LINGUIST List 2.727

Tue 29 Oct 1991

Qs: Degree, ATN, Star Trek, Zeevat', Military, Kenyan, Tones

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Directory

1. , help on degree expressions
2. Nancy L. Crowley, Need an ATN Parser
3. Ellen Kaisse, language in StarTrekV
4. "Kaz.Fukushima", Zeevat' paper
5. David C. J. Leip, Military's alphabetic code
6. Chris Culy, Kenyan pidgin?
7. John Cowan, Re: The four tones

Dear members of LINGUIST:
 I would like to have a list of references concerning about degree
expressions in natural language, such as so-called degrees (all, many,
some,.. always, often,...), the numbers, and the adjectives
(tall-short, clean-dirty, alive-dead,...), etc.
 If you have time, could you please send me a list of the
reference?
 Thank you.
 Shin-ichiro Kamei (skameinmsu.edu)
 Visiting Researcher
 Computing Research Lab.
 New Mexico State Univ.

I am a PhD student that needs an ATN parser for the front end of
my dissertation work. The ATN needs to syntactically parse
declarative English (no questions or incomplete sentences) and also
provide some semantic information such as main noun, relationships
between the nouns and verbs, and check tense and voice agreement.
I will need the source code, because I expect to have to do some
modification. Even a basic ATN that can be expanded to do what I
want would be appreciated.
Please send any information to ncrowleygalaxy.afit.af.mil
Thanks.
Nancy L. Crowley

I saw StarTrek V for the first time this weekend (I had been residing on
another planet when it came out, apparently) - the one called The
Final Frontier, or something like that, where they across the Great
Barrier and find an evil creature impersonanting God. In this Star
Trek, the Klingons speak in Klingon aboard their own vessel, and we
get English subtitles. I was pretty impressed with how believeable
this language sounded, but I didn't want to impose on my friends
clustered around the VCR and keep winding it back to see if it
was SOV, had ejectives, etc. Does anyone know anything about the
creation of this language? As I recall, there was a credit for
'Klingon dialect coach' or something like that, a Marc Ok-something.
If it were a real language (Abkhaz leapt to mind, largely, I suspect,
because I've never *heard* Abkhaz), they'd have to have said so, wouldn't
they? It idlely crossed my mind that this Klingon clip would make a
good mid-November visual/aural aid in an intro class.
-ellen kaisse (kaisseu.washington.edu)
ps While I am bending everyone's pixelated ears on the subject of movie
languages, does anyone know what language, if any, Fellini used in
Satyricon for the beautiful (North African?) woman's language. I don't
remember too much about her character - I think she was taken as a
slave when her village was overrun - but she spoke in the most
amazing, rapid, unique-sounding tongue!

I have a question. Has a review of an article by H. Zeevat:
Combining Categorial Grammar and Unification' in Reyle and Rohrer (eds.)
(1988) appear anywhere?

 I'm presently doing some work in the domain of vocabulary design.
 In particular, vocabulary design for automatic speech recognition.
 I'd be interested in communicating directly with others who might
 be doing work in this area. Also, I'm trying to locate information
 regarding the design history of the military's alphabetic code,
 (alpha, bravo, charlie,...), and other vocabularies like it,
 regardless of language. If you have any leads, I'd like to hear
 about them. Thanks!
 David Leip.
 (519) 824-4120 ext.3709
 <davidsnowhite.cis.uoguelph.ca>
- David.

Hi all,
A student of mine is interesting in finding out about work on Sheng (sp?),
apparently a pidgin spoken in Kenyan cities. Any information would be
appreciated.
Please reply directly to me at:
cculyvaxa.weeg.uiowa.edu
Thanks.
Chris

Many years ago, in some forgotten place, I read an anecdote to the effect
that a Chinese emperor once asked a scholar, "Just what are these so-called
four tones, anyhow?", to which the scholar replied (something to the
effect of) "foo1 bar3 baz5 zam7", which illustrated the four tones of
Middle Chinese but also meant "Whatever Your Majesty chooses to make them."
Does anyone have any idea what the four words he used were, or might have been?
(Presumably the story is apocryphal, but I don't care -- I'd like to use it
to make a point about the simultaneous use of language as discourse and
meta-discourse.) It's also conceivable that the story referred to modern
Chinese, and that the four tones were 1, 2, 3, and 4 -- at this lapse of
time, I can't be sure.
--
cowansnark.thyrsus.com ...!uunet!cbmvax!snark!cowan
 e'osai ko sarji la lojban