HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: rmt51@cas.org (Rick Turkel)
Subject: Re: postpositive articles in English
Reply-To: rmt51@cas.org
Organization: S.W.I.G.
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 21:06:06 GMT

In article <1992Nov19.215659.4152@memstvx1.memst.edu>,
connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu writes:
|> In article <1992Nov19.190026.937@almserv.uucp>, alufml@fnma.COM
|> (Francois-Michel Lang) writes:
|> > In French, certain articles can appear either
|> > (1) after the noun they modify, in which case
|> >     the adjective has its basic meaning, or
|> > (2) before the noun, in which case the sense
|> >     of the adjective is metaphorical.
|> > 
|> > E.g.,
|> > "un sale voleur" (adjective noun) = "a [morally] filthy thief"
|> > "un voleur sale" (noun adjective" = "a [physically] filthy thief"
|> > 
|> > Are there are examples of such behaviour in English?  It doesn't
|> > even have to involve a transfer of sense; just an adjective that
|> > can occur both pre-nominally and post-nominally would be good to see.
|> > The only example I can come up with is something like "the city proper".
|> 
|> There are some fossilized expressions of this sort in English:
|> 
|> 	knight errant
|> 	durance vile
|> 	Chicken Little
|> 
|> But these examples are true fossils; other nouns and adjectives cannot
|> be substituted, and the adjective cannot be compared.  In other words,
|> there is no _*knight peripatetic_ or _*musician errant_, and certainly
|> no _*durance vilest_.  _Proper_ is unusual, perhaps unique, in that it
|> is only postpositive in this usage and can be used after many other nouns
|> than _city_.  But even _proper_ cannot then be compared (_*city most
|> proper_).
|> 
|> --Leo Connolly

There are a few others, like surgeon general, attorney general, secretary
general, etc., which are relatively new coinages, so I don't think "fossil"
is quite the right word, but this certainly isn't a particularly productive
formation.
-- 
Rick Turkel           (___  ____ _  _  _  _  _     _  ___   _  _ _  ___
(rmt51@cas.org)           )    |  |  \  )  |/ \     |    |   |  \_)    |
(rmt51@cas.bitnet)       /     | _| __)/   | __)    | ___|_  | _( \    |
			Ein navi be`iro.            |

Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: alufml@fnma.COM (Francois-Michel Lang)
Subject: postpositive articles in English
Reply-To: alufml@fnma.COM
Organization: Fannie Mae
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 19:00:26 GMT

In French, certain articles can appear either
(1) after the noun they modify, in which case
    the adjective has its basic meaning, or
(2) before the noun, in which case the sense
    of the adjective is metaphorical.

E.g.,
"un sale voleur" (adjective noun) = "a [morally] filthy thief"
"un voleur sale" (noun adjective" = "a [physically] filthy thief"

Are there are examples of such behaviour in English?  It doesn't
even have to involve a transfer of sense; just an adjective that
can occur both pre-nominally and post-nominally would be good to see.
The only example I can come up with is something like "the city proper".

---
------------------------------------------------------------------
Francois-Michel Lang          (202) 752-6067   FAX: (202) 752-4463
alufml@fnma.com ............. Fannie Mae; Asset/Liability Strategy
lang@linc.cis.upenn.edu ..... Dept of Comp & Info Science, U of PA
From: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: postpositive adjectives in English
Date: 23 Nov 92 22:45:06 GMT
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK

In article <1992Nov23.085840.4181@memstvx1.memst.edu> connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu writes:
<In article <1992Nov20.200343.15269@rdg.dec.com>, cockburn@edieng.enet.dec.com (Craig Cockburn) writes:
<> Galore is from the Gaelic "gu leo\r" 
<> leo\r = (feminine noun) sufficiency, enough, a bellyful
<> gu  forms "gu leo\r" into an adjective
<> 
<> Adjectives in Gaelic generally come after the noun - maybe this is why
<> "galore" comes after nouns in English.
<
<Not having the Gaelic myself, I have infinite respect for anyone who does.
<Still, the question remains: granted that _gu leo\r_ is an adjective in
<Gaelic, we still don't know what _galore_ is in English, because it
<doesn't act at all like an English adjective.

I never saw Craig's article, which is strange, as it didn't have an
ocean to cross.  But I'm not prepared to grant that _gu leo\r_ is an
adjective.  _Gu_ is a preposition, so _gu leo\(i)r_ is a PP, literally
`to sufficiency'.

-- 
 `Haud yer wheesht!  Come oot o the man an gie him peace.' (The Glasgow Gospel)
Ivan A Derzhanski   (iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk;  iad@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu)
* Centre for Cognitive Science,  2 Buccleuch Place,  Edinburgh EH8 9LW,  UK
* Cowan House, Pollock Halls, 18 Holyrood Park Road, Edinburgh EH16 5BD, UK
From: alex@cs.adelaide.edu.au (Alex M. Farkas)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Weekdays in Hungarian (was: other languages)
Date: 17 Nov 1992 08:46:36 GMT
Organization: Adelaide University, Computer Science Department.
Distribution: world
Reply-To: alex@cs.adelaide.edu.au
NNTP-Posting-Host: heruka.cs.adelaide.edu.au

As far as I recall:
			 
Kedd : From the word ketto" meaning two (Second day)

Szerda : Of slavic origin meaning middle (hence mid-week)

Csu"to"rto"k : From a slavic word meaning four (Fourth day)

Pe'ntek : From slavic word meaning five (Fifth day)

Vasa'rnap : Related to a middle-eastern word from which the word bazaar is derived,
	    and hence va'sa'r nap, or market day.

I don't have the reference, but books exist ...

alex
----

+----------------+-----------------------------------+-------------------------+
| Alex M. Farkas | University of Adelaide, Australia | alex@cs.adelaide.edu.au |
+----------------+-----------------------------------+-------------------------+
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog)
Subject: Re: [week] Re: Weekdays in other languages (was: ... Latin?)
Organization: Enea Data AB
Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1992 19:14:13 GMT

Rich Alderson (alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU) writes:
>	dies mercurii	Woden's-day (outside Scandinavia, Woden was the
>				conductor of souls to the land of the dead,
>				like Mercury)

I'm not really sure what you say here, but anyway, in ancient
Nordic mythology Oden was the big boss. (Woden -> Oden is
consistent with the process in Old Swedish where initial "w"
and "j" were lost; "wolf" -> "ulv", "young" -> "ung".) Not
surprisingly "Wednesday" is "Onsdag" in Swedish. (But I have
to admit that until now I have understood that they were cognats.)

The Swedish weekdays offer one special, namely "l|rdag" ("|" = dotted
"o") for Saturday. As far as I know, the origin is "l|garedag",
or simply "bathing day".

By the way, did anyone explain German "Samstag"?

-- 
Erland Sommarskog - ENEA Data, Stockholm - sommar@enea.se
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: cockburn@edieng.enet.dec.com (Craig Cockburn)
Subject: Re: postpositive articles in English
Organization: Digital Equipment Co. Ltd., Reading, England
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 18:57:13 GMT


In article <1992Nov20.125429.4163@memstvx1.memst.edu>, connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu writes...
>In article <By0nyB.7nM@swi.psy.uva.nl>, johan@swi.psy.uva.nl (Johan Henselmans) writes:
>> connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu writes:
>> 
>>>There are some fossilized expressions of this sort in English:
>> 
>>>	knight errant
>>>	durance vile
>>>	Chicken Little
>> 
and also Professor emeritus 
>> How about adjectives such as "enough", "aplenty" and "galore" which 
>> often appear after the noun they qualify.
> 
>_Aplenty_ is not an adjective in any sense of the word: neither syntactically,
>nor formally, not historically (it's an old PP).  Neither, apparently, is
>_galore_, though it's far from obvious what it would be.  (An adjective

Galore is from the Gaelic "gu leo\r" 
leo\r = (feminine noun) sufficiency, enough, a bellyful
gu  forms "gu leo\r" into an adjective

Adjectives in Gaelic generally come after the noun - maybe this is why
"galore" comes after nouns in English.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Craig Cockburn, Digital Equipment Co. Ltd, Reading, England.     Suas
  Internet: cockburn@edieng.enet.dec.com                           leis
  UUCP:..!decwrl!edieng.enet.dec.com!cockburn                      a'
                                                                   Gha\idhlig!
  Views here are my own, and are not necessarily those of Digital
From: frankred@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Martin Redington)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: new newsgroup?
Date: 17 Nov 92 16:44:18 GMT
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK

In article <1992Nov16.103339.21310@cc.ic.ac.uk> shan@ee.ic.ac.uk (Shan Parfilt) writes:
>A few people have expressed an interest in setting up a new newsgroup
>or mailing list on the subject of Neural Networks and Natural Language.
>Is anybody reading this similarly interested? If so,please make yourself
>known! Anybody interested in moderating such a group or mailing list
>also required, as I'm not really in a position to do it myself!
>S. Parfitt

There are quite a few people here in Edinburgh working on the subject
of Neural Networks and NL, but I'm not sure whether a new newsgroup is
required, although given the fact that this subject appears to be rarely
addresses in sci.lang, or comp.ai.neural.nets I could be wrong. A mailing
list might be a better option. It's even possible that someone might
volunteer to moderate it, although due to my currently limited net
access I wouldn't want to do so myself,

                                        cheers,
                                               Martin.
Newsgroups: sci.lang,sci.philosophy.tech,sci.cognitive
From: pautler@ils.nwu.edu (David Pautler)
Subject: Re: Theories of meaning
Organization: The Institute for the Learning Sciences
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 16:24:53 GMT

In article <THO.92Nov16001115@hemuli.tik.vtt.fi>, tho@tik.vtt.fi (Timo Honkela) writes:

> Connectionistic models with unsupervised learning capabilities
> seem to be formalisms or even grounding blocks for "theories of
> how the signifier is linked to the signified." Professor Teuvo
> Kohonen has written: "In attempting to devise Neural Network
> models for linguistic representations, the first difficulty
> is encountered when trying to find metric distance relations
> between symbolic items. [...] it cannot be assumed that encodings
> of symbols in general have any relationship with the observable
> characteristics of the corresponding items. How could it then
> be possible to represent the 'logical similarity' of pairs
> of items [...]? The answer lies in the fact that *the symbol,
> during the learning process, is presented in context*."
> (The Self-Organizing Map, Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 78, no 9,
> September 1990)

"Metric distance relations between symbolic items"?  Is that an associationist
take on dereferencing?  And if symbol-encodings have nothing necessarily
to do with with the corresponding item, what led to the encoding in the first
place?  Also, can you imagine any instance of learning that does not occur
within *some* context?

> The context may consist of words, symbolic features, continuous
> features or even pictorial images. The virtue of unsupervised
> learning (e.g. the self-organizing map) lies in the fact
> that there is no need for any "correct answers" which is the
> case with most of the connectionist models.

It seems to me that "unsupervised learning" here means: the desired output
was achieved, but we deliberately ignored looking to see if the learning
sequence itself was psychologically plausible.  So, if symbolist models
require an infinite sequence of dereferencing operations before we can
reach the signified from the initial signifier, an associationist solution
is to turn one's back during "dereferencing" and then insist that the output
is the real signified, rather than just another signifier?

	-dp-

Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: mcovingt@aisun3.ai.uga.edu (Michael Covington)
Subject: Re: Saussure
Organization: AI Programs, University of Georgia, Athens
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 05:10:27 GMT

In article <peeters.721871039@tasman> peeters@tasman.cc.utas.edu.au (bert peeters) writes:
>mcovingt@aisun3.ai.uga.edu (Michael Covington) writes:
>
>>The terms were introduced by Ferdinand de Saussure in his _Cours de
>>Linguistique Generale_, published posthumously in (I think) 1911.
>
>Before another myth starts spreading, let me add for the record that the
>Cours was indeed published posthumously, but not in 1911 - Saussure died
>in 1913, so that would have been a bit premature. It's 1916 to be precise.

Sorry for the error.



-- 
:-  Michael A. Covington     internet mcovingt@uga.cc.uga.edu 
:-  Artificial Intelligence Programs       phone 706 542-0358
:-  The University of Georgia                fax 706 542-0349
:-  Athens, Georgia 30602-7415 U.S.A.     amateur radio N4TMI
From: connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: postpositive articles in English
Date: 20 Nov 92 13:02:45 -0600
Organization: Memphis State University

In article <1992Nov20.165547.26076@leland.Stanford.EDU>, alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson) writes:
> In article <1992Nov19.215659.4152@memstvx1.memst.edu>, connolly@memstvx1 writes:
>>There are some fossilized expressions of this sort in English:
>>
>>	knight errant
>>	durance vile
>>	Chicken Little
>>
>>But these examples are true fossils; other nouns and adjectives cannot
>>be substituted, and the adjective cannot be compared.  In other words,
>>there is no _*knight peripatetic_ or _*musician errant_, and certainly
>>no _*durance vilest_.  _Proper_ is unusual, perhaps unique, in that it
>>is only postpositive in this usage and can be used after many other nouns
>>than _city_.  But even _proper_ cannot then be compared (_*city most
>>proper_).
>>
>>--Leo Connolly
> 
> There is, on the other hand, _durance most vile_.

Gee, I missed that one!  Or did I?  Maybe not.  The darned thing lacks
a determiner, without which there is no superlative meaning.  Now _most_
is used for other things than to form suppletive superlatives. Perhaps
it is.  What do you lurkers think?

--Leo Connolly
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: ntakahas@etl.go.jp (TAKAHASHI Naoto)
Subject: Re: new newsgroup?
Organization: Electrotechnical Laboratory
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 12:27:13 GMT

In article <1992Nov16.103339.21310@cc.ic.ac.uk> shan@ee.ic.ac.uk (Shan Parfilt) writes:

   A few people have expressed an interest in setting up a new newsgroup
   or mailing list on the subject of Neural Networks and Natural Language.
   Is anybody reading this similarly interested? If so,please make yourself

YES! Very much.

--
TAKAHASHI Naoto
Electrotechnical Laboratory, Japan
ntakahas@etl.go.jp
From: koontz@cam.nist.gov (John E. Koontz X5180)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: postpositive articles [sic, adjectives] in English
Date: 20 Nov 92 15:21:55 GMT
Organization: National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD

In article <1992Nov19.190026.937@almserv.uucp>, alufml@fnma.COM (Francois-Michel Lang) writes:
|> In French, certain articles [sic, adjectives] can appear either
|> (1) after the noun they modify, ...
|> (2) before the noun, ...
|>     of the adjective is metaphorical.
|> Are there examples of this in English ...
|> The only example I can come up with is something like "the city proper".

I can think of at least one more loan formation, "the church militant."
In addition, I think that various formations like "lieutenant general,"
"solicitor general," etc., were originally of this type, though I believe
they are usually perceived as adjective + noun, or possibly noun + noun
in contemporary English.

----
John E. Koontz (koontz@bldr.nist.gov)

     People say, `Believe half of what you see,
     Son, and none of what you hear.'
From: connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: postpositive articles in English
Date: 20 Nov 92 12:54:29 -0600
Organization: Memphis State University

In article <By0nyB.7nM@swi.psy.uva.nl>, johan@swi.psy.uva.nl (Johan Henselmans) writes:
> connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu writes:
> 
>>There are some fossilized expressions of this sort in English:
> 
>>	knight errant
>>	durance vile
>>	Chicken Little
> 
>>But these examples are true fossils; other nouns and adjectives cannot
>>be substituted, and the adjective cannot be compared.  In other words,
>>there is no _*knight peripatetic_ or _*musician errant_, and certainly
>>no _*durance vilest_.  _Proper_ is unusual, perhaps unique, in that it
>>is only postpositive in this usage and can be used after many other nouns
>>than _city_.  But even _proper_ cannot then be compared (_*city most
>>proper_).
> 
> How about adjectives such as "enough", "aplenty" and "galore" which 
> often appear after the noun they qualify.

_Aplenty_ is not an adjective in any sense of the word: neither syntactically,
nor formally, not historically (it's an old PP).  Neither, apparently, is
_galore_, though it's far from obvious what it would be.  (An adjective
is ruled out on both syntactic and morphological grounds; the etymology
I don't know about).  That leaves _enough_.  It too does not have adjectival
syntax or morphology even when used in prenominal position: no comparison,
and an article is excluded (*the enough time).  The lack of morphology is
not unique to English: cognate German _genug_ and Dutch _genoeg_ cannot
take adjective endings.  So I submit that whatever _enough_ is (a noun
comes to mind), it is certainly not n adjective.  That leaves _proper_,
which in pernominal position certainly is an adjective, and hence
presumptively also in postnominal position.

--Leo Connolly
From: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: [week] Re: Weekdays in other languages (was: ... Latin?)
Date: 16 Nov 92 23:50:54 GMT
Reply-To: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Organization: Stanford University Academic Information Resources
Originator: alderson@leland.Stanford.EDU

In article <1992Nov15.191413.17768@enea.se>, sommar@enea (Erland Sommarskog) writes:
>Rich Alderson (alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU) writes:
>>	dies mercurii	Woden's-day (outside Scandinavia, Woden was the
>>				conductor of souls to the land of the dead,
>>				like Mercury)
>
>I'm not really sure what you say here, but anyway, in ancient
>Nordic mythology Oden was the big boss. (Woden -> Oden is
 ^^^^^^

Yes.  Let's take that word explicitly, etymologically speaking.  Among the
*North Germanic peoples*, Odin became the chief god.

Among the (*East Germanic*) Goths, Woden was *not* the boss god; that was
Tiwaz.  Woden was the god of the dead.

>consistent with the process in Old Swedish where initial "w"
>and "j" were lost; "wolf" -> "ulv", "young" -> "ung".) Not
>surprisingly "Wednesday" is "Onsdag" in Swedish. (But I have
>to admit that until now I have understood that they were cognats.)

Not just Old Swedish, but all of North Germanic.

>The Swedish weekdays offer one special, namely "l|rdag" ("|" = dotted
>"o") for Saturday. As far as I know, the origin is "l|garedag",
>or simply "bathing day".
>
>By the way, did anyone explain German "Samstag"?

Not yet.
-- 
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_
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: "fred cummins" <fcummins@moose.cs.indiana.edu>
Subject: English adjectives in -ic and -ical
Organization: Computer Science, Indiana University
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 92 17:45:18 EST
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11]

Many English adjectives exist in two more or less synonymous 
forms, one ending in -ic, the other in -ical, e.g rhythmic/
rhythmical; dynamic/dynamical etc.  These are mostly derived
from greek forms (Latin words ending in -ic such as 'public'
behave differently).  Nouns which end in -ic usually form
their adjectives only with -al (music/musical), some
adjectives only exist in the -ic form (ectopic, anaesthetic).
The most confusing case I know of relates to adjectives formed
from 'episode', where we find episodal, episodic and
episodical (although I distrust the latter form).

Why should a language support this degree of apparant synonymy?

Which forms are older?  Are there nuances of meaning which
distinguish between apparantly similar forms?

I suspect that a lot of the confusion arises from attempts by
speakers to simplify the situation, thereby creating novel
forms by back formation, but I would be interested to hear
the opinions of others either here or by email.

Fred Cummins
fcummins@cs.indiana.edu
Xref: sparky sci.bio:4197 sci.cognitive:731 sci.engr.biomed:616 sci.med:21333 sci.med.physics:462
From: lns@gnv.ifas.ufl.edu
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: amber snails, Succinea sp., diet
Date: 17 Nov 92 13:48:24 -0500

Information regarding amber snails, Succinea sp., requested.  What is
the diet of this critter?  Thanks.
From: barkdoll@cattell.psych.upenn.edu (Edwin Barkdoll)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Are most deer colorblind???
Date: 16 Nov 92 21:28:24 GMT
Organization: University of Pennsylvania

In article <1992Nov16.164717.11369@news.unomaha.edu> djclute@cwis.unomaha.edu (Daniel Jonathan Clute) writes:
>16 Nov 16:42:51 GMT
>
>	I've often wondered how most deer hunters can get away with 
>wearing outrageously flashy clothes, such as fluorescent orange jackets,
>and not (presumably) have any effect on their tracking down deer. Can't
>the deer see them more easily with such gaudy attire? I have assumed
>that most vertebrates have color vision; are deer an exception? 

	Deer have cones (Witzel et al 1978, Am J Vet Res) which are
ususally considered to be prerequisites for color vision in
vertebrates and can discriminate between certain wavelengths (Smith et
al 1989, Psychol. Rec. [not a terribly stimulating study tho...]).  In
particular they were able to discriminate "green" from "yellow" and
"orange".

Edwin Barkdoll
barkdoll@cattell.psych.upenn.edu
eb3@world.std.com
Newsgroups: sci.bio
From: des@helix.nih.gov (David E. Scheim)
Subject: Dextrose/glucose equilibration in solution
Summary: Dextrose/glucose equilibration in solution
Keywords: glucose, dextrose
Organization: NIH
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 19:56:50 GMT

I have been told that if you dissolve dextrose in water, the L- and D- 
isomers of glucose come near equilibrium within a few hours.  Is this 
correct?  It could have significant clinical ramifications.  I would very 
much appreciate any comments on this.

Thank you.  -- David Scheim

/*********************************************************************/
/*                      --- David E. Scheim ---                      */
/* BITNET: DES@NIHNEI31                                              */
/* INTERNET: desl@helix.nih.gov          PHONE: 301 496-2194         */
/* CompuServe: 73750,3305                  FAX: 301 402-1065         */
/*                                                                   */
/* DISCLAIMER: These comments are offered to share knowledge based   */
/*   upon my personal views.  They do not represent the positions    */
/*   of my employer.                                                 */
/*********************************************************************/
Newsgroups: sci.bio
From: djclute@cwis.unomaha.edu (Daniel Jonathan Clute)
Subject: Are most deer colorblind???
Organization: University of Nebraska at Omaha
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 16:47:17 GMT

16 Nov 16:42:51 GMT

	I've often wondered how most deer hunters can get away with 
wearing outrageously flashy clothes, such as fluorescent orange jackets,
and not (presumably) have any effect on their tracking down deer. Can't
the deer see them more easily with such gaudy attire? I have assumed
that most vertebrates have color vision; are deer an exception? More 
general, I'd like to know more about color vision among vertebrates. 
What mammals, in particular, cannot see color?

					Confused hunter,
					  Daniel Clute
					  djclute@cwis.unomaha.edu


Xref: sparky sci.bio:4176 sci.environment:12874 sci.energy:5591 alt.activism:19003