Search found 3047 matches

by zompist
Sat Feb 10, 2018 5:18 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Good syntax books
Replies: 32
Views: 16047

Re: Good syntax books

Rory: thanks for the recs. More to add to the book pile!
by zompist
Thu Feb 08, 2018 4:16 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path
Replies: 1058
Views: 221801

Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

The [item] is as visible as required by regulations I may be missing something... this seems awkward but not difficult. I take it as meaning that regulations require [item] to be visible, and there are minimums for 'visibility', and the product has met the minimum. It'd sound better to me with an e...
by zompist
Thu Feb 08, 2018 12:32 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Good syntax books
Replies: 32
Views: 16047

Re: Good syntax books

Ordered the Carnie... I've already read Payne, and it's not what I am after anyway, which is generative syntax. Thanks for the recs!

Zaarin, I promise my book will have plenty of great stuff you can use. :) Plus web toys to play with!
by zompist
Tue Feb 06, 2018 11:59 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Good syntax books
Replies: 32
Views: 16047

Good syntax books

If you don't follow my blog: my next book is on syntax, a topic dear to my heart.

Also, it turns out, a topic I'm way out of date on. So: what are some good, post-1995 books on syntax? Or even mediocre books, if you used them in class?

Is everyone Chomskyan these days? Or post-Chomskyan, or what?
by zompist
Sat Jan 27, 2018 9:31 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: CCC - keeping track of
Replies: 46
Views: 41185

Re: CCC - keeping track of

ZEEBWIKI GOING AWAY!!! I don't think anyone's using zeebwiki.org, so I'd rather save the hosting fees and server space. The domain expires in about a month, so I'll probably take it down before then. If you have stuff there, please copy it! Clawgrip in particular has some lovely maps there. I have ...
by zompist
Sat Jan 27, 2018 6:24 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Minor Semitic Deities
Replies: 25
Views: 7607

Re: Minor Semitic Deities

There are also rakshasis and yakshis. Despite what Wikipedia says, my understanding is that yakshis are supposed to be evil and like black widow spiders: seducing their male victims and then eating them, although the eating part is perhaps more like vultures, sucking the bone marrow and leaving not...
by zompist
Sat Jan 27, 2018 5:22 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Will singular "they" be as acceptable as "you" in formal Eng
Replies: 44
Views: 18441

Re: Will singular "they" be as acceptable as "you" in formal

What you won't find outside fringe dialects spoken by the ostentatiously woke is "they" being used to refer to one specific person. Maybe instead of indulging your political paranoia, you should remember your linguistics, which requires actual evidence, and some diffidence when making universal cla...
by zompist
Tue Jan 23, 2018 11:26 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Minor Semitic Deities
Replies: 25
Views: 7607

Re: Minor Semitic Deities

Is India too far afield? Because there's plenty there: gandharvas, yakshas, vidyadharas, nagas, and on the mostly evil side, rakshasas.
by zompist
Fri Jan 19, 2018 8:06 am
Forum: Almea
Topic: Cadhinorian Religion
Replies: 20
Views: 14652

Re: Cadhinorian Religion

Good news: while moving, I found the pre-web versions of the Cadhinorian paganism pages.

Bad news: they're pretty terrible. They consist of a bunch of bombastic faux-Chestertonian descriptions, plus descriptions of the gods that aren't nearly as humorous as I remembered.
by zompist
Fri Jan 12, 2018 5:38 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: climate change
Replies: 60
Views: 24036

Re: climate change

Basically, instead of having a God at the origins of the universe, this only retains a non-superstitious hope of redemption at the end of history. What I don't understand is why liberalism is so hostile towards my religion. I cannot imagine left-liberals responding to smart Christians with, "Your r...
by zompist
Sun Jan 07, 2018 5:32 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: climate change
Replies: 60
Views: 24036

Re: climate change

zompist: But these are completely different from Sal's objections. Everyone agrees that I'm wrong. Everyone disagrees on why I'm wrong. I agree with Sal that your AI-government is undemocratic. I wouldn't put things the way he did, but the idea that "the AI just implements what the people want!" is...
by zompist
Sat Jan 06, 2018 7:53 pm
Forum: Almea
Topic: New Almeopedia
Replies: 29
Views: 19753

Re: New Almeopedia

The Arcel maps had trouble because of a capitalization problem. :oops: Fixed now.

Probably any images not loading are the same problem, but they're hard to look for... if you see any, make a note here or send me mail, if possible.

I'll look at the big maps.
by zompist
Mon Jan 01, 2018 5:44 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: Non-Biblical religious/spiritual literature
Replies: 21
Views: 9289

Re: Non-Biblical religious/spiritual literature

My books are a mile away right now, but from memory I have the Quran, a Passover Haggadah, the Dao De Jing, and (abridged versions of) the Rigveda and the Mahabharata.
by zompist
Mon Jan 01, 2018 2:27 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Quick question about French
Replies: 7
Views: 3026

Re: Quick question about French

You can see a list of words with <uille> here.

Most can be eliminated by eye, but I had to check a few. There are a few words like cuiller and juilllet where <uille> becomes [ɥijɛ], and I'm guessing that's what happened to any possible /yj/.
by zompist
Mon Jan 01, 2018 1:44 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: climate change
Replies: 60
Views: 24036

Re: climate change

Point taken about AlphaZero. Neural nets can do some amazing and baffling things. However, they're susceptible to the same argument: give me the program and let me increase the number of neurons, and a huge amount of time, and I can beat it. (This is of course exactly what DeepMind is doing as it cr...
by zompist
Mon Jan 01, 2018 2:33 am
Forum: None of the above
Topic: climate change
Replies: 60
Views: 24036

Re: Venting thread

nothing will ever be done ... towards definitively preventing irreversible climate change. I don't see how anyone could challenge this. You're changing the goalposts; your original comments were about "allowing global warming to continue". It's likely that the 1.4C or so global warming we already h...
by zompist
Mon Jan 01, 2018 12:58 am
Forum: None of the above
Topic: climate change
Replies: 60
Views: 24036

Re: climate change

PS. You would have to specify which aspect of the AI you think is barmy from a CS perspective. I can't tell. Since you ask, well, all of it. -- AI researchers are particularly prone to overestimating what has been done and underestimating what remains to be done. -- Programs are almost never bug-fr...
by zompist
Sun Dec 31, 2017 10:30 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: climate change
Replies: 60
Views: 24036

Re: climate change

FWIW, I have studied computer science, and I think rotting's AI-god is barmy. I don't think it's very good science fiction, but even if it were... it's a chimera. We don't have an AI god, and we won't have one in time to address climate change.
by zompist
Sun Dec 31, 2017 10:26 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: climate change
Replies: 60
Views: 24036

Re: Venting thread

Again, I never said that climate change would not be expensive. Just that it will not represent a serious threat to the survival of civilisation, as rotting puts it. And indeed that it will largely be business as normal. There's a huge range of outcomes between "serious threat to the survival of ci...
by zompist
Sun Dec 31, 2017 4:58 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: climate change
Replies: 60
Views: 24036

Re: Venting thread

Second, nobody is seriously suggesting that, *blam* in 2100 there will be 40 million displaced people suddenly. We're talking 40 million people over the next 80 years. Or around 500,000 a year on average. And... that's not many! To pick a country, there have been around 2,000,000 displaced in south...
by zompist
Sun Dec 31, 2017 4:38 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: India Construction Kit
Replies: 2
Views: 3628

Re: India Construction Kit

You are, probably because not that many have bought it yet. I'm sure this will be rectified shortly. But, it's the #69 bestseller in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > History > Asia > India! Which, well, shows that you can sell in the double digits to get that particular honor. Anyway, glad you liked it!
by zompist
Sat Dec 30, 2017 10:54 am
Forum: None of the above
Topic: climate change
Replies: 60
Views: 24036

Re: climate change

Moved. And rotting, please don't use the venting thread for stuff like this; it just creates extra work for the mods. Nothing wrong with starting threads.
by zompist
Fri Dec 29, 2017 11:59 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: climate change
Replies: 60
Views: 24036

Re: Venting thread

Sea level rises are a very minor issue, for the simple reason that such rises - a couple of metres - are tiny, and slow. There are a number of major population centres that will need additional flood protections, but we're really good at that (c.f. the Netherlands). Maybe a "minor issue" for the UK...
by zompist
Fri Dec 29, 2017 3:45 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Something interesting about West Coast American English
Replies: 44
Views: 10758

Re: Something interesting about West Coast American English

in my variety of American English, I have father/bother/cot/caught all with the same vowel, and talk/walk/stalk are pronounced with the same /a/ as father (tock/wok/stock), with no remnants of the /l/ present in the spelling. My father was horrified to learn that I did not pronounce the /l/ in talk...
by zompist
Tue Dec 26, 2017 3:19 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: "You can't eat your cake and have it too".
Replies: 5
Views: 2231

Re: "You can't eat your cake and have it too".

The modern phrasing isn't illogical. "And" does not always imply chronological order— if I eat fish and chips, it doesn't mean I eat the fish, then the chips. It is a weird expression, because cakes aren't normally something you keep without ever eating. It might make more sense as something like "Y...