LINGUIST List 9.1031

Wed Jul 15 1998

Qs: Affect/Effect, Vowels-Ital, Discourse, Software

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

Directory

1. Dr Keith Russell, Affect/Effect
2. Antony Dubach Green, Italian vowel length
3. Maria Wolters, Q: Speaking style of radio newsreaders
4. Frontier, Morphosyntax Software

Anyone know of a list of phrase-based accounts of the usage of these
two words? Inspite of spending much time dealing with AFFECTS - I
still find troubles with phrases - perhaps the causality hidden in
this distinction gets to me?

dskrcc.newcastle.edu.au
keith russell

Hello,

I'm trying to get a grasp on where stressed vowels are and are not
lengthened in Italian. The standard analysis is that stressed vowels
are lengthened in open syllables, so the question is, When is -VCCV-
syllabified -V.CCV- and when -VC.CV-?

Fava & Magno Caldognetto (1976) list only three words with -V.CCV-
syllabification: 'padre', 'madre', and 'metri'. I assume that other
stop + r clusters are syllabified this way too, but I need examples.
What about stop + l? Saltarelli (1970) says the only Italian words
with -tl- are 'atlante' and 'atleta', neither of which are stressed
before the tl cluster anyway. Are there any words with -cl-, -gl-,
-pl- or -bl- where the preceding vowel is stressed? Or is the stop
always geminated in this position (cf. repubblica)? If there are
words with a singleton stop + l, is a preceding stressed vowel
lengthened there? What about consonant + [j] clusters? Are
consonants always geminated here (cf. occhio), or can there be
singletons; and if so, is the preceding vowel lengthened or not?

As for -VC.CV-, this is no issue when the CC cluster can't occur
initially, but s + stop clusters do occur initially and yet don't
cause preceding vowel lengthening word-internally (resto, visto,
posto, basta, giusto, testa). Are there other licit word-initial
clusters that don't cause preceding stressed-vowel lengthening when
they occur word-internally?

If anyone can point me to other published materials where I can find
this sort of information, I'd be grateful for that too.

Thanks in advance for your help; I'll post a summary of responses.

- Antony Green

- ----

Saltarelli, M. (1970). A phonology of italian in a generative
grammar. The Hague: Mouton.

Fava, E. & E. Magno Caldognetto (1976). Studio sperimentale delle
caratteristiche elettroacustiche delle vocali toniche ed atone in
bisillabi italiani. In R. Simone, U. Vignuzzi & G. Ruggiero (eds.),
Studi di fonetica e fonologia. Rome: Bulzoni. 35-79.

- ---------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Antony Dubach Green greenzas.gwz-berlin.de
Zentrum fuer Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft
Jaegerstr. 10/11 Tel +49 (0)30 20 192 574
10117 Berlin
Deutschland Fax +49 (0)30 20 192 402
 http://www.zas.gwz-berlin.de/mitarb/homepage/adgreen/index.htm
- --------------------------------------------------------------------

I am currently analysing two corpora of radio news texts for the
prosodic marking of the information status of discourse referents. The
language of one corpus is American English, the language of the other
is Standard High German.

Since I would like to relate my findings to more general
characteristics of the speaking style of radio newscasters (if there
is such a style), I am looking for pointers to books or papers on that
subject. So far, I have only found publications about the structure of
radio news *texts* and general guidelines for writing and reading
radio news. Of course, I will post a summary of responses to the
list.

Thank you very much in advance,

Maria Wolters
woltersikp.uni-bonn.de

Dear colleagues;

I'm putting together a list of available software to analyze Spanish
and English morphosyntax in speakers of these languages. Any pointers
will be appreciated. Please include info on scope of software,
manufacturer, price, etc - if you know it!

Thanks,
 Jose Centeno

*************
Jose Centeno, Ph.D.
Communication Sciences
The School of Health Sciences
Hunter College
425 East 25th St., New York, NY 10010
Tel 212.481.4467 Fax: 212.481.5179 E-mail: frontiernycnet.com
****************