LINGUIST List 4.896

Fri 29 Oct 1993

Qs: Passives, French Project, Orthography, German Compounds

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. EL ZAIM ADEL, Phrase passive en francais?
2. , French project
3. Paulson, American English spelling
4. Milen Epik, German compounding expectancy

 Bonjour,
 je cherche des informations bibliographiques ou autres sur la phrase
 passive en arabe et/ou sur les problemes relies a la traduction par
 exemple d'une phrase passive francaise vers l'arabe.
 Il me semble que chaque fois qu'on a a traduire une phrase comme:

 Ce livre est ecrit par un comite' de professeurs.
 vers l'arabe, on est comme "oblige" d'utiliser une structure active, ou
 bien de faire des paraphrases arabes qui me semblent etre "peu naturelles".

 Quelqu'un a-t-il des suggestions de lecture ou d'explication.
 Priere de me repondre directement: r32500er.uqam.ca

 Je resumerai les reponses pour la liste.
 Merci
 Adel ELZAIM

To fellow LINGUISTS:

My name is Victor Acker and I teach French 101 to 24 John Jay
College students in New York City. It's a multi-racial, multi
lingual urban group of young adults between the ages of 19 to 23.

Since I am interested in long-distance teaching methodology, I am
interested in doing a project IN FRENCH. To that effect, I have
split my class in 6 groups of students, each group "specializing"
in a specific item:

 - French culture in America
 - French traditions
 - French teens and youth
 - College aspirations
 - French foods/recipes
 - Drug effects on today's youth

One these groups will also have an "Editorial" role.

At this time, all the students are starting to write about
themselves in French and about their topic. Within 2 weeks,
I feel they will be ready to handle the rudiments of E-Mail.

What I am asking is for professors/teachers, in different parts of
the U.S. and the world, who would be interested in a short
(2 to 3 weeks) project that will entail:

 - Exchange of greetings
 - Talking about the selected topic within their OWN environment
 - Concluding on this brief "visit"
 - Any follow-up to be left to the students/groups

At John Jay, we plan on publishing this E-mail class project
and distributing it throughout the college.

Hoping to hear from many of you,

Victor Acker
John Jay College
<ackervacfcluster.nyu.edu>

Hi Netters,
 I am interested in the evolution of the American English
Spelling. I would appreciate if anyone could direct me to some works that
deal with the social or political background of this spelling system. How
did the American Orthographic system come about? Did someone sit down and
invent it? or did it evolve neutrally or did some cultural or
socio-political reasons necessitated it or (and) contribute to it?

 =====================================================================
Paulson Pulikottil (P. G. Student)
Dept. Biblical Studies
University of Sheffield,
S10 2UJ
U.K.
 ========================================================================

I am trying to get a feel for the expectancy of compound words in German,
especially where generation is concerned.

If you are German and have used spelling checkers (such as those in
text processors) your opinion will be valuable.

Suppose you have misspelled a word, and the spelling checker suggests
a list of corrections. Would you expect the correction list to consist
of non-compound words only ? If not, would you also expect common
compounds ? Would you ever expect to see less commonly used compound words
suggested to you ?

If you use a compound word that does not pass the spelling checker, would
you try to look for corrections for the compound word as a whole, or would
you try to spell check the compoundable pieces on their own ?

Milen Epik
internet: mepikmcimail.com