LINGUIST List 9.962

Sun Jun 28 1998

Qs: Syntax, Slavic Nouns, Quote, Altaic

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

Directory

1. keikoune, N. Chomsky's distinct
2. Pierre [** iso-8859-1 charset **] Larriv\233e, Re: 9.943, Sum: Slavic Noun Phrase
3. Z.S. Bond, Reference
4. Frank Bramlett, Altaic Languages

Dear Linguists:

N. Chomsky in a recent book "Minimalist Program" provides the
following definition of DOMAIN:

'Take the domain of a head A to be the set of nodes contained in
MAX(A) that are DISTINCT FROM and do not contain A." Chomsky (1995)
p. 178 line 4.

Does anyone know what the formal definition of the phrase DISTINCT
FROM is, and what the reference is for it? Even an informal definition
would be helpful, if there is no formal definition. Thank you.

Keiko Unedaya

Message 2: Re: 9.943, Sum: Slavic Noun Phrase

Dear colleagues,

Following upon Larisa Zlatic interesting posting on Slavic Noun
Phrase, where among other things she states that

>In the marked contexts, the order determiner-universal quantifer is
>also possible. So, in Slavic, both 4a. or 4b are possible word
>orders.
>
>4. a. all these pictures
> b. these all pictures

I was wondering whether this positional difference would influence the
scope of negation; in other words, whether Slavic structures
equivalent to

1. I didn't look at all these pictures.
2. I didn't look at these all pictures.

would have different reading (presumably,the first one meaning more
readily that some pictures were looked at but not all, and the second
that none of the pictures were looked at). What prompted that question
is the fact that in French, the presence of a determiner before a
numeral substracts this numeral from negative focus:

3. Je n'ai pas regard trois photos.
 I didn't look at three pictures
 (=I looked at less than three, eg very few)
4. Je n'ai pas regard ces trois photos.
 I didn't look at these three pictures
 (=these three pictures, I didn't look at them)

Help on this will be more than appreciated!

Pierre Larrive

Doctor Pierre Larrive
Lecturer in French
School of Languages and European Studies
Aston University
Aston Triangle
Birmingham B4 7ET
United Kingdom

Tel +44 (0)121 359 3611 ext. 5454
Fax +44 (0)121 359 6153
Web http://www.les.aston.ac.uk/staff/pl.html

I ran in to a quotation by L. R. Palmer: Speech is no more than a
series of rough hints which the hearer must interpret.... I would very
much appreciate it if someone could point me to the
reference. Thanks...

Dear Linguists,

I'm teaching an introduction to linguistics this quarter, and a
student of mine asked about web sites and/or introductory material on
Altaic languages. Could any of you make suggestions? I'll post a
summary to the list.

Thanks very much,
Frank Bramlett

Frank Bramlett			 Linguistics Program
fbramletparallel.park.uga.edu	 University of Georgia
 http://www.linguistics.uga.edu