HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: matthew@ntl02.decnet.nokia.fi (Matthew Faupel)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Grammatical distinction through stress
Date: 16 Apr 92 16:46:17 GMT
Article-I.D.: matthew.MATTHEW.92Apr16164248
Organization: Nokia Telecommunications, Cambridge, UK

I've noticed that a significant number of English words distinguish between
related adjectives, nouns and verbs simply by change of stress e.g.:

n. 'abstract,  v. ab'stract
n. 'ally       v. al'ly
a. al'ternate  v. 'alternate
n. 'convert    v. con'vert
n. 'convict    v. con'vict
n. 'recoil     v. re'coil
n. 'recount    v. re'count
n. 'upset      v/a. up'set

and so on.  Could anyone tell me:

1.  Does any other language have this feature?  (Spanish can have this as
    a result of some of its verb conjugations e.g. noun: mando, verb:
    mandar, 3rd person past tense: mand'o) but it's not quite the same
    thing).
2.  When did it appear in English and why? (I get the impression that this
    is not a common feature of Germanic languages)
3.  Is there a "rule" to explain the feature?
4.  Is it a living feature of the language, i.e. are there any recently
    coined words that have this property?


Matthew
--
---* Amnesiac the Wizard *------------------* matthew@uk.tele.nokia.fi *---
 Opinions expressed here are not those of my company.    | NB. ntl02 is EN
 They're not even my own; I plagiarised the lot of them! | TEE EL ZERO TWO
---* matthew@ntl02.decnet.nokia.fi *------------------* Matthew Faupel *---
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: ara@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Allan Adler)
Subject: Re: cinq
Organization: M.I.T. Artificial Intelligence Lab.
	<1992Apr11.142309.14987@athena.cs.uga.edu>
Distribution: sci
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1992 18:46:12 GMT

Thanks for reminding me of the other example, coq. Why not chaq instead of
chaque ?

Incidentally, Larousse's dictinonaire de l'ancien francais give the spelling
of cinq as cinc.

Allan Adler
ara@altdorf.ai.mit.edu
From: lgorbet@carina.unm.edu (Larry P Gorbet ANTHROPOLOGY)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Tenses
Date: 14 Apr 92 00:45:59 GMT
Article-I.D.: lynx.6hxjxaf
Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque

In article <1992Apr13.160412.1838@memstvx1.memst.edu> connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu writes:
>You're not talking *tense*,
>you're talking *time*, which is not at all the same thing.  *Tense*
>refers to the name of some specific verb form, and I know of no way
>to limit the number of possible time-related tenses.  Time is, well,
>time.  Because tense commonly includes both time and "Aktionsart",
>multiple tenses for present, past, future, and timeless (forgot that
>one, didn't you?) are certainly possible.  

Yes, tense is not just "time", but neither is it "the name of some specific
verb form".  That characterization would relegate tense as a linguistic
topic to odd butterfly-collecting of language particularities.  So far as
I know, most linguists who don't just study one language and ignore all 
others tend to use _tense_ to refer *either* to the semantic category of
temporal deixis (i.e. time relative to the time of the speech act or to
some other standard) *or* to the grammaticized categories which manifest 
the semantic category (often, as noted, along with other syncretistic
dimensions such as Aktionsart).  The problem is that not all languages
have *morphological* categories of tense ("verb forms"), but many that
do not (all??) have systematic ways (e.g. the English _will_ and _gonna_
futures) of indicating that information.  If *all* you care about is
form, then *maybe* you can restrict the category to morphological tense,
but a lot of both synchronic and diachronic generalizations are
unattainable if you cannot talk about the grammatical category "tense"
as opposed to other language content concerning time (e.g. _yesterday_,
_whenever_, _second_) in a way that includes both morphological and
other grammaticized manifestations.
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: JAREA@UKCC.UKY.EDU
Subject: Re: feminine as the generic case
Organization: UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 01:57:27 GMT
X-Bytes: 

j c worries about a couple of Spanish words whose feminine grammatical
gender she labels 'perverse'.  Similarly, there is an old Latin joke,
starting out, 'Dicite, grammatice, cur genus...", which may well go
back even before the renaissance.  In case there might just be someone
on the list whose Latin is a bit rusty, I'll give most of it in English.
Tell me, grammarian, why is the gender of 'mentula' feminine, while the
gender of 'cunnus' is masculine?  The reply that is part of the quote
then says that a slave (servus) derives his name (nominatur) from his
master.  This is one reason I have tried to keep the terms 'sex' and
'gender' distinct in my own usage, despite my respect for my feminist
colleagues, with regard to such anomalies as French 'sentinelle' (f),
or German 'Maedchen' (n):  to determine the _gender_ , say, of German
'Frauelein', on looks it up in the dictionary, but to verify the sex
of, say 'Weib', one looks elsewhere.

Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne)
Subject: Re: Linguistics TV Schedule
Keywords: : -)
Organization: Computer "Science" Dept, Yale University
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 13:56:15 GMT

In article <8983@scott.ed.ac.uk>, sharder@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Soren Harder) writes:
<horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne) writes:
<
<>	Det er en dygtig land....
<
<If I should judge your Danish from the above, Mr. Horne, (as I suppose
<it was meant to be the Danish national anthem) it is absolutely
<existing, but you shouldn't count it among the 17 you speak fluently
<(which I don't know whether you do !).

I don't claim to speak seventeen languages fluently; nor do I claim to
speak Danish fluently (far from it).  I do claim some knowledge of Danish,
though.  (My Norwegian is better than my Danish, which is in turn better than
my Swedish, though Danish is the first Scandinavian language I studied.)

<The correct title is 'Der er et
<yndigt land',

Thanks.  (I was wondering when the Danish faction would correct me!)  All I
could remember was `...y...<dental>...ig...', and a quick scan of my meagre
mental vocabulary didn't turn up anything else that 1) fit that pattern;
2) seemed reasonable.  Since the word `dygtig' (`dygdig' in Swedish) has
a slightly different meaning (`virtuous'?) in Norwegian and Swedish, I
opted for it.

(Now, were there any errors in my Serbo-Croatian ["Hej, Slaveni!  Srce
bije..."]?)

And Ivan, you get credit for *`svobodnik' (stupidity) but not *`nerushimij'
(blame ASCII).  Meet me in a bar, Soren and Ivan, and I'll buy you each a
glass of chugdush.  :-)

					--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
Shao2shan1 sheng1 de tai4yang2 yong3 bu2 luo4!
From: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Why are English infinitives so different?
Date: 8 Apr 92 15:44:37 GMT
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK

In article <1992Apr7.143333.25602@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> dabg7181@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (HE-DAN Master of the Universe) writes:
>In (south slavic) Bulgarian (probably Macedonian)

Let's try "In the South Slavic language Bulgarian (including the
Macedonian literary norm)..."

>there is no infinitive 
>form as in the other slavic languages.

Well, there is, but it has a limited use and is dying out.  (I never
use it myself, but my mother occasionally does.)

>In Serbo-Croatian there is an 
>infinitive form but most likely the "da" construction will be used.
>
>SCr: Hocu da znam... (I want to know...)

I've been told that the "da" construction is preferred in the Serbian
and the one with the infinitive ("Hoc1u znati") in the Croatian dialect.
-- 
---- --- -- -  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: andrews@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Avery Andrews)
Subject: Re: -ze and -the in Attic Greek
Organization: Stanford University CSLI
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 17:01:08 GMT

Here's a semantically distributed -de, which is not formally
distributed
  
  ... t`on d   'age m^oira kak`e than'atoio t'elos-de
      him  but led  fate   evil  death(G)    end(A)-to
      `But an evil fate led him to the `end' of death (Il.13.602)
     (I haven't figured out a good translation for the final NP)

Here -de is semantically applying to [than'atoio t'elos], though
only appearing at the end.  Such optional distribution of case-markers
is characteristic of various Australian languages, such as
Warlpiri (see Jane Simpson's recent book for more details).
I wouldn't be surprised in this and the [honde domonde] example
were the only semantically distributed -de's in the corpus,
but I still don't think that the aoidoi would have felt free
to make up such things if they or something like them weren't at least
semi-acceptable somewhere sometime.


Another strange phenomenon from a nearby stable is:

  ho:s d h'ot ap`o plat'eos ptu'o-phin ...
  as    when  from flat(G)  shovel-ABL
  As when from the flat shovel, ... (Il.13.588)

  ham  e^:oi    phainom'ene:-phin
  with dawn(D)  appearing-ABL
  with the appearance of dawn (Od.12, c. 20, & elsewhere)

Here the [-phi(n)], sometimes called `ablative' (cognate with
[-ibus] in Latin, etc.), seems to show up at the ends of various
kinds of phrases (not internally, so far as I have noticed),
but ser es is effect as a substitute for a normal genetive or
dative.  The motivation is presumably metrical, but it's
still funny that the -phi(n) only gets tacked on to the end
of phrases.

Avery.Andrews@anu.edu.au
  (currently andrews@csli.stanford.edu)

Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Subject: Re: Cyrillicisation
Date: Wed, 08 Apr 1992 16:16:14 GMT
Organization: SPSS Inc.

In article <1992Apr8.054959.18634@cs.yale.edu> horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU 
(Scott Horne) writes:
>I was just thinking about the recent Roman-alphabet flamefest and decided
>to try to cyrillicise English.  

You're not the first to try this.  Mario Pei published a proposal to do
the same a few decades ago.  I don't know how similar his scheme was.
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Subject: Re: Written and Spoken Language(s)
Originator: alderson@leland.Stanford.EDU
Reply-To: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Organization: Stanford University LOTS Computer Facility
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 92 06:49:50 GMT

In article <44971@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>, hrubin@pop (Herman Rubin) writes:
>There are also languages which are primarily written.  The Hindu-Arabic
>numeral representation are one of them, and I do not believe that the 
>spoken words in any of the languages involved had much to do with the
>characters.  The Greek representation of numerals used their alphabet,
>augmented to 27 characters, because they needed 27 symbols, and they
>had this well-known collection of 24.  I have read mathematical papers
>in Russian, a language which I do not know, and I have often been abler
>to deduce what is being conveyed by the formulas alone.

Actually, the early Greek alphabet had 27; the classical alphabet as it has
come down to us from Ionic lost some of these because they either were not
useful in Ionic (qoppa) or represented sounds that had disappeared from Ionic
in its historical development (wau, AKA digamma).  The last, san, was retained
in Doric alphabets at the expense of sigma, just as sigma was retained at the
expense of san in Ionic alphabets.

Powell's _Homer and the Greek Alphabet_ provides a good history of the various
versions of the alphabet, even if his major thesis is controversial.
-- 
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_
From: dtate@unix.cis.pitt.edu (David M Tate)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Latin alphabet (was: Inventing a writing system?)
Date: 8 Apr 92 15:50:39 GMT
Organization: University of Pittsburgh

In article <1992Apr7.034920.2601@cs.yale.edu> horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne) writes:
>And the long `s' occurring together with our regular `s' in centuries of
>documents in Latin, English, and many other languages is suddenly a "glyphic
>variant" of `s'.  To hell with classicists.

You lost me here.  Why isn't 'great s' a glyphic variant?  Hasn't it always
been such?  Or do we disagree about what a "glyphic variant" is?

-- 
          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: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com (Richard Wojcik)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Why are English infinitives so different?
Date: 10 Apr 92 00:45:56 GMT
Organization: Boeing Computer Services Advanced Technology Center

Like most people to respond to this query so far, I do not really know why
English developed prepositional infinitives.  However, it is common in Celtic
languages to mark verb participles with prepositions.  For example, you might
translate 'writing' into Breton as 'o skrivan~', where 'skrivan~' is the
citation form for 'write'.  Welsh uses the prepositions 'yn' and 'wedi' for
present and past participles, respectively.  I wonder if the use of
prepositions in Germanic languages might not have arisen from contact with
Celtic languages.  I'm just a-guessing.  :-)


-- 
    Rick Wojcik   (rwojcik@atc.boeing.com)   Seattle, WA
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne)
Subject: A thirty-letter alphabet (Re: Latin alphabet (was: Inventing a writing system?))
Organization: Computer "Science" Dept, Yale University
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 1992 02:18:47 GMT

In article <167C112344.JAREA@UKCC.UKY.EDU>, JAREA@UKCC.UKY.EDU writes:
<
<Let's hear it for putting the thorn back in English
<where it has belonged for over a millenium!

And edh, wynn, and ash.  (While we're at it, let's put the `n' "back" in
`millennium'.)

It appears that our Icelandic brethren were the only ones smart enough to
retain good ole edh and thorn.

					--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!
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne)
Subject: Re: Animal Grammar
Organization: Computer "Science" Dept, Yale University
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1992 07:04:15 GMT

In article <ARILD.92Apr10170640@milan.philosophie.uni-stuttgart.de>, arild@adler.philosophie.uni-stuttgart.de writes:
<In article <ARA.92Apr9210542@camelot.ai.mit.edu> ara@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Allan Adler) writes:
<
<   In the face of this, isn't it a little arbitrary to concentrate on 
<   defining merely human languages ?
<
<Clearly. And what about cricket song, too? And some gorillas even speak
<English. You could actually ask your own Institute professor, N. Chomsky.
<Please post answer. 

Dear Arild, if you were being serious, please forgive me, as I found your
article absolutely hilarious.  :-)  :-)  :-)  :-)  :-)  It's quite a funny
joke against the Establishment.

Or maybe I just have a strange sense of humour.

					--Scott (and did you hear that
					  Chomsky's pet chimpanzee is
					  fluent in Hebrew?)

-- 
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!
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: rmt51@cas.org (Rick Turkel)
Subject: Re: cinq
Reply-To: rmt51@cas.org
Organization: S.W.I.G.
Distribution: sci
Date: Sun, 12 Apr 1992 21:09:48 GMT

In article <92103.150109IO11412@MAINE.MAINE.EDU>, IO11412@MAINE.MAINE.EDU
writes:
|> French uses 'q' without a 'u' following it in the words below:
|> 
|> coq, cinq, Iraq, iraqien, iraqienne, qat, qibla, qasida
|> 
|> The first two words, however, are the only ones commonly used.
|> The last three are included in the Petit Larousse Illustre' of 1982,
|> but not in its 1981 edition.

All very well and good, but all but the first two are words borrowed from A-----
or derived from them, where the 'q' represents a particular Arabic letter. 
Therefore, they don't really count as valid examples in a discussion of French
spelling rules.

|> 
|> 
|> Drago
|> -
|> -------------------------------------------------------------------
|> radev@gandalf.umcs.maine.edu                  I proofread my
|> IO11412@maine.maine.edu                       postings.
|> -------------------------------------------------------------------
|> L'enfer est paye' par les bonnes intentions.
|> -------------------------------------------------------------------

-- 
	Rick Turkel     (rmt51@cas.bitnet)      (rmt51@cas.com)

				Ein navi be`iro.
From: sharder@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Soren Harder)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Animal Grammar
Date: 13 Apr 92 21:17:48 GMT
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK

rhh@alice.att.com (r hardin) writes:

>> 
>>    My Doberman knows over a hundred words
>> 
>>    Among them names for a couple dozen toys.
>> 
>>    All her toys have names, chosen for my convenience, that I use
>>    consistently;  I always use the names in phrases.
>> 
>>    I notice, when she's standing amid the clutter of toys, I can
>>    say ``Get your tiny ball,'' and she's alert, what is it I'm saying?
>> 
>>    I repeat it, and then on the third time I change the verb
>> 
>>    ``Susie, get your tiny ball. (ears up) Get your tiny ball. (about to act,
>>    but undecided)  Where's your tiny ball? (grabs tiny ball and we go out)''
>> 

>Another response might be, isn't that interesting, that the humans
>couldn't conceal from Hans what would count as a correct answer.

>I posted what seemed to me to be relevant to grammar, that Susie
>seems to parse, to find a boundary between two things, when I
>change one of them but not the other.

Your dog seems very intelligent, but I don't think it has any real
language understanding.

It is capable of picking up speech sound and the minute differences in
it, something (I think) most animals are not. But it has no
understanding for syntax, which is shown by that you need to use
different verbs; it recognizes 'tiny_ball' (even inside a sentence),
but is not capable of understanding 'get' or 'where's the' or (I
believe unless you can prove otherwise) not capable of understanding
the concepts of 'tiny' or 'ball' in a way so that it can combine them
productively. _This_ is what characterizes language.

I don't know whether this has been brought up in the discussion, but
Hockett(1956???, his introduction to linguistics) has some real good
descriptions of what it is that makes language so special; he list
about 20 defining characteristics.

Soren Harder

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Soren Harder, (MSc student)
Centre for Cognitive Science, 2 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh
E-mail: sharder@cogsci.ed.ac.uk
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
From: ct@dde.dk (Claus Tondering)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Why are English infinitives so different?
Date: 9 Apr 92 07:29:06 GMT
Organization: Dansk Data Elektronik A/S

sharder@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Soren Harder) writes:

>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).

Yes, but note the peculiar difference:

English: To  be    or   not   to   be
Danish:  At vaere eller ikke      vaere

What happened to the second 'to' of the English version?

-- 
Claus Tondering
Dansk Data Elektronik A/S, Herlev, Denmark
E-mail: ct@dde.dk
Newsgroups: sci.lang,soc.culture.esperanto
From: horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne)
Subject: Re: feminine as default (summary)
Followup-To: soc.culture.esperanto
Keywords: feminine generic default
Organization: Computer "Science" Dept, Yale University
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1992 01:58:09 GMT

In article <29E63EED.8588@noiro.acs.uci.edu>, cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese) writes:
<
<(I don't want to
<provoke a flamewar on this as it is inappropriate;

Oh, by the way, my somewhat belated International Women's Day greetings to
all!  (It was March 8.)

<Genetics has shown that the Y-chromosome is actually
<an X with a little piece broken off.  Shouldn't "man" then be "virfemo"
<and "father" be "virmatro?"

Rather, they should be `femino' and `matrino', respectively.  :-)

By the way, it's time to get rid of the word `female', which is derived from
`male' and Chinese _fei1_, meaning `not'.  (Actually, that's bullshit.  I'm
in a playful mood.)

<Where have you heard of Esperantists who use "matro?"  I'm very
<interested in hearing more about this.

Go over to `soc.culture.esperanto', where this sort of discussion belongs.
(Follow-ups to there.)

<I'm glad other people resent
<having half the race treated as the default and the other half being
<relegated to a suffix.

Indeed.  It's sexism, pure and simple.  (Incidentally, females constitute
about 52% of the population.  If anyone should be relegated to a suffix,
it should be the males.)

					--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: cortese@hepxvt.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese)
Subject: Re: A new pronoun?
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Organization: University of California, Irvine
Date: 11 Apr 92 00:28:26 GMT

In article <204409@unix.cis.pitt.edu> dtate@unix.cis.pitt.edu (David M Tate) writes:
>In article <JON.92Apr3203749@frnk403.franklin.COM> jon@frnk403.franklin.COM (Jonathan Yavner) writes:
>>In article <1992Apr2.134358.2936@darwin.ntu.edu.au> salter_duke@darwin.ntu.edu.au writes:
>>>   I've just discovered a new English pronoun: "its" corresponding 
>>>   to "mine", "yours" etc., which isn't supposed to exist. 
>
>Says who?
>
>>
>>As a system administrator, I use this new "its" pronoun frequently, although I
>>still think it's odd.  
>
>I don't get it.  What's *new* about its?  I learned this one in first grade.
>
>How old is the proverb "Every dog has its day." ?  Certainly a lot older
>than I am...
>

You're using the pronoun in a very adjectival form here.  I think the
speaker was talking about using it like a noun, like "That's mine/yours/
his/hers/ours/theirs."

BTW, it sounds okay to me.

Regards,
Janis C.


Newsgroups: sci.lang