LINGUIST List 5.37

Tue 11 Jan 1994

Qs: E-Type Pronouns, Nationalism, Indicator Semantics, Synonyms

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1. Paul Dekker, Query: the term `E-type pronoun'
2. , LANGUAGE AND NATIONALISM
3. Gary Strong, Indicator Semantics
4. , ascii thesaurus

In his `Pronouns, quantifiers and relative clauses'*, Gareth Evans
(1946--1980) has studied a kind of anaphoric pronouns which he coined
`E-type pronouns'. These pronouns are the subject of many studies
presently, and nowadays Evans' E-type pronoun approach is relatively
popular.

However, despite the amount of attention paid to E-type pronouns, the
meaning of the term, to our knowledge, has never been questioned in the
literature. We know that many people tend to think that `E-type' is for
`Evans-type', but nobody really knows. Alternatively, from two different
sources we have heard that the term `E-type' (implcitly) refers to a kind
of Jaguar**, which was very popular in the sixties/early seventies. But,
still, for as far as we know, the association of the term with a type of
car remains a guess, only.

We, like others, are interested in the story behind the term `E-type'. For
this reason, the members of the linguist list are kindly invited to react
upon the following questions.

1) Can anybody supply us with written, or otherwise reliable, information
about Evans' intentions behind the term `E-type'?

2) Does anybody know of other factual claims about the origins of the term,
or of intentions behind its use?

3) If the first two questions have to remain unanswered, we are interested
in suitable, original and otherwise interesting explanations of the term.

We will collect the reactions and report our findings in due time. If we
don't find any real answer to the question what `E-type' really stands for,
then we would like to select the most original, ingenious alternative
explanation of the term `E-type' and propose to credit, from now on, the
linguist-list for the explanation (that is, if the one who submitted it
agrees, of course).

* Evans, G., 1977, `Pronouns, quantifiers and relative clauses (1)', The
Canadian Journal of Philosophy 7, pp. 467--536 [reprinted in: Evans, G.,
1985, Collected papers, Dordrecht: Foris, pp. 76--152]

** The Jaguar E-type (in the US known as the XKE) was the 1961 car of the
year and it was kept in production from 1961 till 1975. The original price
was $5,600, top speed 150 mph, and it accelerated from 0 to 60 mph in 7
seconds.

Peter Blok: peterlet.rug.nl
Paul Dekker: dekkerillc.uva.nl
Klaus von Heusinger: klaus.heusingerpopserver.uni-konstanz.de

A student here is writing a paper on NATIONALISM AND LANGUAGE IN SWITZERLAND.
Is there anyone out there who would be able to help with details about
anything written on
1: the whole area of NATIONALISM AND LANGUAGE.
OR
2: as they pertain to the situation in Switzerland.

Feargal Murphy
MURPC88IRLEARN.UCD.IE

I'm sorry to be so naive, but what is 'indicator semantics'? This
is the subject of a conference recently announced on Linguist, but
the announcement gave not a clue to the uninitiated such as me.

Gary W. Strong, Associate Professor
College of Information Studies
Drexel University
Philadelphia, PA 19104 USA
Tel.: 215-895-2482; FAX: 215-895-2494
Email: strong.chixerox.com or strongduvm.ocs.drexel.edu

Hi!

One of our MSc students is looking for a thesaurus on file which he can
actually access, i.e. a text file with words and their synonyms. Does
anyone know where we can get such a file?? Please reply to:
traceyotago.ac.nz .

Many Thanks!

Tracey.