HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: oneil@husc10.harvard.edu (John O'Neil)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Linguistics TV Schedule
Date: 16 Apr 92 03:44:07 GMT
 <7059@amsaa-cleo.brl.mil><1992Apr15.180030.15753@cs.yale.edu><1992Apr15.182407.12936@athena.cs.uga.edu>
Organization: Harvard Arts and Sciences Computer Services, Cambridge, MA
In-reply-to: mcovingt@athena.cs.uga.edu's message of 15 Apr 92 18:24:07 GMT

In article <1992Apr15.182407.12936@athena.cs.uga.edu> mcovingt@athena.cs.uga.edu (Michael A. Covington) writes:
   In article <1992Apr15.180030.15753@cs.yale.edu> horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne) writes:

   >This is getting political.  Let's move it.

   Agreed.

Fine idea -- but I didn't know there was an
"alt.politics.civil.war.refight" newsgroup.

--
John O'Neil
"Occasionally I believed I had thoughts of my own --  who does not now
 and then become the victim of such delusions?"
						-- Paul Feyerabend
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: cockburn@majors.enet.dec.com (Craig Cockburn)
Subject: Re:    What Language Is It?
Organisation: Digital Equipment Co. Ltd., Newbury, England
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1992 10:45:29 GMT


In article <92094.133944ISTDRW@ASUACAD.BITNET>, <ISTDRW@ASUACAD.BITNET> writes...
>My brother collects books.  He found and old (1889) book but doesn't
>know what language it is in.  We guessed Gaelic.  Can anyone help?
> 
Close, but no banana! Gaelic is in the Q-Celtic group but your sample
is from Welsh which is in the P-Celtic group.

For a translation, try posting your note in soc.culture.celtic

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Craig Cockburn, Digital Equipment Co. Ltd, Newbury, England.  
  ARPAnet: cockburn@majors.enet.dec.com                            Saor
  UUCP:..!decwrl!majors.enet.dec.com!cockburn                      Alba!

  Views here are my own, and are not necessarily those of Digital
From: robert@minster.york.ac.uk
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: memory
Date: 8 Apr 92 10:44:57 GMT
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of York, England


 Can anyone point me towards references in the area:
`prosody and memory for text'.
any help gratefully recieved.

As a blind student, I am interested in obtaining a copy
of:
A course in spoken english: intonation
by M. K. Halliday OUP
on tape.  This item exists, but I seem unable to ttrace one.

many thanks,

robert stevens.

robert@minster.york.ac.uk
From: davidba@carmel.technion.ac.il (David Ben_Ami)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Infinitives in Hebrew (Re: Why are English Infinitives so ..)
Date: 12 Apr 92 15:23:38 GMT
Organization: Technion, Israel Inst. of Technology

In Hebrew the Infinitives have a similar structure to the English 'to'
Attachment (No Genetical Relations in this case I'm sure).

In Hebrew the Infinitive always have the Preposition "Le" attached before
it. the result is one word but this is very often with Hebrew prepositions
in general.

Some Examples:
--------------
English        Hebrew

to be          l + hyot -> lihyot
to see         l + r'ot -> lir'ot
to stand       l + &amod -> la&amod.
to understand  l + habin -> lehabin

(The Preposition 'le' or 'l' is quite similar in meaning to the prep. "to"
 in English at least in its most common usage. The attachment of the
 Preposition as illustrated above generates different vowels in each verb 
 This is another interesting phenomena the vowel is determined by more
 or less fixed Phonetic Laws).

 I think that finding this very similar constructs for the infinitive
 in so very different Languages like English or Hebrew suggests that
 the Infinitive form in some way "calls for" the prepostion "to". and
 the apparent lack of it in Other Languages can be attributed to it being
 covert rather than overt -> [ I think that in German this might be the
 case , while the regular infinitive is usually without 'zu' , the 'zu'
 surfaces occasionally like in 'haben zu tun').
-- 
=============================================================================
  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
From: lgorbet@carina.unm.edu (Larry P Gorbet ANTHROPOLOGY)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Tenses
Date: 14 Apr 92 15:01:43 GMT
Article-I.D.: lynx.l8xjqk
Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque

Certainly we need to avoid confusing semantics of tense and its grammatical
expression, and when I said _tense_ was used to refer to either, I assumed that the word would be used in contexts where *which* was meant was clear.

On the other hand, I still don't see where restricting the *grammatical*
sense of _tense_ to *morphological* expression and excluding *syntactic* 
expressions gets you anywhere.  Why not -- when you are dealing *just* with
morphology -- call it "morphological tense"?  Otherwise, you make languages
with less morphology look more different in more ways than they may really be.
In diachronic terms, the moves from syntactic and free to cliticized to
affixed tense morphemes look like addition of new grammatical categories when
the actual change may be mostly in form alone.
From: horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne)
Subject: Re: Linguistics TV (Retransmission)
Keywords: : -)
Organization: Computer "Science" Dept, Yale University
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 07:34:14 GMT

In article <8971@scott.ed.ac.uk>, iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski) writes:
<In a North American article samson@netcom.com (Peter Samson) writes:
<
<(Retransmitted for Europe, Asia and Australia, courtesy of The Rose
<and the Heather Ltd.)

And to Africa, Antarctica, and South America by the "The East Is Red"
Satellite Company, Shaoshan, China.  Be sure to watch for our test pattern,
a spectrograph of Peter Ladefoged's rendition of "Colourless green ideas
sleep furiously".  (In black and white--and green.)

<   "Yale:  An animal with long, movable horns that it can adjust in
<    different directions depending on how it wishes to use them."

That's an old one.  I can give several other sources, including _The Yale:
A student guide to Yale & New Haven_, 1988.

<> 7:30  THIS OLD WRITING SYSTEM--Comedy

Important notice:  The schedule has been changed for this week only.  We're
substituting our Arbor Day special, _Bonsai Made Easy_.  Learn how to make
trees grow upside-down!

<Meanwhile, the government remain unbound, though their traces are everywhere.

You've given a new meaning to the term `Government-Binding'.  Say, it's
not such a bad idea after all.  :-)

<This programme has been cancelled for technical reasons.  The
<recording was planned to take place in Ulan Bator.

Yes, but a misspelling (you've forgotten two `a's) confused the travel
agency, and our crew wound up in Scotland by mistake.

<We recommend our new multilingual headphones, courtesy of Alvin Henry
<White.

Yes, as seen on TV!  Call our toll-free number now, and you'll get a free
set of steak knives.  Money back if not delighted, but we're not responsible
for damages arising out of the use or misuse of our product.

					--Scott

-- 
Scott Horne                               ...!{harvard,cmcl2,decvax}!yale!horne
horne@cs.Yale.edu      SnailMail:  Box 7196 Yale Station, New Haven, CT   06520
203 436-1848                Residence:  Rm 1848 Silliman College, New Haven, CT
Shao2shan1 sheng1 de tai4yang2 yong3 bu2 luo4!
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: JAREA@UKCC.UKY.EDU
Subject: Re: Ambiguity a goal of language
Organization: UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1992 02:31:30 GMT
X-Bytes: 

This has been an interesting topic.  I am first reminded of C. P. Snow's
material on _The Two Cultures_, and fascinated by the programmatic state-
ment from Epstein to the effect that, "The main purpose of language is
clear communication."

Snow's two cultures are of course both housed in Universities, and are
the Scientific and the Humanistic.  He, Chancellor I believe at Cambridge,
could speak on the topic as he was a research scientist, and an excellent
novellist in the "high style".

Although he had a number of things to say on the inability of the two
cultures to communicate with each other, one of the problems is that the
scientist wants clarity and even more precision.  For this reason it has
been necessary to have "mathematics" (used in a broad sense, not just
numbers) because "language" often seems "imprecise" and even ambiguous.
The scientist regrets this aspect of language.

The poet (again I use the term broadly, not simply as a synonym for
writer of verse) is pleased by the evocative, supple and polysemous
nature of language (as well as by non-semantic devices of language).
Most humanists would feel that it is wrong to ask what is _the_
meaning of a literary passage.

Wordsworth's lines, "The child is the father of the man, and I could
wish my days to be bound each to each in natural piety come to mind.
Does he mean worshipful respect for nature? Or does he mean that
religion like attitude that is natural for humans to feel?  Or is he
using the word "piety" in its primary sense of respect for ones parents
(for those who remember pious Aeneas), and thus reminding us to respect
the child (who is the forbear of the adult)?

The important thing is that this is not an "or" question.  There are
probably eight answers.  Anybody for Empson?

Back to the question of "The main purpose of language":  we'd have to
ask the originators of human language what they had in mind:  Was it
physics?  politics?  commerce?  religion?   poetry?  sex?  swearing?
From: grossi@capsogeti.fr (Thomas Grossi)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: feminine as the generic case
Date: 15 Apr 92 08:43:37 GMT
Reply-To: grossi@capsogeti.fr (Thomas Grossi)
Organization: Cap Gemini Innovation, Grenoble, France

In article <1992Apr14.211412.761@leland.Stanford.EDU>, alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson) writes:
|> (Latin terms were mentula "erect penis" and verpa "flaccid penis."  Doe Spanish
|> verga ever get used for other than an erect penis?  Does French vierge?)

"Vierge" is something quite different (being a woman that has never met a
"verge").  "Vierge" comes from Latin "virgo" and "verge" comes from "virga".
I don't believe that when "verge" is used to refer to a penis, that it is
necessarily erect; but to answer your question, the primary meaning of the word
is "rod".  Of course it's not used very often because of the sexual
connotations, but the technical term "vergette" is used to refer to a component
of the (pipe) organ.
From: aeb@cwi.nl (Andries Brouwer)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Why are English infinitives so different?
Date: 8 Apr 92 20:41:22 GMT

peeters@tasman.cc.utas.edu.au (bert peeters) writes:

<< 'at vaere eller ikke vaere' (to be or not to be).

<The Danish translation of *to be or not to be* shows that *to* and *at*
<are not equivalent (there is no *at* in front of the second *vaere*).
<Would it be impossible to have either of the following?

<- At vaere eller at ikke vaere
<- At vaere eller ikke at vaere

<Just curious...

All three are possible. The first is perhaps the most natural.
From: brent@mlacus.oz.au (Brent Davies)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: What Language Is It?
Date: 14 Apr 92 02:46:58 GMT
Organization: Australian Centre for Unisys Software, Melbourne

ISTDRW@ASUACAD.BITNET writes:

>My brother collects books.  He found and old (1889) book but doesn't
>know what language it is in.  We guessed Gaelic.  Can anyone help?

>Title Page:

>               LLWYBRAU BYWYD;

>                    neu,

>            HANER CAN' MLYNEDD

>                 O OES

>           WILLIAM D. DAVIES,

> "Y CARDOTYN" O HYDE PARK, SCRANTON, PA.

>  --------------------------------------

>  "Gwn, Arglwyd, nad eiddo dyn ei iiord; nid ar law gwr a rodio~y
>   nae llywodraethu ei gerddediad." Jer.x.23

It's certainly Welsh.  And for a translation of the sentence immediately
above, see chapter ten, verse 23 of the book of Jeremiah in the Bible.

--Brent Davies, ACUS Melbourne
  700 Blackburn Rd
  Clayton North, Victoria
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne)
Subject: Re: Devanagari: Syllabary or Alphabet?
Organization: Computer "Science" Dept, Yale University
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1992 01:25:14 GMT

In article <1992Apr12.225857.21555@midway.uchicago.edu>, bon6@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
<
<It has been three days, and we still have not heard from young
<Scott.  Unusual timidity on his part--or has he finally learned
<the virtue of discretion?

Just absent-mindedness.  Sorry to burst your bubble.

<The fact is that Devanagari is neither purely syllabic nor purely
<alphabetic.  It is not a pure alphabet because the basic unit of
<representation is the syllable, usually one or more consonants
<with a vowel sign above, below, to the right or to the left.

Devana^gari^ is an alphabet, period.  Each letter represents a sound.  The
fact that not all letters come in sequence is irrelevant, as is the fact that
an inherent vowel (namely [@]) is not written.  (It is written as the "null
grapheme".  :-))

It can also be regarded as a syllabary--a very large one--but what is the
point of that?

<But the <e>-component
<of <ke> can not occur independently, unattached to a consonant
<sign.

Yes, it can.  It just has a slightly different form.

					--Scott

-- 
Scott Horne                               ...!{harvard,cmcl2,decvax}!yale!horne
horne@cs.Yale.edu      SnailMail:  Box 7196 Yale Station, New Haven, CT   06520
203 436-1848                Residence:  Rm 1848 Silliman College, New Haven, CT
ZANG4 HAN4 YI4 JIA1 / GONG4 JIAN4 ZHONG1HUA2!
From: zimm@hmivax.humgen.upenn.edu (Laurie Zimmerman, HHMI, Univ. of Pa.)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Why are English infinitives so different?
Date: 7 Apr 92 17:46:52 GMT
Organization: HHMI/Human Genetics, Univ of Pa.

> As far as i know, Swedish and Danish also have this type of infinitive,
> with an infinitive marker and then the verb for a total of two words.
> However, most of my knowledge of Swedish and Danish is through late-night
> television, so this may not be accurate 8-)

In Danish the infinitive form uses "at" in front of the verb.

to do - at lave
                             
to walk - at gaa

to chat - at snakke

So what is its purpose here:

It was too far to walk.

Det var for langt, til at gaa.       'til' is often translated at 'to' but as a
                                       prep.

feedme!                  
Laurie Zimmerman                          zimm@hmivax.humgen.upenn.edu
PS my knowledge of Norwegian and Swedish come also from late-night television!
   or from my friends making fun of the Swedes and Normaender.
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: Tom Christiansen <tchrist@convex.COM>
Subject: Re: Why are English infinitives so different?
Originator: tchrist@pixel.convex.com
Reply-To: tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen)
Organization: CONVEX Realtime Development, Colorado Springs, CO
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 19:42:49 GMT
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by a user at CONVEX Computer
              Corp. The opinions expressed are those of the user and
              not necessarily those of CONVEX.

From the keyboard of dacosta@prl.philips.nl (Paulo da Costa):
:In article <1992Apr15.155419.28862@spss.com> markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
:[about "Romance languages lack progressive tenses"]
:>
:>True for French, false for Spanish and Portuguese.
:>
:>_Maria esta afinando el carro_, Maria is tuning up the car.
:>
:>Such expressions are very common.  However, I don't think you can have
:>a progressive perfect in these languages.
:
:In Portuguese you can make a perfect with the auxiliary "ter":
:
:_Tenho trabalhado muito_, I've been working a lot.

Spanish also uses verbs of motion, like venir, seguir, and ir, to form
progressives, like
	
    Aldo se fue corriendo.
    Aldo went running off.


:Portuguese is also the language of the future subjunctive and the
:personal infinitive, which are not found in Spanish either.

In quotidien parlance, true, but technically false.   The future
subjunctive persists in pat phrases:

    Sea como fuere, seguire hablando castellano puro.
    Be that as it may, I shall continue speaking pure Castilian.

    Por donde fueres, haz lo que vieres.
    Wherever you may go, do whatever you (may) see.
	(i.e. "When in Rome...")

I also recall a quote at the front of a Borges story citing 
something from the Bible, in which it says

    Aunque me quitare la vida, todavia confiare en el.

    Athough he should take from me my life, still I will
    trust in him.

And if you read any semi-old Spanish, you'll find the future subjunctive
occurring in precisely the same sorts of subordinate clauses that it's
found to this day in Portuguese.

But no one really *says* it these days, except in pat phrases.  I've heard
rumor that some lawyers put it into legal documents though.

--tom
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: pesetsk@athena.mit.edu (David M Pesetsky)
Subject: Re: Devanagari: Syllabary or Alphabet?
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1992 14:11:58 GMT

In article <1992Apr13.063234.7830@cs.yale.edu> horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU
(Scott Horne) writes  w.r.t. Devanagari:
>
>The lack of any other vowel-letter indicates the presence of this
>vowel-letter (which, as it happens, is written with no ink).
>

It's a very short step from inkless categories in orthography (a.k.a.
graphiteless graphemes) to phonetically null categories in syntax.
Caveat Cornu!

-David Pesetsky
From: rhh@alice.att.com (r hardin)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Animal Grammar
Date: 15 Apr 92 22:31:17 GMT
Article-I.D.: alice.22588
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill NJ



>can appeal to their own intuitions. So far, my intuition's telling me
>that the observed differences in human language and animal
>communication are so vast that they occupy different levels of
>comprehension. Of course, if you'd like to show me an animal that
>can discuss an abstract concept, I'm more than willing to be
>convinced :-).

Abstract Concepts.

My Doberman brings over a toy, say a frisbee, to my chair while
I absently work, pounds me in the knee with it and looks expectantly.

My feeling is, this is a word to her.  Something grasped, something
grasped by it.

Say I tell her that I'm busy, she'll lie down and put down the frisbee,
get up after a few minutes and carry the thing into the next room.

She comes back with a tennis ball, and the procedure slowly repeats
with successive toys until I take a break and we go out.

So toy in that context has to do with ``going out together.''
(She often doesn't want to play with the toy out there, and she
does insist that I go out with her.)

Other times, at night when I read, she comes over with a tennis ball and
just mouths it standing near my knee, obviously talking about how round
the tennis ball is and how wet its pelt gets, if it still has one.

We can talk about that. I say ``You've got your tennis ball, you've
got your tennis ball,'' and take it from her gently and give it back
repeatedly.  She mouths it more intensely then, responding to my
appreciation.

This is clearly a conversation to her, and I keep thinking of the
meanings of grasping and its kin.

When we're outside, and not doing formal exercises, she'll make
sentences, carrying as many toys at once as she can and trotting
around delightedly.  I name each toy she has, and she prances
even more.

If I've been typing for a long time, sometimes I'll find her lying
in the next room sleeping with her head surrounded by frisbee, tennis
balls, tug toys, footballs, and so forth, that seem to me like ideas
near her head.  She's gathered them there waiting for me
to finish.

Are toys ideas?  Have I erroneously taken objects near her head
to be like the ideas of them that I carry in my head?  That would
be a metaphor, taking one thing for another.  Perhaps precisely
what my Doberman has done.

Taking one thing for another.
From: horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Latin alphabet (was: Inventing a writing system?)
Date: 8 Apr 92 23:48:56 GMT
Article-I.D.: cs.1992Apr8.234856.1966
Organization: Computer "Science" Dept, Yale University

In article <8918@scott.ed.ac.uk>, iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski) writes:
<In article <1992Apr7.175015.16769@cis.ohio-state.edu> schuyler@violin.cis.ohio-state.edu (Carlton Schuyler) writes:
<
<[Hungarian:]
<<	gy, ty, ny are palatal (I don't know which of these are
<<                                coronal; I suspect that gy is not and
<<                                the other two are)
<
<Wrong, whatever you mean by "palatal".  /gy/, /ty/ and /ny/ have the
<same place of articulation.

Post-alveolar, that is.  (Damn, Ivan, why won't you let me use the word
`palatal'?)

<The letter "y" is reserved to be used only
<as a second element in digraphs.

... and pseudo-foreign spellings of names, and a few loan-words, and old
Hungarian spellings, and....

<<	cs sz zs dzs  are  ch, s (Hungarian s = sh), zh, g/j/dzh in one
<<                      commonly used transliteration scheme. 
<<
<<In all the cases above, the letters in the digraph can never (or
<<nearly never) occur adjacent to each other.

Not true.  I have a good example for `zs' but can't remember what it is.

<<is interesting
<<when you look at the pronunciation of a lot of speakers of Indian
<<English.  They may pronounce th as a distributed voiceless aspirated
<<dental stop.  <...>  <...> since the
<<English use of th for the interdental fricative does correspond
<<"logically" to what the sound actually resembles, there is a dialect
<<of English which does not have (theta) in which the orthography
<<nevertheless makes a kind of "sense".  Who follows this train of
<<thought??
<
<I'm afraid I don't.

Neither do I.  The voiced and voiceless (inter)dental fricatives don't occur
in any Indian languages.  (Now Ivan is going to refute that statement with
a long list of Indian languages.  :-))  But many Indian languages (including
Hindi, the most widely spoken language in India [unless English has taken over
:-)]) do have a distinction between aspirated and unaspirated [t].  What's
your point?

					--Scott

-- 
Scott Horne                               ...!{harvard,cmcl2,decvax}!yale!horne
horne@cs.Yale.edu      SnailMail:  Box 7196 Yale Station, New Haven, CT   06520
203 436-1848                Residence:  Rm 1848 Silliman College, New Haven, CT
ZANG4 HAN4 YI4 JIA1 / GONG4 JIAN4 ZHONG1HUA2!
From: lmebgo@eds.ericsson.se (Bengt G{llmo)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Why are English infinitives so different?
Date: 7 Apr 92 11:29:27 GMT
Organization: LM Ericsson, Stockholm, Sweden

In article <1992Apr5.190053.12271@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>, 
ritley@uimrl7.mrl.uiuc.edu writes:
> 
> It has always perplexed me that the
> infinitives in English are referred to with the word 'to',
> such as 'to be', 'to make', etc., but that the infinitives
> in some other languages are often referred to as single words
> (sein, machen; ser, hacer; etc.).
> 
> Might anyone know why this is so, or whether there are
> other languages which refer to their infinitives as English does?

Other languages have 'infinitive marks' also: zu sein (German)
att vara (Swedish).

Bengt 
-- 
Bengt Gallmo                        e-mail: lmebgo@eds.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.
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: tchrist@convex.com (Tom Christiansen)
Subject: grammatical gender
Organization: Engineering, CONVEX Computer Corp., Richardson, Tx., USA
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1992 19:42:09 GMT
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by a user at CONVEX Computer
              Corp. The opinions expressed are those of the user and
              not necessarily those of CONVEX.

In a discussion group the other day, the question of grammatical 
gender came up.  We all could cite plenty of inflected, Indo-european
languages that possess this feature, but when the questions of "what
good is it" came up, no one had a good answer.  Does it provide some
sort of useful redundancy?  

thanks,

--tom
Newsgroups: sci.lang