LINGUIST List 4.149

Wed 03 Mar 1993

Qs: Mina/Ewe, Rothstein, LFG for Arabic, Schwa

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. Desire Houngues, Mina and Ewe
2. , Rothstein
3. , Query: LFG for Arabic
4. John S. Coleman, Schwa in Scone

Hello,

I am interested in finding out about any work being done on
the syntax of Mina or Ewe. If you have references, could you
please send them to me at: fodesiacs.bu.edu
and I will post a summary to this list.

I would also be interested in making contact with anyone
working in this area.

Thank you very much,

 De'sire' Houngues

 Program in Applied Linguistics, Boston University
 718 Commonwealth Avenue
 Boston, MA 02215

This is a query I am putting on the list for a friend who does not have
access to e-mail. She is looking for the 1983 MIT-dissertation "The
syntactic forms of predication" by Susan Rothstein. Can anyone out there
indicate how to get a copy, preferably in Germany? Is it available on the
Graue Bucherborse Passau? Any help to get hold of the book will be
appreciated!
Ursula Doleschal
ursula.doleschalwu-wien.ac.at

A friend of mine intends to develop an LFG-based system for Machine
Translation (Arabic->English), and cannot find any references on LFGs
for Arabic. He has done work on English->Arabic transfer and Arabic
generation, but would like **any** references on parsing Arabic in the
LFG framework. He would appreciate any hint you may have; I'll be
happy to pass it on.

Julia Aymerich.
Georgetown Univ.

Kirk Belnap's recent query about "scone" mentions that:

> Merriam-Webster's dictionary (3rd ed.) gives two spellings ("scone" or
> "scon") and three possible pronunciations (long "o," short "o" or schwa).

The pronunciation with schwa came as a surprise to me. My Merriam-Webster's
shows the vowel of this third pronunciation using the u-breve symbol.
The Longman Pronunciation Dictionary list several British and American
pronunciations instantiating "long o" and "short o", but no mention of
the schwa possibility. Kenyon and Knott's pronunciation dictionary gives
two pronunciations for "scone" (the noun): /skon/ (o = long o) and
/skOn/ (O = short o), and two for "Scone" (a place-name): /skun/ (u = long
[u:]) and /skon/ (with "long o"), but no mention of the schwa possibility.
Can anyone shed any light on the legitimacy of the schwa possibility?

--- John Coleman