LINGUIST List 5.199

Tue 22 Feb 1994

Qs: Spanish; Determiner; Sociolinguistics; Catalan

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. Ted Pedersen, Spanish/English Translation
2. Sungjin HAN, Q: article, determiner, quantifier
3. Donna Jo Napoli, historical socio
4. , UG and Catalan

I am trying to come up with a list of the most common problems in
translating Spanish and English.

Here's my list so far. Any additions, corrections, or deletions would
be greatly appreciated. If there is a source out there (book, journal
article) that has already done this I'd appreciate a reference.
=======================================================================
1) Personal pronouns are not used as frequently in Spanish as they are
in English since in Spanish the verb form indicates the person.

Example:
Quiero comer. <==> I want to eat.

2) Articles are used more frequently in Spanish. (This is just a gut
feeling...can anyone substantiate this?)

El hombre es mortal. <==> Man is mortal.

3a) There are more prepositions in English. I've seen counts placing
the number of prepositions in Spanish at around 20 and about 70 in
English. (If there is better information available I'd appreciate
hearing about it.)

El libro esta en el escritorio. <==> The book is on the desk.
El libro esta en el escritorio. <==> The book is in the desk.

3b) The preposition "a" is added in Spanish before verbs of motion and
to indicate a person as a direct object.

I know Bill. <==> Yo conozco a Bill.
Quiero a correr. <==> I want to run.

3c) The English preposition "for" can be translated as "por" or "para"
depending on whether we are showing cause (por) or goal (para).

He came for his book. <==> Vino por su libro.
He studied for learning. <==> Estudio' para aprender.

--
* Ted Pedersen pedersenseas.smu.edu *
* Department of Computer Science and Engineering, *
* Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275 (214) 768-2126 *

a friend of mine works on her ph.d dissertation and asked me for help.
she's working on the article (or determiner). her research scope also
includes quantifiers but the focus is not given to the scope and scope
ambiguity. references on anything about article, determiner, quantifiers
are welcomed.

i hope the list of references to be big enough to post a summary.
thanks in advance!

--

Peace,

A historian-sociologist friend of mine is interested in finding out about
the kinds of heavy formalism that linguists use when doing historical
socio-linguistics. He knows people use statistics, so he wants fo find out
about other kinds of formalisms. If you know anyone who fits the bill,
could you let me know? Thank you.

-Donna Jo Napoli

Donna Jo Napoli
Prof. and Chair
Linguistics
Swarthmore College
Swarthmore, PA 19081
(215) 3288422
(215) 3286558
dnapoli1cc.swarthmore.edu

Query: there is a student here who is interested in any studies
that relate UG to Catalan and she asks interestingly: 'is
Catalan suitable to UG?'. I'd appreciate any references.

Thank you.

Larry Selinker
Dept. of Applied Linguistics
University of London
Birkbeck College

ublv050ccs.bbk.ac.uk