LINGUIST List 2.834

Wed 04 Dec 1991

Qs: Clitics, Tamil, French, They, Bursaries

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. Joe Salmons, Diachronic query: Clitics
2. raman, Tamil fonts
3. Pierre Martin, Quebec French
4. Jim Scobbie, singular they and other comments
5. , Travel Bursaries

Does anybody know of ANY recent work on diachronic aspects of clitics and
cliticization in early Germanic or Celtic languages? Even basic descriptive
work would be of some interest.
Many thanks.

Hi,
I'm looking for Tamil (a South Indian language) fonts that I can use
on a Unix box, preferably in Postscript or TeX.
I know that the U Mich archives have Tamil fonts for the Mac, but I
need something I can use on Unix.
Thanks very much for your time.
--raman
(Internet: ramanus.oracle.com)

Next January, a team of researchers from Laval University, in Quebec city,
will initiate a survey on the Quebec French semi-vowel [w] as opposed to the
corresponding vowel [u]. Is there here a basis to recognize two distinct
phonemes? And if so, what is the individual, social, and lexical extent of
the phonological contrast, or, simply, of the phonetic variation, if that
is the case? All pertinent structural and sociolinguistic factors will be
considered.
If anyone has hints, comments, suggestions, references (on semi-vowels, in
general), etc., on the matter, please write to Pierre Martin:
E-Mail or Dept de langues et linguistique
pmartinvm1.ulaval.ca Faculte des lettres, Universite Laval
 Sainte-Foy, Quebec
 G1K 7P4 Canada
 phone: (418) 656.3263
 fax: (418) 656.2019

ITEM
 'they' might not take singular verb morphology, but it does show,
at least in my speech, a singular reflexive morphology: 'themself'.
What I don't know is if this is just myself that does this.
================
ITEM
A thought: 'criminal lawyer' is ambiguous, but 'criminal criminal lawyer'
is not. Structural syntactic analyses of bracketing 'paradox' phrases
ought to get this for free, but I'm not so sure about semantic analyses.
================
ITEM
I heard a football commentator, just after the final whistle, say "that will
be the last play of the game". Using 'will' to refer to past time is normal
for me, and the meaning is roughly estimational 'must surely':
	"Are they your unwashed dishes?" "They will be."
I never noticed this usage myself, by the way. After seeing Lawrence
of Arabia, someone asked if many of the characters were based on real
people. "Yes, they will be" I said. It was carefully explained to me
that I had said something rather odd. After hearing this commentator,
I wonder if this is not a mere dialectal difference after all.
Does anyone else use 'will' to express probability in the past/present
like this? Is what I am doing the same as the football commentator?
If Quirk and Greenbaum go over this, just say the word and I'll do my
reading before posting the next time. (that'll be right!)
--
James M. Scobbie: Dept of Linguistics, Stanford University, CA 94305-2150

I have heard rumours about organizations which offer bursaries
to graduate students, to off set the cost of travel to conferences.
I'm intending to deliver a paper in Sydney, Australia in July.
So I am very interested to know if the rumours are true. If you
know of any such organizations, could you please drop me at
line at STAINTONATHENA.MIT.EDU?
Thanks,
Rob Stainton
MIT