LINGUIST List 9.239

Tue Feb 17 1998

Qs: Tenses, Internet Language, Origin of Resentment

Editor for this issue: Anita Huang <anitalinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Michael Yadroff, Sequence of Tenses
2. Mike FOX-ecki, Internet Language
3. Jim Harris, Origin of Resentment

The English sentences like _John thought/believed/said/etc. that Bill
was/*is sick_ show a phenomenon of Sequence of Tenses (SoT). What
other languages besides English have the same phenomenon in
_indicative_ sentences? (let's not touch subjunctives). As I can
recall, Norwegian has SoT (as well as, I guess, the other Scandinavian
languages). The Continental West Germanic languages don't have SoT,
neither do the Slavic languages. If we exclude restrictions on
subjunctive selection (IMHO, it's a different phenomenon), the Romance
languages don't have SoT either. It looks like neither Lithuanian nor
Latvian have SoT. Among the non-Indo-European languages, Japanese,
Chinese and Georgian don't have SoT. As I can guess, Finnish, Estonian
and Hungarian don't have SoT either. It's just a hunch, but I think
neither Hebrew nor Arabic have SoT.
	
So I'd appreciate any information about languages _with_ SoT.
Comrie (1985, p. 104) cites Fula as having (a syntactic rule of) SoT (but
it looks like rather similar to a subjunctive selection than SoT in
indicative sentences).

Please reply to me off-list.
I'll post a summary if there is enough interest.

Michael

Michael Yadroff
Linguistics Department	and	Dept. of Slavic Languages and Literatures
Memorial Hall 322		Ballantine Hall 502
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN 47405
myadroffindiana.edu

I'm wondering if any of you who spend some time online ever tried to
classify the phenomenon of language as it appears on the Internet. Would you
rather say it's a slang, an idiolect, maybe something inbetween or some new
language peculiarity? [due to the fact that it's neither spoken nor written]
As it's a part of my MA thesis, I personaly always thought it's a language
of subculture. However, things started to change lately [esp. on Polish
Internet]. As more and more users connect, most of whom are new to computer
technology in general, this character changes and differences, once clearly
visible blur. It's no longer easy to distinguish a newbie [or even worse, a
lame] from someone who's spent lots of hours online. I mean here especially
those "public talks" on the IRC.
I guess that it's only Hacker's Jargoon that retained the character of the
language of subculture.
How do you, dear linguists, perceive this phenomenon? I don't have to say
that this question has kept my mind busy for the past year or so.

Michal Lisecki
[undergraduate at the University of Silesia, Poland]
======================================================
Mike FOX-ecki <magurapriv.sos.com.pl>
irc [lisu] <mliseckikki.net.pl> 
UIN [4324037] http://priv2.onet.pl/ka/mlisecki 

Can someone help? What is the origin of resentment. I believe it comes from
a Latin root which means to re-feel or re-live.

Thanks in advance