LINGUIST List 10.301

Tue Feb 23 1999

Qs: Proficiency test, Prepositions, Gender/Lang.

Editor for this issue: Jody Huellmantel <jodylinguistlist.org>



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Directory

  • M. Sadrai, Measuring Native Syntactic Proficiency
  • mcintyre, Prepositions:functional uses
  • Marlis Hellinger, International Handbook Gender across Languages

    Message 1: Measuring Native Syntactic Proficiency

     Date: Mon, 22 Feb 1999 21:44:18 -0600
    From: M. Sadrai <mahm0007tc.umn.edu>
    Subject: Measuring Native Syntactic Proficiency


    Hi folks,

    Does anyone know of any tests measuring the syntactic proficiency of NATIVE speakers of English?

    Thanks in advance, Mahmoud Sadrai

    Message 2: Prepositions:functional uses

     Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1999 17:44:44 +0000
    From: mcintyre <mcintyrerz.uni-leipzig.de>
    Subject: Prepositions:functional uses


    Dear Linguists,

    I wish to understand 'functional' uses of prepositions like these:

    (1) They are at/in church (2) Gwen is on the bus. (3) *Basil is at his desk cleaning it. (4) Il est a son bureau/dans son bureau. (French)

    In (1),the articleless construction implies that the church is being used as a place of worship. In (2) Gwen is understood to be using the bus as a means of transport while (3) is bad because the prep. wrongly implies that the purpose of the desk is being fulfilled. These observations do not apply if respectively 'in' and 'near' are substituted in (2) and (3). In (4) 'a' ('at) implies he is working while 'dans' ('in') implies mere physical presence in the office. It is typical that functional uses of prepositions disregard or defocus the dimensional properties of the reference object, cf. (2, 4). My questions are:

    (A) Treatments of such constructions are to my knowledge excessively brief (e.g. in Becker et al 1988; Cienki 1989; Cuyckens 1994, Herskovits 1986, Jackendoff/Landau 1992, Wesche 1987, Pustejovsky 1995 (full refs. in my summary)). Has anyone written more than a page on these phenomena?

    (B) Similar data appear in other languages, (e.g. German, Russian). I would be grateful if anyone could (mention sources which) supply examples from other languages (esp. non- Indoeuropean). I am especially interested in languages with expressions with literal glosses like 'the hat is IN her head', 'the food is IN the table' (vs. 'the hat is ON the table') or with a locative adposition/case which refers to either the interior or the immediate proximal region of an object and which allows functional readings.

    (C) Are there varieties of English where 'get OFF the bus' has a functional reading (cf. (2)) whilst 'get OFF OF the bus' would mean 'get down from the roof of the bus'.

    (D) Is there any good literature on the syntax or semantics of bare P-N structures as in (1)? (Related examples: 'in school, in bed, on ice, in store, by bus', German 'bei Tisch, auf Lager', French 'en avion, en voiture' etc.) How can these constructions come about diachronically, esp. in a language like French where articleless constructions are rare? Should I generate them in the lexicon where they are productive?

    Many thanks,

    Dr. Andrew McIntyre Institut fuer Anglistik, Universitaet Leipzig Particle Verb Project homepage: http://www.uni-leipzig.de/~part Tel (home): 0341-983 0602 (from Australia:001149-341 983 0602) Tel (work): 0341-9737 328 (from Australia:001149-341 9 7373 28) Fax: 0341-9737 329 Adresse: Shakespearestr. 3 04107 Leipzig Germany

    Message 3: International Handbook Gender across Languages

     Date: Sat, 20 Feb 1999 13:44:04 +0100
    From: Marlis Hellinger <Hellingerem.uni-frankfurt.de>
    Subject: International Handbook Gender across Languages


    Dear all,

    For the International Handbook on 'Gender across Languages' (eds. Marlis Hellinger, Frankfurt am Main and Hadumod Bussmann, Munich) we are looking for a colleague who could contribute on PORTUGUESE or HUNGARIAN.

    In the Handbook, we are primarily concerned with the gender-related structural properties of the language in question (categories of gender, pronominalization, wordformation) and speakers' choices in talking about/addressing women and men. We are also interested in tendencies of variation and change, including, where applicable, language politics/gender-fair guidelines.

    Please get in touch.

    Prof. Dr. Marlis Hellinger IEAS, Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main Germany