HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: lgorbet@carina.unm.edu (Larry P Gorbet ANTHROPOLOGY)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Animal Grammar
Date: 15 Apr 92 05:02:32 GMT
Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque

In article <1992Apr14.184221.29573@athena.cs.uga.edu> mcovingt@athena.cs.uga.edu (Michael A. Covington) writes:
>  That's exactly the point.  We're not saying animals are stupid; only
>  that the structure of _human_ language is not found in them.

*The* structure of human language?  I don't think you or maybe any of
us reading this newsgroup think human language has some single,
unifying (abstract) structure -- isn't this a belief shared among
G-B types and folks who call themselves "cognitive linguists"?  And
we certainly don't think its biological underpinnings have a single
origin (creationism anyone?).  Any more than other body parts of any
complexity do.  It's also true that the (entire) structure of human
digestion, locomotion, etc. are not found in any other animal.  There's
no coherent argument I've seen that the evolutionary bases of human
language are unique.  So it is at least not something that we can
rule out a priori that we can learn something about human language by
comparing it with other communication (and cognitive) systems used by
non-humans.  Not every human medical researcher cares about non-human
homologues, but that does not bear on the validity of those comparing
non-human systems.
From: hlin@cbnewsi.cb.att.com (hua.t.lin)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: inventing a writing system?
Date: 10 Apr 92 18:26:52 GMT
Article-I.D.: cbnewsi.1992Apr10.182652.14911
Distribution: usa
Organization: AT&T

In article <1992Apr10.173113.5044@cs.yale.edu> horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne) writes:
>
>The digits we use are not *Arabic*, but *Hindu-Arabic*.

To be more precise, the 10 symbols we use today for the digits
(0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9) were of arabic origin.
However, the decimal system was first commonly used by Indians.
The digits (those 10 symbols) as written in Indian languages
are different for different Indian languages. The arabic digits
are also commonly used in India.

- Lin
From: anderson@sapir.cog.jhu.edu (Steve Anderson)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Albanian Resources
Date: 7 Apr 92 19:29:15 GMT
Organization: Dept. of Cognitive Science, The Johns Hopkins University
In-reply-to: sf@88opensi.88open.ORG's message of 6 Apr 92 21:03:03 GMT

Two rather comprehensive sources:

Hetzer, Armin (1978). Lehrbuch der vereinheitlichten albanischen
Schriftsprache. Hamburg: Helmut Buske. [ISBN 3-87118-347-4].

Buchholtz, Oda, and Wilfried Fiedler (1987). Albanische Grammatik.
Leipzig: Verlag Enzyklopaedie. [ISBN 3-324-00025-4].

The first has a set of 20 lessons (ca. 130 pages), followed by about
100 pages of reference grammar, 25 pages of texts and 125 pages of
vocabularies, etc. The second is just a reference grammar - 561 pages
plus references. Both are in German, but what the hey, if you're going
to learn Albanian, German's no big deal... (I have no idea where you'd
find Buchholtz and Fiedler, now that the DDR is no more. I was in
Berlin at a good time.)

--Steve Anderson
From: blehr@idt.unit.no (Anders Blehr)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Why are English infinitives so different?
Date: 9 Apr 92 07:01:26 GMT
Reply-To: blehr@idt.unit.no (Anders Blehr)
Organization: Div. of CS & Telematics, Norwegian Institute of Technology

Bert Peeters writes:

|> Soren Harder wrote:
|> 
|> >Yes, the Scandinavian languages (Danish, Swedish, Norwegian). E.g. in
|> >Danish 'at se' (to see) or (are there any better examples, when
|> >explaining Danish infinitives in English :-) ): '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

Both make perfect sense.

That the infinitive markers are used somewhat differently in different
languages does not necessarily imply that they're not equivalent.

|> Dr Bert Peeters

- Anders.

-- 
 Anders Blehr      [blehr@idt.unit.no]       /   "No matter what mind is,
 Division of Computer Systems & Telematics  /   never mind what matter is."
 Norwegian Institute of Technology         /            - Einstein to Freud
    --- "I wish I was a fisherman, tumbling on the sea" (Mike Scott) ---
From: kwb@hplvec.LVLD.HP.COM (Keith Blackwell)
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 00:12:49 GMT
Subject: Re: Re: 8I8 (was Re: Chinese question)
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Co., Loveland, CO
Newsgroups: sci.lang

In sci.lang, hlin@cbnewsi.cb.att.com (hua.t.lin) writes:

    `Butterfly' is just an insect! It is not any kind of `butter'. It is not
    even a `fly', although a `fly' and a `butterfly' both flies. Similarly, a
    `hu2die2' is not a `hu2' or a `die2' but a `hu2-die2'. Yes, just like the
    word `butter-fly'.

I thought everyone knew that "butterfly" is simply a spoonerism
for "flutterby", which is what they do.

-- :-)
Keith Blackwell		(my employer has nothing to do with this)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Subject: Re: 8I8
Date: Mon, 06 Apr 1992 18:04:34 GMT
Organization: SPSS Inc.

In article <1992Apr02.183047.4547@spss.com> I wonder:
>How do you know when two Chinese words of identical pronunciation, written
>differently, are the same morpheme or not?  [...]
>But on what grounds do you associate these two hu2?  

Tak To has informed me via e-mail what was the basis of his suggestion that
hu2 "foreign" and the hu2 in hu2die2 "butterfly" might be the same morpheme:
that hu2die2 is often written in Classical Chinese without the "insect"
radical, that is, using the first hu2.  I find this very reasonable.

  |     |    +--+    For those who might be interested, the hu2 in hu2die2
+-+-+  -+-   |__|    looks something like this.  Like most Chinese characters,
| | |   |    |  |    it's composed of a "meaning" radical (chong2, "insect",
+-+-+ +-+-+  |--|    the first of the 3 graphemes) and a "phonetic" (hu2,
  |   |   |  |  |    "foreign", the second two graphemes).  (The phonetic of
--+-I +---+ /   /    a character may have the same sound, or may rhyme, or
                     may rhyme only in Ancient Chinese.)

Now, can anyone tell me where the graphic elements of hu2 "foreign" come from?
If I'm operating my dictionary correctly it's composed of gu3 "ancient" and
yue4 "moon".  Is that right?  Is this also a radical/phonetic pair?
From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Written and Spoken Language(s)
Date: 14 Apr 92 17:49:45 GMT
Organization: SPSS Inc.

In article <204878@unix.cis.pitt.edu> djbpitt@unix.cis.pitt.edu (David J Birnbaum) 
writes (quoting me):
>>It's quite relevant when answering the question, "What is the typical
>>or prototypical example of language use?", or "What behaviors does
>>linguistics need to explain?"  This particular argument does not seek
>>to establish whether writing is dependent on speech.
>
>The question we were addressing was not about typical or prototypical
>examples of language use, which, in turn, is not the same as identifying
>behaviors that linguists need explain.  

I don't agree, and this may be the source of the problem.  The immediate
context of the remarks you so objected to was Herman Rubin's question
"whether the emphasis on the primacy of the spoken languge is appropriate."
To me this is precisely a question of what is the prototypical example
of language use.

>This thread developed from
>comments by some Chinese specialists that written Chinese can be
>considered a separate language from spoken Chinese.  That led to a
>discussion of whether there can be such a thing as a primarily
>written language, so that one could speak of the morphology of
>written Chinese as a separate linguistic object of study.  

Of course there can be a primarily written language.  Modern written
Chinese is not a good example of one, but the Classical Chinese taught
till this century is, and so is modern Latin.  As for the "morphology"
of written Chinese, I was objecting to the term, not the concept
(indeed, I find this particular object of study fascinating).

There is no incompatibility here with the theoretical primacy of speech.
These primarily written languages exist in a sea of spoken language,
and derive from the spoken language of another time.  For that matter,
the "graphic morphology" of written Chinese cannot be fully understood 
without referring to the phonetics of ancient Chinese.

>[...] If so, and if we can view this written language as a
>linguistic system different from its spoken counterpart within
>a culture, then I do not understand why my interlocutor considers
>it behavior that linguists need not explain.

Because you are mistaken about what your interlocutor is saying.
Linguists should explain everything about language, spoken and written
(and signed).  If written language is made primary, then I think 
huge and important aspects of language don't get addressed.
(Examples furnished on request.)

>The atypical is not automatically irrelevant and ornithologists do study
>penguins.

To put it in these terms, ornithologists should certainly study penguins,
but should not base a theory of birds primarily on penguins.

And penguinologists (spheniscologists?) need to know that their subjects
evolved from birds that flew.
From: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Devanagari: Syllabary or Alphabet?
Date: 13 Apr 92 01:07:32 GMT
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK

In article <1992Apr12.225857.21555@midway.uchicago.edu> bon6@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
>In article <1992Apr9.192400.1837@midway.uchicago.edu> bon6@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
>>In article <1992Apr9.044135.4640@cs.yale.edu> horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne) writes:
>> 
>>>Someone claimed in e-mail that Devana^gari^ is not an alphabet.  Is there
>>>need to refute this statement on the net, or should I just handle it in
>>>e-mail?
>>
>>Please make your case in public.
>
>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?

Why does old Rahul lose patience so quickly?

>The fact is that Devanagari is neither purely syllabic nor purely
>alphabetic.

Not all alphabets in the real world are purely alphabetic.
Devana^gari^ is one of those that aren't.

>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.

No.  The syllable is not the basic unit of representation.  It has
something (but not everything) to do with the arrangement of the
actual basic units of representation, which are alphabetic.

>But Devanagari differs from a pure syllabary in that it does not
>present a completely unique symbol for each syllable.

Right, and that's why I say that it is not a syllabary.

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

Yes, but this doesn't mean that it is not a letter.  (The initial
shapes of the Arabic letters can't occur independently either.)
On the other hand, if we assume that it is not a letter, then
Devana^gari^ turns out to be a consonantal alphabetic script with
mandatory vocalisation.

>(Question: Have the
>Southeast Asian scripts derived from Brahmi, such as Burmese,
>Khmer, Thai, etc. retained this feature?)

Yes.
-- 
---- --- -- -  Long Live the Rose and the Heather!  - -- --- ----
Ivan A Derzhanski   (iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk;  iad@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu)
* Centre for Cognitive Science,  2 Buccleuch Place,  Edinburgh EH8 9LW,  UK
* Cowan House, Pollock Halls, 18 Holyrood Park Road, Edinburgh EH16 5BD, UK
From: amunn@macbeth.umd.edu (Alan Munn)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Ambiguity a goal of language
Date: 11 Apr 92 15:31:54 GMT
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park

In article <167C512EB2.JAREA@UKCC.UKY.EDU> JAREA@UKCC.UKY.EDU writes:

>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".

Or as Flanders and Swann, talking about C.P. Snow ("Sir Charles Snow
in private life") put it:

"There's no sense in saying normal things such a 'How are you, can you
lend me a quid' to a scientist.  He simply won't understand. Or make a
rude retort. You have to speak in the languge of science:"

"Ah, H2So4 Professor.  Don't synthesise anything I wouldn't
synthesise.  And, the reciprocal of pi to your dear wife"

"This, Snow says, he will understand."

>
>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?

British humour.  Definitely.

Alan
<amunn@umd5.umd.edu>
From: e343mh@tamuts.tamu.edu (Michael Hand)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: NegV vs. NegQ
Date: 11 Apr 92 04:22:06 GMT

In article <1992Apr10.083647.1820@memstvx1.memst.edu> connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu writes:
>But your theory of s-interpretation is simply impossible if it requires, 
>as you claim, an interpretation of certain sentences which is simply wrong.

Why is this so difficult for folks to grasp?  Whether an interpretation
is "simply wrong" (or even complicatedly wrong) is a theoretical issue,
if "wrong" means *semantically* wrong.  Most of the time, the theoretical
issue is not interesting or difficult, but it's no less theoretical!
If "wrong" means "intuitively unacceptable," then wrongness is not
a theoretical property, but the theory I suggested (and again I emphasize, 
do not hold) was a theory concerned with what interpretations are grammatical 
(in the broad sense of syntax+semantics).  Here's some data: negQ is the 
preferred message, negV is unacceptable.  The question --a theoretical 
one -- is what to make of this fact.  There are options.  If you don't 
like mine, you gotta argue against it theoretically, 'cause I accept the 
same data you accept.

>Further, it is far from clear what sort of interpretation has produced
>the universally accepted negQ interpretation.  

You got that right!  Witness this thread.

>You're trying to save
>your theory by claiming that it's a p-interpretation.  That remains
>to be shown.  What evidence to you have to support this view?

The claim that negQ is a p-interpretation is hardly a defense of
my sad theory.  You've misunderstood it.  If people read a sentence 
a certain way, then that way is a p-interpretation.  That's all I meant by 
"p-interpretation".  So uncontroversially, negQ is a p-interpretation.
Some people think it's the *only* p-interpretation of the sentence
in question.  (It isn't, but some people seem to think it is.)  But 
not every p-interpretation is an s-interpretation, unless you just 
wanna stipulate, and not every s-interpretation is a p-interpretation, 
unless you wanna stipulate a second time.  I don't wanna stipulate.

>Lacking such evidence, many of us will claim: any theory which does
>not yield negQ *as an s-interpretation* is preposterous on its face
>and should be abandoned.

This is an objection I hadn't considered.  Not being a linguist, 
I wasn't aware that such powerful modes of argumentation occurred 
in the field.  Just how powerful an objection do you think it is?  ;->

Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne)
Subject: Re: Latin alphabet (was: Inventing a writing system?)
Organization: Computer "Science" Dept, Yale University
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 20:40:35 GMT

Actually, a Unicode flamefest doesn't really belong on `sci.lang', so perhaps
we should take this somewhere else.

In article <204620@unix.cis.pitt.edu>, dtate@unix.cis.pitt.edu (David M Tate) writes:
<In article <1992Apr8.183008.26240@cs.yale.edu> horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne) writes:
<>In article <204596@unix.cis.pitt.edu>, dtate@unix.cis.pitt.edu (David M Tate) writes:
<
<[Scott Horne expressed indignation that the long 's' that occurs in several
< languages over a span of many centuries is to be treated as a "glyphic
< variant" (i.e. alternative letterform, same letter) of modern small 's'.]

In a scheme for encoding characters on computers.  (This is important.)

<Why do you think long 's' is a separate letter from 's',

I don't.

<and not just a 
<different way of drawing the same letter?

If `e'-acute deserves space in the character set, then so does the long `s'.

<Would you make the same argument
<for, say, 
<
<	       -   		_
<	     /   \|           /  \
<	     |    |   vs.       _|
<	     |    |           /  |
<	      \__/|           \__\
<
<?  (Those are meant to be lower-case 'a's...)

Definitely not.  

					--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: hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Numbers and language
Date: 15 Apr 92 19:24:53 GMT
Organization: Purdue University Statistics Department

In article <29E9ED82.24577@noiro.acs.uci.edu> cortese@hepxvt.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese) writes:
>In article <204854@unix.cis.pitt.edu> dtate@unix.cis.pitt.edu (David M Tate) writes:

			...................

>This isn't REALLY related to the original subject, but it's something
>I've noticed and though was really neat for a while.

>I can't count too well in French.  Even when I was in my eighth
>consecutive year of studying it, I still tripped over the numbers.  I
>had an instructor in Ling 50 (the intro class) who was a speaker of
>about six languages - FLUENTLY.  He learned several natively, the most
>prominenent one being Swiss-German.  He can count easily in English,
>but he has said during class that when he is in the supermarket or
>something and is distracted and has a lot of prices to add up, he just
>chucks it and starts going off in Swiss-German.  I have a friend who
>speaks Spanish fluently after studying it for four years in college and
>getting her degree in it; she also has a harder time "counting fluently"
>than one would expect.

>Why is this?  It seems almost like numbers are kept separate from words
>in a brain. 

I believe the problem is the distinction between translation and 
understanding.  My linguistic background is not that great, and I
have not spent very much time studying any particular language.
Now I have little difficulty in translating into English, nor do
I have too much of a problem in reading some of these languages,
but even in those which I do not know well, I read some parts
without translating.  

But in reading numbers, I now have many representations for them,
only the English one being the one with fluency.  I have to think
deliberately to pronounce the numbers in another language, while
I have no problem recognizing even the spoken version.  I have much
less of a problem with verbal communication, and I suspect that it
is due to the imprecision of the idea that I can pick out the foreign
version more easily.
-- 
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
Phone: (317)494-6054
hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Internet, bitnet)  
{purdue,pur-ee}!pop.stat!hrubin(UUCP)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: jimmay@csuchico.edu (Jim May)
Subject: Re: Why are English infinitives so different?
Organization: California State University, Chico
Date: Mon, 06 Apr 1992 19:49:54 GMT

In article <ARA.92Apr5160327@camelot.ai.mit.edu> ara@zurich.ai.mit.edu 
(Allan Adler) writes:
> Well, although in German "tun" is the the infinitive, to have to do is
> "haben zu tun". The zu tun seems to correspond to English usage.

This example is really not very appropriate because the infinitive almost 
always does NOT have "zu" in front of it.  Even in this case the "zu" does 
not correspond to the "to" in the English infinitive.  It's just a 
coincidence.

Jim May
CSU Chico
From: shrdlu@willow.sdd.trw.com (Lynda L. True)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Numbers and language
Date: 15 Apr 92 16:47:19 GMT
Organization: TRW Inc., Redondo Beach, CA

In article <92105.195428SPIT@EVALUN11.BITNET> Werenfried Spit <SPIT@EVALUN11.BITNET> writes:
>======================================================================== 47
>In article <29E9ED82.24577@noiro.acs.uci.edu>, cortese@hepxvt.ps.uci.edu (Janis
>Maria Cortese) says:
>>
>>
>>Why is this?  It seems almost like numbers are kept separate from words
>>in a brain.  And I'm not talking about not knowing the word for 1,000
>>either.  I can say dix-neuf cent blah blah blah, but damn it, when I see
>>1992, my brain goes "nineteen ninety two" right off the bat.  When I see
>
>One of the reasons might be that numbers are written the same no
>matter the language (sticking to latin and cyrillic alphabets for
>a moment). That makes it just too easy to regard them half consciously
>as words from your own language. It also depends on what you use a
>language for: I have no problem with numbers in english; maybe partly
>due to the fact that almost all physics reading and discussing I do
>is in english -- I see and use the numbers so frequently that I have
>also mastered them, finally.
>Maybe there is a neurologist around who can tell us something about
>locations of speech and calculating centres in the brain. As far as
>arithmetic is concerned I can imagine that it is performed independent
>from speech, but I don't know.

Well from what I know of the brain, mathematical functions are in a
completely different area than that of language. A simple test for you
is to look at aphasia, which immediately affects a person's ability to
communicate (or to understand words, depending on the type of
aphasia). It does not, however, affect the ability to compute sums, or
to think about differential equations, since these thoughts occupy
different areas of the brain than do language and language
comprehension. (The ability to speak, and the ability to understand,
are not completely in the same areas.)

It makes perfect sense to me that the language one uses when developing
mathematical abilities will be the one used to exercise them from then
on. Perhaps learning a new language could also involve re-learning
ones sums in that language, if it seems important to the person
learning it.

Lynda

Disclaimer: I have no serious knowledge of linguistics, only an
interest. I DO have knowledge of how the brain works, however (hence
the interest in such subjects as linguistics).
-- 
shrdlu@rowan.sdd.trw.com (Lynda L. True)
Work Phone - (310) 812-1660 or (310) 812-1570
TRW, One Space Park Drive, R2/2062, Redondo Beach, CA