The Conservatives are traditionally better at getting out the postal vote. Voter suppression is Tory policy nowadays.
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- Thu May 23, 2024 5:30 pm
- Forum: Ephemera
- Topic: British Politics Guide
- Replies: 1941
- Views: 1020219
Re: British Politics Guide
- Thu May 23, 2024 5:25 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
- Replies: 4724
- Views: 2065810
Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
In the case of English, we see in everyday English a "subjective accusative" in the place of the "subjective genitive" (e.g. "If it weren't for me setting up the firewall this Windows box'd be full of worms by now.") At the very least, there's also the attraction of th...
- Thu May 23, 2024 5:20 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
- Replies: 4724
- Views: 2065810
Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
I think that's just an example of the nominative being triggered by an adjacent verb, with fallback to the unmarked accusative when separated.
- Wed May 15, 2024 12:46 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: English questions
- Replies: 1406
- Views: 451303
Re: English questions
I think it's a generalisation of 'I could have done that', which doesn't really make a lot of sense when one analyses it. This particular construction does make sense to me. You just need to notice that English modals don’t really have past tense forms — so if you want to place a modal in the past,...
- Tue May 14, 2024 6:18 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: English questions
- Replies: 1406
- Views: 451303
Re: English questions
Other fun in this sort of department are things like: I'd've never've gotten my box cryptolocked if I hadn't've downloaded that "antivirus" program from that site. To me, this feels almost like aspectual agreement! It doesn’t work in my dialect, though: it feels very much like a feature o...
- Sat May 11, 2024 12:47 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
- Replies: 4724
- Views: 2065810
Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
I'm no expert, but I do have a Larousse, which says the word was singular or plural till the 18th century; while Etymonline says the English word became plural in the 17th century. while in English the plural agreement is inconsistent and varies by dialect ("maths is..." etc.). I don't th...
- Sun May 05, 2024 9:53 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
- Replies: 4724
- Views: 2065810
Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
When Lithuanians sort lists in Lithuanian alphabetically, do they use the same order as dictionaries? I ask because I've seen evidence that some at least consider 'e' and 'ė' as as different as 's' and 'š' (definitely different letters when the brain is engaged), while happily disregarding ogoneks o...
- Sat May 04, 2024 1:25 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
- Replies: 4724
- Views: 2065810
Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
Exactly. And in this case there are no convenient historical events that we can firmly peg a transition in our periodization to (such as how 1066 is used as a demarcation between Old and Middle English). Nitpick: The Old to Middle transition is normally dated to 1200, for which the historical peg w...
- Wed Apr 24, 2024 2:10 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: What are the phonotactics rules for Classical Latin?
- Replies: 22
- Views: 1174
Re: What are the phonotactics rules for Classical Latin?
Does alliteration exist as a poetic device in the languages of the Southeast Asian sesquisyllabic erosion area? If so, can C1- alliterate with P.C1-? It does, and it depends . So the answer to the second part seems to be 'No'. Alliteration, at least for alliterative quasi-reduplication, requires bo...
- Sun Apr 21, 2024 8:36 pm
- Forum: Ephemera
- Topic: Do you think it will ever be possible to go back in time?
- Replies: 43
- Views: 1316
Re: Do you think it will ever be possible to go back in time?
This is getting beyond what I’m familiar with, but according to Wikpedia , such a region of the universe would result in a gamma-ray signal from annihilation with our region of the universe, and we’ve seen no evidence of such a signal. It only says that for regions within the observable universe.
- Sun Apr 21, 2024 8:41 am
- Forum: Ephemera
- Topic: Do you think it will ever be possible to go back in time?
- Replies: 43
- Views: 1316
Re: Do you think it will ever be possible to go back in time?
Professor Brian Cox, around 2013, did a special lecture to a celebrity audience explaining (among other things) why time travel into the past will never be possible. It was a Doctor Who themed lecture and was a part of the BBC's 50th Anniversary celebration for DW. From what I remember it requires ...
- Sun Apr 21, 2024 8:25 am
- Forum: Ephemera
- Topic: Do you think it will ever be possible to go back in time?
- Replies: 43
- Views: 1316
Re: Do you think it will ever be possible to go back in time?
Can we do more than say that there's more matter than antimatter in the visible universe? The antimatter might mostly be beyond the horizon!
- Sat Apr 20, 2024 12:03 pm
- Forum: Conlangery
- Topic: Conlang Random Thread
- Replies: 3024
- Views: 2853356
Re: Conlang Random Thread
The frequency of phonemes in Vrkhazhian will be even more skewed because of the deaffrication of /tɬ tɬ dɮ tʃ tʃʼ dʒ/ into /t tʼ d/ (when geminate) or /ɬ (ɬʼ) ɮ ʃ (ʃʼ) ʒ/ (when singleton) and subsequent mergers of the postalveolars with the central alveolars. I think you may need to evolve your wor...
- Thu Apr 18, 2024 5:09 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: English 'not' migration
- Replies: 8
- Views: 473
Re: English 'not' migration
I suspect that you, Jonlang, may be becoming more pernickety as you gets older, and are thus more aware of the possibility of refraining from "neg hopping".
- Sat Apr 13, 2024 5:56 pm
- Forum: Conlangery
- Topic: Linguistic and cultural situation after the Norse conquest of England
- Replies: 7
- Views: 2051
Re: Linguistic and cultural situation after the Norse conquest of England
Now, I have encountered a claim that Danish in England was simply Anglicised so much that it wound up being simply regarded as English. It is then claimed that the opposite has happened in Jutland - an Ingvaeonic language was so Danicised that it wound up simply being considered bad Danish. Unfortun...
- Sat Apr 13, 2024 5:42 pm
- Forum: Conlangery
- Topic: Linguistic and cultural situation after the Norse conquest of England
- Replies: 7
- Views: 2051
Re: Linguistic and cultural situation after the Norse conquest of England
English as we know it already has quite some Old Norse influence, but there could be a variety of English with even more Norse influence. Maybe the English dialects of the former Danelaw have more Norse influence than Standard English, but I don't know about that - I know virtually nothing about En...
- Sun Mar 31, 2024 7:25 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Marginal distinctions
- Replies: 15
- Views: 685
Re: Marginal distinctions
...For instance, many of the distinctions merged in the Mary - merry - marry merger have been resurrected in a marginal fashion through consonant elisions and resulting vowel cluster reductions... Surely this is only an issue if the merger is still active. Is it? You cannot create new words that re...
- Sun Mar 24, 2024 9:35 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread's Sequel
- Replies: 909
- Views: 1084520
Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread's Sequel
Geneticists have found out that the Yamanya people who probably spoke PIE emerged from the mixture of two populations, one related to the probable speakers of Proto-Uralic, the other from south of the Caucasus. My idea is that the latter spoke an Afroasiatic language related to Semitic. That, howev...
- Sun Mar 24, 2024 9:01 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
- Replies: 4724
- Views: 2065810
Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
Whatever the transcription, I think the best explanation is that this phonologically is /jn̩/, but that’s so highly marked sonority-wise that the language ‘tries really hard’ to get rid of it (so to speak). Why does the phonology even have /jn̩/? Wouldn't /jən/ do just as well? In a few ways, the [...
- Sun Mar 24, 2024 6:18 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
- Replies: 4724
- Views: 2065810
Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
Why does the phonology even have /jn̩/? Wouldn't /jən/ do just as well?