LINGUIST List 6.669

Sat 13 May 1995

Qs: Interpreting, Parser, Ladusaw's SALT IV talk, Trinacria

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. Lianqing Wang, simultaneous interpreting
2. Phil Bralich, New Parser
3. "S. S. Koike", Thetic/Categorical, Stage/Individual, Weak/Strong
4. , TRINACRIA

An employer is looking for a simultaneous interpretor. Could someone give me a
better idea about what is the main creteria for simultenous? In my
understanding, it must be something happen at the same time, such as in the
importing meetings. However, in terms of accuracy, it may cause some problems
if an interpretor says something immediately after he heard something but later
on he finds that that was not the real meaning of the speaker. So, a related
question is, what are main differnces between the simultaneous and
"general" interpreting?

 I will appreciate any help in this question.

William L. Wang
The Ohio State University

In the last few weeks I have posted a couple of messages describing the
 resulstwe are getting from a parser that we have been developing here in
 Hawaii.
We are still quite pleased with the results, and we would like to thank
readers for comments and suggestions. We have just added a couple of functions
to the parser. It can now label parts of speech, sentence parts, and the
 thetaroles of NPs in a string. Our focus now will be on adding more
 traditional
grammar functions (e.g. more sophisticated subject verb agreement, proper
use of referential adjectives in adjective clauses and so on). We are
also creating functions for the parser to demonstrate its ability to analyze
sentences to allow the manipulation of sentences e.g. change active to passive
or passive to active, make a statement a question or a question a statement
 andso on.

Any suggestions on what we should focus on would be appreciated.

However, the main reason I am writing to today is because we would like to
expand our lexicon. We are looking for a modifiable lexicon of 20,000+
words. We will be using C++ for the development of our lexical tools and
would like to have a lexicon that already has standard lexical features
encoded in it. The features we are using would be standard in GB terminology
We would be especially interested in a lexicon that has verb classes marked
as to what sort of complements they allow. We have a limited budget so we
would like to get what we can from shareware, but we will be willing to
purchase a lexicon that meets our requirements.

Thank you

Phil Bralich
bralichuhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.edu

Content-Length: 1500

Dear _Linguist_ readers,

I would like to find out if any work has been done on the
issues touched upon in Bill Ladusaw's SALT IV (1994) talk,
"Thetic and categorical, stage and individual, weak and
strong" (The last two refer to weak and strong determin-
ers.), which I got to read by chance. I believe that this is
an area where syntax, semantics, pragmatics and discourse
interact in a very interesting way, and I have started
working on some of the issues, but I do need more references
than I have right now.

More specifically, I would like to learn about studies on
these distinctions (or how they interact with one another)
in languages other than English and German. I am particu-
larly interested in those studies that deal with such
languages as Japanese, Korean, Turkish, Sino-Tibetan
languages, Austronesian languages, Indo-Aryan languages and
Dravidian languages.

Also, what are the (more or less) accepted (semantic) defi-
nitions of these terms? Are there cross-linguistically
applicable definitions, or has it been accepted that they
have to be identified syntactically as well as semantically
in each language? If there is a syntactic definition, I
would like to know if anyone has suggested that it is
(possibly) universal.

Any help, suggestions, pointers or references will be
greatly appreciated. Thank you very much in advance. I will
try to post a summary, if there is sufficient interest.

Satoshi Stanley Koike
SSKTIMESSQR.GC.CUNY.EDU, SSKCUNYVMS1.BITNET or
SSKGCCUNYVM

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I am looking for linguistic and historical context data regarding the
Trinacria. I have read a number of articles at the library reference and am
looking for the iconographic and mythological input that if sent to me will
be summarized.

The bodyless head in the Trinacria has snakes instead of hair, and also small
wings like those of Hermes. Yet in no source I saw was it said the woman's
head in the Trinacria is the Medusa. Medusa is in some accounts given the
beguiling face of the enchantress. The legend by other accounts sees her as
the witch/crone.

Any etymologies, anecdotes, historical contexts, mythologies, iconography,
and other Trinacria/Medusa answers or arguments would be appreciated and
helpful.

Jeffrey Weber
jefwebaol.com

 Medusa.