LINGUIST List 8.268

Mon Feb 24 1997

Qs: CDs, Indo-European, Russian frequency

Editor for this issue: Susan Robinson <suelinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Aaron Fox, Query: CD ROMS for Linguistics?
2. Patrick Juola, Taxonomic structure of Indo-European?
3. Mike Ford, Russian Frequency Count

Dear Colleagues

I am looking for recommendations for high-quality MULTIMEDIA CD-ROMS
dealing with linguistics, linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics,
etc. I'm especially interested in sources of many choices, so
catalogs or distributors with strong lists would be great, esp. those
accessible on the WWW. Reports of your experiences teaching with
particular CD-ROMS or the technology in general are also welcome.

I would be very grateful if you could also share whatever ordering
information you have for your recommendations (e.g., a phone number,
web or email address, price range, etc.)

I am interested in CDs dealing with any and all approaches to
language, but especially in clear presentations of cognitive
linguistics and interesting presentations of language/culture
interfaces.

I will post a summary to the list if I receive useful responses.
Thank you very much, in advance.

Aaron A. Fox
Anthropology/Music
Univ. of Washington

Dear all,

	I don't know if I've hit a wall in the books that I've read,
or simply in my understanding --- but a quick run-through of the local
library indicates a remarkable consistency in what's believed about
IE. For example, David Crystal cites ten different subgroups,
Albanian, Anatolian, Armenian, Balto-Slavic, Celtic, Germanic, Greek,
Indo-Iranian, Italic, and Tocharian. Finegan & Besnier separate
Baltic and "Slavonic" but are otherwise consistent. Gleason groups
Balto-Slavic and suggests that Anatolian might be a sibling of IE
rather than a daughter. &c. But I'm willing to accept that as,
overall, consistent.

	What I don't see is any subgrouping within IE. For example,
is there any evidence to refute/confirm a hypothetical conjecture that
Italic, Germanic, and Celtic together compose an Alpha-IE subgroup as
opposed to the rest which are comprised in Beta-IE? Would that be a
better or worse conjecture than an identically hypothetical one where
I moved Balto-Slavic into the Alpha-IE group?

	It seems deeply unlikely to me that the original group of PIE
speakers should have simultaneously fractured into ten different
subtribes all of which wandered away -- and even less likely is the
hypothesis that Italic languages have had an equal amount of contact
(and hence borrowing) with the Germanic (sub)family than they have
with the Indo-Iranian (sub)family; I would be willing to bet large
sums of money that there is, in fact, an underlying substructure to
these various groups.

	So my question to the assembled masses is : Once we're past
the overall level of "subgroups", what's known and accepted about the
internal structure of IE? More importantly, what sort of evidence are
these structures predicated on? Which are the books that I really
should have read before wasting the valuable time of everyone on this
list?

	-kitten 
	(Patrick Juola, Oxford U.)

Does anybody know where/how I can get hold of a frequency count for
Russian? Are there any books published? Is there anything on-line?
Or is there perhaps a large on-line corpus from which I could make my
own frequency count? Thank you.

Mike Ford
Centre for Speech & Language
Birkbeck College
University of London
Malet St
London WC1E 7HX
Tel: 0171 631 6242