LINGUIST List 7.1336

Fri Sep 27 1996

Qs: Palatal stops, Real as adverb, Politeness, Text typology

Editor for this issue: Ann Dizdar <dizdartam2000.tamu.edu>

Directory

1. Lynn Santelmann, Q: Palatal Stops
2. elisa vazquez iglesias, Real as an adverb
3. Martin Stegu, Politeness; Diachronic text typology

I am looking for information on the acoustic characteristics of
palatal stops, for a project we are doing with the speech of children
with repaired cleft palates. (These English-speaking children
sometimes use a palatal stop in place of alveolar and/or velar stops.)
So far, our lit search has turned up very little data describing the
acoutsitic charateristics of palatal stops. Can anyone point us to
articles or information on the acoustic characteristics (especially
VOT, burst characteristics and formant transitions) for languages that
use palatal stops phonemically? Characteristics of child productions
would be ideal, but any information at this point would be a great
help.

Thank you,

Lynn Santelmann
SUNY Buffalo
lms6acsu.buffalo.edu

Dear linguists,

After having read the discussion of a sentence such as "He is not
(just) real sick", I became interested in this type of ambiguous
expression whose meaning relies so much on where we draw the isogloss.

I would like to find out:

(i) where the isogloss lies for this expression, so I would appreciate
if linguists from as many states as possible could give me their
interpretation of the sentence. For those linguists in Great Britain,
Australia or Canada, I would like them to give me their interpretation
along with their place of birth.

(ii) Can "real" be a substitute for the adverb really in all dialects
(both in affirmative and negative senteces)?

(ii) whether there are other examples of ambiguous sentences of this
kind that come to your mind. If so, could you give me the two possible
(opposite) meanings?

Thank you so much.

Best,
		Elisa Vazquez Iglesias
		Universidad de Santiago
		Spain

I am sending the following query on behalf of a colleague of mine who
has not yet subscribed to the Linguist List:

Dear Colleagues,

Today I would like to place two entirely different and unconnected
queries with you in the hope that some people will be out there in
the network who could pass on some useful information or material.


Number 1:
In the term to come I have scheduled to do a course on linguistic
politeness. The problem seems to be that very little of the special
literature on politeness strategies is available in German as it has
never been translated. What I'm looking for is a
couple of quite basic and manageable articles in German that outline
the linguistic concept of politeness and, even more importantly, the
ways of describing and analysing politeness markers in discourse or
texts.
In connection with this I'm also on the lookout for some suitable
texts, conversation transcripts etc. to exemplify politeness
strategies. Is there anyone who could provide me with a suitable text
corpus for politeness studies or point one out to me that could be
used. Individual texts (business letters, transcripts etc.) would of
course be very welcome, too.


Number 2:
I was wondering whether anyone could give me some insight into the
state of the art of diachronic text linguistics, in particular
diachronic text typology. Are there any established and widely
accepted diachronic text typologies? I would be especiall interested
in finding out whether the church register has been included in
those text typologies and, if so, whether there have already been
attempts at describing church registers within a textlinguistic
framework and methodology. Could anyone provide me with the
bibliographic data of relevant and up-to-date articles or books on
the subject?
Many thanks in advance to people who should invest time and energy
into helping me out with some material or information on the subjects
specified.

Could you please send the answers directly to the following address:

Dr. phil. Hartmut Stoeckl
Lehrstuhl fuer Angewandte Sprachwissenschaft
TU-Chemnitz-Zwickau
Thueringer Weg 11

Tel.: + 49 371 531 2951
e-mail: hartmut.stoecklphil.tu-chemnitz.de