LINGUIST List 2.809

Thu 21 Nov 1991

Qs: Brown Corpus, Circassian, Croat, Socio

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1. Mark Sanderson, Brown and LOB
2. David Gil, Circassian
3. Allan C. Wechsler, Croatian query
4. Martin Wynne, Serb and Croat

I was reading about a version of the Brown corpus where all the words had
been grammatically tagged, also a corpus built at Lancaster University
called LOB that had been similarly tagged.
Are these corpuses generally available, if so where, if not does anyone
have an address of the custodians of these corpuses that I could contact.
Thanks very much.

I would be grateful for any information whatsoever
(references, fleeting mentions, even anecdotes)
on the dialect of Circassian spoken in Israel
(or neighboring ME countries), and how it differs
from those varieties of Circassian (aka Kabardian,
Adygh, etc.) spoken in the Caucasus.
Thanks,
David Gil
University of Haifa
Haifa, 31999, Israel
rhle813haifauvm.bitnet

A friend would like to know how to say "Madonna" or "Blessed Virgin" or
any other equivalents in Croatian. Thanks in advance.

A friend of mine, a journalist (and not a linguist), reports an
interesting sociolinguistic phenomenon from Yugoslavia. It seems that the
current conflict has encouraged many, especially the Croats, to 'invent'
ethnic and cultural differences between themselves and the Serbs. So,
for example the Serbs are Eastern, Orthodox (in religious terms), Slavic,
dark-haired and -skinned etc, while the Croats are Western, Christian,
European, blonde-haired and blue-eyed. In its more extreme forms, this
demonology portrays the Serbs as uncivilized bearded barbarians
threatening the Western way of life (e.g. bombing "the jewel of the
Adriatic", a symbol of 'Western civilization'). This racist
stereotyping seems to have become accepted as the standard terms of the
debate in the West. I think that it is quite important as it is being
used to rewrite the history of the region and to rehabilitate Croatia's
fascist past, as well as encouraging a xenophobic and exclusive
reinterpretation of the concept of Europe.
The facet of this new
scenario that should be of interest to linguists is the sudden
discovery of the separarate 'languages' Serbian and Croatian. I am told
that regional dialect differences have been exaggerated,
and in many cases invented, in order to assert the differences between
the language of Serbs and Croats.
A colleague from Slavonic Studies tells me that when she went to Zagreb
a few months ago, many people pretended not to understand her when she
spoke standard Serbo-Croat. Does anyone have any concrete examples of
this sort of thing, or perhaps disagreements with the way I have
things?