LINGUIST List 10.557

Sun Apr 18 1999

Qs: Humor, African Names, Reviews, Readability Code

Editor for this issue: Scott Fults <scottlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Anne Menis, Translation of humour
2. Wilma Pendleton, Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo
3. Mathias Maul, Review articles wanted
4. Pierre Asselin, Readability formulae

I am writing my Honours thesis on the topic "pragmatic implications of
the translation of humour". In other words the problems in
inter-cultural communication in the discourse of translation,
concentrating on humour and its effects in this area. If anyone has
any information or tips, I'd be grateful.

Thanks
Anne Menis

I am working with the fiction of Alice Walker and would like to find
out if her use of African names is satirical. One of her characters,
enamored of African culture, renames herself "Wangero Leewanika
Kemanjo". Is this wholly a fabrication on Walker's part -- or is it a
legitimate African name? In what language? Might Walker intend some
joke, as for example that the name, translated, would mean "I am a
goose", or some such.

The character's original name is Dee, short for Dicie. Any chance
that either of these, ironically, is in fact African?

Wilma Pendleton
phpendwph.cc.va.us

Dear listmembers,

Up to now, I have been unable to locate review articles on the following
publications:

 Carson-Berndsen, Julie. 1998. Time Map Phonology. Kluwer.
 Kornai, Andras. 1991. Formal Phonology. PhD Thesis, Stanford.
 Williams, Geoffrey. 1998. The Phonological Basis of
 Speech Recognition. PhD Thesis, SOAS.

Should anyone of you be aware of any publications, drafts, working
papers, opinions, thoughts or ideas relating to one of the above
mentioned works, please send mail.

Please also send mail if you know the email address of Geoffrey
Williams. His subscribing address of this list is invalid, and
contacting him via SOAS has not worked.


Thanks,
Mathias.

- 
linguistics speech recognition computer science english origami INFOCOM
stuttering nlp NLP lewis carroll douglas adams tori amos peter greenaway
unix NeXTStep macintosh atari c++ java tex gc3.12:a--s:-U(VHS)X++$t+e*y?
* Unfortunately, there's a radio connected to my brain. Zorkers unite! *

Dear Linguist,

Years ago, I wrote MSDOS text analysis software. The resulting program used
a formula that indicated what grade school level the reader should have
reached to comprehend readily the text analysed by the software. I have lost
my 'C' source code, the resulting compiled program, and cannot find my
original source of the formula used at the time. So far, Internet searches
have proved fruitless. I would be very grateful if you could point me in the
right direction.

Thank you.

Yours sincerely,

Pierre Asselin.