LINGUIST List 7.980

Thu Jul 4 1996

Qs: Syntactic complexity, Infixing in Eng, CD-ROM dictionaries

Editor for this issue: Ljuba Veselinova <lveselinemunix.emich.edu>

Directory

1. Stuart Luppescu, Q: Computing syntactic complexity
2. Adrian Clynes, Infixing in English
3. Guy Modica, CD-ROM dictionaries

I'm involved in a study involving an investigation of what makes some
reading passages harder to understand and others easy. I would like to
compute an index of syntactic complexity, so my question is two-fold:
1) Is there a computer parsing program available that can analyze text
adequately? and 2) What kind of structures that such a program would
identify be indicative of higher or lower complexity? I would guess
that a center embedding such as in the previous sentence would be on
the high end of the complexity scale, but what else? Your help is
appreciated.
______________________________________________________________________
Stuart Luppescu | ``The keys to success are honesty and University of
Chicago |fair dealing. If you can fake those,
sl70musuko.spc.uchicago.edu | you've got it made.'' --Groucho(?)
:MJ8 $HCRF`H~$NIc(EUC) | [Finger for PGP public key] >> Sent on
07/03/96 at 19:50:01 with xfmail

What can be infixed in English?

In Australian English you hear things like fan-bloody-tastic and
fan-fuckin-tastic, but apart from bloody and fucking (excuse my
English!) probably not much else is used in this way.

I'd be grateful if people could send me examples of other
words/morphemes which can be infixed.

Adrian Clynes
aclynesubd.edu.bn

 ------------------------------------------------------------


Dept of English & Applied Linguistics			PO Box 594
Universiti Brunei Darussalam				MPC Old Airport
Brunei						Bandar Seri Begawan 3705
Fax: 	+673-(0)2-427003				Brunei		
	
Phone: 	+673-(0)2-249001	x 406
	+673-(0)2-339550 	(home)

Hello everyone.

I am searching for a list of available CD-ROM dictionaries of English,
and articles, reviews or other material related to these electronic
resources. Any help or references you can provide will be
appreciated.

Regards.


Guy Modica, Associate Professor
Department of English and American Literature
Seikei University
3-3-1 Kichijoji-kitamachi
Musashino, Tokyo 180 Japan
Office telephone: +81-422-37-3608
Home fax: +81-425-23-5437
gmodicafh.seikei.ac.jp

"...one of my earliest faculties was my responsiveness to beauty. I think
it may be something innate in Italians, I honestly think it may be."

 - Camille Paglia