Search found 2737 matches

by Salmoneus
Tue Mar 27, 2018 4:50 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Lazarus, or on the determination of habitability
Replies: 16
Views: 9443

Re: Lazarus, or on the determination of habitability

Images work for me now, though I'll need to think about them a bit longer... I like the continents map. (are you just guessing on the projection, or using a program?). And the general concept - worlds that are only habitable in certain areas are something that've always appealed to me. I'd have thou...
by Salmoneus
Tue Mar 27, 2018 4:05 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Lazarus, or on the determination of habitability
Replies: 16
Views: 9443

Re: Lazarus, or on the determination of habitability

Your images are all just "image" for me. I'm not sure how you go about calculating temperatures - from what I've seen of real climate simulation, this is an extremely complex and contentious area. [i'm not sure to what extent the mountains of Mars are a result of low gravity, and to what extent they...
by Salmoneus
Tue Mar 27, 2018 12:42 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread
Replies: 2225
Views: 448328

Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

Some laynrgs are attested as /x/ in Hittite so can't be too far off from that originally. That and that they are in most reconstructions allowed to appear between other consonants. What did you mean by coincidence >borrowing>luck? I don't understand, was that a mistake? What is luck in this context...
by Salmoneus
Tue Mar 27, 2018 10:10 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread
Replies: 2225
Views: 448328

Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

Though if I'm honest I don't entirely see the point in talking about "chances of relationship". The point is that the weight of evidence provided by a parallel is heavily dependent upon prior assumptions about the chances of a relationship. It's tempting to look at a parallel and think "I know that...
by Salmoneus
Mon Mar 26, 2018 7:07 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: The Contradictory Feelings Thread
Replies: 933
Views: 204883

Re: The Contradictory Feelings Thread

I've gradually been watching through a TV series online. Only to discover: it's not actually finished yet. This is frustrating. Specifically, I can't watch the final episode because it hasn't aired yet. However: purely by coincidence, the final episode airs today . And I've only just watched the pen...
by Salmoneus
Mon Mar 26, 2018 7:02 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path
Replies: 1058
Views: 221537

Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Wall Street Journal headline this morning: "New York Fed Eyes Its New Leader" I initially read it as "New York fed eyes [to] its new leader" and was deeply concerned... Whereas actually it's saying that New York fed its new leader to some terrifying carnivorous eyes. vijay: yes, that's what my brac...
by Salmoneus
Mon Mar 26, 2018 6:43 am
Forum: None of the above
Topic: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path
Replies: 1058
Views: 221537

Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Oh OK, I guess there is an ambiguity there between [closing to] [set nets] and [closing] [to [set nets]]...
by Salmoneus
Sun Mar 25, 2018 7:45 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path
Replies: 1058
Views: 221537

Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

linguoboy wrote:Big Money As Private Immigrant Jails Boom (NPR)
Brilliant.

Kanejam: doesn't that just mean what it says? It's ungainly, admittedly, but it seems straightforward?
by Salmoneus
Sun Mar 25, 2018 6:10 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread
Replies: 2225
Views: 448328

Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

by default true soundlaws are much less common than borrowings and coincidences I'm pretty sure that there are way more regular sound correspondences than loanwords between e.g. Tocharian and Latin. But that's a biased sample - because we know Tocharian and Latin are related! But the odds of two la...
by Salmoneus
Sat Mar 24, 2018 8:17 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlearn
Replies: 669
Views: 149499

Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

The normative pronunciation of daimon is /ˈdaɪˌmoʊn/? I think I'm only used to that in classical contexts, with /Q/ or /@/ in ordinary contexts - though maybe I just don't talk to enough classics professors. It's /oU/ in "eudaimonia", obviously, but that's in line with normal vowel-lengthening rule...
by Salmoneus
Sat Mar 24, 2018 10:43 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Voynich manuscript
Replies: 40
Views: 19404

Re: Voynich manuscript

You confused me there - note that the "original" decipherment you're talking about there is a different (and later?) one than the decipherment talked about at the beginning of this thread. Clearly, great strides are being taken in Voynichology. It's been solved three times in the last six months alo...
by Salmoneus
Thu Mar 22, 2018 4:54 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread
Replies: 2225
Views: 448328

Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

Sure, I never said it was impossible. It's just really suspicious . Likewise, dropping half the phonemes in a word is a perfectly possible sound change, between clearly related languages, when it's clear that this is what happened. But when you're doing speculative long-range comparison (and ignorin...
by Salmoneus
Tue Mar 20, 2018 3:08 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: On Tetraploidy or Parasitism
Replies: 8
Views: 6552

Re: On Tetraploidy or Parasitism

The imago, it should be noted, is a different individual from the larva. So really you've just got a two-stage reproductive process: - two A-people have sex - one of the A-people has a baby, but dies in the process - the baby is a B-person, who can't have sex, but who gives birth to lots of A-people...
by Salmoneus
Tue Mar 20, 2018 1:00 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread
Replies: 2225
Views: 448328

Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

is there anything especially appealing about an unmotivated general ejective > implosive shift, other than that it explains the dearth of /b/? Is this shift typologically common? It happened in Yucatec Maya (/pʼ/ > /ɓ/ only), and it happened several times independently in Afroasiatic. There doesn't...
by Salmoneus
Mon Mar 19, 2018 3:11 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: Happy Things Thread
Replies: 969
Views: 370303

Re: Happy Things Thread

Thank you. [To clarify in case the wording was ambiguous: hopefully, neither parent now has cancer. One did have cancer, but has now finished treatment (as much as you ever do) and is theoretically OK (although given difficulties diagnosing and finding the cancer in the first place, there's an eleme...
by Salmoneus
Mon Mar 19, 2018 6:10 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread
Replies: 2225
Views: 448328

Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

Realistically, Uralic need not tell us very much - assuming a shift ejective > implosive > voiced stop, there's no reason to assume that it was still in the 'ejective' phase in PIU. My own Indo-Uralic material (a draft version is now at academia.edu) does not have very much to tell here. I don't se...
by Salmoneus
Sun Mar 18, 2018 5:39 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Life in the Colonies in the 26th Century (SF setting)
Replies: 7
Views: 7281

Re: Life in the Colonies in the 26th Century (SF setting)

Errr.... sorry, didn't catch this at the time! [and now you're not on the board much, plus i've probably forgotten many of the details...] But thank you! Glad you liked it. This one isn't quite a blockbuster, no, but it should be! finally got around to reading this. I must say man, it was great. I i...
by Salmoneus
Sun Mar 18, 2018 5:11 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: Classical Composers
Replies: 103
Views: 42724

Re: Classical Composers

Not sure why this is showing up as last posted to on Friday, when the post above this one was clearly made on Sunday. Hopefully this post will break that...
by Salmoneus
Sun Mar 18, 2018 1:10 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: Classical Composers
Replies: 103
Views: 42724

Re: Classical Composers

IGOR FYODOROVICH STRAVINSKY 1882-1971 (Late Romantic, Modern) b. St Petersburg; d. New York Igor Stravinsky was not the most important prophet of the new age: that was Schoenberg. But where Schoenberg positioned himself squarely outside the Common Practice, and hence outside these posts, Stravinsky...
by Salmoneus
Sun Mar 18, 2018 7:10 am
Forum: None of the above
Topic: Happy Things Thread
Replies: 969
Views: 370303

Re: Happy Things Thread

So far as we know, one of my parents doesn't have any horrible cancer (see note from last month in the venting thread). This is good.
by Salmoneus
Sat Mar 17, 2018 2:01 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: Venting thread that still excludes eddy (2)
Replies: 2639
Views: 301397

Re: Venting thread that still excludes eddy

I think Sal went way too far with Nazi and Confederacy comparisons nazi? Yes, that was hyperbole. Confederate? No, that seems pretty equivalent in magnitude. Making a point of wearing orange on St Patrick's Day is pretty similar to, say, going to a black church on Martin Luther King Day wearing a c...
by Salmoneus
Sat Mar 17, 2018 6:40 am
Forum: None of the above
Topic: Venting thread that still excludes eddy (2)
Replies: 2639
Views: 301397

Re: Venting thread that still excludes eddy

alynnidalar wrote:I'm sad St. Patty's Day falls on a Saturday this year because I wanted to wear orange and wait for people to ask me why I wasn't wearing green. :wink:
...were you planning on wearing a swastika armband as well? Maybe waving a confederate flag?
by Salmoneus
Fri Mar 16, 2018 3:58 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: Classical Composers
Replies: 103
Views: 42724

Re: Classical Composers

GUSTAV MAHLER 1860-1911 (Late Romantic) b. rural Bohemia; d. Vienna Mahler, more than most composers, was a man of paradox: a Bohemian Jew, he converted to Catholicism for economic reasons (Jews were banned from many positions in the Viennese musical establishment) and embraced the German tradition...
by Salmoneus
Fri Mar 16, 2018 2:12 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: The Contradictory Feelings Thread
Replies: 933
Views: 204883

Re: The Contradictory Feelings Thread

Maybe it a drill to protect students from marauding bears? I gather, from your secretary of education, that marauding bear attacks are a major threat in American schools these days?

Or it could be fire demons.
by Salmoneus
Fri Mar 16, 2018 11:57 am
Forum: None of the above
Topic: The Contradictory Feelings Thread
Replies: 933
Views: 204883

Re: The Contradictory Feelings Thread

What's a "lockdown drill"? [as distinct from an 'active shooter' drill? Why else would a school be on lockdown? In case someone's escaping with the nuclear codes or something?] (I assume we had a fire drill once a term or something, though I don't actually remember them at secondary school. Detested...