LINGUIST List 4.117

Sun 21 Feb 1993

Qs: Grammer shifts, Identity, Software, Pronouns

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. , Grammer Shifts
2. , Identity of an obscure language
3. Katherine Elizabeth Krohn, Software help
4. , prounouns

In most Indo-European Languages, I have been taught that the languages have
undergone a shift from heavily inflected word order independent grammer
towords less inflected, word order dependent grammer. What I was wondering
is are there any languages (Indo-European or otherwise) that have undergone
a shifting from word order dependent toword word order independent grammer?
If anyone could tell me any language that appears to have done this and other
sundry information about the language (who the speakers are etc) I would
appreciate it. Thank you very much.

 -Dan Williamson

internet: acc_dtwexodus.valpo.edu
bitnet: acc_dtwvalpo

I have been asked to aid in tracking down the source for a particular
pair of tables that apparently come from a page in an appendix to an
unidentified book. The tables seem to give a partial lexicon for some
language, along with a notation for writing the language.

The first table lists a set of 19 symbols, each with a different
syllable written under it. The syllables listed are:

 ka ga gna pa ba ma ta da

 na cha ja gnia eea a la ra

 a wa ha

The second table lists 36 pairs of words in English and the
unidentified language. The table is as follows:

 One Sye Husband Cadjoon
 Two Rowah Wife Cadjoon
 Three Tulloo Father Bapa
 Four Ampah Mother Eenah
 Five Leemah Head Oolooh
 Six Annam Eyes Mattah
 Seven Peetoo Nose Eerong
 Eight Ooalloo Hair Booho
 Nine Seewah Teeth Eepan
 Ten Pooloo Hand Chooloo
 Day Rannee White Mandack
 Night Beenghee Black Malloom
 Good Buttie Die Jahal
 Fire Aphooy Water Wye
 Earth Tanno Cocoa nut Clappah
 Rice Beeas Fish Ewah
 Hog Babooye Moon Boolan
 God Alla-talla I Gniah

There is some evidence that the entire page has been hoaxed.
Nonetheless, there is some chance that the material comes from an
actual human language. Any help identifying the language or the book
from which this page comes would be greatly appreciated. I can
forward photocopies of the page in question to those who think that it
might aid in their identification of the material.

 -- Stuart Shieber

 My colleague, Maureen Neal, who does not yet have an e-mail account,
is looking for help in locating Macintosh software related to tagging
and frequency counts for verbatim transcripts of classroom speech. She
would like to find software which can identify specified grammatical
categories (noun, verb(s), adjectives, pronouns of various types, for
example); in addition, she is looking for a program which can then count
frequencies for the identified categories (located by the tagging program).
She also has questions about such programs: Is there, for example, a generic
program available, or does this need to be specifically written with a
list of features made up ahead of time? Can programs be made to identify
and count (in the same program), or do these need to be separate programs
entirely? Can a tagging program identify word strings of various types
as well as single words? Is there a program anywhere which can distinguish
and count T-units, by any chance?
 Maureen's project involves large-scale transcription of a number of
tape recordings of classroom speech; she is attempting to establish
defining characteristics for an elaborate register of speech used in
academic contexts--classrooms, lectures, conferences, for example.
 Any help, general or specific, would be much appreciated. Please reply
directly to Katie Krohn's address: kkrohntamuts.tamu.edu .

Pronouns tend to have two different morphological series (ie. accusative
me/moi in French), the so-called clitic series and 'strong' series.
Syntactically however, in many cases, THREE classes of pronouns need to
be postulated.

Does anybody know of (i) a language with three morphologically different
series of pronouns (i.e. each syntactic class having its own morphological
realisation), (ii) typological works on pronominal systems ?

Thank you, Michal Starke. (starkeuni2a.unige.ch)