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[chris_notts]

any elongated object is able to represent a penis, any action the sexual act...

Plenty of languages assign almost all long thin objects to the masculine gender, for mysterious poorly understood reasons.

[hwhatting]

News flash for the Canadians on the board:
- Justin Trudeau is a Nigerian prince
- He is a deeply religious man
- He moonlights as "President and CEO of the Royal Bank of Canada" and takes personal customer service very serious
Whatever your opinions on JT, I thought I need to bring these things to your attention.

Attention Dear beneficiary,

Greeting in the name of our almighty God, I wish you and your family

happy moments of life. I am certain this message might come to you as

a surprise. Nevertheless, I humbly ask you to give me your attention

and hear me well.

I am JUSTIN TRUDEAU. The current Prime Minister of Canada.

I want to inform you that the matter of your fund was brought to my

desk this Morning, because the Dr. Williams Welstead the vice

president Royal Bank Of Canada (RBC) said that they will divert your

fund worth a sum of US$12,000,000,000.00 Twelve Billion United State

Dollars to Government

Treasuries Account just because you refused to pay the sum of $300 usd

Activation fee which will permit you a daily withdrawal limit of

US$25,000 USD three times daily from any ATM Machine around you.

Please take note that the US$12,000,000,000.00 deposited with the

Royal Bank of Canada won by your e-mail address via online active

email address selected from the sponsor of Coca Cola Company award. It

was registered with your email address by the Lottery Board Executive

Directors Of Coca-Cola Company Canada Branch, As Prime Minister of

Canada, I told

Dr. Williams Welstead the vice president to reduce the Activation fee

to $100 usd to help you afford the fee. After the Diplomatic Agent

delivers the ATM Visa Card then he will follow you to any ATM MACHINE

center around you so you can withdraw with your ATM Card and then you

balance him the remaining $200 usd.



The Royal Bank Of Canada has given you the grace of sending only

$100. of the charges/fee which will be only $100 for now, then once

you confirm your US$12,000,000,000.00, you can then pay the remaining

balance of $150 . I want to personally assure you once again that you

will have every

course to smile and be happy to organize a big party to celebrate with

your family.



I am hereby protecting your interest as the Prime Minister of Canada

to make sure all goes well because this is a huge amount of money, we

cannot wish you to lose. Please I want you to know that you have from now

till the end of two days to effect the payment for activation of your

ATM Card Account Number: 6021253365.



The payment approval documents have been acquired for the smooth

delivery of your ATM visa Card of U $12,000,000,000.00. You are

advised to buy a $100 usd Steam Wallet Card or Google Play Card to

enable the Royal Bank Of Canada bank activate the account for you to

be able to withdraw immediately you receive the ATM Card to your home

address.

Your quick attention is needed as soon as you read this email and you

should avoid anything that will make you lose this fund.



Thanks, and God bless.

Best Regards,

JUSTIN TRUDEAU,

President and CEO Royal Bank of Canada

[zompist]

It seems there's been some serious inflation in 419 scams. $12 billion is what it takes to get attention now?

I'd subtract a few demerits for the RBC using US dollars.

[Raphael]

A family member pointed me to the first photo on the page on the German news website:

https://www.tagesschau.de/multimedia/bi ... -7835.html

and claimed that it's interesting how the baby bird in it is simultaneously kinda cute and pretty ugly.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

It's ugly cute.

[Raphael]

If I wouldn't know that Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch was a real person, I could easily believe that someone made his name up:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Quiller-Couch

[Moose-tache]

Bonus: it's pronounced "Quiller-Cooch!"

[Moose-tache]

Question: A genie offers to make you the Mohammed Bin Salman of one city, anywhere in the world, of less than 50,000 population. Which city do you pick?

[Ares Land]

Question: A genie offers to make you the Mohammed Bin Salman of one city, anywhere in the world, of less than 50,000 population. Which city do you pick?

Some ultra-expensive skiing resort like Chamonix? I'd sell it immediately after; I can't be bothered to be Mohammed Bin Salman.

[rotting bones]

Polypersonal agreement is so common that I think it's not very useful to take it as a marker of polysynthesis. I don't think of Quechua, Swahili, Sumerian, and French as polysynthetic. Noun incorporation is a better test.

Kwak'wala seems to be described as polysynthetic despite having questionable noun incorporation: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5f51c42p

BTW, if AI successfully automates production, our material conditions might become similar in some ways to what the Kwakwakaʼwakw peoples historically faced. I wonder if there will be convergent evolution between our lifestyle and theirs: https://www.pdfdrive.com/the-social-org ... 70861.html

[bradrn]

Polypersonal agreement is so common that I think it's not very useful to take it as a marker of polysynthesis. I don't think of Quechua, Swahili, Sumerian, and French as polysynthetic. Noun incorporation is a better test.

Kwak'wala seems to be described as polysynthetic despite having questionable noun incorporation: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5f51c42p

While Swedish has full noun incorporation. As I recall, NI isn’t a very good test either. In fact, as with most things in linguistics, no single test suffices. (I think it was Mithun who had a good article on it — Typology of Polysynthesis or something like that? But I’m at my phone right now so couldn’t tell you the details.)

[Moose-tache]

Mithun wrote "Acquisition of Polysynthesis," if that helps.

The original definition of polysynthesis back in the early 19th century was "The greatest number of ideas composed in the least number of words." That's obviously naive and it's difficult to unpack what is meant here by "idea" and "word," but I think that's about as good as we're going to get. The idea of polysynthesis, from day one, was about vibes, and was meant to describe areal features of North America rather than universally applicable features of human language.

"Polysynthetic" belongs in the same category as "monosyllabic." Remember when people used to call Mandarin and some other East Asian languages monosyllabic languages? Like that was a meaningful category of language? No? I'm the only one who's old enough to remember that? Well they did that. And polysynthesis is the same, except it's had more longevity because lay people like us want to believe it means something. I think linguists are using the term (at least in the abstract sense) less and less.

[WeepingElf]

To me, "polysynthetic" simply means, "synthetic to a very high degree". Nothing else.

[Torco]

MFW I read that "the fact large language models work prove that chomsky's universal grammar theory is false [because LLMs are built without using UG principles]"

[Raphael]

MFW I read that "the fact large language models work prove that chomsky's universal grammar theory is false [because LLMs are built without using UG principles]"

I'd say what's generally known about neuroscience is enough to prove Chomsky's universal grammar theory is false. But the LLMs don't prove anything about human use of language, because, just because they handle language in one way, it doesn't mean that the human brain has to handle language the same way. Powerful chess computers don't prove or disprove anything about how the human brain handles chess, either.

[Torco]

quite so! the simile that came to my mind was that you could teach a NN to predict the positions of the planets without incorporating any concept of gravity into the design, it'd just take many many neurons (or indeed simulate art without teaching the thing anything about brushes or color theory).

That being said, most of what is known about neuroscience, i'm told, is that this area of the brain or this particular wave pattern seems to be correlated with that action or experience. not a lot about how the thing functions at all.

[bradrn]

Polypersonal agreement is so common that I think it's not very useful to take it as a marker of polysynthesis. I don't think of Quechua, Swahili, Sumerian, and French as polysynthetic. Noun incorporation is a better test.

Kwak'wala seems to be described as polysynthetic despite having questionable noun incorporation: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5f51c42p

While Swedish has full noun incorporation. As I recall, NI isn’t a very good test either. In fact, as with most things in linguistics, no single test suffices. (I think it was Mithun who had a good article on it — Typology of Polysynthesis or something like that? But I’m at my phone right now so couldn’t tell you the details.)

Found it! It was Mattissen’s Structural Typology of Polysynthesis.

[Moose-tache]

I was about to complain about Torco and Raphael for just repeating what was already said earlier in this thread, but then I realized that happened in a different thread, and discussion has metasthasized across multiple conversations, destroying all it touches. Skynet is real, it's just made of dorks.

[Raphael]

Oh no, a linguistics forum being taken over by debates about language! What has the world come to?

[Torco]

but what do we mean here by "about" ?