LINGUIST List 6.1313

Tue Sep 26 1995

Qs: Logic/Pragmatics, Dialect Samples, Russian Velars

Editor for this issue: Annemarie Valdez <avaldezemunix.emich.edu>

Directory

1. "B.P.H. Lee", Re: Query on Logic/Pragmatics
2. "KUEHNLE", American English Dialect Samples
3. Wendi K Halstead, Russian Velars

Dear LINGUIST subscribers

I wonder if members of the list would like to offer their analyses of the
following exchange of letters between a prospective student of the
Mathematics
Department and a lecturer/supervisor of the Physics Department.

1.	I really hope that you can be my supervisor, if it is at all possible.
	[Context: Excerpt of a letter from student to lecturer]

2.	If you are a student of the Mathematics Department, it would not
be the done thing for me to supervise you, since I'm from the Physics
Department.
	[Context: Excerpt from lecturer's reply to student's letter]

Could members of the List comment on:

A.	Provide a logical notation of the (1) and (2) above, paying
attention to the truth conditions of the propositions and the use of
modality.

B.	State the presuppositions, entailments aand implicatures of (1)
and (2), showing, if possible, any interaction between the
presuppositions, entailments and implicatures (and any other relevant
inferences that can be made).

I am very interested in the logical analysis of the above and the
explanatory power of some of the semantic/pragmatic theories in their
treatment of the above data.

I would be very grateful if members could offer
their comments.
I will post a summary to the List. Thank you.

Benny Lee
University of Cambridge
Email: BPHL100cus.cam.ac.uk

Dear Linguist Subscribers,

I am posting this for a colleague here at Daimler-Benz research who is
interested in quantifying the performance of a speech recognition system for
cars.

We are interested in getting a representative sample of American English
dialects to train the system and wonder how to do this. Ideally, we would like
to record speakers at less than 10 locations in the US and accumulate between
50 and 100 samples. The speakers will all read from the same list of target
words.

Our question is: at what locations should we do this ? Do you feel that a
representative sampling is possible with this number of speakers ? Any other
hints ?

Please reply directly to my colleague: rehstr.daimlerbenz.com.

We will post a summary to the list.

Many thanks for your help,

A. Kuehnle

I am interested in learning more about the distribution of the voiced
velar fricative [gamma] in Russian. It is not clear to me whether it is
an allophone of [g] or of [x]. Any information or references would be
greatly appreciated.

Wendi Klafter Halstead
wendicsd.uwm.edu