HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: gmw1@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Gabe M Wiener)
Subject: Re: *** QUESTION ***
Reply-To: gmw1@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Gabe M Wiener)
Organization: Columbia University
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1992 16:59:40 GMT

In article <1992Jul30.170048.5864@gdstech.grumman.com> david@gdstech.grumman.com (David Nettles) writes:
>
>WHAT DOES NATIVE AMERICAN MEAN?
>

"Native American" is this week's PC buzzword for what you and I and 
most of the world would call American Indian.  I don't particularly find
it a very good term, since having been born in New York, I consider myself
a native American even though my grandparents weren't.


--
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
Xref: sparky sci.lang:6174 alt.sex.bondage:14749
From: rmugele@oracle.com (Robert Mugele)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: what has happened to "ascribe" ?
Date: 24 Jul 92 16:29:55 GMT
Article-I.D.: oasun1.RMUGELE.92Jul24082955
	<1992Jul21.190619.21438@alf.uib.no> <92204.135724GRV101@psuvm.psu.edu>
	<1992Jul24.032652.15096@bnr.ca>
Organization: Oracle Corporation, Belmont, CA
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by an unauthenticated user
              at Oracle Corporation.  The opinions expressed are those
              of the user and not necessarily those of Oracle.

In article <1992Jul24.032652.15096@bnr.ca> gryphon@crchh424.BNR.CA (Joe Widows) writes:
Path: oracle!pyramid!gossip.pyramid.com!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!hermes.chpc.utexas.edu!news.utdallas.edu!corpgate!crchh327!crchh424!gryphon
   From: gryphon@crchh424.BNR.CA (Joe Widows)
   Newsgroups: sci.lang
   Date: 24 Jul 92 03:26:52 GMT
   References: <1992Jul22.234558.15054@alf.uib.no> <8200@amsaa-cleo.brl.mil> <1992Jul21.190619.21438@alf.uib.no> <92204.135724GRV101@psuvm.psu.edu>
   Sender: news@bnr.ca (News on crchh327)
   Reply-To: gryphon@bnrrch43.bnr.rich
   Organization: BNR
   Lines: 69
   Nntp-Posting-Host: crchh424

    > In the examples with 'there' in the 'subject', I would like to point out
    > that this is an idiomatic expression of the same class as 'It's raining'
    > or 'It's snowing' or 'There's trouble here.'  These kinds of expressions
    > carry 'META-BAGGAGE' or context information supplied by the listener.
    > 
    > Most of the conflict with number and verb seem to be in constructs where
    > one might say "THERE'S" < list or conjucate of items> < some consequence>
    > 'There's anger and frustration, here'  Seems to be of the idomatic form.
    > Can you tell me why this is 'non-standard' English?  Idioms are tricky,
    > we say one thing and mean something else, and frequently impose structure
    > that is only convenient.
    > 
    >	     widows
    >  Linguist in the dark.

   >DISCLAIMER:  BNR builds telephones, not opinions.
   >ANTIDISCLAIMER:  The wrong stuff is mine, (the right stuff, too)

I tend to agree with this last comment.  It seems to me that "there is"
and "there are" are moving toward an idomatic usage where they merge and
number is no longer significant.  I see this as analagous to the Spanish
word "hay" which has the meanings "there is" and "there are".

Out of curiousity, does anyone know if these Spanish forms historically
descended from number inflected forms?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Bob Mugele Ph.D.                      214-401-5875
Advanced Text Products                Oracle Corporation
Linguistic Technology Group           5221 N. O'Connor Suite 1400
                                      Irving, TX  75039
                           rmugele@oracle.com

Disclaimer:  Any opinions expressed are my own.  Now they can be 
             yours too.  Simply send $19.95 to me at
                      Fred's Diner
                      Snake's Navel,  Arizona 
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: davidba@carmel.technion.ac.il (David Ben_Ami)
Subject: Re: What lies deep within us?
Organization: Technion, Israel Inst. of Technology
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1992 18:42:21 GMT

In article <92198.174113GRV101@psuvm.psu.edu>, Callec Dradja <GRV101@psuvm writes:
>My question is, what would happen if you were to raise children in an
>environment without language? I ran into a similar idea once before. It turns
>out that there is an old story about two children who were raised, as an
>experiment, by a deaf woman. The children had no exposure to any type of
>language whatsoever. At the end of some appropriate period of time, the
>children were checked on and lo and behold, they spoke fluent Hebrew. The idea
>here, of course, was that Hebrew was the 'unBableized' mode of human speech.
Here's my 2 Agorot(Israeli equivalent to cents:-):
-------------------------------------------------- 
This experiment was done by King James II of Scotland. my version says
that the chilfren were raised by a deaf-mute shepard(sp?) and indeed
the legend is that they spoke Hebrew. I think that is a baloney and 
couldn't be trusted because it's obviously a religious story with 
clear promotional motives. However the story is interesting and is 
similar to what would have been called "urban legend" today. maybe 
"feudal legend"? :-)

Shalom from Israel, 

  David Ben-Ami.
=============================================================================
  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     |   "Heisenberg MAY have slept here".
=============================================================================
-- 
=============================================================================
  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
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: gmw1@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Gabe M Wiener)
Subject: Re: homonym, homophone, homograph
Reply-To: gmw1@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Gabe M Wiener)
Organization: Columbia University
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1992 21:12:28 GMT

In article <1992Jul23.164615.1@rulfsw.leidenuniv.nl> desmedt@rulfsw.leidenuniv.nl writes:
>
>My dictionary lists 'homograph' as two words spelled the same but
>with different pronunciation.  However, it seems to me that the latter
>requirement is not necessary.  I would say that homoghraphs are spelled
>the same and means something different, and may or may not be pronounced
>the same.

I've always considered a word homographic if it is written the same as
another word that has a different pronunciation....bow, wind, record.

>Similarly and vice versa, mutatis mutandis, for homophone.

Right.  die/dye, their/there, him/hymn, air/heir

>
>Then for homonym, my dictionary says both words must be of the same
>word class (part of speech) but differ significantly in meaning. Again,
>the first requirement does not seem essential to me.

I usually regard homonyms to be words such as "pool" or "bridge" which
are spelled and pronounced identically but have completely unrelated
meanings.  

The ones that I love are homonyms whose meanings are antonymic, such as
cleave and sanction.  Can anyone think of any others?


--
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
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: hlirg@alf.uib.no (Roger Greenwald)
Subject: Re: Dilemma = Dilemna ??
Organization: University of Bergen, Norway
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 92 19:53:27 GMT

In article <1992Jul28.133921.2894@memstvx1.memst.edu> connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu writes:

>What's interesting about dilemna is that it is oddly restricted to
>Canada; no one so far has indicated even a single example from South
>of the border.  I teach German; there's no way I would defend the
>spelling practices of most of my students, much less of other Americans.
>But really, the USA isn't responsible for *all* the illiteracy in the
>world.  We just try to make it *seem* that way by electing the president
>some of us (not I!) did.
>
>--Leo Connolly

I just checked titles in the Library of Congress catalogue and came up
with the following:

1. The dilemna <sic> of Mexico. Blitman, Eli Herman (1965).
(The "<sic>" is in the LC record for this title. The book, it turns
out, was published in Mexico.)
2. The dilemna of Eurocommunism. Labour Party of Great Britain (1980).

There is no way of knowing whether the second book actually has this
spelling or whether the record for it contains an error made by the
cataloguer. That is, short of examining the book. Perhaps someone
out there can tell us whether Blitman is/was a Canadian. (Dict. of
Canadian Biography, anyone?) Then again, what if he was a Mexican and
hired a Canadian to translate the book? Or an American?

Perhaps someone who has access to large bodies of English text
identified by source (on CD-ROM) could search for "dilemna"
and see if it turns up in any documents from elswhere than Canada.
-- 
Roger Greenwald
Greenwald@hf.uib.no (address valid only until 10 August 1992)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: hlirg@alf.uib.no (Roger Greenwald)
Subject: Re: More evidence for "dilemna"
Organization: University of Bergen, Norway
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 92 19:23:19 GMT

In article <92Jul21.105335edt.173@smoke.cs.toronto.edu> mudcat@cs.toronto.edu (Michael Gruninger) writes:
>The following is a list of books in the University of Toronto library system
>with titles containing the word "dilemna":
>
[titles deleted]
>---------
>Perhaps the people at Harvard University Press might like to explain their spelling :-)

Perhaps the people at Harvard University Press do not need to explain
their spelling. Perhaps only the Canadian who keyed in the
U of T Library catalogue entries needs to do some explaining :-)
-- 
Roger Greenwald
Greenwald@hf.uib.no (address valid only until 10 August 1992)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,eunet.misc
From: ba07479@bingsuns.cc.binghamton.edu (ba07479)
Subject: Re: Finnish question
Organization: Binghamton University Computing Services
	<MATTHEW.92Jul30143824@matthew.ntl02.decnet.nokia.fi>
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1992 04:14:49 GMT


CT: Claus Tondering in article <1992Jul23.135758.2304@dde.dk>

>
>CT: ISO standard 6937 mentions that the Finnish language uses two characters
>CT: that look like S and Z with a small v above (a hacek accent).
>CT: I have never seen any Finnish text that uses these two characters.
>CT: Does Finnish use them? Or has Finnish used them in the past?
>


	Someone seemed to suggest that these symbols were not used
anywhere else in the world other than in Roman transcriptions of
Cyrillic texts. In fact, they are both used in Czech and Serbo-Croatian,
and the s-hacek is used in Esperanto. That's all I can think of, but
there may be more. :)


				Angus Grieve-Smith
				ba07479@bingsuns.cc.binghamton.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: hlirg@alf.uib.no (Roger Greenwald)
Subject: Re: what has happened to "ascribe" ?
Keywords: logocide
Organization: University of Bergen, Norway
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 92 19:06:19 GMT

In article <8200@amsaa-cleo.brl.mil> matt@amsaa-cleo.brl.mil (Matt Rosenblatt) writes:
>Do a bunch of TV anchormen in blue shirts and blow-dried hair set
>the norms, or are they set by Harvard professors and columnists for
>_The New York Times_?  If Dan Rather started saying, "onliest," 
>whenever he meant, "only," would that change the norm?  

Since I am pretty well on your side of this argument, I hate to
tell you this. But it is because Dan rather and a great many
columnists for the New York Times (well, reporters, at any rate)
use "most" to mean "almost" that now most everyone does (not me,
except for purposes of illustration :-) .) I happen to regard
this as an innocuous change. A worse one is that the New York
Times usually contains at least a few sentences every day in
which the verb does not agree with the subject in number.
The most common case is that of sentences that begin with
"There is" or "there was," and then follow up with a list
of items, each of which is singular. (There is anger and
frustration in Sarajevo tonight.) But there are many other
cases as well. You can say the writers can't count from
one to two; or you can say that the plural form of "to be"
is gradually disappearing from English. The latter is a linguist's
type of description. In this case it's probably correct, even if it
may be regrettable.
-- 
Roger Greenwald
Greenwald@hf.uib.no (address valid only until 10 August 1992)
From: 00hfstahlke@bsu-ucs.uucp
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: "Jury-rigged"
Date: 21 Jul 92 13:59:52 GMT
Article-I.D.: bsu-ucs.1992Jul21.085953.8800

Yesterday's New York Times had a headline in which the word "jury-rigged" was
used.  I've seen (and heard) that usage also by some less skilled speakers and
writers, but I understand that the word meaning "improvised" is "jerry-rigged,"
referring to the skill shown by WWI German soldiers (jerries) at mechanical
improvisation towards the end of the war.  The forms "jerry-built" and
"jerry-can" are of similar provenance.  Does anyone have information on the
source of "jury-rigged," besides the obvious parallel to "jury-rigging," which
has no semantic connection with "mechanical improvisation?"  Or on its current
acceptance outside of colloquial speech?

By the way, I just noticed that even the spelling-checker (DECSpell) that I
use from EVE doesn't recognize the "jerry-" forms but does accept the "jury-"
forms, which may raise questions of standards-compliance about Digital
Equipment Corporation.

          ************************************************ 
          |*  Herbert Stahlke                           *| 
          |*  Professor of English                      *| 
          |*  Associate Director                        *| 
          |*  University Computing Services             *| 
          |*  Ball State University                     *| 
          |*  Muncie, IN  47306                         *| 
          |*  317-285-1843                              *| 
          |*  Bitnet:  00hfstahlke@bsuvax1              *| 
          |*  Internet:  00hfstahlke@leo.bsuvc.bsu.edu  *| 
          ************************************************
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: pesetsk@athena.mit.edu (David M Pesetsky)
Subject: Re: Chomsky's "Minimalist" paper
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1992 11:35:34 GMT

In article <SCHILLER.92Jul22162611@tira.uchicago.edu> schiller@tira.uchicago.edu (Eric Schiller) writes:
>
>I'll just leave with a teaser for David:
>How do you handle the Russian construction:
>
>mnye   (bylo)   pomoch'     yemu
 me-DAT was-NEUT help-infin  him-DAT
 `I had to help him/I was supposed to help him`

>
>(discussed briefly in George Fowler's dissertation)
>
>I am particularly interested in the case assignment, of course.

The questions here are only slightly more difficult than with other
cases of "subject" dative.  The copula here is either used as a modal or
coocurs with a null modal.  The present-tense copula is itself null.
The modal, like some other verbs, selects a dative argument which may
occur as subject (cf. Belletti and Rizzi on the subject). The verb
'help' selects a dative object.  What's the special problem?

There are more interesting cases, like (cf. Gil Rappaport, Russian
Linguistics circa 1986):

nam est' komu pomoch' yemu

-DP
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: schiller@tira.uchicago.edu (Eric Schiller)
Subject: Re: Spelling reform for English
Organization: Center for Information and Language Studies / University of
	Chicago
	<1992Jul13.012254.12640@aifh.ed.ac.uk>
	<1992Jul13.181502.11309@alf.uib.no>
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1992 20:52:07 GMT

I do wish people would stop claiming linguists ignore written language.
Reading most of the articles from the 1970's and 80s, it is clear that
many linguists, especially Chomsky and Friends, concentrate on constructions
so artificial that they could only be found in written discourse!

There is a big difference between concentrating on text corpora and concentrating
on sentence level grammar. But in fact it is the sentence level grammar of
written language which is more frequently employed than that of the spoken
form, with a few notable exceptions like the late Dwight Bolinger.

In the area of text processing, this bias has led to the most absurd parsings
of words (yes, I mean words) like can't and gonna, and wanna and gimme...

Eric Schiller
University of Chicago
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog)
Subject: Re: etymol. of the word "Viking"
Organization: Enea Data AB
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 21:55:27 GMT

Svensk Uppslagsbok, a major Swedish encyclopedia printed in the 1950s
gives the following:


    Icelandic "vikingr" of disputed origin; earliest found in
    Anglo-Saxon, but usually understood as being of Nordic
    origin, interpreted, among other things, as a construction
    from "vik" ("bay" in English), that is "man who with his
    ship anchors or hides in bays", or to the province name
    "Viken", the land around the Oslo Fiord, i.e. "man from
    Viken", or to the verb "vika" in an assumed meaning "abscond
    from home, dwell away", i.e. "person who absoncd from home,
    dwell away"; is the word of Anglo-Saxon origin, it would
    probably be a derivation from the Anglo-Saxon "wic", army
    camp, referring to the from the 9th century permanent camp
    of vikings.

Comment: "abscond" is "avvika" in modern Swedish.
-- 
Erland Sommarskog - ENEA Data, Stockholm - sommar@enea.se
Dabras Laiks!
From: 00hfstahlke@bsu-ucs.uucp
Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: "Jury-rigged" etymology
Date: 21 Jul 92 19:30:06 GMT

In article <1992Jul21.162931.27011@Princeton.EDU>, amlogan@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Adam M. Logan) writes:
> In his _Devil's Dictionary_ Ambrose Bierce uses "jury-gods" to mean
> makeshift gods and religion, which (I believe he says that this is as a 
> sailor would say) is clearly a derivative of "jury-rig".  Bierce disappeared
> around 1914, so he couldn't have known about WWI usage.  So this can't
> come from"jerry".
> 
> Adam

It looks like the analogical egg is on MY face.  A quick browse through a few
dictionaries suggests that the word does indeed predate WWI, with "jury"
derived possibly from Old French "ajurie" (relief, help).

Herb Stahlke
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: richwing@leland.Stanford.EDU (Rich Wingerter)
Subject: Re: what has happened to "ascribe" ?
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 92 06:55:07 GMT

In article <1992Jul22.234558.15054@alf.uib.no>, hlirg@alf.uib.no (Roger Greenwald) writes:
|> In article <92204.135724GRV101@psuvm.psu.edu> Callec Dradja <GRV101@psuvm.psu.edu> writes:
|> >In article <1992Jul21.190619.21438@alf.uib.no>, hlirg@alf.uib.no (Roger
|> >Greenwald) says:
|> >>A worse one is that the New York
|> >>Times usually contains at least a few sentences every day in
|> >>which the verb does not agree with the subject in number.
|> >>The most common case is that of sentences that begin with
|> >>"There is" or "there was," and then follow up with a list
|> >>of items, each of which is singular. (There is anger and
|> >>frustration in Sarajevo tonight.)...

|> >I think that this phenomena is not new. We talked about this very
|> >topic in one of my grammar classes and it seems that in a list,
|> >Standard English speakers will use a verb that agrees with the nearest
|> >subject. This type of speech has been used by educated speakers for
|> >quite some time.
|> >
|> "phenomena" is plural :-) (but I'm sure not everyone who writes
|> for the NY Times knows that either).
|> 
|> It is true that in a sentence that contains a list, especially
|> if it starts with expletive "There," a native speaker may feel
|> it "sounds funny" to have "are" followed by a singular noun; but
|> this tends to be the case only when the noun is preceded by
|> an indefinite article. Thus: "There are a chair and a table on
|> the east wall" puts "are" next to "a chair", and that can
|> sound odd. But "There are anger and frustration here tonight"
|> should not sound equally odd (or, in my view, odd at all)....

It seems to me like this arises from a logistics problem in turning thought
into language.  You have to determine whether to use "is" or "are" before you
have sometimes decided whether there is going to be one or more items in the
complement.  People tend to start with "There is...", but if they tack on an
extra element with "and", it's too late (in speech, anyway) to go back and
correct it.

Also, it looks to me like there may be an ambiguity in how people think about
phrases like "anger and frustration".  Perhaps this is one feeling that has
multiple aspects.  If it is one feeling, then "There is" is the logical
preface.

"Phenomena", well, I'm sure that everyone well grounded in Latin grammar can
get this right.  I'm sure the _data_ is in on this!  :-)

Can anyone tell me about the use of plurals in referring to groups of people,
especially in musical bands?  I've noticed that the preference in the USA is to
use the singular for this, as in "Cosby, Stills and Nash is playing tonight"
but that in England the preference is to use the plural, as in "Led Zepplin
were on tour at the time."  It seems like this is a similar situation: if you
think of the band as an item, an element, then you would use the singular; but
if you think of it as a group of individuals, you would use the plural.


--Rich Wingerter

Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: pesetsk@athena.mit.edu (David M Pesetsky)
Subject: Re: What lies deep within us?
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1992 13:29:52 GMT

There was a paper about this published around 1979.  I don't have any
references except my memory: the paper was by Lila Gleitman, Henry
Gleitman and co-authors, and its title began "Beyond Herodotus:..." with
some stuff after the colon (i.e. the informative part of the title).
The claims were very interesting.  Deaf children raised in an
exclusively oralist environment, with no access to any sign language
speech community, are known to create their own signing systems, if they
are in contact with other deaf children.  There was an image of deaf
kids in an oralist classroom, when the teacher's back was turned, madly
signing away to each other.  The Gleitmans et al. examined some of this
so-called "home sign" and concluded that it was systematic and in part
non-iconic, and argued that it represented a natural occurence of the
experiment reported in Herodotus, spontaneous creation of a natural
language ex nihilo.  My hunch is that sign language studies were
probably not advanced enough then to make the argument really stick, but
perhaps there has been work on the topic since their paper that some
reader here might know about.

Sorry that I don't have a good citation for the paper, but I imagine
that some sleuthing in late 1970s citation indices could yield the
proper attribution.

-David Pesetsky