LINGUIST List 7.1488

Wed Oct 23 1996

Qs: Online study, Lojban or Loglan, _watch_ as verb

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

Directory

1. Scott Alan Landers, help with online study
2. Kate Gladstone & Andrew Haber, Where can I find info re conlang "Lojban" or "Loglan"?
3. Dick Hudson, WATCH

I am looking for online data for an historical study or study of
change in progress and I hope you can help. I am looking for a
corpora or online database of transcripts of spoken English. So far,
I have been unable to locate anything of the sort. I would appreciate
if you could point me to an FTP, Gopher or Web site with this
information.

Please reply directly to me. Thank you for your help.


Scott Landers
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

Enough said!


Yours for better letters,

Kate Gladstone
Handwriting Repair
325 South Manning Boulevard
Albany, NY 12208-1731

518-482-6763

kateglobal2000.net

I've just discovered, much to my surprise, that the
valency/subcategorization of the verb WATCH has changed during my
lifetime. I've just tried to use WATCH in an undergraduate lecture as
an example of a verb whose object is optional, illustrating it with
examples like (1). (1) (You're watching TV, and someone else changes
channel.) Hey, don't do that - I'm watching!

*All* the younger students (i.e. below about 30) rejected this out of
hand. For them, the object of WATCH seems to be obligatory (so they
insist on "I'm watching it/that/etc"). I've checked with others of my
generation (mid-50s), who all agree with me.

Q1 Has anyone else noticed this?
Q2 Has it happened outside UK?
Q3 Most interesting of all, how could it happen? After all, the
youngsters have plenty of evidence for object-omission from people
like me saying things like (1)); and they have *no* evidence that (1)
is ungrammatical.

Richard (Dick) Hudson
Department of Phonetics and Linguistics,
University College London,
Gower Street,
London WC1E 6BT
work phone: +171 419 3152; work fax: +171 383 4108
email: dickling.ucl.ac.uk
web-sites:
 home page = http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/home.htm
 unpublished papers available by ftp = ....uk/home/dick/papers.htm