LINGUIST List 5.1216

Wed 02 Nov 1994

Qs: Vocabulary change, Ling/art colleges, Lang contact, Gender

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1. Anand V Raman, Word replacement rate function of word length?
2. Victoria L. Bergvall, linguistics at small liberal arts colleges
3. Fran Karttunen, Language Contact in Latin America
4. Ingrid Seim, Language and gender

Does anybody know of any work that relates the replacement rate in the
basic vocabulary (Swadesh list) to the length of words (number of
phonemes)? Is there a psychological motivation for moving towards
shorter words in the basic vocabulary? Admittedly the basic vocabulary
consists largely of short words, but what about the vocabulary in
general? The reason for this question is that I need to know if it is
harder to explain the replacement of short words as compared to long
ones. We are trying to get measures of relatedness by measuring the
size of explanations required to describe language evolutions (lexical
or phonological) A recent working paper on related work is available
as a Tech report from the IS department here.

Title: "Linguistic similarity measures based on the minimum message
 length principle"
Authors: A V Raman and J D Patrick

Thanks.

 - &

After years of lurking on LINGUIST, my posting of my first ever message, a
forward of the note on the movie "Stargate," turned up some interesting
responses, one of which was a note from a fellow linguist who studied at my
undergraduate institution.

I have a few queries that thus arise:

(1) Are there other linguists out there who did undergraduate work at
Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington?

and to them, and other graduates of small liberal arts colleges, I am
curious, if you care to respond:

(2) How did you get interested in the field of linguistics?

(3) How did you choose your graduate institution(s)?

(4) What do you think could/should be the role of linguists at small
liberal arts undergraduate institutions?

I could post a summary to those who respond, and if there is sufficient
interest in this topic, to LINGUIST.

 --Vicky


Victoria L. Bergvall
vbergvalmtu.edu

snail mail:
-Dept. of Humanities,
-Michigan Tech. U.
-1400 Townsend Drive
-Houghton, MI 49931-1295

phone: (906) 487-3260
fax: (906) 487-3559
home: (906) 482-7801
or (906) 482-1636 (answering machine)

I have compiled a bibliography of studies of the effects of contact on
indigenous languages of Spanish (and hypothetically of Portuguese)
in Latin America. The bibliography is rather rich in studies of
contact in Mesoamerica and the Andes. I have found absolutely nothing
in print about the effects of Portuguese on any indigenous language.
Also I have come up empty-handed for contact studies dealing with
the languages of Amazonia. If anyone knows of anything I have missed,
I would be deeply grateful for references.

Frances Karttunen

I am a college freshman. I've been given two weeks to write a paper for
my honors English class. I am going to argue for or against the dominant
use of the masculine pronoun and the use of diminutive endings to
designate women. I've not yet decided which side I'll take, but the basis
of my arguments will be a look at the Latin-based languages. My
questions: Do we know *why* Latin assigned genders to its nouns? Was it
done in the languages that preceded it? How does this gender-based
language affect the sexes' perceptions of each other and their roles in
Italian-, French-, and Spanish-speaking countries?

I realize the last question might not be exactly appropriate for a
linguists' list, but I would appreciate any help you would send to my
private address.

Ingrid Seim
seimisequent.do.losrios.cc.ca.us