zompist bboard

My least favourite German cluster: /nfstf/, as in "Zukunfstsphilogie"

No lateral trills...

I don't think "Panting, the man ran down the beach" is an example of anything much like clause chaining, whether marginal or otherwise. The "panting" is a subordinate adverbial clause (save for the elision of a preposition like "while" or other standard adverbial clause trappings) - whereas clause ...

I don't think plate armour WAS a reaction to firearms - I think it was earlier. What I've heard is that the increasing armouredness was a (futile) attempt to deal with longbows and crossbows and the like. Full articulate plate developed between the mid thirteenth and mid fifteenth century. Firearms ...

Mercator: confusingly, "Ba'al" is/was both a title and a name. Its as though Christians called Jehovah 'the Lord', but called each angel "Lord of such-and-such" - and then the people connected with a particular angel called just called him '"the lord" when it was clear Jehovah wasn't meant. This, I'...

Del, how the HELL can you put a diaresis into 'theatre'? It's a diphthong! the point of the diaresis is to show vowels that AREN'T diphthongs. But that IS a diphthong. Some dialects, it's just a long vowel! I mean, goo god. It's like saying "E?r" for 'ear'!!! Your spelling makes it look like /T@.{t@...

The conditions when I would 'borrow' something (from a friend or p2p or whatever): 1) If it's too expensive for me to ever think about buying. Eg, I am NOT going to pay hundreds of pounds (or even tens of pounds) for software that I think I might happen to use at some point. Eg, I've got a copy of A...

Her dialect is a "father from dublin (grandfather from Belfast), mother from Kerry, but learnt Irish in school in Waterford, can't really "speak" irish any more but remembers words, phrases and pronunciation, and probably would remember how to speak it if she were listening to other speakers" dialec...

I have a question!

The acute mark. It appears to be called a 'fada'. However, I've fairly certain my mother pronounces it /fQD@/ (or something that to my english ears sounds like that - Q, not a, and D, not d. Now, a-->Q doesn't seem impossible but why on earth a D? HAve you heard anything like that?

But what about when they DO cross? Surely you can't claim that they actually used a different sentence just to avoid having evidence that conflicts with the arbitrary 'straight lines are good' theory of linguistics? Lines aren't present in people's speech. They're drawn by syntacticians. "You can't...

But what about when they DO cross? Surely you can't claim that they actually used a different sentence just to avoid having evidence that conflicts with the arbitrary 'straight lines are good' theory of linguistics?

If you can't cross lines, what do you do when the lines cross?

Hmm. Maybe I ought briefly to state my own opinion on the matter: I don't think that metaphors have indicative denotation. However, nor do I believe that they are expressions of emotion. I think that a 'view of the world', a 'model' or whatever actually has two types of data in it, which are not red...

Well Spack, I'm aware by now that everyone reads a different Wittgenstein, but your's is totally new to me! The one I read spends most of his time directly attacking the position that meaning is something beyond language, that we have a meaning in our minds when we say something that our interlocuto...

Kirk: but the first 'disagreement' there isn't linguistic, but a matter of biological trivia. Well, I'm sure it's significant to biologists and neurologists and brain surgeons and what have you, but I don't see what it has to do with linguistics. My lexicon could be processed by the same part of my ...

Are you sure you aren't saying 'Chomskian theory' where you really mean 'Chomsky's theory'? Can a Chomskian really not say 'hey, we missed a bit - we need a new rule!' and then add a new rule, without compromise the essential framework of Chomsky?

Not entirely on topic, but you know what's recently been fascinating me about metaphor? Truth. Most claims - "all dogs are blue" - can be argued with. I can show a person certain evidence (eg a non-blue dog) he can accept that evidence as being true, and, if he is rational, he can then admit that hi...

What are their leaders like? Are they despotic kings (like the Pharoah) whom everybody trembles before like an evil god? Incidentally, I find this a rather odd description of Pharaonic rule. If the murtani leaders are at all parallel to Pharaohs, that would make them hereditary royalty ruling with ...

Little contact would probaly help preserve the language rather than destroy it. As far as I know, linguistic, like most othe social, change is a function of communication density. For one thing, low density makes it difficult to transfer innovations. For another, it increases the chance of an innova...

you know, i just realised who khang reminds me of so much: T-Rex. Only less verbose and widely-read.

I've not really studied any of them. I liked all the syntax in the Axunasin description, though.

linguofreak wrote: And giving a joke a backstory makes it funnier.

I have to whole-heartedly agree there. Anyone who's read Douglas Adams' or Terry Pratchett's brilliant elaboration of already good offhand one-liners will know what I mean.

I don't like the loanwords from european languages. Also, the other races, wic strike me mainly as too startrekky/d&dish. particularly the wole evil empire of the ktuvok thing. But, each to their own.

linguoboy wrote:the like, but I've never seen them used in modern texts.

You should add the ancient Germanic month names as well. There's a very complete treatment of them here.

Wow! Dazi gets her very own month?

garrett wrote:I always that that this french form of the verb "louer" was crazy: loueait.

It has five different vowels in a row; this would never fly in english!

Clearly you've never come across the perfectly legitimate (though most likely never actually used before) English word 'portmanteauoid'!