5.0217 Lilliburlero; Male/Female Language; Spy Programs (3/61)

Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Sun, 7 Jul 91 17:18:01 EDT

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 5, No. 0217. Sunday, 7 Jul 1991.

(1) Date: Thu, 4 Jul 91 15:30 GMT (26 lines)
From: STFR8011@IRUCCVAX.UCC.IE
Subject: lilliburlero

(2) Date: Fri, 5 Jul 1991 22:55 MST (18 lines)
From: LHAMPLYONS@cudnvr.denver.colorado.edu
Subject: Re: 5.0189 Rs: Male/Female Speech/Language

(3) Date: Fri, 5 Jul 91 10:19 EDT (17 lines)
From: "Mary Dee Harris, Language Technology"
Subject: RE: 5.0214 ... Spy Programs

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Jul 91 15:30 GMT
From: STFR8011@IRUCCVAX.UCC.IE
Subject: lilliburlero

dear humanists

I don't know if the Lilliburlero query has yet receiveed the following
answer or indeed an answer from Ireland, but as far as I know
"Lilliburlero" is a corruption of the following:

"An lile ba leir e, ba linne an la". There should be an acute accent on
the e of "leir", on "e" and on the a of "la", in Irish. This phrase
means roughly "The lily triumphed, we won the day" and refers to the war
between Prote stant and Catholics British monarchs which was carried on
in Ireland in the seventeenth century (another example of great powers
exprting their conflicts to somebody else's territory so they don't have
to live with the slaughter and suffering, the wreckage and the debased
currency)

I hope this helps.

Dr Angela Ryan
Department of French
University College, Cork, Ireland.
email Stfr8011@vax1.ucc.ie
tel 353 21 276871
fax 353 21 272836

(2) --------------------------------------------------------------28----
Date: Fri, 5 Jul 1991 22:55 MST
From: LHAMPLYONS@cudnvr.denver.colorado.edu
Subject: Re: 5.0189 Rs: Male/Female Speech/Language (2/85)

My undergrad linguistics class last year carried out an emprirical study
inot gender differences in color terms and found some but non-significant
differences; recent research in the e-mail equivalent of fall/rise
intonation patterns and hesitation phenomena suggest that there are
soem gender differences. We can, though expect that as/if gender
differences in other spheres are blurred differences in langauge-using
behavior will also fade away. In data I recently collected there was a
clear male/female difference in celebratory behavior resulting from a
birth within a community whwre with a few exceptions males and females
knew each other equally well (I mean *language* behavior, above)

As for the issue of universal differences, surely this is impossible to
tease out since culture is so interwoven with individual behaior/speech?
Liz H-L

(3) --------------------------------------------------------------21----
Date: Fri, 5 Jul 91 10:19 EDT
From: "Mary Dee Harris, Language Technology"
Subject: RE: 5.0214 Intonation; Foreign Plurals; Spy Programs


With regard to the comments about "spy programs," I suspect that the U.S.
intelligence agencies are not as far along with monitoring telephone
conversations as the earlier message implies. The reason is not that they
wouldn't like to do that, but speech understanding technology is not advanced
enough to be used adequately. My (limited) knowledge of the problem includes
a recollection that, while using "spy programs" to monitor drug activities,
the biggest obstacle is the dealers use of code words and slang to refer to
drugs and deals. Understanding that type of language is difficult for humans
and certainly beyond any language understanding software that's available
today.

Mary Dee