Zompist Bboard Again

So they were given something of the form "if A is true, B is true". Then they were given two situations: - A is true. Is B true? (everyone says yes) - B is NOT true. Is A true? (only 50% say no, the other 50% say there's no way to know). Whereas classical modus ponens insists that in the ...

Yes, I think "me" is effectively the default, and "I" is the marked form used only in one specific circumstance.

I gather the survey (which I'm just taking from wikipedia, so don't take it as gospel) gave conditionals and asked for what could be known. So they were given something of the form "if A is true, B is true". Then they were given two situations: - A is true. Is B true? (everyone says yes) -...

Bryatesle is miekko's. qatama... is that masako's?

Sal, I have pretty similar views as you on the topic but the discussion between me and the other posters here has never turned ugly Well congratulations. And I'm sorry if that post was overly honest, but I'm getting fed up of his my-way-and-no-criticisms approach - even before the personal flaming ...

Do other languages commonly have “false conditionals” of the form “If you’re interested, I’m free next week” (where the speaker is free without regard to the addressee’s interest)? Is there a better name for these than “false conditionals”? Well, they're valid material conditionals*, so "false...

So you'd only like to "submit your ideas for discussion" with people who promise to agree with them? Because rather than defend your ideas, you'd like to harp on yet again about your personal dislike of me and my terrible failings? How original. There's speculation, and then there's crackp...

So, May's zombie government stumbles on to live another day. She got 325 votes, which is 2 less than her coalition... what's the story there? I guess 2 rebels vote against her. Honestly, while I thought she'd win, I'm surprised at least a couple more haven't gone against her. EDIT: no, she got them...

You will, no doubt, be all astounded to hear: the government has not fallen. As expected, Theresa May has survived the parliamentary VONC. The House has full confidence in her to, as the DUP said, 'continue delivering Brexit'. Unfortunately, the House continues to refuse to accept the Brexit she wan...

To be fair, 'balk' and 'baulk' sometimes have epenthetic /l/ in this country... and 'falcon' almost always does.

Bolth I've heard from a fair number of speakers, but I don't have it myself. I'm trying to recall if I have any instances of hypercorrection since I'm much more likely to delete coda /l/ entirely (e.g. folk , yolk , walk ). ...? Are you implying that some people insert /l/ even into words like folk...

It should be pointed out that, even in the extremely unlikely event of there being a close Uralic-IE relationship: - 1. may never have happened (there's no reason to think Uralic didn't instead lose its third phonation) - 2. may never have happened (there's no evidence of IE ever having had a fourth...

So perhaps there could be a completely different approach? What about intentionally designing a language to be equally difficult for everyone to learn? Such a language would, for all its flaws, at least have the advantage of putting potential learners around the world on an equal footing. That soun...

That vote against was so immense that there might actually be a chance that it does pass. It was a bigger defeat than even the most pessimistic/optimistic forecasters had considered. For context, the largest previous defeat anyone knows about was against Ramsay MacDonald in the 1920s, when he lost a...

Anyway, for any politics watchers: the big Brexit vote is at 7pm GMT tonight, and is expected to last a few hours (there's a lot of amendments).

A google maps perusal shows the port of Ramsgate unloads ships from the bow somehow? What even is that? Is that a thing, or are they just too cheap to build piers and cranes? ...do American ships not unload from the bow!? I think the problem is that Ramsgate doesn't have RORO facilities, which I gu...

Does anyone here pronounce "ate" as "et"? I've read that some dialects traditionally pronounced it like such. The people who do probably had a harder time understanding the "Why was six afraid of seven? Because seven ate nine." joke when they were a kid. I have both. I...

Everyone likes Volapuk. Volapuk is a great language. And unlike the conlangs of everybody else here, it was once learnt by millions of people.

It looks like an auxlang. If it's not intended to be an auxlang, that's perhaps something the creator might like to reconsider.

So I've been thinking about what could make a good auxlang. I never really was into auxlangs, I've checked out esperanto and lojban, and that's about it but I realized recently that an auxlang would actually fit quite well in the setting in the novel I'm writing(*). So, well, although I'm a little ...