LINGUIST List 3.990

Tue 15 Dec 1992

Qs: Language Impairment; Exclamations; MT; Hell Bent

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. , Query: Childhood Language Impairment in Multicultural Settings
2. , CORRECTION of earlier query: exclamatory sentences in English and
3. , Machine Translation
4. Michael Kac, Hell Bent

I am interested in contacting anyone active in the area of
identifying childhood language impairments in multicultural
and multilingual settings and in any references to research
in this area.

A German colleague, who doesn't have access to THE LINGUIST, is working on
exclamatory sentences in English (defined as anything followed by an
exclamation mark). Has anything been published on this topic? If so, where
and when? Does anyone know of relevant corpora?

She is also interested in contrastive grammars of English and German. I believe
that such a grammar (by Herbert L. Kufner) was published around 1961. Could
anyone tell me more about this particular one, please - and about others, if
there are any?

Many thanks,
Wiebke Brockhaus

Machine Translation

An undergraduate Engineering major has asked me if I will do
Directed Studies with her next semester on Machine Translation.
I'm not sure if this is the one-eyed leading the blind or the
other way round. Can anyone suggest some readings that would be
a good starting point for the student and me? The student will
probably be taking an introductory linguistics class
concurrently.

Bernard Comrie comrievm.usc.edu

An article in the New York Times of Saturday, Dec. 12, describing the storm
that recently hit the east coast, contains the following:

"The storm ... was not a hurricane, for it lacked a swirling tropical center
and sustained winds over 75 m.p.h. But for all practical purposes, it bore
down with a hurricane's hell bent for treachery."

I can use *bent* by itself in the sense of 'inclination' or 'preference' as a
noun but for me, *hell bent* is an adjective, prototypically used in the
compound *hell bent for leather* (whose origins I do not know -- anyone
care to comment?) Am I alone in this?

Michael Kac