HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: knappen@obelix.kph.uni-mainz.de (Joerg Knappen)
Subject: Re: Proto-languages: what are the rules?
Reply-To: knappen@obelix.kph.Uni-Mainz.DE
Organization: ONO (Organisation der Nicht-Organisierten)
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 15:30:25 GMT

Another argument goes with minimal pair. I don't have examples at the hand,
but say we have two sard words, one being k****, the other s****. These two
have cognates in french, which are both s**** (in pronouciation, they are
probably written differently). It is quite easy to explain that two formerly
different sounds merge into one, but that one sound in the _same environment_
splits cannot be explained.

--J"org Knappen.
From: HAC041@DJUKFA11.BITNET (Konrad Hinsen)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Portuguese in Brazil
Date: 8 Jan 93 10:18:36 GMT
Organization: Forschungszentrum Juelich

Is there any significant difference in the *written* language between
Portugal and Brazil?

Konrad Hinsen (hac041@zam001.zam.kfa-juelich.de)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: cockburn@edieng.enet.dec.com (Craig Cockburn)
Subject: Re: The Days Of The Week In Latin
Organization: Digital Equipment Co. Ltd., Reading, England
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 07:24:08 GMT


In article <1993Jan3.210741.4837@memstvx1.memst.edu>, connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu writes...
>In article <memo.831375@cix.compulink.co.uk>, alext@cix.compulink.co.uk (Alex Thomas) writes:
>> Did someone explain why 'Wednesday' does not appear in German?
>> Isn't it because Wotan was tabooed: compare our English 'touch wood'.
> 
>No doubt.
> 
'Touch wood' came about because the pagans believed that various types
of wood could bring good luck and were associated with gods.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Craig Cockburn  (leaving Digital on 4th Jan)
New internet address: craig@smo.ac.uk (working now)
Voice after 7th Jan: +[44] 31 554 2926
Moving to Edinburgh, yahoo!
From: hubey@pilot.njin.net (Hubey)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Bulgarians - descendents of a Finnis tribe?
Date: 4 Jan 93 21:54:01 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

In article <1993Jan4.205115.8521@leland.Stanford.EDU> alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson) writes:

> In article <1993Jan4.071434.27930@jyu.fi>, ryyti@jyu (Jarmo Ryyti) writes:
> >Rich Alderson (alderson@cisco.com) wrote:

> In the nineteenth century, one accepted methodology for positing relationship
> among languages was morphological typology--the famous "inflecting" versus
> "agglutinating" versus "isolating" spectrum.  However, it was shown *during the
> nineteenth century* that this is *not* a reasonable methodology.
> 


Would you please explain the basis for the original confidence in
the methodology and then the later loss of confidence ? What
makes it unreasonable as a measure.

I'm not claiming Uralic and Altaic belong together. It's just
a question of why the method was abandoned and what method replaced
it and why ?
-- 

	mark	

   hubey@amiga.montclair.edu         hubey@apollo.montclair.edu
   hubey@pilot.njin.net               ...!rutgers!pilot!hubey    
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: delancey@darkwing.uoregon.edu (Scott C DeLancey)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Correlation Lengths of Language Changes
Date: 12 Jan 1993 22:21:21 GMT
Organization: University of Oregon Network Services
NNTP-Posting-Host: darkwing.uoregon.edu

In article <Jan.12.02.44.16.1993.26312@pilot.njin.net> hubey@pilot.njin.net (Hubey) writes:
>
>What is it?  It has to do with being able to give some general 
>indication of the time scale on which certain phenomenon occur.
>For example, searching my memory--(I think) some Indo-chinese
>languages (Burmese, Cambodian ?) were found to be tonal and
>dumped in the Chinese category. Then some other smart fellow
>comes along and says; No, they share some features with Hindi (I
>think.)

Well, I'm not sure how productive most of this discussion has been or
will be, but let's at least try to get the examples right.  Chinese,
the Tai languages (Thai and Lao and their relatives), Vietnamese, and
the Hmong-Mien (or Miao-Yao) languages are typologically almost
identical.  They have the same phonological structure, tones, the
same syntax, the same lack of morphology.  They also have a fair amount
of recognizably common vocabulary.  When all this was first noticed it
seemed obvious that they were part of the same family.
	Turns out they're not.  The major clue was the observation 
that the vocabulary they have in common was all "culture items"--
words for technological processes and devices, agricultural practices,
etc.  This is the kind of vocabulary that is often borrowed, along
with the process or whatever that it names.  "Basic" vocabulary, which
is less often borrowed--i.e. words for body parts, universal aspects
of the physical world, family relationships, etc.--shows no cognates
across any of these languages.  In fact these languages represent at
least three different families--Chinese is Sino-Tibetan, Vietnamese
is Austroasiatic, Tai possibly related to Austronesian, and people
are still arguing about whether Hmong-Mien is Sino-Tibetan, Austro-Tai,
or none of the above.  (None of these, nor any other Southeast Asian
language, has anything in common with Hindi).

>What to do ? Well, based on all the intuition and knowledge that
>years of study gave you (impersonal you) try to come up with
>some plausible arguments as to which kind of phenomenon persists
>over longer time periods and is more resistant to disturbance. This
>is the relaxation/correlation time idea. If tonality is a
>more persistent phenomena than word order or propensity to pick
>up affixation, then it must have been originally more like Chinese.
>If it's the other way around, then somehow it picked up tonality
>from Chinese at a later date.

Wrong.  What you do is try and figure out whether the common vocabulary
represents common inheritance or borrowing.  We *know* that neither
tone nor word order is stable enough to be of any use here at all.
(And none of the languages in question has even the slightest
"propensity to pick up affixation").



-- 
Scott DeLancey			delancey@darkwing.uoregon.edu
Department of Linguistics
University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403, USA
From: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: HAPPY NEW YEAR in 100 Languages...
Date: 10 Jan 93 22:13:35 GMT
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK

In article <1993Jan8.034758.1@climat.geology.yale.edu> zhang@climat.geology.yale.edu writes:
<[...]  I have collected 33 languages up
<to now. But it is still far from 100. I assume the languages people 
<in this group know are more diverse, and there are more linguists and
<polyglots here who can contribute toward this goal. 
<
<	Please *FOLLOWUP* this post to add your language(s) to this list.
<[...] This is a form of cultural exchange, and it is interesting both
<culturally and linguistically.
<
<-------------------Now we have 33 languages-------------------

I was just going to join the exchange and add a number of my pet
languages to the list, when I saw that among the 33 "we" had the
following:

<Balfang:     Halfapilfy Nelfew Yelfear !      (Happy New Year)

<Pig Latin:   Appy-hay Ew-nay Ear-yay!!        (Happy new Year)

Not a bad start.  Will rot13 be #34?

I think you shouldn't have much trouble making up the required
expression in 67 more "languages", even without the help of the
sci.lang linguists and polyglots.

-- 
 `D'ye mind tellin me whit the two o ye are gaun oan aboot?' (The Glasgow
Ivan A Derzhanski  (iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk; iad@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu)    Gospel)
* 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: mcovingt@aisun3.ai.uga.edu (Michael Covington)
Subject: Ah, Pazis (was: Re: Chaire -> chaise)
Organization: AI Programs, University of Georgia, Athens
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1993 02:01:23 GMT

In article <1993Jan9.161144.22109@enea.se> sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) writes:

>Chaire -> chaise is a two-of-its-kind, the other being "be'sicles"
>from "be'ryl". However, there was a general change in French in
>the 16th century where intervocalic -r- became -z-, so there was
>"mazi", "Pazi" etc. According to Erasme this was to blame high-
>society Parisian ladies, but the pronounciation was noted outside
>of Paris as well. Nevertheless the change was rejected, and the two
>words above were the only to be affected.
>

What was the phonetic value of /r/ in French just before the change?
Was this odd change something that happened along the way from an
apical to a uvular r ?


-- 
:-  Michael A. Covington     internet mcovingt@uga.cc.uga.edu :    *****
:-  Artificial Intelligence Programs       phone 706 542-0358 :  *********
:-  The University of Georgia                fax 706 542-0349 :   *  *  *
:-  Athens, Georgia 30602-7415 U.S.A.     amateur radio N4TMI :  ** *** **
From: connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Future of Languages
Date: 12 Jan 93 11:50:27 -0600
Organization: Memphis State University

In article <1e59wB1w164w@cellar.org>, dbt@cellar.org (Marquis de Freud) writes:
> Tying a few threads together here -- dealing with "plausible" lingusitics -- 
> I wonder if anyone has tried to *predict* language change. I know many rules 
> exist for classifying linguistic drift, but have there been any notable 
> attempts to extend these observations into the future? (Even if they have 
> been *wrong*).

I don't know of any serious attempts to predict the entire future course
of a language.  However, we do find some predictions of a few changes.
For instance, it has been noted (I don't remember by whom) that English
[oi] is poorly integrated into out vowel system and really shouldn't
exist.  (See Chomsky & Halle, The Sound Pattern of English, to see just
how badly it fits and what they did with it.)  It is therefore supposedly
doomed.

Along the same lines, English verb agreement is very limited and poorly
integrated.  It supposedly is also doomed.

Both of these predictions are supported by popular tendencies in certain
kinds of English to merge [ai] and [oi] and to eliminate verb agreement,
so we can't really claim that they're just theoretical predictions.
So it don't matter if we bile the water, sez me.  :)

--Leo Connolly
I yam what I yam and that's all what I yam.
From: Jawara@Applelink.Apple.COM (Ron Drake)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Rhetorical question
Date: 7 Jan 93 00:34:12 GMT
Followup-To: sci.lang,misc.writing,sci.logic
Distribution: usa
Organization: Me, The Whole Me and Nothing But

In article <6819@npri6.npri.com>, eric@npri6.npri.com (Eric Williams)
wrote:
> 
> (I'm surprised there's no group devoted to rhetoric... Maybe we
> don't get it. Maybe *I* don't get it. Oh, well...)
> 
> Does anyone out there know of a rhetorical term (or maybe a logical
> one) for a statement that may be interpreted two different ways,
> with the result being the same basic meaning? For instance, a
> sign reads:
> 
> 	"No smoking section inside."

Antipodism?
From: zornow@hpcc01.corp.hp.com (Claudia Zornow)
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 00:24:24 GMT
Subject: Re: "n'ha" == "daughter of" ? Language?
Organization: HP SSD R & D
Newsgroups: sci.lang

>>> Adams Douglas   | Always tell the truth, | You can die like the rest,
>>> adamsd@         | then you make it the   | or be one of the best.
>>> crash.cts.com   | other bloke's problem! | - Cyndi n'ha June, 1992
>>> Chula Vista, CA | - Sean Connery, 1971   |

>>The "n'ha" usage comes from Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover series
>>of science fiction novels.  I don't know whether she made it up or
>>got it from some known language.  She has a set of female characters
>>called Renunciates, or Free Amazons, who have made themselves
>>independent of the strictures normally imposed on women of Darkover,
>>and who change their names to show matrilineal descent.

>Do you know for a fact that "Cyndi n'ha June" is influenced by Bradley?

No, not for a fact.  It seemed likely to me, since I have heard
of women adopting this usage (not often, to be sure) based on
Bradley, and no one has yet come up with another origin for "n'ha."

Claudia
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: alderson@cisco.com (Rich Alderson)
Subject: Re: Proto-languages: what are the rules?
Originator: alderson@leland.Stanford.EDU
Reply-To: alderson@cisco.com (Rich Alderson)
Organization: Cisco Systems (MIS)
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 93 01:57:01 GMT

In article <1993Jan9.005144.10836@midway.uchicago.edu>, deb5@ellis (Daniel von Brighoff) writes:

>As a linguistics undergrad at the University of Chicago, I learned that the
>principle balancing out "majority rules" is "phonetic plausibility."  Applying
>this to the Romance example, we notice that although there are several
>documented cases of the change /k/ -> /s/,/sh/ (e.g. the division of
>Proto-Indo-European into `centum' and s'atem languages, based on whether
>inherited */k/ remains /k/ (as in Italic) or palatalises to /sh/ (as in
>Slavic)), there is no (to my knowledge) example of a regular change in the
>reverse direction, i.e. /s/ becoming /k/.  Thus, we decide on a /k/ to /s/
>change as being the only plausible explanation.  So think of "plausiblity" as
>being a more general "majority rules" principle which serves to limit the
>first one.

Talk to Eric Hamp about the Albanian change I mentioned in my followup to this
query.

>Now, the downside:  if this argument seems circular, it's because (as faras
>this example goes), it is.  Many of our guidelines for phonetic plausiblity
>were developed through work on the Indo-European languages, in large part
>because it afforded written sources old enough for us to check our hypotheses
>(and, of course, Europeans were the first to use it extensively).  However, if
>certain phonetic changes common to I-E turn out to be _specific_ to it, we may
>become guilty of overgeneralisation in our attempts to see them at work in
>other language families.

With the amount of work that has been done in, for example, the languages of
the Americas, I think any overgeneralizations would have come to light 50 years
or more ago.  _Pace_ some readers of this newsgroup, linguists *as a group* are
not so hide-bound as to reject evidence set before them in systematic fashion.

>After all, like most sciences, historical reconstruction is still an inexact
>one (which is why them *'s come in so darn handy : >).

The inexactitude lies not in the science, but in the historicity, of the
discipline.

But sometimes I wish that the asterisk was in the home row on my keyboard. :->
-- 
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
Subject: Re: labio-velars to labials, but reverse?
From: robrtsnj@yvax.byu.edu (John S. Robertson)
Date: 9 Jan 93 11:16:27 -0700
Followup-To: sci.lang
Distribution: world
Organization: Brigham Young University

In article <1993Jan8.002108.20583@leland.Stanford.EDU>, alderson@cisco.com
(Rich Alderson) wrote:
> 
> In article <memo.846119@cix.compulink.co.uk>, petex@cix (Peter Christian)
> writes:
> >In-Reply-To: <1993Jan6.101008.4885@memstvx1.memst.edu>
> >connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu
> 
> >>In article <memo.842322@cix.compulink.co.uk>, petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
> >>(Peter Christian) writes:
> >>>In-Reply-To: <robrtsnj-311292101210@peirce.byu.edu> robrtsnj@yvax.byu.edu
> >>>(John S. Robertson)
> 
> >>>I am right in assuming Latin quinque shows assimilation rather than a
> >>>genuine p > kw?
> >>
> >>It shows a genuine p > kw *by* assimilation!
> >
> >Yes, that was a careless formulation of mine, but I took it that the original
> >message was about regular sound changes rather than unique assimilatory
> >changes.
> >
> >>The interesting thing is that Late Latin undid it by dissimilating the new
> >>kw to k: Italian _cinque_ [c^ingkwe], French _cinq_ [sae~k] etc. reflect an
> >>(unattested?) Vulgar Latin *_cinque_ [kingkwe].
> >
> >The other interesting thing is that Germanic also had a problem with *penkwe
> >(or whatever) and assimilated the *other* consonant, i.e. kw > p (the normal
> >reflex of IE *kw being Gmc. *x). Or pehaps it was after the First Sound Shift
> >and the assimilation was x > f.
> 
> There is (may be) more at work in Germanic than assimilations.  There are a few
> lexical items which do not show the expected development *k<w> > *x<w>, but
> rather *k<w> > *f.  Whether *k<w> > **p in some environment prior to Grimm's
> law, or afterwards *x<w> -> *f, is indeterminate.  But besides the evidence of
> "5," we have other words such as "wolf," Gothic Wulfila "Little Wolf" <
> *wlk<w>o-.
> 
> (NB:  "4" is suspect as evidence since the numbers influence each other any
> way, and a simple assimilation in "5" could lead to one in "4" as well.)
> -- 
> Rich Alderson 

Just a reminder that x became f rather unpredictably in English, as in
laugh, rough, tough, trough and others, but not, for example, though,
through and others. The phenomenon of peripheral consonants going either
way (labials to velars or vice versa) is well attested. I would note that
in the English examples, and apparently in the German examples, there seems
to be a *tendency* for the movement from velar to labial in the context of
rounding (proximate or distant), and in such contexts there is a tendency
for elision of w's (as e.g. English who, sword, whore and the like). So...I
wonder if it's the case of kw going to f, or of kw > xw > x /some context
of rounding where the shift is only partially and up to this point
unpredictably realized.
John Robertson
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: knappen@obelix.kph.uni-mainz.de (Joerg Knappen)
Subject: Re: Origin of English?
Keywords: clobbered; zillions; cut-plug
Reply-To: knappen@obelix.kph.Uni-Mainz.DE
Organization: ONO (Organisation der Nicht-Organisierten)
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 18:55:42 GMT

In article <10182@amsaa-cleo.brl.mil>, matt@amsaa-cleo.brl.mil (Matt Rosenblatt) writes:
:
:And thanks to all those French- and Latin-type Romance words,
:an Englishman often has two or three ways to say something that
:a German, Dutchman, or Afrikaner on the one hand or a Mexican,
:Brazilian or Frenchman on the other hand may have only one way
:to say.  We've got more words than any other Germanic language.  
:We've got more words than any other Indo-European language.  
:In fact, we've got more words than any other language, period.
:That's another of the special virtues that English has.  
:

Maybe you should have a closer look on hindi :-). Its complex vocabulary with 
an own stock, borrowings from sankrit, persian, arabc and dravidian languages
as well as portugese and english makes it even better than english in this
respect.

--JK
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: petex@cix.compulink.co.uk (Peter Christian)
Subject: Re: quendi and linguistics
Reply-To: petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 18:33:00 +0000


>   I was wondering if anyone out there knows the etymology of the word "elf"

I have a colleague who's writing a book on elves, both the word and
the associated folk lore, so I'll pass this posting on to him and
post any reply. I expect it's a pretty difficult matter, as I
understand the early sources are rather thin and problematic.

Peter
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Christian               peter@gold.ac.uk
                              petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin)
Subject: Re: Origin of English?
Keywords: clobbered; zillions; cut-plug
Organization: Purdue University Statistics Department
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1993 19:16:56 GMT

In article <9977@fs3.cam.nist.gov> koontz@cam.nist.gov (John E. Koontz X5180) writes:
>In article <10182@amsaa-cleo.brl.mil> matt@amsaa-cleo.brl.mil (Matt Rosenblatt) writes:
>|> >English wound up with an easy-to-speak, easy-to-understand 
>|> >isolated SVO structure.  That's one of its special virtues.

>For a speaker of another Western European language it's not too bad, but the
>belief that it's wonderfully simple for everyone is one of the pieces of 
>jingoistic folklore that we English-speakers pick up.  Anyone who has heard
>the sort of telegraphic English that first-language speakers of Chinese
>sometimes use has direct evidence that English has plenty of arbitrary fluff
>that it could easily get by without.  Our copious supply of irregular and
>regular strong verbs (sing, sang, sung, etc.) are present difficulties, too.

That speakers of Chinese have difficulty with English grammar is not
all that surprising; Chinese is, to my knowledge, the only major language
with fewer grammatical forms than English.

But the English formal structure is on the very simple side in the Indo-
European language family.  Unfortunately, its orthography is on the 
other side.
-- 
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
Phone: (317)494-6054
hrubin@snap.stat.purdue.edu (Internet, bitnet)  
{purdue,pur-ee}!snap.stat!hrubin(UUCP)
From: sizex@bnr.co.uk (Eric Barber)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Origin of English?
Followup-To: sci.lang
Date: 6 Jan 1993 08:34:09 GMT
Organization: BNR Europe Ltd, London Road, Harlow, England.
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.199.202.49

one of the striking features of English is its lack of conjugations
and declensions. these seems to have been lost as various brands
of Germanic, e.g. Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, sharing the same basic
vocabulary but with their own systems of conjugation and declension,
learned to communicate with each other in Britain.

Eric
Eric Barber			E.O.Barber@bnr.co.uk
BNR Europe Limited		6 742 3527
London Road			+44 279 403527/429531
Harlow, Essex CM17 9NA		England
Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: petex@cix.compulink.co.uk (Peter Christian)
Subject: Re: ..... On bhaashaa, lipi | language, scripts ...
Reply-To: petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 20:19:00 +0000


There's one big problem with logographic scripts (which I realized
the hard way - by starting to learn Chinese). If you don't already
recognize a sign you have no way of (a) guessing what it means or (b)
guessing how to pronounce it so you can ask someone!

Geoffrey Sampson in his book on Writing Systems argues that the
English sytem is the about best because it works both phonetically (very
roughly) and logographically. However, as an native speaker of
English, he could be accused of chauvinism. (Though he claims that
Korean is actually the best system ever invented.)

Peter


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Christian                         
  Dept of European Languages              peter@gold.ac.uk
  Goldsmiths' College, London.            petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.usage.english
From: evan@hpl.hp.com (Evan Kirshenbaum)
Subject: Repost of ASCII IPA representation
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 02:55:28 GMT
Reply-To: kirshenbaum@hpl.hp.com
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories

It appears that my attempt to send out the latest (last) version of
the ASCII IPA representation just before they shut the power off
before the holiday shutdown may not have worked.  I am therefore
reposting the three articles (the announcement, the draft, and a
summary for English speakers) as follow-ups to this one.

If they *did*, in fact make it out the first time, please forgive the
waste of bandwidth.

Evan Kirshenbaum		       +------------------------------------
    HP Laboratories		       | C: I'd like to take a few of you back
    3500 Deer Creek Road, Building 26U |    with me.  To prove I discovered
    Palo Alto, CA  94304	       |    you.
				       | I: What you mean, discover us?  We
    kirshenbaum@hpl.hp.com	       |    discover you.  We discover you on
    (415)857-7572		       |    beach here.  Is all how you look
				       |    at it.
Newsgroups: sci.lang