LINGUIST List 7.1404

Wed Oct 9 1996

Qs: Software for drawing trees, Chinese, Intro ling courses

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

Directory

1. Sze-Wing Tang, Q: software for drawing trees
2. Ivan A Derzhanski, Q: Chinese (re)sources sought
3. "REBECCA S. WHEELER", Intro. Ling. as important in an English major. How to present it?

Does anyone know whether there is a software for drawing syntactic
trees which is compatible with Windows 95? Please tell me how I can
order such software. Thank you.

Sze-Wing Tang
stanguci.edu

(I checked the Chinese Linguistics Web Page (announced in 7.992), but
the Computational Linguistics link there is not active now.)

I am looking for pointers to the following:

* Frequency counts of Mandarin Chinese phonemes (onsets, rhymes).
* Chinese electronic dictionaries.
* Downloadable corpora of Mandarin Chinese text.

Will be grateful for any help.

- Ivan A Derzhanski <iadbanmatpc.math.acad.bg, iadcogsci.ed.ac.uk>

I'm looking for ideas on how to convince an English faculty who is
unfamiliar with and suspicious of Linguistics that an Intro to
Linguistics class is an important part of an English major and a major
in English Teaching in the secondary schools.

The English Dept. at Weber State University, (located in Ogden, Utah,
30 miles north of Salt Lake) draws nearly all its students from the
local town. Most of the students go into teacher education with very
few going on to graduate school.

Most of the faculty are literature people, with no exposure to 
linguistics.

I'm on the Curriculum Committee at Weber English and am hearing
rumblings about "no need to teach that useless linguistic theory
stuff." They have required an Intro Ling class or a History of
Lang. class, but are reconsidering whether the Intro is relevant to a
contemporary English major.

The department does want a "grammar" class -- but by grammar, they
mean phrase types, sentence varieties, (compound, complex, etc.),
"correct punctuation and spelling, and introduction to editing."

I'm looking for compelling and intriguing linguistic puzzles or
examples that would speak to a literature faculty in a down-to- earth,
practical way to convince them of the utility of a Ling Intro. Like
what real-world problems should an English major be able to solve that
would be facilitated by knowing some Linguistics?

Any ideas? I'll summarize to the list.


Rebecca S. Wheeler
Adjunct Faculty
Dept. English
Weber State University
Ogden, UTah 84408-1201

rswheelercc.weber.edu