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NL-KR Digest Volume 04 No. 15
NL-KR Digest (2/08/88 20:46:05) Volume 4 Number 15
Today's Topics:
segmenting words
Ambiguity in 1st person plural
Re: Idiom collection
Submissions: NL-KR@CS.ROCHESTER.EDU
Requests, policy: NL-KR-REQUEST@CS.ROCHESTER.EDU
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 88 14:29 EST
From: HOWELLS@cs.umass.edu
Subject: segmenting words
Are there any public domain Common Lisp programs out there
which segment words (strings) into syllables, identifying
common prefixes, suffixes and roots? Thanks.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 88 12:29 EST
From: Sjaak Schuurman <sjaak@wundt.psy.vu.nl>
Subject: Ambiguity in 1st person plural
While talking once with someone, I said something like "... *we* don't have
to do that, because ..." At that point I referred to myself and some other,
*third* person, but he (mis)understood the meaning, i.e. himself included.
At that point I realized, that the listener doesn't have any syntactical way
to get out of the sentence whether I referred to a group including him
or excluding him.
My question therefore is:
Do there exist any natural languages in which this ambiguity is solved in
a syntactical way, i.e. do they distinguish two forms, one including
the addressed object, and one excluding this object?
Thanks in advance, ~sjaak.
Disclaimer: My mother is not responsible for misspellings, her tongue is Dutch.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 88 04:01 EST
From: Jeffrey Goldberg <goldberg@russell.STANFORD.EDU>
Subject: Re: Ambiguity in 1st person plural
There are plenty of languages that distinguish between first
person plural INCLUSIVE and first person plural EXCLUSIVE.
These are common in the languages of Australia (along with a
singular/dual/plural distintion) See "The Languages of
Australia" by Robert Dixon, Cambridge University Press. (I think
that a good chunk of this book is accessible to non-linguists
and is well worth reading). Chamorro (austronesian lg. of Guam)
also makes this distinction (no doubt many other austronesian
languages do), and other people will be able to provide other
examples, but those are the ones I can think of off of the top
of my head. It is by no means a rare thing.
--
Jeff Goldberg Internet: goldberg@russell.stanford.edu
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 88 08:05 EST
From: Robert K. Coe <bobcoe@cca.CCA.COM>
Subject: Re: Ambiguity in 1st person plural
For some reason our mailer can't cope with Schuurman's domain, so I'll post
this:
If I'm not mistaken, Cree, a highly inflected language of eastern Canada,
makes this distinction. Cree also makes another interesting distinction
between "proximative" and "obviative" nouns; it resolves, for example, the
ambiguity in "John's father died when he was twelve years old." (since "he"
would match "John" but not "father" with respect to the proximative-obviative
distinction).
--
*> Robert K. Coe | bobcoe@cca.cca.com <*
*> Computer Corp. of America | [...!]{decvax,linus,mirror}!cca!bobcoe <*
*> 4 Cambridge Center | 617-492-8860, ext. 428 <*
*> Cambridge, Mass. 02142 | "Everyone should adopt a homeless dog." <*
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 88 10:04 EST
From: Alan Michael McKenney <mckenney@acf2.UUCP>
Subject: Re: Ambiguity in 1st person plural
As well as I can remember from my college course in Chinese, there
are words that distinguish exclusive and inclusive 1st person plural:
national romanization pinyin
-------------------- ------
Exclusive: woo.men wo^men (^= 3rd tone)
Inclusive: tzar.men za'men (' = 2nd tone)
We were told, though, that this distinction is peculiar to the Beijing
area, perhaps like the distinction you/you all in American English,
which is (or used to be) considered a Southernism. People from Taiwan
seem to use only "woo.men".
--
Alan McKenney E-mail: mckenney@acf2.nyu.edu (INTERNET)
Courant Institute,NYU mckenney%acf2@nyucimsa.bitnet (BITNET)
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 88 12:36 EST
From: Vallath Nandakumar <vallath@esvax.berkeley.edu>
Subject: Re: Ambiguity in 1st person plural
Yes, in my mother-tongue, Malayalam, there are two words for
the WE including the addressed person (nammal) and WE excluding
her/him (nangal). This latter is the straight plural of "nan",
meaning "I".
I believe this is the case in most other Dravidian languages,
which, incidentally, is a primarily South Indian language family
unrelated to the Indo-Aryan language family.
Vallath Nandakumar
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 88 14:03 EST
From: alan@CS.UCLA.EDU
Subject: Re: Ambiguity in 1st person plural
Mandarin Chinese, (more specifically, northern Mandarin Chinese), does have
two seperate forms for these to meanings. If one wants to include the
addressed object, he will use "Zar'men". Otherwise, "Wo~men" is used.
(However, this distinguishment is somehow, I think, only popular in northern
part of China.)
_ Yih-Jih Alan Wang
\ --- _____ alan@CS.UCLA.EDU
\ -|- ---- / Computer Science Department
/ --- /____ University of California, Los Angeles
U.S.A.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 88 16:56 EST
From: William Robboy <robboy@bend.ling.ucsd.edu>
Subject: Re: Ambiguity in 1st person plural
Yes, quite a few languages encode the distinction between 1st
person plural inclusive ( i.e., 'we' including the addressed person(s))
and 1st person plural exclusive (not including the
addressee(s)). For example, Guarani, a South American language
(the focus of my current research) expresses this distinction
in its pronoun system and in agreement prefixes on verbs
and adjectives (among other places).
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 88 20:38 EST
From: Rob McConeghy <malibo@arizona.edu>
Subject: Re: Ambiguity in 1st person plural
Mandarin Chinese has two words, wo-men and za-men, which distinguish between
the inclusive and exclusive we. I forget which is which. The usual word is
wo-men which like English "we" can cover either situation in normal speech.
The word "za-men" is I believe used primarily in Beijing Mandarin and makes
a clear distinction. I think that za-men is rarely used in other Mandarin
speaking areas (I could be wrong here.) I don't know if there is a way to
make the distinction in other dialects of Chinese such as Cantonese.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 5 Feb 88 00:50 EST
From: troly@CS.UCLA.EDU
Subject: Re: Ambiguity in 1st person plural
There are *scads* of such languages. You no doubt will be iniundated with
examples. Vietnamese is one, with the forms
/ ^ /
chung toi (inclusive) and chung ta (exclusive)
New Guinea "Pidgin English" has
yumi (inclusive) and mipela (exclusive)
Quechua (which I studied for a couple of years long ago) has
nuqanchis (inclusive) and nuqayku (exclusive)
I've stumbled across many other examples in my browsings.
?
Bret Jolly (Bo'-ret Tro Ly) Mathemagus LA Platygaean Society
.
troly@MATH.UCLA.EDU
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 88 19:19 EST
From: Frank Adams <franka@mmintl.UUCP>
Subject: Re: Idiom collection
In article <726@PT.CS.CMU.EDU> knight@F.GP.CS.CMU.EDU (Kevin Knight) writes:
>Spanish Literal Translation English equivalent
>------- ------------------- ------------------
>beber como una esponja "to drink like a sponge" to drink like a fish
Actually, "to drink like a sponge" is an English idiom, too, although much
less common than the one quoted above.
--
Frank Adams ihnp4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
Ashton-Tate 52 Oakland Ave North E. Hartford, CT 06108
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 88 11:31 EST
From: Rob Bernardo <rob@pbhyf.UUCP>
Subject: Re: Idiom collection
In article <726@PT.CS.CMU.EDU> knight@F.GP.CS.CMU.EDU (Kevin Knight) writes:
+I am interested in investigating idioms.
Technically (well, not all *that* technically) speaking, an idiom is an
expression whose meaning is not deducible from the meanings of its parts.
Some of the "idioms" that Kevin listed are idioms and others are merely
metaphors that have gotten standardized, conventionalized.
+heads or tails
Not an idiom. One side of the coin is called "heads", the other "tails". Now
the particular words "heads" and "tails" came to have these meanings in
a sort of metaphorical way, but the meaning of the expression as a whole
is deducible from the meanings of the words in the expression.
+ to pull your leg
+ go fly a kite
Honest-to-goodness idioms
+to drink like a fish
Merely a conventionalized metaphor.
+to change the subject
Not even a metaphor here.
+to get goosebumps
Not an idiom. Same reason as for the "heads or tails" expression.
--
Rob Bernardo uucp: [backbone]!ptsfa!rob
residence: (415) 827-4301 (Concord, CA) business: (415) 823-2417 (San Ramon, CA)
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 88 02:09 EST
From: sp202-ad@garnet.berkeley.edu
Subject: Re: Idiom collection
In article <726@PT.CS.CMU.EDU> knight@F.GP.CS.CMU.EDU (Kevin Knight) writes:
>
>I am very interested in finding idioms in other languages, especially when
>they express the same concept as an English idiom, but in a different way.
> (...)
>I'd like to collect a large number of these, in as many languages as possible.
>I'd also appreciate hints on how to do this in a more structured manner.
>Finally, I mean to include dialectical variants (e.g. southern USA,
>Australian, Colombian Spanish) (...)
If you read Spanish, here is a reference for a thorough collection,
historical explanation, and sometimes interpretation of Spanish idioms,
proverbs, and sayings (mostly from the Spanish state).
I have inserted accent marks and the tilde ~ after the corresponding
letters. The abbreviations in the book call numbers stand for:
University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), U.C. Santa Cruz
(UCSC), and U.C. San Diego (U.C.S.D.).
Author: Iribarren, Jose Mari'a.
Title: El porque' de los dichos [sentido, origen y ane'cdota de los
dichos, modismos y frases proverbiales de Espan~a, con otras
muchas curiosidades] / Jose Mari'a Iribarren. 4. ed. Madrid :
Aguilar, 1974.
xxiii, 732 p. ; 25 cm.
Series: Coleccio'n Obras de consulta.
Notes: Bibliography: p.[673]-[701]
Subjects: Proverbs, Spanish.
Spanish language -- Idioms, corrections, errors.
Spanish language -- Etymology.
Spanish language -- Slang.
Call numbers: UCSB Library PN6491 .I7 1974
UCSC McHenry PC4460.I76 1974
UCSD Central x79787 Closed Stacks
The reference is from MELVYL, the on-line U.C. bibliographical catalogue.
It can be accessed via modem.
Celso Alvarez (sp202-ad@garnet.berkeley.edu.UUCP)
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End of NL-KR Digest
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