LINGUIST List 6.562

Thu 13 Apr 1995

Qs: Textbooks, Grad programs, English dialects, Universals

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1. Nicole Schrickel, Query: language disorders textbooks
2. Vicki Fromkin, query
3. Christopher Culy, Universals query

 1
I was wondering whether anyone of you could recommend good
introductory textbooks on *speech and language therapy*, *language
disorders*, *clinical linguistics*, *language pathology*,
*neurolinguistics*, and similar topics.

 2
Do you also happen to know schools in Europe - preferably Germany - which
offer MS, MA, or postgraduate programs in these fields? So far I only know
about an MA program in *Klinische Linguistik* at the University of Bielefeld
(Germany).

Thanks for your help!

 *****************************************
 * Nicole R. Schrickel *
 * Freie Universitaet Berlin (Germany) *
 * e-mail: nschrickzedat.fu-berlin.de *
 *****************************************

 QUERY

 I am interested in a variety of English in which underlying /d/ appears
as [t] before syllabic /n/, as in _wouldn't_, _didn't_, _couldn't_, and
sometimes _wooden_. If anyone who is a native speaker of this dialect would
be willing to participate in a brief telephone elicitation of such forms, I
would be exceedingly grateful. I can be reached at bhayeshumnet.ucla.edu.

--Bruce Hayes, UCLA

Bruce Hayes
Department of Linguistics
UCLA
Los Angeles, CA 90025-1543
(310) 825-9507, 825-0634

bhayeshumnet.ucla.edu

Hi all,

For a paper I am working on, I would like to rely on several properties
that I think hold of all natural (human) languages. Some of these
properties are given below. What I am particularly interested in are
languages which do not have some of these properties. I would be most
appreciative of any leads to such languages.

Please reply to me personally, and I will summarize the results for the
list. Thanks in advance.

Sincerely,

Chris Culy
culycsli.stanford.edu
______________________

In the properties below, I intend to distinguish sentences from other
meaningful phrases. So, I intend to exclude as non-sentences things like:
interjections (Wow!), yes/no items (No!), partial questions (So?), and
other extremely elliptical forms (Where are you going? _To the beach_).

1. Every language has some sentence which makes use of more than one
lexical category (part of speech).

2. There is some language which requires a verb in every sentence.
English is a possible example.

3. There is a maximum number of overt verbs that a language can require to
be in every one of its sentences. For example, Fula and Russian don't
require any overt verbs in (certain) predicative sentences. English seems
to require at least one verb in every sentence. Are there any languages
which require 2 verbs in every sentence? Three? More? (Feel free to
include auxiliaries in the count.)

4. Predicative sentences are the only sentences that can lack a verb.

5. In no language can a sentence consist of two predicative clauses
juxtaposed. For example, "I am a teacher you are a student" consists of
two sentences (in my view).

6. No language allows the orders Noun Demonstrative Numeral Adjective and
Noun Adjective Numeral Demonstrative within the NP, but not some other
order of Demonstrative, Numeral, and Adjective after the noun in the NP.

7. If a language has overt pronouns, then it can have more than one overt
pronoun as the arguments of a verb (e.g. as subject and object) or it can
have an overt pronoun as the possessor of an overt noun.