LINGUIST List 6.80

Fri 20 Jan 1995

FYI: Ape lang, LaTex and Macitosh, Corrections, Modern Greek

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. "John H. Chalmers", Ape Language
2. Richard M. Alderson III, LaTeX and Macintosh
3. , Program on indigenous languages of Brazil
4. Jesse Sheidlower, IMPORTANT Re: 6.68 Sum: American Dialect Society
5. Dan I. Slobin, Modern Greek Acquisition

 The latest issue of the Journal of NIH Research (vol 7,
No.1 Jan. 1995 pp. 50-55) contains a short review article by
Pat Shipman on human evolution. On the cover, the article is
referred to as "Fading Lines Between Apes and Humans," but actually
it is titled "Climbing the Family Tree: What Makes a Hominid a
Hominid?".
 The discussion on linguistic abilities might be of interest
to other subscribers to the Linguist list. The author discusses
Kanzi and Sue Savage-Rumbaugh's 1994 book "Kanzi: The Ape at the
Brink of the Human Mind," [John Wiley and Sons, NY]. According to
Savage-Rumbaugh, Kanzi does have a rudimentary grammar, can use
displaced referents and arbitrary symbols (in this case, icons or
"lexigrams" on a computer).S-R thinks his ability equals that of
a 2 year old child.
 In later section, the work of Derek Bickerton ("Language
and Species," 1990 [University of Chicago Press] is summarized.
Bickerton admits that Kanzi, other apes and young children
use "proto-language," but not full language because of the lack
if grammatical elements. Most of the rest of the section on
language is devoted to Broca's area and cortical specialization.

 --John

You've already made up your mind, it seems, but I want to point out that there
are four implementations of TeX and LaTeX for the Macintosh, three shareware
and one commercial.

Besides the very weak (in my not particularly humble opinion) WSUIPA fonts,
LaTeX allows the use of Adobe Type 1 and Type 3 ("PostScript") fonts, so that
you can use the SIL IPA fonts, or those available commercially from Adobe
(Times Roman, Stone Sans Serif and Stone Serif) or Ecological Linguistics (cf.
the recent message from Lloyd Anderson). This is true whichever platform you
decide to use.

Rich Alderson

A typo in my recent announcement about the specialization program on
indigenous languages of Brazil has been brought to my attention by
several list members. The program intends to prepare linguists to do
research on indigenous languages from Brazil providing intensive
training on methodologies for description and analysis of data as well
as on the evaluation and reanalysis of published and unpublished
materials on brazilian indigenous languages. It will take place
between August/95 and June/96 in the National Museum of the Federal
University of Rio de Janeiro. Note that the application period was not
correct on the previous posting. The correct date is July/95.

For further information, please contact maiavms1.nce.ufrj.br*EXIT*

Message 4: IMPORTANT Re: 6.68 Sum: American Dialect Society

Correction to the annoucements about American Dialect Socisty List

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Jesse T Sheidlower Editor Random House Reference
(jesterpanix.com) (212) 572-4917

Ursula Stephany has just finished a long and detailed chapter
on the acquisition of Modern Greek for Volume 4 of
_The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition_ (ed. Dan I.
Slobin, scheduled for 1995 publication by Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates). Contact her for an advance copy:
e-mail: am001aix370.rrz.Uni-Koeln.DE
address: Institut fuer Sprachwissenschaft, Universitaet zu
Koeln, D 5000 Koeln 41, Germany.

Dan Slobin (slobincogsci.berkeley.edu)