HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Subject: Re: two questions
Keywords: gender, word marking
Organization: SPSS Inc.
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 18:53:16 GMT

In article <Bw46vp.EsB.2@cs.cmu.edu> adc+@cs.cmu.edu (Alan Christiansen) writes:
>1.  Why do some languages (e.g., French, German) assign gender to the names 
>    for inanimate objects, while other languages (e.g., English, Esperanto)
>    do not?  Being a native English speaker, I have difficulty understanding
>    the value of arbitrary gender assignment, and I have not been successful
>    in finding anyone who can give me a plausible answer as to why this 
>    practice evolved in some languages.  Anyone willing to try?

I can't really explain it, but perhaps I can clear up a confusion or two.

You can talk about the "value" of a feature in Esperanto, which is a
constructed language, but not in natural languages.  Languages like French
and German have gender agreement because their ancestor languages did.
The ancestor of English did, too, but regular sound changes (in this case,
dropped final syllables or consonants) messed it up, so we lost it.  

The "genders" are really declensional patterns: that is, words belonging
to different patterns decline in different ways.  All the Indo-European
languages go back to a three-gender system in proto-Indo-European.  This 
isn't the only way of doing things; the Australian language Dyirbal has
four genders; many of the Bantu languages have nine or so.

Now, *why* there exist different declensional patterns I don't know; perhaps
some of the high-powered historical linguists here will offer some guesses.

>2.  Why is it that English marks the third person singular of verbs (with -s),
>    while all other forms are not distinguished?  (I love, You love, He/she/it
>    loves, we love, you (all) love, they love)
>    What is special about third person singular that makes it worthy of 
>    marking?

Nothing at all.  Again, English used to have endings for all six person/
number combinations, and regular sound changes caused all but the 3.sg.
forms to merge together.  (To be precise, the 2.sg. forms stayed distinct--
"thou lovest"-- but we stopped using that pronoun instead.)
From: amccullo@elli.une.edu.au (Alistair McCullough)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: UNINTERUPTED SUSTAINED SILENT READING
Date: 8 Oct 92 15:57:46 GMT
Organization: University of New England - Northern Rivers (Lismore)

My wife is currently undertaking action research into

UNINTERUPTED SUSTAINED SILENT READING (USSR) with

Primary (Elementary) school children and is seeking

some input from other practitioners.

She writes;

I have regarded USSR as a practice which has the

capability of empowering children through their

individual selection of reading material.

I am now concerned with the choice of reading material

made by children where such material is primarily the

work of one author or the material is written in a

formula style or a closed text or the influence of

gender preference.

I would appreciate comment/opinions from anyone exposed to 

the concept of USSR. Please post replies to this
bulletin board.
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: asc@aclark (Alexander Clark)
Subject: Re: Subjectless verbs; was: Re: SVO / VSO
Organization: Demon Internet Services.
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 15:48:20 GMT

In article <1992Oct6.130812.3550@memstvx1.memst.edu>  
connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu writes:
> 
> Sorry, I can't help you on either point.  As for correlation: I was
> only trying to say that dummy subjects are unlikely to be found in
> langugages lacking the mandatory-subject-no-matter-what compulsion
> that we labor under in English.
> 
A trivial point -

there are dialects of english which allow one to drop the subject: the  
so-called 'retired colonel' dialect which allows

"Saw my son yesterday.  Doesn't know one end of rifle from the other.   
Rained all day yesterday ."

and so on
From: miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Metalleus: Moundsbar Topicalization
Date: 11 Oct 92 21:08:02 CDT
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services

                  TOPICALIZATION IN MOUNDSBAR*


     *In this note topicalization will mean the simple designation
of what the speaker is talking about.  To those enemies of clarity
who object to this, I say, Poo.


     As is well-known by now, modern Moundsbar, cursed with perhaps
the most rigid word-order known to us, not only disdains movement
rules, but actively pursues them with an eye to their destruction.
As a result, shouting, accompanied by a tensing of the facial
muscles, is the most common means of foregrounding a constituent in
this language, bolstered on certain occasions by the severer
device of grasping the intended hearer by the ears and lifting
slightly.  This second strategy is rarely needed other than
in speaking to children, however, since adult Moundsbarians have
acquired the ability to watch each other's lips carefully in order
to distinguish the various vowels, and under these conditions it is
hard to miss the facial tensing just mentioned.

     This is course raises the question of topicalization in the
written language.  At earlier stages of both the spoken and the
written language, a constituent could be moved to the extreme left,
slamming it into a major juncture and giving rise to various
particles.  This is still possible in the more archaic written
styles; however very few Moundsbarians can read and write today,
probably in part a result of their having acquired the cathode-ray
tube before they had completely mastered agriculture.  Those few
who are literate usually do not read aloud, in fear of losing their
lives by appearing to move constituents.

     Constituents are backgrounded, or removed as it were from the
spotlight, by deleting them.  This may include entire predicates,
resulting in sentences which convey no new information whatever,
other than underlyingly.  This is either good or bad, depending on
one's linguistic theory; the Moundsbarians themselves do not have
linguistic theory and thus it is not surprising that they have not
been heard to express a viewpoint on the matter.  One of my older
informants suspended his ritual insults long enough to opine that
in general there *is* no new information.  Make of this what you
will.

     Being double-parked at the moment, I am unable here to go into
the question of the origin of the Moundsbarian fear of movement
rules.  Comparative evidence would be of help, and despite the
vehement protests of the peoples involved, there are a number of
languages in the area related to Moundsbar,  several of which
appear to have movement rules.  When I understand all this, I will
let you know.

                         - Metalleus
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: 'Hebrew is Greek'
From: bthurman@uncavx.unca.edu
Date: 12 Oct 92 11:34:12 -0500
Organization: University of North Carolina at Asheville
Nntp-Posting-User: bthurman

Could it be that Chapel Hill (UNC) collection still has a book that came out in
Oxford, England a while back titled Hebrew is Greek? What was the author's
name? Something like Benjamin Yehuda?  Would it not immediately lack much
credibility simply because so few persons would have a reasonably thorough and
equal grip on classical and semitic philology?  Didn't my respected
acquaintance Saul Levine write an introduction to said book?  (Maybe 'bearded
Bill' has old notes on it in home library and can be more exact next time.)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: jww@evolving.com (John W. Woolley)
Subject: Re: subjects of pluit & brechei
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 16:40:42 GMT
Organization: Evolving Systems, Inc.
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4

In article <1992Oct5.123402.1@uncavx.unca.edu>, bthurman@uncavx.unca.edu writes:
> Can one find other kinds of subjects with pluere than (1) material that comes
> down, e.g. saxa pluunt 'it's raining rocks' or (2) the source of the rain,
> e.g. caelum pluisse 'that the sky had let go its load'?

I don't have any more information on Classical usage, except to note that
Cassell's says "pluere" is used with the accusative or ablative of the
material falling.

Herewith a few (4th-century) examples from the Vulgate of "pluere" with a
nominative subject and (except for #5) an accusative direct object.  There
are probably several more, but I don't have a Vulgate concordance.

1.  "Igitur Dominus pluit super Sodomam et Gomorram sulphur et ignem a
    Domine de caelo."  "Therefore the Lord rained out of the sky upon
    Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord."  (Genesis 19:24)

2.  "Pluitque Dominus grandinem super terram Aegypti".  "And the Lord
    rained hail upon the land of Egypt."  (Exodus 9:23)

3.  "Dixit autem Dominus ad Mosen, Ecce ego pluam vobis panes de caelo."
    "And the Lord said to Moses, Behold, I shall rain upon you bread from
    the sky."  (Exodus 16:14)  Perhaps "from heaven" would be better.
    Note the first person verb and unusual object.  I'm not sure why
    "panes" rather than "panem".  Normally I'd think "panes" were pieces
    of bread, but the manna wasn't in chunks, was it?  The construction
    "de Mosen" where you'd normally use the dative is an early-warning
    sign, common in the fourth century, of just how awful Latin style
    would get over the next few hundred years.

4.  "Ignem et sulphur pluam super eum et super exercitum ejus."  "I will
    rain fire and brimstone on him and his army."  (Ezekiel 38:22)

5.  "... ut sitis filii Patris vestri qui in caelis est, qui solem suum
    oriri facit super bonos et malos, et pluit super iustos et iniustos."
    "... that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven, who makes
    his sun rise upon the good and the bad, and rains upon the just and
    the unjust."  (Matthew 5:45)

How does Hebrew handle rain?  Is it possible that St. Jerome is reproducing
in non-standard Latin a Hebrew construction, and that a purer Latinist
would have expressed these things differently?  The Greek of #5 uses
"brechei" just as you'd expect.
-- 
                                   Pax et Bonum!
                                       Fr. John Woolley
From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: two questions
Date: 16 Oct 92 18:43:32 GMT
Article-I.D.: spss.1992Oct16.184332.10315
Organization: SPSS Inc.

In article <1992Oct16.103001.3713@memstvx1.memst.edu> connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu 
(Leo Connolly) writes:
>I think you're missing something important about this.  Indo-European
>languages have many declensional patterns but only three genders.  The
>essential feature of IE gender is that nouns are cross-referenced by
>gender, *not* declensional patterns.  Latin has great examples here:
[for which see the original posting]

Thanks for the clarification.  But now I'd like to know how widespread 
is this phenomenon of concord/NP class divergence.  In Russian,
for instance, genders correlate pretty nicely with declension class,
with a small number of exceptions (e.g. dyadya 'uncle') for which you 
could say that the sex of the referent overrides the grammatical gender
for concord purposes.  What happens in Greek?  proto-Germanic?  Sanskrit?

Also, how different are the paradigms in Indo-European?  Do the differences
between the classes tend to diminish as you trace them back in time?
From: connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Latin/PIE/Finnish verbs (was:Subjectless verbs)
Date: 12 Oct 92 16:34:46 GMT
Organization: Memphis State University

In article <1992Oct12.093324.19518@s1.gov>, lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich) writes:

[stuff about Spanish and Italian omitted]
 
> 	Let us forget about their Latin origin:
> 
> 	-a:re	-e:re	-i:re	-ere	*-re
> 	-o:	-e:o	-i:o:	-o:	*-o:
> 	-a:s	-e:s	-i:s	-is	*-s
> 	-a:t	-e:t	-i:t	-it	*-t
> 	-a:mus	-e:mus	-i:mus	-imus	*-mus
> 	-a:tis	-e:tis	-i:tis	-itis	*-tis
> 	-a:nt	-e:nt	-i:nt	-unt	*-nt
> 
> 	[from memory]

A correction: Latin shortened long root vowels befoer 3.sg. -t and
3.pl. -nt, as well as before any vowel, so the 1st, 4th and 7th 
lines of the chart above should read
(with one other correction) as follows:

	-o:	-eo:	-io:	-o:	*-o:
	-at	-et	-it	-it	*-t
	-ant	-ent	-iunt	-unt	*-nt

These changes are typical of the sort of morphophonemic changes I
claimed would be necessary under my analysis of Spanish.

> 	It would be interesting to look at other archaic Indo-European
> languages, especially Greek, Sanskrit, and Hittite.
> 
> 	If I remember correctly, the reconstructed IE paradigm looks
> something like:
> 
> 	-o:/-mi
> 	-si
> 	-ti
> 	-mes
> 	-tes
> 	-nti

More or less, but the -i is apparently a present-time morpheme; the
"secondary" endings of past tenses in languages such as Greek and
Sanskrit lack it, as does the subjunctive.

> 	The ultimate origin is probably from suffixed pronouns.

Possible, but it's not easy to prove, since the forms of the pronouns
are actually quite unlike verb endings (with the sole exception of
1sg verbal -m and pronominal oblique stem m-).

> 	Someone mentioned the Finnish verb conjugation once as looking
> a lot like Latin. What is it, again?

	puhun		puhumme
	puhut		puhutte
	puhuu		puhuvat

I don't see much similarity in the singular, or in the 3.pl (unless
we want to connect 1.sg. -n with the -m of _sum_ 'I am' and various
non-present forms).   The 1.pl. and 2.pl. forms do resemble Latin --
but they are fairly obviously simply the singular forms with a
pluralizing affix -Ce (C fully assimilated to the preceding singular
suffix, at least if 1.sg. is really *-m), so there goes the
relationship.

--Leo Connolly
From: LMEBGO@kiera.ericsson.se ("Bengt G{llmo, L M Ericsson, Stockholm, Sweden")
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: two questions
Date: 16 Oct 92 21:32:00 GMT

ct@dde.dk (Claus Tondering) writes:

What creates gender changes within, for example, the Germanic languages?
One great example is "human being" which has the following gender
in three closely related languages:

Language   Word       Gender
-------------------------------
German     Mensch     masculine
Danish     menneske   neuter
Swedish    ma"nniska  feminine

The words 'Mensch', 'menneske', and 'ma"nniska' are so obviously the same
word. Why has it changed gender? And which is the original gender?

Objection! Ma"nniska in Swedish is not really feminine. Swedish has
four genders: masculine, feminine, real, and neuter. The         
corresponding personal pronouns are 'han', 'hon', 'den', and 'det'.
Ma"nniska is real gender, except that it is not politically
correct to refer to people as neuter or real, therefore we
often use 'han' or 'hon', with some preference for the latter if
the actual sex is not known. But this, I think, is similar to referring
to ships as 'hon' (feminine) although 'bat' (a-ring) is real gender,
'skepp' and 'fartyg' are neuter.

Bengt
-- 
Forwarded-By:
Bengt Gallmo                        e-mail: lmebgo@kiera.ericsson.se
Telefonaktiebolaget L M Ericsson    phone:  +46 8 719 1940
S-126 25 STOCKHOLM                  fax:    +46 8 719 3988
SWEDEN

The bad thing about good things is that they usually come to an end.
The good thing about bad things is that they, also, usually come to an end.
From: connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Subjectless verbs
Date: 12 Oct 92 16:09:15 GMT
Organization: Memphis State University

In article <1992Oct11.140719.23157@enea.se>, sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) writes:
> Leo Connolly (connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu) writes:
>>If there were only one Spanish conjugation, you'd be right.  But there
>>are three, and so one can analyze a verb such as _amar_ as having the
>>root _ama-_ rather than _am-_.  Similarly, second conjugation verbs
>>would have base forms such as _come-_, and third conjugation verbs
>>would be _pedi-_.  While allowance must be made for morphophonemic
>>changes where an ending and the vowel of the root come together, the
>>simplest explanation would be approximately:
>>
>>        -o      -mos
>>        -s      -is
>>        -0      -n
> 
> I think this analysis is to[o] simple-minded. What says that there is
> exactly one morpheme which means third person singular?

I never said any such thing, even for Spanish!  A different set of
morphemes is used for some tenses, such as the preterite, where
the ending morphemes have meanings such as '3.sg.preterite' etc.

 Permit
> me to switch to Italian where we have
> 
>      parl-are      cred-ere       part-ire     fin-ire
>          -o            -o             -o          -isc-o
>          -i            -i             -i          -isc-i
>          -a            -e             -e          -isc-e
>          -iamo         -iamo          -iamo       -iamo
>          -ate          -ete           -ite        -ite
>          -ano          -ono           -ono        -isc-ono

What on earth does this have to do with any analysis of Spanish?
You might as well compare the morphology of Swahili!  Since
languages are not identical, they must have separate morphemes,
and varying structures among languages require that *on principle*
each language has its own principles of morpheme organization,
which may (but need not) coincidentally (not by any necessity)
be shared with one or more other languages.  So unless you can
show that Italian and Spanish *must necessarily*, or at least
*do in fact*, have the same system of morphological organization,
you cannot cite Italian to criticize an analysis of Spanish.
And your examples demonstrate that the two languages do *not*
have the same system of morphological organization.

> Of course all this morpheme business is just a recontruction post
> facto; more or less rules for a recreational game we've made up.

Come now!  Is it any more a "reconstruction post facto" than any
other form of linguistic analysis?  Surely you don't mean to say
that linguistics is just a hobby?  If so, we should all take up
some other form of dishonest labor, such as banking.

--Leo Connolly
From: djbpitt+@pitt.edu (David J Birnbaum)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Peripheral data
Date: 13 Oct 92 22:59:35 GMT
Organization: University of Pittsburgh

I dimly recall seeing a posting in this group within the past few years
evaluating the insights provided by peripheral linguistic data into
linguistic competence. By peripheral data, I mean linguistic behavior
that is not part of normal speech: child language acquisition, asphasic
speech, play languages, speech errors, treatments of recent borrowings,
etc. The posting, if my memory is accurate, referred to a published
article that examined the use of these different types of data in
linguistic research. That is, the article did not examine peripheral
linguistic data, but, rather, it examined the use of peripheral
linguistic data in our discipline. The evaluations were quantitative; I
do not remember whether the different categories were ranked with
respect to one another or whether each was given an independent
numerical ranking on a scale of usefulness.

Can anyone help identify the article in question? Or was it all a dream?

Thanks,

David

-- 
Professor David J. Birnbaum         djbpitt+@pitt.edu [Internet]
The Royal York Apartments, #802     djbpitt@pittvms   [Bitnet]
3955 Bigelow Boulevard              voice: 1-412-687-4653
Pittsburgh, PA  15123  USA          fax:   1-412-624-9714
From: connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Subjectless verbs; was: Re: SVO / VSO
Date: 8 Oct 92 12:51:17 -0600
Organization: Memphis State University

In article <Bvt7wL.I7L@gate.demon.co.uk>, asc@aclark (Alexander Clark) writes:
> In article <1992Oct6.130812.3550@memstvx1.memst.edu>  
> connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu writes:
>> 
>> Sorry, I can't help you on either point.  As for correlation: I was
>> only trying to say that dummy subjects are unlikely to be found in
>> langugages lacking the mandatory-subject-no-matter-what compulsion
>> that we labor under in English.
>> 
> A trivial point -
> 
> there are dialects of english which allow one to drop the subject: the  
> so-called 'retired colonel' dialect which allows
> 
> "Saw my son yesterday.  Doesn't know one end of rifle from the other.   
> Rained all day yesterday ."
> 
> and so on

I cited several such sentences myself in another post a few days ago.
But I would point out that these sentences do not have the status of
subjectless sentences in Spanish, which (a) are not regarded as incom-
plete, (b) appear in all styles of the language, and (c) do not always
have a recoverable subject.  _Llueve_ has no recoverable subject, and
any attempt to give it one fails.  But your English examples all do
have one, even the sentence with its meaningless _it_.

I did note that the English examples mean that we -- at least I -- can't
take the "prodrop" parameter seriously.

--Leo Connolly
From: harold@ccl.umist.ac.uk (Harold Somers)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Yes/no
Date: 16 Oct 92 14:59:57 GMT
Organization: Manchester Computing Centre

In <1992Sep23.091929.8387@dde.dk> ct@dde.dk (Claus Tondering) writes:

>It is common in many computer applications to have the user respond
>'yes' by typing Y and 'no' by typing N.

>Are there any languages where 'yes' and 'no' start with the same letter,
>so that this scheme cannot be used?

Your question makes some false assumptions about yes/no questions.

There are some languages which do not have a simple yes/no alternation.
French for example has two words for yes depending on the polarity of the
question:

Question     +    -
answer  +   oui   si
        -   non  non

In Japanese the answer reflects the concord of the polarities:

Question     +    -
answer  +   hai   ie
        -    ie   hai 

In English of course the answer is usually independent of the question:

Question     +    -
answer  +   yes   yes
        -   no    no

though there are sometimes potential misunderstandings: "You wont be
back before 10?" "Yes" (could mean yes that's right, or yes on the
contrary). I read recently of a case in court where a defendant was
being interrogated in English through a Spanish translator. The
prosecutor was asking complicated double and treble negative questions
(Isnt it the case that you did not think that she wouldnt come?)
Eventually the translator complained that s/he was unable to translate
such questions confidently, nor be sure what the defendant was actually
saying. This had to do with different strategies for asking and answering
negative questions.

There are some languages, like Welsh, which dont have words for yes or no
at all: affirmation is shown by repeating the auxiliary (which shows
person and sometimes gender concord), negation by negating the auxiliary, 
roughly as follows:

Are you coming tonight? I am.
Will you stay for dinner? I wont.
Did they all arrive? They did.
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: slie@ulrik.uio.no (Svein Lie)
Subject: Chomsky's last paper
Organization: University of Oslo
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 09:10:27 GMT


Some time ago somebody told where to buy Chomsky's new minimalistic paper.
Could somebody give that information once more?

(Chomsky will come to Norway in November, and we had better be prepared...)

Thanks!

Svein Lie