LINGUIST List 5.1140

Tue 18 Oct 1994

Qs: Aptitude test, Comput. apprentice, Comparative, Prosody

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. "Paula West", linguistic aptitude test
2. CAVEMAN -- San Bernardino, Calif. USA, Computational Linguistics
3. "Larry Trask", Query: Frequency of random similaritiesMime-Version: 1.0
4. , Loss of prosody

 Does anyone know of a "linguistics aptitude test" that gives an
 indication of general linguistics problem solving skills (not just
 English-based comprehension etc). We're looking for something to
 screen students into a `literature' field versus `linguistics' field.

 Thanks
 I am posting this query for someone else not on LINGUIST, please reply
 directly to

 Gowlettbeattie.uct.ac.za

Hi:

I am looking for someone in the Southern California area (I live in San
Bernardino -- where Interstate 10 and Interstate 215 cross) who does work
in the computational linguistics field. Lacking both the time and money
to attend post-graduate schools, I have taught myself linguistics. It is
a fascinating subject.

I am a wizard at programming and system analysis on the IBM-PC and compatibles
platform -- yeah, I know, IBM-PC programmers are a dime a dozen. Programmers
with my skill level are at least fifty cents a dozen. :-) I can also create
TrueType font sets for less common languages if need be.

What I would like to do, if anybody out there is interested, is trade some
programming and design work for the chance to work with somebody who knows
the subject well. I learn by *DOING* much faster than I learn by reading.

Having some Native American ancestors, I have a strong interest in Native
American languages. However, I will work with any subject -- I have this
compelling need to learn. :-)

Any takers?

Chuck Coker
CJCokerCSUPomona.Edu

 ==============================================================================
There have been no dragons in my life, only small spiders and stepping in gum.
I could have coped with the dragons.
 Anonymous (but wise)
 ==============================================================================

In his recent posting on the comparative method, Alexander Vovin raises
an interesting point: how easy is it to find random similarities between
two unrelated languages? Vovin suggests that it is, in general, very
difficult, citing English and Mandarin as a case in point.

Now if Vovin is right, it would seem that we are obliged to take
seriously the innumerable demonstrations, many of them recent and
prominent, that certain languages must be distantly related because they
exhibit some dozens of random similarities -- even though there are no
systematic correspondences.

But I'm not convinced he is right. For one thing, the very fact that
the proponents of, say, the Dene-Caucasian construct seem to have found
it so easy to collect random similarities wherever they look makes me
suspicious. But I have another reason.

I recently tried an exercise with Basque and Hungarian, two languages
which even the advocates of the various super-families seem to agree are
not related, unless at the global level. In less than four hours, I
found no fewer than 65 fairly impressive matchups in lexical items and
in grammatical morphemes, including the definite article, the noun
plural marker, one numeral, a couple of body parts, and some common
verbs like `go' and `fall down'. (This list will shortly appear in an
article in the Australian journal Dhumbadji!, and in a forthcoming
book.) And the list would have been longer if I hadn't deliberately
excluded both a number of words transparently borrowed from
Indo-European languages and a number of slightly less impressive
matches.

So my question is this: has anybody else ever tried this sort of
exercise, and, if so, what were the results? I know of only one other
effort in this vein. Several decades ago, the German linguist Zyhlarz,
exasperated by the repeated efforts of Schuchardt and others to relate
Basque to the "Hamitic" languages of North Africa by listing random
similarities, compiled an equally impressive list of "cognates" proving
that German was related to Hamitic. (Unfortunately, I've never been
able to get my hands on Zyhlarz's list.)

I suspect, therefore, that success in these improbable enterprises is by
no means so elusive as Vovin suggests. And I have an idea that random
similarities may be easier to find when the languages in question have
similar phonological systems and similar phonotactics. Maybe that's why
the English-Mandarin effort doesn't work out.

Anybody else out there ever tried this stuff?


Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
England

larrytcogs.susx.ac.uk

Does anyone know of anything that has been written on the loss of
the prosodic aspect of language in aphasic patients?

Ming-wei Lee