LINGUIST List 6.810

Tue 13 Jun 1995

Qs: IPA fonts, NP-typology, Etymology, Dislocations

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Directory

1. , IPA fonts for Unix (TeX): Request for Japanese-speaking help
2. Jie Li, NP-typology
3. Ted Harding, Etymology: "Statist" etc.
4. PIERRE LARRIVEE, dislocations

In Linguist 6.792, Jo"rg Knappen notes that "tsipa is more complete
(contains 1990 ipa additions) but the documentation is in japanese."
This situation has been true for some time, and I wonder if we can't
get something done about it. Surely one of our Japanese-speaking
colleagues could have a look at the tsipa package in the CTAN archives
(e.g., ftp://ftp.shsu.edu/tech-archive/fonts/tsipa) and translate the
documentation into English so as to make it more widely accessible.
You don't have to know anything much about TeX-hacking to do this, but
without some documentation, this reputedly excellent font is pretty
hard to use.

--Steve Anderson

Dear LINGUIST,

is there anyone out there who knows if there is (are) language(s) in which
the Nominal Phrase (NP) is head-initial. If yes, I would like to have
following informations:

a. whether the order goes like this:

 headnoun - determiner - adjective modifier - complement

or rather

 det. - head noun - modifier - complement

or something else.

b. Whether these languages have relative sentences; if yes, where do they
occur, to the left of modifier or to its right?

In sum, all what I want to know is the exact order of the elements whithin
NP which is head-initial.

I will post a summary later.

Thanks in advance!

Jie Li
Department of General Linguistics
University of the Saarland
Germany

Hi All,
An etymological question:

Reading Janet Browne's new biography of Darwin got me interested in the
Captain of the "Beagle", Robert Fitzroy.

He seems to have had a remarkable capacity for systematic observation and,
as well as his official task of surveying the coasts of Patagonia and
Tierra del Fuego, accumulated much data on weather. In 1851 he was elected
Fellow of the Royal Society and in 1854 was appointed to the meteorological
department of the Board of Trade `with, in the first instnce, the peculiar
title of "Meteorological Statist"' (Encyclopdia Britannica, 9th ed.,
volume IX, page 272).

So this got me on the track of "statist", which thereby seems to have been
in use as an official title as late as 1854. "Statist" goes back a long
way, but I am wondering when "statistician" became the usual term (I had
thought, earlier than 1854, but find I have no explicit data).

In the list of meanings of "statist" in a modern dictionary (e.g. Chambers
20th century), "statistician" trails the field. Interestingly, Chambers
gives among meanings for "statistic" the meaning "a statistician" (which I
suppose in a sense -- though not one I expected to see in a dictionary --
we all are).

I can envisage a progression from the noun "statist" to the adjectives
"statistic" and "statistical" (as "egoist" to "egoistic" and
"egoistical"), but I sense a nice etymological tangle here, and I am
wondering if anyone has pointers to a more detailed discussion of this.

I am aware of the very interesting account of early usages of "statist",
"statistic", "statistics" and "statistical" (though not "statistician")
in Yule's "Introduction to the Theory of Statistics", and of a few other
references none of which takes the matter much further.

I would be most interested to receive indications of where a detailed
history of these terms may be looked for.

Meanwhile, you may enjoy the following quote from Yule (my edition is
1937, but it could have been written yesterday):

 But it is unnecessary to multiply instances to show that the
 word "statistics" is now entirely divorced from "matters of State".

 (Yule, loc.cit., section 0.20)

Ted. (Ted.Hardingnessie.mcc.ac.uk)

Dear listers,
I am in need of reference to works which clearly show that dislocated
phrases hold in general (as well as in French and English) coreferential
relationships with some element in the sentence to which
they are adjoined. Any reference or pointers to reference, even
discussions or counterexamples will be greatly appreciated and I'll
post a summary if there is sufficient interest. Thanks to all, Pierre
Larrivee.