LINGUIST List 2.87

Friday, 22 Mar 1991

FYI: East Asian,Intonation,Bib,WLIST,Mac,Digest,Publications

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. Peter Cole, Mid-Atlantic Workshop on the Syntax of East Asian Languages
2. , intonation symbols
3. Pier Marco Bertinetto, A piece of bibliographical information
4. Jari Perkiomaki, WLIST -- word frequency & length counter
5. Michael Kelly, nonparametric statistics package
6. David J. Camp, dedigestifier now supports LINGUIST digest
7. Lorraine Leddy, Publications List Available

The Workshop is a monthly meeting of linguists interested in the syntax of
Chinese, Japanese and Korean (and potentially other East Asian Languages). It
meets at the University of Delaware. The next meeting in on April 12 in
Room 107of Newark Hall at 1 p.m. There will be two papers presented, both
on Chinese: Yafei Li of MIT speaking on "Empty Operators in Chinese" and Jie
Xu of the University of Maryland will present "A Note on Chinese Null Objects".
The May meeting will be on the 24th. The probable speakers will be Lisa
Cheng of MIT and Tom Ernst of Delaware. Topics will be announced later.

All are welcome, but please let us know you are coming. Driving directions
are available on request.

RE: intonation symbols

 I would like to remind people of the availability of symbols we can
use to indicate an intended joke, :-) , which is a smiling face on
its side, or a tongue-in-cheek remark, ;-) , which is supposed to
indicate a winking eye on that smiling face.

 In general I really hate these hokey smiley face symbols, but they
are a usable means of indicating intonation when we're talking
electronically. This conversational forum brings with it the danger
of misunderstanding and unintended offense. Some of the exchanges
I've seen recently on the net may have benefitted from a clear
indication of intended irony; an unintended sneer can start a flurry
of word-slinging to no purpose. I don't think we want tempers to
flare over mere misunderandings: if you really want to say "so and so
is an idiot," have the courage of your convictions and say so
explicitly!

 I hope we can keep the tone of our exchanges helpful and
informational. If anyone else has ideas for indicating intonation,
please share them.

Christine Kamprath

[Moderators' Note: A file exists on the LINGUIST server that
lists these symbols (called "emoticons"), in more detail than
most people would want to know about. To retrieve this file,
send the server (listservuniwa.uwa.oz.au) the message:
get emoticons
The file will then be mailed to you.]

May I have the opportunity to communicate to those who are interested in anapho
ric processes that the last issue of "Rivista di Linguistica" (2,1,1990) was en
tirely devoted to "Anaphoric Relations in Sentence and Text"?
The issue contains papers by Maria-Elisabeth Conte, Alessandra Giorgi, Luigi Ri
zzi, Denis Delfitto, Francis Corblin, Monica Berretta, Frantisek Danes, Georges
 Kleiber, Peter Bosch & Bart Geurts.
It may be ordered through the publisher: Rosenberg & Sellier, via Andrea Doria
14, 10123 Torino, Italy.
Thank you for your attention.
Pier Marco Bertinetto (Pisa)

We have just released a free MS DOS programme called WLIST.EXE, a word
frequency and word length counter. This programme is suitable even for
linguistic purposes.

WLIST.EXE is available ARCed by anonymous ftp at garbo.uwasa.fi, directory
/pc/fileutil, under the name WLIST10.ARC. Following is the documentation.
We hope you find the programme useful.

WLIST.EXE -- A fast word frequency and word length counter. 

(C) Copyright 1990 Ari Hovila. Based on the ideas of Ari Hovila and
 Jari Perkiomaki, University of Vaasa.

Syntax : wlist [-m] [-e] [-a] file

Options: <no option> : lists all words in lower case
 -m : lists all words 'as-is'
 -e : sorts words by their endings
 -a : makes a plain word list, no frequencies or statistics

Description:

WLIST is our first more "serious" attempt to do things with words. We
needed a utility that would not only make plain word lists but also do some
statistics, preferably suitable for linguistic purposes. Furthermore, the
programme must be capable of handling the Finnish way of sorting, and long
words (right now WLIST can handle words as long as 50 characters) and, of
course, be as quick as possible.

Using WLIST is rather straight-forward. By default, it lists words in
ascending alphabetical order (the Finnish characters will be sorted
correctly) and in lower case. The output will show the frequency and length
of each word as well as an analysis of overall word length distribution
(chars/word). Moreover, the statistics include the totality and the
average lengths of all words and different words.

You may find the different options, which are described above, useful.
Please note that they can all be freely combined for the preferred result.

WLIST is a programme under development. We are anxious to know your opinion
about this programme. Please send your suggestions and comments by e-mail 
either to Ari Hovila <ajhuwasa.fi> or Jari Perkiomaki <fk00133ruwasa.fi>.

-- 
Jari K Perkiomaki, U of Vaasa, fk00133ruwasa.fi, perkiomajyu.fi,
jpebrando.uwasa.fi, Jari.Perkiomakimacpost.uwasa.fi

To Macintosh users: Many linguists and psycholinguists collect data
that is unsuitable for standard parametric statistics (e.g., the data
may not be on an interval scale). Unfortunately, many statistical
programs for the Mac lack nonparametric tests, especially some
esoteric, but occasionally useful statistics like the Kolmogorov-Smirnov
goodness of fit test and the runs test. Because I've needed some of
these for my own work, I have written a hypercard stack that incorporates
many nonparametric statistics. In addition, each statistic is provided
with a brief description of its purpose and procedure for use. If anyone
would like a copy of this hypercard stack, you can send me a disk and
a self-addressed stamped envelope, and I'll be happy to send you a version.
Please indicate whether you have hypercard 2.0 or a version from the 1.x
series. You can address your request to:

Michael Kelly
Department of Psychology
University of Pennsylvania
3815 Walnut St.
Philadelphia, PA 19104

I'll be happy to provide further information via e-mail.

I have modified my dedigestifier (called "digest") to support the
Linguist digest. It is included below. It requires perl and elm.
-David-

#! /usr/bin/perl
#
# This is 'digest' a program to run elm on a digest as a folder.
# Copyright (C) 1990 David J. Camp
#
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation; either version 1, or (at your option)
# any later version.
#
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
# Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
#
# davidwubios.wustl.edu ^ Mr. David J. Camp
# david%wubioswugate.wustl.edu < * > +1 314 382 0584
# ...!uunet!wugate!wubios!david v "God loves material things."
#
$| = 1;
open (FOLDER, ">/tmp/dig$$");
while (<>)
 {
 if (/(^\([0-9]*\) |^--)----(\n|-----------------------(\n|-(\n|----------------------------------------\n)))/)
 {
 print FOLDER "From dummy Wed Feb 29 12:12:12 1990\n";
 do
 {
 $_ = <>;
 }
 until (eof() || /[\041-\177]/);
 }
 print FOLDER $_;
 }
close (FOLDER);
exec ("elm -f /tmp/dig$$ <&2 ; /bin/rm -f /tmp/dig$$");

NOW AVAILABLE


A full publications list of research, working papers and PhD These from
the Centre for Cognitive Science, University of Edinburgh.

For more detailed information on ordering and receiving the list please mail:

<librariancogsci.ed.ac.uk>

Or write to:

Technical Report Librarian
Centre for Cognitive Science
University of Edinburgh
2 Buccleuch Place
Edinburgh
EH9 8LW