LINGUIST List 8.22

Thu Jan 16 1997

Qs: Wh, Construction, Database, Sp analysis

Editor for this issue: T. Daniel Seely <seelylinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Olivier Tardif, +wh in situ
2. Kate Gladstone & Andrew Haber, query re whether a certain structure occurs in any language
3. Ion Androutsopoulos, URLs for commercial NL database interfaces
4. office, looking for audio and speech material from various languages

Hello.

I am a student at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal. I am looking for some
examples of +wh "in situ" in the popular speech of 17th century french; this
phenomenon is quite common in contemporary french ("Tu fais QUOI?", "Vous
allez OU?" as opposed to the correct forms "Que fais-tu?", "Ou allez-vous?"
etc.), but it has never been attested for the classical period. Since the
grammar books of that time did not care much to describe popular speech, I
have to look for some writers that did. Does somebody know of an author,
playwiter or grammarian, who took record of 17th century french's "slang"?

Thanks.
Olivier Tardif
ah891832er.uqam.ca

Is there any natural (OR constructed) language in which one word, in one
sentence, can ever serve both as the grammatical object for one part of the
sentence & the grammatical subject for the rest of the sentence?

Specifically, I am asking whether any language contains sentences like:

"I ate the bread was hard"

that would mean

"I ate the bread. The bread was hard."
(or "I ate the bread - it was hard" or "I ate the bread, which was hard.")

I ask this because my husband
 (a 45-year-old native speaker of English who suffered some
early-childhood brain
 injuries,and who also has some inherited neurological disorders)
sometimes forms such sentences, and is puzzled that they are not easily
understood by others.

 In fact, when I talked about this with him a little while ago, he
stated that he had never noticed that other English-speakers do not use
this construction, and that he had "never been told that anything was wrong
with it. What can be wrong with it?"

He asked me if there *was* any language that used such constructions, and I
promised that I would find out.





Yours for better letters,

Kate Gladstone
Handwriting Repair
325 South Manning Boulevard
Albany, NY 12208-1731

518-482-6763

kateglobal2000.net

I am compiling a list of pointers to _Web pages_ that describe _commercially
available_ natural language database interfaces. My list currently
includes the following URLs:

Access ELF: http://users.aol.com/elfsoft/elfsoft.htm
Appeal: http://wwwiz.com/home/mather
English Wizard: http://www.englishwizard.com

Does anybody have any other URLs that should be added to the list?
I'll post an updated version of my list if I get any additions.
- 
Ion Androutsopoulos email: ionmri.mq.edu.au
Language Technology Group web: www.mri.mq.edu.au/~ion
Microsoft Research Institute phone: +61 (0)2 850 6332
Macquarie University, Sydney fax : +61 (0)2 850 9529

	Dear Linguist readers,

	for a CD-ROM on speech analysis we are looking for
	audio and video speech material from various languages.
	The speech data will be bundled with our speech
	analysis program and should consist of as diverse
	sources as possible.

	We'd be happy about any hint on available speech
	material. If you have data yourself (audio or video
	digital files, video tapes, audio tapes) you would
	like to get published, or know of such data, please
	contact us. Besides content and data format we'd
	also be interested in possible license conditions.

	Should the project be successful, there would be a
	rich collection of speech data in standard format,
	together with an analysis tool on a reasonably
	priced CD-ROM. We will inform you if and when the
	product is published.

		Best regards,

		the Media Enterprise team


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 Media Enterprise

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