HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: question of 'fluency'
Date: 27 Jan 93 04:12:52 CST
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services

In article <1993Jan25.112426.1@unca.edu>, bthurman@unca.edu writes:
> since the term 'fluency' seems so subjective, it has been my practice in
> dealing with students who ask "are you fluent in greek?" or the like to reply:
> sometimes, especially when i'm over there, persons will come and speak to me in
> greek in my dreams.  if a person dreams, one may suppose that one could be
> approaching fluency when this happens.
> would welcome critique of this as a response, if reasons accompany response.
> thanks, bearded Bill Thurman

One thing that has often occurred to me is that fluency is a rather
useless indicator of a person's command of a language, at least in
view of what we normally think of as "command of a language."  We've
all known people who can babble away with great ease in a language
they are butchering wildly.  They have either simply lost their
inhibition without gaining command, or have internalized what I guess
ESL theorists call an "interlanguage."

Conversely we've all known careful and hesitating speakers who rarely
make a grammatical mistake (probably because it matters to them), and
we might want to allow that these are very compentent speakers but not
fluent ones.

As for dreaming in a language or of a language, in the 60s I ran into
mystically inclined romantics who were convinced they understood
Sanskrit in their dreams or while they were under the influence, but
I'm here to say they did not...!

-Ken
-- 
miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu | Nobody can explain everything to everybody.
opinions are my own      | G. K. Chesterton
From: swf@tools3teradata.com (Stan Friesen)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Subject and object confusion (Was: Re: "n'ha"...)
Date: 28 Jan 93 16:52:33 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: NCR Teradata Database Business Unit

In article <1993Jan25.093751.5191@memstvx1.memst.edu>, connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu writes:
|> 
|> Strangely, an SVO reading for that example is quite unlikely, in my opinion.
|> Indefinite subjects can precede the verb, though they are not likely to
|> do so; but there's a logical problem: SVO would, to me, entail that the
|> cat then took some action because it had seen Tom: "A cat saw Tom and
|> reported this to the proper authorities."  However, I wouldn't
|> find this entailment with a verb such as _beobachten_ 'observe', though
|> I don't know why not.  The normal way to say 'A cat saw Tom' is:
|> 
|> 	Dann hat eine Katze Tom gesehen.
|> 
|> This can only be read as XVSO, not XVOS: word order disambiguates in
|> this instance (which is not to say that XVOS is not legal with a few
|> verbs such as _gefallen_ 'be pleasing', provided that O is definite).

Interesting.  This seems to make a case for German being fundamentally an
[X]VSO language, with the initial position tending to indicate topicality.

That is, your interpretation of 'Eine Katze sah Tom' is as a form that
*introduces* a new topical entity, the cat.  (Which is only meaningful
if you intend to say *more* about the cat, as you suggest above].

The alternate form has a 'filler' (dann) in the initial position, and thus lacks
any topical element.  I tend to read the 'dann ..' form as being rather
generic, or 'remote'.

-- 
sarima@teradata.com			(formerly tdatirv!sarima)
  or
Stanley.Friesen@ElSegundoCA.ncr.com
From: hubey@pilot.njin.net (Hubey)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Correlation Lengths of Language Changes
Date: 22 Jan 93 02:56:24 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.


The timing could be off if the time-scaling factor is not taken
into account.  I promise I'll have the paper ready soon. What 
I promised to send is almost finished.
-- 

	mark	

   hubey@amiga.montclair.edu         hubey@apollo.montclair.edu
   hubey@pilot.njin.net               ...!rutgers!pilot!hubey    
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: rudolf@sirius.UVic.CA (Rudolf  Schnorr Von Carolsfeld)
Subject: Linguistics fonts for Windows
Keywords: Font
Organization: University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 93 02:49:22 GMT

Since I haven't seen a FAQ posting, could anybody tell me if an FTP
site exists with a TrueType font that contains IPL?

Thanks in advance!

Rudi
____________________________________________________
       
                 rudolf@sirius.uvic.ca

    Rudolf Schnorr von Carolsfeld
    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
    P.O. Box 3055 Victoria, B.C. Canada V8W 3P6
    Telephone: +1 604 721 6043
    Facsimile: +1 604 721 6052 
 
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com (Richard Wojcik,snake)
Subject: Re: yacc like grammar of natural languages?
Reply-To: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com
Organization: Research & Technology
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 17:35:04 GMT

In article 728031611@risken, hansg@risken.vd.volvo.se (Hans Granqvist) writes:
>This may be a strange question, but having read in the latest issue of
>BYTE about Machine Translation, I thought, why not express the source
>language in yacc to resolve all ambiguities like "the can can be filled"
>where "can" is noun or verb?

YACC, which stands for "Yet Another Compiler Compiler", can be used with LEX to
create simple natural language front ends for programs, but it is extremely 
limited when it comes to resolving ambiguities.  The reason that it works well
for implementing artificial language compilers is that such languages, by design,
contain ambiguities that can be resolved locally.  That is, you don't need to 
resort to context or pragmatic knowledge to figure out which of the possible
meanings are optimal.  For example, the Lisp expression (list list) uses the
ambiguous symbol "list", but the compiler sees the first instance as a function
name and the second as a variable name.  Word order alone resolves the ambiguity.
Your example "the can can be filled" happens to contain an ambiguity of this sort,
and that is why it looks like YACC can resolve it.  Unfortunately, natural language
tends to prefer ambiguity of the following sort, which cannot be resolved by looking
at local conditions in the sentence:  
		"Mary saw that gas can explode."
		                   ^^^--verb or noun?

>I realise the enormity of such a scheme, but I would
>very much like to know if anybody has produced such a front end for
>an MT device.

Not for an MT device, but for a natural language command language.  At Boeing, we
have a need to write machine-interpretable tests in English.  Implementations of
such "English Test Languages" have been written in BASIC and YACC/LEX.  Our natural
language group also converted our NL parser to read simple BNF rules, and I wrote
a simple "semantic grammar" front end with just context free rules.  The reason that
this works is that the test language is designed to be unambiguous.  It looks like
English, but its expressions are as unambiguous as a programming language.  

MT is too difficult a problem for this kind of solution because the input text tends
to be far less constrained.  One of the reasons that NLP researchers like to work
with MT is that it forces you to do everything--language understanding and language
generation.  Therefore, it is less tractable than activities such as NL front ends
to data bases, grammar checking, etc.  YACC and LEX are not really suitable for MT
applications.

-----
Disclaimer:  Opinions expressed above are not those of my employer.

    Rick Wojcik   (rwojcik@boeing.com)   Seattle, WA

Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: pcj1@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Pierre Jelenc)
Subject: Re: Esperanto a natural language?
Reply-To: pcj1@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Pierre Jelenc)
Organization: Columbia University
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 12:59:22 GMT

In article <C1B2s5.51r@well.sf.ca.us> dasher@well.sf.ca.us (D Anton Sherwood) writes:
>In article <1993Jan19.160056.46522@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:
>>
>>Bernard Comrie did a quite readable book on linguistic universals;
>>it's a little out of date now but not much.  Unfortunately I can't
>>recall the exact title, but check the author in a good university
>>library or check Books in Print.
>
>"Language Universals and Linguistic Typology".  I'd give the ISBN but I've
>lent my copy to autarch@well.sf.ca.us -- email him if you want it!
>

ISBN 0 631 12618 X   for the paperback, and ....12971-5 for the hardback
(in the yellow edition of 1981)

Pierre Jelenc                        pcj1@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu 
                                    Columbia University, New York
From: JAREA@UKCC.UKY.EDU
Subject: Re: Vowel systems of ....
Organization: University of Kentucky
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 02:31:50 GMT

In article <Jan.21.22.05.32.1993.1068@pilot.njin.net>
hubey@pilot.njin.net (Hubey) writes:
 
>
>
>Hello again :-)
>
>Can anyone direct me to a book which might have vowel systems
>including dipthongs of all languages (and maybe hopefully of
>consonants).
>
>
 
Ian Maddieson at UCLA has done a work, which may not include diphthongs.
Then Hockett's _Manual of Phonology_ has a let of inventories.  However
these may not be arranged to suit your needs.
 
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: goer@ellis.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz)
Subject: Re: yacc like grammar of natural languages?
Reply-To: goer@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 05:31:30 GMT

In article <8749@charon.cwi.nl> aeb@cwi.nl (Andries Brouwer) writes,
regarding problems turning YACC loose on natural languages:

>>(1) There are phenomena in natural language (including Swedish, I
>>believe) which are provably not context free.  Since the syntax used
>>in YACC is less than context-free (LALR(1), I believe), one of the
>>difficulties would be to change the syntax people used with the
>>translator.

>I do not think this is really a problem.

I see what you mean, i.e. that non context-free phenomena in natural
languages are few and far between.  But we're straying from the point.
The point is that you can't use YACC to handle natural languages.
YACC uses a LALR(1) table generation algorithm, and rejects all but
a relatively small subset of context free grammars.  In particular,
the parser cannot handle ambiguity in the tables.  You can remedy this
problem by using a parallel parser (a la Masaru Tomita), but only for
grammars with a fairly low level of ambiguity.  For high-ambiguity
situations, you're not doing any better than a chart parser.  So even
if you could extend YACC you would not be getting yourself very far
(unless you wanted to restrict yourself to a relatively small subset
of some natural language).

-- 

   -Richard L. Goerwitz              goer%midway@uchicago.bitnet
   goer@midway.uchicago.edu          rutgers!oddjob!ellis!goer
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: jardar@swix.nvg.unit.no (Jardar Eggesboe Abrahamsen)
Subject: Searcing similar cases
Summary: girls and boys treat each their palatals oppositely
Organization: Nettverksgruppa - University of Trondheim, Norway
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 93 11:39:56 GMT


In 1991 I did some syncronic research on palatals and depalatalisation in a 
Norwegian dialect. The palatals were these:

/N/ - voiced prepalatal nasal
/L/ - voiced prepalatal lateral
/K/ - unvoiced prepalatal affricate
/G/ - voiced prepalatal affricate
/j/ - voiced mediopalatal approximant (or semivowel or glide or whatever)

Historically both /N/ and /L/ come from the corresponding alveolar or dental 
/n/ and /l/ in Old Norse. Although the palatals first were only the long 
allophones of the alveolars/dentals, they must now be considered to be 
seperate phonemes.

/K/, /G/ and /j/ are historically velars, the palatals now occuring at the 
end of a noun stem, but before the enclitic definite article (which in Old 
Norse always began with a front vowel). Thus the modern dialect has a 
morphophonologic alternation between velar and palatal:

/k(:)/ - /K(:)/  e.g.  /bu:k/ - /bu:Ka/  (book - the book)
/g:/   - /G:/    e.g.  /veg:/ - /veG:i/  (wall - the wall)
/g/    - /j/     e.g.  /sa:g/ - /sa:ja/  (saw - the saw)

However, in the "standard pronunciation" of Norwegian there is neither 
palatalisation of the alveolars/dentals nor of the velars, this being 
supported by the orthography. Hence the young speakers of the dialect have 
begun substituting the palatals with the original alveolars/dentals and 
velars.

I wanted to see which palatals that suffered the first death, and which that 
were most fit to live longer, and I observed 30 boys and 30 girls. One would 
expect the depalatalisation to show the same sex internal tendencies for all 
of the palatals, but it didn't. The girls were more reluctant to the change 
from palatal to velar than the boys, and the boys were more reluctant to the 
alveolar/dental depalatalisation than the girls. Or in other words: The 
typical boy would say /diN:a bu:ka/ ("that book") and the typical girl would 
say /din:a bu:Ka/, whereas an old speaker would say /diN:a bu:Ka/. (However, 
in summa the boys _did_ have the most palatals.)

So, we have observed that boys and girls treat each their half of the 
palatal sounds oppositely. If anyone on this newsgroup has any knowledge of 
similar cases, please mail me at jardar@swix.nvg.unit.no writing in English, 
German, Esperanto, Norwegian, Swedish or Danish.


-- 
Jardar Eggesboe Abrahamsen            "Ili rigardis min kiel sian
studanto pri lingvistiko               moralan chefon."
jardar@swix.nvg.unit.no                                (L.L. Zamenhof)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Subject: Re: Esperanto a natural language?
Organization: SPSS Inc.
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 18:02:55 GMT

In article <1993Jan20.160900.46570@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes (quoting me):
>> Whether that something is
>> important or worth calling the UG Police in on is another question.
>
>I was trying to suggest in my post that in the case of E it is not!

No need to be so reasonable about it.  :)

>> Do Esperanto learners import their first-language phonology into Esperanto?
>> E.g., do English speakers pronounce "patro" with an aspirated p, Spanish
>> and French speakers with an unaspirated one?
>
>Yes, there is this tendency.  Ideally, however, one tries to avoid
>giving away one's nationality; at least I do...<:->

What then is the "ideal" realization of (say) p?  Aspirated or unaspirated?
Is t dental or alveolar?  Is an advanced /k/ before /i/ ok?  How do we know?

>> [Esperanto's Victorianness seen in Z's]
>> relative lack of interest in syntax.  (Would any modern linguist dream
>> of fully describing the syntax of a language in 16 rules?)  
>
>I don't happen to have anything around here that contains the 16
>rules, but I don't remember them having anything to say about syntax.
>Weren't they just about the morphology?

Most of them are, but there's just a bit of syntax (e.g. placement of 
adpositions, use of case, description of the passive, proscription of double
negatives).  It seems obvious Zamenhof hadn't read Chomsky...

>> As a result, Esperanto syntax is about as idiosyncratic and complex 
>> as that of any natural language.
>
>I dunno about that.  *Any* natural language?  I think German syntax
>could grind E syntax into cole slaw...<:->

Not knowing German, I couldn't say.  Strike "any" above and read "the average".
I'm just pointing out that Esperanto's simple morphology doesn't imply 
simplicity of syntax.

Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: jbm@hal.trl.OZ.AU (Jacques Guy)
Subject: Re: Subject and object confusion (Was: Re: "n'ha"...)
Organization: Telecom Research Labs, Melbourne, Australia
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 23:30:44 GMT

connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu writes:


>This shortcoming is hardly peculiar.  *Many* languages lose the ability
>to distinguish subject and object in certain situations.  Here's a
>German example:

>	Das ist die Frau, die meine Grossmutter ermordet hat.
>	'That is the woman who killed my grandmother.'
>	'That is the woman whom my grandmother killed.'

Yes, so in Latin (e.g. Catullus: dic mi te me amare), but in the
Breton case, if memory serves me (I can't find my Breton grammar, 
koc'h!) that confusion could arise in the simplest sentence, i.e.
a single, main clause. 

I must try harder to locate that grammar.
From: zia@paul.rutgers.edu (ashar Zia)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Silk worm gender
Date: 22 Jan 93 14:20:49 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

testing 123..
Newsgroups: sci.bio
From: ken@iat.holonet.net (Ken Easlon)
Subject: Re: "Falling" Asleep
Organization: HoloNet National Internet Access BBS: 510-704-1058/modem
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 05:34:06 GMT

In article <106066@netnews.upenn.edu>,
rowe@pender.ee.upenn.edu (Mickey Rowe) writes:

>But seriously, since we're back to a public forum, does *anybody* else 
>understand what it means to say that your "dream" head and your real 
>head are lined up?  My dreams don't seem to exist in the same space as 
>my waking life, which is why I've lost track of what this is supposed 
>to mean... 

Allow me to recap.  This thread started out with Ruth Ginzberg's question: 

> Does anyone know what causes the sensation (when just falling asleep) 
> of sudden literal falling, followed by a startle reaction that wakes 
> you right up? 

I opined that I think it's associated with loss of gravity perception (I
actually said disconnection of gravity sensors) in the sleep state, going
on to explain (vainly) the difference between a sense of "down" in dreams
verses the perception of gravity in the waking state.

In arguing that sleep "down" is not true gravity down I resorted to the
Easlon theory of imagery orientation, sleep verses waking, and incurred the
disagreement of Mickey Rowe.  

As I understand it, Mickey's view is that the dream head might be at any
random orientation, but lines up with the real head upon awakening, giving
the illusion that the dream world is at a ninety degree angle with the real
world.

My view is that the dream head and real head are always in alignment, and
that the 90 degree relationship between the real world and the dream world
is actual and not illusory.

My primary data for this belief is a lot of experience in a hypnagogic
state where I can see dream imagery and real world imagery at the same
time, and they are at right angles.  There is no sense of shifting head
orientation.  

My backup argument is that conceptual imagery has a top and bottom which is
usually aligned with the top and bottom of the head.

In any event, I think Mickey and I agree that the sense of "down" in dreams
is imaginary.  This would be consistent with my explanation of Ginzberg's
falling sensation as being the normal sleep-time loss of gravity perception
at a time before sleep has fully arrived.

As regards concept/dream orientation (the angle of a conceptual or dream
image with respect to the head),  I'm willing to go on talking about it as
long as anybody wants to.


--
Ken Easlon
ken@holonet.net
From: swf@tools3teradata.com (Stan Friesen)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: family of Drosophila spp.
Date: 22 Jan 93 18:20:39 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: NCR Teradata Database Business Unit

In article <1993Jan15.173428.444@aurora.com>, isaak@aurora.com (Mark Isaak) writes:
|> If they're going into so much detail, then why didn't they include
|> "Schizophora/Acalyptratae/Ephydroidea/Drosophilidae" between Cyclorrhapha
|> and Drosophila?  (There's probably a subfamily which could be added as
|> well, but I don't know it offhand.)

If there is the rules require it to be Drosophilinae.

-- 
sarima@teradata.com			(formerly tdatirv!sarima)
  or
Stanley.Friesen@ElSegundoCA.ncr.com
From: johns@m.mscs.mu.edu (John Simms)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Lorenz and Number Recognition in Birds
Date: 24 Jan 1993 13:05:17 GMT
Organization: Marquette University - Department MSCS
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: m.mscs.mu.edu

Long ago I read a story, by Konrad Lorenz, I think, that concerned number
recognition in birds.  As I remember it, Lorenz wanted to study a certain
group of birds.  He built a blind, but no matter how long he stayed in it, the
birds knew he was in there and were distressed.  So he got the bright idea of
taking a friend along with him into the blind, and then having the friend
leave by himself.  No joy, the birds still knew he was in there.  So he
brought two friends with him.  They entered the blind together, they waited
awhile, and then the two friends left.  Still no joy.  He tried three friends
and then four friends and still no luck.  Finally, he tried five friends (or
something like that), and it worked:  the friends left and the birds were no
longer disturbed.

Does anyone know where this story is?  I looked for it in "King Solomon's Ring"
and in "On Aggression" and couldn't find it (I could have overlooked it).

Also, what else is known about number recognition in animals?  How much
"mathematics" can animals do, especially chimpanzees or gorillas?

I don't normally read this newsgroup, so I'd appreciate replies by E-mail,
though I will stay on for a while in case there is any interest in a general
discussion of the subject.

Thanks.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
| John C. Simms                    | Internet........: johns@mscs.mu.edu  |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: bultman@dgw.rws.nl (G.W.Bultman)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Scientific --> Common names for spiders
Date: 28 Jan 1993 08:54:09 -0600
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu


Hi,

I have a list a scientific names for spiders (possibly a tick among them)
that I would like to know the common name of.

Can anyone help me or point me towards a book/person/institution that
can help me?

::  Gamasellus Racovitzai ( either a spider type or a tick)
::  Alaskozetes Antarcticus
::  Cryptopygus Antarcticus
::  Notiomaso Australus
::  Hydromedion Sparsutum
::  Parochlus Steinenii

Thanks,
Gert.

--

    o                                                                o   
  / | \    Gert Bultman <bultman@dgw.rws.nl>   Koningskade 4       / | \  
 o--o--o   Tidal Waters Division               2596 AA The Hague  o--o--o 
  \ | /    Rijkswaterstaat                     The Netherlands     \ | /  
    o                                                                o
From: rowe@pender.ee.upenn.edu (Mickey Rowe)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: The size of a cell (was Re: MRNA)
Date: 21 Jan 93 20:28:28 GMT
Organization: University of Pennsylvania

In article <C17E3y.GCE@world.std.com> eb3@world.std.com 
     (Edwin Barkdoll) writes:

>In article <1759@tdat.teradata.COM> swf@tools3teradata.com 
    (Stan Friesen) writes:

>>Now, since neurons are amoung the largest cells in the body,
>
>	Neurons are also among the _smallest_ cells in the in the body
>-- granule cells of the cerebellum.  

Thanks, Edwin.  That was actually the point of my objection to Ken's
statement.  I was protesting the idea that neurons are generally
larger (volumetrically) than other types of cells.  Your points about
DNA content not being the same in all cells is also well taken, but
that wasn't what I was on about at the time...

>Granule cells have been estimated
>to number ~10^11 which I think Mickey pointed out is about that
>estimated in the rest of the brain.

Well, actually what you're probably remembering is my quote of Larry
Palmer, "it's been estimated that there are 10^12 neurons in the human
nervous system, 10^13 of which are in the cerebellum".  Or perhaps
you're remembering Ken's posting of the 10^11 estimate that made me
post the joke in the first place.  

>>except for certain muscle fibers and (as mentioned above) eggs, they must
>>clearly have less DNA per unit weight than other cells.

Come on, Stan, you should know me better than that by now...

>Edwin Barkdoll

Mickey Rowe     (rowe@pender.ee.upenn.edu)