<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head> <title></title> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=no"> </head> <body style="font-family:Helvetica;color:#000000;font-size:13px;"><img id="D79E3658BBA3D07A60FC38740E7A46A2" width="0px" src="https://read-receipts.canarymail.io:8100/track/751F2D81C98B64244A1B80D2AD97DBC4_D79E3658BBA3D07A60FC38740E7A46A2.png" height="0px"><div id="CanaryBody"> <div> Hi Ian,</div><div><br></div><div>Following up on Hartmut, Yunfan and others, I have some questions:</div><div><ul><li>What do you do with variation? I’m not familiar with the languages you work on, but ’Tense Future’ in German could be translated as “Ich werde morgen gehen” or “Ich gehe morgen”. The latter would be more frequent in spoken language, but you might get the former because of translation bias. Would you include both? You say that your method accounts for the choice of the speaker, but again I wonder if this isn’t just translation bias.</li><li>You say that this method has the advantage of including more frequently observed features. I wonder how you know whether that’s the case or not? Do you mean in spoken or written language? As Yunfan pointed out, with 50 sentences you might easily miss some common features.</li><li>How do you standardize the glosses? For example, how do you decide whether something should be glossed as ‘be’ or copula? That seems important to me, since glossing is very subjective and you might inadvertendly bias the whole calculation. Especially since you already wrote up the conclusion.</li><li>Lastly, I find it odd that Example 2) is calculated as having distance 1. To me, there are two differences: presence/absence of nominative and the presence/absence of a copula. How do you determine that the copula is in the same slot as the nominative for calculation?</li></ul></div><div><br></div><div>Best,</div><div>Sandra</div><div><br></div> <div><br></div> </div> <div id="CanarySig"> <div> <div style="font-family:Helvetica;">—<br><b><span class="" style="font-size: 12px;"><font face="Tahoma"> <a href="https://sauderset.github.io/"><span class="" style="font-size: 12px;">Sandra Auderset</span></a></font></span></b><div><span class="" style="font-size: 12px;"><span class="" style="font-size: 12px;"><font face="Tahoma">PhD Candidate | [she/her]</font></span></span></div><div><span class="" style="font-size: 12px;"><span class="" style="font-size: 12px;"><font face="Tahoma">Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution</font></span></span></div><div><span class="" style="font-size: 12px;"><span class="" style="font-size: 12px;"><font face="Tahoma">MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology</font></span></span></div><div><span class="" style="font-size: 12px;"><span class="" style="font-size: 12px;"><font face="Tahoma">&</font></span></span></div><div><span class="" style="font-size: 12px;"><span class="" style="font-size: 12px;"><font face="Tahoma">Department of Linguistics</font></span></span></div><div><span class="" style="font-size: 12px;"><span class="" style="font-size: 12px;"><font face="Tahoma">University of California Santa Barbara</font></span></span></div></div> <div><br></div> </div> </div> <div id="CanaryDropbox"> </div> <blockquote id="CanaryBlockquote"> <div> <div>On Saturday, May 08, 2021 at 19:16, Hartmut Haberland <<a href="mailto:hartmut@ruc.dk">hartmut@ruc.dk</a>> wrote:<br></div> <div lang="DA" link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72"> <div class="WordSection1"> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">Dear Ian,<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">I have a few comments.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">I was wondering about<o:p></o:p></span></p> <table class="MsoNormalTable" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="0" style="width:197.0pt;border-collapse:collapse"> <tbody> <tr style="height:14.0pt"> <td width="128" nowrap="" style="width:96.0pt;padding:0cm 3.5pt 0cm 3.5pt;height:14.0pt"> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Courier New";color:black">Genitive<o:p></o:p></span></p> </td> <td width="135" nowrap="" style="width:101.0pt;padding:0cm 3.5pt 0cm 3.5pt;height:14.0pt"> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Courier New";color:black">Alienable<o:p></o:p></span></p> </td> </tr> <tr style="height:14.0pt"> <td width="128" nowrap="" style="width:96.0pt;padding:0cm 3.5pt 0cm 3.5pt;height:14.0pt"> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Courier New";color:black">Genitive<o:p></o:p></span></p> </td> <td width="135" nowrap="" style="width:101.0pt;padding:0cm 3.5pt 0cm 3.5pt;height:14.0pt"> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Courier New";color:black">Inalienable<o:p></o:p></span></p> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">Is it a good idea to use ‘genitive’? Would ‘possessive’ not be better?<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">Also I wonder about languages like Finnish which express contrast between definiteness and indefiniteness by word order:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">Auto on kadulla. ‘<u>The car</u> is in the street.’<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">Kadulla on auto. ‘There is <u>a car</u> in the street.’ (-ulla is inessive case.)<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">Also think of Italian<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">La macchina è rotta.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">È rotta la machina. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">both ‘The car is broken’, but are answers to different questions (Where is your car?, Why are you late?, resp.); same (SV vs. VS) in Greek. How would you get these results?<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">Best, Hartmut<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <div> <div style="border:none;border-top:solid #E1E1E1 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0cm 0cm 0cm"> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Fra:</span></b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"> Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org> <b>På vegne af </b>JOO, Ian [Student]<br> <b>Sendt:</b> 8. maj 2021 15:08<br> <b>Til:</b> LINGTYP <lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org><br> <b>Emne:</b> [Lingtyp] A list of 50 basic sentences<o:p></o:p></span></p> </div> </div> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <div name="messageBodySection"> <div> <p class="MsoNormal">Dear all,<br> <br> I am trying to make a list of 50 basic sentential meanings.<br> The goal is to make parallel corpora of different languages based on this list of sentences.<br> Each sentence on the list serves to check whether a language has a given grammatical feature, and if so, in what form the language expresses it.<br> When creating each sentence, I tried to limit its vocabulary to basic words that are found in most languages, avoiding culture-specific words.<br> I would appreciate it if you could have a look at the attached file and advise what I should add/remove/modify.<o:p></o:p></p> </div> </div> <div name="messageSignatureSection"> <p class="MsoNormal"><br> From Hong Kong, <o:p></o:p></p> <div> <p class="MsoNormal">Ian<o:p></o:p></p> </div> </div> <p class="MsoNormal"><img id="_x0000_i1025" src="https://www.polyu.edu.hk/emaildisclaimer/PolyU_Email_Signature.jpg"><o:p></o:p></p> <p><br> <em>Disclaimer:</em><o:p></o:p></p> <p style="margin-left:36.0pt"><i><span style="color:black">This message (including any attachments) contains confidential information intended for a specific individual and purpose. 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Any views and opinions expressed are only those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the University and the University accepts no liability whatsoever for any losses or damages incurred or caused to any party as a result of the use of such information.</i><o:p></o:p></p> </div> _______________________________________________<br>Lingtyp mailing list<br>Lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org<br>http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp<br></div> </div> </blockquote> </body></html>