LINGUIST List 2.614

Mon 07 Oct 1991

Qs: French orthography, bananar, etc.

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Directory

  • "Michel, Orthographic to phonetic French
  • , bananar
  • BROADWELL GEORGE AARON, trema?
  • And Rosta, [one of you]rs
  • Michael Kac, Query

    Message 1: Orthographic to phonetic French

     Date: Wed, 2 Oct 1991 20:39 EDT
    From: "Michel <mgrimaudlucy.wellesley.edu>
    Subject: Orthographic to phonetic French
    I am planning to transcribe about 4,000 lines of French poetry -- the text of Victor Hugo's masterpiece _Dieu_ (note modest title) -- into phonetics... and would like the computer to do much of the work for me. DOES ANYONE KNOW OF A MACHINE READABLE GLOSSARY OF FRENCH WORDS WITH THEIR PHONETIC EQUIVALENT? If not I suppose I will have to create it myself. Here is how I imagine doing it. Please criticize! Step 1: Scan the text into WordPerfect and proofread Step 2: run a frequency list so that repeated words do not need to be transcribed phonetically twice Up to here things are clear. The next steps are where I would like suggestions. Step 3: Find in the linguistic literature... WHERE???... if there are robust (not fail-safe but useful) sets of correspondences between spelling and pronunciation in French. (Beyond the obvious.) Step 4: Find out whether there are robust rules for SYLLABIFICATION (I remember reading about problems with this... in an article published 15-20 years ago and read 10 years ago at least...) Does there exist a DICTIONARY OF ALL POSSIBLE SYLLABLES? Would it be of any use? Step 5: Deal with liaison and enchainement One solution I envisage is to search for all PAIRS of words and try to create rules for those pairs that do occur. Step 6: Deal with the phonetics of end of line to beginning of next line... Which would be considered performance under ordinary circumstances but which has to be dealt with here Step 7: Put all this together Step 8: Establish links in a database between the text and its transcription Any help on any of the steps would be most welcome. I would, of course, be most curious to know if anyone has already done this kind of work. Michel Grimaud Dept of French Wellesley College Wellesley MA 02181 Tel. 617/235-0320 (extension 2404)

    Message 2: bananar

     Date: Wed, 02 Oct 91 13:05:54 EDT
    From: <waoneilAthena.MIT.EDU>
    Subject: bananar
    I am trying to locate a short, ten-minute movie that I saw on two occasions in Cambridge MA several years ago. It is a parody of a language lesson in which this very straight-faced person is teaching the intricacies of the Spanish verb bananar 'to banana'. At one point in the movie, the guy drags out a large banana and a small one and has them usted-ing and tu-ing one another. I want to use the film in a course on bilingual education that I am presently co-teaching at Wheelock College in Boston. Any help with pinning down the title, producer, etc. will be appreciated. Wayne O'Neil.

    Message 3: trema?

     Date: Wed, 2 Oct 91 15:49:19 -0400
    From: BROADWELL GEORGE AARON <gb661csc.albany.edu>
    Subject: trema?
    A recent post on coding schemes for African languages referred to a diacritic called a `trema'. Can anyone tell me what this is? ****************************************************************************** Aaron Broadwell, Dept. of Linguistics, University at Albany -- SUNY, Albany, NY 12222 gb661leah.albany.edu "Chi Wen Tzu always thought three times before taking action. Twice would have been quite enough." -- Confucious ******************************************************************************

    Message 4: [one of you]rs

     Date: Thu, 03 Oct 91 23:14:01 +0000
    From: And Rosta <ucleaarucl.ac.uk>
    Subject: [one of you]rs
    The other day I heard someone say: 1a Is this book one of yours? meaning "Does this book belong to one of you?". Though initially gobsmacked by this utterance, on reflection I reckon I could utter it, as a possibly preferable alternative to: 1b Is this book one of you's? though I prefer (2b) & (3b) to (2a) & (3a). 2a *This is one of your/our/their book. 2b This is one of you's/us's/them's book. 3a *Sophy's picture of your/our/their frame. [not a picture of a frame] 3b Sophy's picture of you's/us's/them's frame. [not a picture of a frame] First question: Who *can* accept (1a)? (And (2a), (3a)?) Second question: How do you analyse & explain them? ---------- And Rosta

    Message 5: Query

     Date: Thu, 3 Oct 91 17:50:34 -0500
    From: Michael Kac <kaccs.umn.edu>
    Subject: Query
    Are there any languages which have some kind of morphological marking of verbs to distinguish collective vs. distributive interpretation? E.g. in an analogue of *John and Bill carried a piano upstairs* a way of mor- phologically distinguishing the sense in which John and Bill each carried a piano upstairs from the one in which the two of them did it together? Michael Kac