HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: goer@ellis.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz)
Subject: Re: Nasalisation
Reply-To: goer@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1992 15:16:54 GMT

Bert Peeters writes:
>
>>>Whatever the case may be, it should be pointed
>>>out that nasalisation is not phonemic in English, whereas it is in French
>>>(I don't like the generative account which analyses [a~] as [a] + [n]). 
>
>>How do you propose to account for the alternation between [bo~livr]
>>'bon livre' and [bonami] 'bon ami' then?  Just curious.

What do you guess was meant by the term "phonemic" above?  The term means
somewhat different things, depending on whether the person in question is
thinking of systematic or autonomous phonemes.  (Don't laugh: autonomous
phonemes aren't dead; they are certainly assumed in enough discussions here
on the net.)

-- 

   -Richard L. Goerwitz              goer%midway@uchicago.bitnet
   goer@midway.uchicago.edu          rutgers!oddjob!ellis!goer
From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com (Richard Wojcik,snake)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Nasalisation
Date: 31 Aug 92 21:29:41 GMT
Reply-To: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com
Organization: Research & Technology

In article 20204@midway.uchicago.edu, goer@ellis.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz) writes:
>Bert Peeters writes:
>>
>>>>Whatever the case may be, it should be pointed
>>>>out that nasalisation is not phonemic in English, whereas it is in French
>>>>(I don't like the generative account which analyses [a~] as [a] + [n]). 
>>
>>>How do you propose to account for the alternation between [bo~livr]
>>>'bon livre' and [bonami] 'bon ami' then?  Just curious.
>
>What do you guess was meant by the term "phonemic" above?  The term means
>somewhat different things, depending on whether the person in question is
>thinking of systematic or autonomous phonemes.  (Don't laugh: autonomous
>phonemes aren't dead; they are certainly assumed in enough discussions here
>on the net.)

I agree with Bert Peeters on the wrongness of the idea that phonetic [a~] is
[a]+[n] phonemically.  If you accord nasal vowels phonemic status in a language, 
then you may account for alternations between them and (usually historically
related) vowel + nasal sequences with the same mechanism that allows you to
account for suppletively related forms.  This does not require anyone to posit
extra grammatical mechanisms to account for such alternations.  If their theory
is capable of handling suppletion (wholesale relationships) between strings of
phonemes, then it is possible to make the strings at issue very short--even zero
phonemes in length.  In French, for example, there is a rule that requires you
to replace "de le" with "du".  The replacement is obligatory, and not clearly
motivated in a phonetic way.  When you make the masculine form "bon" into the
feminine form "bonne" (or vice versa), the psychological mechanism that lets you
do this is the same one that replaces "de le" with "du".

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

    Rick Wojcik   (rwojcik@atc.boeing.com)   Seattle, WA
From: sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Baron's Fourth Law of Linguistic Thermodynamics
Date: 30 Aug 92 18:42:33 GMT
Organization: Enea Data AB

Dennis Baron (baron@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu) writes:
>Baron's Fourth Law of Linguistic Thermodynamics states that the more
>people object to a trend in language, the more likely it is that the
>trend has gone beyond the point of now return.

Shudder. It makes me think of some of the trends in current
Swedish which I don't like. For instance dividing compounds
in two when they should be one word. Often it is harmless
with respect to understanding, although it looks awful, but
there are exceptions. There is a big difference between 
"fel meddelanden" (wrong messages) and "felmeddelanden" (error
messages).

>An important corrollary to this Law: the more an individual objects to
>a form, the more like you are to find it in his or her speech or writing
>if you look long enough.

Shudder. I find myself sometimes committing this error. Then again
I find the most fascinating errors when I proof-read my texts
(unfortunately my readers find even more), like swapping two
adjacent letters ("from" becomes "form" or vice versa) - even
when I'm writing by hand.
-- 
Erland Sommarskog - ENEA Data, Stockholm - sommar@enea.se
F|rst till kvarn f}r f|rst vankiva
Xref: sparky sci.lang:6718 soc.culture.celtic:5610
From: mark@cs.hw.ac.uk (Mark Riordan)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,soc.culture.celtic
Subject: Re: [pronouns] Re: Other properties of pronoun usage
Date: 26 Aug 92 10:11:19 GMT
Organization: Dept of Computer Science, Heriot-Watt University, Scotland

In article <1992Aug25.161124.13656@rdg.dec.com> cockburn@edieng.enet.dec.com (Craig Cockburn) writes:
>
>"yous" is also used in lowland Scots.
>

yous or even you-es is the usage in Dublin. It might be used elsewhere
in Ireland although I remember my Cork cousins giving me a ferocious
slagging over using yous.

In that otherwise totally unintelligable :-) programme on the scots language
(STV Monday) I noticed many words familiar to my Irish ear. I am not sure
if we got them from Scots, Scots from us or we both got them
from Ghailig/Gaeilge.

MARK
-- 
| JANET:    mark@uk.ac.hw.cs   Mark Riordan, Room G21,                       |
| Internet: mark@cs.hw.ac.uk   Dept of Computing and Electrical Engineering, |
| (031) 449-5111 x4172         Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland.  |
Xref: sparky sci.lang:6854 alt.usage.english:7033
From: epp@mala.bc.ca (Lorne Epp)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: Ships and countries
Date: 31 Aug 92 00:27:40 GMT
Organization: Malaspina College

In article <1992Aug30.185048.26292@enea.se>, sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) writes:
> Charles H. Sampson (sampson@nosc.mil) writes:
> Roger Lustig (roger@crux.Princeton.EDU) writes:
>>>At any rate, we only gender-inflect to describe sexed things: humans,
>>>animals.
>>
>>     And ships?
> 
> It is not unusual that a country is personified by a woman,
> "Mother Russia" or "Moder Svea" (that's Sweden) for instance,
> so the use of "she" seems very plausible at least in more poetic
> contexts. But is the use of "she" as a pronoun for any country
> common among native speakers in every-day language?

The impression I have is that countries are almost always feminine in 
formal English.  British writers are more likely to use the feminine
than Americans are.  In informal English, countries are usually neuter.
This is only an impression that I formed from general reading; it is
in no way authoratative.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Lorne Epp                                               epp@mala.bc.ca
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: goer@ellis.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz)
Subject: phonology question
Reply-To: goer@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1992 03:26:26 GMT

Why does it seem awkward for an English-speaker to say "ibpag"?

Is it hard to say because of some problem with the physical mechanisms
involved in articulating the sequence?  Or do we English speakers just
not hear words structured in this way, and tend to reinterpret and/or
repronounce "ibpag"?  I.e. is it a natural mechanism that dictates its
awkwardness, or a simple matter of well-formedness judgments?  Or is
it some mixture of both?

Innocently concrete question.

-- 

   -Richard L. Goerwitz              goer%midway@uchicago.bitnet
   goer@midway.uchicago.edu          rutgers!oddjob!ellis!goer
Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.usage.english
From: totty@flute.cs.uiuc.edu (Brian Totty)
Subject: Re: New words for gender neutral pronouns in English
Organization: Picasso Group, DCS, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 23:34:25 GMT

In article <87302@netnews.upenn.edu>, crawford@ben.dev.upenn.edu (Lauren L. Crawford) writes:

|> And if you use "she", you'd have the same odds.  So by this logic,
|> why not just use "she"?

	Slightly better odds for she, since I believe the female population
	is slightly higher than the male, isn't that so?

   /                       Brian Totty             o o
  /__  __  o     Department of Computer Science     o  
 /  / /   /          1304 W. Springfield Ave       \_/  "We have corn in
/__/ /   /               Urbana, IL 61801                Massachusetts too!"
                        totty@cs.uiuc.edu
Xref: sparky sci.lang:6847 alt.usage.english:7031
From: sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.usage.english
Subject: Ships and countries
Date: 30 Aug 92 18:50:48 GMT
Organization: Enea Data AB

Charles H. Sampson (sampson@nosc.mil) writes:
Roger Lustig (roger@crux.Princeton.EDU) writes:
>>At any rate, we only gender-inflect to describe sexed things: humans,
>>animals.
>
>     And ships?

And countries? I tend to hang around in various soc.culture.*
and talk.politics.* groups which covers Eastern Europe and
Balkan, and several writers use "she" for almost any country.
Now, many of the contibutors are non-native speakers of English,
just like me, so I don't really know whether the sample is
relevant. Personally, I use "it", or "they" if I am rather
referring to the government or similar.

It is not unusual that a country is personified by a woman,
"Mother Russia" or "Moder Svea" (that's Sweden) for instance,
so the use of "she" seems very plausible at least in more poetic
contexts. But is the use of "she" as a pronoun for any country
common among native speakers in every-day language?
-- 
Erland Sommarskog - ENEA Data, Stockholm - sommar@enea.se
F|rst till kvarn f}r f|rst vankiva
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Subject: Re: Cognitive Phonology (was: Cognitive linguistics...)
Originator: alderson@leland.Stanford.EDU
Reply-To: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Organization: Stanford University Academic Information Resources
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 92 19:12:04 GMT

In article <BtyKxo.LI@acsu.buffalo.edu>, v187ef4y@ubvmsd (Patrick J Crowe)
writes:

[in reference to a mention of the "impossibility" of pronouncing */bnIk/ in
English]

>This got me playing with pronounciation.  While thinking of how /bn/ sounded,
>I thought of /bn-na-na/ for banana, where the hyphens separate syllables.
>This is similar to an example someone gave in an earlier thread, of /cn/ for
>can.

You seem to mean a pronunciation with (to use an Indo-Europeanist term) a
syllabic dental nasal, usually written in my specialization as an <n> with a
small open circle underneath; I don't know the ASCII IPA for such, so I'll use
the usual description in phonology as "shwa+nasal" instead:

	[b@n.nA.n@]

However, the item in question is not of this form; rather, it is a hypothetical
word with a NON-syllabic nasal following the initial stop.

Of course, it is also possible to pronounce the word "banana" in rapid speech
as

	[bnA.n@]

with exactly the same consonant cluster as */bnIk/.  The difference is that the
rapid pronounciation of "banana" arises through the operation of automatic
processes rather than as a set of specifications in the lexicon.

David Stampe had a wonderful description of the differences in reaction to
actually hearing */bnIk/ pronounced among three hypothetical listeners, based
on what their internal systems would be if Chomsky&Halle's simplicity metric in
_Sound Pattern of English_ were correct, and each had heard only a subset of
the possible consonant clusters of English.  I've packed away my notes from his
class (Spring, 1974), so I can't give the exact details.

David?  Greg?  Rick?
-- 
Rich Alderson   'I wish life was not so short,' he thought.  'Languages take
                such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.'
                                                        --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@leland.stanford.edu                              _The Lost Road_
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: kcohen@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Kevin B Cohen)
Subject: New (beta) ASCII IPA
Organization: The Ohio State University
Distribution: usa
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 18:58:26 GMT

Evan-- mail to you bounced. I'm a grad student in phonetics at Ohio State and 
would be happy to proof/comment on your ASCII IPA. (I'm just a second-year, so 
don't expect much!) Please mail me a copy.

Kevin
kcohen@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu
From: thorinn@diku.dk (Lars Henrik Mathiesen)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: compounds
Date: 1 Sep 92 02:43:43 GMT
Organization: Department of Computer Science, U of Copenhagen

lucas@WATSON.IBM.COM ("Bruce Lucas") writes:
>Interesting.  In English, the opposite seems to be happening:
>for example, "alot" seems on the verge of becoming a word, at least
>in the Netland dialect of English.

As I understand it, in English there is no difference in pronunciation
between "road bed", "road-bed", and "roadbed" --- the choice is
determined by tradition, the familiarity of the compound, and
individual preference.

In Danish, however, an adjective/noun sequence such as the one in "en
lille roed haette" (a little red hood) is very different from the
compound in "en lille Roedhaette" (a little Red Riding Hood). The
compound loses one stress peak, and (in this case) the glottal stop in
"roed". I think it is much the same in Norwegian and Swedish, except
that those languages use a tonal accent where Danish has the glottal
stop.

The orthographical rule is that compounds are spelled as one word; and
normally, this is a help when reading. However, there seems to be many
Danes who are not aware of the rule, or rather of its close relation
to pronunciation, so it tends to get broken in less literate usage. I
find it very disrupting when a compound is broken in something I read;
in most cases, the intention is clear, but I have to back up anyway.

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@diku.dk> (Humour NOT marked)
From: miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: On-line English "dictionary" anywhere???
Date: 3 Sep 92 21:33:05 CDT
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services

In article <1992Sep3.160717.1@tnclus.tele.nokia.fi>, pbrown@tnclus.tele.nokia.fi writes:
> Hello sci.lang'ers!
> 
>   Was not certain where to post about this, but thought sci.lang ought
> to be an okay place to start.
> 
>   I would like to get my hands on a list of English words -- like if
> maybe someone got bored last summer and decided to type in Webster's
> Unabridged?  I'm sure there are lists available via ftp, but from where?
> I simply have no idea where to start looking, so thought I'd ask around
> here first.  Anyone?
> 
>   I need a list that I can run through a program I've written, so it
> can't be like a spell-checker "encoded" version of a list -- just plain
> ASCII, I guess.
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> 
> --Paul V. Brown
> pbrown@tnclus.tele.nokia.fi
> 
> P.S.  I'd be interested in finding a list of Finnish words as well, if
> anyone has any clues there.

There appear to be English wordlists available at Simtel20.  Ftp
	wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
Simtel20 is a DEC System-20 running the TOPS-20 operating system.
Ordinary anonymous ftp; file format is DISK:<DIRECTORY.SUBDIRECTORY>.
For MS-DOS programs the main directory is pd1:<msdos>; in that
directory is a file called MSDOS.CRCLST which lists everything in it.

The wordlists are in MSDOS.LINGUISTICS.-- 
********************************** +.............................+
*- Ken <miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>* :All opinions expressed herein:
*There is no privileged position.* :are my own and are not to be :
*	-God, Derrida, others    * : attributed to my employer   :
********************************** +.............................+
From: hau4@ellis.uchicago.edu (sven  hauptfeld)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Axe - is it really easy?
Date: 27 Aug 92 18:10:10 GMT
Reply-To: hau4@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations

In article <1684F12A1B.JAREA@UKCC.UKY.EDU> JAREA@UKCC.UKY.EDU writes:
>In article <1992Aug24.044312.2673@midway.uchicago.edu>
>hau4@ellis.uchicago.edu (sven  hauptfeld) writes:
>>
>>Also note that the Latin 'x' became 'ss' in Italian and is (almost?) never
>                           ^                             ^^           ^^^^^
>>pronounced /ks/ in French - obviously, there is nothing "easy" about it.
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>
>>Sven
> 
>Not so:  in 'taxi', 'M'exique', 'extra', 'luxe', and 'rayons-x', as well
>as many other words it is pronounce /ks/ by the French:  indeed the name
>of the letter itself in French is pronounced /iks/.
> 
> 

O.K., remove my parentheses around 'almost' and the '?' following it. 

Anyway, most of your examples are words borrowed from other languages, and the
name of the letter is not even a word. Or could you find an English word in
which 'h' is actually pronounced /eitS/ ? (Or Italian word in which it is 
pronounced /akka/, or a German word in which 'y' is pronounced /Upsilon/...)

Let's not split hairs.

	Sven
Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.usage.english
From: Tom Christiansen <tchrist@convex.COM>
Subject: Re: Problem with 'they' (etc) as 3p singular common gender pron.
Originator: tchrist@pixel.convex.com
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 02:25:33 GMT
Reply-To: tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen)
Organization: Convex Computer Corporation, Colorado Springs, CO
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 sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog):
:
:Neither can we use "they" instead of "he", particularly
:is the instruction is to be read by non-native speakers. 

Hogwash.  This usage should simply be included in lessons
on English.  It's used so much that not doing so leaves
non-native speakers handicapped.

--tom

-- 
    Tom Christiansen      tchrist@convex.com      convex!tchrist

You want it in one line?  Does it have to fit in 80 columns?   :-)
                --Larry Wall in <7349@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
From: matt@amsaa-cleo.brl.mil (Matt Rosenblatt)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Ships and countries
Keywords: Irving Berlin; Kate Smith
Date: 2 Sep 92 14:01:33 GMT
Organization: U.S. ARMY MATERIEL SYSTEMS ANALYSIS ACTIVITY (AMSAA), APG, MD.

In article <2AA2A91A.15967@orion.oac.uci.edu> cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu 
(Janis Maria Cortese) writes:

>In article <564@alden.UUCP> sgr@alden.UUCP (Stan Ryckman) writes:

>>Americans use the feminine plenty.  From the song:

>>        "God bless America, land that I love;
>>         Stand beside her, and guide her, ..."
>>     		        ^^^            ^^^
>>[Irving Berlin, quoted by Stan Ryckman]

>Again, this is not informal.  When was the song written, btw?
>[Janis M. Cortese]

My copy doesn't say when it was written, only that it was 
"introduced" (which I suppose means, "first performed") by 
Kate Smith on Armistice Day, 1938.

					-- Matt Rosenblatt
					(matt@amsaa-cleo.brl.mil)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,soc.culture.celtic
From: mcmanus@pell.anu.edu.au (Aine McManus)
Subject: Re: [pronouns] Re: Other properties of pronoun usage
Organization: Australian National University
	<1992Aug24.050301.3320@midway.uchicago.edu> <ovndso0@zola.esd.sgi.com>
	<1992Aug25.085553.3244@titan.ksc.nasa.gov>
	<1992Aug25.161124.13656@rdg.dec.com>
	<17fgmcINNfke@grapevine.EBay.Sun.COM>
Date: 27 Aug 92 12:50:17


The plural I'm yoused to is "ye" or "yeh". And "ya" in the singular.
That was in Galway -- here in Australia "yous" is fairly common.
	,
	Aine
From: hau4@ellis.uchicago.edu (sven  hauptfeld)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: X and Y
Keywords: Y
Date: 30 Aug 92 03:20:36 GMT
Article-I.D.: midway.1992Aug30.032036.2880
Reply-To: hau4@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations

In article <HBH6TOF@minnie.zdv.uni-mainz.de> knappen@obelix.kph.Uni-Mainz.DE writes:
>In article <1992Aug27.181010.7490@midway.uchicago.edu>, hau4@ellis.uchicago.edu (sven  hauptfeld) writes:
>
>"> "Anyway, most of your examples are words borrowed from other languages, and the
>"> "name of the letter is not even a word. Or could you find an English word in
>"> "which 'h' is actually pronounced /eitS/ ? (Or Italian word in which it is 
>"> "pronounced /akka/, or a German word in which 'y' is pronounced /Upsilon/...)
>"> "                        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>"> "Let's not split hairs.
>"> "
>"> "	Sven
>
>Well, here it is:
>
>Das Y-Chromosom.
>
>:-) J"org Knappen.

:-), but the only GERMAN word I see there is 'Das'.  ;-)

Sven
From: dik@cwi.nl (Dik T. Winter)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Agglutinative languages
Date: 29 Aug 92 00:46:12 GMT
Organization: CWI, Amsterdam

In article <1992Aug24.191142.12213@microsoft.com> siobhan@microsoft.com (Siobhan Harper) writes:
 > I'm interested in knowing specifically whether Basque is an agglutinative
 > language in the sense that Turkish is, and more generally, what other
 > languages are. I know about Finnish, Hungarian, and their cousins, but
 > what other languages are truly agglutinative?
 > 
I do not know very much about Basque but I have here a small booklet:
'Voulez-vous parler le basque?'.  It has only two pages about grammar,
but from it I do not think it is agglutinative.  But somebody else may
decide, here what I find about the grammar:
1.	There are 11 cases, indicated by suffixes.
2.	There are 2 two verbs with conjugation (to have and to be).
	All other verbs are formed by the standard form for the 'meaning'
	plus a conjugation of 'to have' for transitive verbs and of
	'to be' for intransitive verbs.
Certainly: verbs, subjects and objects do not form single words; they
are readily visible in a sentence.
-- 
dik t. winter, cwi, kruislaan 413, 1098 sj  amsterdam, nederland
home: bovenover 215, 1025 jn  amsterdam, nederland
dik@cwi.nl
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: avlb@aplcomm.jhuapl.edu (A V Louis Biggie)
Subject: Articles and Proper Nouns
Reply-To: avlb@aplcomm.jhuapl.edu (A V Louis Biggie)
Organization: JHU/Applied Physics Laboratory
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 12:56:50 GMT

Also, the George Bush - as opposed to the one that nobody has ever heard of 
(with the article stressed).

Also 

A John Smith is on the phone.
A certain John Smith is on the phone.

Louis



Xref: sparky sci.lang:6833 soc.culture.celtic:5686
From: connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang,soc.culture.celtic
Subject: Re: Ye/you
Date: 29 Aug 92 22:21:36 -0600
Organization: Memphis State University

In article <1992Aug27.192630.9603@odin.diku.dk>, thorinn@diku.dk (Lars Henrik Mathiesen) writes:
> evan@hpl.hp.com (Evan Kirshenbaum) writes:
>>pjn@phsun.ph.kcl.ac.uk (Philip J. Naylor.) writes:
>>>	"you" is plural.  "thee" is singular, and as such is still
>>>used frequently in the west of England.  In fact you can still find
>>>some of the denizens of Bristol using the Anglo-Saxon "thee bist" in
>>>place of "you are".
> 
>>"thee bist", not "thou bist"?  I thought that the (American) Quakers
>>(and related groups) were the only ones who used "thee" in subject
>>position.  (And I believe they use "thee art".)

American Quakers said "thee is", a patently artificial form.  But I
always thought English Quakers said it too.
 
> On a related subject, how/why did the oblique form of 2p pl "ye/you"
> spread to the subject form? (In the standard dialect, that is; I am
> aware that several other dialects retain "ye".)

Strictly a guess, but here goes: If nominative _ye_ had become [y@]
with Schwa, then "refined" pronunciation would want to restore the
full vowel of the objective _you_.  Sounds plausible, but it is only
a guess.

--Leo Connolly
Xref: sparky sci.lang:6782 alt.usage.english:6989