[Lingtyp] A list of 50 basic sentences

paolo Ramat paolo.ramat at unipv.it
Sat May 8 16:23:25 UTC 2021


Hoops ! Of course I meant  'sentential', not 'sentinel' !....
P.Rt.


Il giorno sab 8 mag 2021 alle ore 18:20 paolo Ramat <paolo.ramat at unipv.it>
ha scritto:

> Hi Jan,
> why do not add  meteorological expressions, like "It's windy", "It's
> raining"  which certainly  belong to your 'basic sentinel meanings' . This
> kind of predicative sentence does not appear in your list.
>
> Best,
> P.Rt.
>
> prof. dr. Paolo Ramat
>  Università di Pavia (retired)
> Istituto Universitario Studi Superiori (IUSS Pavia) (retired)
> Accademia dei Lincei, Socio corrispondente
> 'Academia Europaea'
> 'Societas Linguistica Europaea', Honorary Member
> piazzetta Arduino 11 - I 27100 Pavia
> ##39 0382 27027
> 347 044 98 44
>
>
> Il giorno sab 8 mag 2021 alle ore 17:15 Broadwell,George Aaron <
> broadwell at ufl.edu> ha scritto:
>
>> Hi Ian,
>>
>> Possibly you'll encounter a problem with this group
>>
>>
>>    1. I have a dog
>>    2. I have two dogs
>>    3. I have many dogs
>>
>> As you probably know, expression of possessive sentences can be very
>> complex cross-linguistically.
>>
>> In Choctaw, for example, 'dog' will be the subject of a verb like 'exist'
>> or 'stand' and the verb will supplete to show its number. Both the
>> possessor and possessee can be marked nominative.  E.g.
>>
>> John-at      ofi-yat      im-a̱tta-h
>> John-nom dog-nom 3dat-exist:sg-tns
>> ’John has a dog.’
>>
>> These are some of the most complicated sentence types in Choctaw.  I
>> think if someone who did not know much about the lg elicited these as part
>> of 50 basic sentences, their grammar would be quite hard to understand.
>>
>> If you’re looking for simple examples of sg/du/pl contrasts, I would
>> avoid the verb 'have'.
>>
>> Aaron B.
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> George Aaron Broadwell, broadwell at ufl.edu  [Pronouns: he/him/his]
>>
>> Elling Eide Professor | University Term Professor (2018-2021)
>>
>> Associate Chair,
>>
>> Dept. of Anthropology, University of Florida
>>
>> Turlington Hall, Room B364
>> PO Box 117305 Gainesville, FL 32611
>>
>> 352-294-7598
>>
>> Copala Triqui dictionary: http://copalatriqui.webonary.org/
>>
>> Timucua dictionary: http://timucua.webonary.org
>>
>> San Dionisio Zapotec http://sandionisiozapotec.webonary.org
>>
>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> ------------------------------
>> *From:* Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of
>> Claire Bowern <clairebowern at gmail.com>
>> *Sent:* Saturday, May 8, 2021 9:52 AM
>> *To:* JOO, Ian [Student] <ian.joo at connect.polyu.hk>
>> *Cc:* LINGTYP <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>> *Subject:* Re: [Lingtyp] A list of 50 basic sentences
>>
>> *[External Email]*
>> Many of the subjects are first person pronouns; but ergative splits often
>> differ by whether the subject is nominal or pronominal (or which person).
>> Claire
>>
>> On Sat, May 8, 2021 at 9:47 AM JOO, Ian [Student] <
>> ian.joo at connect.polyu.hk> wrote:
>>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> to give you a better idea of what I intend to do with the list, please
>> find attached a manuscript I’ve recently written: Basically the idea is to
>> make interlinear glosses of 50-100 sentences and calculate the
>> Damerau-Levenshtein distance between the glosses to calculate the distance
>> between two languages.
>>
>> So for example if we translate the sentence “I am in the house” into
>> English and Korean,
>>
>>    - English has the structure <1.SG
>>    <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__1.SG&d=DwMFaQ&c=sJ6xIWYx-zLMB3EPkvcnVg&r=qeKcDF9fuJtynE1sgtWkljlMiU6zkoGT-A9LsHjrx94&m=_41v-heIh1mO0HQU9oMR_8A74htfuSqV8FBCy6mfSE8&s=stp2oJg4IANL6q5lP_2HBfFEAatmmyEzO9Pu67Q9wrg&e=>
>>    be.1.SG.PRES in DET house>
>>    - Korean has the structure <1.SG-TOP house-LOC be-DECL>
>>
>> so we can calculate the DL distance between the two structures (by
>> counting the number of transposition, deletion, and addition) to see how
>> morphosyntactically different the two languages are (in this case, 2
>> movements + 3 additions + 5 deletions from English to Korean, so 8 scores
>> of DL distance)
>> So the goal is to translate this list of 50-100 sentences into different
>> languages, gloss them, and calculate the distance between each pair of
>> languages.
>> I hope this makes it a bit more clear. I’m sorry for the confusion.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Ian
>> On 8 May 2021, 9:34 PM +0800, Yunfan Lai <lai at shh.mpg.de>, wrote:
>>
>> Hi Ian,
>>
>> Frankly, I do not think that 50 sentences are sufficient. Sometimes using
>> this sort of lists may be misleading. For example, among most others, the
>> passive constructions in Gyalrongic languages are generally unelicitable.
>> Showing the native speaker a passive sentence in English may more often
>> than not lead to a translation with an active construction in Gyalrongic.
>> Gyalrongic does have passive morphology, but can almost exclusively be
>> found in natural narratives.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Yunfan
>>
>> On 8. May 2021, at 15:24, Denys T. <denys.teptiuk at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Just a random thought: you have inferential, mirative, but what about
>> reportative?
>> And I am not sure that I understand correctly, but what is honorific
>> about 'My mother ate fish'? ‘Mother’ over ‘mom’? I don’t know what to offer
>> instead, but I would think about changing this one.
>>
>> Best wishes,
>> Denys
>>
>>
>>
>> On 8. May 2021, at 16:08, JOO, Ian [Student] <ian.joo at connect.polyu.hk>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> I am trying to make a list of 50 basic sentential meanings.
>> The goal is to make parallel corpora of different languages based on this
>> list of sentences.
>> 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.
>> When creating each sentence, I tried to limit its vocabulary to basic
>> words that are found in most languages, avoiding culture-specific words.
>> I would appreciate it if you could have a look at the attached file and
>> advise what I should add/remove/modify.
>>
>> From Hong Kong,
>> Ian
>>
>>
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>> <Basic Sentences.xlsx>_______________________________________________
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>> *This message (including any attachments) contains confidential
>> information intended for a specific individual and purpose. If you are not
>> the intended recipient, you should delete this message and notify the
>> sender and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (the University)
>> immediately. Any disclosure, copying, or distribution of this message, or
>> the taking of any action based on it, is strictly prohibited and may be
>> unlawful.*
>>
>> *The University specifically denies any responsibility for the accuracy
>> or quality of information obtained through University E-mail Facilities.
>> 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
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