LINGUIST List 4.207

Sun 21 Mar 1993

Qs: First time that, voice quality, Rhaeto-Romance, Polish

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1. , Urgent query: First time that ...
2. mark, classifying voice quality
3. , Rhaeto-Romance and Swiss German
4. , Polish language learning materials

Does anybody know who

(a) came up with the contrast between

 I asked him what was he up to.
 *She never even considerd what was he up to.

(b) first talked about discovery procedures (it was some
neo-Bloomfieldian but which one and where?)

Finally, has anybody pointed out that the discovery procedures
amounted to the same thing in a different guise as Chomsky's
idea of a LAD (or can I take credit for this observation?).

For speech research, we would like to classify speakers by voice
as well as by age and sex. Pitch and accent are two important
categories, but how should we group/classify speakers within
them? Are we overlooking other important dimensions? Does
anyone know of an already existing set of voice qualifications,
or should we just come up with our own?

 Mark A. Mandel
 Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 965-5200
 320 Nevada St. : Newton, Mass. 02160, USA

On p. 41 of _Languages in Contact_, Weinreich refers to the fact that both
Rhaeto-Romance (Romansch) and a neighbouring Swiss German dialect form the
future with the (auxiliary) verb 'come'. This is presumably a case of
grammatical transfer by bilingual speakers from one language to the other
(that is Weinreich's interpretation). Most writings on the Swiss dialects
of Rhaeto-Romance assume that grammatical transfer is generally from German
to Rhaeto-Romance, but this one, if correctly recorded, seems to be from
Rhaeto-Romance to Swiss German. Can anyone confirm whether this inference
is correct? How widespread is the use of 'come' as a future auxiliary in
Swiss German dialects?

Any hints on this topic would be gratefully received, as would references
to any recent work on grammatical transfer involving Rhaeto-Romance and
German (other than Haiman's account in Harris and Martin's _The Romance
Languages_0.

Please reply direct to me.

Malcolm Ross.

Can anyone help me find Polish language learning materials for SL classroom
(for US students at college level? I'm starting a course, but I have no
books. Any infor greatly appreciated.