LINGUIST List 6.1208

Tue Sep 5 1995

Qs: Eng usage, Trans software, Pinyin for Mac, Chinese

Editor for this issue: Ann Dizdar <dizdartam2000.tamu.edu>

Directory

1. hiro-t, Query: Impossibly,.../ impossibility that...
2. Dan Alford, Q: translation software?
3. , Pinyin for Macintosh
4. Chen Xiang, Chinese Word-Processing

Dear Linguists,
 After I posted a summary about _impossible that_ a few months ago, my frien
d
wrote a short paper in one of Japanese English language teaching journal
about the acceptability of _impossible that_, adding thatwe cannot say
_Impossibly, ..._ and also _There is an impossibility that..._.
 Then, a short time ago, one of the Japanese lexicographer and corpus linguis
t
counteraugued him, saying that there are examples of _Impossibly,..._ and
_There is an impossibility that..._ He and I don't think acceptabilities
of such phrases raises even if one can find one example. So I would like
to ask you in a hurry whether you can find the sentences below acceptable
or not. Please answer me directly.

 (1) _Impossibly_, John will come.

 (2) There is an _impossibility_ that you are right.

It will be of some help if you add some context when you find them acceptable.
Thanks a lot in advance. I will post a summary soon.

Hiroaki Tanaka, Tokushima University, Japan.
Email: hiro-tias.tokushima-u.ac.jp

A friend and colleague not on the list has asked me to pass this along to
you:

I need to pass this message to linguists and specialists in the languages
in question:

"Does anyone know any software that does a decent job translating between
Engish and:

Spanish? Cantonese? Mandarin? Tagalog? Vietnamese?
Cambodian? Russian? Korean? Laotian?

Any pointers to good software (or warnings about bad products) would be
appreciated.

It will be used to help reach members of the communities involved, and we
don't want to annoy them and embarrass ourselves.

Thanks,

Birrell Walsh
birrellwell.com

for The Hearing Society of San Francisco.


Thanks for any help you can give him. :-)

A friend of mine is looking for a way to type pinyin characters on the
Macintosh. This system, the PRC's official transcription of Mandarin,
uses Roman letters plus the vowel u-dieresis (= German u-umlaut), plus
the acute, grave, macron, and hachek (inverted circumflex) over the
vowels a, e, i, o, u, and u-dieresis. Thus, it includes four
double-accented letters: u-dieresis-acute, u-dieresis-grave, etc. These
four plus the five standard vowels with hachek and macron make a total
of 14 letters beyond the usual Macintosh inventory. (In fact, my
dictionary shows u-dieresis occurring only with hachek and grave
accents, but I wouldn't want to bet that they're NEVER needed.)

Please reply to me; I will summarize to the list.

 Mark A. Mandel
 Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 965-5200
 320 Nevada St. : Newton, Mass. 02160, USA : markdragonsys.com

Hello, does anyone know where I can get a good, reasonably priced
word-processing program for Chinese? I don't mind simplified or
full-form characters, although I'd like to be able to use hanyu pinyin to
enter the characters. I am familiar with Chinese Windows and Word for
Windows in Chinese , but know that the standard price for the latter is >
$600! I have seen NJSTAR and believe it is quite good, but would
appreciate any suggestions. Also, do programs such as NJSTAR need
Windows in Chinese?
Thanks,

Paul Woods

English Department
205 Morrill Hall
Oklahoma State University
Stillwater OK 74078
USA

Tel: 1 405 744 9474
Fax: 1 405 744 6326
Email: ncxosuunx.ucc.okstate.edu