LINGUIST List 9.1233

Mon Sep 7 1998

Qs: Temporality, Wh-Qs, Consonants, BrE Phonology

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

Directory

1. eva born-rauchenecker, Qs: Textling. Confs, temporality in narr. texts
2. Miura Ikuo, Multiple wh-questions
3. Paul Sezonov, Consonants
4. John Wells, BrE Pronunciation Preferences

Dear colleagues,

My first questions is: Who has any information about a conference in
Europe concerning textlinguistics (I read about the one in Singapore)?

And my second:
In my actual work I try to find out

- the temporal relations in russian narrative texts based on the
semantics (and the actionality) of verbs

- the cohesive and / or coherent function of verbs.

Is there anyone, who works in a related field?

Certainly, I'll post a summary (if there is something to summarize),

thanks in advance,

Eva Born-Rauchenecker


oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Eva Born-Rauchenecker
Slavisches Seminar
UNIVERSITT HAMBURG
Von-Melle-Park 6
D-20146 Hamburg


Tel.: 040/4123-2558 bzw. -4809
Fax.: 040/4123-6144

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Dear linguists,


 I am going to write a peper about multiple wh-quesitons. So I would
like to know the grammatical status of some English multiple
wh-quesitons. In the literature, it is observed that while the
sentence in (1a) is grammatical, the corresponding (1b) is not.


(1) a. Who said what?

 b. What did who say?


First, I want to know whether the following pairs of sentences exhibit
the same contrast as in (1).


(2) a. Whose mother bought what?

 b. What did whose mother buy?

(3) a. People from where bought what?

 b. What did people from where buy?

(4) a. Tell me whose advisor is where.

 b. Tell me Where whose advisor is?


The sentences in (2a) and (3a) are from Stroik (1995), who says that
they are grammatical. But he doesn't mention about the grammaticality
of (2b) and (3b).

 In the literature, psych-verbs like 'worry' and 'annoy' which take
the experiencer argument as the object behave differently from verbs
like 'say' with respect to some phenomena like anaphor binding. So I
want to know whether or not multiple wh-questions of psych-verbs like
(5) and (6) exhibit the same grammticality of (1).


(5) a. What worries who?

 b. Who does what worry?

(6) a. What annoies who?

 b, Who does what annoy?


 If you can help, please reply to me personally. Thank you.


Ikuo Miura

(a966702deds.ecip.nagoya-u.ac.jp)



Reference


Stroik, Thomas S. (1995) "Some Remarks on Superiority Effects," Lingua
95, 239-258.

Hello!

 I need badly and urgent a list of two consonant groups which
sounds like one for English and German.
 I need also a list of consonant equivalent classes.

 Thank you.
 Best regards,

 Paul Sezonov

***For speakers of British English only***

Dear colleagues, 

In 1988 I conducted a pronunciation preference survey to investigate
BrE preferences in a hundred or so items of fluctuating or disputed
pronunciation (eg "zebra" with /e/ or /i:/). The results were reported
in the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. Some of you took part at the
time.

This year I am carrying out a further poll. The new questionnaire is
available not only in printed form but also by e-mail and on the
web. It includes a few of the same items as before, with a view to
discovering whether people's preferences have changed since 1988. But
mostly it deals with new items.

As reported in the 1995 Stockholm ICPhS proceedings (3: 696), my
student Yuko Shitara has carried out a similar survey of American
preferences. I hope to include her results and my 1998 results in a
future revised edition of LPD.

The survey questionnaire is now ready. It is targeted not at a random
sample of the population (where the response rate would surely be very
low) but at a self-selected sample of those I call the
speech-conscious: those native speakers of British English who are
interested in language and speech, and who may therefore be motivated
to spend up to an hour completing a questionnaire. I am hoping to
persuade 500 people or more to take part.

If you are a speaker of BrE, will you will be willing to participate
by telling me of your own preferences? The questionnaire is at
http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/quest.htm, or you can also ask to
receive it by e-mail or as hard copy.

Feel free to pass this message on and to circulate the survey
questionnaire to anyone interested.

John Wells 
1998 Sep 07
E-mail me: j.wellsucl.ac.uk 



Prof. J.C. Wells, Head of Dept.
Phonetics and Linguistics, UCL
0171-380 7175, fax 0171-383 4108
www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/home.htm