LINGUIST List 6.616

Fri 28 Apr 1995

Qs: Passives, English (-) French trans, Bilingualism

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Directory

1. Marit Julien, passives
2. Eoin Shalloo, LFG references for Prolog implementation of English (-) French Trans.
3. "Carsten Quell", query: research/literature on mixed couples

Content-Length: 1994

Dear linguists,

I am working on an analysis of passives and I need some data that are hard
to come by here. So I rely on your help. Below I list some active
constructions or verbs from Navajo, Oromo, Tok Pisin and Aleut, and my
question is: which of these verbs can be passivised? And what will the
passives look like? ( I have to admit that I do not know if all these
languages have a passive at all.) I need morpheme-by-morpheme glossings of
the passives. Thank you all in advance! Please reply directly to
mjulienisl.uit.no

Here is the list:

NAVAJO (note that I have omitted all diacritics, instead I have included
tha translations, so that the meaning will be clear).

1. yi-beezh
 "it is boiling"

2. yi-beezh
 "S/he is boiling it"

3. yoo-i
 "S/he sees him/her"

4.yi-ni-l-i
 "S/he looks at (examines) him/her"

5. n-e-da
 "I sat down"

6. shi-ni-ni-l-da
 "you seated me"

OROMO

7. Terfaan gurbaa raff-is-e

8. Terfaaan gurbaa raff-is-iis-e

(is there more than one option here?)

TOK PISIN

9. mi tok-im yu

10. What about these verbs:
bik-im
brait-im
doti-im

ALEUT

11. Piitrax igluqax qatakikux (singular -x)

12. Piitrax sunas qakadguqax.

13. Piitrax sunas qakayakux.

14. Ayxanikung.

15. Mariiyax hlax saganiqax.

 I am currently doing research into the implmentation of an ENG (-)FR
translation system in Prolog complete with LFG annotation with a view to using
it as a demonstration aid for explaining the workings of LFG, paying
particular attention to motion verbs, and verb pairs such as like/plaire.
I would greatly appreciate any advice, references or URLs for sites where
information is available.

Eoin Shalloo

School of Computer Applications
Dublin City University, Ireland. "Ni/ he/ la/ na gaoithe
 la/ na scolb"

Dear Linguists,

One of the students in a seminar I teach on bilingualism hopes to make a
small study of language choice and language status among Polish-German
couples at our university. This university is rather special as it is
situated in Frankfurt (Oder) in Germany which borders directly on Poland.
About 40% of the student population is Polish. Thus, there is quite a lot of
contact between Poles and Germans. Since the university is, however, in
Germany and most classes are taught in German, bilingualism tends to be very
lopsided with all the Polish students speaking German, but only very few
German students speaking or even learning Polish.

The issue of language contact in personal relationships seems to me to be a
very interesting one but I do not know of any good research or literature on
the subject which may provide a starting point for his investigation. Can
anyone help? Has there been any research, for example, on mixed couples
(Hispanic-American&Anglo-American) at American universities?

I would be very grateful for any hints, even if they only touch upon the
issue in a general way.

Thanks!
***********************************
** Carsten Quell **
** Brettnacher Str. 19a **
** D-14167 Berlin, Germany **
** phone/fax:++49-30-8112932 **
**e-mail:quellzedat.fu-berlin.de**
***********************************