Lvxferre [he/him] @ lvxferre @mander.xyz

I have two chimps within, called Laziness and Hyperactivity. They smoke cig

---

Read more

Posts

6

Comments

1,986

Joined

2 yr. ago

The general pattern seems cross-linguistically consistent.

As I checked from an article, at least in Mandarin the usage of particles happens alongside the change in intonation, not at the expense of it.

Also note that even [some? all?] Germanic languages show something similar - but instead of a particle, you get a syntactical movement (verb fronting) overtly marking the question. Examples:

In English this is slightly obscured by do-support being obligatory for most verbs, but note how it's the same process - if you were to insert the "do" without a question, in the third sentence, it would end as "the cat does meow".

I was expecting Mandarin to be an exception, since the language uses pitch to encode different words; apparently it isn't, the speakers simply "abstract" the phonemic vs. phrasal pitch variations as two different things, when interpreting the sentence. Check figure 6.

And while there is a particle overtly conveying "this is a question", ⟨吗⟩ /ma⁰/ (the "0" indicates neutral tone), it seems that you can couple it with an assertive phrasal pitch to convey rhetorical questions. And other languages (like e.g. German and English, that overtly mark questions with verb fronting) show a similar pattern.

I also found some literature claiming that it might be cross-linguistically consistent

The most important observations are the following:

1. pitch tends to decline from the beginning of an IP [intonational phrase] to the end, a tendency known as declination;
2. the beginning of an IP may be marked by a local sharp rise in pitch or “reset”;
3. in IPs that are utterance-final and/or in statements, there may be a local drop in pitch at the end of the IP in addition to any overall declination spanning the IP as a whole;
4. in IPs that are in questions and/or are not utterance-final, declination may be moderated, suspended or even reversed, i.e. the overall trend may be less steeply declining, level, or even slightly rising;
5. in addition to exhibiting reduced declination, non-final and interrogative IPs may also have a local rise in pitch at the end, or at least have no local drop.

The validity of these observations, as general tendencies, is not in doubt.

The article also lays out some potential explanations for this. The basic gist of it is, nobody knows why but everyone has a guess.

EDIT: as another user (ABCDE) correctly pointed out, keep in mind that this works differently for open-ended vs. yes/no questions.

I tried GenAI. It simply doesn't get the vibe right, as it makes both Mario and Pikachu a bit too cheerful and tries to make the picture a bit too dynamic.

I'm trying to trace the characters over to see if I can output a somewhat decent sketch. At least to give people an idea of what I mean.

Those studios have been pouring huge amounts of money on graphics under the assumption (i.e. idiocy) that better graphics = more sales. Tim Sweeney is shifting it towards yet another assumption/idiocy: that more forced socialisation = more sales.

And they still don't get the picture. People won't buy your games if they're boring, if they're too expensive, or if they think that you're an arsehole. Roughly in this order. That's it.

I don't think that dreams are a good threshold. Mostly based on personal anecdote - sometimes I dream with random stuff in Talian, for example, and I'm definitively not proficient in it. (Including some shitty bilingual jokes, like an angry pig surrounded by bananas praying to the sky.)

I wish that I had enough drawing skills to do this, but:

Imagine obese (morbidly so) versions of Mario and Pikachu. Both with blood on their mouths, and faces that strongly remind Goya's "Saturn Devouring His Son". Mario holds half of the body of a dead Tanzee (a Palworld pal), and is strongly implied to be eating it; Pikachu does it with the Yuzu logo, or something else.

There are only three things written in the whole picture.

• Top right corner: Nintendo's logo.
• Centre bottom: "we were starving", followed by "私たち二人は飢えていました。" (ditto; might as well check the grammar as I don't speak JP, I used a machine translator).

ich habe noch kein einziges “du hast mich” bis jetzt

Auch weil alles Liebe in Lemmy ist, ja? /witz

People with no friends confirmed as nihillingual. /s

[Caveat lector: I'm not from language acquisition, my main area of knowledge within Linguistics is Historical Linguistics.]

Native proficiency is a result of a language acquisition ability that is not well understood and disappears early into child development.

That's the critical period hypothesis. It's more complicated than it looks like, and academically divisive; some say that it's simply the result of people having higher exposure and incentive to learn a language before they're 12yo, while some claim that it's due to changes in cerebral structures over time.

And then there's people like Chomsky who claim that the so-called "window of opportunity" is to learn Language as a human faculty, not to learn a specific language like Mandarin, Spanish, English etc.

It's complicated; different people put the cut-off point in different places. And to complicate it further language proficiency isn't just one but at least two (production vs. reception), if not four (hearing, speaking, reading, writing).

That said, in my personal and subjective view, a person is proficient enough in a language to say "I speak it" when they're able to use it for a simple conversation about a topic that they know, without too much effort or reliance on external tools.

Se hablás castellano entonces complica, ya que no hablo. Excepto cuando borracho. Aún asi, no es castellano, es más como portitañol...

de veras, che. Una vodca hoy sería genial.

Du irrst dich, Brudi - niemand spricht Deutsch hier.

And when you do use those ⟨U⟩ (I do), people assume that you know what's going on in the UK (I don't.).

No, it's roughly 20% (297M/1537M). Source.

"So, those guys generate positive advertisement for our games. How do we stop it, and make sure that public opinion shifts to «Nintendo is cringe and you're a loser if you play this shit»?"

Also, what the fuck is with Japanese law, criminalising modding?

I'd consider growing those. Mostly to blend alongside some extremely hot pepper, as then I can control the heat properly.

r/TheDahmerCase has been banned from Reddit

Yes, we reported that. We've done nothing wrong, only noticed the 2500 sudden members today and someone else had the same issue today and then their sub was also banned, so it's not just us. And we were both banned for 'spam'. I think Reddit has been hacked.

Reddit has negative respect towards the small communities, eh. The same ones that used to make that place fun, in contrast with overgrown shitholes like r/[we try to be]funny.

As I mentioned in another thread, about the same link, whoever is left moderating that shithole lacks dignity and care about the userbase to do anything.

Well, at least here we can talk about Voldemort without evoking him, right? (Unless this shit is like Betelgeuse - on the third time you mention his name, he pops up to ruin your day.)

Okay, serious now: that's sensible since in r/brasil it would be basically advertisement.