LINGUIST List 2.660

Mon 14 Oct 1991

Misc: Responses

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Directory

  • Fan mail from some flounder?, Re: 2.646 LINGUISTS Nameserver
  • , RE: 2.642 Sound Change and Collectives
  • Allan C. Wechsler, 2.635 Filled pauses
  • "Wayles Browne, Re: Filled Pauses
  • Prof. Roly Sussex, Re: 2.654 Responses: "I says" dialects
  • "Bruce E. Nevin", data is

    Message 1: Re: 2.646 LINGUISTS Nameserver

    Date: Sat, 12 Oct 1991 15:29 EST
    From: Fan mail from some flounder? <SDFNCRritvax.isc.rit.edu>
    Subject: Re: 2.646 LINGUISTS Nameserver
    This isn't about the linguist nameserver, just trying to reply to something else. A while back, someone asked for Shibatani's whereabouts. He is at University of Kobe, probably in the English dept. I don't know if he has na e-mail address. Susan Fischer

    Message 2: RE: 2.642 Sound Change and Collectives

    Date: Mon, 14 Oct 1991 9:43:36 +0800 (SST)
    From: <A_DENCHFENNEL.CC.UWA.OZ.AU>
    Subject: RE: 2.642 Sound Change and Collectives
    Michael Barlow replies to Michael Kac's request for information on collectives on verbs mentions the use of reciprocal morphology. The use of reciprocals with a collective interpretation is fairly common, certainly in Australian languages. Although I am pretty sure the semantics involved here are not quite what Kac was looking for, an additional reference is: Lichtenberk, F. "Multiple uses of reciprocal constructions", Australian Journal of Linguistics 5 (1985) 19-41. and if this IS what is being sought, the polysemous functions of a verbal collective suffix in a group of Australian languages is described in: Dench, A. "Kinship and collective activity in the Ngayarda languages of Australia" Language in Society 16 (1987) 321-340. I should say that Lichtenberk's paper is not in the least bit restricted to Australian languages. Alan Dench Department of Anthropology University of Western Australia Nedlands WA 6009 A_DENCHfennel.cc.uwa.oz.au

    Message 3: 2.635 Filled pauses

     Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1991 19:25-0400
    From: Allan C. Wechsler <ACWYUKON.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
    Subject: 2.635 Filled pauses
    Date: Tue, 8 Oct 91 00:59:11 PDT From: eesspeech.sri.com (Liz Shriberg) Subject: filled pauses Does anyone know of any cross-linguistic work on hesitation phenomena? In particular I am interested in filled pauses (like "um" and "uh" in English; "euh" in French.) Any type of information (phonetic/phonological form, prosodic characteristics, function, distribution, etc.) would be extremely helpful. Information on languages other than English, French or German would be especially appreciated. Anecdotal information on a language you have worked on would also be great, as would suggestions for people to contact. My mother is a native Hebrew-speaker, one of the first full generation of such, b. 1922. She uses [a:] and [e:], mostly the latter. Gosh, I can /hear/ her in my imagination -- the memory of the pausal [e:] is very evocative of my memory of her voice! (I'm a pretty good mimic, but I've /never/ been able to imitate her accent.)

    Message 4: Re: Filled Pauses

     Date: Fri, 11 Oct 91 22:59:45 EDT
    From: "Wayles Browne <JN5JCORNELLA.BITNET>
    Subject: Re: Filled Pauses
    Serbo-Croatian agrees with what Scott Delancey says about Japanese and Mandarin: it uses a demonstrative _ovaj_ 'this (masculine singular nominative)' as a pause filler. Unlike Japanese and Mandarin, this is not a distal demonstrative; it's the closest of three: ovaj 'this (near me); just about to be mentioned' taj 'this/that (near you); already mentioned' onaj 'that (further from both of us); mentioned on a previous occasion'. The language has three genders, masculine, feminine, and neuter; I don't know why it doesn't use the neuter _ovo_ here.

    Message 5: Re: 2.654 Responses: "I says" dialects

    Date: Tue, 15 Oct 1991 11:22:45 +1000
    From: Prof. Roly Sussex <sussexlingua.cltr.uq.oz.au>
    Subject: Re: 2.654 Responses: "I says" dialects
    Ron Smyth <smythlake.scar.utoronto.ca> asks about "I says" dialects. Australian teenagers have a similar (and endemic) usage with "go": "and then he comes in, and he goes, he goes, umm ... and then I go,...". There isn't anything quite like "I says to him, I says", and this use of "go" is unknown (to me, anyhow) in the past: I haven't heard "he went" meaning "he said". The main function is discourse-oriented, and is a means of marking discourse participants, including switch reference (at a not too formal level) when new participants enter the conversation.

    Message 6: data is

     Date: Fri, 11 Oct 91 08:22:53 EDT
    From: "Bruce E. Nevin" <bnevinccb.bbn.com>
    Subject: data is
    A convenient way to rationalize the use of "data" as a singular in English to those who don't know the history just pointed out (or are unimpressed by it) might be to claim that it is a collective noun like "sand". The real issue of course is not semantic but social. Of such tiny shibboleths are mighty social barriers made. Bruce Nevin bnbbn.com