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Editor for this issue: Brett Churchill <brettlinguistlist.org>
ix.netcom.com>Greetings! I am doing research on fossilized L2 pronunciation. While searching the literature I found numerous articles that discuss fossilization (Selinker, 1972; Adjemian, 1976; Vigil and Oller, 1976; Selinker and Lamendella, 1979; Schachter, 1988, 1990; Selinker and Lakshmanan, 1992, Selinker and Han 1996, etc.) and several longitudinal studies that focus on stabilization/fossilization of morphological and syntactic structures (Tarone, Frauenfelder and Selinker, 1976; Selinker, Swain and Dumas, 1975; Schumann, 1976; Shapira, 1978; Schmidt, 1983, etc.). In addition, I have accessed the LINGUIST LIST archives and found useful references from a previous posting (Vol-5-998 - Sept. 1994). Unfortunately, I am unable to find longitudinal studies of fossilization that focus on phonetics and/or phonology. Does anyone know of such studies? I would be happy to summarize the responses. Thanks in advance, Fran Gulinello CUNY Graduate Center frances6Mail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue
htdc.org>As part of our due dilligence in researching our NLP work, I am looking to see if anyone has seen technology similar to that being offered (for Free) by our company at http://www.haptek.com. The free dowload is called "ChatterBox" and it is intended for use with the 3-D animations that are available at that site. It is quite fun actually so if you enjoy "talking computers" you might want to take a look. The product allows you to chat with the animations in the following manner. You (or the designer) enter in information statements and then later you query the character for that information such as: my appointments are at 5 pm and 6 am your name is roswell you live in new york the man who has the gun lives in the park the tall dark stranger was killed by the man with gun the tall dark stranger was jogging through the park your fax number is 8085393924 John's web address is john.com when are my appointments? what is your name? what was the stranger doing? what is your fax number? what is john's web address? and so on. I would like to be know as accurately as possible if there are any other such products anywhere else either as a commercial product or research project. If so I would like to the url's or email addresses of those who make them. I will post a summary to the list. Phil Bralich ______________________________ Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D. President and CEO Ergo Linguistic Technologies 2800 Woodlawn Drive, Suite 175 Honolulu, HI 96822 Tel: (808)539-3920 Fax: (808)539-3924 bralichMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue
ias.tokushima-u.ac.jp>Dear all, I'm working on gradability of non-gradable adjectives, such as _very dead_, _very much alive_, _very pregnant_, _very on_. One conclusive comment I derived from my work is that there must be some contrast in the pre- context to make these phrases better. The next example says that the speaker thought that the sisters he was looking for were dead, but in cotrast they were very much alive. (1) In April 1944, I was transferred to Long Island, New York, and I though that this would be an opportunity to find out if the Everleighs were still alive, and if they were alive, to learn if they'd give me permission to write the play about them... When I reached New York, I went to see Lait. He assured me the Everleighs were _very much alive_, living as Minna and Aida Lester at 20 West 71st Street. (Irving Wallace, The Golden Room, p. xii) If I am right, I can make the following _very on_ sentences better to put them in the contrastive context like (4) below. As a non-native speaker's judgement, I find (1a) and (2a) are unaccpetable and (1b) and (2b) are better than (1a) and (2a), because _very much_ rather than _very_ can be more useful for emphasizing the speaker's opnion. Of course, these sentences as well as (1) above have comic flavour or have a tongue in cheek as a Canadian native speaker of English in my university says. Do you agree with his opnion? Please judge these senteces below as OK, ?, or * in each slot, and if you find them accpetable, please paraphrase them into possible alternatives in the same context. And if you find that _very_ and _very much_ are different, please state what exactly the difference is. (2) a. ( )The light is very on/off. b. ( )The light is very much on/off. (3) a. ( )The strike is very on. b. ( )The strike is very much on. (4) A: At last, the strike has come to an end. B: No, you're wrong. ( )It is very/very much on, even more on than a few weeks ago. (5) a. ( )John had a TV very on/off. b. ( )John had a TV very much on/off. (6) a. ( )The door is very open. b. ( )The door is very much open. c. ( )The door is wide open. Thank you very much in advance. I will definitely post a summary soon. Please e-mail me directly to the following e-mail address. Best wishes, Hiroaki Tanaka Associate Professor Faculty of Integrated Arts and Sciences Tokushima University, Japan 1-1, Minamijousanjioma, Tokushima, 770, Japan phone & fax: +81 886 56 7125 e-mail: hiro-tMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue