LINGUIST List 9.1334

Sat Sep 26 1998

Qs: Parsing, Native Culture, Business Dictionary

Editor for this issue: Scott Fults <scottlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Marius Doornenbal, Parsing incomplete data
2. David Hardisty, Cultural equivalent of 'native speaker'?
3. moubtassime, Business Dictionary

Who knows whether and where I can find good, comprehensive information on
parsing incomplete chunks of text (by computer)? My job is to create
parsing tools that come up with some information on the contents of text,
no matter if it is garbled or parts of it are dislocated. In my opinion,
this task typically requires building structures as good as possible
(bottom-up), and after that, connecting these structures in some pragmatic,
error-correcting way to make the best guess which expression was meant
(top-down).

I suppose that there be some standard textbooks or Web-material dedicated
to this problem; the task of spelling-correction presupposes some kind of
tool that is garbage-resistant. Maybe there are standard tools or code
available to tackle this problem; that would be even more interesting.

Who knows where I can start my search?

Marius Doornenbal
Human Inference (Arnhem, The Netherlands)
mariushuminf.nl

I would be grateful for any thoughts/references on the following:

1. In relation to language, the use of the the term 'native speaker of X'
is well established, notwithstanding the varieties and variations a
particular language may possess. When considering culture, is there/has
there been an attempt to develop a similar concept? (e.g. a first culture?
mother culture? native culture??). Any help in constructing a bibliography
would be appreciated.


Informal Background to the question: My nationality is British. I lived in
Britain from birth until I completed my undergraduate studies. Since then I
have lived most of my life outside English(L1) speaking countries. I teach
English for Academic Purposes and aspects of British Culture to Media and
Culture Studies students in a Portuguese university. After many years
living outside my L1 environment I still feel able to look at an extract of
English and give it the traditional linguistic tick/cross/question mark in
terms of well-formedness. Culturally, I am starting to feel less secure. I
'consumed' events such as the election of Tony Blair in 1998 via the media
but did not have first hand experience of it (i.e. walking down the
street/into a shop and experiencing at first hand the reaction of my local
community to such an event). My tentative subjective conclusion is that
one can continue to be a native 'speaker' more easily than one can hold
onto one's culture. Thoughts and references welcome. 

David Hardisty
Catholic University, Lisbon, Portugal.

To Linguistlist members,

I am a Moroccan Linguist teacher. I am planning to gather data concerning
the compilation of a text/work book on Buisiness English for Buisinessmen to
be consulted as well as to serve as a text book for students of English.
Does any one know of online reference or dictionaries on Finance, buisiness,
Marketing or Advertissment? Please, do send me any feedback to my E-mail
address or through my snail mail:

 Mohammed Moubtassime
 Faculty of Humanities1
 Department of English
 P.O.Box 50 Fez (30000)Morocco

A summary will be published herein the soonest I get all the feedback.

Thanks alot