LINGUIST List 3.258

Tue 17 Mar 1992

Qs: Print Aid, French Text, Adverbials

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1. , Printing tool
2. , gank (?)
3. Justine Cassell, query about intro texts for French linguistics.
4. "Robert S. Kirsner", Query re: RIGHT dislocation
5. , adverbials

When sending around unpublished articles, most linguists - and probably
other researchers as well - reduce the pages of their paper by about 75-
80%, and arrange them two by two onto single sheets of paper. Every
single sheet then resembles the layout of an opened book. This of course
vastly reduces the amount of paper being sent, the research money spent
on copies, not to mention the number of forests cut down. After spending
35 frustrating minutes copying the laserprinted pages of a book
manuscript in the manner described above, I thought there should be a
simpler way of doing this. In the greater interest of ecology, is there a
printing program or tool out there that would allow one to print two pages onto
one page in the way described? This would save us a lot of time and
paper. The technology certainly exists: Addresbook 3.0 for the Macintosh
has a feature which allows four small pages with addresses to be printed
on a single page. In the improbable case such a program does not exist,
and if some savvy software specialist (mark the alliteration!) wanted to
develop it, I would like to modestly claim intellectual ownership: royalties
might allow me to pay the cost of further copies!

Johan Rooryck

Margaret Winters and I have identified a new verb in Midwest
American teen slang--gank (rhymes with bank--someday we'll
have IPA here!). It means `steal', especially `shoplift',
although our informant also used it in an example sentence as
follows:
 That wench ganked my boyfriend.
How widespread is this? Any guesses on etymology?
 G&M

A question about intro texts for another specialized audience: graduate
students in a French department. I teach Intro to French Linguistics
to beginning grad students who may go on in French linguistics, or
who may turn to literature, pedagogy or civilization; they all complain
that there isn't a textbook for them to follow in the course. The
course is taught in French, and is a mixture of linguistics of French,
and French linguistics. Any suggestions?
I guess the text could be either in English or in French.
Thanks,
-justine Cassell

I would be grateful for references on RIGHT dislocation in any langauge
in any framework, but I am particularly interested in Germanic languages.
Please post on LINGUIST but with a copy to me at idt1rskmvs.oac.ucla.edu.
Thanks,
 Bob Kirsner

This query is about the external structure of adverbials with regard to
semantic roles and theta roles. I'm interested in the interaction
between external roles and referential roles, assuming that only
lexical items that have a referential role allow for modification/
specification, i.e. (d-structural) adjuncts are licensed iff they
appear within a projection of a head that has a referential role. I
assume that modification doesn't change a head's argument structure
but is "parasitic" on this argument structure in saturating its
external role. The argument structure which is projected is that of
the head; it can be regarded as modified in so far as the external
role of the adjunct is identified with the head's referential role,
thus modifying the reference of the item under consideration.
In recent work "adverbial theta roles" are discussed - what is
the nature of these roles? How are they identified?
Does anyone work on the same (or a related) topic or
know about papaers on this topic?
Thanks in advance. Dagmar Haumann