LINGUIST List 9.170

Wed Feb 4 1998

Qs: Breast/Milk,NLP,Irrealis Modality,Byzantine Voc

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

Directory

1. Krisadawan Hongladarom, The Words for Breast/Milk
2. Anne Sing, NLP Software
3. Claire Bowern, Irrealis Modality
4. tata, Byzantine Architecture Vocabulary

Dear Colleagues,

The word for breast and milk in many Southeast Asian languages are
often related etymologically. For example, in Thai nom(32) is breast,
and nam(45)nom(32) 'water breast' is milk. The same situation is for
Written Tibetan, though I'm not very sure if the word for breast is
correct. Homa is milk, and Ho-Hdod 'milk desire(?)' is breast. (H is
a voiced glottal fricative). In Rgyalthang, another variety of Khams
Tibetan spoken in Yunnan (PRC), the word for milk is nei (231), which
obviously came from nei(231)po(51) 'breast'. However, Rgyalthang also
distinguishes between nei(231) 'breast milk' and wui(231) 'cow milk'.

I'm wondering if the languages you speak or are familiar with have the
same etymon for the words breast and milk and if the word for breast
milk is the same as cow milk.

I'll post the summary to the list. Thank you for your contribution.


Dr. Krisadawan Hongladarom
Department of Linguistics
Faculty of Arts
Chulalongkorn University
Bangkok 10330
Tel. 662-2184690; Fax. 662-218-4697
Email: artfkhlchulkn.car.ac.th
<http://pioneer.netserv.chula.ac.th/~hkrisada/www/Krisadawan.html>;

>ABOUT THE GROUP:

>We are in the process of designing and building a system to analyze
>unrestricted natural language, taking input text, and moving from
>lexical/morphological analysis through syntax, semantics, and
>eventually pragmatics and discourse. A generation component is also
>planned. We have already shipped products world-wide based on our
>English and Japanese technology, and are now ready to ship in French
>and Spanish.

This sounds like vapor ware. Is anyone aware of what software is
being referred to (other than the grammar checker in word) and to what
degree they can conform to the Penn Treebank II guidelines or to what
degree they can actually analyze and manipulate strings?

Phil Bralich

I am a student summer research follow at the Research Centre for
Linguistic Typology at the Australian National University in
Canberra. Part of my research involves the cross-linguistic use of the
irrealis modality and the development of a hierarchy of the meanings
associated with irrealis marking. I would like to investigate as many
languages as possible. If you would like to fill out a short
questionnaire for your favourite language(s) please write to
C.BowernStudent.anu.edu.au (Claire Bowern)

Thanks in advance,

Claire Bowern
Centre for Linguistic Typology
Australian National University
Canberra, ACT, 0200
Ph: +61 2 6249 2053

Dear subscribers,

Does anybody know some new publications on Byzantine ekphraseis or
especially on Byzantine architecture vocabulary?

Many thanks.

Tatiana M. Vassilieva,
PhD Student,
Centre of East Christian Culture
18-1 Biriulevskaia apt 93
Moscow 115404
Russia
Phone: (095) 348 0173
E-mail: tatapolydata.ru