HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: leva@ghost.dsi.unimi.it (paolo leva)
Subject: Kipling (the 6 servants)
Organization: Computer Science Dep. - Milan University
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 18:10:03 GMT

Has anybody heard of a short poem by R. Kipling in which he talks about the six 
servants which are What, Where, Why, How, Who, and When?

I only got an awful translation, may you please send me the original english 
text? it should not be longer than four lines.

Unfortunately, I don't know where it comes from. Someone told me that it must 
be on the jungle book but I'm not sure. 

Thank you

Paolo

leva@ghost.dsi.unimi.it

Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: oneil@cwis.unomaha.edu (Sharon O'Neil)
Subject: Re: Classical Latin and Vulgate (was Re: Morphological ...)
Organization: University of Nebraska at Omaha
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 02:42:44 GMT

alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson) writes:

>In article <1993Jan8.151334.6482@desire.wright.edu>, w0318@desire writes:

>>Also, for you Latin buffs, what are the general differences between Classical
>>Latin (of Cicero, say) and the Vulgate?

>Subject matter.

I think Cicero's Latin is harder to read.

When I took New Testament Greek, there was the Greek on one side and the Latin
on the other side of my Bible.  At least I didn't feel like I was totally
cheating when I got stuck.  :-)  (My prof said if I was going to use a "pony,"
it might as well be in Latin.  :-)

Sharon
oneil@cwis.unomaha.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: petex@cix.compulink.co.uk (Peter Christian)
Subject: Re: Morphological development of the genitive case in German
Reply-To: petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 00:05:00 +0000


> 
> There is a problem here: in German compounding, masculines and neuters
> generally do not add -s, though some do.  Conversely, while many femi-
> nines do add -s, many others do not: nouns in -e more usually add
> -n or else drop the -e.

True enough, but I was concerned to find *some* analogy which would
explain the -s-, and although it may be true that they *generally* do
not (though I'd like to see the statistics), usage is so fluid that I
don't think it's a fatal objection

> And a second problem: genitives can still precede nouns in German, as
> the second example above proves (it's the title of a play written after
> the Second World War).

Ah yes, but it's surely recognized as archaic/literary, certainly not
everyday usage.

>
> A final mystery is why *all* German feminines lack genitive -s.  In Indo-
> European, the morphology of masculine and feminine i-stems was identical,
> and had -s,
> as may readily be seen by looking at Greek and Latin.  But in Old High 
> German they're different for some reason.  To wit:
> 
>                         Masc.           Fem.
>         Nom. Sing.      gast 'guest'    anst 'favor'
>         Gen. Sing.      gastes          ensti
>         Nom. Plural     gesti           ensti
> 
> Somehow -s survived in the masculine, but not in the feminine.  Apparently
> the patterning of *other* masc. resp. fem. categories is to blame.

Could the answer lie in the coalescence of the masc. a-stems and
i-stems in the singular? Perhaps the fem has the `correct' reflex of
IE *-eis and the masc has taken over the reflex of *-os from the
a-stems. Just a thought, I haven't checked the phonology.

Peter
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Christian                         
  Dept of European Languages              peter@gold.ac.uk
  Goldsmiths' College, London.            petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Chaire -> chaise
Date: 9 Jan 93 16:11:44 GMT
Organization: Enea Data AB

Jacques Guy (jbm@hal.trl.OZ.AU) writes:
>Z to r is also strange; once again,

As already been mentioned, this is exactly what happened in North-
Germanic.

>it's usually the other way around as far as I know, e.g. French 
>chaire --> chaise,

Chaire -> chaise is a two-of-its-kind, the other being "be'sicles"
from "be'ryl". However, there was a general change in French in
the 16th century where intervocalic -r- became -z-, so there was
"mazi", "Pazi" etc. According to Erasme this was to blame high-
society Parisian ladies, but the pronounciation was noted outside
of Paris as well. Nevertheless the change was rejected, and the two
words above were the only to be affected.

Source: Henriette Walter: "Le francais dans tous les sens".
-- 
Erland Sommarskog - ENEA Data, Stockholm - sommar@enea.se
Jag gav en k{ck tjeck en check.
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: petex@cix.compulink.co.uk (Peter Christian)
Subject: Re: labio-velars to labials, but reverse?
Reply-To: petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1993 23:33:00 +0000


> Just a reminder that x became f rather unpredictably in English, as in
> laugh, rough, tough, trough and others, but not, for example, though,
> through and others.

enough & bough both come from the voiced counterpart of x (how do you
show it in 7-bit ASCII?). Is there any reason for this uncertainty
between f and 0?

Peter



----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Christian                         
  Dept of European Languages              peter@gold.ac.uk
  Goldsmiths' College, London.            petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: petex@cix.compulink.co.uk (Peter Christian)
Subject: Re: Proto-languages: what are the rules?
Reply-To: petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1993 23:33:00 +0000


> It is quite easy to explain that two formerly
> different sounds merge into one, but that one sound in the _same environment_
> splits cannot be explained.

I agree that in classical comparative linguistics this would be
inexplicable, and one would have to search for unsuspected
environment differences (cf. Verner's Law). Or grammatical function
might be important - though some might argue that that is
environment, too.

But we now know, thanks to the sociolinguists, that although sound
changes may well end up without exceptions, they may proceed not only
environment by environment, but even word by word. Look at the Ripuarian German diale
cts, which have
unshifted Gmc t in `dat' and `wat' but all other Gmc t > s,
including, I think I'm right in saying, `etwas'. One might debate
about the reasons for this particular example, but in principle
either partial change or influence of neighbouring dialects would
account for this offence against neo-grammarian sound laws.

Peter
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Christian                         
  Dept of European Languages              peter@gold.ac.uk
  Goldsmiths' College, London.            petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: scc@rlgvax.Reston.ICL.COM (Stephen Carlson)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Naming Convention for Part of Speech Subclasses
Date: 12 Jan 93 19:42:25 GMT
Organization: International Computers Ltd


It appears that Ben was asking for the traditional nomenclature of certain
grammatical categories--but not wishing to open up old linguistic wounds
dating back to the time that Latin grammar dominated English grammar.  I am
presenting here the terminology that has been applied to English:

In article <C0pGEI.86M@inews.Intel.COM> bongalon@tcad05.intel.com (Ben Bongalon) writes:
>|> In-Reply-To: <C0IEnu.Ew4@inews.Intel.COM> bongalon@tcad05.intel.com
>(Ben Bongalon)
>|> > 
>|> > Where can I find references for the names of part-of-speech
>|> > subclasses.  For example,
>|> > 
>|> > for Nouns,
>|> >    (subject,object)     ???

case [English has nominative (I), possessive (mine), and objective (me)]

>|> >    (common,proper)      ???

gender  [Most European languages have masculine and feminine, sometimes neuter]

>|> >    (singular,plural)    case(?)

number   [Homeric Greek also has dual for two.]

>|> >    Verbs,
>|> >    (past,present,future)        tense(?)

tense

>|> >    (singular,plural)            case(?)

number

Finite verbs also have:
	person -- 1st (I), 2nd (you), 3rd (he/she/it).
	mood -- indicative (stating a fact), imperative (giving an order), or
			subjuctive (stating a wish).
	voice -- active (grammatical subject is the agent) or passive (subject is
			 the patient).
	aspect -- perfect (completed) or imperfect (ongoing, habitual, or
			  continuous)

Non-finite verbs can be infinitives, participles, or gerunds.

Please note that other languages have different categories and even different
parts of speech.

-- 
Stephen Carlson           | ICL OFFICEPOWER Center    | In theory, theory and
scc@rlgvax.reston.icl.com | 11490 Commerce Park Drive | practice are the same.
..!uunet!rlgvax!scc       | Reston, VA  22091         |    (703) 648-3300
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: petex@cix.compulink.co.uk (Peter Christian)
Subject: Re: The Days Of The Week In Latin
Reply-To: petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 00:20:00 +0000


> 6 Teutonic gods and 1 Roman god.

Another non-Germanic God who turns up in German is Ares who is
represented in German dialect words for Tuesday: ergetag, erchtag,
ertag & erntag according to Kluge's etymological dictionary. (Never
heard these myself - anyone know if people actually use them?) Kluge
says it's a south-eastern (i.e. Bavarian) word & reflects East
Germanic influence. Since Ares is a Greek God rather than a Roman one
that makes sense. I wonder what the other Gothic day names are. I
can't remember coming across any reference to them.

Peter

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Christian                         
  Dept of European Languages              peter@gold.ac.uk
  Goldsmiths' College, London.            petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: mikak@microsoft.com (Mike Kortelainen)
Subject: Re: Finnish-Hungarian correspondences (was: Re: Om spr}kenas uppkomst)
Date: 05 Jan 93 18:50:38 GMT
Organization: Microsoft Corp.

In article <2560@cix.cict.fr> clary@xdata.cnrm.meteo.fr wrote:
> In article <8491@charon.cwi.nl>, aeb@cwi.nl (Andries Brouwer) asks for
> > ::Hu. h'az / Fi. kota (house)  [borrowed? cf. Haus]
> 
> It says the relationship with the Proto-Indo-European word should be
> further examined (so it is not so sure, it seems).
>
> > ::Hu. l'ud / Fi. lintu (goose)
> 
> -- Olivier Clary

I'm sorry, this may seem a bit like nit-picking, but some of the
Finnish words have been given wrong(ish) translations into English.
(I can't say anything about the Hungarian, or the equivalence between
the two lexical items).

"kota" is actually the name for a teepee-like dwelling; (I don't know
if this meaning has changed, but...)
The word for "house" in Finnish is "Talo".

"lintu" means "bird" in Finnish, not "goose".
"goose" is "hanhi" in Finnish.

	--Mika

*************************************************************************
*Mika Kortelainen                                     mikak@microsof.com*
*Microsoft WPG Ireland                                                  *
*************************************************************************
*A Finnish polar bear hunter stranded in Ireland, a country with no     *
*polar bears                                                            *
*************************************************************************
*I have a deal with my employers; we don't speak for each other         *
*************************************************************************
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: petex@cix.compulink.co.uk (Peter Christian)
Subject: Re: Naming Convention for Part of Speech Subclasses
Reply-To: petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 20:19:00 +0000


> 
> Where can I find references for the names of part-of-speech
> subclasses.  For example,
> 
> for Nouns,
>    (subject,object)     ???
>    (common,proper)      ???
>    (singular,plural)    case(?)
> 
>    Verbs,
>    (past,present,future)        tense(?)
>    (singular,plural)            case(?)
> 
>    ...etc.

If this is a not a language-specific question, I'm not sure there is
an answer (well, there might be some really abstract stuff in the
literature on linguistic universals).

If it's a question about English, you might look at Geoffrey Leach,
S. Greenbaum & Jan Svartik (I think that's right) _A Grammar of
Contemporary English_ (*very* detailed, lots of tables for
clarification) or something similar.

But there are really three different things implied by your examples:
1.  common/proper noun divides nouns into two *categories* on the basis of
    their syntactic behaviour, whereas
2.  singular/plural distinguishes between different *forms* of the
    same word, while
3.  subject/object distinguishes between different syntactical
    *functions*.
I think most linguists would understand `sub-classes' to refer to
only the first of these, since only in that case are the sub-classes
mutually exclusive. You'll need to look at a reasonably anlytical
grammar for that sort of thing (see above!), and it should also have
all the other stuff, too.

Perhaps if you could explain what you need the terms for, it would be
possible to be more helpful.

Peter






----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Christian                         
  Dept of European Languages              peter@gold.ac.uk
  Goldsmiths' College, London.            petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Bah! to bhaashaa
Date: 11 Jan 93 09:39:21 -0600
Organization: Memphis State University

In article <C0nKMG.4vG@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>, hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:
> In article <1993Jan8.141523.4947@memstvx1.memst.edu> connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu writes:
>>Two comments:
> 
>>1. If you consult any professor of education, you will discover that it
>>has long been known that people read English by recognizing whole words.
>>In fact, it was at one time usua;lly taught that way: the "look-and-say"
>>method.  And most teachers do teach a lot of sight words.
> 
> You have misstated even the educationists; the claim is that good readers
> read by recognizing whole words.

I could have been clearer, but this is in fact what I wanted to say.

> And if you consult somebody else, you will be told that this is utter
> nonsense.  The "look-and-say" method of teaching produced a generation
> of illiterates, and set of the one successful revolution against the
> excesses of the educationists.  

Come, come: I never said that this was a *good* way to teach reading.
As for the "generation of illiterates": I was born in 1941, so I should
be illiterate!  The see and say method may have been theoretically
awful, but we know this only because of the research of educationists.
And before you blame the education establishment, it might be well to
remember that the method was developed because the earlier method --
phonics -- was producing unsatisfactory results.  The simple truth is
that there is no perfect way to teach reading.  See and say isn't as 
bad as critics like to claim, and phonics isn't the perfect solution
either.

Do remember that my point was simply that English has, on occasion,
been taught as if phonics didn't matter -- which is what the original
poster suggested ought to be tried, if I understood him rightly (I was
about as angry as you obviously were when you replied).

> Now I do know how their the "reasoning" behind the educationists' claim.
> It has long been known that good readers take in even several words at a
> glance.  But this does not mean that the brain processes things this way.

I find your first sentence impossible to process.  But let it pass.  Any-
way: the brain processes all sorts of things that aren't there, which is
why we can sometimes understand code puzzles with only a few letters in
place.  Example: "You can kiss my ***", or its German equivalent, "Du
kannst mich ... "  Or fewer letters yet.  (By the way: these are just
convenient examples, not personal comments!)

> Also, I believe that most readers of this group are aware that, no matter
> what language is being read, the brain carries out the processing which
> recognizes roots and modifications.  It is this ability to use structure
> which enables the efficient learning and use of language, not memorizing
> lots of minor variations.
 
Nu?

--Leo Connolly
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: petex@cix.compulink.co.uk (Peter Christian)
Subject: Re: Definitions of terms that have bothered Mark Hubey
Reply-To: petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 20:20:00 +0000



> regular:  Predictable by historical or comparative expectation.

I'm not querying the definition, but some people might be a bit
baffled by the use of the word `predictable' refering to something in
the past, where prediction in the normal sense doesn't apply. Perhaps
you could add an extra gloss, something along the lines of:

   `occurring (generally!) without exception in identical
   circumstances'

Peter
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Christian                         
  Dept of European Languages              peter@gold.ac.uk
  Goldsmiths' College, London.            petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: oneil@husc10.harvard.edu (John O'Neil)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Definitions of terms that have bothered Mark Hubey
Date: 8 Jan 93 05:33:54 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc10.ONEIL.93Jan7213354
Organization: Harvard Arts and Sciences Computer Services, Cambridge, MA
In-reply-to: alderson@cisco.com's message of Fri, 8 Jan 93 00:21:57 GMT

In article <1993Jan8.002157.20841@leland.Stanford.EDU> alderson@cisco.com (Rich Alderson) writes:

[omitting several sage definitions (not to disparage this one)]

	There are a number of ways to divvy up the field of linguistics.  One
	major division is that between synchronic and diachronic studies
	(Saussure 1916).  This is a distinction between the study of speech in
	a single time-frame versus the study of speech across time-frames.

That's one dimension.

	Across this dichotomy is a breakdown by special area of interest:

Phonetics to pragmatics -- that's the second dimension.

	The synchronic side is generally referred to as "theoretical" linguis-
	tics, although there are theories on the diachronic side as well.  This
	group of studies is susceptible of investigation by experimentation,
	either instrumented (as, for example, acoustic phonetics) or introspec-
	tive (as, for example, acceptability judgments in syntax).

	The diachronic side--the study of languages in a temporal dimension--
	uses the results garnered by "theoretical" linguistics, but in addition
	uses methodologies similar to those of other *historical* studies,
	methodologies which simply do not admit of mathematical manipulation.

You may want to consider a third dimension of labelling, instead of
just using the "theoretical" label.  That is, the dimension of 'pure'
linguistics versus psycho-, socio-, neuro-, mathematical, and
computational linguistics (along with other hyphenated variations
which I have neglected.)  Thus, we are able to give a label to such
sub-fields as diachronic socio-phonology, for example.

Along this dimension we might want to include 'theoretical'
linguistics, although the term 'theoretical' is used in a somewhat
unexpected way in linguistics, in comparaison to other sciences. In
physics, say, a theoretical physicists is usually occupied with
comparing different theories and their structures -- as if one were
comparing GB to LFG, for instance, or discussing the abstract
properties of some formalism.  However, this activity is usually
considered mathematical linguistics or formal language theory by
linguists, who reserve the term theoretical linguistics for activities
which are really more concerned with accounting for experimental or
observational data within a formalism.  I don't want to imply that
that's a bad thing, or that we linguists should change our usages to
conform with other fields, but I just wanted to bring it up.

--
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
From: connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: "Quomodo sedet sola civitas"
Date: 12 Jan 93 11:56:03 -0600
Organization: Memphis State University

In article <1993Jan12.164628.25117@netcom.com>, mdb@netcom.com (Mark Bisgeier) writes:
> Does anyone know the translation for this phrase, which appears in Waugh's
> "Brideshead Revisited"?

It translates "How does the city sit alone?" or "How alone does the city
sit?", but heaven knows if that's what it *means*.  That's why I don't
do literature!

(For those who wonder where I got the question mark: an indirect
question, "how alone the city sits", would have required the subjunctive
_sedeat_.)

Perhaps a better question: how do cities *sit*?  More usually they
lie or (sometimes) stand.

See why I don't do literature?

--Leo Rugiens
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: L629159@LMSC5.IS.LMSC.LOCKHEED.COM
Subject: Re: Origin of English?
Organization: Lockheed Missiles & Space Company, Inc.
Date: Fri, 08 Jan 93 13:33:31 PST


In article <10182@amsaa-cleo.brl.mil>, matt@amsaa-cleo.brl.mil (Matt Rosenblatt)
:And thanks to all those French- and Latin-type Romance words,
:an Englishman often has two or three ways to say something that
:a German, Dutchman, or Afrikaner on the one hand or a Mexican,
:Brazilian or Frenchman on the other hand may have only one way
:to say.  We've got more words than any other Germanic language.
:We've got more words than any other Indo-European language.
:In fact, we've got more words than any other language, period.
:That's another of the special virtues that English has.

I'm not sure that this is really a virtue.  Most languages do without
our badly overburdened lexicon, and of those that have a very long list
ov available words, a number generate them in a systematic manner, so that
unfamiliar words are immediately meaningful.  I believe that classical
Arabic has a pretty sizeable lexicon.  English has borrowed fairly
freely from other languages, but Arabic has very powerful active
word generators working from existing roots within the language.

Al Moore
From: clary@xdata.cnrm.meteo.fr (Olivier CLARY)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Origin of English?
Date: 8 Jan 93 08:57:31 GMT
Organization: Cnrm.Meteo-France
Keywords: clobbered; zillions; cut-plug

In article <10182@amsaa-cleo.brl.mil> matt@amsaa-cleo.brl.mil (Matt Rosenblatt) writes:
>English wound up with an easy-to-speak, easy-to-understand 
>isolated SVO structure.  That's one of its special virtues.

Easy-to-understand? This would rather stand for a language just the opposite,
with lots of marks for Object, Subject and redondancies in the Verb and
everywhere, so that things are clear and unambiguous. I saw many examples
of native Hungarian misunderstanding a complex sentence because of the lack
of Object marks and the omission of the relative "that"/"which"

>In fact, we've got more words than any other language, period.
>That's another of the special virtues that English has.  

A word is the thing between two spaces, right? So for two languages
with really different grammatical structures, a word in one language
is often several words in the other one and vice-versa. So the number
of words is surely not the number of different ideas as people may
naively think, the number and the complexity of ideas that can be
conveyed does not depend on the language but on the man.

>[...] Britain was multi-cultural (in the 
>best, hierarchical sense of multi-culturalism, as in the British
>India of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen) long before the term "multi-
>culturalism" was coined.  That's yet another special virtue of English.

Is Britain still multi-cultural in its language? Not more than any other
language accepting lots of borrowings, for instance English terminology
in French.

-- Olivier Clary