LINGUIST List 2.207

Thursday, 9 May 1991

Disc: WP, Comparatives, Glottal Stop

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Directory

1. Lesli LaRocco, Hebrew for WordPerfect 5.1
2. , macintosh fonts
3. Elissa Feit, Re: Comparatives
4. bert peeters, Comparatives/superlatives in French
5. John Rennison, Glottal stops

I've tried many Hebrew programs for WP, but which to choose depends on your
needs. Scripture Fonts is an excellent, and relatively cheap, program, and
it includes Greek as well (as the name indicates, it is geared toward
those in biblical studies). The Hebrew font (as well as the Greek) is quite
beautiful on both laser and dot matrix printers, but the font is the old
fashioned Bible font, not the modern Israeli standard.
Fontmax also has a good product, but it has only a modern Israeli font which
looks good on my laser printer, but not great (some of the letters have a tende
ncy to print very close together). Both programs do pointed text.
So if you work in the Bible field, and want to prepare camera-ready copy,
Scripture Fonts might be a better choice (though even works on the Bible
seem to use the modern script). Fontmax, however, has a number of fonts besides
Hebrew (Polish, Japanese, Russian, Turkish...), and if you simply want to
type letters to friends or insert text, Fontmax might be the way to go.
The third alternative is to wait: I have heard rumors that WP will be
coming out with a Hebrew version in the not-too-distant future. This will
solve the wrap-around text problem, which neither of the above deal with all th
at well. But it means buying a whole program. And the present WP Hebrew font
(in the character set) is terrible.
If you are interested in either, I can dig up the info on how to get them.
Lesli LaRocco (OZVYCORNELLA)

Linguists Software sells a variety of phonetic fonts for the
Macintosh. Their RLaser IPAS series (actually three separate IPA
fonts) sells for about $100 U.S. (itUs also available from mail-order
outfits). These are PostScript font, which means they looks very good
if you are using a laser printer such as the Apple IINT. Laser IPA is
o.k., but doesnUt have any capital letters.
The address is: LinguistsU Software, P.O. Box 580, EDMONDS, WA,
98020-0580, Phone 206-775-1130.
In the preceding, RLaser IPAS should be Laser IPA (sorry).
John O'Meara
Lakehead University
Thunder Bay, Ontario

Guido Vanden Wyngaerd writes:

>The French determiner "les" is ambiguous between definite and indefinite.
>For instance, (1) may be translated as either (2) or (3) in English:
>
>(1) Les chats aiment le chocolat
>(2) The cats like choclate
>(3) Cats like choclate
>
>In the example Bert gives, "les" is not the plural of the
>definite article "la" (as in "*la voiture plus grosse") but the
>plural of the indefinite article "une" (as in "une voiture plus
>grosse").

Couldn't one just as well analyze (1) as a generic, with the
understanding that generics sometimes use the definite article:

 The dog is a friendly animal.
 The lion is brave.

The main difference between English and French here would be that
generics with a definite article use a singular noun in English.

Elissa Feit (feitcs.buffalo.edu)

A rejoinder to Guido Vanden Wyngaerd.
Mea culpa: my example was ill-chosen. However, I maintain that "la voiture
plus grosse" should not be starred. It IS correct if it means "the larger car",
and "les" in my original example (repeated as (1) below) becomes the plural
of a definite article in (2).

(1) Les voitures plus grosses sont aussi inevitablement plus cheres.
 (Larger cars are also inevitably more expensive)
(2) Les voitures plus grosses se trouvent dans l'autre salle d'exposition;
 elles sont malheureusement plus cheres.
 (THE larger cars are to be found in the other showroom; unfortunately,
 they are more expensive)

Similarly, if the comparative is part of a singular NP:

(3) La voiture plus grosse que je vois la n'est quand meme pas un modele 
 recent?
 (That bigger car over there isn't a recent model, is it?)

Hence, "la voiture plus grosse" and "une voiture plus grosse" (a larger cad)
are equally acceptable comparatives. "Une voiture plus grosse" can be
rephrased as "une plus grosse voiture". Is this possible with the definite
article as well? It seems to me it is: "la plus grosse voiture" is ambiguous,
at least in print and out of context, and may therefore be a case in point of
the phenomenon of a formally identical comparative and superlative construction.
However, the ambiguity does not arise in speech:

(4) The largest car = la "plus grosse voi'ture
(5) The larger car = la plus "grosse voi'ture

(" indicates a secondary stress used only to place proper emphasis where 
otherwise ambiguity would arise; I can't remember what it's usually calledi: is
it an instance of the "accent d'insistance"? 

PS A quick look at Fouche, Traite de prononciation francaise, tells me my guess
was correct. It is more particularly the "accent intellectif" (as opposed to
the "accent affectif" - both being instances of the "accent d'insistance") I
am referring to.
Bert Peeters <peeterstasman.cc.utas.edu.au>

Closer to home...
Phonologically (though obviously not morphologically) there are word-
initial contrasts of [?V] ~ [V] in glottaling dialects of English,
e.g. my native Yorkshire (Bradford) has [o:m] `home' vs. [?o:m] `the
home'.
(I only mention this because the enquiry specifically stresses the
 a surfacey phonemic level.)

[End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 207]