LINGUIST List 4.997

Sun 28 Nov 1993

Qs: Ambiguity, Crossclassification, Aboriginal, Japanese

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. , Q: The shooting of the hunters
2. , Q: Aristotle on Cross-classification
3. Randy Allen Harris, Query: aboriginal/caucasian miscommunication
4. James Magnuson, Japanese word/phoneme frequency

 When Chomsky first called attention to the ambiguity of
phrases like _the shooting of the hunters_, he analyzed them as
being derived (in two different ways) from actives. But the
objective reading could also be derived from the passive (_The
hunters are being shot_). Is there any literature on this?

Also, does anybody know good references to pretransformational
literature on this ambiguity?

Is there anybody out there who is knowledgeable about
Aristotle's theory of categories? My reading of the
same is that he explicitly denied the possibility of
crossclassification of categories of any kind. If so,,
this would be of great interest to linguists, I think, who
seem to have been the first people to explicitly talk about
the need for recognizing crossclassification.

For a course I am teaching, I would be very grateful for references to
crossed communication between aboriginals (including, especially, Native
Americans) and Caucasians (including, especially, North American English
speakers). I would also appreciate any work relating to aboriginals and
literacy. If there is sufficient response, I will post a summary. Many
thanks.

 -------======= * =======-------
 Randy Allen Harris
 rahawatarts.uwaterloo.ca

 Rhetoric and Professional Writing, Department of English, University of
Waterloo, Waterloo ON N2L 3G1, CANADA; 519 885-1211, x5362; FAX: 519 884-8995

Hello --

Can anyone recommend a source for Japanese word and/or phoneme
frequency data? Or to 'romaji' or phonemically-transcribed
Japanese texts?

Thanks,

Jim Magnuson
ATR Human Information Processing Labs
Kyoto

magnusonhip.atr.co.jp