LINGUIST List 2.243

Monday, 27 May 1991

Disc: Reflexives, Hawkins, Fonts, Acronymic names

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Directory

1. "STEVE SEEGMILLER", RE: Reflexives
2. , Reference for John A. Hawkins
3. Roland Noske, phonetic fonts for Signum!2
4. Robert D Hoberman, Acronymic names

 In reply to Bruce Nevin's query about reflexives without antecedents:
Mike Helke dealt with these in his MIT dissertation (circa 1973) and argued
that, indeed, such constructions are analogous to emphatic reflexives (e.g.
"He did it himself") with the non-reflexive zeroed. The main evidence comes
from the stress patterns: ordinary reflexives are unstresses, while the 
emphatics are stressed. The Irish English type ("Himself will be home any
minute") have stressed reflexives like th emphatics.

Steve Seegmiller

Re. Koenraad de Smedt's query:
 a paper on syntactic weight versus information structure in
word order patterns by John a. Hawkins will appear in a special
issue of "Linguistische Berichte" shortly. Prof. Hawkins is
currently a guest lecturer at the Universitaet des Saarlandes,
Saarbruecken.
 Stephen Matthews, University of Hong Kong

Phonetic and other linguistic fonts for the document processor
Signum!2, (and the word processors Script and Tempus-Word) (all
programs for the ATARI-ST Series) are obtainable from:
Semiotic Soft
Richildenstrasse 24
D-8000 Muenchen / Germany
Tel. 089/174587
Price : 298 DM.
The set includes 27 fonts each for screen, 24 pin and laser
printers.
They include phonetic, Indoeuropeanist, Cyrillic and Greek
fonts, in various sizes. For a change, these sets are based on not
on the Times font type, but on Bodoni. This information comes
from the the German language STmagazin 2/91, pp.6-7, and 3/91,
pp. 119-123.
By the way, is there any linguist (especially a
phonologist/phonetician) working with an Atari-ST and Signum
outside of Germany? I would like to hear from her/him. I seem to
be the only one here in the Netherlands. People usually laugh
when you tell them you're working with an ST. It is usually seen
as game machine (an image for which Atari itself is responsible).
Only in Germany the machine is taken seriously, helped by the
fact that until quite recently, Macintoshes were shamelessly
expensive here in Europe. However, even compared to the word
processing and DTP packages for the MAC, Signum!2 is quite nice.
This concerns especially the fact that is is possible to position
signs extremely precisely, simply during the process of writing
(not exclusively in some later layout phase, as in DTP packages),
and the fact that it is possible to alter and adapt the fonts
very easily. Also, on a 24 pin printer the output is much better
than on a MAC image writer.

 Another Jewish acronymic family name found in America is Rashbaum. The 
spelling of this one is particularly interesting. The name derives from Hebrew 
Rashbam (without the "u") for Rabbi Shmuel ben Me'ir The English spelling 
obviously mimics all the other Jewish and German names ending in "-baum", 
pronounced /boym/ or /beym/ in Yiddish. Because these names are pronounced 
/-ba:m/ by some in English, "-baum" must have been seen by someone (an 
immigration official?) as a good way to write /-bam/ in a Jewish name. But now 
many people (including me) use a spelling-pronounciation of Rashbaum with 
/-bawm/.
 Other Jewish names known in America derived from acronyms are Schub for 
SHoxet U-Bodek '[meat] slaughterer and inspector' (because of the necessity of 
observing the kosher-food laws this is a religious official, not a mere 
butcher), and Brill for Ben ('son of') Rabbi Yomtov Lipmann (who lived in 15th 
century Bohemia).

Bob Hoberman

[End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 243]