LINGUIST List 2.149

Sunday, 21 Apr 1991

Misc: SIL, Tone, IPA, Lang study, Dictionary, Transitive

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. Evan Antworth, SIL software catalog
2. Michael Henderson, Queries, Windows IPA
3. Gregory Bloomquist, Intensive Language Study
4. Evan Antworth, want on-line English dictionary
5. , Query re: transitive constructions with dummy 'there'

I have uploaded to the LINGUIST archive server a catalog of some of the
major computer publications of SIL (Summer Institute of Linguistics).

Evan Antworth
Academic Computing Department
Summer Institute of Linguistics
7500 W. Camp Wisdom Road
Dallas, TX 75236
U.S.A.

phone: 214/709-2418
internet: evantxsil.lonestar.org

1. My colleague Ken Miner asks whether anyone knows of a language that
uses tone grammatically but _not_ lexically.
2. Someone asked about IPA for Word for Windows. Not yet, but it will
be available soon. Watch this space.

I am considering participating in a programme that is seeking to teach ancient
languages in an intensive - accelerated fashion (during the Northern Hemisphere
summer -- one month, actually! -- immediately prior to a new academic year).
Does anyone have any information on other such programmes? Can anyone give me
any insight into the viability of such a programme -- in other words, can it
(i.e. learning of ancient languages) be done in an introductory fashion in such
a brief space of time? The point is to provide students with a sufficient back
ground in the language that they will be able to start using the texts, not
that they would be proficient in the language by the end. Thanks for any help.

Greetings.

L. Gregory Bloomquist
Saint Paul University
Faculty of Theology

I am trying to answer a query from someone in Thailand who has been
assigned the task of writing a program to transliterate English text
from roman script into Thai script (this does *not* mean translate from
English to Thai). Don't ask me why anyone wants to do this; perhaps as
an aid to teaching English. Anyway, he want to use a pronouncing
dictionary of English as a starting point. I assume what he wants is
each English word represented both in orthographic form and in phonetic
(phonemic) transcription. Such a dictionary of course must be in machine-
readable form and available for non-commercial use. I know that machine-
readable English dictionaries exist, and presumably one can retrieve the
pronounciation field from each entry. If some knowledgable person could
provide information on how to obtain such a dictionary, I'm sure many
people besides me would be very interested. Please either post directly
to the list or e-mail me and I will summarize.

--Evan

Evan Antworth
Academic Computing Department
Summer Institute of Linguistics
7500 W. Camp Wisdom Road
Dallas, TX 75236
U.S.A.

phone: 214/709-2418
internet: evantxsil.lonestar.org

I have recently come across examples of dummy 'there' in
transitive clauses, contrary to the old idea (recently
reiterated in McCawley's book on English syntax for ex.)
that "there insertion" is only found with intransitives
(allowing us to claim that in 'There are no unicorns",
"no unicorns" occupies the object position, I guess).
I am wondering if this is indeed a new fact, or something
well known to English syntax mavens.

[End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 149]