LINGUIST List 3.524

Tue 23 Jun 1992

Qs: Plurals, Khalkha, Reflexives, Address, Admin.

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Directory

1. , query: sisters-in-laws
2. , Request for info on Khalkha (Mongolian)
3. John Paolillo, Grist for the reflexive mill
4. Boyd Davis, address for R. Wardhaugh
5. Mark Hansell/ Mai Hansheng, Re: 3.515 Linguistics in trouble?

A query to English speakers out there:
I seem to remember that someone once mentioned to me English forms with double
plurals like

 sisters-in-laws, passers-bys

I'd like to get confirmation whether these forms actually exist.
And what about forms with only final -s, like sister-in-laws, passer-bys?

(And does anyone know how morphologists who rely crucially on the
Elsewhere Condition to rule out double affixation deal with such forms?)

Martin Haspelmath, Free University of Berlin

I would greatly appreciate any information on the Khalkha
language of Mongolia, including any available dictionaries and grammars,
book and information sources, political and social status, current
research and researchers, etc.
I'm starting from scratch, so any and all information would help.
I will summarize the results if anyone else is interested.

Ken Beesley
beesley.parcxerox.com
415 949-8606

I was reading Michael C. Corbalis' book "The Lopsided Ape, Evolution of
the Generative Mind" (Oxford 1991), and was struck by the following
sentence (p.243):

	"As we saw in the previous chapter, Roger W. Sperry and his
	colleagues have shown that the right hemispeheres of two
	split-brained patients were clearly capable of recognizing
	pictures of themselves, or of relatives and personal belongings."

The antecedent of _themselves_ favored (for me at least) by the structure
of this sentence (i.e. the right hemispeheres) is clearly not the intended
antecedent. If I allow the intendended antecedent (the split-brain
patients) to be the antecedent, then I must also allow Roger Sperry and his
colleagues to be a potential antecedent, making the sentence 3-ways
ambiguous. Any "generative minds" (or non-generative) out there care to
comment?
	John C. Paolillo (johnpcsli.stanford.edu)

I am trying to find an address/e-address for R. Wardhaugh, in order to
obtain a reprint-permission. His publisher tells me Dr. Wardhaugh is in
Japan. Any address would be most helpful.
 Boyd Davis fen00bhd at unccvm

Message 5: Re: 3.515 Linguistics in trouble?

I am curious to hear what people think of the trend toward subsuming
linguistics under a department of Cognitive Science or Cognitive Studies. Is
this done voluntarily and eagerly when it happens, or is it done out of
desperation, either to avoid closure of a department or to seek fuller funding
from the AI establishment? Do people who work in subfields of linguistics that
are less interesting to cogsci (e.g. historical ling., sociolinguistics, field
ling etc.) find their work devalued as a result? What's it like out there?