Search found 2654 matches
- Sun Jun 02, 2024 5:54 pm
- Forum: Ephemera
- Topic: United States Politics Thread 46
- Replies: 1459
- Views: 450856
Re: United States Politics Thread 46
Yes, that is the conundrum. The Democrats are beholden to capital. My suggestion is to break that bond, and rebuild their bond with organized labor. Merely voting Democrat hard enough is not going to let us escape from this situation. Hence my criticism of the Democrats, urging them to change. The ...
- Sun Jun 02, 2024 3:18 pm
- Forum: Ephemera
- Topic: Random Thread
- Replies: 3752
- Views: 458012
Re: Random Thread
Oh, of course. My parents were born in the 1920s and were still buying music albums in the 1980s. Nothing any of the kids wanted to hear, and they never bought anything resembling a rock album. Your parents were born that long ago? I always had the impression that you were born in the sixties or se...
- Sun Jun 02, 2024 5:38 am
- Forum: Ephemera
- Topic: Random Thread
- Replies: 3752
- Views: 458012
Re: Random Thread
Also, pop music that still sounded somewhat like 1950s pop music was still produced for a while in the 1960s. Oh, of course. My parents were born in the 1920s and were still buying music albums in the 1980s. Nothing any of the kids wanted to hear, and they never bought anything resembling a rock al...
- Sat Jun 01, 2024 4:53 pm
- Forum: Ephemera
- Topic: Random Thread
- Replies: 3752
- Views: 458012
Re: Random Thread
Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was (traditionally) released 57 years ago today. This date will soon become like D-Day: nobody alive will be able to remember it. What I find strange is how eclipsed earlier music seems to be. E.g. I just looked up Frank Sinatra's best album— some at least ...
- Fri May 31, 2024 4:35 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Pronunciation of Standard English in America (1919)
- Replies: 144
- Views: 334837
Re: Pronunciation of Standard English in America (1919)
"in the popular dialects" [θ] and [ð] are sometimes completely replaced by [t] and [d]: think [tɪŋk], that [dæt] — i've heard [dæt] before, but never [tɪŋk], at least not from a u.s. native speaker I think "popular" here might mean "AAVE". TH-stopping exists sporadical...
- Fri May 31, 2024 6:43 am
- Forum: Ephemera
- Topic: United States Politics Thread 46
- Replies: 1459
- Views: 450856
Re: United States Politics Thread 46
Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure we had that discussion back in 2016. And let's be honest, did things improve between 2017 and 2021? American hegemony didn't noticeably recede. Didn't it? How would you measure this? What would it look like if "American hegemony" was lessening? It did ...
- Thu May 30, 2024 4:44 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Names, nouns and their (phonological) restrictions
- Replies: 49
- Views: 1164
Re: Names, nouns and their (phonological) restrictions
yeah, the last barrier is the usual alphabet... (but then it's probably the omnipotent computers that will be harder to overcome...) There was a brief period when you could blame computers for not supporting diacritics etc., but that time is past. The politicians didn't get the memo, though. There ...
- Mon May 27, 2024 6:07 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Names, nouns and their (phonological) restrictions
- Replies: 49
- Views: 1164
Re: Names, nouns and their (phonological) restrictions
E.g. Moteuczoma is literally "He-is-Lordly-Angry", but there's a distinction between the verb ninoteuczoma "I am lordly angry" and the noun niMoteuczoma "I am He-is-Lordly-Angry". It's kind of like how English handles movie/book/song/etc. titles. What's going on with h...
- Sun May 26, 2024 4:53 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Names, nouns and their (phonological) restrictions
- Replies: 49
- Views: 1164
Re: Names, nouns and their (phonological) restrictions
Names are just nouns, except when they're not. That is, they are not a syntactic or morphological category, and in general they won't have any distinctive phonology. They start off transparent and understandable. First caveat: they are often a sentence or noun phrase rather than a noun. In the ancie...
- Sun May 26, 2024 4:13 am
- Forum: Ephemera
- Topic: United States Politics Thread 46
- Replies: 1459
- Views: 450856
Re: United States Politics Thread 46
Did you look up "Southern Strategy"? If so, when did that happen? Hint: look up electoral maps of (say) 1956 vs. 1988. Which states voted for an unpopular Democratic candidate in those two years? Why those states? Let's compare the elections of 1988 to 2016. (Also two losing elections for...
- Sun May 26, 2024 12:41 am
- Forum: Ephemera
- Topic: United States Politics Thread 46
- Replies: 1459
- Views: 450856
Re: United States Politics Thread 46
I've said this about a million times, so I don't want to go over it in depth, but: yes, if you're remotely progressive, it's frustrating. But progressives are about half the Democratic party and zero of the Republican party, and it used to be far worse. In 1994 liberals + leftists were 25% of the D...
- Sat May 25, 2024 5:42 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Innovative Usage Thread
- Replies: 572
- Views: 663060
Re: Innovative Usage Thread
IMD "got" and "gotten" have slightly different meanings: "got" merely implies possesion, "gotten" emphasizes acquisition. E.g. "I've got the money" = I have it, it's available "I've gotten the money" = I've acquired it, recently enough that...
- Thu May 23, 2024 10:05 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
- Replies: 4731
- Views: 2108969
Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
Because in Latin, the ‘default’ pronouns were instead the subject ones! Which is precisely the usual situation for a nominative-accusative alignment, where the nominative case is ‘unmarked’ (to use the usual terminology). Now that strikes me as circular. :( I'm no expert on Latin syntax, but what's...
- Thu May 23, 2024 7:10 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
- Replies: 4731
- Views: 2108969
Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
[…] my point is that both English and French are generalizing the default pronoun— making it more default, as it were. Well, my definition of ‘default pronoun’ was precisely that it is generalised. So wouldn’t this just be a circular argument? Not if the language has changed. I don't know enough ab...
- Thu May 23, 2024 4:34 pm
- Forum: Ephemera
- Topic: Venting thread
- Replies: 1945
- Views: 15033110
Re: Venting thread
Observing horrible attitudes in someone you care about a lot must be really tough. Commiserations. She thinks activists for trans women are trying to tell her and other cis women how they should feel about what they think is an infringement on their spaces. And she cites specific examples of this i...
- Thu May 23, 2024 4:16 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
- Replies: 4731
- Views: 2108969
Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
The key part of my argument is that the default series of pronouns is in fact the object series, rather being the subject series (as in e.g. Latin) or a separate series (as in French). I don't disagree with this observation, but my point is that both English and French are generalizing the default ...
- Thu May 23, 2024 6:19 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
- Replies: 4731
- Views: 2108969
Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
You'd probably have to explain what notion of markedness you're using. To me the form used in clefting and emphasis would be more rather than less marked. (Note that in French the clefted/emphatic form is different from both nom. and acc. pronouns.) Essentially, by ‘less marked’, I mean ‘has a wide...
- Thu May 23, 2024 4:22 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
- Replies: 4731
- Views: 2108969
Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
Even English is arguably marked-nominative. Citation form for the pronouns is the object series: me , us , them , etc. The object series is used after prepositions The object series is used for emphatic subjects and topics The object series is used after be (and by extension in clefts), unlike most...
- Wed May 22, 2024 8:00 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
- Replies: 4731
- Views: 2108969
- Wed May 22, 2024 5:22 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
- Replies: 4731
- Views: 2108969
Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
Perhaps from an active-stative system? The trouble is that the scenario is caseless predecessor with a plain old nom-acc alignment. You're not giving yourself much to work with. :) And pure nominative markers are kinda rare. You could do something like this though: 1. Evolve a case marker for accus...