LINGUIST List 6.299

Sun 26 Feb 1995

Qs: [bijvo], Common ground, Deixis, Obj-subj verb inflection

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. , word [bijvo]
2. "B.P.H. Lee", Establishing Common Ground in Written Correspondence
3. Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen, Discourse deixis
4. Stan Carmack, Obj-subj verb inflection

The American musical "The Music Man", by Meredith Willson, set in
small-town Iowa in the early 20th century, includes a song called
"Trouble". A word in the song eludes our efforts to find its
meaning/origin.

It's in a line about the possible vices children can acquire in a pool
hall: "they'll be tryin' out [bijvo], tryin' out cubebs, tryin' out
tailor-mades"

Cubebs [kjubEbz] are medicinal herbal cigarettes, and tailor-mades are
factory-made cigarettes (as opposed to roll-your-own). Can anyone tell me
what [bijvo] means? Asking around and checking in dictionaries under
various spellings (bevo, beavo, beevo, bivo, bievo, etc.) has yielded
nothing. The term may be a brand name, a regionalism, or ...? I would
guess it has something to do with smoking, given the context.

Thanks much for any help you can provide.

Anne Loring

( please address replies to me at
(froe0008gold.tc.umn.edu) as my address is in the process of changing)

Hello

I'm a PhD candidate in Applied Linguistics working in the area of
Discourse Analysis. I am particularly interested in how interactants
establish common ground/shared beliefs as they write to each other over a
series of letters.

So far I have done a case study of two interactants corresponding with
each other over eight consecutive letters. My analysis involves the
configuration of beliefs of the two interactants in regard to certain
"propositional topics". My analysis shows that some propositions take a
longer time (i.e. more letters) to establish, while others take less.

My initial conclusion is that interactants seem to be primarily concerned
with their certainty of sharedness of the propositions and with their
certainty of truth of the propositions.

If my research interest you or if could cite some references for me to
look at, please contact me. The following are some of my current concerns:

a. modelling of beliefs of solipsistic individuals signalling to
other enclosed minds
b. how the infinite regession of beliefs is arrested in real life
on-line interaction
c. how different shared beliefs can be taxonomised in an
hierarchical network
d. linguistic features associated with the establishing of common
ground and shared beliefs
e. other related areas

I welcome correspondence with anyone working in the fields of discourse
analysis, discourse comprehension, artificial intelligence and NLP.

Thanks for reading my email up to this point. I look forward to
correspoding with interested members of Linguist. Oh...yes, I am
primarily concerned with business/official/formal letters of a
transactional nature. I am not analysing email messages; so don't feel
"comfortable" corresponding with me please. Thanks again.

Benny Lee
Research Centre for English and Applied Linguisitics
University of Cambridge
Cambridge, UK

I'm looking for references to recent work on discourse deixis.
Is there anyone out there who might be of help?
Thanx in advance.
Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen
Dept. of Romance Languages
U. of Copenhagen
majcoco.ihi.ku.dk

In languages such as Quechua, person-number suffixes signalling
both object and subject agreement can attach to lexemes. For
example, in the following wordform, -WA and -NKI attach to the
verb stem QO `give':

 qo-wa-nki
 give-1.obj-2.subj
 `you (sg) give me'

So too in Georgian. For instance, in the following wordform, M-
and -A attach to the verb stem C'ER `write':

 mi-m-c'er-a
 preverb-1sg.obj-write-3.subj
 `(s)he wrote me'

I would be most grateful for references to discussions of
languages possessing such straightforward object-subject verb
inflection but LACKING accompanying complications which some
languages require for such agreement relations such as:
nominalizations, genitives, or other periphrastic structures,
etc.

Please reply directly to me; I will post a summary to the
list if the response warrants it.

Thank you,

Stanford A. Carmack
6500sacucsbuxa.ucsb.edu
Univ. of Calif., Sta. Barb.
Dept. of Span. & Port.