LINGUIST List 6.1705

Tue Dec 5 1995

Qs: Ethymology of paella, Center-embedding, Common root words

Editor for this issue: Ljuba Veselinova <lveselinemunix.emich.edu>

Directory

1. Michael Lilljequist, Ethymology of paella
2. Richard Hudson, center-embedding
3. , Common root words

I'm looking for the ethymology of the Spanish word/dish paella. Maybe
you can help ?

I have heard two theories, one that it comes from the Arabic "baella",
which means "remains". This would date back to the Arabic invasion of
Spain. The other theory is that it would come from the French "poele",
which means "frying pan".

Would appreciate if you could assist or direct me to another address.

My address is 100431.2563COMPUSERVE.COM.

Thanks and best regards,
Mike Lilljequist, Switzerland

Does anyone know of any *empirical* investigations of center-embedding
examples (aka self-embedding) such as the following?

(1) The dog the stick the fire burned beat bit the cat.

I've found lots of discussions (especially in introductory books - the
above example is from Pinker's `The Language Instinct'), but no
experimental data (or any other kind of data). There's no shortage of
explanations of the `facts', but there does seem to be a shortage of
well-established facts to be explained. Any help will be much
appreciated, and will (of course) be fed back to the list in a
summary.


Prof Richard Hudson Tel: +44 171 387 7050 ext 3152
 E-mail: r.hudsonling.ucl.ac.uk
Dept. of Phonetics and Linguistics Tel: +44 171 380 7172
 Fax: +44 171 383 4108
UCL
Gower Street
London WC1E 6BT
UK

I am a student trying to do research on African languge.

One of the things I am looking into are the usage of same ( or close ) words
in different areas that are the same.

The common words I am curerntly researching are ::::

Woman -- Man -- Child -- Hunter -- Food -- Dig -- Root -- Animal -- Elephant
- Lion --
Hunger -- Moon -- Sun -- Water -- River and Lake

The countries ( languges ) are Kenya - Uganda - Tanzania - Zaire - Sudan -
Ethiopia

Would any of you be able to help me?

Ed. Wagner