Four Things Do Not A Post Make, But I Post Anyway

[bloodyrosemccoy]

• So after years of fans in the crowd I hang with complaining that the American Girl Dolls of the Year seem to be Mostly White, American Girl has heeded our warnings and given us … a platinum-blonde doll of the year. Dudes, this isn’t them ignoring us. This is them inviting us to kiss their cynical asses.
• The Princess and the Frog had a decent enough story, a worthy heroine, JENIFER FUCKING LEWIS, and terrific animation. Still doesn’t top Beauty and the Beast for me (fluffiness wins over “you’re secreting mucus”), but man I could watch hours of footage of the shadows interacting with the real world.
• You know what's totally a swell thing to get in the mail? COOKIES, IS WHAT. Especially cookies from somebody who has made a career out of baking. westrider , I thank you heartily!
• Today's Rredŕa translation exercise: Ñagh she tikulya pe tes, dhre ka nuryi trugovish vyugadra!—colloquially, “Call the ambulance quick, cuz I’ve been hit by a brick!” A line from an Atomic Fireballs song. For some reason “I’ve been hit by a brick” is always the first passive-voice perfect-aspect example I can think of, so I decided to use it. I must say, case markers make for some really easy passive voice—all you need to do is rearrange the word order. It doesn’t actually change the meaning at all, just what you’re focusing on. So ka nuryi trugovish vyugadra, “I’ve been hit by a brick,” has all the same inflections as vyugadra nuryi trugovish ka, “a brick has hit me,” except for the word order. This wouldn’t work in English, where rearranging the same words would produce nonsense (*“a brick have been hit by I”). (And looking at the amount of inflection coded into that English version—man, English is redundant.) You don’t care, I know, but I had fun.

Comments

[chibicharibdys.livejournal.com]

I could watch hours of footage of the shadows interacting with the real world.

Same here. They should release a director's cut that consists solely of that.

[kadharonon.livejournal.com]

At the same time as thinking that, though, I was also sitting there thinking "Oh dear god this is going to be the thing that terrifies a whole new generation of small children."

For me, it was Flotsam and Jetsam. These kids will never look at shadows the same again.

Granted, children of really geeky parents have already been shown Silence in the Library and Forests of the Dead, so they're terrified of shadows anyway.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

There were indeed a few nervouse squeaks around us in the theater when the shadows took off. Childhood always needs some good, safe trauma. ;)

[westrider.livejournal.com]

You're welcome! I always like it when people enjoy the food I make.

Truth be told, though, my skill with that cookie recipe takes almost nothing from my time working as a Baker. I've been making these for over 20 years now, and that is why they're so good :)

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Well, either way, they are VERY good!

[westrider.livejournal.com]

Well, either way, they are VERY good!

On this, there can be no argument :)

[stormteller.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, inflected languages are awesome. Latin is a great example. My personal creation, Charkartayou, is one. It's so flexible you can put the words in absolutely any order you want without screwing up the meaning, as long as you use the right particles. I use word order in that language to denote emphasis, with the most important words coming first. Fun-fun.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

See, this is what I love about the internet--people out there will commiserate with you about how great inflected languages are.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

Really? You can even mix words from embedded clauses in with the matrix clause?

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

Technically, rearranging word order isn't passive voice. Latin had fairly free word order but still inflected verbs for voice.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Your technicality is true, if technical!

Actually, that's one of the things I was experimenting with--using word order as the grammatical marker for passive voice. I like it for this construction, but I might make it unique to constructions where the demoted agent is still present. I'm still trying to decide how to do other passive constructions--I might reserve this for the strict passive, and do static and adjectival passives some other way.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

So, for example, if the noun marked as nominative precedes the verb, the clause is active (and the nominative is the semantic agent), but if it follows, the clause is passive (and the nominative is the semantic patient)? Something like that?

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Actually, the language is ergative/absolutive, which is why it only really works when the agent is present. In that case it works fine--erg.noun-verb-abs.noun would be an active clause, and abs.noun-verb-erg.noun would be passive.

But that's why I'm still torn--it isn't so easy when the agent is omitted. An absolutive noun followed by a verb would depend on the situation--if it's an intransitive verb it'd be active, but if the verb is transitive it would be passive. The trouble is, of course, distinguishing whether the verb is transitive. I'm trying to figure out how much of that can be determined by the context.

I really like the word order, though, just because of the idea that it's the closest they ever get to a passive construction, so I may keep it anyway--if I don't think context is enough, I'm also considering a dummy pronoun for the demoted ergative agent.

Like I said, it's really up in the air right now. I've got whole pages of scribbled ideas.