LINGUIST List 5.519

Fri 06 May 1994

Qs: Mathematics, Intonation, Word freq, Conjoining nominals

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Directory

1. Margaret M. Fleck, mathematical English
2. Loren Allen Billings, Intonation in multiply fronted wh constituents in Slavic
3. Ron Smyth, word frequencies
4. R.Y.L. TANG, Conjoining of Nominal Elements

In mathematics, the following construction is common:

 We have that X is a 3-manifold.
 I got that X subtends an angle of 30 degrees.

This is parallel to sentences such as

 I know that X is a linguist.
 I showed that X is corrupt.

except that the range of main verbs in mathematical English seems to
be wider than I recall hearing in standard English.

Question: is this exclusively confined to mathematicians and
mathematical writing?

 Margaret Fleck
 mfleckcs.uiowa.edu

I'm interested in finding out if any of you out there know about any work
done on the prosodic phrasing of multiply fronted wh constituents,
especially in Slavic, particularly in Bulgarian. I have one source so far
and will provide an excerpt to let you know what I have in mind:

 "Syntactic constituents often correspond to intonational phrases (cf.
Selkirk 1980 ["Constraints on coordination." _Lg_ 53, 83-103.]) so that
boundaries between major constituents are marked by certain tones. The
following intonation facts relevant to wh-word sequences have been observed
by G[rzegorz] Dogil (personal communication).

(14a) * _ __ _
 -_ -_ _
 Kto komu co daL?
 [who to-whom what gave
 NOM DAT ACC M-SG]

(14b) _ _____
 -_ -----_
 Kto komu co daL?

 'Who gave whom what?'

These representations indicate that breaks in intonation contours occur
after the first and third wh-words but not after the second. The implica-
tion is that the second and third wh-words belong not to separate constitu-
entsbut to one. . . ." [CICHOCKI, Wladislaw (1983) "Multiple wh-questions
in Polish: A two-Comp analysis." _Toronto working papers in Linguistics._
vol 4., pp. 53-71; quote taken from sec. 2.4 "Intonation", p. 58.]

I would appreciate it greatly if anyone could provide me with addresses for
either Cichocki or Dogil, preferrably e-mail. Any other assistance would be
greatly appreciated.

Loren A. Billings (billingspucc.princeton.edu)

A colleague in speech pathology is doing PET scans while subjects read words
aloud; he wants to use word frequency data to balance his lists across
experimental conditions. Can anyone advise on the most practical way of
obtaining frequency data on nouns, and on which kinds of data bases would give
the most appropriate frequency counts for this type of study?

Please send replies to my address:
smythlake.scar.utoronto.ca

Dear netters,

Consider the sentence

(1) My interests include swimming, reading and playing chess.

3 NPs are conjoined by 'and'. Consider another example which is unacceptable:

(2) * My interests include swimming, reading and to play chess.

Why is 'to play chess' not allowed in this nominal slot, considering the fact
 that it can function as a nominal in the subject position:

(3) To play chess is what I want now.

and in the complement position:

(4) His only pastime is to play chess.

I am having the notion of 'to-infinitive nominal clause' (Quirk and Greenbaum
 1973) in mind when positing this problematic case. Can anyone explain the above
 unacceptability using a non-GB framework?

Please reply to me at h9290030hkusub.hku.hk or h9290030hkuxa.hku.hk. Many
 thanks.

Regards,

Raymond Y.L. TANG
Dept. of English
University of Hong Kong