LINGUIST List 14.524

Fri Feb 21 2003

Qs: Drum Vocables, Trace Effects

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Directory

  1. Aniruddh Patel, drum vocables
  2. Hiroyuki Tanaka, Pseudo-that-trace effect?

Message 1: drum vocables

 Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 00:46:23 +0000
From: Aniruddh Patel <apatelnsi.edu>
Subject: drum vocables

Dear Linguist List,

We are doing research on the acoustic and perceptual resemblance
between drum sounds and the spoken syllables used to name them in
North Indian tabla music.

We would be most grateful for input on the following questions:

Is anyone aware of previous published research on this topic?

What other cultures have organized systems of vocables for naming
drum/percussion sounds? References to published papers or books are
especially appreciated.

Thank you,

Aniruddh Patel & John Iversen 
The Neurosciences Institute 
San Diego, CA
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Message 2: Pseudo-that-trace effect?

 Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 22:16:36 +0000
From: Hiroyuki Tanaka <htanakakwansei.ac.jp>
Subject: Pseudo-that-trace effect?

Dear Colleagues,

I've been curious about the fact discussed in 
Stowell's dissertation (citing the discussion in 
Kayne (_Connectedness and Binary Branching_:ch.1)) 
that a finite clause in English whose subject is 
wh-moved must be adjacent to a Case-assigning verb. 
Consider the contrast between (2) and (3):

(1) John said [to Mary] [(that) Bill would help him]
(2) ?*Who did John say [to Mary] [t would help him]?
(3) Who did John say [t would help him]?

If this phenomenon is related to Case at all, a natural 
question is whether a subject-extracted CP somehow 
behaves like a noun phrase, which must be adjacent to 
its governing verb. (BTW, I've heard the (2)-(3) 
asymmetry referred to as the `pseudo-that-trace effect'.
Does anyone know the origin of this terminology?)

In this light, I would like to know how this constraint 
interacts with the fact that it is hard to place the 
finite clause before the PP argument:

(4) ?*John said [(that) Bill would help him] [to Mary].

My question is, can the `adjacency requirement' on a 
subject-extracted CP override the ban on V-CP-PP 
ordering? That is, is the following (5) any better 
than (4) above?

(5) Who did John say [t would help him] [to Mary]?

I'm sure judgments on these kinds of sentences vary 
among individuals, but I would appreciate any information 
about the judgments from native speakers and/or pointers 
to references; I would also appreciate theoretical 
discussion on this topic as well.

Please reply directly to me. I will post a summary if 
appropriate.

Thanks,
Hiroyuki Tanaka
Kwansei Gakuin University
htanakakwansei.ac.jp 

Subject-Language: English; Code: ENG
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