LINGUIST List 5.496

Sat 30 Apr 1994

Qs: Count nouns, Verb movement, Japanese corpus, Reaction-Time

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Directory

1. Gregory Jewell, +/-Countable in English
2. Jairo Morais Nunes, verb movement in infinitivals and clitic duplication
3. Michele Weinberg, queries
4. "Christian Kissing", QE: Reaction-Time software, esp. MEL

I'm searching for/trying to produce the most concise explanation possible
for why some nouns in English are countable, others are uncountable, and
still others may be either. My purpose is pedagogical, for teaching
Japanese students of English. Many have difficulty grasping the concept,
as Japanese of course does not make such a distinction and instead attaches
units for counting when needed. The use of plural markers and articles,
and the choice of quantifying expressions and verb inflections all depend
on grasping the countable/uncountable distinction first.

The explanations I've seen are either vague or involve a considerable amount
of detail. The simple question "Can you count it?" doesn't always work.
If you ask a Japanese if tofu is countable, the answer may be "Yes" (ichoo,
nichoo, sanchoo ...). Detailed explanations (e.g., mass, aggregate,
abstract, etc. nouns are uncountable) don't seem to capture the "essence"
of why these seemingly unrelated categories are those of uncountable nouns.

Wouldn't there be some feature or characteristic of English nouns that
would distinguish them as countable, uncountable, or either (depending on
what they refer to)? (Bananas are countable, but the flavor by itself
isn't). Could someone please give me a lead on this, perhaps something in
lexical theory? Thanks.

 I am trying to find out whether the Italian dialects (or any other
language) that allow clitic duplication of the type shown in (1) also allow
verb movement within infinitival clauses. In other words, can these dialects
allow a sequence corresponding to (2)?

(1) Lo voglio farlo
 it I-want do-it
(2) acc. clitic (restructuring verb) infin.verb+acc.clitic adverb indirect obj

 I would appreciate any information about this matter. Thank is advance.

Jairo Nunes
Department of Linguistics
University of Maryland

Does anyone know of an online romaji Japanese dictionary, either
freeware/shareware or commercially available?

Also, does anyone know if the /r/ in Japanese ever occurs as a geminate?

Thanks for any help; I'll post a summary of replies if there's interest.

Michele Weinberg
shellibabel.ling.nwu.edu

Dear List!

In a new project at the Department of Linguistics of Duesseldorf University
we want to do reaction-time experiments on German inflectional morphology,
and do desperately need software to run on MS-DOS-machines (and the
appropriate interface-devices for voice acivated response). We have heard
about the MEL Professional Experimental Software Package being quite a
powerful tool for doing RT and priming experiments.
Can anyone on the list tell us the European/German distributor of the
program and/or provide more information on how the package works and how
(in)convenient it is to set it up, how reliable the support is?
Thanks in advance, Yours

Christian Kissing
Seminar fuer Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft
Heinrich-Heine-Universitaet Duesseldorf

Please direct your replies to either
kissingze8.rz.uni-duesseldorf.de
or
eisenbeize8.rz.uni-duesseldorf.de