man"
>(oblique form "en" (= 'one)) and a word for male adult humans, "mand".

That's the same as in German, isn't it?  I've seen "frau" used as an,
um, alternative to "man" when the indefinite referent is known to be
of the female sex.  That's a point in favour of keeping all instances
of the noun "Frau" capitalised, folks.

-- 
 `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: lucas@WATSON.IBM.COM ("Bruce Lucas")
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: ibpag
Date: 8 Sep 92 03:57:34 GMT

All the theorizing about admitting "tadpole" as some kind of honorary
compound aside, let this speaker add his introspection that still somehow
the /bp/ combination is in some way more fundamentally "difficult"
than say /dt/, even if we throw in a word boundary: for example,
"glib pig" seems to me more difficult in some sense than say "sad tick".
Why I'm not quite sure, but maybe some clue comes from the fact that when
I say "glib pig" I get somewhat the same feeling one gets when trying
to speak with a cold, whereas this doesn't seem to be as much the case for
"sad tick".  Sorry I don't have the vocabulary to put this in more
precise terms.

Bruce Lucas
From: bthurman@uncavx.unca.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re:questions after the rixe
Date: 11 Sep 92 16:30:15 GMT
Organization: University of North Carolina at Asheville
Nntp-Posting-User: rcrisp


Did the standard pratice of using Latin in the universities not create a
situation that makes our term 'borrowed' rather ambiguous?  May not terms like
toxique, lexique, coxalgique be said to have been in use all along by the
educated, who will have used the Latin suffix (-icus) when verbalizing in
university language?  Would not words with x in the root that never passed out
of medical vocabulary all the way back to the Greeks, with a view to which ones
ever appear in a vernacular source, make an interesting study?  Even if rixe
were a late and conscious borrowing from Latin must not the process of its
adoption seem somewhat different?  Does not the allegation that it's not found
before early modern times affirm the risky historical negative: that every
possible vernacular source has been exploited and that one knows that it's not
there?  If the risk be taken and the case demonstrated, what of a host of other
words, e.g. vexille, flux, maxime, proximite', proper names like Alexandre,
maybe dextre (as in heraldry)?  What of the host of prefixes ex- as in
exception? What of verbs like fixer, vexer?  What of numerals like six or
soixante? Did bearded Bill misunderstand the original point of the question:
why x > ss in Italian, but pax>pace & felix>felice?  And was not the comment
that Italian vernacular favors oblique case where the actual stem appears
apropos?  Does not French much more often than Italian do it both ways:unlike
Italian paix<pax, voix<vox; but sometimes seemingly like Italian vorace<vorax?
From: beesley@parc.xerox.com (Ken Beesley)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Article before name in Spanish
Date: 14 Sep 92 19:04:53 GMT
Reply-To: beesley@parc.xerox.com (Ken Beesley)
Organization: Xerox PARC

In article <Sep13.153848.28042@yuma.ACNS.ColoState.EDU>, komives@lamar.ColoState.EDU (Robert Komives) writes:
> A question about Spanish if that is appropriate.
> 
> My daughter just reported that she hears people refer to others by name in
> Ecuador placing an the article before there name.
> 	La Josefina no esta'. The Josefina is not here.
> 
> I found the same to be true among farmers in Guatemala but was told by
> college educated people there that this custom is "bad" Spanish. The closest
> expressions I can think of in English are pejorative. "That Josefina isn't here
> ". Meaning there is some fault in her that causes her not to be here. 
> Is this form common in Spanish (or elsewhere)?

I've read that the use of the article with proper names is standard in Catalan, even in vocative cases.  E.g. you would call Mary by shouting "La Mari/a!".  Can anyone confirm this?

In Portuguese, use of the article with common names and possessives can convey an added measure of uniqueness or singularity, which in some cases can amount to endearment.

Ken Beesley
From: komives@lamar.ColoState.EDU (Robert Komives)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Article before name in Spanish
Date: 13 Sep 92 15:38:48 GMT
Organization: Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO  80523

A question about Spanish if that is appropriate.

My daughter just reported that she hears people refer to others by name in
Ecuador placing an the article before there name.
	La Josefina no esta'. The Josefina is not here.

I found the same to be true among farmers in Guatemala but was told by
college educated people there that this custom is "bad" Spanish. The closest
expressions I can think of in English are pejorative. "That Josefina isn't here
". Meaning there is some fault in her that causes her not to be here. 
Is this form common in Spanish (or elsewhere)?
From: mcovingt@athena.cs.uga.edu (Michael A. Covington)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: discourse and pragmatics
Date: 15 Sep 92 05:29:13 GMT
Article-I.D.: athena.1992Sep15.052913.25651
Organization: University of Georgia, Athens

According to C. E. Morris back in the 1930s (?),
  syntax = relation of symbol to other symbols in a message
  semantics = relation of symbol to the things it can refer to
  pragmatics = relation of symbol to person using it
                (and to audience, and to situation in which it is used)

A good modern  pragmatics textbook is the one by S. Levinson.

-- 
+ Michael Covington - Artificial Intelligence Programs - U of Georgia - USA 
+ Unless otherwise noted, these are private opinions, not official statements.
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Persons with several native languages
From: comjohn@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz (Mr. John T Jensen)
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 21:26:58 GMT
Organization: University of Auckland, New Zealand.

I have a friend (Greg, are you listening?) who certainly has not got A
native language, but this may be because he has several.  As I recall his
history:

His mother is Russian.
His father is Macedonian.
He grew up in Tiberias, in Palestine.
He emigrated to the United States in late teens.
The community languages around him were Arabic, Hebrew, and Bulgarian.
His primary education was in French.
His secondary education was in English.

When I first met him it did not occur to me that there was anything
non-native about his English.  I was reared in California, moved to Hawaii
as a young adult, and made his acquaintance there.  I thought of his English
as being vaguely east coast metropolitan, until he told me his background.

He says that probably the closest he comes to having a native language would
be to say that he has two native languages:  Russian (which was the language
he used with his mother in early childhood), and Arabic (which was the
language he used with his fellows outside of the home).  But the others are
all languages in which he was fully fluent and comfortable in childhood,
except for English which was first acquired at about the onset of puberty,
i.e. the end of the classic 'linguistic imprinting' period.

So has he seven native languages (Russian, Arabic, Macedonian, Hebrew,
Bulgarian, French, and English)?  Two (R, A)?  One (English, since he now
lives in and almost exclusively communicates in English)?  None (since
'native' implies 'from birth')?

jj

John Thayer Jensen                      64 9 373 7599 ext. 7543
Commerce Computer Services              64 9 373 7437 (FAX)
Auckland University                     jt.jensen@aukuni.ac.nz
Private Bag 92019
AUCKLAND
New Zealand
From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com (Richard Wojcik,snake)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: phonology question
Date: 10 Sep 92 19:13:26 GMT
Reply-To: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com
Organization: Research & Technology

In article 7778@midway.uchicago.edu, goer@ellis.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz) writes:
>In article <82259@bcsaic.boeing.com> rwojcik@atc.boeing.com writes (in response
>to a postin of mine) that
>
>>nonsense word "ibpag" is monomorphemic.  You are comparing apples and oranges.
>>I think that you might find "idtag" to be more difficult than "hardtack", and
>>"lobe paint" (paint for earlobes) easier than "ibpag."
>
>Why should an (invisible) morpheme boundary affect what you've said is a matter
>of low-level phonology (a "process," using the terminology proper to Natural
>Phonology)?  This is a very reasonable assertion, actually.  I have often gotten
>the feeling that Natural Phonology doesn't allow processes to know about higher
>levels of structure.  They apply after morphophonemic rules.  As Leo has pointed
>out in several postings, the pronunciation of compounds is unlike that of mono-
>morphemic forms like "ibpag."  We say "hardtack" with two clearly recognizable
>vowels, and not like, say, "chairman."

I don't think that the operation of processes needs to refer to morpho-lexical
boundaries, although that may just reflect my ignorance of phonological data.
(I love to expound on theory, but I must admit to lacking anything like David's
command of what the theory purports to explain.)  Processes apply to prosodic 
domains, however, which are affected by morpho-lexical units.  That is, morpheme
boundaries can override normal rules of syllabication.  That is why you can 
aspirate the [k] in 'disconnect', but not the one in 'discover'.  One word allows
you to syllabicate [dIs.k@.nEkt] because of the morpheme boundary, but the other
forces you to syllabicate [dI.sk@.vR] because of the lack of one.  Morphology
can strongly affect the way you set up prosodic units.  Which makes sense, when 
you think about the need listeners have to identify lexical units in the speech
stream.

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

    Rick Wojcik   (rwojcik@atc.boeing.com)   Seattle, WA
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Subject: Re: RFC: ASCII representation of IPA (technical draft)
Originator: alderson@leland.Stanford.EDU
Reply-To: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Organization: Stanford University Academic Information Resources
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 92 17:44:06 GMT

In article <10642@spark.ed.ac.uk>, iad@cogsci (Ivan A Derzhanski) writes:
>Herein is my first reaction to E Kirshenbaum's ASCII IPA proposal.
>
>My biggest complaint is that I see no mention of affricates.  My Slavic ear
>and tongue insist on the articulatory and acoustic distinction between an
>affricate and a stop followed by a fricative.  I know that the distinction is
>not relevant for English, but English is not the only language discussed here.
>_Proposal:_ Include a diacritic (/+/, say) to turn a fricative into a
>homorganic affricate.

The IPA doesn't have symbols for affricates.

>>ejc     ejective
>
>I seem to recall that this is the same as "glottalised" (as in the Caucasian
>languages) or "emphatic" (as in Arabic) -- which one, and do we write the
>other one in the same way?  But in either case, glottalised/emphatic
>consonants are fairly frequent, so /<'>/ seems too long to me.  How about /"/
>or /;/?

It is the same as "glottalized"; Arabic "emphatics" are pharyngealized in the
dialects I have been exposed to, although *historically* they are hypothesized
to have arisen from ejectives.

I agree with your assessment of the need for a short symbol for this class,
though.
-- 
Rich Alderson   'I wish life was not so short,' he thought.  'Languages take
                such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.'
                                                        --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@leland.stanford.edu                              _The Lost Road_
From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com (Richard Wojcik,snake)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: phonological constraints
Date: 9 Sep 92 17:28:47 GMT
Reply-To: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com
Organization: Research & Technology

In article 22444@leland.Stanford.EDU, alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson) writes:
>In addition, each language has phonological rules that must be learned over and
>above the suppression of processes.  These rules may create further constraints
>in the system, although they will be occurrence restrictions rather than making
>a sound or sequence of sounds difficult for the language user to produce or
>hear.

While I endorse most of what Rich Alderson said about Natural Phonology, I am
a little puzzled by his statements on so-called Rules.  First of all, it is
worth noting that Natural Phonology has never had an official definition of
Rules, and this has been criticized by some (e.g. McCawley in the Dinnsen volume
on "Current Approaches to Phonological Theory.") as a weakness.  David Stampe,
Pat Donegan, and others, have taken to listing differences between Rules and
Processes, but saying mostly what properties Rules do not have.  One of the 
things that rules don't do is they don't constrain the pronunciation of words.
Whatever "constraints" Rules can be said to be involved in are purely 
serendipitous constraints on the distribution of phonemes in lexical represen-
tations.

>To return to the example of the moment, */bnIk/ does not occur in English as a
>result of *rules*, not *processes*.  The occurrence of [bnAn@] as a perfectly
>understandable and reproducible pronunciation of /b^nAn^/ assures us of this.
>The discussion of co-occurrence of certain phonemes as a result of borrowings
>is likewise an issue of rules.

The fact that you can't pronounce initial */bn-/ guarantees that its non-
occurrence is Process-governed.  This does not mean that /bn-/ is banned 
in the phonemic representation of English words.  If the language were to
adopt a morphological process of prefixing /b-/ to words, just as it 
suffixes /-z/ in plurals, then you could get initial /bn-/ clusters.  In
fact, I believe that something like this occurs all the time with proper 
names.  What would you do if you were suddenly introduced to a Mr. Bnick?  
(Assume here that the spelling of the name has come to your attention.)
You might train yourself to suppress the epenthetic hiccup caused by that
cluster, or you might just continue to stumble over it.  In any case, you 
should choose your friends carefully.  :-)

p.s.  Definition of a Rule:  A Rule is a substitution of one phonemic string
      by another in a word or word class, where "phonemic string" can also
      be taken as null.

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

    Rick Wojcik   (rwojcik@atc.boeing.com)   Seattle, WA
    (That's /wojIk/, not /wojsIk/. ;-)
Xref: sparky sci.lang:7047 alt.usage.english:7216
From: thorinn@diku.dk (Lars Henrik Mathiesen)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: Problem with 'they' (etc) as 3p singular common gender pron.
Date: 7 Sep 92 13:55:23 GMT
Organization: Department of Computer Science, U of Copenhagen

iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski) writes:
>thorinn@diku.dk (Lars Henrik Mathiesen) writes:

>>iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski) writes:
>>>According to my experience, the following universal holds:
>>>  If a language distinguishes between a masculine and a feminine
>>>  gender, one of these two [...] is used as gender-unspecific. [...]
>>
>>>  Exception: English.

>>Danish is certainly a counter-example as well: There are separate
>>masculine and feminine 3p sg pronouns ("han" og "hun"), distinct from
>>the common and neuter ones ("den" og "det"). The latter two cannot be
>>used for humans (except, sometimes, for babies).

>If they can't be used for humans, what kind of gender-unspecific
>pronouns are they?

I did not intend to imply that "den" and "det" are gender-unspecific
in the sense that we are talking about. Danish generally distinguishes
only between the common and the neutral genders, except for humans
where either the masculine or the feminine pronouns have to be used.
Nouns that denote humans are either common or neuter, too, not masc.
or fem..

>[...] I was saying that no pronominal (sub)system in any natural
>language appears to include a `he', a `she', and a `he or she' (which
>would cover the functions of the other two) at the same time.

Actually, you said that every language with a 'he' and a 'she', except
for English, appears to use one of those to replace 'he or she'.
Danish does not, and in informal usage manages to do quite well
without any replacement at all.

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@diku.dk> (Humour NOT marked)