LINGUIST List 8.1735

Thu Dec 4 1997

Qs: Blends, Aphasic Speech, VOS Langs, Ethnobiology

Editor for this issue: Martin Jacobsen <martylinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Amalia Arvaniti, Research on Blends / Blends in Greek
2. Nicole Rosen, Aphasic Speech
3. Daniel L. Everett, VOS Languages
4. Jon Clenton, Regarding Ethnobiological Classification

I am doing research on the phonological structure of blends in Greek
and would appreciate information on the following two issues.

A. I am trying to gather as many examples of blends in Greek as
possible, and would be grateful if Greek speaking linguists would send
me any such blends they happen to know. The blends I have in mind are
jokes that came out about 18 months ago or so and took the following
form: 
Q: "what miaows and lives in a pond?"
A: [o gatraxos] (where [g] stands for a voiced velar fricative) [the
English equivalent would be the "crog" or the "frat"].

I am interested in the phonological form of the blends (not, say,
their semantics) so supplying me with just the blend and not the
accompanying question is sufficient.

B. In addition, I would like to find more about the existing
literature on blends. I am interested in papers that deal with the
phonology of blends in other languages (I am aware of Kubozonoas,
Pierrehumbertas and Bat-Elas work on Japanese & English, English and
Hebrew respectively). In addition, I am particularly interested in
finding out about research relating to the perception of blends and
compounds. Any information on this topic will be most appreciated.

Thanking all respondents in advance

Amalia Arvaniti (Asst.Prof.)
Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures
University of Cyprus

My name is Nicole Rosen and I am a graduate student at the University
of Toronto. I am trying to find any documentation on the use of
prepositions in agrammatic speakers. There doesn't seem to be much
out there - or perhaps I simply can't find it!

Any references would be most helpful, before the 1st of January if
possible.

Please email me directly at nicole.rosenutoronto.ca

Thank you very much,
Nicole Rosen

I am looking for recent research on VOS languages, especially in
formal linguistics, although any data on the questions mentioned below
would be interesting. In particular, I am interested in WH-questions
in these languages.

Between VOS languages one often observes interesting contrasts. So,
for example, in Palauan (from Georgopolous' dissertation), there is an
anti-agreement effect, such that subject agreement does not appear
when the subject constituent has been 'fronted'/questioned. Object
agreement, though, does cooccur with questioned/fronted objects. But
in Wari' (see Everett and Kern 1997, _Wari'_, from Routledge), the
reverse is found: subject agreement cooccurs with fronted subjects but
object agreement is never found with fronted objects. Yet it seems
that there are very few attempts in the literature to deal with such
differences.

I would be interested in hearing about recent studies on clause
structure, WH-questions, and grammatical-function changing operations
in these languages. I will post a summary if there is a sufficient
number of responses.


- Dan Everett

******************************
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Daniel L. Everett
Department of Linguistics
University of Pittsburgh
2816 CL
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Phone: 412-624-8101; Fax: 412-624-6130
http://verb.linguist.pitt.edu/~dever

I have been recommended to your 'publication' (if that is the right
term). I am searching somewhat in vain for information regarding
advances since Berlin's (1992) Ethnobiological Classification.

I am a master's student at Sussex University, and want to be able to
demonstrate what studies have dis/proved Berlin's propositions.

If you can help I will be severely indebted to you!

Thankyou,


Jon Clenton


Email:

Dclentonavnet.co.uk