LINGUIST List 3.10

Sun 05 Jan 1992

Qs: Smileys, Speech Recognition, Biblical, Is

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. Brenda Danet, Query re smiley icons
2. John Cowan, Query: state of the art for computer speech recognition
3. Mari Olsen, Bibles on disk
4. , "the reason is, is"

Hi, I'm a sociologist and communications researcher at the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem. I'm working on a paper on smiley icons in CMC (computer-
mediated communication). I'd like to ask (1) Do you know about them? (2) Do
you have files or collections of them? (3) Do you use them yourself? (4)
If yes, why do you use them? If not, why not? (5) Do many people you know use
them? I'll look forward to hearing from you. Thanks! :-) (of course!)
Brenda Danet

Can someone working in speech recognition please give me a short statement
describing 1) the RESEARCH state of the art, and/or 2) the COMMERCIAL state
of the art? In particular, is the following recognition job feasible at
present:

To recognize at the phoneme level connected speech, plus information about
stress (two levels, primary and weak) and pause. The phoneme set contains
23 phonemes, roughly characterized by the following IPA symbols:

[a] [epsilon] [i] [o] [u]
[b] [long-S] [d] [f] [g] [script-z] [k] [l] [m] [n] [p] [r] [s] [t] [v] [x] [z]
short [h] between vowels only

If this is >not< feasible, consider the alternative of pauses between each
word, where words are of arbitrary length.

Please respond by e-mail to: cowansnark.thyrsus.com (ignoring the bogus
address inserted by the digesting software).

--
cowansnark.thyrsus.com		...!uunet!cbmvax!snark!cowan
		e'osai ko sarji la lojban

My dissertation proposal was just approved, and I just became aware of
funds available from Northwestern, application for which is due
January 15. The goal of my dissertation is to use the Koine Greek of
the New Testament and its translations into English, Spanish and
German to investigate the different ways the languages express motion
and aspect (based on Talmy (1978, 1985, 1991).

I have a Macintosh IIsi. I plan to get Gramcord for the Greek New
Testament, and would be interested to hear from anyone who has used it
with SoftPcC or Soft AT. I am also looking for other Greek electronic
texts, such as the Greek Translation of the Old Testament
(Septuagint). I do have information about Biblical texts available
from the Center from Computer Analyis of Texts at Penn. I would like
to get as many versions on-line for each English, Spanish and German
as possible, preferably for the Macintosh. Gramcord has some English
versions, CCAT has some, and there is at least one program
(Quickverse, for DOS) with five on-screen simultaneously. So I
especially need information about GERMAN AND SPANISH NEW TESTAMENTS on
disk.

Any recommendations with prices would be appreciated, prior to Jan.15,
please.

Thank you.

Mari Broman Olsen
Northwestern University - Dept. of Linguistics
molsenastrid.ling.nwu.edu
molsencasbah.acns.nwu.edu

School: (708) 491-5667
Home: (708) 615-0342

 I see syntacticians doing so well with explaining "til death do we part"
that I am inspired to ask for someone to make sense to me out of "is is".
The reason is, is, I have no handle on this construction, which I hear
all around me. The point is, is, it doesn't respond to any logic I can
apply to it. My commas indicate the pauses that I hear; both is's seem
 to be stressed, especially the first one.
 Is "is is" limited geographically? I've heard it in Southern Illinois
and from some Chicagoans; where else is "is is" used or not used?
 Last week I heard a mixed-tense "is is" -- though I can't remember
whether it was "was is" or "is was".
-----------------------------------
Lee Hartman ga5123siucvmb.bitnet
Department of Foreign Languages
Southern Illinois University
Carbondale, IL 62901 U.S.A.