LINGUIST List 3.904
Tue 17 Nov 1992
Disc: Names, Spanish
Editor for this issue: <>
Directory
John E. Koontz, Re: 3.892 Articles in Geographical Names
Ian MacKay, Articles in place-names
Michael Newman, Re: 3.894 Queries: Fillmore; Spanish; Chinese TeX Fonts; NLP
Message 1: Re: 3.892 Articles in Geographical Names
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1992 11:23:56
Re: 3.892 Articles in Geographical Names
From: John E. Koontz <koontzalpha.bldr.nist.gov>
Subject: Re: 3.892 Articles in Geographical Names
In regard to 'The La Brea Tar Pits' meaning 'the the tar tar pits', this
reminds me of some Colorado forms I've seen: Table Mesa, i.e. `table table';
Casa del El Dorado (about the best one can do with this is "sic"); and The
El Rancho Ranch, i.e., `the the ranch ranch', the last with the same
embedding observed in The La Brea Tar Pits.
Somewhat comparable to the `hill ...' examples are the various rivers in the
central US called things like (the) Niobrara (Neosho, Minnesota, etc.) River,
in which Ni (Ne, Minne, etc.) represents the term in the local Siouan
language for `water'. Major rivers are general named `the (something)
water' in Siouan languages (though there is generally a perfectly good term
for river in each language). Similar things occur with river names borrowed
from Native American languages, and, of course, (sometimes) from Spanish, cf.
"the Rio Grande River," though not, apparently with river names borrowed
from French, cf. the Platte River, the Cache-la-Poudre [River? Creek?], etc.
Message 2: Articles in place-names
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 92 12:32:33 ESArticles in place-names
From: Ian MacKay <IMACKAYacadvm1.uottawa.ca>
Subject: Articles in place-names
Having missed the early part of this discussion, I may be going over
familiar territory; if so I hope the editor will delete this message.
Having noticed a while ago that suddenly news readers were talking about
"Ukraine" where I had always previously heard "the Ukraine", I asked a
question show on a local radio show about the change. While the answer
(from an expatriot democratic nationalist) was linguistically inexpert,
it is perhaps revealing of how the article in place names is perceived
by the non-specialist. This person ignored the issue of what the name is
in Ukrainian [I assume that there is no definite article in that language],
but concentrated on the "fact" that the article "the" made it sound that
Ukraine was a part of something else, and that by dropping the article, the
country seemed more independent. I know of no evidence for this viewpoint,
but there is a parallel in the Canadian territory formerly known as the
Yukon. Recently, news readers have been referring to it as "Yukon" rather
than "the Yukon". This parallels recent movements and stirrings in the
direction of provincial rather than territorial status. This might be
supported by the contention that "the Yukon" is *really* short for "the
Yukon territory".
In both cases, the popular interpretation seems to be that in the names
of states (either nation-states or states as in American states or Canadian
provinces), the definite article diminishes the status or independence of
the political entity so named.
Message 3: Re: 3.894 Queries: Fillmore; Spanish; Chinese TeX Fonts; NLP
Date: Sat, 14 Nov 92 09:55:51 ESRe: 3.894 Queries: Fillmore; Spanish; Chinese TeX Fonts; NLP
From: Michael Newman <MNEHCCUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Subject: Re: 3.894 Queries: Fillmore; Spanish; Chinese TeX Fonts; NLP
Regarding Ron Corio's query on the state of epicene masculines in Spanish,
os/as does appear on occasion, but rather infrequently. In Spain, at least,
which is the area I'm most familiar with, I noticed it occasionally, along with
the singular -o/a. Curiously, the article does not change so a generic student
could be something like "EL ALUMNO/A," but I don't remember any EL/LA ALUMNO/A,
or EL ALUMNO O LA ALUMNA. (ALUMNO is somewhere between pupil and student in
meaning) Additionally, I don't remember seeing EL/LA ESTUDIANTE.(ESTUDIANTE, or
STUDENT, being either male or female)
The problem is evidently similar to the case of s/he, he/she, she/he, he or she
etc. Once is not too bad, it quickly becomes tedious. I was once doing a
translation together with an Argentine lesbian. At one point she decided we
should translate some of the explicitly bigender terms in the English original
to explicitly bigender ones in Spanish becuase, as she put it, it was not a
a bad idea to explicitly include women. Unfortunately, it soon became clear
that it wasn't going to work: too many slashes and that strange inconsistency
of maintaining the masculine article. Since almost every element in the NP is
going to have to agree with the bigender head to be consistent, it really is
going to be a mess. By the way when I JOKINGINGLY suggested to her and others
that the solution would be a massive prescriptive reform in which any gender
marked reference item be given a neutral ending like -e or -u, the reaction
was always one of horror. They could not even believe I could make a joke
like that.
I think in the end, the Spanish -o/os, unlike their English equivalents, can be
interpreted neutrally. There is ample experimental and observational evidence
that the so-called generic HE is not really interpreted neutrally. Some of
this literature is interpreted and critiqued in my article, "Pronominal
Disagreements" in the current issue of LANGUAGE IN SOCIETY, if you can forgive
my shameless self-promotion. (Also send me a message if you'd like more ref-
erences or a more complete review) It would be interesting if someone would
run the same sort of experiments or did the same sort of corpus analysis I did,
on Spanish, French or any other language with an unmarked masculine.
Michael Newman