LINGUIST List 2.374

Wednesday, 31 July 1991

Disc: Ergative, Character encoding, 40's radio, TreeTex

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. Scott Delancey, Re: Queries
2. Ken Whistler, Character Encoding
3. Ellen Prince, Re: Queries
4. , Re: TreeTex

I think I remember that the term >>ergatif<< (for the case form, of
course; the use as a label for a language type is more recent) was
introduced by Trubetskoy. The earliest citation I can come up with
offhand, though, doesn't seem to be the first; in BSL 29 (1929), on
p. 170, he uses the term in reference to Caucasian languages, but
the passage doesn't read as though he intends it to be the first
introduction of a novel term.
Scott DeLancey

In response to Peter Salus' comment on Linguist List: Vol-2-370
U+01BF	LATIN LETTER WYNN
U+0292	LATIN SMALL LETTER YOGH
U+03DD	GREEK SMALL LETTER DIGAMMA
You see, Unicode does care! No cuneiform yet, but we'll get
to it.
--Ken Whistler

>Date: Fri, 26 Jul 91 19:28:14 MDT
>From: Randy Allen Harris <USERRAHA%UALTAMTS.bitnetRICEVM1.RICE.EDU>
>Subject: Query: HLS's radio program
>
>I'm looking for some information about Henry Lee Smith's
>radio program from the forties. Virtually anything will
>help ( all I know at the moment is that it existed, that it was
>fairly popular, and that it concerned, at least partially,
>American dialects), but specifically does anyone know
>
>(1) its name, (2) any particulars about its content and/or
>popularity, (3) if any tapes survive, and (4), if the tapes are
>available, where?
>
>Thanks.
i may be inventing this or confusing it with something else, but something
like 'ask dr. smith' sticks in my mind as the name of the show. the particulars
that i remember is that people would come on the show and he'd guess where they
were from, like within a few miles. (look, if you wanted excitement, there
was always flash gordon...)
at least from my perspective (a kid in brooklyn), it was very popular. and,
more recently, when i got into linguistics in the '60s, i remember being very
titillated to learn that the smith of trager and smith was the radio smith of
my youth, so clearly twenty years later i still remembered him and thought he
was pretty famous.

On
 Fri, 26 Jul 91 14:48:52 EDT
 Bob Kasper <kasperling.ohio-state.edu>
asked me (private mail)
>> Ton,
>>
>> Where is TreeTex available?
>>
>> You mentioned on the LINGUIST list that it is a LaTeX macro package,
>> but it is not in the macro libraries that were installed
>> with our LaTex software (on a SUN UNIX system).
>>
>> I'm sure that other readers of LINGUIST would also like to know where
>> it is available, so please any information you have about it there
>> too.
>>
Actually, I'm afraid I don't know were to get the TexTree package. I
have looked in a recent version of the TeX-FAQ (Frequently Asked
Questions) (FAQ.SUPPLEMENT_3OF3 Fri, 24 May 1991 10:35:52 CDT, From:
FILESERV-Mgrniord.shsu.edu) were I found:
>> tree1 uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu linguist/tree1.1.tar.Z
>>
>> For drawing hierarchical tree diagrams. Very flexible.
>> Can take advantage of Postscript capability.
>>
>> tree macros (posted to comp.text.tex)
>> by hwbtexnix.stgt.sub.org
>>
>> tree.sty emr.cs.uiuc.edu by Ed Reingold
>> /home/reingold/ftp/pub/tree.sty
>> TreeTeX ? by Univ. Waterloo
>> For drawing hierarchical trees.
So, there seem to exist various tree drawing packages for \LaTeX and
\Tex, and nobody seems to know the whereabouts of TreeTeX. In the
pre-ambule of our TreeTex.Tex I found the following:
>> %
>> % TreeTeX is a public domain macro package for drawing
>> % trees with TeX. It may be freely distributed, provided
>> % that the following files are kept together:
>> %
>> % classes.tex, l_pic.tex, readme, tree_doc.aux, tree_doc.bbl
>> % tree_doc.dvi, tree_doc.tex, treetex.tex
>> %
>> % Copyright is with Anne Brueggemann-Klein and Derick Wood.
>> % Print tree_doc.dvi to get more information about TreeTeX.
>> %
>> % All remarks, bug reports etc. should be directed to
>> %
>> % Dr. Anne Brueggemann-Klein
>> % Institut fuer Informatik
>> % Rheinstr. 10--12
>> % 7800 Freiburg, West Germany
>> %
>> % email: abksun1.ruf.uni-freiburg.dbp.de
>> %
so that latter address is probably the place to ask for more
information.
I hope this helps a bit (I will crosspost to linguist and
comp.text.tex).
Kind regards,
Ton van der Wouden
vanderwoudenlet.ruu.nl