LINGUIST List 5.433

Mon 18 Apr 1994

Qs: Jakobson, Phonetics list, (Un)predictable tone, Turn length

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1. Vicki Fromkin, query
2. Paul Kenneth Roser, Phonetics list?
3. , (Un)predictable tone (stress)
4. , Turn length in English & Japanese

I am trying to find the obituaries for Roman Jakobson and would appreciate
information on references where they were published.

Send to me at iyo1vafmvs.oac.ucla.edu or iyo1vafuclamvs.bitnet

many thanks

 I'm aware of a lot of language-specific lists on-line, but does anyone
know of a list for phonetics? Thanks for the help.

Paul Roser <pkrosercsd4.csd.uwm.edu

It is often assumed that word-stress in English can be introduced by a
complicated set of morpho-phonological rules, so for the majority of
words of the language, there is no need to mark stress placement in
the lexicon. But are there languages where word-stress placement is
really unpredictable and so has to be marked in the lexicon? (I know
we can never be sure, because there is always the possibility that the
pattern has yet to be discovered.)

On the other hand, lexical tone is often assumed to be unpredictable and
has to be stated in the lexicon. But again are there languages where
lexical tone could be introduced by morpho-phonological rules? (What
I have in mind is a language where lexical tone is correlated with
lexical category, i.e.,HIGH LOW--NOUN, LOW HIGH--VERB, etc.)

Thanks in anticipation!

Ming-wei Lee

A colleague of mine who is not on e-mail is doing a cross-cultural study
of Japanese and English conversation. Among other things, she would like
to compare average turn-length in both languages (assuming she can decide
what is and what is not a turn, which is another interesting issue).
However, she is uncertain how to measure the "length" of a turn: number
of words, number of morphemes, number of syllables, number of tone groups,
actual time of utterance, etc. All these possibilities have been argued
for in the literature, but the cross-cultural aspect of the study
complicates matters, because of the structural differences in the
languages. Any advice?

Please reply directly to me: Margaret_Luebsum.cc.umich.edu
Thanks!