LINGUIST List 6.333

Sun 05 Mar 1995

Qs: South Slavic, Corpus of various genres, Use of better in SAE

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Directory

1. , South Slavic Phonology
2. Ali Aghbar, Request: Written Corpus of various genres
3. , Whatever happened to 'd?

Hi
Could anyone recommend a good fairly uncomplicated book on
South Slavic phonology and/or morphology? I'd appreciate it much.

Thanks,
Donald P. Hussey
Boston College
HUSSEYDBCVMS.BC.EDU

I am looking for a public corpus of about 200,000 words containing
current written texts of various genres. I need this for text
analysis in an Introduction to Linguistics class I will be teaching
this summer. Could anyone help me?

I apologize for burdening the readers with this request. I have a
feeling this topic was dealt with on this list before at a time it
did not interest me.

I would like a corpus that would be transferable via Internet and
one that my students and I could quote from freely in our research.

Thanks.

Ali
 ==============================================================================
 Ali-Asghar Aghbar, Dept. of English, Indiana U. of PA, Indiana, PA 15705
 Bitnet: aaghbariup Internet: aaghbargrove.iup.edu Phone: 412-357 2262

Dear subscribers,

Recently I came across an example of BETTER used without HAD in
the following construction: SHE BETTER STOP. As it was an American
publication, I assumed that the use of HAD in such expressions
had completely disappeared, in written as well as spoken
US English. I would not have been surprised to find that
it had disappeared from spoken usage, since there are obvious
phonological reasons, but the loss of it in writing indicated to me that
the use of BETTER alone was quite standardised.

This poses a question for me, and I was wondering if anyone out there
has a suggestion. If it is now standardised, and there is no longer a
HAD, why doesn't the former bare infinitive STOP now become finite and
take 3ps inflection (? SHE BETTER STOPS)? Is this because it now has
assumed a subjunctive-like quality? Can it then be associated with the
expression: IT IS BETTER THAT SHE STOP? If so, can another adjective be
substituted for BETTER here, e.g. IT IS GOOD THAT SHE STOP) ??SHE GOOD
STOP? How has this been reanalysed, and what are the implications?
(Susan Dopke informs me that some grammarians have interpreted BETTER in
these contexts as an auxiliary, and if that is the case, can we use
SUB-AUX inversion to make it a question? (?BETTER SHE STOP?) Is this now
acceptable too?

Please send your suggestions if this bothers you.

Debbie Ziegeler