HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: peeters@tasman.cc.utas.edu.au (bert peeters)
Subject: Re: SVO / VSO
Organization: University of Tasmania, Australia.
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 06:41:01 GMT

pesetsk@athena.mit.edu (David M Pesetsky) writes:

>I'm going to stop fighting this particular sci.lang battle, because the
>discussion is getting a bit silly.  No one makes the claim that any
>language is a deviation from any norm.  In Welsh, according to Harlow
>and Sproat, and in Irish, according to McCloskey, there is evidence that
>the finite verb in a VSO sentence is related to an empty verb position
>elsewhere in the sentence.  Evidence. Facts. Arguments.

I won't rub in my viewpoint any further either, until I have (as I told
Pesetsky in private e-mail) gone back to the evidence, seen the facts,
examined the arguments. I'm happy to see that, in spite of the turn the
discussion was about to take before both of us decided to drop out, 
Pesetsky has not lost his sense of humour (and of alliteration; even on
"we" and "Welsh", although I guess that was unintentional...):

>Maybe, had Chomsky been Chamorro, the history of linguistics would have
>been different.  If Jakobson were Yakut, Bloomfield Bengali or Sapir
>Sesotho, likewise.  What of it?  If no one knew languages with an intact
>VP, sure we might view Welsh differently, but that view would be founded
>on an error, just as the non-configurational approach of the late 1970s
>seems to have been founded on an error.

I wrote as follows:

>>Isn't it ironical to see that the importance of VP's has led
>>cohorts of generative grammarians into believing that there are internal
>>and external arguments, whereas it has been argued recently that that
>>distinction may be illusory? 

and was asked:

>By whom?  What are some of the arguments?

I won't go into the arguments, which I may not have fully understood. But
here is a reference to a French text where this point was made:

Aafke HULK, "La relation entre lexique et syntaxe en grammaire generative",
pp. 107-118 in Ronald Landheer ed., *Aspects de linguistique francaise.
Hommage a Q.I.M. Mok* (Rodopi, 1988). See esp. p. 112.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
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: schiller@whorf(Eric Schiller)
Subject: Re: SVO / VSO
Reply-To: schiller@sapir.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 19:04:54 GMT

In article <1992Oct1.142411.490@news.Hawaii.Edu>  
lee@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Greg Lee) writes:
> In article <1992Sep29.090038.3435@memstvx1.memst.edu>  
connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu writes:
> }...
> }Actually, some of us think that the whole notion of VP is a lot of
> }(expletive deleted).  ...
> 
> Syntactic (expletive deleted), but not semantic/pragmatic (expletive
> deleted).  There seem to be VPs because there are subjects.
> 
> }It might be interesting to take a poll of the
> }denizens of this group on that point.  What do the rest of you think?
> 
> There is lots of purported evidence for VPs to be explained away.
> In the case of C-command constraints on anaphora, I think it can
> be.  The arguments from subcategorization (verbs are supposed not
> to subcategorize with respect to subjects) I think are factually wrong.
> That leaves the conjoinability of VPs and transformationalist
> arguments based on VP-deletion and the like.  But you can put me
> down as being agin'.
> 
> --
> Greg Lee <lee@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu>

Ah, Greg, you seem to be a closet Autolexicalist! <grin>.
The Autolexical $.02 (from my dissertation, I think) is that VSO languages  
all have a syntax/semantics discrepancy. The semantic phrase (F-1 in our  
notation, or a predicate in normal terms) is certainly there, and  
participates in rules involving c-command etc. (see Seuren's remarks on my  
work in the Ohio State "When Verbs Collide" volume), but there is no
(surface) VP in the syntax. I use (surface) because Pieter is doing  
Generative Semantics. Autolexically, there simply isn't a syntactic VP at  
all.

In this context it is interesting to look at languages which show both SVO  
and VSO order, such as many of the Wa languages of the Northern Shan  
States. The data can be found in one of the early University of Chicago  
Working Papers in Linguistics (vol 1 or 2).
--
***** ** *** **** ***** ** *** **** ***** ** *** **** ***** ** *** ****
Eric Schiller                              schiller@sapir.uchicago.edu
Dept of Linguistics, Univ. of Chicago      schiller@whorf.uchicago.edu
                                  
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: peeters@tasman.cc.utas.edu.au (bert peeters)
Subject: Re: SVO / VSO
Organization: University of Tasmania, Australia.
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 00:20:23 GMT

e343mh@tamuts.tamu.edu (Michael Hand) writes:

>In article <peeters.717657429@tasman> peeters@tasman.cc.utas.edu.au (bert peeters) writes:
>>Would Chomsky, had he been a native speaker of a VSO language, not
>>have concluded that SVO languages are essentially VSO in structure, with
>>etc. etc. 

>Would it undermine your argument to find a native speaker of an SVO
>language arguing that his own SVO language is VSO at remote structure?
>See the old McCawley paper "English as a VSO language".  (Other
>Generative Semanticists who were native English speakers also adopted
>this idea.)

It was a nice try, but as Eric Schiller points out, it failed. Dare I
say it failed because of the anglocentrism of its opponents?
---------------------------------------------------------------------
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: peeters@tasman.cc.utas.edu.au (bert peeters)
Subject: Re: SVO / VSO
Organization: University of Tasmania, Australia.
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 23:52:23 GMT

pesetsk@athena.mit.edu (David M Pesetsky) writes:

>Look, we might be phrasing it differently: "Wow! English is just like
>Welsh except the verb doesn't move", but the discovery would be just the
>same, if the same tools were being applied.

Anglocentrism once again. If Chomsky had been a Welshman with no knowledge
of English (I admit the very possibility of being Welsh without speaking
English is extremely remote), would he have concluded that in Welsh the
verb moves, whereas (later discovery during a fieldtrip to London) it
doesn't in English? It is not impossible he would have concluded that
the Welsh facts are the norm and all the rest is deviation. I do know
that SVO and SOV are both more frequent on world scale than VSO, but I
don't think that is necessarily a factor in favor of seeing SVO as "the
standard" from which VSO derives.

>Actually, in my view, it's pretty damn fortunate that the founders of
>generative grammar worked mainly on a language with an intact VP.

Perhaps. The very notion of a VP, although familiar to constituent analysis
and American structuralism, might not have had the same prominence it
has today. Isn't it ironical to see that the importance of VP's has led
cohorts of generative grammarians into believing that there are internal
and external arguments, whereas it has been argued recently that that
distinction may be illusory? The generative paradigm might have spared
itself a great loss of time by starting from Welsh rather than from
English.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
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
From: goer@ellis.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Cognitive Phonology (was Cognitive Linguistics...)
Date: 28 Sep 92 03:53:10 GMT
Reply-To: goer@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations

miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:
>
>> Ironically, this is *not* true of the real founders of generative grammar.
>> Chomsky, Halle, etc. (especially in their early articles) demonstrate a
>> good command of all the major international languages
>
>Major international languages, perhaps; but the development of
>Chomsky's thought, and that of the MIT school in general, suggests a
>lack of familiarity at the beginning with a variety of languages.
>Things which a Sapir or a Bloomfield would have seen as rather
>run-of-the mill...

Perhaps.  But don't underestimate Chomsky himself.  His view of grammar
has had a major impact on of all things programming languages.  Computer
sciences owe much more to him than meets the eye.  Linguistics only owes
a lot to him a) because he's done brilliant and original work, and b)
because he had every scholar's dream of being at the right place at the
right time, and being there with enough money and students to create a
virtual army.

I thank heaven above that I'm a philologist, because I think linguistics
is now a heavily constrained field.  Either linguists today are all
incredibly brilliant (so far above me that I just can't grasp what they
are saying) or else many have been so indoctrinated into a certain way
of thinking that things now seem obvious to them that just aren't clear
to the rest of us.

Mr. Householder was one of the few people to recognize what was going
to happen, so I gather.  You were one of his students, right?  Why did
he give up?

-- 

   -Richard L. Goerwitz              goer%midway@uchicago.bitnet
   goer@midway.uchicago.edu          rutgers!oddjob!ellis!goer
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: lee@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Greg Lee)
Subject: Re: SVO / VSO
Organization: University of Hawaii
Date: Sun, 4 Oct 1992 10:46:28 GMT

In article <1992Oct1.121543.3473@memstvx1.memst.edu> connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu writes:
}...
}I love the "handout".  Could you tell us (a) is it meant for us, or for a
}real class of students? and (b) did you concoct it or borrow it?

(a) real students.
(b) concoct.  But the ingredients existed: (b1) the resultant category
(the left of a psr) is part of the categorial description of a lexical
item in Categorial Grammar, (b2) using subject/object/... to define
order of functional application is an inversion of David Dowty's idea
to define 1/2/... in terms of order of application.

--
Greg Lee <lee@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
From: pesetsk@athena.mit.edu (David M Pesetsky)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: SVO / VSO  --> NP-movement
Date: 30 Sep 92 03:03:37 GMT
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

In article <ARILD.92Sep29162327@milan.ims.uni-stuttgart.de> arild@ims.uni-stuttgart.de writes:
>There is actually one case where I really think that English-centrism had a
>negative effect in Chomsky's work, namely with regard to the analysis of
>passive. His work on passives has always assumed that NP-movement is an
>obligatory part of it. If Chomsky had been Scandinavian (or Ukrainian, cf.
>Sobin LI 1985), where NP-movement in passive is clearly optional (see my
>article in Nordic Journal of Linguistic 9, 1986), things like Case-
>absorption would never have made it into the GB tradition.
>
>Chomsky still seems to hold on to the view that NP-movement is obligatory.
>For example, in his Minimalist paper, there seeems to be no room for a
>movement operation that is optional before Spell-Out, since that would
>violate, is it the Procrastinate principle?  (i.e., don't do something
>unless you have to, and if you have to, do it as late as possible). The
>optionality of NP-movement before Spell-Out in Scand. passives looks like a
>glaring counterexample to this, but the data seems to be ignored...
>

If memory serves me correctly, the Ukrainian example is not relevant to
your point, since you still have accusative case on the object.  Indeed,
if Sobin's Ukrainian passive is like similar examples in Polish, it's
not clear it shares much with passive at all.  More like the German
impersonal construction with 'man'.

Turning to Scandinavian (where I don't know your 1986 paper but do know
the comparable (?) data from German and Dutch), can you tell whether
we're dealing with formally optional movement or, alternatively, with an
optionality in the properties of the relevant morphology?  For optional
raising in Irish (and Latin), McCloskey somewhere noted that the latter
is a possibility.

As for the Anglocentrism issue again (et tu Brute?), I suppose we all
fall into the trap of not wanting the unknown to differ too much from
the known. However, as I'm sure you will agree (having read the
literature), the analysis of Celtic VSO as the product of verb movement
is not an instance of that failing.

-David Pesetsky
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: arild@milan.ims.uni-stuttgart.de (Arild Hestvik)
Subject: Re: SVO / VSO  --> NP-movement
Reply-To: arild@ims.uni-stuttgart.de
Organization: IMS, University of Stuttgart, Germany
	<1992Sep28.105812.3871@athena.mit.edu>
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 15:23:40 GMT

There is actually one case where I really think that English-centrism had a
negative effect in Chomsky's work, namely with regard to the analysis of
passive. His work on passives has always assumed that NP-movement is an
obligatory part of it. If Chomsky had been Scandinavian (or Ukrainian, cf.
Sobin LI 1985), where NP-movement in passive is clearly optional (see my
article in Nordic Journal of Linguistic 9, 1986), things like Case-
absorption would never have made it into the GB tradition.

Chomsky still seems to hold on to the view that NP-movement is obligatory.
For example, in his Minimalist paper, there seeems to be no room for a
movement operation that is optional before Spell-Out, since that would
violate, is it the Procrastinate principle?  (i.e., don't do something
unless you have to, and if you have to, do it as late as possible). The
optionality of NP-movement before Spell-Out in Scand. passives looks like a
glaring counterexample to this, but the data seems to be ignored...

-Arild Hestvik
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: zgilbert@titan.ucc.umass.edu (Zvi Gilbert)
Subject: Re: Science Fiction books with linguistic content
Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 19:28:18 GMT


Thanks to Henry Churchyard for posting the list that I put on the LINGUIST
list some time ago.  I'd like to correct the address to which corrections,
additions or comments to this SF/LIN list can be sent.  My previous address
was:

zgilbert@epas.utoronto.ca

My current address is:

zgilbert@titan.ucc.umass.edu

Thanks, Henry!  And thanks to all of you.

--Zvi
From: miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Metalleus: the Voiced Snore Debunked
Date: 6 Oct 92 17:22:00 CDT
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services

                    THE VOICED SNORE DEBUNKED*

     I promised, in my last note, now to discuss that feature which
has made Moundsbar such a catchword among students of exotic
languages (hod-carriers and sheet-metal workers being notably less
concerned with it), the so-called "voiced snore."  "So-called" I
say, because it has turned out to be perhaps the rankest hoax to be
put over on the scholarly community since Cognitive Spelling, or
the smoking of oven-dried banana peelings in the late seventies.

     Let us face facts.  There are, essentially, only two ways in
which a pulmonic ingressive uvular (properly, velic) trill can
possibly be voiced.  For if the vocal cords are approximated during
its production, they are doomed.  Indeed, in December of last year,
the Nepalese phonetician Ramawatar Dhati attempted it, and
according to reports, swallowed his own larynx.  Normal voicing,
then, is definitely out.  Forget it.  Kiss it off.  There remains
either vibration of the lips during ingression, against which the
laws of physics amass themselves in galloping herds, or a jaw-harp
may be twanged against the upper incisors.  Any other expedient
would make breathing an accomplishment of the highest order, let
alone anything we might call speech.

     Nonetheless, there you have it; and since the phoneme
definitely exists in the language, though we do not know what it
is, I propose that we symbolize it as /5/ (there is no need, you
will recall, for numeral symbols in Moundsbar, the first twenty-
five numeral words being taboo, so we may as well use them for
something else).  We will say that this phoneme has the
*underlying* properties that a voiced snore would have, if there
were any such sound; there are many precedents for this in
Classical Phonology, and if this is not the best possible analysis,
it definitely beats whatever is in second place.

     We (you and I) have now described the Moundsbar syllabics,
including /N/, and the consonant /5/; the sound system up to now:

     i    u         m    N         kp

     e    o         s

     0    +         5

       a    

                                   - Metalleus

*The first token of "phonemes" in my previous note should have been
"phones."




Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.usage.english
From: evan@hpl.hp.com (Evan Kirshenbaum)
Subject: Re: ASCII representation of IPA (second draft) and call for examples
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 16:08:54 GMT
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories

In article <10868@scott.ed.ac.uk> iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski) writes:
>In article <1992Sep25.002614.19155@hplabsz.hpl.hp.com> evan@hpl.hp.com (Evan Kirshenbaum) writes:
><In article <1992Sep24.185821.10381@spss.com> markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
><>4. I'd vote for ~ as {vzd}/{fzd} for consonants, {nas} for vowels.
><
><agreed.
>
>What is the new notation for pharyngealised vowels?

In the latest draft, they're still marked by '~'.  If we make the
change back to '~' for {nzd}, then we'd need to find a new diacritic
(or just use <fzd>).  Are pharyngealized vowels common/important
enough to demand an undelimited diacritic? or could we use something
like <f>?  <H> is "murmured", perhaps we could steal that one (/H/ is
a pharyngeal).  or we could use "_".  or the languages which need them
could use one of the ad hocs: "+" and "=".

Evan Kirshenbaum
    HP Laboratories
    3500 Deer Creek Road, Building 26U
    Palo Alto, CA  94304

    kirshenbaum@hpl.hp.com
    (415)857-7572

Xref: sparky sci.lang:7451 alt.usage.english:7620
From: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: ASCII representation of IPA (second draft) and call for examples
Date: 1 Oct 92 22:26:49 GMT
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK

In article <1992Sep30.160854.11592@hplabsz.hpl.hp.com> evan@hpl.hp.com (Evan Kirshenbaum) writes:
>In article <10868@scott.ed.ac.uk> iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski) writes:
>>What is the new notation for pharyngealised vowels?
>
>In the latest draft, they're still marked by '~'.  If we make the
>change back to '~' for {nzd}, then we'd need to find a new diacritic
>(or just use <fzd>).  Are pharyngealized vowels common/important
>enough to demand an undelimited diacritic?

I'm not sure how to measure the importance of pharyngealised vowels.
I think it is safe to say that they are less common than nasalised ones.
They are fine without an undelimited diacritic.  But (see below).

><H> is "murmured", perhaps we could steal that one (/H/ is a pharyngeal).

I wouldn't mind using <H> for them, if it is a pharyngeal -- but in
that case why is it being used for "murmured"?  Isn't that made with
the larynx?  (I recall it was the voiced counterpart of aspiration.)

What I'm unhappy with, though, is the inconsistency that is created --
the notation becomes too context-sensitive.  Having /~/ for /<nsd>/
after vowels and /<fsd>/ after consonants _and_ something else for
/<fsd>/ after vowels (whether or not it also stands for /<mrm>/ or
something after consonants) looks like asking for trouble.

-- 
 `If ye hiv ears oan yer heid - then use them tae lissen.' (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
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: andrews@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Avery Andrews)
Subject: SVO / VSO --> NP-movement
Organization: Stanford University CSLI
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 1992 02:57:27 GMT
Re: arild@adler.ims.uni-stuttgart.de (Arild Hestvik)
     msg:  <ARILD.92Oct2094313@adler.ims.uni-stuttgart.de>


>This, I think, is a misinterpretation of the data, or a mis-description of
>what's going on. The relevant definiteness effect is nothing other than the
>familiar definiteness effect known since Milsark's work, i.e. just the same
>thing you have in English: ...

I agree with all this.  I don't see how I said anything contradicting it.
In particular, I said nothing about causation.

Avery.Andrews@anu.edu.au
From: miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Metalleus on interlanguages
Date: 1 Oct 92 06:28:11 CDT
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services

                   PARABLE OF THE TWO KINGDOMS

     Two kingdoms had been at war for thirty years, but the time
came when the crown prince of one kingdom fell in love with the
vizier's daughter of the other kingdom.

     Now these two had roughly the worldly sophistication of your
average pair of iguanas, and they said, "Lo, we will teach our two
kingdoms to speak the same language, and then they will understand
each other and will be at peace."  So they cast about for a
suitable, neutral language and eventually decided upon Ethiopian,
because most of its vowels were schwa, and they reasoned, not
wholly lacking in savvy, that "Anyone who can't pronounce schwa
can't pronounce anything."

     But while attending to schwa the crown prince and the vizier's
daughter overlooked the severely inhibiting effect upon the average citizen
of deponent verbs and object participles.  In fact, when the people
of the two kingdoms discovered that their new language had deponent
verbs and object participles, they seized the unfortunate youths
and shoved them off the edge of a cliff.

     Then they resumed their fighting.

ANALYSIS: If the two kingdoms had learned the same language and
understood each other, they probably would have fought even harder
than they did.

                              - Metalleus