HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: torkel@sics.se (Torkel Franzen)
Subject: Re: [verbs] Japanese "be" (Re: [Anglolingvo/English] easy to learn English?
Followup-To: sci.lang,soc.culture.japan
Organization: Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Kista
	<1992Aug15.071008.22450@leland.Stanford.EDU>
	<36768@uflorida.cis.ufl.edu>
	<1992Aug22.213152.20425@leland.Stanford.EDU>
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1992 22:51:48 GMT


In article <1992Aug22.213152.20425@leland.Stanford.EDU> chungdan@leland.
Stanford.EDU (Zhong Qi Iao (Daniel)) writes:

 >"-desu" is not a verb, is it?  It is just a politeness.

  This is usually explained as follows. The basic form of the copula is
"de aru", polite form "de arimasu". "Da" and "desu" are contractions of
these. The negation of "de aru" is "de nai", only, there is always a
tendency in Japanese to add a "wa" in negative constructions; hence
"de wa nai" (="ja nai", polite form "de wa arimasen"="ja arimasen").

  So "desu" is a verb to the extent that the copula as such is a verb.
The special use of "desu" to make adjective forms polite and its derivation
according to Martin have been commented on earlier.
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: chungdan@leland.Stanford.EDU (Zhong Qi Iao (Daniel))
Subject: [verbs] Japanese "be" (Re: [Anglolingvo/English] easy to learn English?
Followup-To: sci.lang,soc.culture.japan
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 92 21:31:52 GMT

     [Anglo-lingva artikolo.]

     David Johns wrote:
>... the polite "desu" is not a regular formation from "da"; based on
>the past "datta", the continuative should be "datte", not "de"; the
>negative should be "danai", not "de wa nai"; and it doesn't occur as
>the main verb of attributive phrases, being replaced by "na" or "no".

      "-desu" is not a verb, is it?  It is just a politeness.

						Daniel Chung
From: rwojcik@snake.tc-suns (Richard Wojcik,snake)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Prospects for Change in English (was: English Orthography...)
Date: 14 Aug 92 17:43:51 GMT
Reply-To: rwojcik@snake.tc-suns
Organization: Sun Microsystems

In article 20959@ecst.csuchico.edu, jim_may@msmailgw.csuchico.edu (Jim May) writes:
>In article <1992Aug12.141030.11222@blaze.cs.jhu.edu> pjt@newton.cs.jhu.edu 
>(Paul Tanenbaum) writes:
>> In a nutshell, whose pronunciation should our orthography encode?
>
>I think this argument is made too much and is, for much of English, 
>irrelevant because the language is remarkably uniform.  Compare, for 
>example, the dialects of German which vary greatly...

I doubt that there is any objective standard whereby one could argue that the dialects
of German are more varied than those of English, a language which has vastly more
speakers and dialects.  But Paul's original question is even more interesting for
English than it is for German.  Not only is English the official language of quite
a few countries around the world, but it is the world's lingua franca.  If just one
country were involved, then it would be just a matter of basing spelling reform on
the dialect recognized as the standard among its speakers.  In the case of America,
that dialect would be the Northern dialect, especially that spoken in the Midwest.
Egalitarians might wish to be "fair" to Midland and Southern dialects, but the speech
community as a whole has already voted.  And the US government, in principle, can
exercise some control over what constitutes standard American English.

To a certain extent, England and America determine the international standard for 
the lingua franca.  England because it is the origin of English, and America because
of its leading role in the world economy.  I am not aware of many efforts at creating
international standards for writing, but the one I am most in touch with--Simplified
English for aerospace maintenance documentation--calls for American spelling stan-
dards.  For example, it prefers 'color' over 'colour' and 'center' over 'centre'.
This, despite the fact that Simplified English was designed in Europe, by Europeans,
primarily to meet the needs of European customers.  (At the most recent meeting of
the AECMA SE Working Group in Paris, there was even a discussion over whether SE
should be made into an official EEC standard.)

Now, the fact that English serves as an international trade language makes it about
as inert as a language can get for the purposes of change.  Even though one might
take America as the chief source for linguistic innovations, it is the whole world
that has to be moved in order for a change to become ensconced.  Orthographic reform
is virtually a dead issue (as both Jim and Paul recognize), and I am doubtful that
the stylistic and grammatical literary standard that currently exists will ever 
change in a substantive way.  In other words, standard English has about as much
chance of evolving beyond its current state as Latin does.  It is a frozen standard.

Comments?

-----
    Rick Wojcik   (rwojcik@atc.boeing.com)   Seattle, WA
From: cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese)
Subject: Re: English Orthography (was "easy to learn?")
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Organization: University of California, Irvine
Date: 14 Aug 92 03:01:20 GMT

In article <1992Aug13.214838.6491@midway.uchicago.edu> hau4@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
>In article <1992Aug13.154331.20959@ecst.csuchico.edu> jim_may@msmailgw.csuchico.edu (Jim May) writes:
>>
>>As for word origins, who cares except for linguists?
>>
>
>I do. And probably most of the people who read this.
>
>Sven

You aren't kidding.  Jeez, buddy, are you telling me that if your job
required you to tighten ONE LITTLE SCREW that you wouldn't even want to
bother learning anything else?

Understanding word origins happens to be FUN, for Christ's sake.  Maybe
YOU look at an entire branch of learning and say, "Who care?" but
puh-LEEEEZE don't ascribe that same apathy to everyone else.

Regards,
Janis C.
From: hubey@pilot.njin.net (Hubey)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Karandash/Caran d'Ache
Date: 20 Aug 92 18:59:43 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

In article <10426@scott.ed.ac.uk> iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski) writes:

> <Kara [=black], thus karanlik [darkness], karangi [ignorant].
> 
> Er, wait a minute, Mark.  Surely _karanl1k_ is derived from _kara_,
> not from _karan_, by means of the suffix _-l1k_.  Where did the
> _-n-_ come from?  What does _karan_ alone mean?  (Too lazy to go to
> the library to look it up myself.)

I don't really know. Karanlik and karangi are in two different
dialects so maybe for words ending in a vowel it might have
been necessary to stick an 'n'. I know that the arka in arkadas
ends in a vowel too. Maybe it was arkandash at one time. I'm
not sure.

Kara means black except in Karachai where it also means 'look.
It might have been borrowed from Hebrew via Khazar.


> No, it can't mean that.  What happened to the cooperativity element
> inherent to the suffix _-da,s_?  It is present in all of your examples
> above, and also in other words such as _karde,s_ < _kar1nda,s_
> `sibling' (`co-womber').  _Karanda,s_ would have to mean `relating to
> the same "karan"' (if "karan" is a noun), or maybe `equally "karan"'
> (if it is an adjective), but not a blackening agent.


I can't explain that either. It's possible that the word was
originally karan and not kara. That could explain karanlIk,
and karangI.

I checked Redhouse. Karan is archaic for to curse or damn. It
seems to be derived from black, blackening a name ? 

It also says that kara has the additional meaning of to slander
which is along the same lines as above; and karaci as backbiter.

Btw, the the kardash, kardes, karnash probably does come from
kari1ndash, as you indicate.
-- 

	mark	


   hubey@pilot.njin.net                   hubey@apollo.montclair.edu
 ...!rutgers!pilot!hubey                  hubey@logos.montclair.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Subject: Re: typology of Esperanto
Originator: alderson@leland.Stanford.EDU
Reply-To: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Organization: Stanford University Academic Information Resources
Distribution: usa
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 92 02:33:50 GMT

In article <1992Aug17.184829.7969@spss.com>, markrose@spss (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
>In article <1992Aug15.033352.13370@leland.Stanford.EDU> alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson) writes:

>>It is therefore *by definition* *NOT* an Indo-European language.

>I'm going to fall back on prototype theory here, and say that Esperanto is
>a member, but not a very good one, of the category of Indo-European 
>languages.

I'm not sure what you mean by prototype theory.

>Perhaps the typology of artificial languages is not worth discussing at all.  
>But if it is, historical linguistics has nothing to contribute to the 
>discussion (not even a definition), since, as you correctly note, Esperanto 
>(and other artificial languages) cannot be regularly derived from pIE.  

The typology of artifical languages is indeed worth discussing.  However,
typology has nothing to do with genetic classification--there is no such thing
as an "Indo-European type language."

>If we still wish to classify Esperanto, we could do it on lexical or
>morphological grounds.  In this case we note that every word, affix, and
>ending in the language derives from Indo-European models; if it belongs to
>any category at all it is surely Indo-European.

This does not follow.  As I noted in my previous posting, the genetic classifi-
cation of the Indo-European languages is strictly historical.  Thus, though you
try to remove the issue of historical linguistics from the discussion, this is
not going to fly.

>In any case, I think it's misleading to simply declare that Esperanto (or
>Papiamentu; the same problems come up for creoles) isn't an Indo-European
>language; this is certainly not true in the same sense as it is for (say)
>Chinese or Dyirbal.

Yes, it is true in that sense.  And Papiamentu either has an Indo-European
core, or it is not Indo-European, any more than Esperanto or FORTRAN.

(Actually, FORTRAN is a better candidate--all its vocabulary is derived from
English.)
-- 
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: miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: direct and indirect speech
Date: 20 Aug 92 18:25:28 CDT
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services

     THE ORIGIN OF FICTION IN HEBREW GRAMMAR

     Robert Alter in _The Art of Biblical Narrative_ (NY:Basic
Books, 1981) is puzzled that in the Bible so much "thought should
be reported as speech." [p 68] "By and large, the biblical writers
prefer to avoid indirect speech" [p67 top--quote following lines]
"...thought is almost invariably rendered as actual speech, that
is, as quoted monologue."  On p. 69 he gives "an extreme instance:
the report of inquiry of an oracle as dialogue."  This is II Samuel
ii.1 in which David presumably consults an oracle; the example is
weak in that we must _assume_ the method of consultation was non-
verbal.  A stronger example (which Alter does not cite) is I Samuel
xxiii.9-12, where we _know_--because of the reference to the ephod
in v. 9 (cf. the notes in the Oxford RSV, p 362)--that the
consultation was by lot, probably by means of the Urim and Thummim,
yet we have "the Lord said" followed by direct speech, vv 11, 12,
to render the answers.
     Several questions arise: if the were _never_ any indirect
speech in biblical Hebrew, we would probably not hesitate to
pronounce this a grammatical phenomenon, assuming (correctly? see
below) that there are languages which do not "have" indirect
speech, and assuming that in those languages we can be sure the
absence of indirect speech is a grammatical phenomenon.  Even if it
is not a grammatical phenomenon, however, is it a fairly
commonsensical assumption that ancient readers did not take the
direct speech seriously?  Well, it must be, given the example in I
Sam xxiii.9-12, etc.
     Question: are there languages in which it is a clear-cut
grammatical restriction that one *can't* say, for example, "John
said he was/is tired" but one must say instead, "John said, 'I am
tired'"--whether the speaker knows the exact words John used or
not?

	- Ken <miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>
From: miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Some problems with Q-implicatures
Date: 22 Aug 92 01:05:03 CDT
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services

Some problems with I-Implicatures:

1.   Consider the following exchange (heard at home):
          1(a). Did you turn the AC on?
          1(b). Well, I turned it _back_ on.
This appears quite parallel to:
          2(a). Did you clean your room?
          2(b). Well, I cleaned up _part_ of it.
The Q-Implicature of 2(b) is of course
          I didn't clean up all of it
since there is a Horn scale <clean up all, clean up part>; and it
seems that a Q-Implicature of 1(b) should be
          I didn't turn it on originally
even though 1(a) does not entail 1(b) as should be the case if
there is a Horn scale <turn on, turn back on>.

2.   In Gracian's _Manual_ (a book of neat medieval commonsense
wisdom) #17 we find "a gambler does not play the card which his
opponent expects, much less that which he desires" which gives
another example:
          A. Did he desire it?
          B. Well, he expected it.
Surely B has the Q-Implicature "he didn't desire it" even though
there is no Horn scale <desire, expect>.

So are there contextual constrains on Horn scales, or what?
-- 
**********************************
*- Ken <miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>*
*There is no privileged position.*
*	-God, Derrida, others    *
**********************************
All opinions expressed herein are 
     my own and are not to be 
    attributed to my employer!
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: hau4@ellis.uchicago.edu (sven  hauptfeld)
Subject: Re: Gender neutral pronouns
Reply-To: hau4@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1992 17:20:00 GMT

In article <BsI9r4.58I@newcastle.ac.uk> R.S.Hunt@newcastle.ac.uk (R.S. Hunt) writes:
>
>Persian (Farsi) is the only Indo-European language apart from English to
>have no grammatical genders; it has taken this a stage further than English
>as its 3rd person singular pronoun does not even make the residual gender
>distinction forced upon English speakers.   Sorry, I don't know what the
>pronoun actually is!
>

Sounds like a good refutation of theories that gender in grammar somehow
reflects the gender relations in the society that uses the language.

Sven
From: koontz@cam.nist.gov (John E. Koontz X5180)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Can I axe you a question?
Date: 18 Aug 92 16:10:58 GMT
Organization: National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD

In article <olems-180892152217@hfmac15.uio.no>, olems@ulrik.uio.no (Ole Michael Selberg) writes:
|> >> apropos ask <--> axe:
|> > 
|> > Same phenomenon in German:
|> > Some people say: "Wepse" instead of "Wespe" ("wasp" in English).
|> > 
|> 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' ...
-- 

Cf. Old English waeps ~ waesp (fide Webster's New Collegiate)

Cs clusters tend to swap unstably with sC clusters.  It has nothing to do
with laziness, moral degeneracy, illiteracy, etc.  It's just the way the
human speech facility interacts with human social factors.

`Ask' and `wasp' are classic examples of this in English (etc.), anyone
know of any more?  

----
John E. Koontz (koontz@bldr.nist.gov)

Disclaimer:  Views and recommendations, express or implied, are my own, and
do not reflect the opinion or policy of my employers.
From: gmw1@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Gabe M Wiener)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: inclusive/exclusive
Date: 20 Aug 92 20:42:42 GMT
Organization: Columbia University

Can any linguists out there tell me which languages (if any) make the
distinction between:

		the inclusive and exclusive "we"
		      	 and
		the inclusive and exclusive "or"

thanks

--
Gabe Wiener - Columbia Univ.     "This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings 
gmw1@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu       to be seriously considered as a means of 
N2GPZ in ham radio circles        communication. The device is inherently of
72355,1226 on CI$                 no value to us." -Western Union memo, 1877
From: cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese)
Subject: Re: infants and bilingual training
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Organization: University of California, Irvine
Date: 14 Aug 92 00:09:00 GMT

In article <1992Aug13.145120.3442@desire.wright.edu> nyoung@desire.wright.edu writes:
>
>Both of my children have been cursed by my mutterings in Norwegian,
>Spanish, German and Esperanto. 

Then they are blessed four times over.  ANY time a kid can learn more
than one language, as long as the parents do their best to make it clear
to the kid that these ARE two distinct languages, the kid can only
benefit.

>They are not bilingual, but they
>understand me. At least they respond appropriately. In all, I have never
>seen anyone become a social or educational misfit from being exposed
>to or brought up in a polylingual situation. Further gibberish from me
>cannot make up for all the evidence. Simply put: bilingual families
>and the children raised in them suffer no harm to anyone.

I wouldn't call it gibberish.  Let me add a third example drawn from
among people I know.  One person with whom I'm familiar (Carlos Suarez)
has Colombian parents; whenever he speaks with his parents, it is in
Spanish, despite the fact that they speak English perfectly well.

He has said that when he was little, he thought that all the words he
knew were just one BIG language; so what if there are two words for
"door?"  Believe me, as soon as he got to school, he was straightened
out, and has suffered no ill effects.  In fact, he is now well on his
way to a Ph. D. in condensed-matter physics -- bright guy.

The benefits to being natively polyglot FAR outweight the possible
problems, since the problems are easily surmounted if the parents know
what they're likely to be in advance.  Carlos spoke Spanglish until he
got to school; he was straightened out easily and quickly. 

I understand that there can be problems if the kid is not taught to
distinguish between the languages.  This is so easily taught, though,
that I can't imagine why anyone who can predict and prepare for these
unique problems wouldn't love to raise their kid with more than one
language.  (More than two seems pushing it, though.  You would need a
great variety of situations to distinguish the languages.  Two are easy
to handle -- one at home, one at school.)

Regards,
Janis C.

Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: richwing@leland.Stanford.EDU (Rich Wingerter)
Subject: Re: NEEDED: IPA font, mac format
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 92 07:29:19 GMT

In article <1992Aug12.150830.13345@usenet.ins.cwru.edu>, au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Robert Drake) writes:
|> 
|> 	Does anybody have, or know where I can get, a font that
|> contains the International Phonetic Alphabet symbols?  I am 
|> working on a Macintosh/HyperCard application that will drill
|> students in phonetic transcription.  Bit-mapped fonts would be
|> sufficient, since they will only be used on-screen.  I do not
|> have access to FTP, alas...    any help would be GREATLY 
|> appreciated.  Please respond direct to me:

Adobe Systems in Mountain View, CA, has a wonderful IPA font called Stone IPA. 
It lists for about $185(?).  It's a PostScript font.  Check out the latest
Font & Function from Adobe for examples of its use.  It's a truly beautiful
font.


--Rich Wingerter
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: richwing@leland.Stanford.EDU (Rich Wingerter)
Subject: Re: English IS easy to learn
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 92 05:53:33 GMT

In article <Aug.16.15.24.44.1992.27079@pilot.njin.net>, hubey@pilot.njin.net (Hubey) writes:
|> To speed it up, in fact, it might be possible to consider a time
|> period during which free-form spelling is encouraged. Just a joke!
|> It might be a nice game to try on sci.lang, though. 

Actually, it might be an interesting experiment to set up a sci.lang.freespell
newsgroup and run it for a year or so.  The rules would be that you could spell
any word any way you wanted.  It would be up to the readers to try to figure
out what you said.  If you ran it for a while, do you think that the spelling
would settle down into some sort of a pattern?  Would standard spelling for
words evolve that the participants all "knew"?


--Rich Wingerter
From: reinpost@wsinis02.info.win.tue.nl (Reinier Post)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: "Von Neuman style" (was: Russian dative + infinitive)
Summary: separate! sentences?
Date: 20 Aug 92 19:29:58 GMT
Reply-To: reinpost@info.win.tue.nl

In article <1992Aug15.234259.3037@memstvx1.memst.edu> connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu writes:
>In article <36726@uflorida.cis.ufl.edu>, djohns@elm.circa.ufl.edu (David A. Johns) writes:
>> In article <1992Jul31.142533.2915@memstvx1.memst.edu> connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu writes:
>> 
>> #         What, me worry?  (Alfred E. Neuman)
>> #         Him learn Russian? Forget it!

[...]

>	Hmm, me doing linguistics!

[...]

>
>			are there analogues in other languages?  I'll
>start with German: NO!  German infinitives are militantly subjectless
>(well, most of the time);  the subjectless (1) is OK, (2) with accusative
>"subject" is not, and (3) with nominative works only if the nominative
>constitutes a *separate* question, indicating that it is not the subject
>of the infinitive.
>
>	(1)  Was?  Russisch lernen?   'What?  Learn Russian?'
>	(2)  Was?  *Mich Russisch lernen?   'Me learn Russian?'
>	(3)  a.  Was?  Ich?   Russisch lernen?
>	     b.  Was?  *Ich Russisch lernen?   'I learn Russian?'

I'll vote for your analysis (3a).  Why not treat the other examples this way?:

	What? Me, worry?		<--	What? Me? Worry?
	Hmm! Me, doing linguistics!	<--	Hmm! Me! Doing linguistics!

If they're all chains of NPs, this leaves the form 'me' to be explained.
Could this  - seemingly 'accusative' -   form have to do with emphasis, or with
the fact that the pronoun appears in isolation?  Sentences like these always
remind me of the French

	Moi, je ...

Compare:

	Me?	(English)
	Moi?	(French)
	Ich?	(German)

Unlike 'me' in 'Me worry?', German 'mich' always has accusative meaning:

	Sie liebt dich!			Mich?/*Ich?
	'She loves you!'		'Me?'

So it's the double function of English 'me' that accounts for the contrast
between German and English in your example, (2).

(Dear linguists in the audience, please cut me to pieces.)

>--Leo Connolly

--- cut here --- 
Reinier Post						reinpost@win.tue.nl
Newsgroups: sci.lang