LINGUIST List 9.913

Sat Jun 20 1998

Qs: McGurk Effect,Topicalisation,Calo',Grad Prog

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

Directory

1. grevzand, McGurk Effect
2. Carsten Breul, Topicalisation and Truth-Conditions
3. Mahalat, Calo'
4. Steven Schaufele, Grad Programmes-Corpus-based Ling

I am a Spanish student doing an MSc in Cognitive Science and Natural
Language at the University of Edinburgh. I have chosen the McGurk
effect as the topic for my summer thesis. I was wondering if anyone
knows of any studies that have been done on the McGurk effect related
to Spanish.

Thank you,

Maria Luisa Flecha Garcia 

It has been claimed more than once or twice in the literature that
topicalisation/fronting does not preserve the truth-conditions in
certain sentences involving quantificational DPs. For example, very
recently Irene Heim and Angelika Kratzer (_Semantics in Generative
Grammar_, 1998) maintain that

(1) Almost everybody answered at least one question.
(2) At least one question, almost everybody answered.

do not have the same truth-conditions. They say that (2) "cannot
express the salient reading of [(1)]" (p. 136). The "salient reading"
is that in which the one question that almost everybody answered is
not the same for each of the persons. I.e., (2) may ONLY mean that
there is one and the same question which was answered by almost
everybody.

Is this judgement shared by 'all' native speakers? (My non-native
speaker intuition does not support Heim & Kratzer's claim.) Could you
possibly direct me to work where the claim that
topicalisation/fronting affects truth-conditions is criticised?

Thank you very much in advance.

Dr. Carsten Breul
Englisches Seminar
Universitaet Bonn
Regina-Pacis-Weg 5
53113 Bonn
Germany

e-mail: c.breuluni-bonn.de

Hello. I am seeking help in tracking down _any_ work done on the
dialect of the Gypsies of southern Spain known as Calo' (or Kale,
Cales, Gitano, or Ibero-Romani).

The resources I have found so far are George Borrow's _The Zincali_
(1841) and Margarita Torrione's Calo'-Castillian dictionary (1987). I
would like to find out if there have been any (relatively) recent
linguistic analyses done on this dialect, or if anyone is currently
working with it.

Many thanks in advance,
Michelle Hajder
hajdermcarleton.edu
mahalataol.com 

I'm placing this query on behalf of a former student of mine, who is not
a subscriber. Please send any responses to me, and i'll pass on to her
any interesting or promising possibilities.

She is interested in pursuing graduate studies in linguistics, but is
particularly interested in focussing on corpus-based approaches and
methodologies. The question is, are there any graduate programmes that
are particularly strong in such areas? I have to admit, i don't know of
any, but for her sake i hope there may be a few good university
programmes in linguistics that offer some interesting/exciting
possibilities in pursuing corpus-based research. Does anybody out there
know of any? If there's enough interest & response, i may be able to
post a summary.

Best,
Steven
- 
Steven Schaufele, Ph.D., Asst. Prof. of Linguistics, English Department

Soochow University, Waishuanghsi Campus, Taipei 11102, Taiwan, ROC

(886)(02)2881-9471 ext. 6504 fcosw5mbm1.scu.edu.tw

http://www.prairienet.org/~fcosws/homepage.html



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