LINGUIST List 5.230

Sat 26 Feb 1994

Qs: Reference, Phonological rules, Global rules, Spatial

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1. Monique Rolbert, reference
2. Robert J Kuhns, Query - English Phonological Rules
3. , Query: Whatever happened to global rules in syntax
4. Karen Emmorey, Spatial descriptions

I'm looking for the exact reference of :
Lauri Karttunen (1968) : What makes Definite Noun Phrases definite.

Merci d'avance

Monique Rolbert
Laboratoire d'Informatique de Marseille
France
moniquegia.univ-mrs.fr

I am looking for rule sets mapping English to IPA for use in a transliteration
system. I am aware of the Hunnicutt paper in the American Journal of
Computational Linguistics (1976). Are there any other research/commercial
rule sets available?

I will summarize responses to the list.

Thanks in advance,

Bob Kuhns

I am wondering if anyone knows what ever happened to the
phenomena which in the 1970's were shown not to yield to
elegant solutions in transformational terms but to require
global rules.

In English (and many languages), the canonical ordering in simple locative
descriptions is to indicate the Figure (the object being located) prior to
the Ground (the object with respect to which the Figure is located):

a) The cup is on the table.
b) The apple is in the bowl.

In American Sign Language, the reverse order is standard:

a) TABLE CUP CYLINDRICAL-OBJECT-BE-LOCATED-ON-FLAT-SURFACE.
b) BOWL APPLE ROUND-OBJECT-BE-LOCATED-INSIDE-CYLINDRICAL-OBJECT.

The final expressions in these examples are classifier constructions in
which each hand represents an object, and the spatial relation between the
hands indicates the locative relations. The hand representing the Ground
remains static, and the hand representing the Figure moves into the
appropriate spatial relation (e.g., for (a) a C handshape rests on the back
of a flat hand, and in (b) a "loose" 5 handshape is upside down (palm down)
next to a "wide" C handshape).

My question is: are there other languages in which the Ground is described
prior to the Figure? I am concerned not with discourse level phenomena in
which the Ground is mention first (e.g. "In the right hand corner, you will
find the desk"); rather I'm interested in the types of descriptions given
in (a) and (b), i.e., simple sentence-level descriptions produced in
reponse to questions like: "Where's X?". And for linguists who are
familar with other signed languages, do these languages follow the pattern
I have described for ASL, i.e. Ground before Figure?

One question of theoretical interest is whether this ordering phenomenon is
due to the visual modality of sign languages. That is, because space
itself is used to relate spatial relations, the location must be described
before the object can be located. On the other hand, the ordering may be a
result of a linguistic system in which classifier constructions are used,
rather than prepositions (of course, these two explanations may be linked).
If there is enough interest in this issue, I will summarize for the list.

Karen Emmorey

Laboratory for Cognitive Neuroscience
The Salk Institute for Biological Studies
10010 North Torrey Pines Rd.
La Jolla, CA 92037
USA