LINGUIST List 12.1829

Mon Jul 16 2001

Qs: Langs & Time Words, Dictionary/Plaintext/ASCII

Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karenlinguistlist.org>

We'd like to remind readers that the responses to queries are usually best posted to the individual asking the question. That individual is then strongly encouraged to post a summary to the list. This policy was instituted to help control the huge volume of mail on LINGUIST; so we would appreciate your cooperating with it whenever it seems appropriate.

Directory

  1. Dan Everett, Re:12.1795, Sum: Terms for 'Yesterday' and 'Tomorrow'
  2. Scott A. Golder, plaintext (ASCII) dictionary

Message 1: Re:12.1795, Sum: Terms for 'Yesterday' and 'Tomorrow'

 Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 14:01:54 -0500
From: Dan Everett <Dan.Everettman.ac.uk>
Subject: Re:12.1795, Sum: Terms for 'Yesterday' and 'Tomorrow'

The summary on words for 'yesterday' and 'tomorrow' made me wonder if other
languages might be like Piraha, an Amazonian language, in this respect. In
Piraha, there are no time words. There is a word meaning 'other fire', which
means, in effect, 'not today'. There are no specific time words in Piraha,
aside from 'now'. There is no word, for example, for 'year', for 'month'
(they can use '1 water cycle' for 'year' and 'moon' for 'month', but there
are no dedicated terms for these or other time words). Are there other
languages without such words?

Dan Everett
Mail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue

Message 2: plaintext (ASCII) dictionary

 Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 13:35:11 -0400 (EDT)
From: Scott A. Golder <golderfas.harvard.edu>
Subject: plaintext (ASCII) dictionary


I'm in search of a moderately comprehensive plaintext (ASCII)
dictionary that includes part-of-speech information. Ideally,
it is in a format from which it would be trivial to parse out
(a) the word, and (b) the part of speech. Definitions, etc.
purely optional, but helpful. Does anyone know where I might
find one of these? Surprisingly, Project Gutenberg does not
contain a dictionary.

Thanks,

Scott

- --------------------------------------------------------
Scott A. Golder
Concentrator in Linguistics
Harvard College '03
Mail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue