Search found 267 matches

by Ulrike Meinhof
Fri Dec 06, 2013 4:55 am
Forum: None of the above
Topic: The Official ZBB Quote Thread
Replies: 2878
Views: 636808

Re: The Official ZBB Quote Thread

Rhetorica wrote:(Who in their right mind would ever need a selection rectangle indicating the edges of the current layer? You only need that when arranging stuff in large documents, which is a tiny minority of usage cases! Don't copy PaintShop Pro's terrible defaults! They're terrible!)
Isn't that off by default?
by Ulrike Meinhof
Tue Nov 26, 2013 5:33 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread
Replies: 2225
Views: 448195

Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

Nortaneous wrote:it's too bad the (AFAIK and I'm probably wrong) only wl- word to survive into even middle english underwent metathesis to break up the cluster and then died out
Which one?
by Ulrike Meinhof
Mon Nov 04, 2013 3:39 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: [p]->[k] sound change outside of Arapaho?
Replies: 12
Views: 4102

Re: [p]->[k] sound change outside of Arapaho?

Depending on the phonology, you can just do it straight off if you don't already have lots of plosives and clusters etc. Look at Polynesian. In any case, it's not a strange sound change in the least.
by Ulrike Meinhof
Sun Oct 06, 2013 2:55 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: What is English /p/ in the coda position?
Replies: 10
Views: 2486

Re: What is English /p/ in the coda position?

Woody Allen occasionally has ejectives for all three unvoiced stops utterance-finally.
by Ulrike Meinhof
Mon Sep 23, 2013 4:05 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Non-IE auxiliary verbs
Replies: 33
Views: 6800

Re: Non-IE auxiliary verbs

Inversion wrote:This is equivalent to the French aller de V construction
Venir de, rather?
by Ulrike Meinhof
Wed Sep 11, 2013 3:15 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: RIP Ivan Sag
Replies: 2
Views: 1607

Re: RIP Ivan Sag

Pole wrote:
merijn wrote:EDITED to use the proper abbreviation for Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar
Ah, I thought that HPSG is some kind of a Harry Potter pairing, but just couldn't decipher that SG.
Stargate
by Ulrike Meinhof
Thu Sep 05, 2013 5:00 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Cases/Adpositions
Replies: 12
Views: 3409

Re: Cases/Adpositions

Terra, go read on "dechticaetiativity" This is a curious suggestion, actually. I once tried to do just that a while back when the phenomenon sparked my interest, but apart from a Wikipedia article and a handful of mentions in forums and the like, I haven't seen this term in use anywhere. Grammars a...
by Ulrike Meinhof
Sun Aug 18, 2013 11:41 am
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: But do they have their own language?
Replies: 6
Views: 2501

Re: But do they have their own language?

What's up with just copying real city names? Tammerfors, Vimmerby, Oxelösund (albeit without the dots), Markaryd, Djursholm, Haninge, Helsingfors... probably lots that I don't recognize. It's a settlement colony, with mostly English and Swedish ancestry population. Settlers often bring their topony...
by Ulrike Meinhof
Sun Aug 18, 2013 6:09 am
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: But do they have their own language?
Replies: 6
Views: 2501

Re: But do they have their own language?

What's up with just copying real city names? Tammerfors, Vimmerby, Oxelösund (albeit without the dots), Markaryd, Djursholm, Haninge, Helsingfors... probably lots that I don't recognize.
by Ulrike Meinhof
Wed Aug 07, 2013 1:38 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Common L2 English mistakes
Replies: 56
Views: 10328

Re: Common L2 English mistakes

Seems we're alone among the languages of Europe in preferring the present perfect (progressive or otherwise) in this context. Nope, not alone. Hemos vivido aquí por cinco años sounds as normal and idiomatic to me as Vivimos aquí desde hace cinco años . And Swedish works exactly like English in this...
by Ulrike Meinhof
Mon Jul 29, 2013 12:34 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Euphony and non-phonemic orthographies
Replies: 23
Views: 5083

Re: Euphony and non-phonemic orthographies

Aurora Rossa wrote:The combination <qv> in Swedish also really appeals to me, though I don't know if they still do that.
Not since the late 1800s. I recall having mentioned this before, but in case you've forgotten, your much revered <hv> is no more since 1906 and <hj lj dj gj> are all /j/.
by Ulrike Meinhof
Tue Jul 16, 2013 3:42 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: "Suppletive" comparatives
Replies: 8
Views: 2438

Re: "Suppletive" comparatives

Stuck-up prescriptivist Swedish prohibits comparing sakta 'slowly', favouring the synonyms långsammare and långsammast, respectively. I suspect, however, that most speakers intuitively only find the forms saktare and saktast a bit less formal-sounding, at the very most.
by Ulrike Meinhof
Mon Jun 24, 2013 4:30 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Good books on IE linguistics
Replies: 9
Views: 2540

Re: Good books on IE linguistics

The best book I know on this matter is Indo-European Language and Culture by Benjamin W. Fortson IV. Seconded. This covers all the wishes of the OP. Thank you both! It does indeed seem like a good introduction, and beyond what it covers I suppose you just have to look up the literature on the indiv...
by Ulrike Meinhof
Mon Jun 24, 2013 4:28 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Grammatical developments propelling sound change
Replies: 7
Views: 2281

Re: Grammatical developments propelling sound change

The usual way to think about case loss in Romance nowadays goes the other way: a continuous increase of the use of prepositions made case endings more and more useless. [...] Even then, I don't personally know how accurate it is to say that [phonology/grammar] affected [phonology/grammar]. Surely t...
by Ulrike Meinhof
Sun Jun 23, 2013 6:28 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Good books on IE linguistics
Replies: 9
Views: 2540

Good books on IE linguistics

I'm getting increasingly annoyed with my limited knowledge of Indo-European linguistics and I feel like it's time to read up a bit on it, just so I won't be lost when people talk about whoever's law and this and that development in the palatal series in Italic and whatever. So, and this has probably...
by Ulrike Meinhof
Sun Jun 23, 2013 4:10 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Grammatical developments propelling sound change
Replies: 7
Views: 2281

Grammatical developments propelling sound change

It's common for sound changes to have sometimes radical effects on grammar, such as the loss of case distinctions in Romance for example, but are there any cases of grammatical changes leading to changes in the phonology? Perhaps there are textbook examples of this that I just can't recall for the m...
by Ulrike Meinhof
Sun Jun 02, 2013 8:05 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: [r]
Replies: 24
Views: 5066

Re: [r]

Wierdmin wrote:I apologize if this is intrusive
hehehe
by Ulrike Meinhof
Tue May 14, 2013 4:55 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Re: Help me with semantic examples! (from Zomp's blog)
Replies: 218
Views: 39971

Re: Help me with semantic examples! (from Zomp's blog)

English distinguishes between "house" and "building", while Swedish "hus" covers more than "house", but I'm not sure about how much of "building" is covered. Eh? Building is byggnad. In Swedish it's perfectly normal to refer to the WTC North Tower as norra huset , whereas house would seem out of pl...
by Ulrike Meinhof
Sun May 12, 2013 4:12 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Re: Help me with semantic examples! (from Zomp's blog)
Replies: 218
Views: 39971

Re: Help me with semantic examples! (from Zomp's blog)

Swedish uses snygg as an all-purpose adjective for beauty/prettiness (in both people and inanimate objects), and anyone can call anyone snygg regardless of the sex of both the speaker and the person spoken of. Söt is pretty much equivalent to 'cute' and is probably more commonly used with females. ...
by Ulrike Meinhof
Fri May 10, 2013 5:52 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Re: Help me with semantic examples! (from Zomp's blog)
Replies: 218
Views: 39971

Re: Help me with semantic examples! (from Zomp's blog)

Swedish uses snygg as an all-purpose adjective for beauty/prettiness (in both people and inanimate objects), and anyone can call anyone snygg regardless of the sex of both the speaker and the person spoken of. Söt is pretty much equivalent to 'cute' and is probably more commonly used with females. V...
by Ulrike Meinhof
Fri May 03, 2013 3:47 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Re: Help me with semantic examples! (from Zomp's blog)
Replies: 218
Views: 39971

Re: Help me with semantic examples! (from Zomp's blog)

4. Lumps city and town into a word "kota" 5. Lumps leg and feet into a word "kaki" (I think this is kinda common) Yes, the latter is common, but surely the former is even more so? In fact, I don't know of any language other than English that distinguishes town and city (and I'm not sure I fluently ...
by Ulrike Meinhof
Thu May 02, 2013 9:04 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Re: Help me with semantic examples! (from Zomp's blog)
Replies: 218
Views: 39971

Re: Help me with semantic examples! (from Zomp's blog)

fjäll/tunturi - mountain in the north of the Nordic countries. berg/vuori - mountain elsewhere. That's not really true; berg can freely be used to talk about Nordic mountains without it sounding strange in the least, however referring to Mount Everest as fjäll sounds quite weird. Actually, I think ...
by Ulrike Meinhof
Wed Mar 20, 2013 3:55 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Polyglottal Telephone 17 [done]
Replies: 161
Views: 30216

Re: Polyglottal Telephone 17 [done]

Oh, finally! I'm glad I didn't mess up, apparently. But I agree with Qwynegold that the original text was (too) hard; as a non-native speaker it doesn't make much sense unless I really go through the effort of looking up words and stuff. I think it's usually funnier in the end when you end up with a...
by Ulrike Meinhof
Sun Feb 24, 2013 8:12 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Polyglottal Telephone 17 [done]
Replies: 161
Views: 30216

Re: Polyglottal Telephone (number 17) [UPDATED: teams!]

Yiuel Raumbesranae wrote:
finlay wrote:Did you send it to ulrike meinhof?
I did.
And I received it, and now it's in the hands of tubragg.
by Ulrike Meinhof
Sat Feb 09, 2013 5:34 am
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Close Encounters theme spells out "your spring" in Solresol
Replies: 4
Views: 2422

Re: Close Encounters theme spells out "your spring" in Solre

Gray Richardson wrote:"your spring." (or ton automne per Sudre's original Solresol-French dictionary.)
So... 'your autumn'?