The Official ZBB Quote Thread

[Ser]

nort|laptop = Nortaneous, Cev = Xephyr

[18:59:54] <nort|laptop> As in many Salish languages, the syntactic categories of ‘noun’ and ‘verb’ are not usefully distinguished in Saanich. Therefore, the ∥s-∥ prefix is really something quite different from what is usually thought of as a nominalizer.
[19:00:00] <nort|laptop> What ∥s-∥ has in common with nominalizers in more familiar languages is not the syntactic function of converting one category into another, but the semantic function of converting a form that refers to a process into one that refers to an entity. Forms with ∥s-∥, like those without, can function as arguments to predicates (examples 1-3) or as predicate heads themselves (examples 4-11). They can take voice, person, and aspect
[19:00:32] <Yng> I always wonder how it happens
[19:00:38] <Yng> like
[19:00:49] <Yng> if you imagine that historically that language had distinct nouns and verbs
[19:00:51] <Yng> do
[19:00:57] <Yng> all nouns get replaced by nominalised verbal constructions
[19:01:08] <Yng> by VAST ANALOGY
[19:03:21] <Cev> the nouns get reanalyzed as predicatables
[19:03:48] <Yng> yeah
[19:03:48] <Cev> A year or so ago I had this like epiphany, regarding these north american languages where "whooo the distinction between noun and verb is fuzzy... whoooo"
[19:04:03] <Cev> And I don't know if it was a real epiphany that actually matches the real world situation, or a false epiphany
[19:04:18] <Cev> But I realized that people who are worrying too much about whether something is a noun or a verb are just looking at it the wrong way
[19:04:37] <Cev> And, going off of this, even learned people on the zbb who know what they're talking about, go about it the wrong way
[19:04:57] <Cev> Like one time Eddy asked "how do you know whether šuŋka is a noun meaning "horse" or a verb meaning "it is a horse"?"
[19:05:02] <Cev> and someone responded "context!"
[19:05:02] <nort|laptop> 2.1.1.4. An initial /s/ in borrowed words is readily treated as an ∥s-∥ ‘nominalizer’.
[19:05:04] <Cev> but that's the wrong answer
[19:05:07] <Cev> Because it's a nonquestion
[19:05:10] <Yng> yeah
[19:05:24] <Cev> It's like asking "How can I tell when 'grande' means 'big' and when it means 'large'?"
[19:05:28] <Yng> because it kind of imagines that these are useful categories in the
[19:05:29] <Yng> yes
[19:05:52] <Cev> Another way to describe it is
[19:06:12] <Cev> When you read word-for-word literal translations of languages with lots of resumptive pronouns, or translations which express conjugated verbs with pronouns
[19:06:47] <Cev> like "the larger men they went up to the woman who the boy he knew her"
[19:06:55] <Cev> that seems weird but you see the sense underneath it?
[19:07:19] <Cev> Well it's just an extension to that, to think of a sentence that goes "it is a house he is a man he lives there we know it" for "we know that the man lives in a house"
[19:07:53] <Cev> The category of verb, really, is in a way just a technique to express emphasis
[19:08:32] <Cev> That's why when we translate something like "it is a house" it sounds like it draws attention to itself
[19:08:42] <Cev> Like the listener doesn't already know there's a house there
[19:09:02] <nort|laptop> huh
[19:09:02] <Cev> it sounds like a PREDICATE
[19:09:16] <nort|laptop> ah
[19:13:04] <Cev> I think it was when I was reading a paragraph or something in a book about the Lakota mantra "mitakuye oyas'in"
[19:13:13] <Cev> Which alternately means "all of my relatives" or "we are all related"
[19:13:21] <Yng> yeah
[19:13:25] <Cev> And there was a moment of clarity when I realized how it could mean both of those things at the same time

[Kereb]

yeah a lot of Eddy's questions have as their most correct answer "you're asking the wrong question", which sadly he's shown he can't understand at all

[Radius Solis]

Yes. A tiger is a striped jungle cat, after all.

[Drydic]

Yes. A tiger is a striped jungle cat, after all.

[Click]

The word "two" bi, bi-ga, bi-da in Basque relates to Bantu bili "two" (Johnston 1919 - 22 : 32), and ultimately to Niger-Congo bi "breasts"

Because we all know how the traditional way of counting to two among primitive peoples is to point once to each breast.

[Kereb]

<Drydic> anyways Baloo's plane was basically the Millenium Falcon in seaplane form

[linguoboy]

Then we can ask Turin, we can ask SLC, I don't fucking care what city we ask just so long as we move the Olympics from Russia. Vancouver is just the logical choice because the infrastructure is all still intact.

Why don't we just hold them in Olympia? The infrastructure is pretty much still intact.

[linguoboy]

i have acquired a cursory knowledge of supermarkets in europe, but to punish you for making a shitty thread, i will not share any of it with you

[Astraios]

[19:04:57] <Cev> Like one time Eddy asked "how do you know whether šuŋka is a noun meaning "horse" or a verb meaning "it is a horse"?"
[19:05:02] <Cev> and someone responded "context!"
[19:05:04] <Cev> but that's the wrong answer
[19:05:07] <Cev> Because it's a nonquestion

If it was me (which seems likely) who said context, it's because that's the answer to how you know how to translate the word into English, which wasn't the question asked, but.

[19:13:04] <Cev> I think it was when I was reading a paragraph or something in a book about the Lakota mantra "mitakuye oyas'in"
[19:13:13] <Cev> Which alternately means "all of my relatives" or "we are all related"
[19:13:25] <Cev> And there was a moment of clarity when I realized how it could mean both of those things at the same time

It's not exactly accurate for this particular phrase. It's most accurate to call it "all my relatives", because mi- can't be affixed to finitely conjugated words ("verbs") and because there's no morphology indicating "we". This is like having a moment of clarity and realizing that "how are you" means "hello" and "how do you feel" at the same time; it's just the literal meaning of all my relatives vs. the meaning in context of we are all related. I agree with what your point though.

[Kereb]

Wait, Walmart didn't used to sell food? Huh. I assumed they sold everything, from the way people speak about them. So they just sold... what, bric-a-brac-y household items?

If by "bric-a-brac-y household items" you mean clothes, home and personal electronics, gardening supplies, furniture, appliances and machines, sporting goods, toys, tires and car repair stuff, christmas decorations, linens, paint, pets, kitchenware, hardware, stationery, bicycles, liquor, houseplants, and guns, then: yes.

[vampireshark]

In response to Xephyr's original reply: I also do not see what this has to do with being qualified to judge a name's awfulness. Some people have a comparable aversion to e.g. "moist" - do we require them to be experts on moistness before allowing them to find the word unpleasant?

[dhok]

[14:42] <dhok> afternoon
[14:43] <dhok> is er
[14:44] <dhok> I don't recognize a lot of these names on here
[14:45] <guitarplayer> Ang|Oot = Anguipes; MaelKerilson = Izambri
[14:45] <guitarplayer> other than that, it's the usual suspects
[14:45] <Slereah> Hello
[14:46] <dhok> markus?
[14:47] <guitarplayer> miekko
[14:47] <Slereah> Miekk'ojew
[14:48] == MaelKerilson has changed nick to Izambri
[14:49] <Izambri> *burps*
[14:51] <guitarplayer> Mec Ó Diú
[14:51] <dhok> but there's already a miekko
[14:51] <dhok> is it
[14:51] <dhok> SPAWN OF MIEKKO?
[14:51] <Slereah> Two miekkos for the price of one
[14:51] <dhok> bred in a radioactive vat by a mad scientist!
[14:52] <nort|laptop> <vv> /R/
[14:52] <nort|laptop> <hh> /G/
[14:52] <nort|laptop> goodorthography
[14:52] <miekko> huh
[14:52] <nort|laptop> qiang
[14:52] <miekko> oh
[14:52] <nort|laptop> the *official* one
[14:53] <miekko> I forgot my copy online I guess
[14:53] <nort|laptop> oh
[14:53] <markus> you're the copy
[14:53] <miekko> fuck you
[14:53] <nort|laptop> fight
[14:53] <nort|laptop> fight
[14:53] <nort|laptop> fight
[14:53] <dhok> fight
[14:53] == markus [markus@464b931d.dhcp.28320769.fi.hmsk] has left #isharia [killed violently]

[Click]

The issue of just vs unjust discrimination was addressed some time ago, in the spoudogeloic syllogism of Hipparchia of Maroneia, contra Theodorus the Atheist:
"Allow that if one person is to be permitted to perform a certain action, it must also be permitted for any other person to perform the action. Allow also that Theodorus has the right to punch himself in the face. From these premises it must follow that Hipparchia may also punch Theodorus in the face."
*punches Theodorus in the face*

Let it be known that Salmoneus just recommended we gang up on and beat up Zayk.

[linguoboy]

Salmoneus, I appreciate how seriously you must take your monastic vow to never break kayfabe, but for the benefit of those of us who aren't familiar with the London cityscape, would you please explain what the fuck you're talking about?

[Drydic]

And today we learned that Salmoneus doesn't know the difference between "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing".

[Dewrad]

I'm a bit uncomfortable that the last three quotes here refer disparagingly to Salmoneus?

[Legion]

He has a high comedic potential, unbeknown to himself.

[Drydic]

I'm a bit uncomfortable that the last three quotes here refer disparagingly to Salmoneus?

I wasn't intending to be disparaging towards him in the slightest with the Zayk-punching, fwiw.

[Legion]

<Radius> they finished putting in the new carpet
<Radius> it is beautiful and plush and practically luxurious
<Cev> is it made entirely from walrus pelts?
<Radius> no
<Radius> but it does contain real girl scouts

[Click]

One day, I'll perhaps come up with an exceedingly ugly and bureaucratic programming language named COMSOMOL, which would make COBOL look elegant in comparison. However, I haven't even started working out the language, and also don't know yet what the acronym COMSOMOL stands for.

[Torco]

/me goes to fuck himself then. Mod said so.

[Click]

<Cev> I like to think there's a special place in Heck for people who post 240p videos on youtube and label then "hq" or "hd"
<Cev> A place where they're forever damned to play Minesweeper but each time they start a game, the first square they click has a mine in it!

LIBERTÉ, ÉGALITÉ, FRATERNITÉ, ET DES AVATARS PLUS GRANDS

[Xephyr]

There's this thing I do sometimes where I see people posting in forums asking about various problems they're having with their cars. I see a question about some particular issue someone is having and I post a reply in their thread saying "my car works just fine!" or "I don't get that problem at all!". I think it's important that this stranger who's having a problem and looking for a helpful answer should know that their problem is something that I luckily haven't had to deal with. Because ... um ...

oh wait no, I got confused

it's not cars. it's computers.

So yeah I go on forums where someone is having a problem with some particular computer program and they're asking other users for help. I reply to their post by saying something like "it always works just fine for me!" or "I never get that problem on mine!" I think that a person who's looking for an answer to their problem should know that I never had to deal with the same problem because ... uh fuck wait

no no I got confused again

that's not me. that's you.

Seriously what the fuck is wrong with you people. How can anyone think that's a constructive reply ever.

I dunno Kereb, I never get that problem on my forums.

[Hallow XIII]

<H13> pthagnar
<pthagnar> what
<H13> I did not win any fabulous prizes when I met you
<pthagnar> yes you did
<pthagnar> you got the gift of uh
<H13> unless your presence is a fabulous prize in itself
<pthagnar> idk, being party to a political hatecrime

[Nesescosac]

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