LINGUIST List 5.1190

Fri 28 Oct 1994

Qs: Speech production, Kurzon's address, Aphasia, Document data

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1. Michael Kelly, speech production and the phonological structure of words
2. "Bethany Dumas, UTK", Need D. Kurzon Address or Cite to his Book
3. , Survey-Aphasia Research
4. , Looking for document data

Does anyone know of any research that examines
potential articulatory effects on the segmental
compositions of words? For example, it should
be relatively easy to follow an alveolar stop
with a high front vowel like /i/ than a low
back vowel like /a/. The reverse would be expected
for a velar stop. The basic rationale is that articulation
should be easier when the tongue's position does not have
to move very far in shifting from a consonant to
a subsequent vowel. My initial analyses of the English
lexicon produced results consistent with this
analysis. In particular, I randomly selected a few
hundred words from the Francis & Kucera frequency
norms that began with alveolar or velar stops. I then
counted all the words in these two groups that had an /i/
or an /a/ immediately following the initial consonant. Whereas 95%
of the velar initial words had an /a/ rather than an /i/,
only 41% of the alveolar initial words had that pattern.
This difference was highly significant in a chi-square
statistical analysis. Does anyone else know of similar
research and/or findings? I haven't been able to locate
papers on this particular topic (though I have found
plenty of references to other issues in the relation
between language structure and language production).

M. Kelly
kellycattell.psych.upenn.edu

I have been unable to find an e-mail address for Dennis Kurzon in the
usual places (Amsterdam list, LINGUIST LSA list). I am trying to locate
any book reviews of his book IT IS HEREBY PERFORMED. Can anybody help?
Thanks. Bethany Dumas = dumasbutkvx.utk.edu

Dear colleague,
A friend of mine has asked me to put this survey over Linguist List. We
appreciate your candid responses. Results wilt language samples from nonfluent
and fluent aphasic subjects.
Please send responses to maurstemmerle.acns.nwu.edu
Thanks.
SURVEY

The results from this survey will be utilized in a research project designed
to
examine the language of aphasic speakers. Results of this survey will remain
confidential. Please do not write your name on this form.

 Identifying Information

 Today's date: __________

 Your birth date: __________

 Highest level of education:
 ____________________
 ____________________

 Present or most recent job:
 ____________________

 (asterisk one)
 male female

PART I
In the spaces below, please list five 'stories' from which you could recall
the
general plot, some of the major characters, possibly some details important to

the storyline, and provide a short narration of if given some reminders of the

story (such as pictures). These 'stories' could be such things as children's
books, fables or fairy tales, adult books, movies, plays, etc. Please fill in

all of the blanks.

 1.____________________________________________

 2.____________________________________________

 3.____________________________________________

 4.____________________________________________

 5.____________________________________________

PART II

Please asterisk those items that you would be able to talk about in sufficient

detail for approximately ten minutes. Asterisk all that apply.

World War II
Watergate
Your best friend
Learning to drive
The bombing of Japan
The Challenger disaster
Vietnam
Apollo 11
Graduating from high school
The fall of communism in eastern Europe
Your first job
The Gulf War
Kennedy's assassination
Your earliest memories of school
Woodstock
The Depression
The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King
The current U.S. President
Your present or most recent job
Your first date
D-Day
The civil right's movement
The Cold War
Your most memorable vacation

Thank you for your participation.

I am posting this query for some colleagues of mine who are working on
a project that involves the automatic analysis of documents, starting
with hardcopy. We are hoping that some of the subscribers to the
Linguist List would be able to donate short documents in various
languages to serve as raw data for this project. Please contact Mark
Lipshutz (contact information below) for further information.

Debbie Dahl
Unisys
P.O. Box 517
Paoli, PA 19301 USA
dahlvfl.paramax.com


Here is a description of the project:

We are engaged in a project for the automatic analysis of business
correspondence, such as letters and memoranda, in order to be able to
(1) distinguish between classes of such documents and (2) given a
document's class, to isolate and label its functional components. In
the case of a letter, such components include the addressee, date,
body, sender and letterhead.

We have achieved some success with letters in English and want to see
what the software will do with foreign language material. Thus, we are
requesting originals or photocopies of letters and memoranda in
French, Spanish and German, as well as additional items in English.
Note that nearly all of the English language documents in hand have
been generated in the USA, so it would be useful to have some from
other English speaking domains.

Please do not send anything that is private, personal or proprietary.
However, I know that I receive a lot of product offers in which look
like business letters in the mail. This sort of "junk mail" item
actually serves very well for our research purposes, often bearing all
the features of a true custom business letter. As for memoranda, it
may be more difficult to find something non-proprietary there, but
those which announce social events or blood drives, etc. would be both
suitable and innocuous. Our current focus is on single-page documents,
but we will be moving on to multi-page ones, also.

We will certainly not turn down offerings in other languages, but as
there is an OCR capability involved, we are limited to those which are
derived from a Latinate character set. This also means that we can
only handle documents whose principal content is machine printed.

Documents or follow-up questions may be conveyed to the party below.
We thank you in advance for your consideration and any contributions
you might make.

 Mark Lipshutz
 Unisys Corporation
 PO. Box 517
 70 E. Swedesford Rd.
 Paoli, PA 19301-0517
 USA
 Voice: 610 648 2771
 Facsimile: 610 648 2288
 Internet : markvfl.paramax.com