HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: andrews@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Avery Andrews)
Subject: Cases vs. Adverbs (was: -ze and -the in Attic Greek)
Organization: Stanford University CSLI
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 1992 02:11:15 GMT

A reasonably rational way to draw the distinction between
`cases' and `adverb formers' is that cases apply semantically to
NPs of a fair degree of syntactic complexity, while adverb formers apply
only to nominal stems.  On these grounds, Gk. -thi, -then and -phi
would come out as adverb formers, on the basis of what I know,
while -de works like a case, in fact, like a `semantic case'
in a typical Australian language.  It's funny that it is itself
attached to a case-marked form, but multi-level case-marking of
various kinds is not actually all that rare, at least in
Australian and Indo-Europpean languages.  E.g. in Anmatyerre,
an Arandic language, pronominal bearers of `semantic' cases
appear in the dative form:

   
   kwere(-warne) kweke-warne
   child(-to)   small-to
   toward the small child
     (case obl. on final nominal, optional on other)

   tyenge-warne
   me(DAT)-to

Perhaps trickier than the case vs. adverb former distinction is
that between cases and postpositions: it can be quite difficult
to draw a sensible distinction between postpositions and cases
that don't distribute (or between prepositions and prefixial cases
that don't distribute).

Avery.Andrews@anu.edu.au
 (currently andrews@csli.stanford.edu)
   
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne)
Subject: Re: Latin alphabet (was: Inventing a writing system?)
Organization: Computer "Science" Dept, Yale University
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 23:05:19 GMT

In article <8926@spark.ed.ac.uk>, iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski) writes:
<
<(``Hungarian spelling is such a nightmare.  They write
<"Shakespeare" and pronounce it as "Sekszpir".''  :-))

:-)  In Spanish, one writes `Shakespeare' but says [Sakespe'are].  (Yes, it's
true that /S/ [English `sh'] does not occur in Spanish, save in the expression
`Shhhhhhhh!')

<I remember having read two acrostycha on the name of Arany Ja1nos a
<few years ago.  Imagine the task of finding a first word for the fifth
<line.

Yikes!  (Say, would that do?  :-))  I give up.  Even changing to
`Arany elvta1rs' wouldn't work.  :-)  What about treating `ny' as one
letter?  I think _nyilv_ means `arrow'.

<One of the poems went "<...> / Yale egyetemet, / Jancsi, nem
<ve1gezted, / A1m <...>"  `You didn't graduate from Yale University,
<Jancsi, but... [nevertheless became a great man, or something to that
<effect]'.  (Hello, Scott.  :-))

Well, I haven't graduated from Yale University, either--not yet, that is.
Maybe I should learn from Ja1nos and drop out while I still have the chance.
:-)

					--Scott

-- 
Scott Horne                               ...!{harvard,cmcl2,decvax}!yale!horne
horne@cs.Yale.edu      SnailMail:  Box 7196 Yale Station, New Haven, CT   06520
203 436-1848                Residence:  Rm 1848 Silliman College, New Haven, CT
ZANG4 HAN4 YI4 JIA1 / GONG4 JIAN4 ZHONG1HUA2!
From: sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Coincidental glosses
Date: 10 Apr 92 21:30:17 GMT
Organization: Enea Data AB

(Reposted because of problems with disappearing articles. Apologies
if you see this twice.)

Scott Horne (horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU) writes:
>My favourite is Norwegian _maal_ and Korean _mal_, both meaning `language'.

Is the Korean "a" pronounces as the Norweigan "aa" (which I
would expect to be written with a-ring)?

Anyway, my favourite has to be the Hungarian word for menu,
"'etlap", which, if you are not too picky with the exact
pronounciation, would be the same as "{t-lapp" in Swedish.
("{" is a dotted "a"). Not that there is such a word in
Swedish, but "{t-" is the stem for "eat" and "lapp" is a
piece of paper, so it definitely makes sense.

(In case you wonder: the word for "menu" in Swedish is
"meny", guess where we got that from. "Matsedel" would
be a true Swedish word, but a restuarant wouldn't use it,
unless it really wanted to look like a canteen.)
-- 
Erland Sommarskog - ENEA Data, Stockholm - sommar@enea.se
From: cortese@hepxvt.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese)
Subject: looking for Julia Penelope (Julia Stanley)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Organization: University of California, Irvine
Date: 8 Apr 92 21:38:20 GMT
Distribution: na  

I've posted this previously, but got no response.  HOwever, I also left
out some information.

I'm trying to find the e-mail address of Julia Penelope, formerly Julia
STANLEY, in the Department of English at the University of Nebraska in
Lincoln, NE.  If anyone out there knows how I can find this address or
knows what it is, I would appresciate this information.

Thanks!

Janis Cortese
cortese@hepxvt.ps.uci.edu
cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu

Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: peeters@tasman.cc.utas.edu.au (bert peeters)
Subject: Re: Why are English infinitives so different?
Organization: University of Tasmania, Australia.
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1992 02:03:29 GMT

cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese) writes:

>In article <1992Apr10.053647.19960@midway.uchicago.edu> dunl@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
>>Note the English infinitive which does not have *to* tagged onto it:
>>as in "You should *go*."

>In that case, it's not the "go" that's canning the "to," it's the
>"should."  Should, like must, can, will, shall, could, might, ad nauseum
>just don't take infinitives after them.

Then, what IS *go* in "You should go"? 
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Bert Peeters                         Tel: +61 02 202344
Department of Modern Languages               002 202344
University of Tasmania at Hobart        Fax: 002 207813
GPO Box 252C                            Bert.Peeters@modlang.utas.edu.au
Hobart TAS 7001
Australia
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne)
Subject: Cyrillicisation
Organization: Computer "Science" Dept, Yale University
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1992 05:49:59 GMT

I was just thinking about the recent Roman-alphabet flamefest and decided
to try to cyrillicise English.  But I refused to spend more than half an
hour on the task.  Here's the fruit of my labour:

First, here's the (Russian-style) Cyrillic alphabet as I write it out in
romanisation:

	a b v g d e jo zh z i j k l m n o p r s t u f kh c ch sh shch
	` y ' eh ju ja

Now, my cyrillicisation scheme.  Column I is IPA; Column II, Cyrillic.

VOWELS:

a	a	(as in `father')
&	ja	(& is ash, the vowel in `bag')
E	eh	(epsilon, as in `beg')
I	y	(small-cap `I', as in `big')
C	o	(turned `c', as in `bog')
U	u	(horseshoe-shaped `u', as in `put')
@	`	(schwa, the first vowel in `above';
		 also turned `v', the second vowel in `above')

DIPHTHONGS:

aI	aj	(as in `high')
aU	au	(as in `how')
eI	ehj	(as in `hay')
i:	ij	(as in `he')
oU	ou	(as in `hoe')
CI	oj	(as in `ahoy')

(SOME PURE VOWELS USUALLY DIPHTHONGISED IN AMERICAN ENGLISH:)

e	e
o	jo
i	i

CONSONANTS:

b	b	(as in `buy')
d	d	(as in `die')
f	f	(as in `fie')
g	g	(as in `guy')
h	kh	(as in `hie')
j	'	(as in `ye')
k	k	(as in `key')
l	l	(as in `lie')
m	m	(as in `my')
n	n	(as in `nigh')
p	p	(as in `pie')
r	r	(as in `rye')
s	s	(as in `sigh')
t	t	(as in `tie')
v	v	(as in `vie')
w	uj	(as in `Y' [the name of the letter])
z	z	(as in `zoo')
3	zh	(pseudo-yogh, like the `s' in `vision')
S	shch	(ish, as in `shy')
D	sh	(edh, as in `thy')
0	c	(theta, as in `thigh' [wasn't I clever to use [aI]?])
d3	dzh	(as in `Jew')
tS	ch	(as in `chew')
wh	khj	(as in `why' when distinguished from `Y')
N	nj	(eng, the final consonant in `sing')

Note that I used only four digraphs for consonants (and could probably
get away with only three by opening up an ambiguity with [u] = _u_ = [w];
_u_ and _ju_ gave me problems in words like `Malawi' /ma'lawi/, `suing',
and `swing') and none at all for vowels (though I did use digraphs for
the diphthongs).  I think this solution is quite workable and unambiguous.
(Readers are invited to comment.)

Note also that I opted to cyrillicise on the basis of sound and not symbol.
A cyrillicisation based on symbol is trivial, as the (Russian version of the)
Cyrillic alphabet has six (or seven, depending on how you count) more letters
than the Roman.

					--Scott

-- 
Scott Horne                               ...!{harvard,cmcl2,decvax}!yale!horne
horne@cs.Yale.edu      SnailMail:  Box 7196 Yale Station, New Haven, CT   06520
203 436-1848                Residence:  Rm 1848 Silliman College, New Haven, CT
ZANG4 HAN4 YI4 JIA1 / GONG4 JIAN4 ZHONG1HUA2!
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Subject: Re: feminine as the generic case
Originator: alderson@leland.Stanford.EDU
Reply-To: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Organization: Stanford University LOTS Computer Facility
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 92 21:14:12 GMT

In article <29E9CDE8.21272@noiro.acs.uci.edu>, cortese@hepxvt (Janis Maria Cortese) writes:
>In article <5838@charon.cwi.nl> aeb@cwi.nl (Andries Brouwer) writes:
>>sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) writes:
>>
>>>By the way, is not "m{nniska" not feminine in Danish?
>>
>>No, Danish says "mennisket" - it is neuter.
>>Moreover, Danish does not have a feminine gender.
>
>Speaking of odd genders (I *had* to mention this), it always struck me
>as really perverse that the words "verga" and "barba" were feminine in
>Spanish.  Anybody know why?

Because virga "rod" and barba are feminines in Latin?

(Latin terms were mentula "erect penis" and verpa "flaccid penis."  Doe Spanish
verga ever get used for other than an erect penis?  Does French vierge?)
-- 
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: IO11412@MAINE.MAINE.EDU
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: cinq
Date: 12 Apr 92 19:01:09 GMT
Article-I.D.: MAINE.92103.150109IO11412
 <1992Apr11.142309.14987@athena.cs.uga.edu>
 <ARA.92Apr11134612@camelot.ai.mit.edu>
Distribution: sci
Organization: University of Maine System

French uses 'q' without a 'u' following it in the words below:

coq, cinq, Iraq, iraqien, iraqienne, qat, qibla, qasida

The first two words, however, are the only ones commonly used.
The last three are included in the Petit Larousse Illustre' of 1982,
but not in its 1981 edition.


Drago
-
-------------------------------------------------------------------
radev@gandalf.umcs.maine.edu                  I proofread my
IO11412@maine.maine.edu                       postings.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
L'enfer est paye' par les bonnes intentions.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: richwing@leland.Stanford.EDU (Rich Wingerter)
Subject: Re: Latin alphabet
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 92 07:03:28 GMT

In article <7026@amsaa-cleo.brl.mil>, matt@amsaa-cleo.brl.mil (Matt Rosenblatt) writes:
...
|> Han-gul looks like a fine writing system for the Taiwanese people
|> for whose as-yet-unwritten language we are discussing possible scripts,
|> seeing as how Taiwan is not all that far from Korea and the writers
|> presumably would not mind an Asian-looking alphabet.  It would be
|> otherwise if the people in question were inhabitants of some land
|> far from Asia; in that case, they would be better advised to go
|> with some version of the "Latin alphabet" -- the "Subject" of this
|> thread of articles.  We have to bear in mind that perhaps the most
|> sought-after document in the world, viz., the American dollar bill,
|> is printed in the Latin alphabet.

Actually, this would suggest pyramids, stars, circles, arrows, keys, leaves....

If you propose to use Korean as a basis, you might want to check the local
history.  People from the same part of the world often have ancient historical
conflicts that haven't been fully resolved.


--Rich Wingerter
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne)
Subject: Re: Animal Grammar
Organization: Computer "Science" Dept, Yale University
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 06:27:13 GMT

In article <ARA.92Apr9210542@camelot.ai.mit.edu>, ara@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Allan Adler) writes:
<
<In view of the interest in this newsgroup in comparative linguistics, I
<am surprised that almost nothing has been posted on the subject of 
<comparative animal linguistics.

You have to have some animal languages before you start talking about
animal linguistics.

<In the face of this, isn't it a little arbitrary to concentrate on 
<defining merely human languages ?

Conflating non-human animal "languages" and human languages is not useful.

(Say, a thought occurred to me:  Is the most distant ancestor of English
Proto-_Australopithecus_?  :-))

					--Scott

-- 
Scott Horne                               ...!{harvard,cmcl2,decvax}!yale!horne
horne@cs.Yale.edu      SnailMail:  Box 7196 Yale Station, New Haven, CT   06520
203 436-1848                Residence:  Rm 1848 Silliman College, New Haven, CT
ZANG4 HAN4 YI4 JIA1 / GONG4 JIAN4 ZHONG1HUA2!
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne)
Subject: Re: Linguistics TV Schedule
Keywords: Dixie
Organization: Computer "Science" Dept, Yale University
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 18:00:30 GMT

Clarification:  My remarks about "Dixieland" ("regional bigotry", if you wish)
were not directed at anyone in particular.

In article <7059@amsaa-cleo.brl.mil>, matt@amsaa-cleo.brl.mil (Matt Rosenblatt) writes:
<
<Neither the State flag nor the Great Seal of Maryland incorporates
<the Stars and Bars.

Unlike the state flags of Mississippi and Georgia, which do incorporate
the Stars and Bars (Confederate flag).  And the Stars and Bars still flies
over the capitals of many Southern states (Mississippi, Georgia, 
South Carolina, and perhaps others).

This is getting political.  Let's move it.

					--Scott

-- 
Scott Horne                               ...!{harvard,cmcl2,decvax}!yale!horne
horne@cs.Yale.edu      SnailMail:  Box 7196 Yale Station, New Haven, CT   06520
203 436-1848                Residence:  Rm 1848 Silliman College, New Haven, CT
Shao2shan1 sheng1 de tai4yang2 yong3 bu2 luo4!
From: arild@milan.philosophie.uni-stuttgart.de (Arild Hestvik)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Animal Grammar
Date: 10 Apr 92 15:05:46 GMT
Reply-To: arild@adler.philosophie.uni-stuttgart.de
Organization: IMS, University of Stuttgart, Germany

In article <ARA.92Apr9210542@camelot.ai.mit.edu> ara@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Allan Adler) writes:

   In view of the interest in this newsgroup in comparative linguistics, I
   am surprised that almost nothing has been posted on the subject of 
   comparative animal linguistics.

   I saw a show on TV in which someone taped the sounds that birds, prairie
   dogs and other animals make under various conditions and analysed the
   wave forms and found that the waveforms were closely correlated in their
   shapes.

   In the face of this, isn't it a little arbitrary to concentrate on 
   defining merely human languages ?

Clearly. And what about cricket song, too? And some gorillas even speak
English. You could actually ask your own Institute professor, N. Chomsky.
Please post answer. 
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: scobbie@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Jim Scobbie)
Subject: empty categories in phonology (Re: Devanagari)
Organization: Stanford University CSLI
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1992 18:02:39 GMT

In <204835@unix.cis.pitt.edu> dtate@unix.cis.pitt.edu (David M Tate) writes:

>Naive question: aren't some glottal stops realized exactly this way, as
>phonetic nulls?  Like the /t/ in a Cockney's "bottle"?  It's the stoppage
>of sound that's phonetically significant there...

I'm not really going to answer your question directly, unless it is to
say that glottal stops are not realised exectly like empty categories,
or whatever. I'll try to bring up some illformed queries on the issue
that others might like to respond to.

I'm not quite sure what you mean - the glottal qua sound or the glottal
qua neutralisation of p-t-k contrast? 

If the former, then the glottal is as real a bit of phonetics as you could
desire. It's not a null - though the tongue does nothing distinctive
(let's suppose).

If the latter, I take it we are thinking of a dialect where final
p,t,k are all realised as glottal stop (not merely glottal
reinforcement of the p, as happens in most English dialects). So
tap, tat, tack are articulatorily and auditorily the same. Now - 
given this dialect we might suppose either
1: a phonological 'deletion', so phonetics interprets /?/, the glottal.
   No specification of labiality, dorsality or whatever is present.
2: a phonological specification for labiality ignored by phonetic
   interpretation given the context of the /p/ - prosodic context
   and/or the presence of glottalising features.

Emptiness is quite normal - there is no consensus that every featural
distinction used for contrast in a language of the world is present
redundantly prior to phonetic interpretation in our theories. My
vowels, let me surmise, need not be specified as [+nasal] or [-nasal],
but are contextually nasalised. There is phonetic evidence (cf Pat
Keating for one) for such 'underspecification' of phonetics - the lack
of a specific target for the articulatory machinery is demonstrable in
certain cases. 

Whether such a lack of target is due to 1-empty phonology 2-fussy
phonetics or 3-some combination of the two is unclear to me.

The analogous meaning of empty category in phonology (to syntax) is
probably a feature bundle which appears to be an 'x' and affects the
rest of the phonological system as if it were an 'x', but fails to
surface with the phonetics that oethr 'x' have. It's a theoretical
construct, like Scott's empty grapheme, so that generalisations can be
made at the level of theory (graphemes in that case) which are made
abstract from the patent contradictions offered by a (more
superficial/pretheoretic) inspection of the data.



-- 
James M. Scobbie: Dept of Linguistics, Stanford University, CA 94305-2150, USA
                  scobbie@csli.stanford.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: userisra@mts.ucs.ualberta.ca (Mark Israel)
Subject: Re: What is a dialect?
Originator: lnds@zeus.biochem.ualberta.ca
Organization: University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 20:08:23 GMT

In article <1992Apr9.234112.21656@cs.yale.edu>, horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne) writes:

> If you know only Mandarin, you will not be able to speak with people 
> from Hong Kong, where Cantonese is spoken (unless they also know 
> Mandarin).  This indicates that Mandarin and Cantonese are different 
> languages. 

   Written Mandarin and written Cantonese are virtually identical.  
That seems to imply that there is a one-to-one mapping between Mandarin
words and Cantonese words.  This would make Mandarin and Cantonese more
closely related to each other than English is to any language (there
is no one-to-one mapping between English words and French words, or
even between standard English words and Pidgin English words).

userisra@mts.ucs.ualberta.ca		Mark Israel
Instinctive grammatical moralizer.
From: cortese@hepxvt.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese)
Subject: Re: 8I8 (was Re: Chinese question)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Organization: University of California, Irvine
Date: 11 Apr 92 00:20:47 GMT
Distribution: usa

In article <1992Apr3.221127.13632@cbnewsi.cb.att.com> hlin@cbnewsi.cb.att.com (hua.t.lin) writes:
>In article <1992Apr3.184155.24389@news.Hawaii.Edu> mathias@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Gerald B. Mathias) writes:
>>
>>It has been hypothesized that that is why Chinese is one of the earliest
>>written languages.  Until they invented a writing system, the early Chinese
>>couldn't understand each other.  There was a lot of pressure to do something
>>about that.
>
>The facts are as follows:
>
>1. The Chinese cannot understand each other even today unless they speak
>   the same dialect or resort to writing on paper.
>2. The writing in Chinese developed almost exclusively in `classical'
>   chinese which has almost nothing to do with the spoken chinese.
>3. The current chinese language is adapted from the spoken dialect of
>   northern china at the turn of the century retaining the written
>   script of `classical' chinese. And yes, there was a lot of pressure
>   to adopt a written chinese similar to the spoken language.
>
>- Lin

Isn't there a phonetic type language that is used a little bit in China?

Regards,  
Janis C.

Janis Cortese           ||   "The United States is the only country to  
U. C. Irvine            ||    have gone from barbarism to decadence  
cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu ||    without passing through civilization."            
========================||                 -- H. L. Mencken
From: hlin@cbnewsi.cb.att.com (hua.t.lin)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Written and Spoken Language(s)
Date: 15 Apr 92 16:03:32 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: AT&T

In article <532@tdatirv.UUCP> sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) writes:
>
> ... , written Chinese is based on the writing system invented for
>a *spoken* Chinese language several millenia ago.  This language is
>no longer *spoken*, but it is *still* a language.

The written Chinese, in common use today is based on a dialect of nothern
china which is commonly called mandarin. The writing system developed from
pictographic representation of objects, and the classical chinese took off
from there without much dependence on spoken chinese of any time.
Modern written Chinese is therefore the `dialect of nothern china' written
in the writing system of classical chinese.
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Subject: Re: Numbers and language
Originator: alderson@leland.Stanford.EDU
Reply-To: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Organization: Stanford University LOTS Computer Facility
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 92 20:56:25 GMT

In article <1992Apr13.214920.3874@spss.com>, markrose@spss (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
>In article <29E9ED82.24577@noiro.acs.uci.edu> cortese@hepxvt.ps.uci.edu 
>(Janis Maria Cortese) writes:

[Anecdotal data deleted for space.--rma]

>>Why is this?  It seems almost like numbers are kept separate from words in a
>>brain.  And I'm not talking about not knowing the word for 1,000 either.  I
>>can say dix-neuf cent blah blah blah, but damn it, when I see 1992, my brain
>>goes "nineteen ninety two" right off the bat.  When I see words, I have no
>>immediate brain response that tries to shoehorn them into English.  I have no
>>reflex that starts going off in English AND HAS TO BE FORCIBLY SUPPRESSED
>>like I do with numbers, and from what I gather, this is similar to many
>>others who are fluent in languages.

>Could be that we simply never learn the numbers well in a foreign language,
>because we immediately translate them into our native tongue, while everything
>else (at first) has to be decoded.  That is, if you read "42" you think
>"forty-two", and the French equivalent isn't reinforced.  If you read
>"quarante-deux", it will be, but this doesn't occur as often.

>A good test of this notion would be to learn Arabic, where the numerals are
>somewhat different, and see if you learn to count fluently in Arabic.

More anecdotal evidence:  When looking at numerals next to the lines in
Sanskrit verse, I *still* read them as English.  That is, it may be written
very strangely, but it's *still* "42."
-- 
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_