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Cake day: August 14th, 2023

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  • hakase@lemm.eetoShowerthoughts@lemmy.world*Permanently Deleted*
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    11 days ago

    True, but as usual, that’s offset elsewhere in the grammar (and a binary or ternary noun class system doesn’t really introduce that much complexity).

    English still has number distinctions with multiple irregular patterns (and plural/collective distinctions like “fish/fish/fishes”), and even lesser recognized animacy distinctions that must take up some space in the grammar too (“my face” is fine, but “the face of mine” is odd, while “the clock’s face” and “the face of the clock” are both fine).


  • hakase@lemm.eetoShowerthoughts@lemmy.world*Permanently Deleted*
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    11 days ago

    One example of such a process is subregular patterns getting extended instead of always levelling toward the most productive constructions.

    In many southern dialects, for example, even though the productive past tense is the “-ed” past (just like it is in all modern varieties of English), and so we normally would expect to get regularization like “cleave/clove/cloven” > “cleave/cleaved/cleaved”, we instead in these dialects get irregular examples like “bring/brought/brought” being regularized not to expected productive “bring/bringed/bringed”, but rather “bring/brang/brung” on the pattern of “sing/sang/sung”, “drink/drank/drunk”, etc.

    Extending subregularities like this can cause irregular patterns to persist and grow stronger over time.

    I suppose that technically this isn’t introducing a new irregularity so much as it is helping an older one persist, but it’s a similar process.

    Other recent innovations include things like Canadian and northern US English “I’m done my homework”, northern positive anymore (“Anymore, I go to the store on Fridays”), and prepositional “because” (“I can’t come tonight, because homework”).

    Again, this isn’t exactly the development of new irregular morphology (word-building rules) specifically, but these are analogous processes elsewhere in the grammar.

    It’s also worth mentioning that English is becoming more and more of an isolating language over time (a language with less morphology/word-building processes), and so we’d expect irregular morphology specifically to become less common in these systems over time.

    That was kinda rambly, and way more than you asked for - I hope it made some sort of sense.


  • It isn’t though.

    It may seem like it is, but English is actually becoming more regular over time in many dialects.

    Dialects dropping the 3rd person singular -s, dropping irregular (and even regular!) plurals, dialects eliminating the subjunctive, and past tense/participle distinctions. In the phonology you have marked features like English’s interdental fricatives going away as well. All of these processes are producing less marked and more regular structures across the English-speaking world.

    As always, there are processes countering these and introducing more irregularity, but as cattywampas mentioned, these are the sorts of processes that all languages are always undergoing. English really isn’t special - it’s just a natural language like any other.



  • hakase@lemm.eetoLemmy.World Announcements@lemmy.worldLemmy needs more donations
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    15 days ago

    I’ve heard that a few of the third party mobile apps still show the specific moderator who took action, and I think other moderators/admins can see which mods took action as well. Either way, we would need some reasonable amount of proof/assurance that the devs had actually stepped back from active moderation, and this seems to be the non-negotiable sticking point for many users, including myself.

    I am completely fine with them still being the admins of the instance because of its importance as a testbed. And, I think they should have a community that they belong to, especially when that community reflects their values and is so satisfied with them. The important thing for a lot of us is that they themselves do not take a direct, active role in the distasteful censorship that goes on in .ml.

    As I told Nutonic elsewhere in this thread, I solemnly swear that as soon as I’m convinced that both devs have permanently stepped back from active moderation of .ml, I will set up recurring donations going forward and provide receipts.

    Edit: It was in the lemm.ee thread that I told Nutonic that, not this one.


  • hakase@lemm.eetoLemmy.World Announcements@lemmy.worldLemmy needs more donations
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    15 days ago

    Fine, maybe we’re just talking past each other somehow. I’ll give it one more try, and I’ll try to be clear. This is the main point:

    I am saying that I find it very wierd that you and .world feel like they should be able to dicate moderation, especialy when the instance is not the issue at hand.

    I understand your concern here, and I fully agree that if we were trying to control how .ml is moderated, then this would absolutely be a double standard.

    My response is that we’re not dictating the moderation of the instance, we’re dictating that the developers of Lemmy should personally not participate in that moderation.

    The moderation of .ml could be literally, exactly the same, with literally exactly the same bans, deletions, etc., as long as it’s not Dessalines doing it.

    The moderation policies are fine; the devs acting as a moderator for a tankie instance is not fine.

    Once again, we do not want to dictate how your instance is moderated. We do not care how your instance is moderated, other than finding it generally distasteful. We want to make sure that the devs of Lemmy are not the ones doing that moderating.


    Also, this is orthogonal to the main point, but it’s worth mentioning:

    Where I do agree is that if you find communism so distasteful that you cannot suport a communsim sure no one is forcing you to donate

    You’ve put words in my mouth here. If .ml were a communist instance, I’d be fine with donating. It’s the fact that it’s specifically - a tankie, authoritarian, genocide-denying, human-rights-violation-supporting instance that aggressively silences all dissent just like the authoritarian, genociding governments they hold up on pillars instance - that I find so distasteful.

    I would love it if the devs were actually communists.



  • hakase@lemm.eetoLemmy.World Announcements@lemmy.worldLemmy needs more donations
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    15 days ago

    The difference, and why it’s not a double standard, of course, being the fact that I’m not going to your instance and asking for money.

    Like, think about it for a second - imagine that I actively moderate .world or some “lib instance” where I aggressively ban tankie talking points, and that I also contribute a huge amount to the codebase of Lemmy. If I were to go to the tankie instances to ask for money that’s going into my own pocket, I’d get laughed out of the room. There’s no way they’re gonna cough up dough for someone like that, especially with all of the horrible accusations they make about .world (transphobia, nazis, etc.).

    And we know this is the case, because they’re already rioting in the donation threads about Nutonic’s transphobia. And he’s already a tankie. If a literal tankie can’t pass the purity test well enough to get their support, there is zero chance a “lib” would.


    Anyway, there’s no right wing content here that I’ve seen, but regardless, I absolutely support .ml users having their instance moderated exactly as they would want. That’s what decentralization and federation is for, after all.

    I also fully support the devs using .ml as their testing ground for new versions of Lemmy.

    I do not support the devs of the entire Lemmy project actively censoring dissenting viewpoints on a tankie instance. They have a right to moderate their instance however they see fit, of course, but I also have the right to not give them any of my money because of it.

    If the devs do want money from us, then, as has been mentioned repeatedly, all they have to do is stop actively moderating .ml themselves and let their mods do it for them, and I believe the donations would pour in.

    They don’t seem willing to do that (Dessalines, at least), and so they will continue to receive pennies outside of the Tankie Triad. And y’all would do the exact same if the situation were reversed, and you know it.

    Simple as.




  • hakase@lemm.eetoMeta (lemm.ee)@lemm.eePlease consider supporting Lemmy development
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    17 days ago

    Probably not - for me it’s more that the majority of my negative experiences on Lemmy have come on lemmy.ml, so the sticking point really is your involvement with it.

    For a lot of other people in these threads though, it does seem like funding the hosting is the biggest deal. If the server costs for lemmy.ml are as low as you say, splitting off the hosting costs separately in some way (like taking donations directly from lemmy.ml that go into their own account separate from general Lemmy donations, for example) probably would see at least some sort of increase in donations to the overall Lemmy project. Especially if you made an announcement that this is what you were doing and maintained an official “separation of finances” position going forward.

    If it wouldn’t be too much extra work, it’s probably worth a shot.