LINGUIST List 7.959

Mon Jul 1 1996

Qs: Scripts, Yes&no, Speech sound, Machine translation

Editor for this issue: T. Daniel Seely <dseelyemunix.emich.edu>

Directory

1. "david b. solnit", Indic scripts, standard Lao
2. Marina Yaguello, Yes and No
3. Shinichi Tokuma, speech sound perception
4. Balkan L, Machine translation

Dear friends,
1. Is it correct to say that the standard language of Laos is based on
the speech of Vientiane? If not, what is a better characterization of
standard Lao?

2. Most of the scripts of Southeast Asia are of Indic origin: Mon,
Burmese, Shan, Khmer, Thai, Lao, White Tai, Kavi and more. I'm pretty
sure it's incorrect to say that they are derived from Devanagari:
Florian Coulmas in _The Writing Systems of the World_ (Blackwell, 1993,
pp 182, 191) states that the SE Asian scripts are derived from 'the Pali
scripts', which are in turn derived from the Gupta script (as is
Devanagari). I'd like to check that this is mostly correct, and in
particular that 'Pali script(s)' is an accepted and accurate
designation. Thanks for any and all help.
David Solnit
dsolnitumich.edu

Dear linguists
I am posting this on behalf of a friend. She would like to know if there
are other languages beside Latin and Chinese which do not have words for
yes and no but in which, instead, you have to answer "I do", "I will" or "I
don't" etc.
Thanks for your answers to mayaparis7.jussieu.fr (Marina Yaguello)

Dear Linguists

I am writing on behalf of a friend of mine, who
is interested in the modelling of speech sound
perception. In particular, he is interested in the
modelling of categorical perception of speech
sounds, i.e., how we can reconstruct imperfectly
transmitted or imperfectly produced phonological
segments of speech signals

Now he needs some reference that discusses
that modelling generally.
I recommended he should read
"Cognitive Models of Speech Processing"
edited by Altmann (MIT Press). However he would like to
look at more up-to-date reference.

Can anybody suggest some books or papers
that satisfy him?

Yours,

Shin TOKUMA (Mr)

| Shin TOKUMA	 |
| Phonetics Laboratory |
| Sophia University, 7-1 |
| Kioi, Chiyoda, Tokyo 102 Japan|
| Tel: +81-3-3238-3492 / e-mail |
|s-tokumahoffman.cc.sophia.ac.jp|

 ********************************************************
 *Resources and Methods for teaching Machine Translation*
 ********************* ***************************
		 *A Survey*
 **********

We are interested in hearing from anyone who is involved in the
teaching of Machine Translation (MT).

We are conducting a survey of resources and methods used in the
teaching of MT and are particularly interested to hear from those who
use, or would be interested in using, practical MT systems as a
teaching aid.

We are interested in your ideas, experience, needs, etc. etc., but in
the first place we are interested in knowing WHO YOU ARE.

Particular questions we will be addressing include what demand there
is for practical MT systems as a teaching aid, what commercial MT
systems are presently available, at what cost, etc. The report and
other results of the survey will be sent to everyone who replies.
Concrete outcomes may include some ideas about what how courses can be
structured, what teaching aids are available. If resources permit, we
may try to organize a workshop for face to face exhange of ideas.

Please pass this message on to anyone you think might be
interested. Apologies if you receive this multiple times.

This survey is partly sponsored by ELSNET.

- ----------------------------------------------------------------
Doug Arnold, dougessex.ac.uk Tel: +44 1206 872084
Lorna Balkan balkaessex.ac.uk Tel: +44 1206 872092
Louisa Sadler louisaessex.ac.uk Tel: +44 1206 872082
CL/MT Group,
Dept. of Language & Linguistics, Fax: +44 1206 872085
University of Essex,
Wivenhoe Park,		
Colchester, CO4 3SQ, UK. http://clwww.essex.ac.uk/