HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: ba07479@bingsuns.cc.binghamton.edu (ba07479)
Subject: Re: Minority Languages in the EC
Organization: Binghamton University Computing Services
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 21:54:16 GMT

In article <24217@castle.ed.ac.uk> cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:

>In one of Catalunya's towns (city?) there is a large square, bedside
>the bus station, which contains a lot of sculpture, the name of which
>(translated) is "the square of nations without states". My Catalan
>friend pointed to the name of the square, saying "As a Scot you will
>be able to understand how we feel about this.  Stateless nations are
>one of the great tragedies of Europe, but only those who have
>experienced it can know this. This square is dedicated to stateless
>nations everywhere."

	I know that nationalism isn't really in the domain of this
group, but I felt I had to respond. As an American and the son of a
Scot and a Jew, I really don't think being a nation without a state is
such a tragedy, as long as the majorities don't make the majorities
feel inferior or undesirable.
	It seems to me the real tragedy, which we has inspired
countless atrocities in our century and is even now making people
miserable or dead in what was Yugoslavia, is nations who feel they
have to have their own states at all costs, and that they should be as
ethnically "pure" as possible. 
	I have to admit that I do feel a stirring inside of me when
people talk about Scottish independence, but it isn't worth bloodshed,
in fact it doesn't even justify the alienation that any English or
Irish would feel at suddenly  being forced to live in a Scottish
state. I do feel a deep sense of shame about ethnic violence in my
other "home areas" of Northern Ireland, Texas and Israel.
	(I should probably point out here that I feel in general that
very little indeed does justify killing.)
	I do support some kind of autonomy for fairly homogeneous
minority regions such as Scotland or Catalunya, and if this EC thing
works out, I see no reason why they should remain part of the ancient
conquerors. In any case, even France would be a nation without a state
then.

				Sincerely,

					Angus Grieve-Smith
					ba07479@bingsuns.cc.binghamton.edu
From: connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Mutilation (sci.lang, English)
Date: 29 Jul 92 13:39:10 -0600
Organization: Memphis State University

In article <1992Jul28.213433.13985@midway.uchicago.edu>, goer@ellis.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz) writes:
> kartik@hls.com (Kartik Chandrasekhar) writes:
>>
>>I was disturbed to see how the language is used here in the USA.
>>What I have really come to despise are expressions such as:
>>
>>"I did not get the invite."
>>"Dont do drugs." (Seen on billboards all over the country.)
> 
> When one learns a language in school that is not one's mother-tongue,
> one has to memorize a lot of rules that come naturally to a native
> speaker.  It is easy to get so wrapped up with these rules that one
> begins to see the rules as the language itself, and not as abstrac-
> tions from it.  It is also easy to superimpose the norms of standard
> written English on living speech communities, forgetting that, be-
> cause you are not part of a living community of first-language Eng-
> lish speakers, you haven't had the opportunity to learn the various
> subtleties - regionalisms, levels of formality, etc. - that charac-
> terize British, American, Australian, South Afreican, Canadian (etc.)
> speech.
> 
> If you find colloquial dialects unbearable, given your background,
> then try reading alt.usage.english.  You may find partial fulfillment
> there....

My, we are getting nasty, aren't we?  And xenophobic to boot.

Come on.  Native speakers of English make all of the mistakes that
Kartik complained about, and that you and others have found in his
post.  We have plenty of natives who try to make us write the way
Sister Porcupina wanted us to because she thought that was the only
way.  Kartik didn't tell us anything we didn't already know: that
American newspapers sometimes make dreadful mistakes, and that some
speakers of English (both native and foreign) don't write so well.
Read some of the posts by natives.  Some of you guys don't bother
to capitalize, punctuate, or even try to spell correctly, and we have
constant trouble with posts that simply don't say what the poster
intended.  Even *I* don't always make myself too clear, as a recent
exchange on Black English --> German dialects illustrated.  Let's
just cool it, do lunch, and hope that Bush can be beat.

--Leo Connolly
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: schiller@tira.uchicago.edu (Eric Schiller)
Subject: Re: English and its Mutilation
Organization: Center for Information and Language Studies / University of
	Chicago
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 22:35:44 GMT

Each of the examples you cite are perfectly fine as statements of
English. There is no mutilation of the language involved. Language
changes, and those who fail to incorporate the changes will be
left behind. Any use of English that is clear to both speaker and
hearer is good English, despite what the pedagogues may claim.

The use of "invite" as a noun has been well established for over two
decades. It may be informal, but is not incorrect.

As for "beat",

"This taste just can't be beat!" sounds a lot better than
"This taste just can't be beaten!"

Accusing newspapers of carelessness and irresponsibility is just
foolish. They reflect the language as it is used, with new
usages accepted only after they have become popular. They are
linguistically conservative, but not necessarily pompous.

Those who try to stop change in language are condemned to be
thought of as silly people, however good their intentions may be.

Eric Schiller
Newsgroups: sci.lang,sci.philosophy.tech
From: e343mh@tamuts.tamu.edu (Michael Hand)
Subject: Alienating adjectives
Organization: Texas A&M University, College Station
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 20:44:52 GMT

This is pretty out-of-the-way, but maybe somebody out there 
can help me.  The following inference scheme is invalid for 
certain adjectives.
		x is an ADJ N
		Thus, x is a N.
For instance, from the fact that x is a former head of dept,
it certainly doesn't follow that x is a head of dept.

Now, I once long ago read a discussion of these "alienating
adjectives" but I cannot now find it.  I could have sworn
it was in something by Peter Geach, but I cannot find it in
*Logic Matters* or *Reference and Generality*.  Anyone knowing
a good discussion of this matter, or even just knowing more
about this than what I've posted, please respond by email.
(I don't think the groups will be too interested.)
Thanks.
B-o} Michael
_______________________________________________________________________
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Hand                     phone (409)845-5660, fax (409)845-0458
Dept of Philosophy, Texas A&M Univ, College Station TX 77843-4237 U.S.A.
From: jgk@osc.COM (Joe Keane)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: what has happened to "ascribe" ?
Keywords: number, contraction
Date: 28 Jul 92 05:29:47 GMT
Reply-To: Joe Keane <jgk@osc.com>
Organization: Versant Object Technology, Menlo Park, CA
Weather: sunny, high 79, low 55
Moon-Phase: waning crescent (4% of full)

In article <RMUGELE.92Jul24082955@oasun1.oracle.com> rmugele@oracle.com
(Robert Mugele) writes:
>I tend to agree with this last comment.  It seems to me that "there is"
>and "there are" are moving toward an idomatic usage where they merge and
>number is no longer significant.  I see this as analagous to the Spanish
>word "hay" which has the meanings "there is" and "there are".

I have a sort of alternative theory that "there's" has become an acceptable
contraction for "there are", most likely because "there're" is awkward to
pronounce and easily confused with "their" or "they're".  So i wonder how much
people who use "there's" with plural objects would also use "there is" in the
same place, or whether most of them would switch to "there are" if they're not
using the contraction.

In any case, it is an idiomatic format, and there's no reason to assume that
the verb must agree in number with the object (or do you call it the subject).
I'd have a hard time believing that "there" is a noun.

--
Joe Keane, amateur linguist
jgk@osc.com (uunet!amdcad!osc!jgk)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,eunet.misc
From: matthew@ntl02.decnet.nokia.fi (Matthew Faupel)
Subject: Re: Finnish question
Organization: Nokia Telecommunications, Cambridge, UK
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 14:37:37 GMT

JH: Juha Heikkila in article <JHEIKKIL.92Jul30133020@utrio.helsinki.fi>
CT: Claus Tondering in article <1992Jul23.135758.2304@dde.dk>

CT: ISO standard 6937 mentions that the Finnish language uses two characters
CT: that look like S and Z with a small v above (a hacek accent).
CT: I have never seen any Finnish text that uses these two characters.
CT: Does Finnish use them? Or has Finnish used them in the past?

JH: Yes, they are used, but very rarely. [stuff removed for brevity] You
JH: don't come across these characters that often because the sounds
JH: themselves only occur in relatively recent loans (ZH practically
JH: only in transliterations). More acclimatised loans tend to have S
JH: (/s/) instead.

The only Finnish word that I've ever come across that uses one of these
letters is s<ekki (s< being the s-hacek) meaning cheque (as in traveller's).


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
Subject: Re: Spelling ( Was: Dilemma = Dilemna ?? )
From: comjohn@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz (Mr. John T Jensen)
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 20:22:33 GMT
Organization: University of Auckland, New Zealand.

jrt@hawk.dsto.gov.au (J.R.Terry-AEG) writes:

>Is it not perhaps yet another example of (North) American english (?)
>speakers almost total inability to spell correctly? :-)

Not only North American, mate!  You should (or, rather, you shouldn't) have
to read some of the stuff that passes for Master's theses here!  The only
thing that protects them from things like 'dilemna' is spell-checkers ---
and these mostly can't help with homonyms.

jj

John Thayer Jensen                      64 9 373 7599 ext. 7543
Commerce Computer Services              64 9 373 7437 (FAX)
Auckland University                     jt.jensen@aukuni.ac.nz
Private Bag 92019
AUCKLAND
New Zealand
From: cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese)
Subject: Re: etymol. of the word "Viking"
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Organization: University of California, Irvine
Keywords: norse, viking, etymology
Date: 29 Jul 92 01:52:20 GMT

In article <3978@novavax.UUCP> vaccaro@novavax.UUCP (N. Trafford Vaccaro) writes:
>Referring to the above subject line, does anyone know the origin of the
>word "Viking"? My dictionary is inadequate in this area. Thanks!
>
>
>Nicholas Vaccaro

This may be the kind of post that grates on your nerves like nails on a
blackcoard, BUT . . .

I think it came from the gerund form of a verb that meant "to plunder,"
meaning "those who go viking."  I do not, however (hence the source of
the frustration) have a reference.

Regards,
Janis C.


Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: lio@ornl.gov (MILLION D L)
Subject: Re: "Jury-rigged"
Organization: Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1992 16:49:48 GMT

In article <1992Jul21.085953.8800@bsu-ucs.uucp> 00hfstahlke@bsu-ucs.uucp writes:
>Yesterday's New York Times had a headline in which the word "jury-rigged" was
>used.  I've seen (and heard) that usage also by some less skilled speakers and
>writers, but I understand that the word meaning "improvised" is "jerry-rigged,"
>referring to the skill shown by WWI German soldiers (jerries) at mechanical
>improvisation towards the end of the war.  The forms "jerry-built" and
>"jerry-can" are of similar provenance.  Does anyone have information on the
>source of "jury-rigged," besides the obvious parallel to "jury-rigging," which
>has no semantic connection with "mechanical improvisation?"  Or on its current
>acceptance outside of colloquial speech?
>
The correct word is indeed "jury-rigged", and it has a nautical derivation.
If, for example, a ship's rudder broke off in a storm, the crew would make
a "jury-rigged" rudder to allow them to limp into a port for repairs. The
exact derivation of the "jury" part of the word, I do not know.

Dan Million                            Internet:  milliondl@ornl.gov

Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: schiller@tira.uchicago.edu (Eric Schiller)
Subject: Re: Chomsky's "Minimalist" paper
Organization: Center for Information and Language Studies / University of
	Chicago
	<1992Jul23.113534.4232@athena.mit.edu> <36538@uflorida.cis.ufl.edu>
	<1992Jul29.160249.14294@husc3.harvard.edu>
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 00:01:17 GMT

Don't know what you mean. I checked the data with LOTS of native
speakers, and I believe that Fowler did too. Maybe you should
get together with Kartik and invent some normative Russian that
no one speaks. Really, people do use the construction. it is
not the invention of a linguist. As I noted in one of my
posts, not ALL speakers accept it, but then that is not
the point. A linguistic theory must at least account for
all attested data (the old descriptive adequacy). This
is data we syntacticians must wrestle with, as Fowler did
in his dissertation.

Eric Schiller
University of Chicago
Xref: sparky sci.lang:6178 sci.classics:596 sci.anthropology:639 talk.philosophy.misc:1504 sci.philosophy.meta:1380 rec.arts.books:13430
Newsgroups: sci.lang,sci.classics,sci.anthropology,talk.philosophy.misc,sci.philosophy.meta,rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Eyes as Windows of the Soul
From: zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny)
Date: 30 Jul 92 03:29:41 EDT
Followup-To: talk.philosophy.misc,sci.philosophy.meta,rec.arts.books
Organization: The Phallogocentric Cabal

In article <1992Jul29.152734.9663@news.eng.convex.com> 
cash@convex.com (Peter Cash) writes:

>In article <1992Jul29.022611.14276@husc3.harvard.edu>
>zeleny@husc9.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:

>>A question for all commonplace experts: what is the earliest occurrence of
>>this locution known to you? has it found significant representation in the
>>arts? in which languages and cultures does it occur? is there a religious
>>significance to it? has it been discussed in scholarly literature?

>Mikhail, I'm surprised at you! Don't you know that the real "you" is a
>little guy that lives in your head and looks out of your eyes? (Actually, I
>do think that a metaphysical picture like this underlies the
>"commonplace".)

Aside from the fact that this is singularly unhelpful, I believe that
homuncularism has currency in legitimate philosophical circles solely
as a strawman fabricated by unscrupulous antirepresentationalists.  I
hereby offer a token bounty in the amount of US $1 to the first person
who demonstrates an occurrence of the aforementioned "metaphysical
picture" in the writings of any bona fide philosopher who professes to
hold the homuncular view as described above.  No metaphors will be
accepted; this offer expires on July 30, 2002.

>-- 
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>             |      Die Welt ist alles, was Zerfall ist.     |
>Peter Cash   |       (apologies to Ludwig Wittgenstein)      |cash@convex.com
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

regards,
mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang,sci.classics,sci.anthropology,talk.philosophy.misc,sci.philosophy.meta,rec.arts.books
From: perkins@MSUPA.PA.MSU.EDU
Subject: Re: Eyes as Windows of the Soul
Reply-To: perkins@MSUPA.PA.MSU.EDU
Organization: MSU Dept. of Physics & Astronomy
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 92 09:38:26 GMT

In article <1992Jul31.034401.1978@news.columbia.edu>, 
blz1@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Betsy L Zucker) writes:

>Well, folk etymologies are nice, but here's what the _The Concise
>Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs_ has to say about the windows of
>the soul:
> [...quotations...]
>So actually the eye or face is the interpreter, index, mirror or
>window of the soul or mind.  It's interesting that all these
>expressions and uses do tend toward the view from the outside,
>not the homunculus view from the inside -- the eyes of person X
>show the observor Y what X's soul and mind are up to.  None of
>the expressions look through the other side of the window to
>suggest that the eyes of person X are the windows which the soul
>of person X uses to observe the world.

How about this, from Wm Blake's _The Everlasting Gospel_ (circa 1818):

    This life's dim windows of the soul
    Distorts the heavens from pole to pole
    And leads you to believe a lie
    When you see with, not through, the eye.

As elsewhere in the poem Blake touched upon the varying perceptions of
different people to the same stimulus (mostly the concepts of Christianity
in this particular piece), I think this fits the "person X's soul sees the
world by looking out of person X's eyes" concept.

---------------------------------------------
George J Perkins     perkins@msupa.pa.msu.edu 
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: ard@cs.bham.ac.uk (Antoni Diller)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,sci.cognitive
Subject: Re: Speech-act planning since mid-80's?
Date: 21 Jul 92 20:34:35 GMT
Organization: School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham, UK

In article <GOLDMAN.92Jul20163014@neon.elements.rpal.rockwell.com> goldman@rpal.rockwell.com writes:
>There has been some further work on speech acts by Cohen and Levesque.
>See the book "Intentions and Communication," MIT Press, 1991.  I
>believe it's edited by some permutation of Perrault, Morgan, Pollack,
><unknown>.  I'm afraid I am away from my library so I am unable to
>check.
>
>R

The book by Baker and Hacker, ``Language, Sense and Nonsense'' has some
very powerful arguments showing that most speech act theories are worthless
as accounts of how language works.  They trace the mistakes of speech act
theory from Frege, through Austin and Seare and many linguists.  If they're
correct, anybody working on speech act theory is wastinf their time!!

Antoni Diller

PS:  I'm not convinced by their arguemnts, but are you?
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Subject: Re: What lies deep within us?
Originator: alderson@leland.Stanford.EDU
Reply-To: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Organization: Stanford University Academic Information Resources
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 92 05:08:02 GMT

In article <92198.174113GRV101@psuvm.psu.edu>, Callec Dradja <GRV101@psuvm writes:
>My question is, what would happen if you were to raise children in an
>environment without language? I ran into a similar idea once before. It turns
>out that there is an old story about two children who were raised, as an
>experiment, by a deaf woman. The children had no exposure to any type of
>language whatsoever. At the end of some appropriate period of time, the
>children were checked on and lo and behold, they spoke fluent Hebrew. The idea
>here, of course, was that Hebrew was the 'unBableized' mode of human speech.

Others have addressed the issues; I won't bother with them.

However:  The story is reported in the first book of Herodotus' _History_, as
an experiment by the Egyptian Pharoah Psammetichus.  Two children were isolated
except for sheep.  When a word was uttered, it was "bekos" (usual English
transcription), which was determined to be the *Phrygian* word for bread.

One wag of my acquaintance, noting that the "e" in the transcription represents
an ETA, has suggested that the word was more like "baaa-kos"...

(Note to non-native speakers of English:  The sound made by sheep is
conventionally rendered by the word "baa" in English.)

(Note to non-linguists:  The Greek letter ETA represented a front mid-low or
front low vowel, ASCII IPA E or AE, in Herdotos' time.)
-- 
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: arantamaki@tnclus.tele.nokia.fi
Subject: Re: What lies deep within us?
Organization: Nokia Telecommunications.
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1992 07:55:30 GMT

In article <1992Jul21.132952.25443@athena.mit.edu>, 
pesetsk@athena.mit.edu (David M Pesetsky) writes:


> There was a paper about this published around 1979.  I don't have any
> references except my memory: the paper was by Lila Gleitman, Henry
> Gleitman and co-authors, and its title began "Beyond Herodotus:..." with
> some stuff after the colon (i.e. the informative part of the title).
> The claims were very interesting.  Deaf children raised in an
> exclusively oralist environment, with no access to any sign language
> speech community, are known to create their own signing systems, if they
> are in contact with other deaf children.  

[text deleted]

> My hunch is that sign language studies were
> probably not advanced enough then to make the argument really stick, but
> perhaps there has been work on the topic since their paper that some
> reader here might know about.


One book I highly recommend is 'Seeing Voices' by Oliver Sacks. 
It gave me quite a new aspect to language and
language acquisition. I also remember that it includes a lot of
references to other works and studies on learning a visual 
language.

Annu Rantamaki

Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: pesetsk@athena.mit.edu (David M Pesetsky)
Subject: Re: What lies deep within us?
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1992 11:44:27 GMT

In article <1992Jul23.095530.1@tnclus.tele.nokia.fi> arantamaki@tnclus.tele.nokia.fi writes:
>
>One book I highly recommend is 'Seeing Voices' by Oliver Sacks. 
>It gave me quite a new aspect to language and
>language acquisition. I also remember that it includes a lot of
>references to other works and studies on learning a visual 
>language.
>
>Annu Rantamaki
>

This book was given a withering but beautifully written review and
insightful in the NY Review of Books last year by David Perlmutter, a
linguist who specializes in ASL, among many other things.  His point was
that Sacks' whole book (which I haven't read) encourages us to view Deaf
signers as otherworldly, inhabiting some other dimension of
understanding, thanks to their manual language.  Perlmutter, on the
other hand, stressed again and again in this article how normal Sign
Language is in the world of languages as a whole -- the linguistic
features of Sign being those features from which spoken languages pick
and choose, the stock-in-trade of normal linguistics.  I strongly
recommend hunting down this review.  It is quite something.

There is a story about that the NY Review of Books delayed the
publication of Perlmutter's review for a long time, trying to get him to
take a more positive tone on the book.  It seems Oliver Sacks is someone
who, in their eyes, should not be reviewed badly (he writes for them
occasionally).  I don't know if this story is true, but in any case,
Perlmutter did comment that Sacks' book would be valuable if only for
sensitizing readers to the existence of a subject matter.  But the whole
slant of Sacks' book, judging from the review, is seen as misguided.

-David Pesetsky

Newsgroups: sci.lang