Zompist Bboard Again

[…] 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...

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...

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 ...

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...

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...

bradrn wrote: ↑Wed May 22, 2024 5:53 pmEven English is arguably marked-nominative.

How so?

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...

Looking at the main zompist.com page, I just stumbled across this pretty old piece: http://zompist.com/spoke.html Naturally Google Translate today is far better than Babelfish ever was. For fun I let Google at the text, and got this: Full belly, happy face. It is likely that already Vm. compose som...

zompist, I mostly agree with your points here, but one small nitpick. This is a red herring, but the Nazis never won a majority. They had 33% in November 1932 (but Hitler was named chancellor anyway, as a result of negotiations with the conservatives). The election of March 1933 was not free, but e...

Note, I wasn't justifying Biden, but explaining. The general rule in US federal politics is that you have to appeal to the "independents", the tiny minority that actually does switch votes between parties, frequently and whimsically. The Independents are not overwhelmingly pro-Israeli lik...

It's depressingly simple: not supporting Israel is political suicide. A recent poll shows 58% very or mostly favorable views of Israel. And it was over 60% for the entire period 2005-2023... often over 70%. You don't get ahead in US politics by bucking that kind of trend. Er, it looks like 35% Demo...

If you're orbiting a black hole, avoid the plunging region:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/17/world/bl ... index.html

Responsible black hole owners will put up warning tape, but this is not always present.

What should, theoretically speaking, happen if an object that has a number of ants on it is brought to a different place, a place that is very far away - at least by ant standards - from the ants' original colony? Let's assume the ants are all workers, with no queens, drones, or larvae among them. ...

If I remember special relativity correctly, if we watch a spaceship going at .99c, we see it slowed down by a factor of 7. However, the people on the spaceship see us (and the whole universe) flying past them at .99c, so they see the universe as slowed down. The planet doesn't work like this, becaus...

The "landlord" claims that she's going to explain everything tomorrow [...] [*]The pièce de la résistance: the photos she sent "of the place" weren't even of a residence in Europe , but they were of an apartment in Québec. I can't believe I didn't notice the American plugs in th...

Yeah, look at your own page. Democratic support, 87%; Republican, 28%. Who controls the House? They controlled the house back in 2020 (but not the senate). Exactly. Which is why they passed a federal $15 minimum wage law in the House in 2019, and it died in the Senate. This raises the question: Why...

Support for raising the minimum wage to at least $15 is about 62%, yet we don't get that and no politicians get punished for failing to deliver it. About six-in-ten U.S. adults (62%) say they favor raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, including 40% who strongly back the idea. About four...

the Copts would be shocked to hear that they are speaking a nonexisting language. Coptic has not had native-speaker transmission for multiple hundred years now, so while they may technically be speaking it, that statement needs qualification. what?? then how did some of the French and English peopl...

A thought that occured to me too is that -- from my foreign, limited perspective -- Republicans are pretty easy to read and have better luck implementing their policies. Depends on what you consider their policies to be. The one thing they can all agree on is cutting taxes. They were unable to repe...

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 ...