LINGUIST List 2.613

Mon 07 Oct 1991

Qs: Translation, Modals, Esperanto, Reflexive, etc.

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

  • "l. valentine", Machine Translation Involving Spanish
  • "(. valentine", Double modals, "real" data
  • , query regarding esperanto
  • Michael Newman, query
  • Fan mail from some flounder?, Third person indefinite reflexive
  • Julie Coleman, political correctness

    Message 1: Machine Translation Involving Spanish

     Date: Fri, 4 Oct 91 01:10:45 -0400
    From: "l. valentine" <valentinjulian.uwo.ca>
    Subject: Machine Translation Involving Spanish
    Is anyone aware of any machine translation projects either ongoing or completed involving Spanish? Can anyone point me to some current literature on the subject of machine translation in general, or more specifically, projects involving French or Spanish? Thanks.

    Message 2: Double modals, "real" data

     Date: Fri, 04 Oct 91 08:23:00 BST
    From: "(. valentine" <MFCEPDDcms.mcc.ac.uk>
    Subject: Double modals, "real" data
    With reference to recent discussions of double modals and genuine data, how about this one? "Might could I offer you a seat, Miss?" It's from Allan Gurganus's novel, Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, 1989, UK paperback ed. p.606. The novel is full of *might could*s: the main narrator is a white Carolina woman supposedly nearly 100 years old. The blurb says that Gurganus is from there (can't recall whether North or South Carolina). The above example is the only one I have noticed so far which isn't a positive declarative, and - to make matters worse - it's supposed to be an utterance TO the principal black female character, as imagined by her and possibly said out loud by her to her white owner at the end of the US Civil War, the whole conversation apparently imagined by the fictional white woman not yet born, and narrated by her to a reporter! The dialects of black former slave and white friend are usually distinguishable, though they share many features. So: is this a genuine dialect example of interrogative *might could*? As a historical linguist I sometimes have to rely on novels for examples. This 19th/20th-century stuff could be checked with real informants, presumably, but it does raise some interesting questions, doesn't it? (And if it IS genuine, the syntax is fun too.) David Denison

    Message 3: query regarding esperanto

     Date: Fri, 4 Oct 91 15:51 EDT
    From: <AMODIOvaxsar.vassar.edu>
    Subject: query regarding esperanto
    Can anyone on this network tell me if there is an electronic discussion group devoted to Esperanto? I ask this on behalf of a colleague who has been studying it for the last several years. Does linguist-l perhaps have a sub-group of Esperanto devotees? As I'm not a member of linguist-l, I'd appreciate it if you would contact me directly if you have any knowledge of such a group. Thanks in advance. Mark Amodio Department of English Vassar College Poughkeepsie, NY 12601 amodiovaxsar.vassar.edu

    Message 4: query

     Date: Sat, 05 Oct 91 21:02:07 EDT
    From: Michael Newman <MNEHCCUNYVM.BITNET>
    Subject: query
    Howard Lasnik in his 1976 article, Remarks on Corefernce, in Linguistic Analysis used a few examples along the lines of"*Everyone/*No one sat down after he walked in." His point is the impossibility of coreference under these circumstances. His theoretical point aside, what I find interesting is his ex- clusive mention of HE as the possible coreferent pronominal--following the old fashioned norm. He ignores what would be the most typical coreferent pronoun for EVERY under all syntactic configurations: ie. THEY. Gareth Evans in his response to Lasnik does basically the same thing with one of his examples, star ring "Every congressman came to the party and he had a marvelous time" and giving and undeserved marginal status to "?Every congressman came to the party and they had a marvelous time." This phenomenon of ignoring useage in favor of school-grammar norms seems wide- spread in theoretical studies of pronouns, at least if my memory does not deceive me. My query is:1. does anyone remember other such cases? 2. Does any- one's thery get into trouble because they have ignored this? 3. Has anyone pointed out the inconstency before? 4. If not why in the ruthless world of theoretical linguistics haven't they? Michael Newman Hunter College

    Message 5: Third person indefinite reflexive

     Date: Sun, 6 Oct 1991 16:33 EST
    From: Fan mail from some flounder? <SDFNCRritvax.isc.rit.edu>
    Subject: Third person indefinite reflexive
    We've all heard (and Anne Bodine has documented) sentences like (1): (1) If anyone calls, tell >>them<< I can't come to the phone or even (2): (2) Someone dropped by, but >>they<< didn't say what they wanted. The following sentence appeared in today's New York Times (Section I, p. 27), and although I think I've heard things like it, I've never seen its like in print: (3) (quoting the Georgia Attorney General) "I'm not going to hire someone who holds >>themself<< out to the public by their own admission as being engaged in homosexual marriage," Mr. Bowers said. I found this fascinating, since as (1) and (2) show, colloquial English does use a plural for indefinite third person pronouns (as well as the well-known "everyone...their" constructions that English teachers try to bash out of us. However, (3) seems to be the most felicitous way to express the intended idea in this case, since the "correct" >>himself<< is inappropriate given the genders of the participants, and even >>themselves<< is a little funny since the pronoun is semantically singular, and unlike the case of "their", there seems to be a singular counterpart. Has anyone else encountered constructions like (3)? Susan Fischer

    Message 6: political correctness

     Date: Mon, 7 Oct 91 9:41 GMT
    From: Julie Coleman <UDLE036ash.cc.kcl.ac.uk>
    Subject: political correctness
    I'm informed that the term "individual" is 'politically incorrect'. Can anyone tell me why this should be?