LINGUIST List 3.907

Wed 18 Nov 1992

Disc: Fillmore, Reanalysis

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. Scott C DeLancey, Re: 3.894 Queries: Fillmore
2. John Cowan, Re: control language
3. , morphological reanalysis/folk etymology, etc.

Message 1: Re: 3.894 Queries: Fillmore

Bert Peeters asks:

> My impression may be the wrong one, but it seems to me that people usually
> discuss either Fillmore's case for case model or his scene-and-frames
 semantics
> but never both at once. Are they totally unrelated?

It's true that people who cite Fillmore in reference to case theory
often limit their discussion to the model described in "The Case For
Case". This is unfortunate, IMHO, since other and later work by Fillmore
presents significant improvements on that model. For example, no one
should ever casually invoke a notion like "Patient" (which isn't in
the CFC model, though people tend to assume it is in some disguise)
without citing Fillmore's "The Grammar of Hitting and Breaking", which
does a lot to clarify what might or might not be involved in such a
category.
 As for "scene and frames semantics", one link between this and the
CFC model is "The Case For Case Reopened". The two models are entirely
consistent; while it might be argued that a frame semantics theory doesn't
necessarily have to involve a case grammar per se (though this may be a
debatable point), any case grammar theory with any semantic content is
automatically an example of frame semantics. I don't have ready to hand
an apt citation from Fillmore's many papers on the subject(s), but I'm
sure that he has explicitly stated more than once that he sees these two
lines of research as directly related.

Scott DeLancey

Since Don Webb has brought in >Star Trek<, I will mention Larry Niven's
science-fiction novels >The Integral Trees< and >The Smoke Ring<, set in
a future several millennia hence. The language used there appears to be
English, but voice-controlled computers are addressed as "Prikazyvat <command>",
said to be a borrowing from Russian. Typical examples:

 Prikazyvat Menu
 Prikazyvat Erase
 Prikazyvat Record

Seemingly the idea is that the computers ignore everything until they hear
the non-English signal word, and then start parsing.

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

 Recent discussion in the List of such etymologically redundant
strings as 'the La Brea Tar Pits' and 'The Los Angeles Angels' reminds me
of a fellow i knew in college back in the mid-70's. His name was (still
is, as far as i know) Michael, and he was a charismatic/evangelical with a
huge chip on his shoulder against organized religion (which created some
tension between us, since while he was raised Episcopalian i was in the
process of converting to Episcopalia- nism) ; he was also very bright with
a good liberal education (he majored in Spanish). He once told me he
objected to a song that was currently popular in Roman Catholic circles,
whose refrain began:
 'Alle, Alle, Alleluia'
on the grounds that, contrary to the implication of the song, the first two
syllables of '(h)alleluyah' do not form a constituent. (To the extent one
can represent the 'correct' morphological analysis of this Hebrew word in
linear form, it would be something like hallel + u + yah. The first
element, of course, can be further analysed as h-l-l + CaCCeC.) It did no
good explaining to him that 'halleluyah' is often used as a
quasi-incantatory sequence of 'nonsense' syllables heavily laden with
religious connotations, i.e., as a mantra. To Michael, this was merely
symptomatic of the sort of covert paganism with which Catholocism, in his
opinion, is riddled. Michael's religion has very little room for
right-brain functions. Which is especially odd given his participation in
glossalalia.
 ------
Dr. Steven Schaufele
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

4088 Foreign Language Building
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