LINGUIST List 4.172

Wed 10 Mar 1993

Qs: Phoneme, Slavish, Negation, Spanish, CFG

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. David Stampe, The phoneme: A survey
2. "Curt F. Woolhiser", morphophonemic alternations; "Slavish"
3. Barbara C Johnstone, multiple negation in English
4. , Spanish dictionary & CFG

A recent posting mentions Halle's argument against the phonemic level
as having set a new standard for linguistic argumentation. But it is
really not clear from recent textbooks what has been concluded from
Halle's argument, or for that matter from Chomsky's.

I'd like to know, thirty years later, what linguists think of those
arguments and of the status of the phoneme. I'd also like to know
whether students still study the issue. Please reply by email to me,
not to the list, and I will summarize the responses. The arguments in
question appeared, of course, in Morris Halle's Sound pattern oF
Russian (The Hague: Mouton, 1959), and Noam Chomsky's Current issues
in linguistic theory (The Hague: Mouton, 1964). Chomsky briefly
summarized Halle's argument, and proposed additional ones.

David Stampe
Internet: stampeuhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu
Bitnet: stampeuhunix.bitnet
Dept. of Linguistics, Univ. of Hawaii/Manoa, Honolulu HI 96822

I have a couple of queries for Linguist subscribers:

1. I'm interested in examples of the transfer of morphophonemic rules (either
through borrowing or shift) between cognate languages or dialects thereof
(for example, between Portuguese and Spanish, Spanish and Catalan, French and
Occitan, German and Dutch, Low German and Danish, etc.). I'd appreciate any
references or examples anyone might have that relate to this topic. Are
borrowings of this type limited to borrowed lexical items, or are they
applied to native items as well?

2. C.-J. N. Bailey in the article "Old and New Views on Language History
and Language Relationships" (1980), In Helmut Luedtke (ed.) Kommunikations-
theoretische Grundlagen des Sprachwandels. Berlin:Walter de Gruyter) makes
reference to an inter-Slavic Mischsprache in the U.S.: "An interesting
phenomenon in America is the creolized koine created by factory-workers
and miners of different Slavic origins which is called Slavish" (p. 156).
Unfortunately, Bailey gives no references. Does anyone out there have any
information concerning this alleged koine? (i.e. where it arose, which
languages were involved, whether there are any published descriptions).

Thanks in advance

Curt Woolhiser (CWOOLHISIUBACS.bitnet)

A student of mine is looking for examples of multiple negation that
are acceptable in standard, writerly English, or at least borderline
acceptable. One example:

 I can't not wear it.

She'd appreciate your help. Please reply to me: bcjtamuts.tamu.edu
Thanks.

Barbara Johnstone
Texas A&M University

To all Linguist subscribers,

One of my colleagues is looking for

-a (small) electronically available Spanish dictionary (I assume he
 means a list of word forms where each word form is associated with some
 grammatical information, e.g. syntactic category, inflectional
 features, etc.),

and

-a context free grammar for a fragment of Spanish.

He intends to use these as a basis for a grammar corrector.

Does anyone know whether any of these are available anywhere?

If you have something like this, or know a place where it might be, please
contact me.

Thanks,

Jan Odijk
e-mail: odijkjeprl.philips.nl

address: Institute for Perception Research (IPO)
 P.O.Box 513
 5600 MB Eindhoven
 The Netherlands

fax: +3140773876
tel: +3140773843