LINGUIST List 9.1661

Sun Nov 22 1998

Qs: Pashto, Speech acts, Presidential speeches

Editor for this issue: Brett Churchill <brettlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Roderick A. Jacobs, European Language Resource
2. Anna Fenyvesi, the speech act of blurting
3. Roy/Lilian Tan, Clinton's "Apology" Speech

It's good to hear of the new Pashto lexicon (LINGUIST 9.1649) from
Taylor Roberts! There has been relatively little on Pashto in English
since the sixties, except for a couple of interesting works on clitics
and on ergativity by Habibbullah Tegey. But now, in addition to the
new lexicon, there is a very useful pedagogical grammar of the
language by Tegey and B. Robson, "A Reference Grammar of Pashto"
published in 1996 by the Center for Applied Linguistics. Moreover, a
student of mine at the University of Hawai'i, Farooq Babrakzai, has
just completed a 280pp. draft of a dissertation "Studies in Pashto
Syntax." Is anyone aware of other work in a European language (or
Japanese) on Pashto? language?

Roderick A. Jacobs Tel:808/956-2800
Professor of Linguistics & ESL Fax: 808/956-2802
Chair, Dept. of English as a Second Language
University of Hawai'i at Manoa
1890 East-West Road PhD program in Second
Honolulu, HI 96822, USA Language Acquisition

Personal Web page: http://www2.hawaii.edu/ling/fac_pages/jacobs.html
Visit our department Web site at http://www.lll.hawaii.edu/esl

I'm posting this for a graduate student at my university, who is looking
for pragmatic literature on the speech act of, well, we don't quite know
what it is called in English, something like blurting: when somebody
accidentally lets somebody know something which they should keep secret,
like the fact of a surprise party in preparation for the other person, or
that the other person's spouse has been having an affair, for instance.
 So, the question is, is there a name for this speech act in the
linguistic literature? And if not, is there any literature on anything
vaguely similar to this topic?

Thank you!

Anna Fenyvesi

*******************************************
Anna Fenyvesi
Department of English
Institute of English and American Studies
Jozsef Attila University
Szeged, Egyetem u. 2, H-6722
phone/fax: (36-62) 454-259
fenyvesilit.u-szeged.hu
*******************************************

I am an honours student doing an analysis on the nominal expressions
used in 2 of Bill Clinton's speeches -- the "confession" (16 August
1998) and the "apology" speeches. I have difficulty locating a copy of
the "apology" speech. Can anyone provide me with information on where
to find it?

Lilian Foo
magnumopuspacific.net.sg