Re: question: Arabic morphology

On Mon, 21 Aug 2000, Michael Potter wrote:

> yl112@CORNELL.EDU writes:
>
> > > [What is 'generic' here?]
> >
> >  Used in making general statements, e.g. Daggers are sharp.  You're
> >  talking about a class of items, not a particular instance--making a
> >  generalization.  I don't know if it's legit, but hey, it tickled my fancy.
>
> Just wondering, Yoon, but have you ever done any Java programming? I do like
> the idea of that distinction, maybe I can borrow it from you? :)
Yes, I have.  :-)  I've programmed in Pascal (self-taught, so the first
text game I wrote was utter inelegant hash, but what can you do?), Java
and Dylan (obscure but achingly elegant, beautiful, *beautiful* language
related to LISP or Scheme, don't know how computer language taxonomy
works).  You can borrow the distinction.  I'm sure someone else has done it!

> I'm thinking of ordering _The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language_, unless I
> can find something better. Looking at the page on Amazon.com, I see at least
> one list member who has recommended it, anyone else want to help me out?
I liked it as a general introduction.  I read it with no prior
linguistics unless you count HS French and I could make sense of most of
it.  I still think any book that has stuff on phonetics should come with
a cassette tape, and for some reason I can't get .au files to play on
this computer for phonetics-website-viewing, which is something I'll need
to fix.  I got 2nd ed. for $20 at a used bookstore.  (I couldn't believe
someone had given it up!)

I read Fromkin & never-can-remember-the-other-name's _Introduction to
Linguistics_, which seemed to be a similar thing with less pictures and
more exercises.  :-p  I've also tried Ronald Macaulay's _The Social Art_,
which was too geared toward monolinguistic-English-speakers for my taste,
but it might be a gentler introduction (which, however, I doubt you need).

YHL