LINGUIST List 8.456

Sat Apr 5 1997

Qs: Official English, Loan-words, Logophors

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

Directory

1. Christopher Mierzejewski, Official English
2. Melanie Misanchuk, French loan-words
3. Elisa Vasquez-Iglesias, Logophors

I am working on a comparison of French and American language policy
and I would like to know the current status of the Official English
laws in the U.S, both at the federal and state levels (where things
stand at the federal level, how many states have passed Official
English laws, how many have been contested in court). I will post a
summary.

Thanks for your help,
Christopher Mierzejewski
University of Paris 7

 Dear Linguists: 
 
 I hope you can help me. I could *swear* I'd once read that
 English had at its peak 10 000 loan-words from French, many of
 which are now lost. I had originally attributed it to Jespersen,
 but I can't find it in _Language_ (1922) and I don't know where
 else I might have seen it.
 
 I would be much obliged to hear from those of you who recognise
 this figure (or who want to debunk it). I'll post a summary if
 responses warrant.
 
 Thank you
 
 Melanie
 
 Melanie Misanchuk
 Department of French Italian and Spanish
 University of Calgary
 Calgary, Alberta, Canada
 

Dear listers,

I need some grammaticality judgements from as many native speakers of
English as possible.

I have been told by a native speaker of American English that the
following sentences are ungrammatical if the self form is taken to
corefer with the direct object.

(i) Jane(i) gave John(j) information about herself(i) / *himself(j).

(ii) Jane(i) didn't tell John(j) anything about herself(i) /
*himself(j)


However, (iii) seems to be grammatical with the nearest antecedent,
but ungrammatical with the long-distance one.

(iii) Jane(i) remained angry upon John(j) hitting
*herself(i)/himself(j)


Do you agree with these judgements? What are your intuitions?


Second question:

According to the same native speaker, (ii) greatly improves if
you insert the noun before the "self" form, as I show in (iv) below

(iv) Jane gave John information about John himself.

This possiblity, however, seems to be ruled out in (v), (vi) and (vii)

(v) ??Jane didn't tell John anything about John himself.
(vi) ?? Jane remained angry upon John hitting Jane herself.
(vii)?? John told Jane to hit John himself.

Any thoughts on this?

Thanks in advance.

		Elisa Vazquez