zompist bboard

Depends on the institution and its size. Ordinary families have cohorts by generation, but a large institution will have a smaller age range. If the cohort is getting large and there's been a lull in recruitment, that's the ideal time to have the next batch form a new cohort. Thanks, this makes sen...

Thanks for the answers :-D though too bad about the board problems :( Institutional bands can be pretty large-- up to 150 people or so. That works for a nunnery, a gang, a school, etc. Larger institutions like armies are divided into multiple bands. This is interesting! The thing I was most wonderin...

I've just been rereading the Bé Belief Systems page, and was wondering if I could get clarification on a few points :) First, in The Deeds of Pàn , I notice in this excerpt... Four of the idols (Ìsu, Lín, Łas, Jíŋ) are acquired by stealth or tricks; two (Ŋòŋ and Tɔ̀) are rescued from the elcarin tra...

What are the Dhekhnami sound changes? I couldn't find them on the language page, and I do like being able to follow how a descendant emerges from the parent language.

Sumelic wrote:there are other languages where high vowels cause allophonic aspiration of preceding voiceless plosives.

What would motivate that?

Well said! I get that general verb-marking tendencies could be the germ of the idea... but if someone knows enough to be aware that a language might lack overt pronouns, even if they aren't familiar with polysynthesis and all, how do they miss the memo that this is because the verbs are super compli...

Sierra Madre Games has a game called Neanderthal... the rules can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VlXOwXSB9_2QikIi1ZsVI1mmhQdXX0MzHgPuA2BCRxE/edit On the 32nd page is an essay called "A WORD IS WORTH A THOUSAND PICTURES." I don't know enough about cognitive linguistics to comment ...

Interesting. Yeah, I'd completely missed the revision in projections. That changes a great deal. I notice, when looking back to your GWP growth chart, you mention 2036 as "a golden era of progress." I notice this is pretty close to the time that Nigeria reaches great power status. So I wonder if thi...

Messing some more with the datasets from worldmapper.org, I came up with some more interesting results. First I took their dataset on GDP (rather out of date, though, being from 2002), and took the GDP per capita column and multiplied it by their projected 2300 populations. That leads to nearly the ...

Out of curiosity, what was your coinage before you corrected it?

in some cases entirely reject comparative linguistics as a valid field of study. Sorry, I just have to ask... how exactly does one go about rejecting comparative linguistics as a valid field of study? I mean, what does that even look like? Do they offer any reasoning behind that? That just seems so...

This is interesting. I mean, I'm a bit skeptical that it's particularly likely to have accurate results, but it certainly looks fun. Would one have to get a copy of the right Analog or Apocalypses and Apostrophes in order to get a hold of this article, or is it out there somewhere else as well? (I h...

Would anyone be able to find names (any plausible list of vocabulary that could be used as names, I guess) that'd fit around Proto-Northeast Coast Bantu? Or, at the very least, an idea where I could find a source for these? (I have access to a college library with interlibrary loan.) Really all I'm ...

This is something I would quite like to get involved in. I'm a little confused as to what time period exactly we're developing at the moment... would I claim and develop a culture for the time period leading up to the comet, since zompist said on the drama thread "OK, no new rounds for a couple mont...

linguoboy wrote:Doesn't sound similar to me at all. RP /eə/ starts lower and centralises, and a mid central offglide sounds nothing to me like a high front one,

Hmm, fair enough. I suppose I'm just used to different distinctions.

Couldn't he have intended "It so happens that more people in the world are bitten by New Yorkers every year than there are by sharks."? Sounds pretty similar, especially in a non-rhotic 'lect, and at least to my first impression it seems to parse better. (N.B. When I first read the quote, I misread ...

I guess now that I've actually posted I might as well do the census. Age: 18 Gender: Male Nationality: American State/Province/Other Subdivision: Great Lakes Region. Depends on if you're asking for the college or the house. Occupation: Student Sexual Orientation: Bisexual (though I'm not very cut-an...