3.28 various queries (173)

Willard McCarty (MCCARTY@VM.EPAS.UTORONTO.CA)
Sat, 13 May 89 16:41:30 EDT


Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 3, No. 28. Saturday, 13 May 1989.


(1) Date: 12 May 89 12:07:44 bst (23 lines)
From: D.Mealand@EDINBURGH.AC.UK
Subject: Greek

(2) Date: Wed, 10 May 89 17:28:59 EST (67 lines)
From: "John E. Koontz, NIST 713, Boulder" <JEK@NBS>
Subject: Ideophone questionnaire

(3) Date: Fri, 12 May 1989 14:03:00 CDT (24 lines)
From: "Kevin L. Cope" <ENCOPE@LSUVM>
Subject: Ain't No Horse Can't Be Rode

(4) Date: Fri, 12 May 89 17:17:27 EDT (10 lines)
From: "Thomas W. Stuart" <C078D6S6@UBVM>
Subject: EIES and BLEND

(5) Date: Sat, 13 May 89 11:04:15 EDT (14 lines)
From: Niko Besnier <UTTANU@YALEVM>
Subject: ANTHRO-L

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 12 May 89 12:07:44 bst
From: D.Mealand@EDINBURGH.AC.UK
Subject: Greek

We have been using Greek texts on cd-rom with an Ibycus here for
over a year now and find this facility very useful. Does anyone
on this bb have experience of using the Pandora with Mac equivalent
or the Lbase with PC equivalent ? It is possible that Edinburgh
might wish to get a second system being a split campus and rather
than simply double up on Ibycus it might be worth considering
having a mac or pc based access to the TLG texts. Please reply
to me about this rather than the bb (D.Mealand @edinburgh.ac.uk)

Also about discussion on Greek texts. There is an active group of
Ibycus users who have a list-serv discussion group. Is there any other
sub-group of Humanities people discussing ancient Greek texts on
any of the many networks ? David M.

[Note that the Ibycus, the program Offload (for getting texts from the
CD-ROMs to a PC fixed disk), Pandora, Lbase, and Searcher will all be
exhibited at our software and hardware fair here in June. What better
way could there be than attending the fair for seeing many, if not most,
of the options? --W.M.]
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------75----
Date: Wed, 10 May 89 17:28:59 EST
From: "John E. Koontz, NIST 713, Boulder" <JEK@NBS>
Subject: Ideophone questionnaire



PLEASE COPY PLEASE POST
AND DISTRIBUTE
* * * IDEOPHONES * * *

DO THEY OCCUR IN THE LANGUAGES OF WHICH YOU HAVE SPECIAL KNOWLEDGE? I
would appreciate any information you care to provide. Use the following
as a guide. If a language does not have them, please tell me that too.

1. Name of language
2. Some properties of the ideophones (e.g. from list below, or others)
3. Some examples of the ideophones
4. Is there morphology in the ideophones?
5. Do they show sound symbolism (e.g. vowel height correlating with size)
6. Relation with the rest of the vocabulary (e.g. can ordinary words be
derived from ideophones, or vice-versa?)
7. Is usage correlated with age, sex, situation (story-telling, etc.)
or other sociolinguistic variable?
8. Comparative information. E.g., It has often been noted that
ideophones do not exhibit regular sound-correspondences.
9. Acquisition: any observations on how children learn and use them.
10. Descriptions or collections (published, unpublished, forthcoming)?

Ideophones form a special class of words in some languages. (Diffloth
uses "expressive", reserving "ideophone" for expressives with phonological
symbolism.) The class is often hard to define, though the members are
easy to spot. They may exhibit one or more of the following properties:

1. Phonologically somewhat aberrant, e.g. having segments,
stress-patterns, or phonotatics not found in the general vocabulary.
2. Grammatically different from other words in the language, e.g.
uninflectable when other words are typically inflected, restricted
to special constructions, or able to function as complete utterance.
3. Typically having a "meaning" that is hard to pin down, often
described as characterizing an entire situation, or describing
(usually sense-based) properties in several modalities at once, e.g.
color, size, and speed.
4. Rhetorically they provide additional color not available from the
general vocabulary.

Exx: Japanese "numenume," of a smooth glossy surface having a damp feel,
either sticky or slippery.
Lao "jojo," of a situation involving movement and something heavy
and round, as in carrying a heavy beam on a shoulder.
Zulu "chaphasha," of crossing over; "mikithi" of equality.

There exist dictionaries of Japanese ideophones, and a collection of Lao
ideophones forms part of an unpublished PhD dissertation. Ideophones
traditionally have enjoyed great prominence in African linguistics, but
tend to be slighted by linguists in other areas. So much so that it is
hard to form an idea of how widespread the phenomenon is, let alone how
it varies across the world's languages. The best survey still seems to
be Samarin's (Word, Aug. 1970, revised in the A.A.Hill Festschrift,
1978), based mostly on published work. I suspect that a wealth of
relevant information remains unpublished and inaccessible, or tucked
away in works focussed on other subjects. Hence I have decided to
canvass specialists directly, particularly non-Africanists.

Thank you for your cooperation. I would be glad to send you a summary
of the responses. Please indicate if you would like to receive it.
Robert Hsu, Linguistics Department, University of Hawaii, Honolulu,
Hawaii, 96822 (USA). BITNET: T119920@UHCCMVS
(3) --------------------------------------------------------------29----
Date: Fri, 12 May 1989 14:03:00 CDT
From: "Kevin L. Cope" <ENCOPE@LSUVM>
Subject: Ain't No Horse Can't Be Rode

I'd appreciate help in locating the author or origin of the following
epigram. This item appeared on the illustration for a forthcoming conference
on tombstones and grave markers (it is itself a tombstone inscription).
The inscription, however, seems to go beyond the capacity of the persons
who ordered its incsription, or, at least, it seems to me to have folkloric
qualities to it. I have an ulterior motive--I'd like to share this saying
with a certain operative in our basketball program. So, here is the epigram.

Ain't no horse can't be rode,

Ain't no man can't be throwed.


The tombstone, incidentally, portrays a bucking bronco.



Yours appreciateviely,

Kevin L. Cope
(4) --------------------------------------------------------------13----
Date: Fri, 12 May 89 17:17:27 EDT
From: "Thomas W. Stuart" <C078D6S6@UBVM>
Subject: EIES and BLEND

Does anyone know if either of the big experiments in use of electronic
publishing and communication to support scholarly communication -- EIES
or BLEND -- has had any interface with the BITNET/NETNORTH/EARN/JANET
networks? Any info (or leads) on similar projects in the humanities or
social sciences -- current or completed/defunct -- would also be
welcome.
(5) --------------------------------------------------------------17----
Date: Sat, 13 May 89 11:04:15 EDT
From: Niko Besnier <UTTANU@YALEVM>
Subject: ANTHRO-L


Does anyone have an address for ANTHRO-L, an anthropologists' electronic
discussion group which someone mentioned to me recently?

Thank you.

Niko Besnier
Department of Anthropology
Yale University
UTTANU@YALEVM