LINGUIST List 2.626

Tue 08 Oct 1991

Qs: Computational, Turkic, Overt/covert messages

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. , Computational Linguistics
2. , anymore
3. "STEVE SEEGMILLER", Queries
4. Ron Kuzar, overt/covert messages

Hi, there:
I have been awarded a scholarship in order to follow postgraduate
studies in the US for two years and I need some information on
Masters of Computational Linguistics, how long they are,
which requisites they ask (GRE General Test or Subject
Test or both) as well as which department the Master is housed within.
Any information from universities such as Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA,
Brandeis, MIT, will be appreciated.
Thank you very much in advance.

In reply to Geoffrey Russom's question, I can answer that "anymore" is
indeed found without negation in some (American?) English dialects, e.g.
in southern California (as Alan Harris observes). Actually, it was through
William Ladusaw's dissertation (1980) that I became aware of this issue.
I am doing a typological investigation into the domain of already/still/
anymore/yet/only, etc., and as far as I know the above phenomenon is found
in some other languages as well, e.g. in Albanian and (maybe) in.
The main difference is that bare "anymore" means 'nowadays', whereas
Albanian "me" (with Umlaut) and Irish "a thuilleadh" mean 'still'.
One further question on my behalf is: does anyone know of other languages
in which similar phenomena occur? Or: does anyone know of linguists
working in this particular field of research ? (i.e. apart from those in
Holland, Belgium and Germany)
Tim van Baar
Department of linguistics
University of Amsterdam

1. I have come across comments several times, including recently on
LINGUIST (maybe from Dan Slobin, I'm not sure), to the effect that the
Soviet government intentionally produced alphabets for the Turkic languages
of the USSR that were slightly different, presumably in order to discourage
cooperation among groups or some such thing. In my own reading on this
topic, including those in Soviet sources, I have never come across any
documentary evidence to support this view. In fact, it is my conclusion that
in several cases, the Soviet linguists responsible for introducing Cyrillic
alphabets for Turkic languages (circa 1939) simply adapted palohabetRZs
habets that
were previously in use by Western or Eastern European Turkologists, importing
all of their flaws. I would be most interested in learning of the source of
the view that some unstated, anti-nationalist motive was at work.
2. On a related topic, is anyone outside the Soviet Union working on the
lesser-known Turkic languages, e.g. Karachay-Balkar?
Thanks for any information that anyone can supply.
Steve Seegmiller <seegmillerapollo.montclair.edu>

I would appreciate any references about gaps between overt and covert message
of texts. Both theoretical and specific analyses are welcome.
Thanks Ron Kuzar