LINGUIST List 8.1750

Fri Dec 5 1997

Qs: Chomsky/Foucault,Spectrogram,Discourse,Lang Eng

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

Directory

1. Stuart Robinson, Chomsky/Foucault Debate
2. Marek Przezdziecki, Spectrogram Software for PC/Windows95
3. Carlos Rodrigues, Definition in discourse
4. Bilal Kirkici, Language Engineering

I recently saw _Manufacturing Consent_, which has a clip from a
televised debate between Chomsky and Foucault. Does anyone know if
that debate can be obtained on video? If so, where? A source here in
Australia would be preferable. Thanks in advance.

Cheers,
Stuart Robinson

- 

Stuart Robinson <Stuart.Robinsonanu.edu.au>
Linguistics Department
Australian National University
Canberra ACT 0200
FAX: 61-6-279-8214

I'm looking for a software product for use on Windows 95 (PC) that
does a good job of producing spectrograms.

Thanks,

Marek Przezdziecki
Department of Linguistics
Cornell University

map18cornell.edu

Definition in discourse

I'm working on an applied linguistics dissertation focused on the
functions and the linguistic resources of definitions in ongoing
scientific discourse. Examples of the sentences I will be examining
are:

<<The bit sequences representing quanta of knowledge WILL BE CALLED
"kenes".>>
<<... "Social Class" REFERS TO ......>>

Where 3 distinct elements can be identified:

1) a term or expression to be defined, modified, rejected or debated.

2) an expression or a word that "marks", or signals that a
metalinguistic operation is being performed, for example, "... is
called ...", " ... can be referred to as ...."

3) a reference, a definition or a terminological proposal which relates
to the word in question.

This kind of explicit definitional sentences have discourse functions
beyond that of referring or denoting, and researchers use textual
resources besides words to signal them, for example, typography or
punctuation. It seems to me that this kind of construction is fairly
common in research articles, regardless of discipline, and is
fundamental for theory-building.

I hope LINGUIST subscribers can advise me on:
A) References of work done on scientific definitions in ongoing
discourse, as well as sugerences on methodological approaches for
corpus-based analysis relevant for this perspective (Perhaps both an
analysis of the semantics of the metalinguistic "marker" and the
sentence structure within functional systemic grammar can be
fruitful). B) Obviously, in calling these definitional expressions
"markers" I am deviating from its common usage in pragmatics, but the
term reflects well the explicit signaling of metalinguistic operations
done by them. Would "definitional indexes" be a better term? I'll be
very grateful for any useful comments and will post any relevant
responses.
 
************
Carlos Rodriguez Penagos
Institut Universitari de Linguistica Aplicada
Universitat Pompeu Fabra
http://www.iula.upf.es
crodriupf.es

************

I am a graduate student of ELT at METU, Ankara-Turkey. As I was
reading the messages in the list, I came across the term Language
Engineering. It is not a familiar term in Turkey for the people
dealing with languages; so, I would like to have more information
about it. If anyone who knows about Language Engineering could give me
some information, I would be very glad. My e-mail address is
bilalktutor.fedu.metu.edu.tr

Bilal Kirkici (METU, Ankara-Turkey)