LINGUIST List 2.496

Thu 12 Sep 1991

Qs: Classifiers, compositionality, Arabic, American, Picard, WH, CALL

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. William McKellin, Re: query - classifiers
2. Stephen P Spackman, Question: "compositionality" of semantics
3. Alexis Manaster Ramer, Query: Egyptian Arabic
4. Geoffrey Russom, American Dialects
5. , Picard
6. Jan Olsen, WH-Movement
7. Dennis Day, CALL programs

A colleague is working on numeral classifiers in Polynesian and Micronesian
languages. He would like to know of any work done on classifiers
using Connectionist or PDP models.
Prof. Bill McKellin mckeunixg.ubc.ca
Department of Anthropology and Sociology
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, B.C.
V6T 1Z1

One of the questions that seems to get asked a lot among my
formal/computational friends is, "is your semantics compositional?".
There seem to be more ideas as to what that might mean, however, than
answers to the question; at the extremes it seems that "having a
compositional semantics" is used for both "ignoring pragmatic issues
completely" and "having some FORMAL theory of interpretation, with or
without reference to 'meaning'".
I wonder if I might garner some informed opinion as to what a
"compositional" semantics might be. Or, perhaps more informatively (in
these days of lambda-calculus and denotational semantics), what could
a NON-compositional semantics be like?
stephen p spackman Center for Information and Language Studies
systems analyst University of Chicago

Looking for an expert on the Arabic dialects of Upper Egypt (not
Cairene!). Can anybody help?

Thadious Davis, a professor in our English department, asked me to
try to locate a 60-minute video on American dialects that she saw in
Europe. She misplaced the reference (as we all do at conferences),
but thinks that the title may have been something like "American Voices."
Your help will be appreciated, especially if you can tell her how to
obtain a copy for class use.
 -- Rick Russom

 I was wondering if there is anyone currently working on Picard or if someone
knows of references on Picard syntax. All I have found, so far, is a
collection of texts at the end of Flutre's 1977 book, but there is no syntactic
analysis at all. I am interested in so-called clitic-doubling and would also
like to find references about other Romance dialects with clitic-doubling such
as Pied-Noir French, Fiorentino, Trentino (in addition to Brandi & Cordin
1989), etc.
 Thanks in advance.
--Julie Auger

In English, both topicalization and Focus or Heavy NP-Shift seem to block
WH-movement:
*who did you give to a book
*who do you think that books, he would never give to
German object scrambling does not have comparable effects:
wem hat das Buch keiner geben wollen 'who-dat has the book-ac nobody give
					wanted'
I would like to know what languages pattern with English or German in this
respect.
	Gisbert Fanselow
	fanselowunipas.fmi.uni-passau.de

Does anyone out there know of any good computer-assisted language teaching
material. I'm particulary interested in programs for learning Japanese and
Chinese
Thanx
Dennis Day