LINGUIST List 2.236

Friday, 17 May 1991

FYI: CLS 27, Humor, LINGUIST, IJCAI-91, Biology of lg, Cyrillic

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. Chicago Linguistic Society, CLS 27 (1991) volumes
2. "don l. f. nilsen", INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR HUMOR STUDIES
3. , Revisions in the LINGUIST archive files
4. Kimberlee Pietrzak-Smith, REVISED IJCAI-91 Programme Schedule: 01/15/91
5. "Garrett H. Riggs", Article on biology of language
6. John E. Koontz, 5.0062 Fonts; Soviet Keyboard Layout; Cyrillic (3/186)

The CLS 27 (1991) volumes may be pre-ordered (due to come out in Sept.)

Main session $13 Invited speakers: Sandra Chung
 Elan Dresher
 Jerry Fodor
 Robin Lakoff
 Howard Lasnik

Parasession on Negation $13 Invited speakers: Laurence R. Horn
 Paul Kay
 Marcia Linebarger
 James D. McCawley

send orders, pre-paid by check (including $4 shipping for 1st volume,
 $2 any volume after that)
to:

Chicago Linguistic Society
1050 E.59th Street 
Chicago, IL 60637

LINGUIST SUBSCRIBERS:
 The Ninth International Humor Conference will be held at Brock
University in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada from June 26-30, 1991.
A list of presenters is available from Don Nilsen.
 WHIMSY VII is now available for $10.00 per volume. This is the
proceedings of the Seventh International Humor Conference. Contact
Victor Raskin, Linguistics Chair, English Department, Purdue
University, Heavilon Hall, West Lafayette, IN 47907.
 If you are seriously thinking of becoming a member of ISHS
and subscribing to HUMOR: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMOR RESEARCH,
I can send you a free copy of Volume 1, Number 4. If your library
is seriously considering an institutional subscription I can send
your library a free copy of the same issue for their consideration.
Membership in ISHS with a subscription to our quarterly journal
is $45.00. Institutional subscriptions to HUMOR are $104.20.
 If you have information about humor-related scholarly events
please send information to Don Nilsen for inclusion in the HUMOR
NEWSLETTER, but please send news items six-months in advance since
our JOURNAL/NEWSLETTER is published by Mouton Publishers in Germany.

=-) :-) ;->
Don L. F. Nilsen, <ATDFNASUACAD> (602) 965-7592
Executive Secretary
International Society for Humor Studies
Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ 85287-0302

 Due to the spectacular growth of the LINGUIST archive file LINGUIST.LST
 (it was approaching 2 MBytes) that I've been maintaining for anonymous
 ftp in the LING directory on um.cc.umich.edu, and by request of users,
 I have segmented the LINGUIST.LST file into 50-issue chunks. The file
 LINGUIST.LST is no more; it has been replaced by 5 files labeled from 
 with Volume and Issue numbers as V?.???.LST. The cryptic names are 
 necessitated by the facts that file names are limited to 11 characters, 
 and it is not possible to put archive filesin a subdirectory, since our 
 OS does not provide for those. My apologies.

 Herewith the relevant statistics about the archive files,
 from the file "CONTENTS" on the LING directory at um.cc.umich.edu:

 The files V?.???.LST are the collected back issues of the first and second
 volumes of the LINGUIST mail list (linguistuniwa.uwa.oz.au), grouped
 50 issues to a file and averaging about 400 KBytes per file. The file name
 indicates the last issue contained in that file; the name of the latest
 file always reflects the number of the last issue archived. Thus the
 current last file contains the issues of LINGUIST from Volume 2, No. 201
 to Volume 2, No. 223 (May 14, 1991). 

 V1.006.LST has 34,642 bytes in 986 data lines
 (Volume 1, 35,628 on Unix, including 986 newlines
 #1-6) 36,614 on MS-DOS, including 986 CR/LF pairs
 Dates: 13 - 23 December 1990

 V2.50.LST has 309,921 bytes in 7624 data lines
 (Volume 2, 317,545 on Unix, including 7624 newlines
 #1-50) 325,169 on MS-DOS, including 7624 CR/LF pairs
 Dates: 9 January - 23 February 1991

 V2.100.LST has 432,896 bytes in 10,058 data lines
 (Volume 2, 442,954 on Unix, including 10,058 newlines
 #51-100) 453,012 on MS-DOS, including 10,058 CR/LF pairs
 Dates: 23 February - 28 March 1991

 V2.150.LST has 408,669 bytes in 8933 data lines
 (Volume 2, 417,602 on Unix, including 8933 newlines
 #100-150) 426,535 on MS-DOS, including 8933 CR/LF pairs
 Dates: 29 March - 21 April 1991

 V2.200.LST has 371,246 bytes in 8024 data lines
 (Volume 2, 379,270 on Unix, including 8024 newlines
 #150-200) 387,294 on MS-DOS, including 8024 CR/LF pairs
 Dates: 21 April - 5 May 1991
 ------------------------------------------------------------
 V2.223.LST has 159,691 bytes in 3558 data lines
 (Volume 2, 163,249 on Unix, including 3558 newlines
 #120-223) 166,807 on MS-DOS, including 3558 CR/LF pairs
 Dates: 6 - 14 May 1991

 Note, incidentally, the steady rate of increase in frequency and size
 of the content (luckily, these statistics say nothing about coherence
 or value) with time. As Alice Davidson put it, "Talking is the
 consuming vice of linguists."

 John Lawler Internet: jlawlerub.cc.umich.edu
 University of Michigan Bitnet: USERGB4NUMICHUB

A new, REVISED IJCAI-91 Programme Schedule, now exists on
the LINGUIST server. To get this program, send: 
 listservuniwa.uwa.oz.au
the message: 
 get ijcai-91

Hello, everyone.

I'm not sure how many people on the list might be interested in
neurolinguistics, but on the off chance that there are a few neurolinguists
out there, I offer the following reference for your consideration as an
interesting and timely review of an intruiging topic. For the record, I am in
no way connected with the authors, their academic institutions or the
publisher.

Poizner, H., U. Bellugi and E. S. Klima. 1990. Biological foundations of
language: clues from sign language. *Annual Review of Neuroscience* 13:
283-307.

Garrett Riggs
Dept. of Anatomical Sciences and Neurobiology
University of Louisville School of Medicine
Louisville, Kentucky 40292 USA
GHRIGG01ULKYVM.BITNET

Reposted from Humanist.

Forwarded message follows:
-----------------
Date: Wed, 15 May 91 10:26:29 CDT
From: Claudia Lynch <AS04UNTVM1>
Subject: Foreign Fonts

The following was posted to Desk Top Publishing (DTP-L, Volume 1: Issue
22 Tue, 14 May 91). I thought it might be of interest to this group.

Date: Mon, 6 May 91 22:12:59 pdt
From: ariwell.sf.ca.us (Ari Davidow)
Subject: Foreign fonts

For Sanskrit, as well as an amazing selection of other languages,
there are two good sources for fonts on the Mac:

Linguists Software, PO Box 580, Edmonds, WA 98020-0580
 (206) 775-1130

Ecological Linguistics, PO Box 15156, Washington, DC 20003
 (202) 546-5862; Internet: ECOLINGAPPLELINK.APPLE.COM

Both specialize in fonts that serve the academic community. This
means that both companies provide fonts with all possible
imaginable characters, but that neither company produces fonts
that are necessarily exciting. Of the two, Philip Payne at
Linguists Software tends to be more thorough about creating a
complete set of characters, but has a smaller catalog of
languages, whereas Lloyd Anderson of Ecological Linguistics has a
broader range of selections and, has spent a lot more time
creating customized systems with multiple foreign languages.
I have had nothing but good experiences with both vendors.

There is also a company called Snow Lion that does the most
beautiful Tibetan (related to Devanagari). They are in Toronto,
but I have misplaced the particulars.

(If memory serves me correctly, both EL and LS also make IPA
fonts modeled on the Linotype Times Roman 12pt master built into
most postscript printers. Another source for IPA, I believe, is
NeoScribe International, although I don't recall if it is likwise
based on Times. Neoscribe can be reached as (of course)
neoscribeapplelink.apple.com. You can also send mail to:
NeoScribe International Inc., PO Bo 469, Middletown, CT 06457.
[Michael Ross, an excellent colleague & reader of this digest,
is the proprietor of NeoScribe, by the way. - - gf]
 * * * * * *
I second the recommendation of FontMonger. It did, indeed, ship
last month. I was a beta tester for the program. It is sort of a
cross between ParaFont (in that it can create small caps, small
shilling and nut fractions, and some composite characters) and
Metamorphosis (in that it can convert fonts, in single or batch
mode, from just about all formats to just about all formats). The
interface can be confusing (although I don't know of a better
one), but the basic metaphor is an actual keyboard that you see
on your screen, which makes placing the characters where you want
them (and finding the ones you want) incredibly simple and
straightforward. Given a choice, I would have to recommend
FontMonger over Metamorphosis, if only because it is a more
useful all-around tool. On the other hand, if all you want to do
is to convert between type 1, type 3, true type, etc.,
Metamorphosis is easier to use.

As Dave Martin noted, FontMonger is available from Ares
(Foster City, Calif. (415) 578-9090). It retails for $99, with
street prices around $60-$65. Ares is also the company that does
Font Studio for LetraSet, and the long-delayed version 2.0 of
that product is also about to ship (it's now finished and moving
through the Letraset release bureaucracy). Font Studio is a font
design program competing with Fontographer and the new ATF
product. I find Fontographer's user interface easier to use until
I get to the actual character shaping tools, where Font Studio is
several orders of magnitude (imho) much easier and saner. I
should also note that in my specialty (non-Latin alphabets) Font
Studio actually supports FOND IDs outside the range for English,
whereas Fontographer does not (leading to some tedious
workarounds). In short, it's easier to set up a font with
Fontographer, but far, far easier to actually design or modify
the font with Font Studio (imho).
 * * * * * *
Those interested in Hebrew may be interested to know that my own
e-mail newsletter (which focuses on all aspects of using Hebrew
on micros) is now based at a listserv  Dartmouth. To subscribe,
send e-mail to LISTSERVDARTCMS1 with the one-line message,
 SUB E-HUG Your_first_name Your_last_name
For more information, send me e-mail, or send a message to the
listserv with the message: REVIEW E-HUG
(E-HUG stands for "Electronic Hebrew Users Group".)
 * * * * * *
People interested in Russian may be interested in the following
blurb:

The Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union at
Columbia University publishes an annual report entitled:

"Teaching Your Computer Russian: A Guide to Cyrillic Software."

It costs $8.00 postpaid and covers mainly word processors and
add-ons for IBMs, but also has a small Mac section. It can be
obtained from:

 Publications Office
 Harriman Institute
 420 W. 118th St., New York, NY 10027
 (212) 854-6218.