LINGUIST List 6.37

Sat 14 Jan 1995

Qs: Audience presence, Feminine gender, Parsers, Content analysis

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Directory

1. "S. A. Williams", Enquiry for list
2. Timothy Miller, Feminine Gender for abstractions
3. Phil Bralich, Natural Language Parsers
4. , content analysis

I would like to make the following enquiry to Linguist list subscribers:

Can anyone help with a reference to a chapter on audience participation
in the "Rocky Horror Show", probably in a book on discourse analysis
published probably in the USA maybe around 10 years ago? I remember
reading it when looking for something else. Now I'd like to refer to it!

Secondly, to what extent is the special following for the RHS (a dying
pursuit?),
dressing up, shouting the lines in chorus etc, a cross-cultural
phenomenon (apart, that is, from the English-speaking UK and USA)?

Simon Williams
Centre for Applied Language Studies (CALS)
University of Reading, UK

e-mail: Simon.Williamsreading.ac.uk

It was pointed out to me recently that many IE languages (German being
the major point of discussion) use the feminine gender for abstractions.
For example, the German suffix (-ung) creates an abstract noun from a
verb and makes it feminine. We understand that German is by far not
alone in making abstaction feminine.

We were wondering if anyone knew of a reason for this.

Danke.

I am trying to find the names and addreses of indivduals, departments,
and companies that have or are developing Natural Language Processors.
Ideally, I would like to both receive the parser and communicate with
the developer. Any assistance you can give me on this matter would be
greatly appreciated.

I can be reached at:

bralichuhccux.uhunix.Hawaii.edu

Sincerely,

Philip Bralich, Ph.D.

I am looking for suggestions regarding content analysis methodology

and for software used for this purpose. My aim is to analyze text

(eg. articles or forms) to determine underlying features,

summarize, and describe its contents.

One program called "The General Inquirer" has come to my attention,

but I have no current information about it. I also have a few

references describing the subject of content analysis, but they

generally deal with its theory rather than its practice.


Any leads would be appreciated.


Hillel R. Alpert

halpertfas.harvard.edu

617-432-2610

P.S. Perhaps this has been discussed on this list before in more detail.
If so, I also would appreciate any references to those messages. Thank you.