March 7, 2003

An e-mail message

E-mail employs most of the conventions of standard written language, except that it can vary widely in degree of formality. Conventions concerning openings and closings are different than from paper letters ("snail mail").

From: Jim Martin [martin@cs.colorado.edu]
To: Susanna Cumming
Sent: Wed 4/25/01 12:55 PM
Subject: paper reprint?


Hi Susanna,

I have a student working on extracting Wordnet-like hypernym relations
from text and I'd like him to take a look at your Ad Hoc Hierarchy paper.
(to get a broader perspective on what he's doing and why). I have a hardcopy
of a draft but not the final version. Don't suppose you have an electronic
version?

Also I assume you coded the data for that work in a nifty database. Any
chance
you'd be interested in making that available?

Jim

ps: how's things?

Mailing lists are similar to e-mail, but since they go to a wide number of recipients, the language tends to be considerably more formal.

A mailing list post

Fri, 11 Jan 2002 08:23:42 -0500
From: Jim Rader <jrader@Merriam-Webster.com>
To: AUSTRONESIAN LANGUAGES AND LINGUISTICS <AN-LANG@anu.edu.au>
Reply-to: jrader@Merriam-Webster.com
Subject: Ama, Ambonese


I hope that AN-LANGers can help me with a couple more
problems. My apologies, by the way, if I have been remiss in
individually thanking respondents in the past. I have been under
heavy deadline pressure of late and many things slip under the rug.

First: is the word <ama> designating the outer float or hull of an
outrigger canoe used in any Polynesian language other than
Hawaiian? I have no way of checking this easily.

Second: Does the word "Amboinese/Ambonese" have any
meaning as a language label, or does this just describe the variety
of Malay spoken on Ambon? Is "Central Moluccan" useable as a
label for a form from one or more languages of Maluku, or is this
simply too broad, seeing that "Central Maluku" has been used, if
I'm not mistaken, to describe a fairly large assemblage of
Austronesian languages? Jim Collins, who is pretty familiar with
this area, used "Central Moluccan" in some etymological notes he
gave me a number of years ago. The particular syntagma I have in
mind is <ai lanito>, the etymon of the botanical Latin name
<ailanthus>.

My thanks in advance for any comments--Jim Rader

Jim Rader
Etymology Editor
Merriam-Webster, Inc.
47 Federal St., P.O. Box 281
Springfield MA 01102
http://www.merriamwebster.com

Chat/messaging

Real-time written communication via computer. This leads to a very distinctive set of special language usages.

Distinct from other computer genres (e-mail, mailing lists, newsgroups, forums), but features that originate in chat may spill into these genres.

Some features of chat:
· Since text is sent one line at a time, no overlaps/interruptions.
· Since sender and recipient are not copresent, topics may be mixed up.
· Previous context constantly scrolls off the top of the screen; speed depends on how many people are typing, and how fast.

Some emergent conventions (may differ from one community to another):

In general, chat and IM orient towards spoken rather than written language norms.

Abbreviation:
· deletion of subject pronouns: "goodbye gonna try and do something smart for once"
· Words: "r u" for "are you", "c u" for "see you" etc.

Paralinguistic/prosodic cues:
· lengthening: "cooollll"
· ellipsis ("…") for pauses
· UPPERCASE (for loudness)
· Spaces between letters: "A N N E M A R I E!!!"
· emoticons: :) etc.
· "eye dialect": "wot wuz dat fo?"

Actions and gestures:
· Conventionally, description enclosed in asterisks: "*hugs*", "*shakes hand*"
· Other kinds of actions may be simulated: "*** Zola fills a flute of champagne for all"
· Graphical images, sometimes inserted by the program: @}-`-,-`-- (rose)

Some IM data

wndrlk74: hello
TheSUCK: hey
TheSUCK: what's goin on?
wndrlk74: how are ya bro?
TheSUCK: that's step-bro to you, boy
wndrlk74: I just got finished hanging x-mas lights, sorry sir
TheSUCK: doin fine
TheSUCK: already?
TheSUCK: got snow?
wndrlk74: took advantage of nice weather
TheSUCK: ah
wndrlk74: we finally got snow yesterday in the mts
wndrlk74: how's the weather there?
TheSUCK: we're not even close - it's like 60 out
wndrlk74: that's crazy
wndrlk74: never did have normal weather there