LINGUIST List 6.674

Sat 13 May 1995

Qs: T test/correlation, Tagalog, Synesthesia, NP variations

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1. , t test and correlation
2. Larry Rosenwald, courses in Tagalog
3. "S. Press", help: colored hearing
4. Laurel Smith Stvan, Locative NP variations

I am undergoing e research on the use of "t test" (Student's) in
applied linguistics and a parallel research on the use of "correlation
indexes" in applied linguistics.
The research is part of a general research project concerning
"statistic methodology in linguistic research".
Any suggestions?
I particularly need suggestions about the typology of the possible
experiments and the description of already carried out
experiments.
prof. Cesare Gagliardi
Language and Linguistics
University of Verona
Department of Anglistics
ITALY

A student of mine was wanting to study Tagalog (she's from the Philippines,
understands some of the language but doesn't speak or write it), and
wondered where courses in it are available. Could any of LINGUIST's
readers help her out? Messages can come to me or to her directly
at eaguilawellesley.edu - Thanks, Larry Rosenwald

Dear linguists,
We are searching for references and/or people working on synesthesia,
especially on colored hearing. Any help welcome, we'll post a summary.
Thanks in advance.

I am looking at PPs in English that contain nouns with the following two
properties:

 1) they can occur both with and without articles
 2) the two constructions convey different senses, (in this case, the
articleless forms convey a more narrow sense of activity or scenario taking
place) for example:

to be at church = to be taking part in the service there, while
to be at the church = to merely be in or near the building, for any purpose

to be in school = to be taking part in attending or teaching a class, while
to be in a school = could apply to any person (visiting parent, janitor, voter)
 who was physically inside the building

to be in prison = to be held there, for committing a crime
to be in the prison = to be in the building, for any reason
 (e.g. as visitor, cook, cockroach)

My question is whether anyone knows of locative nouns in other languages
where uses both with and without an article are possible, and, more
importantly,
which show a recognizable meaning difference between these constructions.
Grammar texts have suggested that, for example, in Italian "the
preposition alone is used in common expressions referring to places and
rooms of a house (e.g. in biblioteca = in, at, to the library; in giardino
= in, to the garden; in chiesa = in, to the church) but I do not know if an
article can ever occur with these nouns, and if so, under what
circumstances and creating what meaning.

More generally, does anyone know of other comparable differences within
lexically similar noun phrases that are marked in ways besides article use,
i.e. different morphosyntactic ways of marking locative NPs for different
semantic/pragmatic functions?

References or native speaker confirmations of any languages would be
appreciated. Thanks.

Laurel Smith Stvan
Northwestern University
stvannwu.edu