LINGUIST List 5.896

Mon 15 Aug 1994

Qs: AMTA yellow book, But, Syntax tutor, Adjacency pair marking

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1. "Dragomir R. Radev", QUESTION: AMTA Yellow Book
2. Alex Eulenberg, Another connective query: BUT
3. , Syntax tutor wanted
4. , Adjacency pair marking

Can someone please give me a poijnter to AMTA's Yellow book
(Machine Translation Commercial Sites)?

Thanks

Drago

Many thanks to all who have responded to my requests for work on additive
connectives. I will have ready a preliminary (squib-length) grammar and
dictionary of additives (furthermore, besides, what is more, moreover...)
in a month or so, designed for learners of English as a second language
and for English composition class. It could also be used in support of
theory of discourse-frames. Please email me if you're interested
(aeulenbeindiana.edu).

For my second installment, I wish to look at adversatives: however,
nevertheless, still, yet, on the other hand, etc. Most of the time, these
are glossed as words that identify "special cases" of but. This
cannot be the complete answer: while "but nevertheless" and "but still" are
possible, "but yet" and "but however" are considered improper.
Furthermore, "on the other hand" can be used equally after "but" and after
"and"; "and yet" is fine.

As a result I have concluded that while "but" may occur in adversative
contexts (i.e. in "A but B" A contradicts or argues against B), its job in
"A but B" is not to oppose A against B. Rather, it is to oppose "A and B"
to some ideal where A holds and B doesn't. This explanation accounts for
the use of but in partial disagreements/refusals ("Well, darling, I'll
wash the dishes but I won't take out the garbage."), accident reports
("The man was wearing a floatation device but it slipped off"), and other
contexts where it's important to distinguish the aberrant items from
the conforming ones: conforming items come before BUT, aberrant items after.
The two parts of the ideal may, of course, be a premise and a conclusion,
respectively, in which case we may see R. Lakoff's famous "denial of
expectations but" (an adversative relation) with premise and denied
conclusion: "I love you but I won't take out the garbage". My claim is
that the existence of a denied causal relation (or other semantic
contrast, for that matter) is orthoganal to what "but" actually expresses.

I intend to use this analysis of "but" to pave the way for my analysis of
adversatives proper, so I can explain why some adversatives take "but"
and some don't. First, though, I'd like to ask the subscribers of
Linguist two things: 1) does this account ring true, and 2) has it been
published before?

Alexander Eulenberg
Indiana University

P.S. "I don't have a pen but I do have a pencil" may be analyzed against
the ideal of NOT having a writing utensil.

I am looking for a person who is willing to teach me modern syntactic
theory via email. I am most interested in starting with "orthodox"
theory, whatever GB has evolved into these days.

I have read van Riemsdijk (sp?) and Williams, but some things didn't
make sense to me, or weren't described in enough detail; I tried
Lasnik and Uriagereka, but they lost me right quick.

I'd like to try a different modality, and I thought perhaps there was
somebody out there who was interested in clarifying their own thinking
by trying to explain the theory to a novice.

Thanks in advance.
Allan C. Wechsler <Wechslerworld.std.com>

Dear Linguists:
I discovered in Western Apache conversational data an enclitic -(h)i that seems
 to be doing nothing else but marking the question and answer pairs of
adjacency pairs. It is generally, but not always, clause final. It is
definitely not the same as the nominalizing or relativizing enclitics of
similar shape. Two examples:
Tones, slash l, and nasalization not marked:

Hayu nadinne'i? Where did you find it?
Dzil yahilk'idyu nadine'i tl'e'da'. I found it on the hill last night.

Hago at'ehi? What kind (of gun) is it?
30-30hi. It's a 30-30.

I would like to know if anyone knows about similar arking of adjacency pairs
in other languages.
Please respond directly to me. If there is interest, I'll summarize for the
List.

Willem J. de Reuse
University of Arizona
wdereuseccit.arizona.edu