LINGUIST List 3.341

Fri 17 Apr 1992

Qs: Tones, Addresses, Discourse, Eclipsis

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. John Cowan, Grammar by tones: does it exist?
2. Donald Peterson, addresses of institutions
3. , coding for discourse cohesion
4. ,sd, Eclipsis in Irish

Does anybody know of any languages in which tones are used not to discriminate
lexical items but to specify syntactic relations? In other words, are there
any languages in which (to make up an example) >eat< means 'eat' and >dog<
means 'dog' regardless of tone, but where:

	eat1 dog1	means		'something eats and is a dog'
	eat4 dog6	means		'an eater of dogs'
	eat1 dog4	means		'the dog eats'
	eat4 dog1	means		'the eater is a dog'

and so on? Please mail to me directly at <cowansnark.thyrsus.com>
disregarding the header lines above, and I will summarize replies.

Does anyone have a list in electronic form of addresses of
institutions teaching linguistics in the UK or continental Europe?
This would be much appreciated.

Donald Peterson.

addr: Cognitive Science, School of Computer Science, University of
 Birmingham, PO Box 363, Birmingham B15 2TT, U.K.
phone: 021 414 4792 (direct) 021 414 4782 (secretary) 021 414 4281 (fax)
email: D.M.Petersoncs.bham.ac.uk

 This message is from Elizabeth Bates (forwarded by Emmorey):

I am writing on behalf of a group of researchers at UCSD involved
in collaborative work on the brain bases of language and cognition.
We are now in possession of a relatively large corpus of narrative data
from adults (aphasics, Alzheimer's patients, college controls and older
controls) and children (normally-developing children from 3 - 12, and
children from several different clinical groups included Specific
Language Impairment, early focal brain injury, Williams Syndrome and
Down Syndrome). So far we have used that data base to ask some very
specific questions motivated by the group contrasts that we set out
to test. However, we are also planning to carry out some comparative
analyses of grammar and discourse across these groups. Much of the
data has been (or soon will be) placed on the CHAT format, for eventual
contribution to the Child Language Data Exchange System. In the interim,
we are particularly interested in identifying some coding schemes for
the assessment/quantification of discourse cohesion (including
forms of reference, and maintenance/shifting of topic and perspective).
Given the nature of our data base and the size of our collaborative
enterprise, we are particularly interested in coding schemes with
established reliability (i.e. easy to teach and easy to use, with
similar results across raters). We could of course reinvent the wheel,
but would prefer to draw on the wisdom, experience and recommendations
of our colleagues. Any and all suggestions are welcome. Thanks in
advance.

Elizabeth Bates (batescrl.ucsd.edu)

	I am looking for information and references pertaining to the
process known as 'eclipsis' in Irish. I'm especially interested in the
history of it all. Can anyone out there help me get more on this?

					Sean A. Day
					Purdue University