LINGUIST List 6.734

Thu 25 May 1995

Sum: Lithuanian Phonology, Writing corpora

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1. MICHEL PLATT, SUM: Lithuanian Phonology
2. Joyce Tang Boyland, Sum: writing corpora

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 Several weeks ago I posted a query regarding Lithuanian Phonology. I have
 thanked everybody by e-mail and I apologize if there is someone I have
 forgotten. Here's the bibliography suggested by those who helped:

 Thanks to Jules Levin (Univ. of California) for 1-4:

 1- The phonology section of Lietuviu kalbos gramatika, the LithAcadSci
 "official" grammar (also translated into Russian), n.d.

 2- In the 60's a collection of Baltic articles, including at least two on
 phonology of Lith, appeared in English. One article was written I believe
 by Klimas at the University of Rochester. The book is called as I recall
 Baltic Linguistics, published by U. Penn.

 3- Kenstowicz's dissertation on Lithuanian phonology, University
 of Illinois Linguistics series, vol 5 (?), including a few other articles

 4- Jules Levin (who was gracious enough to provide me with part of this
 bibliography) has published a few articles, and will have an article on the
 phonological status of /j/ in Lith coming out in Baltistica in Vilnius.

 Wayles Browne (Cornell University) suggested 5-8:

 5- A recent publication: Steven R. Young, _The Prosodic Structure of
 Lithuanian_, University Press of America 1991, 102 pp.

 6- A historical article: Steven Young, "Indo-European Length and Baltic Tone",
 Howard I. Aronson, ed., _The Non-Slavic Languages of the USSR. Linguistic
 Studies. New Series [on the title page it says Second Series]_. Chicago
 Linguistic Society, University of Chicago, 1992.

 7- Bill J. Darden. "On the relationship between the nominal accent in
 Lithuanian
 and that of other Indo-European languages.", Howard I. Aronson, ed., _The
 Non-Slavic Languages of the USSR. Linguistic Studies_. Chicago
 Linguistic Society, University of Chicago, 1989.

 8- Linguistica Baltica published by Wojciech Smoczynski
 (WSMOCZVela.filg.uj.edu.pl> to which I would like to add that this is a must
 and I have started a subscription (MP).

 Suggestions:

 Jules Levin suggested to stay away from non-Balticists who are general
 linguists. I fully agree with him. I have come across several erroneous
 articles
 myself over the past few years and I don't even speak Lithuanian that well!

 Stephanie Jannedy suggested the following: For information on every aspect of
 Lithuanian linguistics, contact Professor William R. Schmalstieg at the
 Department of Slavic Languages, The Pennsylvania State University. For
 information on study opportunities in Lithuania, contact the Executive Office
 of
 AABS (Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies), 111 Knob Hill Road,
 Hackettstown, NJ 07840.

 Thanks to Violeta Kaledaite currently at the University of Bergen for helping
me
 to get into touch with Lithuanian Language Summer School are in order. I had a
 ticket bought and everything when I finally I received info from Vilnius
 directly (via e-mail). They seemed to have changed the dates of the course
 this
 year. I was able to cancel my ticket (couldn't go at the new dates) and this
 saved me about $1500 CDN. How can I ever repay her for that!

 I am currently researching on CD-ROM and will be willing to share what I find
 if
 anyone is interested. I have not been able to track down the whole
 bibliography
 as of yet, but I have noticed that most of what I HAVE found is NOT generative
 linguistics. This will be my approach in my work.

 If anyone else has suggestions, please, please, please contact me at
 m200754er.uqam.ca BEFORE 8 June 1995. I will be absent from then until 1
 August
for personal reasons and will not be able to receive e-mail. I look forward to
 hearing from anyone.

 Michel (Platukis) Platt, Universite du Quebec

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This is a belated summary of info I sought last August,
regarding corpora of high school and undergraduate (unedited) writing.
Thank you to all from whom I received responses:
Michael Covington, mcovingtai.uga.edu
Donald Dyer, mldyerumsvm.bitnet
Alice Horning, horningargo.acs.oakland.edu
Raphael Salkie, rms3vms.brighton.ac.uk.

Several possibilities and contact people were mentioned.
1) One was a writing program at the Univ. of Mississippi
(Prof. Ben McClelland, e-mail wgbwmvm.cc.olemiss.edu).
I tried e-mailing but didn't hear back.
2) One was a person in Zimbabwe who has a computerized corpus
of high school writing. The postal address is
Juliet Thondhlana
Dept of Linguistics, University of Zimbabwe, PO Box MP 167,
Mount Pleasant, Harare, Zimbabwe;
and an e-mail address of a colleague in her department
is ANN_JEFFERIESORG.APC.MANGO
I was looking for American English, so I did not pursue this
beyond sending e-mail to the colleague.
3) There is a remnant of a large corpus from the Freshman Writing Program
at USC. It is no longer complete, is housed in an off-site storage facility,
requires that you send a formal written request to the authorities who may
or may not approve your request, and can only be used on the USC campus.
The person to contact would be
John Holland (213) 740-1988, FWP, USC, HSS-201, Univ Park, LA, CA 90089-0062.
The work they are collecting now is in portfolio form.
4) Alice Horning has a 400-page or so collection of undergraduate
student essays which should now be in the process of being scanned into WP.
I have photocopies of most of it (I took only one paper from each student
though a few had two papers), which you could borrow but you should contact
Alice Horning if you want to do that.

I eventually decided not to include student writing in my dissertation project,
because the data I needed looked too sparse in the student essays for me to
be able to get enough from the resources that were available, and besides I had
too many other projects going. However, there were several others who wrote to
me that they were interested in what might be available, so if anyone has
further leads I'm sure they would be appreciated.

Joyce Tang Boyland (jtangcogsci.berkeley.edu)