HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: dtate@unix.cis.pitt.edu (David M Tate)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Animal Grammar
Date: 10 Apr 92 15:54:33 GMT
Organization: University of Pittsburgh

In article <1992Apr10.062601.27387@cs.yale.edu> horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne) writes:
>
>Conflating non-human animal "languages" and human languages is not useful.

...except for purposes of fiction.  All linguists should read Ursula LeGuin's
"The Author of the Acacia Seeds (and other extracts from the Journal of the
Therolinguistics Society)" before being allowed to talk about Linguistic
Universals :-).

>(Say, a thought occurred to me:  Do we speak Proto-_Australopithecus_?  :-))

Only in an impure, degraded form. :-)


-- 
          David M. Tate            |"The man who hath no music in himself
     dtate@unix.cis.pitt.edu       | Nor is not moved by concord of sweet sound
  A poem should be dumb, / As old  | Is fit for treason, stratagems, and spoils
 medallions to the thumb.-MacLeish | 	Shakespeare, "Merchant of Venice", A.V
From: rath@binah.cc.brandeis.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Linguistics TV Schedule
Date: 16 Apr 92 14:49:13 GMT
Reply-To: rath@binah.cc.brandeis.edu
Organization: Brandeis University

(stuff deleted>
>Look you Yoyos.  I live in Utah.  You guys don't have a clue what a
>real redneck is.  It's a well known fact that there aren't any
>rednecks east of the Mississippi river.  Sheez, trying to tell me that
>people in Eastern Maryland are rednecks...

I think you are confusing semantic rednecks with morphological rednecks
---RIch Rath

>[Surely I don't have to insert a ;^) do I?  Better do it or *someone*
>will take exception; that's a given on the Net.]
>-- 
>Keith Rogers
>Evans & Sutherland Computer Corp.
>krogers@javelin.sim.es.com
From: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Linguistics TV Schedule
Keywords: Dixie
Date: 15 Apr 92 16:42:06 GMT
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK

In article <7041@amsaa-cleo.brl.mil> matt@amsaa-cleo.brl.mil (Matt Rosenblatt) writes:
<In article <1992Apr14.085443.25062@cs.yale.edu> horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU 
<(Scott Horne) writes:
<
<>In article <!nxj98_.samson@netcom.com>, samson@netcom.com (Peter Samson) 
<>writes:
<
<><       The National Anthem is sung fluently in 17 languages. [Peter Samson]
<
<>	Allons, enfants de la patrie....
<>	Qi3lai2, bu2 yuan4 zuo4 nu2li4 de ren2 men!...
<>	Kimi ga yo^ wa....
<>	Soyuz nerushimij respublik svobodnik....
<
<Wait a minute!  If this last still counts as a national anthem,

It is a national anthem, only not a current one.  It is the national
anthem of a state which doesn't exist anymore, but this doesn't make
it any less of a national anthem.

<why did Mr. Horne leave out
<
<       "I wish I was in the land of cotton . . ."?

What is that?
-- 
---- --- -- -  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
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: sf@88opensi.88open.ORG (Steven Finney)
Subject: Albanian Resources
Reply-To: sf@88opensi.UUCP (Steven Finney)
Organization: 88open Consortium Ltd., San Jose
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 92 21:03:03 GMT

In article <1992Apr2.063246.28666@cs.yale.edu> horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne) writes:
>
>(By the way, does anyone know of a good textbook [in whatever language]
>for learning Albanian?  I ran across Routledge's _Colloquial Albanian_ in
>that ultra-expensive foreign-language bookstore in New York but didn't
>buy it, as it was twice the suggested retail price.)
>
>					--Scott

Without trying to judge quality, here are some resources for Albanian:

1) Spoken Albanian, book and cassette set available from Spoken Language
  Services, Ithaca, NY, around $70 for book + 6 cassettes. Done by Leonard
  Newmark at UCSD and cohorts. Only one speaker on the tapes. Dialogues seem  
  well done. I've been told the grammar is not presented well.

2) Colloquial Albanian, Routledge. Book and 1 cassette, around $35. Came out
  in early 1991.

3) Standard Albanian: A reference grammar. Newmark and cohorts, published by
   Stanford.

4) Some (East and West) German textbooks. One is even translated into English -
   by Martin Camaj? I believe I was told this one was good as a somewhat advanced
   textbook, but that it mixed gheg and tosk (be aware of this dialect difference,
   and the recent trend towards a "standardized" Albanian. Look for various
   sociolinguistic works by Janet Byron and Victor Friedman.)

5) Actually, the textbook I liked best was published in Tirane, in Albanian 
   only, with glossary in English, French, and Spanish; it was called something
   like "Gjuhes Shqipes" ("Albanian Language"). If you knew some basic
   Albanian to start with, it was quite useable. I got it from Albania Report
   in NYC for a ridiculously low price (with tapes) a few years ago, but with
   the upheaval in Albania, they may be out of the biz.


Somewhere I remember reading a critique by Leonard Newmark of various resources
for Albanian. He mentioned Nelo Drizari's works in order to warn everyone away
from them. Gaspar Kici, near Washington DC, has separate Albanian-English
and English-Albanian dictionaries available; I have heard them recommended
highly.

People doing Albanian in universities: Leonard Newmark at UCSD. Erik Hamp (still?),
Albanian and IE at Chicage. Victor Friedman at UNC, Chapel Hill. Possibly people
at Toronto and Stanford. I believe someone at MIT just finished a Linguistics (hence,
presumeably GB) dissertaion using Albanian.

Enough?

sf
Shoenhof's in Cambridge, Mass has some of these.
-- 

<Opinions are my own, you betcha>

..... "absolute chaos is guaranteed."  (SVR4 Programmer's reference).
From: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Written and Spoken Language(s)
Date: 13 Apr 92 21:02:42 GMT
Reply-To: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: Teradata Corp., Irvine

In article <204689@unix.cis.pitt.edu> djbpitt@unix.cis.pitt.edu (David J Birnbaum) writes:
|
|The reference to written Chinese as a written "language," rather than as
|the writing system used to record a spoken language, leads me to wonder
|whether the emphasis on the primacy of spoken language is appropriate.

It is, written Chinese is based on the writing system invented for
a *spoken* Chinese language several millenia ago.  This language is
no longer *spoken*, but it is *still* a language.

The use of Latin as a near parallel in European culture is a good one.
The language is now *primarily* written.  When it is read, it is usually
pronounced as if it were Italian.  But 2000 years ago it was a living,
*spoken* language.
-- 
---------------
uunet!tdatirv!sarima				(Stanley Friesen)
From: churchh@ut-emx.uucp (Henry Churchyard)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: A new pronoun?
Summary: Sapir, Language
Date: 10 Apr 92 17:39:54 GMT
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin; Austin, Texas


   [discussion about `its']
>>| the "its" discussed here is a
>>|PRONOUN, and not a possessive adjective 
>>"Its is bigger than mine!"

   Speaking of `its', Sapir predicted in his book _Language_ (1921,
p.168) that this posessive form will eventually disappear from the
language (in favor of `of it') in the course of his seminal discussion
on linguistic `drift'.

--
         --Henry Churchyard     churchh@emx.cc.utexas.edu
From: lgorbet@carina.unm.edu (Larry P Gorbet ANTHROPOLOGY)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Cases vs. Adverbs (was: -ze and -the in Attic Greek)
Date: 7 Apr 92 15:14:44 GMT
Article-I.D.: lynx.p9pjg7c
Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque

Leo Connolly writes:
> I suggest another distinction (which I'm sure isn't original but can't
> attribute at the moment).  Only morphemes which apply to most or all nouns
> (not NPs) may be called case.  Those which apply only to a very limited
> subset of nouns (e.g. only to certain place names) should be called
> adverbs.

A problem for this characterization is that there are morphemes which 
don't fall into either category -- they attach to NP's (not N's) but are 
not at all restricted to any subset.

The example I know best is Dieguen~o (or 'Iipay Aa), a Yuman language of
southern California and Baja California, but the same things applies to
Yuman generally and, I believe, to some languages of unrelated families in
South America, Oceania, and maybe W. Africa.

In Dieguen~o, there are six morphological case suffixes:
  Nominative    -c [...hachek -- i.e. vl. alveopalatal affricate)
  Accusative    -[zero]
  Comitative    -m
  Ablative      -k
  Locative      -i
  Inessive/Ill. -Ly [vl. alveopalatal lateral]

In relative clause constructions, for example, the suffix attaches not to
the head noun but to the verb of the relative clause (the language is
verb final and relatives are so-called "internally-headed"). Similarly, 
NP's which are conjunctions of N's have only the final N suffixed with 
the case marker indicating the role of the NP. I don't see what's odd
about this at all -- it *is* the NP which is semantically filling an
argument role, not an N. But maybe I missed something...
Organization: Valencia University - Computer Center
Date: Tuesday, 14 Apr 1992 19:54:28 EST
From: Werenfried Spit <SPIT@EVALUN11.BITNET>
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Numbers and language
 <204854@unix.cis.pitt.edu> <29E9ED82.24577@noiro.acs.uci.edu>

======================================================================== 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.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Werenfried Spit
  Departamento de Fisica Teorica        tel: +34-6-386 4551
  Universidad de Valencia
  c/ dr Moliner, 50                     spit@vm.ci.uv.es
  E-46100 Burjasot                      spit@evalun11.bitnet
  Valencia
  Spain
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Written and Spoken Language(s)
Date: 12 Apr 92 13:46:21 GMT
Organization: Purdue University Statistics Department

In article <1992Apr10.171858.4766@cs.yale.edu> horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne) writes:
|In article <1992Apr10.153443.4406@javelin.sim.es.com>, krogers@javelin.sim.es.com writes:

|<The obvious reason why spoken language is to be considered the chicken
|<with writing the egg is to look at what humans do naturally vs. have
|<to be formally instructed in.

>Not true.  The reason is that languages tend to be spoken before they're
>written.

>I wonder if a baby would learn to write if its parents communicated with it
>and others only in writing.

|<Writing is definitely an invention to
|<fit spoken language where as speaking is hardwired in the brain.

>That statement happens to be very controversial.  Don't assume that it's
>true.

There is a fable that a king wanted to learn what the original language
of mankind was. so he had a group up children brought up by deaf-mutes.
It was found that they were using sign language!
-- 
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)
From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Universal grammar (was: Cases vs. Adverbs)
Date: 9 Apr 92 19:25:36 GMT
Organization: SPSS Inc.

In article <ARA.92Apr7145506@camelot.ai.mit.edu> ara@zurich.ai.mit.edu 
(Allan Adler) writes:
>If I confine myself to IE languages, then I imagine that I know what a
>case is and what an adverb is. If I consider languages in general, then
>I can't assume that words like case and adverb have any meaning at all.
>
>I have heard rumors of Chomsky's general approach to languages and perhaps
>that is what people have in mind in their various postings. I haven't
>read Chomsky but my impression is that he has an unproved hypothesis about
>languages and a lot of work is being done to show that all natural languages
>can be formulated in a manner consistent with his hypothesis. I like to
>use music as an example, since as Piston points out in his book on 
>counterpoint, music is notorious for lending itself to preconceived modes
>of interpretation. I expect it is the same with language, so success in
>carrying out analyses of languages along the lines rumored to be Chomsky's
>would still not convince me that it is pertinent.

There have been a number of postings lately about the errors of exporting
Latin grammatical analyses to other languages.  The errors of Chomsky's UG,
if any, are not so blatant.

Here's an example, so you can judge for yourself.  I am paraphrasing (and
oversimplifying) from _Language and Problems of Knowledge_, which is pretty 
readable, for Chomsky.  

In Spanish (and a number of other languages), questions can be formed 
by fronting the verb:

   (1) El hombre, que esta contento, esta en la casa.
   (2) Esta el hombre, que esta contento, en la casa?

However, you can't just front any old verb, such as the first one in the
sentence-- you have to front the verb from the main clause.

   (3) *Esta el hombre, que contento, esta en la casa?

A rule such as 'Front the first verb' would be much simpler than the actual
rule.  It turns out to be rather tricky, in fact, to precisely define what
"the main verb" is.

Yet children (he says) don't make mistakes like (3); nor is it necessary
to explicitly teach foreigners learning Spanish to say (3) rather than (2).

He concludes that something innate in the mind/brain predisposes us to 
grammatical rules of the type that form (2) rather than (3).  "The rules
of language do not consider simple linear order but are _structure 
dependent_...  The child learning Spanish or any other human language 
knows, in advance of experience, that the rules will be structure-
dependent."

If you want to know more, Cook's _Chomsky's Universal Grammar_ is a good 
source.
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: hlin@cbnewsi.cb.att.com (hua.t.lin)
Subject: Re: Devanagari: Syllabary or Alphabet?
Organization: AT&T
Distribution: usa
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 14:04:44 GMT

In article <1992Apr15.021008.103@midway.uchicago.edu> bon6@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
>  [ .... ]
>4.  Scott is not hesitant to posit a "null grapheme" when looking
>    at Devanagari as an alphabet.  I am reluctant to do this, and
>    would prefer a theoretical framework that did not force me to.
>  [ .... ]

There is no ``null grapheme'', if you are refering to the first vowel
which is the default vowel for all Consonants. A consonant without any
vowel is written with only the left-half of the Consonant, and is
written attached to the next Consonant.
From: ct@dde.dk (Claus Tondering)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: feminine as the generic case
Date: 15 Apr 92 07:17:13 GMT
Organization: Dansk Data Elektronik A/S

sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) writes:

>By the way, is not "m{nniska" not feminine in Danish?

No! It's neuter: "Et menneske". Which means that we in Danish refer to
a human being as "it" (Danish: "det").

Similarly "a child" in Danish is "et barn" which is neuter. This is,
I believe, also the case in Swedish, isn't it?

I think that this is just a general case of a common phenomenon in
the Old Norse language. I don't know that language myself, but I've
been told that it differed from many other IE languages in the way
it referred to a collection of both males and females. In French, for
example, a collection of males and females are referred to as "ils",
which is a male pronoun. In Old Norse, I'm told, a collection of
males and females were considered neither male nor female but neuter!

How "m{nniska" came to be feminine in Swedish, I have no idea. Norwegian
follows Danish, I think. Are there any Icelanders or Faroese out there
who can tell us about their language?

-- 
Claus Tondering
Dansk Data Elektronik A/S, Herlev, Denmark
E-mail: ct@dde.dk
From: cortese@hepxvt.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese)
Subject: Re: Latin alphabet (was: Inventing a writing system?)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Organization: University of California, Irvine
Date: 13 Apr 92 20:13:52 GMT

In article <1992Apr13.174423.5447@spss.com> markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
>In article <8940@scott.ed.ac.uk> iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski) writes
>(quoting Janis Maria Cortese):
>>>The quirks are kind of neat, but they get a little irritating,
>>>especially once you learn something like Spanish or, dare I say,
>>>Esperanto.
>>
>>No, you dare not.  I have yet to meet a planned language whose
>>orthography wouldn't be at least as reasonable as that of Spanish.
>
>Spanish has an undeserved reputation for orthographic regularity.
>In Latin America, at least, you have to worry about s, z, and c; g and j
>(and occasionally x); ll and y; h; b and v; and you'll have worse problems
>if you're one of those speakers who likes to leave out s's and d's.
>
>Yeah, this is a lot better than English spelling, but then, anything is.

Most of the time, there's a rhyme or reason to Spanish spelling.  You
will rarely find "se" or "si", but you will find "c" in front of the
front vowels.  You usually find "g" in front of the front vowels (I know
not all the time; I've heard of jefe and fajita, too).  "B" and "v" are
a little weird, but it's a lot easier to just ask "b chica o b grande?"
than have to look up the whole damned word like in English.  The "ll"
or "y" you can usually bash your way through just from writing it and
seeing what is "prettiest" (I *know* that's a subjective term).

Regards,
Janis C.
From: matt@amsaa-cleo.brl.mil (Matt Rosenblatt)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Linguistics TV Schedule
Summary: Avenge the patriotic gore/ Which flecked the streets of Baltimore.
Keywords: Dixie
Date: 15 Apr 92 15:53:15 GMT
Organization: U.S. ARMY MATERIEL SYSTEMS ANALYSIS ACTIVITY (AMSAA), APG, MD.

In article <1992Apr15.134213.2188@athena.cs.uga.edu> 
mcovingt@athena.cs.uga.edu (Michael A. Covington) writes:

>In article <1992Apr15.071136.9262@cs.yale.edu> horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU 
>(Scott Horne) writes:

>><>       "I wish I was in the land of cotton . . ."?  
>><>        [quoted by Matt Rosenblatt]

>>No, that's the "correct" way to sing the song.  Actually, `wuz' is probably
>>correct.  

>>You can't expect good English from rednecks who wrap themselves in the
>>Confederate flag.   [Scott Horne]

>Do I hear a bit of regional bigotry coming through here??? 
>[Michael A. Covington]

Couldn't be.  Although Maryland lies south of Mason and Dixon's Line,
and our State song is a Confederate song that rails against the
"tyrant's" (i.e., Abe Lincoln's) "Northern scum," Maryland never did
join the Confederate States of America, nor are citizens of Maryland
(except for the Eastern Shore) commonly referred to as "rednecks."  
Neither the State flag nor the Great Seal of Maryland incorporates
the Stars and Bars.  Nor is there anything even remotely Confederate
about our fine State Motto, which reads:

               "Fatti Maschii, Parole Femine."

Actually, Mr. Horne is entirely correct.  Not only did I change the
original "wuz" to the more recognizable "was," I also emended "ob"
to "of," and "de" to "the," all in the interest of readability by
the worldwide, not necessarily English-speaking, readership of this
newsgroup.  I apologize to any Southern purists I may have offended
by these emendations.  I sincerely hope I do not offend them any further 
when I observe that the nation whose national anthem is "Dixie" is 
every bit as alive, and proved to be every bit as "nerushimij" (even 
after Grant took Vicksburg), as the nation whose national anthem 
begins with the preposterous

            "Soyuz nerushimij respublik svobodnik . . ."

of Mr. Horne's original article.

 					-- Matt Rosenblatt
 					(matt@amsaa.brl.mil)
From: cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese)
Subject: Re: Latin alphabet (was: Inventing a writing system?)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Organization: University of California, Irvine
Date: 11 Apr 92 01:00:02 GMT

>In article <1992Apr3.202342.24493@cs.yale.edu> horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne) writes:
>>
>>True, but it's misleading to refer to "designers of orthographies for
>>English" _et al._  No one designed those orthographies.

Jesus, you ain't kidding.  

>
>>Old English and Old French had reasonable orthographies.
>

ANYTHING would be more reasonable than what we have.  English is my
mother language, and I'm what is usually called a "good speller," but
this is nuts.  I shared an office with another grad from Argentina a
while back, and she was floored when she heard of the concept of a
"spelling bee."  It made sense to her when she recalled what she hated
the most about learning English.    

Let's face it.  Every language has to have a peeve to make it hard for
nonnative speakers to learn it.  English doesn't have genders, or formal
pronouns, or that many irregular verbs (at last count, I heard it was a
mere 144), or really conjugated verbs, and in some tenses, there are NO
IRREGULARS WHATSOEVER.  All this makes it too easy, so we HAD to have a
screwed up system of writing it just to make the furriners go nuts
learning it.

The quirks are kind of neat, but they get a little irritating,
especially once you learn something like Spanish or, dare I say,
Esperanto.  (French isn't a very good example.  There are too many
possible spelling to one pronunciation; the converse, however, is not
true.)  THAT'S when you realize that you're writing one f*cked-up
language when you write English.

I mean, I love the language.  I think as far as sheer expressiveness
goes, it's pretty good.  It tends to invent words a bit too often
instead of exploring metaphor, but then that's a personal taste.
ANYway, don't flame me on this.  I LIKE English, but I'm also damned
glad I learned how to write and speak it natively, or else I'd go nuts.
 
Just a meaningless rant, folks.  We now return you to your regularly
scheduled flamewars.

Regards,
Janis C.
  
Newsgroups: sci.lang