LINGUIST List 2.134

Friday, 12 Apr 1991

Qs: German, Online text, Polynesian lg, Wehrli, Thesaurus

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. Kelvin Woolacott, HELP
2. Robert Morris, online text
3. Dr M Sebba, Query - Polynesian languages
4. , Address
5. John Batali, Roget's Thesarus

To all of you out there...

I've come across the terms "mutativ" and "Mutativa" (referring to categories
of verbs in a book written in German, i.e.

Moser/Wellmann/Wolf, "Geschichte der deutschen Sprache", Band I, 1981, Quelle
 & Meyer, Heidelberg.

I can only assume this translates as "mutative"! But what is that supposed to
mean? I found the occurences on page 80 and 81, but it no doubt occurs
elsewhere in the work. Here are a couple of example sentences from the text:

"es handelt sich dabei um die Partizipien von mutativen Verben, besonders um
Transitiva"

"Es kommt aber nicht nur zu solchen Syntagmen mit Transitiva, sondern auch mit
intransitiven Mutativa"

It could well be that this is a term "invented" by German linguists or which
is just rare (after all, on the same page I found the term "Diathesen" meaning
the voices of a verb!)

Any help you could give me on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

KJW1  uk.ac.york.vaxa

For two different projects, I am seeking machine readable text of the
following forms, preferably available via Internet FTP, but anything
will do.

1. American English at some standardized reading level,
preferably 9th grade, preferably with a low content of proper names.
This is for studies of the effects of various typographic
variations on reading rate.

2. Text in any non-English language but in TeX input form,
together with TeX fonts or Metafonts necessary to print them
(actually, I don't print them, but I do image processing on the
resulting text images, so I need the bit maps. I might consider
alternatives to TeX form things, but as we are already set up to deal
with TeX and Metafont, I hope I can get enough to keep me busy in
that form).

As I do not read the LINGUIST list, please reply directly to me.
Thanks.

Robert A. Morris
Professor of Math. and C.S.
University of Massachusetts/Boston

I want to get some statistics for Polynesian languages concerning
average word length in syllables and the distribution of phonemes.
1) Does anyone know of any work like this which has been done already?
2) Can anyone help me to get some texts in the following languages:
Tongan, Maori, Hawaiian, Samoan? I am looking in to the possibility of
getting bibles in these languages from libraries in Britain, but even
these are surprisingly hard to find.

Mark Sebba
Dept. of Linguistics
University of Lancaster, Lancaster LA1 4YT, England
Telephone (0524) 65201 ext. 2241 (W) (0524) 69223 (H)
Fax: (0524) 843085
e-mail: eia023uk.ac.lancaster.central1

 Does anybody have Eric Wehrli's email address?

I need to find an on-line copy of Roget's Thesaurus. I would
appreciate any relevant advice.

[End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 134]