Search found 2622 matches
- Tue May 14, 2024 4:09 pm
- Forum: Ephemera
- Topic: British Politics Guide
- Replies: 1935
- Views: 1018753
Re: British Politics Guide
Why is the collection of built-up areas that serves as the capital of the UK generally called "London" and not "Westminster"? This would be an interesting philological study, though I suspect the answer would be "You have to call it something, and that something has always ...
- Tue May 14, 2024 3:32 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: English questions
- Replies: 1396
- Views: 446943
Re: English questions
Here’s a really interesting English sentence I was presented with recently: 1. If I hadn’t’ve had that cake, it would’ve gone mouldy. Neat find, and your initial syntactic analysis is good work. I think I could say this, especially if it's even more abbreviated: If I hadn'a... So far as I can tell ...
- Mon May 13, 2024 9:16 pm
- Forum: Ephemera
- Topic: AIs gunning for our precious freelancers
- Replies: 731
- Views: 137231
Re: AIs gunning for our precious freelancers
so they're both fascists, and we're all fascists too if we prefer any of them wins (cause what you here mean by support is just that, a vague preference, at least on my part) I don't get the word games... is this 1952? "Fascist" means anyone to the right of Fidel? Again, we've been here b...
- Mon May 13, 2024 5:16 pm
- Forum: Ephemera
- Topic: AIs gunning for our precious freelancers
- Replies: 731
- Views: 137231
Re: AIs gunning for our precious freelancers
You support a US fascist and you support a Russian fascist. You are a fascist. and legally antisemitic too, I suppose. but seriously now, i support neither: i just care to a similar degree about americans and non-americans, and so if something is going to be bad for americans but good for the rest ...
- Sun May 12, 2024 1:16 am
- Forum: Conlangery
- Topic: AI in conlanging - present and future
- Replies: 24
- Views: 439
Re: AI in conlanging - present and future
I got ChatGPT to estimate the total number of words it has been exposed to in all of its training. [...] It’s ultimate estimate, IIRC, was 5 quintillion. There are some estimates of the total size of the Internet, but I don't think they're comparable... consider how much of the Internet is pictures...
- Sat May 11, 2024 5:16 am
- Forum: Conlangery
- Topic: AI in conlanging - present and future
- Replies: 24
- Views: 439
Re: AI in conlanging - present and future
I then asked it to estimate the number of words spoken by human beings in the last 100,000 years. Again, caveats abounded... Eventually it gave a figure of, IIRC, 15 quintillion. That is probably in the ballpark. A study online says people say about 16,000 words a day. Let's say each human does 40 ...
- Fri May 10, 2024 10:10 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
- Replies: 4687
- Views: 2061793
Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
OK, I have a question for any French experts out there: when and how did mathématiques become plural? And is it related in any way to the English phenomenon? 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 ...
- Wed May 08, 2024 4:54 pm
- Forum: Ephemera
- Topic: The voice of the dead: AI chat sharing thread
- Replies: 10
- Views: 236
Re: the voice of the dead
Interesting stuff, especially the first one. I am still impressed by LLMs' ability to (seem to) remember what they're talking about. Though even in the first transcript, it forgets in the last response that you were talking about the dead. Now, I understand how it can create stories, pseudo-reports,...
- Wed May 08, 2024 3:31 pm
- Forum: Ephemera
- Topic: AIs gunning for our precious freelancers
- Replies: 731
- Views: 137231
Re: AIs gunning for our precious freelancers
i'd prefer a crazy orange man win and is a lot friendlier towards russia and north korea We did learn things in the 1990s— some of them the same things that should have been learned in the 1920s. And one of those is that there is no fake fascism. Edging toward fascism with a smirk and a wink is not...
- Mon May 06, 2024 5:31 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Syntax random
- Replies: 195
- Views: 114171
Re: Syntax random
Going from the placement of ‘only’, it can mean what you mention: ‘the Louvre was the only thing we didn’t see’. But for me this requires special intonation (we didn’t see | őnlý the Lòuvre), and feels quite strained. Maybe it’s an Australian English thing, then. Either way, zompist seems to say th...
- Sun May 05, 2024 6:02 am
- Forum: Ephemera
- Topic: Random Thread
- Replies: 3731
- Views: 451078
Re: Random Thread
A totally unrelated random musing: Have humans made more transistors, or more things which aren't transistors? I think transistors win out by a large margin. This took longer to find than I expected, but I think I have a candidate: viral particles in the Covid vaccines. First, let's look at the tra...
- Sun May 05, 2024 5:20 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
- Replies: 4687
- Views: 2061793
Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
I have long been entertaining the notion that the impression that languages change faster in times of social upheaval than in times of social stability may be a mirage resulting from the conservatism of written norms which are only broken up and realigned with the spoken vernacular in times of soci...
- Sat May 04, 2024 5:48 pm
- Forum: Almea
- Topic: "Experiencer"
- Replies: 40
- Views: 4403
Re: "Experiencer"
These are just neutral and emotive restatements of the same thing. How so? (more precisely, how is superstratum influence the same thing as mindful borrowing with the intent to change one's native language in a specific direction?) What do you think superstratum influence is ? You're repeating a te...
- Sat May 04, 2024 5:10 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Syntax random
- Replies: 195
- Views: 114171
Re: Syntax random
We saw everything except the Louvre. The only thing we didn’t see was the Louvre. I agree that these sound good. So… yeah, maybe you’re right, and I’m overthinking these questionable edge cases. (It is something I tend to do when thinking about syntax.) Oh, you're not alone. Any sentence, or word, ...
- Sat May 04, 2024 5:04 pm
- Forum: Almea
- Topic: "Experiencer"
- Replies: 40
- Views: 4403
Re: "Experiencer"
People making naturalistic conlangs are, well, trying to be naturalistic. Often that means simulating natural changes. E.g. you take a word list, run it through some plausible sound changes, and see what havoc that does to your morphology. That in turn suggests changes to the syntax. All this is pr...
- Sat May 04, 2024 4:48 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Syntax random
- Replies: 195
- Views: 114171
Re: Syntax random
We didn’t see [only the Louvre]. ⇒ We only didn’t see the Louvre. Yet, the first sentence exists in surface structure with a completely different meaning! For you, that meaning is unambiguously different; for me it’s ambiguous, and can be the same under highly marked circumstances. But, apparently,...
- Sat May 04, 2024 4:33 pm
- Forum: Almea
- Topic: "Experiencer"
- Replies: 40
- Views: 4403
Re: "Experiencer"
Another point is that conlangs' grammars are created consciously and with clear intent, whereas natlangs' grammars just sort of evolve on their own. People making naturalistic conlangs are, well, trying to be naturalistic. Often that means simulating natural changes. E.g. you take a word list, run ...
- Sat May 04, 2024 4:19 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
- Replies: 4687
- Views: 2061793
Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
Wikipedia is not an authoritative source here. :P David Crystal in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language : "The year 1066 marks the beginning of a new social and linguistic era in Britain, but it does not acutally identify the boundary between Old and Middle English. It was a long ...
- Sat May 04, 2024 5:10 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Syntax random
- Replies: 195
- Views: 114171
Re: Syntax random
Other way around: what's happening in We only didn’t see the Louvre is Quantifier Hopping. We are planning to see only the Louvre. > We are planning to only see the Louvre. > We are only planning to see the Louvre. The trick is to note the semantics: what's limited is what we're seeing, i.e. the Lo...
- Fri May 03, 2024 8:28 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Syntax random
- Replies: 195
- Views: 114171
Re: Syntax random
Reviving this thread to mention an interesting observation about English quantifiers (discovered in the process of conlanging): 1. We only didn’t see the Louvre ⇒ It was only the Louvre that we didn’t see Under focalisation (I think this particular construction is clefting?), the quantifier seems t...