LINGUIST List 5.1314

Sat 19 Nov 1994

Qs: Internet groups, Auxiliary verbs, Glottal stop, German text

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1. Maik Gibson, Dialect/Sociolinguistics group
2. Kate Remlinger, 'get' constructions in english
3. Joseph P Stemberger, glottal stop
4. Todd Sieling, German text info. needed

Does anyone know of any dialetological or sociolinguistic discussion
groups on the net? I already know about ADS-L. Mail me and I'll post a
summary.

Maik Gibson
llrgbsonreading.ac.uk

i am posting this query for a friend who is not connected to email. please
respond to me privately. i will later post a summary.

his questions are:
why is it that auxiliary verbs such as 'have' and 'be', while adding little
semantic content to setences, are not just randomly chosen? And why, too,
is it that they cannot substitute readily for one another in some instances
but can in others? And what makes a speaker choose 'get' over 'have' or
'be' when it is possible, in those instances , to substitute one for the
other? this query comes out of a previous study on adversity, based on
ellen prince's (1983) _discourse analysis: a part of the study of
linguistic competence_.

thanks,

kate remlinger/jonathan heikkinen
_______________
kathryn remlinger

karemlinmtu.edu

department of humanities
michigan technological university
1400 townsend drive
houghton, mi 49931

In English, words that "begin with a vowel" really begin with a glottal
stop after a pause. In fluent speech, when the preceding word ends in a
consonant, the glottal stop is rarely (if ever) present.

But what about when the preceding word ends with a vowel? It seems to me
that pronunciations with or without a glottal stop are both natural,
though the glottal-stop-less pronunciation is especially natural after
high vowels.

Have there been any studies of this? Especially quantitative studies,
that state what percentage of time the glottal stop appears, broken down
by vowel environment?

Thanks.

---joe stemberger

Hi there.
 In my attempts to trace the path of the -er agentive suffix from
pre-English to the present era, I have run into a problem with finding a
specific description of how a Latin formative made it into pre-English
languages. My Gothic Etymological Dictionary cites two expanations in
passing, but these are German books that I can't find in English.
 If anyone has access to these books and would be able to give me
a quick sketch of the explanations offered, it would be a great help and very
much appreciated.
 The two citations are: Wilmanns, Wilhelm -- 1911. _Deutsche Grammatik_
 Gotisch, Alt-, Mittel- und Neuhochdeutsch
 I. Lautlehre. 3rd ed. StraBburg:Trubner
 page 283

 Jellinek, Max H. -- 1926. _Geschichte der
 gotischen Sprache_ (GGP 1/1.) Berlin: de
 Gruyter. [Replaces E. Sievers' contribution
 by the same title to GGP.]

If you can help me out here, please email me:
tesielincalum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca
Thanks.