5.0136 Qs: E-Encyclopedias; Frequency List; Articulation (3/69)

Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Tue, 11 Jun 91 17:00:04 EDT

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 5, No. 0136. Tuesday, 11 Jun 1991.


(1) Date: Mon, 10 Jun 91 18:11 PDT (13 lines)
From: "Vicky A. Walsh" <IMD7VAW@UCLAMVS.BITNET>
Subject: info on e-encyclopedias

(2) Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1991 19:09:29 PDT (16 lines)
From: Diane_L._Olsen.osbu_north@xerox.com
Subject: Frequency list for Arabic/Persian/Urdu/Pashto?

(3) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1991 02:06 +0800 (40 lines)
From: "Tze-wan KWAN, Philosophy Dept." <B071767@CUCSC.BITNET>
Subject: Double Articulation

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 91 18:11 PDT
From: "Vicky A. Walsh" <IMD7VAW@UCLAMVS.BITNET>
Subject: info on e-encyclopedias

Does anyone out there have any experience with electronic encyclopedias-
on disks or CD-ROM (I don't mean here the ones on on-line services)?
I have heard of Random House and Grolliers; are there any others and
could you recommend any? These are for student use, not faculty, if that
helps to focus the question.

Thanks.
Vicky Walsh
UCLA Humanities Computing
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------28----
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1991 19:09:29 PDT
From: Diane_L._Olsen.osbu_north@xerox.com
Subject: Frequency list for Arabic/Persian/Urdu/Pashto?

One of my coworkers here at Xerox is making enhancements to our
Arabic/Persian/Urdu/Pashto word-processing software and has need of a
list (for any of those four languages) of the relative frequency of
occurrence of the letters in the alphabet -- something like the
"ETAONRISHRDLU..." list for English. Does anyone know where she might
find such a list?

Please send replies to iwoo.osbu_north@xerox.com, not to me. Thanks in
advance!

Diane L. Olsen
Multilingual Development
Xerox Corporation
(3) --------------------------------------------------------------45----
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1991 02:06 +0800
From: "Tze-wan KWAN, Philosophy Dept., CUHK, Hongkong" <B071767@CUCSC.BITNET>
Subject: Double Articulation

I am currently working on a paper that handles the relation between
speech sounds and meaning. In the course of formulating my thesis, I
came across the concept of "double articulation" which is in fact a
semiotic distinction between the meaning determining function on the one
hand (1st articulation: morphemes, words, sentences...rituals,
cultural tradition) and the meaning discriminative function on the
other (2nd articulation: distinctive features, phonemes, syllables, may
be sound clusters). This differentiation is supposedly important as it
allows a symbolic system to function with the greatest efficiency and
abstraction. Some cognitive scientists takes this feature of
differentiation in symbolic activity as peculiar to and characteristic
of human intelligence at large. As this issue is quite new to me I
would like to hear some more opinions from the outside world. The only
relevant sources I have found so far are works by Roman Jakobson and
Andre Martinet. Some works of Elmar Holenstein (Bochum, Germany) also
touch upon this issue. Can anyone out there give me some enlightenment
in regard of the history of this notion? Further bibliographical
information will also be appreciated!

Tze-wan Kwan
Dept. of Philosophy,
The Chinese University of Hong Kong,
Shatin, Hongkong
E-Mail: B071767@CUCSC (Bitnet) or
B071767@CUCSC.CUHK.HK