HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Origin of English?
Keywords: clobbered; zillions; cut-plug
Date: 8 Jan 93 11:35:04 GMT
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK

In article <10182@amsaa-cleo.brl.mil> matt@amsaa-cleo.brl.mil (Matt Rosenblatt) writes:
>English wound up with an easy-to-speak, easy-to-understand 
>isolated SVO structure.  That's one of its special virtues.

Yes, in the mind of a native speaker.  Not elsewhere, I'm afraid.

>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.

Or he may not.  He may turn out to have more ways to say it than the
Englishman.  Borrowing is not the only way to develop a wealth of
synonyms, and I would suggest that some languages which have been
developing their lexicons by domestic means (derivation), such as
Georgian, Armenian or Arabic, are characterised by even richer
synonymy than English.  Besides, synonymy is not all that there is to
having a lot of ways to say something.  The fixed word order of
English reduces the number of ways significantly.

In any case, let's test this.  Give an example of something that can
be said in three ways in English, but in only one way in German.  I'll
see if I can come up with nine ways to say it in Russian.

Not to mention the fact that other languages have been doing a lot of
borrowing as well.  Turkish and Hindi, for instance, are chock full of
Persian and Arabic words.

>We've got more words than any other Germanic language.

This statement wants a proof.

>We've got more words than any other Indo-European language.

So does this one.

>In fact, we've got more words than any other language, period.

Make that a comma, or a semicolon at best.  Who is keeping the score?

>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.

No, it isn't.  Except that in the overwhelming majority of cases they
couldn't care less for those "virtues" of its.  What makes them learn
English rather than something else is that there is so much of it around.
Which has nothing to do with the simplicity of its syntax or the size
of its lexicon.

-- 
 `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
From: connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Liquids to Fricatives and Vice Versa (was Re: Bulgarians - ...)
Date: 5 Jan 93 08:17:15 -0600
Organization: Memphis State University

In article <9969@fs3.cam.nist.gov>, koontz@cam.nist.gov (John E. Koontz X5180) writes:
> 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)

Good enough, though.  Essentially *all* intervocalic -s- in Latin became
-r-.  (-ss- was, of course, maintained, since neither -s- was intervocalic).
The few examples of intervocalic -s- in classical Latin mainly reflect
earlier -ss-, simplified after a long vowel.  -ss-, in turn, mainly
reflects /tt dt dht/, all of which may already have been assibilated
in Indo-European.

The opposite change, [r] to a sibilant, is rarer but does occur.
French _chaise_ 'chair' (beside expected _chaire_ 'speaker's platform')
< Gk. Lat. _cathedra_ is the classic example. Assibilation also occurs
in some Slavic languages, where Polish <rz> represents [z^] deriving
from earlier /r/ in certain environments and Czech <r^> is a "rolled
post-alveolar fricative" deriving from earlier /r/.

--Leo Connolly
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: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 18:33:00 +0000


I am right in assuming Latin quinque shows assimilation rather than a
genuine p > kw?

Peter
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Christian               peter@gold.ac.uk
                              petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: etg10@cl.cam.ac.uk (Edmund Grimley-Evans)
Subject: Re: ..... On bhaashaa, lipi | language, scripts ...
Organization: U of Cambridge Computer Lab, UK
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 11:43:13 GMT

|> 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?

The main-stream important Esperanto literature is read internationally, and the
most influential speakers travel a lot. This prevents the literary language
from splitting up into national dialects. There is however a lot of writing in
Esperanto that is read mostly in one area (most national Esperanto
organisations have a newsletter in Esperanto, hold their committee meetings in
Esperanto, etc), and this writing does often show national characteristics.
The difference are however not large enough or consistent enough to merit
the title "dialect". They are smaller than the differences between American
and English, or between Austrian and German (and I mean the *written*
languages in both cases).

Occasionally one can notice a feature that is characteristic not of a particular
area but of a particular sub-movement. I can't at the moment produce an example,
but I think that a careful analysis would show certain statistical differences
between the language of SAT Esperantists and UEA Esperantists. (UEA is the
neutral international movement; SAT represents the workers' movement, though
it switched from socialism to a kind of anarchism a long time ago.)

As for the spoken language: Some speakers have a strong national accent,
and some speak in such a way that no one could guess where they come from.
Ability to learn a good pronunciation seems fairly independent of the ability
to actually learn a language, in my experience.

In case anyone wants a concrete example of a national characteristic in
Esperanto I might mention two features that I identified last night while
I was flicking through some Esperanto magazines from Vietnam:

The expression "ia nombro de", literally "some quantity of", but used
apparently to mean rather a lot.

The word "premsekvi", literally "push-follow", apparently meaning something
like "follow closely" or "chase".

Neither of those expressions is in any way incorrect, but I have never
seen them used with such frequency in any other Esperanto literature. Of
course it may well be possible to trace both of these expressions back to
one influential dictionary or writer/translater. The Esperanto movement in
Vietnam is probably rather small and centralised compared with the European
movement(s).

=======================================================================
Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS                  Edmund.Grimley-Evans@cl.cam.ac.uk
=======================================================================
From: miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Clicks are stops, right?
Date: 5 Jan 93 11:25:57 CST
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services

I hold that clicks are stops, since they, like stops, can be
readily prenasalized and aspirated.  (I know it is claimed that
aspirated fricatives occur too, but (a) they're much rarer than
aspirated stops and (b) I would have to see evidence that they aren't
really sequences.)

I thought of this when looking at the ASCII/IPA, where clicks are to
be represented by diacritic "!" following the homorganic stops, which
by my lights is a good choice.

Next question is, Do they come from stops historically, or what?
My guess would be that since they're original only in Khoi-San (?), not
much comparative evidence is available.
-- 
miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu | Graecis ac barbaris, sapientibus et
opinions are my own      | insipientibus debitor sum
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: alderson@cisco.com (Rich Alderson)
Subject: Re: labio-velars to labials, but reverse?
Originator: alderson@leland.Stanford.EDU
Reply-To: alderson@cisco.com (Rich Alderson)
Organization: Cisco Systems (MIS)
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 93 00:21:08 GMT

In article <memo.846119@cix.compulink.co.uk>, petex@cix (Peter Christian)
writes:
>In-Reply-To: <1993Jan6.101008.4885@memstvx1.memst.edu>
>connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu

>>In article <memo.842322@cix.compulink.co.uk>, petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
>>(Peter Christian) 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.

There is (may be) more at work in Germanic than assimilations.  There are a few
lexical items which do not show the expected development *k<w> > *x<w>, but
rather *k<w> > *f.  Whether *k<w> > **p in some environment prior to Grimm's
law, or afterwards *x<w> -> *f, is indeterminate.  But besides the evidence of
"5," we have other words such as "wolf," Gothic Wulfila "Little Wolf" <
*wlk<w>o-.

(NB:  "4" is suspect as evidence since the numbers influence each other any
way, and a simple assimilation in "5" could lead to one in "4" as well.)
-- 
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: gus.teschke@med.umich.edu (Gus Teschke)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Origin of English?
Followup-To: sci.lang
Date: 5 Jan 1993 18:30:37 GMT
Organization: University of Michigan Medical School
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: 141.214.40.108

My friend and I are tired of arguing over the origins of the English
language. We are completely ignorant of any relevant facts.  Can anyone
enlighten us before we start making stupid bets about Romance languages?

Thanks,
     Gus
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: mikak@microsoft.com (Mike Kortelainen)
Subject: Re: "n'ha" == "daughter of" ? Language?
Date: 05 Jan 93 18:16:29 GMT
Organization: Microsoft Corp.

In article <1992Dec30.212037.2821@leland.Stanford.EDU> alderson@cisco.com wrote:
> My first guess would be a Celtic language, most likely Scottish Gaelic, this
> based on the fact that the elder sister of my friend Conall O Raghallaigh is
> Roisin Ni Raghallaigh.
> 
> The most obvious choice for "son of" is then "mac."
> -- 
> Rich Alderson  

Well, at least in the Irish language "Mac" really means "son of".
"O'" means "male descendant of" (ie. grandchild or further down the line)
"Ni'" means "female descendant of"

ie, just as you said.

But I suppose the Scottish Gaelic actually would most probably use
something very close to Irish, as they are closely related languages.
I would venture to suggest maybe Welsh...????

	--Mika

*************************************************************************
*Mika Kortelainen                                     mikak@microsof.com*
*Microsoft WPG Ireland                                                  *
*************************************************************************
*A Finnish polar bear hunter stranded in Ireland, a country with no     *
*polar bears...                                                         *
*************************************************************************
*I've a deal with my employer; we don't speak for each other            *
*************************************************************************
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: gvanmoor@nrao.edu (Gustaaf Van Moorsel,,,)
Subject: Re: The Days Of The Week In Latin
Reply-To: gvanmoor@nrao.edu
Organization: National Radio Astronomy Observatory
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 93 15:25:15 GMT

Whether 'Saterdag' is originally Frisian I do not know. I do know that
'Zaterdag' is THE Dutch word for Saturday.

Gustaaf van Moorsel
From: hubey@pilot.njin.net (Hubey)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Bulgarians - descendents of a Finn...
Date: 7 Jan 93 04:54:18 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

In article <1993Jan7.012915.18582@leland.Stanford.EDU> alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson) writes:


> However, languages change whether or not they encounter speakers of other
> languages.  Thus, there is no language in the Indo-European family that is any
> closer to the Ursprache than any other at the same time depth, for some notion
> of closeness.
> 
> That is, the phonology and/or the morphology and/or the syntax will be changed
> from that of the parent language.


I don't have any doubts that languages change for a variety of
reasons. Neither do I subscribe to the view that all changes
emanate from only one cause in every case.

However, if languages change as a result of some internal effort
at some kind of an optimizing principle, then it should be an
observable universal. It should be possible, then, to find this
univeral principle since there are so many languages that 
lingusists have studied.

On the other hand, if the changes are caused by external influence,
then although exhibiting some kind of regularity in the pattern of
the changes, it probably could be attributed more to the
characteristics of the external influence than to the universality
of the transition. Thus methods can be devised, in principle, to
distinguish between the two kinds of changes.


> Besides, given current thinking on the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European,
> somewhere at a midpoint between the Eastern Goths and the Western Armenians
> would be best under your proposed model.  There are problems with that location
> as well.

I did not and do not defend any of the views put forward by any of
the constructionists. I'm only attempting to point out inconsistencies
in some of the current thoughts.

My main concern, and one of my hobbies, is to derive methods of
obtaining numbers for various schemes. This is a very important
part of science since it enables researchers to create unambiguous
models on the basis of which discourse can take place.

Never have I denigrated the tremendous effort expended by linguists
at various times to produce some regularity/pattern that is
not plainly visible. This is the essence of science. However, none
of this should be taken to mean that 'Then End' as arrived and
that linguistics has reached the point where nothing else can
be added. It would be too arrogant of anyone to even hint at
such a conclusion. The wheel is still spinning, not only for
linguistics, but even for mathematics. There will probably be
no end to this process and the linguists should be well aware of
it. 
-- 

	mark	

   hubey@amiga.montclair.edu         hubey@apollo.montclair.edu
   hubey@pilot.njin.net               ...!rutgers!pilot!hubey
From: cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese)
Subject: optional contractions 
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Organization: University of California, Irvine
Date: 7 Jan 93 23:27:16 GMT

I know that there are languages, like French, that include contractions,
but I was wondering if there were any around that had OPTIONAL
contractions, as does English.  "I'm" is just as grammatical as "I am,"
while "je aime" isn't acceptable.

Please e-mail.

Just wonderin',
Janis C.


Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: poser@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Bill Poser)
Subject: Re: Origin of English?
Organization: Stanford University CSLI
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 01:56:29 GMT

On the question of whether English is a creole or mixed language, I
strongly recommend reading Case Study 9.8 of Sarah Grey Thomason and
Terrence Kaufman's _Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics_,
which argues at length (about 80 pp.) against the claim that
English is a creole or mixed language.

Bill
From: hubey@pilot.njin.net (Hubey)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Definitions of terms that have bothered Mark Hubey
Keywords: paradigm history comparison linguistics relatedness
Date: 12 Jan 93 07:49:14 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.


Thanks for the lessons but I've read both Lyons' book Bynon's
SPE, SApir, etc.

I have about 30 books at home now-half mine half loaned from a
library.

The point was really about other things. 

I have to become less active on sci.lang otherwise I won't
be able to finish what I started. If the semester starts then
it won't get finished for another year--at least until summer.

Thank you.
-- 

	mark	

   hubey@amiga.montclair.edu         hubey@apollo.montclair.edu
   hubey@pilot.njin.net               ...!rutgers!pilot!hubey    
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: deb5@ellis.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: optional contractions
Reply-To: deb5@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago
Distribution: na
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1993 08:13:14 GMT

	If I understand the example correctly, you're asking which
languages have optional contractions in the standard written form,
because ever language I've come into contact with has spoken contrac-
tions which are not reproduced in writing.  For example, although I
often include the words "y'all's", "gonna", "what'll", etc. in letters,
I would hesitate to use them in formal writing.
	
	One sees various forms when writers try to reproduce people's 
natural speech, but the only standard contractions in German are (native 
speakers help me out):

1)  Elision of unstressed "e" under certain conditions, particularly in 
the word "es" (it).  For example, "Wie geht's?" (But "Wie geht es Ihnen?"  
That is, contraction is acceptable with the informal "you" only).  In other 
cases (Wie geht's? is a fixed expression) it is optional, such as "Keiner 
merkt's" or "Sie hat dich nicht gesehn" (for "gesehen").

2)  Contraction of certain forms of the article with certain prepostions.
These are:  ans (an+das), am (an+dem), aufs, beim, durchs, fuers, ins, im, 
uebers, vom.  (Have I forgotten any?)  Other similar contractions, such as 
"ueberm" or "vorm", are heard in speech but unacceptable written.
These contractions are all optional.  Generally, they are made whenever the
article is not stressed, e.g. "Es ging durchs Fenster" vs. "Es ging durch
DAS Fenster" (roughly, "through the window" vs. "through THAT window").

3)  The intial vowel of the forms of "ein" (one, a) is dropped.  Common in
speech (esp. so'n "such a"), but I believe it's inacceptable in all but the
most informal writing.  Optional.

	Italians have more leeway; they need only invoke the principle of
euphony.  "oli" (oils) for "olii" is a common contraction.

	Welsh has a large number of prepostion/pronoun contractions some of
which are colloquial, some of which are archaic.  The picture's much too
messy to go into here.  Certain languages, especially Romance ones, have
"short" forms for certain verbs.  For example, Catalan has "hem" for "havem"
(we have) and there are similar cases in Romanian.

	Korean has a wide variety of optional contractions, but I have no
idea which are acceptably written because I learned spoken forms.
A very common example is the "possessive" suffix written "-ui" (a high, back, 
unrounded vowel with a high, front, unrounded off-glide; Yale transcription) 
which is normally pronounced [e^].  It can contract with some subject 
pronouns, e.g. naui or nay [ne^] (my), neui or ney [ne] (your), etc.
	There are various contractions with the "object" suffix -(l)ul, such
as "kel" for "kesul" (it), and _lots_ of verb contractions, most of which are
optional in writing. 
	 
 	I hope this wasn't too much :> 

-- 
	Daniel "Da" von Brighoff (deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /\
	951 E. 54th Place				    /__\
	Chicago, IL  60637				   /____\
From: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Works on WHO,WHEN,WHAT,WHERE...
Date: 8 Jan 93 13:48:02 GMT
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK

In article <1993Jan7.130658.22948@ghost.dsi.unimi.it> leva@ghost.dsi.unimi.it (paolo leva) writes:
>If you think of what can be asked about any situation
>that is possible to describe with language, you will find out that you have
>to use one of the wh-words, among those the following six seem to be the most
>essential: WHO, WHAT, WHY, HOW, WHERE, and WHEN.

This is English-specific, though.  Other languages may fail to make
the two-way distinction between `who' and `what'.  On the other hand,
in Nivkh it is a three-way distinction (human : animal : object).  As
opposed to which you may have a variety of HOWs and WHYs.

I'm also missing such essential (I would say) WHs as WHICH, WHAT KIND
OF / WHAT FOR and HOW MUCH / HOW MANY.

>We are ignoring the yes/no questions as you surely noticed.

Yes, WHETHER is nowhere to be found.

-- 
 `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: hubey@pilot.njin.net (Hubey)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Bulgarians - descendents of a Finn...
Date: 4 Jan 93 19:40:42 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

In article <1993Jan4.032130.12753@trl.oz.au> jbm@hal.trl.OZ.AU (Jacques Guy) writes:

> hubey@pilot.njin.net (Hubey) writes:
> 
> Strange. I know of at least one case of change in the other
> direction (l --> sh), and that is in Picard, the French
>.....
> --> chaise, and, if memory serves, Latin r --> s.
> 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 ?
-- 

	mark	

   hubey@amiga.montclair.edu         hubey@apollo.montclair.edu
   hubey@pilot.njin.net               ...!rutgers!pilot!hubey