LINGUIST List 7.792

Thu May 30 1996

Qs: VARBRUL vs. SPSS, Fricatives, Paired transitive verbs

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

Directory

1. Antonio Medina-Rivera, VARBRUL vs. SPSS
2. wclivax.ox.ac.uk, interdental fricatives
3. Hideo Fujii, languages with paired transitive verbs

I'm in the process of completing my dissertation. I'm working with
phonological variables in relation to both social and situational
variables. I've been using both VARBRUL and SPSS for Windows and I
have a question for the experts:
	What is the difference between the results obtained by VARBRUL
step up and down and SPSS Multiple Regression? Are they comparable in
any way?

My question arose because I tried both, and the group of factors
selected by Multiple Regression and Step Up and Down as significant
are not the same, in fact only one group of factors coincided.

Please, give me some light in this matter.

Antonio Medina-Rivera
amr1pooch1.allencol.edu

I am looking for instances of interdental fricatives (e.g., English
"th") developing from or developing into alveolar or postalveolar
fricatives ("s", "sh"), or any other types of sounds in any language
you might know of. I am also looking for references (preferably in
English) on the development of the "th" sound in Spanish. I would
greatly appreciate any pointers.

				Wenchao Li
				Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford

Dear LINGUISTs:

I would like to know which languages have "paired transitive verbs".
I mean that the morphology of some language shows the derivational
variations of transitive and intransitive verbs paird with a shared
"stem" with more or less regularity. For example, in Japanese many
such verb pairs are observed, e.g., "OR-u"(Vt:break)
vs. "OR-eru"(Vi:break). In this case, "OR-" is a common stem, and
"-u" and "-eru" are transitive and intransitive endings repectively.
There are several endings for this kind of functionality in Japanese
*derivational* morphology. I want to exclude languages which show the
transitive/ intransitive pairs with inflectional changes, zero
morphology (like English for "break" etc.), nor syntactical
constructions (passive/causative- like form). I appreciate if you
tell me the name of languages of this kind. I will summarise after I
receive your information. Thank you very much.

- Hideo Fujii
 U. of Massachusetts
 at Amherst