LINGUIST List 4.691

Sun 12 Sep 1993

Qs: Database, Rennellese, X rules OK, Distinction

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Directory

1. David Corina, Please Post
2. Richard Coates, For THE LINGUIST: Invisibility of women
3. Geoffrey Russom, Re: 4.686 Uptalk, Y'all, OK
4. Megumi Sasaki, The distinction between can and can't

I have been working in collaboration with Michael Jordan on a way of
representing written and spoken words in connectionits networks.
As part of the development of this technique, we are looking for a
data base of English words that would include for
each word its phonemic description in some reasonably worked out
autosegmental hierarchical model (e.g. Clements, Sagey etc.).
We would also be interested by a data base of American English words that
would inlcude for each word its decription into a matrix of phonemic
features (a la Chomsky and Halle, or acoustic based features a la Stevens).
If you are aware of such data bases or a tool for generating
an approprite approximation (say from a TIMIT labled description)
could you please e-mail

daphnepsyche.mit.edu
Thanks a lot,
Daphne Bavelier

Samuel Elbert's grammar of Rennellese, a Polynesian language of
the Solomon Islands, "Echo of a culture" (UHawaii Press), p. 87,
mentions a particle _maa_, said to mean `and his wife'. It follows
proper names of men within a NP, and more rarely pronouns. Can
anyone tell me what its etymology is, and in particular whether
it is related to any word for a female? The Rennellese for `wife'
is _uguugu_.

Richard Coates
University of Sussex

Message 3: Re: 4.686 Uptalk, Y'all, OK

I've seen several British spray-painted slogans of the form "X rules OK" on
walls and other outdoor surfaces. Can someone explain the syntax to me?

-- Rick Russom

This is the first time for me to send a message to Liguist list. I am an
graduate student in Japan,which is (in)famous for original English
sentences.(I hope my English will not be cited in 'more fun'.)
I guess most of you are English speaker,so probably you know a lot
about what I am interested in. Sometimes, I can't make a distinction
between can and can't because some English speakers omit the last 't'
in can't. When the focus is on can in a declarative sentence (this means
the intonation pattern is almost the same,for instanse,both in 'I can
do it' and 'I can't do it',and the context permits either interpretation,
I can't judge which is which. I am going to do some acoustic experiments
and write a paper about it. I guess the vowel is the key ,but there must
be regional variations. I,am non-native spaker of English,don't belong
to any dialect group, cannot say 'in my dialect..'. Would you please
e-mail me if you have an idea how you make a distinction during a discourse,
or if you have seen papers about that topic.I have not found references
about it so far. My address is m-sasakihoffman.cc.sophia.ac.jp( it is odd
Sophia university is not in Bulgaria, but in Japan.)Thank you.