HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: hau4@ellis.uchicago.edu (sven  hauptfeld)
Subject: Re: [Anglolingvo/English] easy to learn English?
Reply-To: hau4@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Distribution: usa
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1992 18:03:06 GMT

In article <1992Aug11.171521.1149@efi.com> dchung@efi.com (Daniel Chung) writes:
>
>     C^i tiu artikolo nur havas Usona dissendo.  Se estos respondo,
>bonvolu larg^igi al monda dissendo.
>
>     I just overheared, that someone says that English is easy to learn.
>Well, it will be easy to learn, if one gets rid of all unregularitys from
>it.  I thinked that "Newspeak" can be a nice language for note-takeing.
>Now, perhaps Esperanto haves the regularity for note-takeing and for
>a lot of people to learn as a twoth (2th) language -- more regularitys
>than English.
>
>						Daniel Chung, U.S.A.

Yes, but if you want to invent an "English" language that would be as regular
as Esperanto, you should make the spelling as regular, too. Thus your article
should read:

     I just overheered, that sumwun say  that English is eesy to lern.
Well, it will be eesy to lern, if wun get rid of awl unregularitys from
it. I thinked that "Newspeek" can be a nice language (langwidge?) for 
note-takeing. Now, perhaps Esperanto have the regularity for note-takeing
and for a lot of peeple to lern as a tooth language (...?) -- more ...

Notice that verb conjugation (-s) is also omitted here, to make it more 
Esperanto-like.

However, I prefer English as it is. If you want a regular language, why not
just learn Esperanto rather than change English?

Sven

Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: olems@ulrik.uio.no (Ole Michael Selberg)
Subject: Re: Can I axe you a question?
Followup-To: sci.lang
Organization: Oslo University
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 14:17:05 GMT

In article <R3653FJ@mailgzrz.tu-berlin.de>, bzfstoer@ZIB-Berlin.DE
(Mechthild Stoer) wrote:
> 
>> apropos ask <--> axe:
> 
> Same phenomenon in German:
> Some people say: "Wepse" instead of "Wespe" ("wasp" in English).
> They knows it's wrong, but it sounds nicer.
> But I don't know of other examples.
> 
> Mechthild Stoer

Or maybe they're just oldfashioned and prefer the original form,
cp. Old High German `wafse', Norwegian `veps' or `kvefs', Lithuanian 
`vapsva', Old Prussian `wobse' ...

Ole Michael Selberg
Institutt for oesteuropeiske og orientalske studier
Universitetet i Oslo
Postboks 1030 Blindern
N-0315 Oslo 3
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: hughes@tweedledee.cis.udel.edu (John Hughes)
Subject: Re: axe
Organization: University of Delaware, Newark
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 18:48:06 GMT

In article <9208191614.AA08482@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> lucas@WATSON.IBM.COM ("Bruce Lucas") writes:
>I'm somewhat surprised at the knee-jerk arguments apparently from
>political correctness against the explanation of laziness for
>the substitution of "axe" for "ask".  If we take "lazy" to mean
>"tending to do what is easy rather than what is right" [...]

>However, I don't see how either of these two technical issues could
>justify the flames directed at the poster who innocently hypothesized
>that laziness accounts for the observed behavior.  Note for example
>that (assuming for the sake of this argument that the metathesis
>is an innovation) there must have been a time when "ask" was the norm
>and the easier "axe" was spoken only by a few speakers; wouldn't these
>speakers qualify as lazy under the above definition?  (The alternative
>would be that suddenly all at once an entire population began to
>say "axe" rather than "ask", which I find a little hard to swallow.)

The obvious point is that people have been saying "aks" for a long time,
certainly for many generations, and that at this time in many linguistic
communities it is being transmitted from generation to generation as the 
normal pronunciation. It is completely likely that certain groups, say, 
learning English as a second language pronounced "ask" as "aks" out of some 
difficulty in reproducing that cluster. But the important thing is that this 
pronunciation, if widely produced, would be passed on to children who heard
it as the original form. So, if you want to insist that laziness produces 
the pronunciation, you can only blame the originators with laziness, and
the people who produce it now as learning language exactly the same way
you did-- from your momma and your buddies-- and cannot fault them on that
point.

The people who insist only laziness is to blame for the pronunciation seem
to me to be making the assumption that people who produce it have been 
surrounded by the correct alternative from an early age, perhaps coached in it 
meticulously, but never "bothered" to learn it. This, it seems to me, is in 
opposition to all common sense about how children learn to speak. By the time 
children enter school, they have formed strong pronunciation habits based on 
what their social group does. Plenty of people with regional accents keep them 
all their lives, regardless of the schooling they receive, or impressively low 
"laziness" quotients. 

To speak for myself, I don't think my reaction was knee-jerk PCness. Many
people, ignoring the realities of human linguistic bahavior, nevertheless
feel they are qualified to theorize about the sloth and stupidity of others.
I am not making an argument against standardization or anything similar; I am 
arguing that one who hasn't thought much about the psychology of language 
isn't going to come up with a very satisfactory psychological explanation for 
a simple linguistic phenomenon.

John
hughes@cis.udel.edu
From: mcovingt@athena.cs.uga.edu (Michael A. Covington)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Chomsky's 'Minimalist' paper
Date: 18 Aug 92 20:50:14 GMT
Organization: University of Georgia, Athens

In article <1992Aug18.191135.20858@athena.mit.edu> pesetsk@athena.mit.edu (David M Pesetsky) writes:
>In article <1992Aug18.033810.23837@athena.cs.uga.edu> mcovingt@athena.cs.uga.edu (Michael A. Covington) writes:
>>Is there anyone here who has read Chomsky's new "minimalist" paper and
>>would care to comment on it?
>>
>But your query now leads me to suspect that my remarks never made it out
>of MIT (unlike the Minimalist paper itself). Is this the case?

Hmmm, they may have appeared during a time when I wasn't reading sci.lang.
(3 weeks ago I was in a work crunch, finishing a book.)  Care to repost?


-- 
+ Michael Covington - Artificial Intelligence Programs - U of Georgia - USA 
+ Unless otherwise noted, these are private opinions, not official statements.
+ VOTE NO GEORGIA LOTTERY - don't tie education to an unpredictable income.
From: davidba@carmel.technion.ac.il (David Ben_Ami)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: "Yes Virginia!" What does it mean?
Date: 13 Aug 92 17:26:20 GMT
Organization: Technion, Israel Inst. of Technology

I don't know if that is the proper newsgroup to ask it in but I'll try.

I ran into the expression "Yes Virginia!" in several places and couldn't
find any explanation in dictionraies (either standard or Slang/Americansims
ones). I guess it's from an American movie.

Can someone enlighten me?

Thanks in advance, David.
-- 
=============================================================================
  David Ben-Ami (irc: bigdav)      |   "I can resist anything but Temptation"
  s2780369@Techst02.Technion.Ac.Il |       Oscar Wilde
  davidba@Carmel.Technion.Ac.Il  davidba@Moav.Techniona.Ac.Il
From: michalj@fuw.edu.pl (Michal Jankowski)
Subject: Re: Gender neutral pronouns
Organization: Warsaw University Physics Dept.
	<1992Aug9.064234.13288@midway.uchicago.edu>
	<1992Aug11.111306.8891@bsu-ucs.uucp>
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 22:01:30 GMT

>>>>> On 11 Aug 92 16:13:06 GMT, 00prneubauer@bsu-ucs.uucp (Paul Neubauer) said:

Paul> 	Singular:
Paul> 	Masculine:		Feminine:
Paul> 1st	by{\l}em		by{\l}am
Paul> 2nd	by{\l}esz		by{\l}asz
                       ^^                      ^^

Wrong. The correct forms are: "by{\l}e\'s" and "by{\l}a\'s".

  Michal

Newsgroups: sci.lang,soc.culture.japan
From: mako@uihepa.hep.uiuc.edu ("Makoto Shimojima, Univ of Tsukuba/CDF")
Subject: Re: [verbs] Japanese "be" (Re: [Anglolingvo/English] easy to learn English?
Reply-To: mako@uihepa.hep.uiuc.edu
Organization: High Energy Physics, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1992 02:10:49 GMT

> "de wa nai" (="ja nai", polite form "de wa arimasen"="ja arimasen").

"ja" is a VERY common variant of "de wa" but is not to be considered
polite. To me, "dewa arimasen" is not the same as "ja arimasen."

						mako
From: schiller@tira.uchicago.edu (Eric Schiller)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: New words for gender neutral pronouns in English
Date: 19 Aug 92 23:07:57 GMT
	<SCHILLER.92Aug18174601@tira.uchicago.edu>
	<2A91B612.15919@orion.oac.uci.edu>
Organization: Center for Information and Language Studies / University of
	Chicago

Yes, the use of the third person plural as unmarked is
common. It is my preferred strategy as well.

Eric Schiller
From: hubey@pilot.njin.net (Hubey)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Karandash/Caran d'Ache
Date: 21 Aug 92 00:54:18 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

In article <1992Aug20.155147.4671@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk> jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin) writes:

> I recall from somewhere that this word comes from applying the _da,s suffix
> to Old Turkish "kar" (womb), not the modern form "kar1n" (which accounts
> for the missing syllable).

Are you sure about this, Jack ? Kar means snow. I can't see how one
word means both snow and womb,groin. (BTW, not k^ar, meaning
profit.)


> But it raises another issue: why did the vowel harmony disappear?  There are
> a few other words in Turkish where pre-existing vowel harmony has been lost;
> one is "merhaba" (hello), from the Arabic "marhaba" - the Arabic form has
> vowel harmony but the Turkish one doesn't, exactly the opposite of what you'd
> expect.

I could understand how it could happen to borrowed words, but it
also happened to some Turkish words, like elma,alma, and
yara, yare. It could be because of the effect of Farsi or because
it introuduced ambiguities. Alma also means 'don't take. And
yar is love, from Farsi (I think) and also abyss.

It might be an affectation of sounding Persian since it was
a literary language.
-- 

	mark	


   hubey@pilot.njin.net                   hubey@apollo.montclair.edu
 ...!rutgers!pilot!hubey                  hubey@logos.montclair.edu
Xref: sparky sci.lang:6478 soc.culture.esperanto:1458
From: urban@cobra.jpl.nasa.gov (Michael Urban)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,soc.culture.esperanto
Subject: Re: [Anglolingvo/English] easy to learn English?
Date: 17 Aug 92 23:06:57 GMT
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California

In article <1992Aug17.221506.25602@ima.isc.com>, karl@ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer) writes:
>  It remains to be seen whether it will continue to evolve
> in the direction of correcting what you perceive to be its major flaws.
> 

Ah, Karl has hit on the proverbial crux of the matter.  Esperanto
evolves.  Any _a priori_ improvements suggested in the name of nonsexism,
alphabetical parsimony, or other linguistic technicality do not represent
evolution, they represent planning and design.  You can start a language
that way, but if that is your primary mechanism for evolution you do not
have a human language on your hands, you have a sterile imitation of one.

-- 
	Mike Urban

	urban@cobra.jpl.nasa.gov
Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.drugs
From: andrewm@runx.oz.au (Andrew McLaren)
Subject: Etymology of Cocaine
Organization: RUNX Un*x Timeshare.  Sydney, Australia.
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 92 23:33:56 GMT

I've been dipping into the Middle English poem "The Land of Cokaygne", a
satiric description of sensual pleasures in a monastery. There is also an
Old French version "Le Fabliau de Coquaigne". The OED says that the word
"cocaine" was invented in 1874 as "coca" + "-ine", but of course, coca was
unknown in Europe before the discovery of the Americas ... so where does
the name "Cokaygne" come from? Or was the inventor of "cocaine" making a
clever, if obscure, reference to the earlier poem? Any suggestions from
etymologists or you amateur pharmacists :-) ?

Andrew McLaren
andrewm@runx.oz.au
From: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Gender neutral pronouns
Date: 19 Aug 92 08:48:48 GMT
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK

In article <36779@uflorida.cis.ufl.edu> djohns@elm.circa.ufl.edu (David A. Johns) writes:
<Russian uses the second-person singular as a generic, and as far as I
<know, the agreement is always masculine.  I don't know whether the
<first person is used this way.

Yes, it is, and the agreement is up to the sex of the speaker.  Or so
I feel about it.  I can't imagine a woman using the masculine form in
the first person, even in a hypothetical situation.

<But what if the verb requires a female subject?

It doesn't matter.

<Can you say the following as hypotheticals with masculine agreement?
<
<        Esli by ja xotel zaberemenet'...
<        'If I wanted to get pregnant ...'
<
<        Esli by ty xotel zaberemenet'...
<        'If you (one) wanted to get pregnant ...'

Yes.  Ditto if they are preceded by

   _Esli by ja/ty byl zhenshchinoj, i ..._
   `If I/thou were a woman, and ...'.

(That's "thou were", right?  Or is it "thou wert"?  Damn.)

-- 
 `If ye hiv ears oan yer heid - then use them tae lissen.' (The Glasgow Gospel)
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: komives@lamar.ColoState.EDU (Robert Komives)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: English IS easy to learn
Date: 20 Aug 92 04:19:45 GMT
Organization: Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO  80523

In article <2A91B6B1.16046@orion.oac.uci.edu> cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese) writes:
>In article <Aug19.020250.18491@yuma.ACNS.ColoState.EDU> komives@lamar.ColoState.EDU (Robert Komives) writes:
>>In article <1992Aug18.163817.16916@news.cs.brandeis.edu> rath@binah.cc.brandeis.edu writes:
>>>... I have commonly encountered
>>>documents which spell the same word several different ways, sometimes 
>>>within a line or two of each other.  ...
>>
>>Bad spellers still do that. I do that. Good spellers just do not seem to
>>understand that bad spellers do not make mistakes on purpose nor always. Why
>>look up a word in the dictionary if you know you spelled it correctly last
>>week? Its nice to know from all these posts that there is something natural
>>about this.
>
>It's still a little annoying when you find it in published documents and
>stuff like that.  By the time it got to the publisher's, I would hope
>that the author -- especially if they knew they were bad spellers --
>would have checked the hard stuff.
>
>You can be a bad speller; some good writers can't spell worth a damn.
>Just try to proofread the thing before it gets printed or sent out or
>whatever.
>
>Regards,
>Janis C.

I agree. We all have to make the best of our handicaps. I am just glad
that I live in the age of spell checkers.
From: cigno@sgi.com (Kevin Walsh)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: [Anglolingvo/English] easy to learn English?
Keywords: sexism, female "ino" suffix
Date: 14 Aug 92 21:39:02 GMT
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.

In article <209@schroedinger> ghinkelmeyer@schroedinger.UUCP (George Hinkelmeyer) writes:
...
>Maybe in a truly egalitarian lingo, we could have a root word which
>means 'parental unit'; then by adding a male or female affix, we would
>render 'father' or 'mother'. The same would go for children, rabbits,

	A relatively popular reform of esperanto that I have heard is 
	the creation of -ic^ (-ich) to correspond with -in.  Then patro
	would mean parent, patrino would mean mother, and patric^o would
	mean father.  

>and celestial bodies...

	Well, some of us are so fortunate that we feel no need to 
	distinguish between male and female heavenly bodies.  I, alas, 
	prefer mine bearded (no Martha, he ain't talking about comets).

--
------
"I've always thought of Boston traffic as Brownian motion with
evil intent."  -- Don Coolidge coolidge@speaker.sgi.com
Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.usage.english,soc.culture.usa
From: roger@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig)
Subject: Re: Problem with 'they' (etc) as 3p singular common gender pron.
Originator: news@nimaster
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1992 03:59:45 GMT

In article <1992Aug23.023626.22025@midway.uchicago.edu> gal2@midway.uchicago.edu writes:

>I don't think anyone has mentioned yet that in today's English 'they' /
>'them' / 'their(s)' cannot refer to (some?) specific singular antecedents:

>* Every good chef knows their ingredients.

>  Everyone in the kitchen knows their ingredients.

>Any thoughts on why? I haven't spent much time on this. Does anyone have

One thing is the 

{every/any/some/no}+{one/body} words.  These seem to take the "They"
more easily and frequently.  

The former sentence is used less often, and criticized more often; but
it's certainly acceptable in informal usage. (See Urdang, for instance.)
In formal usage, many people nowadays recast it with "All chefs..."

>an argument putting this phenom in the syntactic realm? Is it because
>antecedents which are specific people (ie, introduce a cognitive model
>or frame or whatever) somehow require a commitment / assumption in regards
>to their sex?

Well, replace "chef" with "person."  Any better?  Worse?  I dunno.

Roger

Newsgroups: sci.lang,soc.culture.esperanto
From: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Cutting R Post to pieces (Re: "Von Neuman style" (was: Russian dative + infinitive))
Date: 21 Aug 92 08:24:34 GMT
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK

In article <3999@svin02.info.win.tue.nl> reinpost@info.win.tue.nl writes:
 >
*>(Dear linguists in the audience, please cut me to pieces.)
 >
 >>--Leo Connolly
 >
*>--- cut here --- 
 >Reinier Post						reinpost@win.tue.nl

Hmm.  Good to know where to cut, of course, but I've always thought
that "cut to pieces" means to more than two pieces, so just one cut
won't make it.  Or?

(Standard "Sorry, couldn't resist" disclaimer.)

-- 
 `If ye hiv ears oan yer heid - then use them tae lissen.' (The Glasgow Gospel)
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: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Subject: Re: axe
Originator: alderson@leland.Stanford.EDU
Reply-To: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Organization: Stanford University Academic Information Resources
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 92 02:24:21 GMT

In article <9208191614.AA08482@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>, lucas@WATSON ("Bruce Lucas") writes:
>However, I don't see how either of these two technical issues could
>justify the flames directed at the poster who innocently hypothesized
>that laziness accounts for the observed behavior.

You have made two assumptions that are unwarranted.

First, you have assumed that the responses were motivated by some notion of
political correctness.  While I'm not certain that I can claim, as Mr. Connolly
did of himself, that I am never politically correct, I am quite sure that I am
never so with regard to linguistic discussion.

Second, you have assumed that the poster was making an innocent hypothesis.
Given the value judgments expressed in his other postings on the same topic,
this assumption would appear to be unwarranted.

The issue is one of negative connotations in the term "laziness."  Your own
description is of the more neutral "ease of use" than of the word "laziness."
-- 
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: bzfstoer@ZIB-Berlin.DE (Mechthild Stoer)
Subject: Re: Can I axe you a question?
Reply-To: bzfstoer@ZIB-Berlin.DE
Organization: Konrad Zuse-Zentrum fuer Informationstechnik Berlin
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 08:14:22 GMT

apropos ask <--> axe:

Same phenomenon in German:
Some people say: "Wepse" instead of "Wespe" ("wasp" in English).
They knows it's wrong, but it sounds nicer.
But I don't know of other examples.

Mechthild Stoer
Xref: sparky sci.lang:6593 alt.usage.english:6708 soc.culture.usa:6701
From: tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.usage.english,soc.culture.usa
Subject: Re: New words for gender neutral pronouns in English
Date: 20 Aug 92 17:03:21 GMT
Reply-To: tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen)
Organization: Convex Computer Corporation, Colorado Springs, CO
Originator: tchrist@pixel.convex.com
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.


thank you thank you thank you.

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


Speak softly and carry a +6 two-handed sword.
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: sos@oz.plymouth.edu (Steffan O'Sullivan)
Subject: Re: "Yes Virginia!" What does it mean?
Reply-To: sos@oz.plymouth.edu (Steffan O'Sullivan)
Organization: Plymouth State College - Plymouth, N.H.
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 92 02:47:32 GMT

davidba@carmel.technion.ac.il (David Ben_Ami) writes:
>
>I ran into the expression "Yes Virginia!" in several places and couldn't
>find any explanation in dictionraies (either standard or Slang/Americansims
>ones). I guess it's from an American movie.

Not a movie, no.  It's from a newscaster, but I can't remember which
one - a forerunner of Walter Winchell - Paul Harvey, maybe?  It's from
the 1930s or '40s is my guess.

This is all from a shaky memory, but I used to know the story.  Some
little girl, Virginia, had heard that there was no such person as Santa
Claus, and had written to this newscaster asking if it were true.
(This was a radio newscaster - I believe it was before commercial
television.)

His reply, on the air, was famous, and included the line, "Yes,
Virginia, there *is* a Santa Claus."  He was referring to the hearts of
humans moved to help one another - that, to him, was "Santa Claus" made
visible.

Sorry to be so vague - hope it helps.  I have heard a tape of this, and
can still hear, in my head, his nasal voice saying this one phrase, but
I can't remember his name, alas.

-- 
  - Steffan O'Sullivan		         sos@oz.plymouth.edu
From: smit@urz.unibas.ch
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: ethymology of foobar
Date: 17 Aug 92 21:59:43 MET
Organization: University of Basel, Switzerland

In many of manuals I've seen the word 'foobar' as a placeholder
for any name. (e.g. "send the file 'foobar')

Does anybody know the origin of that word?

Stefan