LINGUIST List 5.165

Sun 13 Feb 1994

Qs: Translations, Institutions, Stieber's Law, Morphology

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Directory

1. Mary Ellen Ryder, Translations of foreign expressions in some ads
2. , Q: How our institutions classify us
3. , Stieber's Law
4. , SLA Morphology

I'm doing research with a marketing colleague on use of foreign expressions
in ads for monolingual audiences. We have four expressions for which we would
like both an idiomatic and a morpheme-by-morpheme translation into English.

1) French: Remy Martin est l'eau de vie. (I know eau de vie is literally 'water
of life', but I wondered if there was an idiomatic meaning as well.)
2) French: soin lissant immediat contour de l'oeil (of course, acute accent on
the e of immediate)
3) Italian: occhiali (Is the preferred translation 'eyeglasses' or 'eyewear'?)
4) Swedish (?): Kaffe och forvaringsbox fran Zoegas i Helsingborg, Sverige
 (umlaut on first o of forvaringsbox, circle over a of fran, acute accent
 on e of Zoegas. And of course, if I have the language wrong on this
 one, I'd like to know that, too)

We have a research deadline coming up soon, so quick answers would be
greatly appreciated. Please respond to me at:

renryderidbsu.idbsu.edu (internet users)
renryderidbsu (bitnet users)

Many thanks! Mary Ellen Ryder

I am trying to investigate the thesis that the institutions
of linguistics (departments in their hiring and promotion
policies, journals and conference organizers in their acceptance
policies, etc.) treat linguists as falling into three categories
namely, current theoretical (which means GB in syntax and a range
of contemporary theories from MIT and Stanford in phonology), theoretical
but not really current (which includes say the work of someone like
Jim McCawley), and all other. The thesis holds moreover that
these three are not treated as equally valuable or important, although
all three are tolerated. But the thesis does imply that the higher
you are in the hierarchy the less you are required by editors for
example to pay attention to those below you (and vice versa), the higher
you are, the less you have to do to justify your basic assumptions, etc.
(and vice versa), the higher you are, the more access you will have to
wide audiences, etc.

I would like to collect substantial evidence (with references to
specific events) of whether this is true or not. Please send
replies to me, specifying the extent to which the information you
supply can be used in a LINGUIST summary and/or in published work.

Every year or so, I put this query on LINGUIST hoping that a new
subscriber or someone who missed it last time will have the answer
(I have tried everything I can think of to find it myself).
In 1938 the Polish linguist Zdzislaw Stieber published a paper
in which he takes it for granted that phonemic contrasts in a
language (which roughly correspond to the distinctions permitted
in lexical representation in Lexical Phonology, by the way) can
only arise via regular sound laws or borrowing, but not via analogical
change in the morphophonemic rules. I would like to find out who
first came up with this universal?

I would like to receive information about articles or papers dealing with
the acquisition of derivational morphology by non native speakers. I
appreciate your help very much.
 Conchita Lagunas