LINGUIST List 2.76

Sunday, 17 Mar 1991

Disc: Reading, Quechua, Vowels, Databases

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. Mary Califf, thanks for reading list responses
2. Joe Giampapa, Re: help for a novice
3. William J. Rapaport, Re: Responses: Quechua
4. Peter Cole, Quechua
5. , Quechua
6. , Responses: Quechua
7. , quechua
8. , Re: Responses: Quechua
9. Wayles Browne, re: quechua
10. "Michael Kac", Re: Responses: Vowels
11. John Coleman, Reduced vowel system in English?
12. , Stress
13. , Re: Linguistic Databases
14. "Hartmut Haberland, Roskilde University"HARTMUTjane.ruc.dk, German word lists
15. Richard Hacken, German Word Frequency Lists
16. Robert D Hoberman, Mother of Battles

I want to express to the entire list my surprise at and gratitude for the
number of responses I have received in less than 24 hours. Many people
have taken the time to send suggestions, though I welcome more (no two
people have suggested the same things). Several have offered to send
copies of hard-to-find materials or have encouraged further conversation.
I am used to this kind of response from the faculty I know, but your efforts
in aiding a complete stranger are much appreciated.

Mary Elaine Califf

In reply to Mary Elaine Califf, who would like an NLP reading list:

You might want to try electronically subscribing to the Usenet group
comp.ai.nlang-know-rep. If you do not have Usenet, I believe that you can
subscribe in normal e-mail. The list is: nl-krcs.rpi.edu and is published
in Digest format. My last issue was, Volume 8 No. 11, Thur 7 Mar 1991. They
are not distributed often. If you ask your question there, you will most
likely get a healthy response.

Ciao!
-Joe Giampapa
garofsixcom.it

Another source on Quechua is Wolfgang Wolck, Dept. of Linguistics,
SUNY Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260. No email. Phone 716-636-2177

Another source of ionformation on Quechua is my book "Imbabura Quechua", in
the Lingua Descriptive Series. A problem with the book is that it has no index
It follows the format of all the books in the series, so you should get
a copy of the issue of Lingua which gives a detailed table of contents for
all books in the series. That is in Lingua 42, 1-77. Some other important sour
ces are the series of 5 reference grammars in Spanish called "Gramatica Quechua
. . .", Lima, Ministry of Education, 1976; David Weber's two monographs
published by U California Press, Pieter Muysken and Claire LeFebvre's book
and articles, Gaby Hermon's book, MOdularity in Syntax, Foris. Sorry I don't
have complete references for all of the above handy.

Professor Pieter Muysken (pmuyskenalf.let.uva.nl) has done
substantive work on Quechua, both field studies and theoretical
work, syntax and morphology.

Ton

An excellent source of information on Quechua is
Bruce Mannheim, Dept. of Anthropology, U. of Michigan, Ann Arbor,
MI 48202 (don't know if he uses e-mail). Please feel free to say
I recommended him.

Alexis Manaster Ramer

Kluwer Academic Publishers published in 1988 "Mixed Categories:
Nominalizations in Quechua" by Claire Lefebvre (UQAM) and Pieter
Muysken (University of Amsterdam). Although this volume is not
of an introductory nature, it may contain information helpful to
the person enquiring about Quechua. It is available in paperback
ISBN 1-55608-051-4.

The literature on Quechua is quite large, and has gotten better over the last
ten years. I don't have my collection with me here, but the authors I 
recommend are Weber, Huallaga (Huanuco) Quechua Grammar (UC Publications in
Linguistics), works on Ayacucho Quechua by Clodoaldo Soto Ruiz, mentioned by
Mike Cheney, Ayacucho Grammar and Dictionary by Gary Parker (published by 
Mouton in 1968 I think), for Ecuadorian Quechua, there is a pedagogical
grammar by Stark and Muysken (I think), and a descriptive grammar by Peter
Cole: Imbabura Quechua (in the Lingua Descriptive Series); there are two
pedagogical grammars for Bolivian Quechua, one by Bills, Troike, and Vallejo,
An Introduction to Spoken Bolivian Quechua (U texas Press), and one by Louisa 
Stark. For Argentinian Quechua, all there is is the works by Domingo Bravo,
not sophisticated linguistically. For Cuzco Quechua, the variety most
people want to learn, there are unpublished pedagogical materials by Sola
(Cornell U.), a grammar and dictionary by Antonio Cusihuaman, published in
Lima, an older but quite large dictionary by Jorge Lira, published in Buenos
Aires. I'm sure there are several other recent pedagogical works on Bolivian
and Cuzco Quechua, but don't remember titles. A good contact person, who has
taught Puno (Cuzco) Quechua at U. Penn. is Nancy Hornberger, Dept. of 
Linguistics or Anthropology. Another grammar I just thought of is Willem
Adelaar, Tarma Quechua. One should also be aware of the fact that Quechua is
not a group of dialects but a group of mutually unintelligible but closely
related languages, so one should always specify which area one is interested
in.
Willem J. de Reuse
Dept. of Anthropology
University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721

Prof. Donald Sola' teaches Quechua at the Dept. of Modern Languages, Morrill
Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853; his e-mail
address: caljcornella.bitnet or caljcornella.cit.cornell.edu
Another Quechua scholar is Bruce Mannheim, Dept. of Anthropology, University
of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1382, e-mail Bruce_Mannheimum.cc.umich.edu

Re reduced vowels in English: Some speakers (I think I'm one of them, but
I don't know if it's wishful thinking or not) have a phonemic schwa vs.
barred-i distinction that can be heard in the pronunciation of the phrase
*Rosa's roses*.

Michael Kac

Christine Kamprath (KAMPRATHCC.UTAH.EDU) writes:

> This is a request for names of languages you know that have unstressed
> vowel "systems". 
> I am working on the relationship between stressed vowels and the
> unstressed vowels they neutralize to (assuming that there is a
> generative relationship between the two). I am looking particularly
> for languages whose stressed vowels neutralize to *more than one*
> unstressed vowel. Languages whose vowels are all schwa in unstressed
> syllables, presumably like English in this respect, are thus of little
> or no interest to this study. 

I would concur very strongly with Norval Smith's statement that 
> there are many standard forms of
> English with contrasts among the unstressed vowels.
> "accept" and "except" contrast in RP phonologically between a schwa and an 
> [I].

There are further distinctions between "reduced" vowels in RP than even this.
For example, given a relationship between `title' and `titular', is the close 
back vocalic quality of the `-le' of title a "reduced" `-ul'? Is 
rounded schwa (o-bar) in `prOpose' or `Oppose' yet another distinct
unstressed vowel quality? What is the quality of the `reduced u' in
"awful"? 

You may be interested in:

J. Kelly and J. K. Local (1986) "Long-domain resonance patterns in 
 English". International Conference on Speech Input/Output;
 Techniques and Applications. IEE Conference Publication No. 258.

and some of their examples in their (1989) book "Doing Phonology"
(Manchester University Press). Cf. p. 74 example 22, pp. 135-140,
p. 159, pp. 174-6.

J. K. Local (1990) "Some rhythm, resonance and quality variations in
urban Tyneside speech", in S. Ramsaran (ed.) "Studies in the Pronuciation
of English", identifies five systematically distinct types of
word-final /I/ in Tyneside English, and they're probably to be found
in most other dialects too! (cf.p 290 --- a two-by-three system is
set up, but one term - i1 - appears twice in the system).

---

> Does the language have (or is it reputed to have):
> a. phonological tone 
Maybe. It depends what you mean. See Goldsmith's "English as a Tone Language"
> b. "morphologicaI tone" (e.g., Serbo-Croatian)
Since `tone' in English is one aspect of accent distinctions such 
as reJECT vs. REject, I guess it does.
> c. pitch accent or stress accent
Both of these. I mean English accent has both pitch and stress exponents
(among others).
> d. syllable timing or stress timing
The concensus is stress timing.
> e. "graded" stress, i.e., secondary (tertiary?) stress in various
> pretonic and posttonic positions
Yes.
> f. a variety of unstressed vowel inventories depending on stress
>"grade" and position relative to the primary-stressed vowel 
Indirectly. The systematic variance identified by Local is dependent
on what kinds of syllable structure occur in the word, which also
conditions stress "grade" and position relative to the primary-stressed vowel.

> 4. Does the language have other phonological processes involving
> vowels?
I should say.

--- John Coleman

A language with regular stress assignment that skips over reduced
vowels is French: final stress but not on schwa.

About data bases available to linguists:

There's also CHILDES, the child language acquisition data base, which
has not only English data but some from other languages. It's quite 
large. I don't have the information handy for how to get access to it;
perhaps someone else can fill in.

Carol Georgopoulos

RE: your inquiry about German word lists:
The classical list is Kaeding's of 1897 (I believe):
 Friedrich Wilhelm Kaeding: Haeufigkeitswoerterbuch der deutschen
 Sprache. Steglitz bei Berlin.
 Reprint: Quickborn 1964
I always was a bit suspicious about it, since Kaeding used all written
material he could get for free for his data base. One of his major sources
were the minutes of the German Reichstag, which must have biased his corpus
in the direction of political language. I also remember that the most 
frequent German noun according to Kaeding is Haupt. With the meaning 'head',
this word is certainly obsolte 8and it was obsolete in 1897), havin been re-
placed by 'Kopf'. But it is still used in compounds like Hauptbahnhof 'Main
[i.e. Central] Station', ad that's where Kaeding must have got it from. But
again, this is a bias of his material.
[NB. The name is spelled with a e, not with a-Umlaut]
There is a newer book by W. D. Ortmann:
 Hochfrequente deutsche Wortformen
 Munich: Goethe-Institut (c) 1979
but as far as I can see, this is based on Kaeding's original list. But there
is also
 Helmut Meier:
 Deutsche Sprachstatistik
 Hildesheim 1964 (second edition: 1967)
which, among others, contains word lists.
i did a quick check via telnet with the University of California library
catalogue to see if any of these books are available in the USA. Meier is re-
presented at every major library. The reprint of Kaeding's book was only
listed for the library of the University of California at Rivera, PF3691.K34.
Best regards,
Hartmut Haberland

In reply to a query from the Ides of March, here are some word frequency helps
 for the German language:

 IDIOMATIC GERMAN:

 Ortmann, Wolf Dieter, HOCHFREQUENTE DEUTSCHE WORTFORMEN, Munich, 1975.
 Ortmann, Wolf Dieter, WORTBILDUNG UND MORPHEMSTRUKTUR HOCHFREQUENTER
 DEUTSCHER WORTFORMEN, Munich, 1985.
 **note--several other works by Ortmann may be helpful--**
 Meier, Helmut, DEUTSCHE SPRACHSTATISTIK, 2nd ed., Hildesheim, 1967.
 Pfeffer, Jay Alan, BASIC (SPOKEN) GERMAN WORD LIST, Englelwood Cliffs, NJ,
 1964; Pittsburgh, 1970.
 Pfeffer, Jay Alan, GRUNDDEUTSCH, Tuebingen, 1975.
 Waengler, Hans Heinrich, RANGWOERTERBUCH HOCHDEUTSCHER UMGANGSSPRACHE,
 Marburg, 1963.
 GRUNDDEUTSCH, Tuebingen, 1984.
 Ruoff, Arno, HAEUFIGKEITSWOERTERBUCH GESPROCHENER SPRACHE, Tuebingen, 1981.

 NEWSPAPER GERMAN:

 Swenson, Rodney, A FREQUENCY COUNT OF CONTEMPORARY GERMAN VOCABULARY BASE ON
 THREE CURRENT LEADING NEWSPAPERS, s.l., 1967.
 Rosengren, Inger, EIN FREQUENZWORTERBUCH DER DEUTSCHEN ZEITUNGSSPRACHE,
 Lund, 1972.

 OTHER TEXTUAL GERMAN SOURCES:

 Scherer, George A.C., FINAL REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR ON WORD FREQUENCY IN THE
 MODERN GERMAN SHORT STORY, Boulder, Colo., 1965.
 Erk, Heinrich, WORTFAMILIEN IN WISSENSCHAFTLICHEN TEXTEN, Munich, 1985.
 Odwarka, Karl, A WORD FREQUENCY STUDY OF BASIC GERMAN TEXTBOOKS, Ann Arbor,
 1977.
 Billmeier, Guenther, WORTHAEUFIGKEITSVERTEILUNGEN VOM ZIPFSCHEN TYP,
 UEBERPRUEFT AN DEUTSCHEM TEXTMATERIAL, Hamburg, 1969.

 I would be interested in knowing of others, especially recent ones.
 No rankings or preferences are suggested.
 (Though obviously a more current list is more current, as Yogi Berra would
 undoubtedly agree).
* * * Dateischluss * * *

"A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic" by Hans Wehr lists a large number of 
expressions of the form "mother of X". In some the relationship between the 
meanings of the whole and of X is possession: _mother of ink_ 'squid', _mother 
of forty-four_ 'centipede'. For most, however, the whole is a sort of epitome 
of X, either the most important part, as in _mother of the head_ 'skull, brain, 
cerebral membrane, meninges', _mother of the Koran_ 'the first [and most 
important] chapter of the Koran', _mother of the homeland_ 'capital city'; or 
the most important of a class, where X is plural: _mother of towns_ 'Mecca', 
_mothers of problems_ 'the main problems', _mothers of events_ 'the most 
important of events', _mothers of virtues_ 'the principle virtues'. There are 
similar expressions with _father_, and it is not obvious to me in every case 
why _mother_ or _father_ is selected. Sometimes it matches the gender of the 
noun for the general class, as in _mother of towns_, where _town_ is feminine; 
the word ma`raka 'battle' is feminine. So "mother of battles" fits in well 
with the general type, and means 'the greatest or most important battle'.

Robert Hoberman
rhobermanccmail.sunysb.edu