Men are from Slars

It was limited before both by having a quantity of good arrows and, more importantly, by the hassle of dealing with them.

I'll start. My favorite thing is definitely the unlimited bow ammunition, which makes archery the powerful tool it deserves to be. — Slartucker, who felt like being positive this evening

Quote: Always have a small but increasing percentage chance of just going bananas with every servile interaction after using canisters. Percentage chances just don't work. Save-and-reload has been a customary option for far too long, and most gamers these days -- even those who don't identify with Red Mage -- will use it without thinking, especially in the case of annoying effects like attacking friendly characters. I agree with SoT. Giving the canisters positive AND negative effects on your stats, as well as positive AND negative effects on the story, would make them WAY more interesting. And they desperately need to be more interesting.

I see I chose the wrong three weeks to ignore the Geneforge forum. I'm really excited to hear Jeff's plans. Everything he's said suggests he's approaching GF4 with a dynamic attitude, where rules are broken, strange new ideas are released, and "good enough" gets embellished until it becomes "whoa, cool." This is the attitude that has brought us the most engaging game-worlds and stories, like GF1, E2, and Nethergate. Huzzah! I am thrilled to hear that there will be returning NPCs. (I'm rooting for Khyryk myself, but I'll be happy as long as it's not just the drakons.) I am elated to hear that there will be an actual war. The Empire War in E/A2 has got to be one of the best-implemented plot devices I've seen in a game. And I am completely euphoric that there's a servile PC option. It has been more than ten years since Jeff last cracked open a new non-human character option. HUZZAH!

All right, you've convinced me Kel. And it is horribly circular. Syntactic theory is full of horribly circular definitions. You might appreciate the following exchange I had with my syntax prof two years ago: "So we know the subject is in SpecTP because it's the thing that sits in SpecTP?" "Yes."

Quote: Honestly, I disagree with Slartucker here. All verbs require a subject. Transitive verbs require an object. I think that saying that transitive verbs require a transitive subject just confuses the issue. But in Nephilian, the subject of a transitive verb is in a different case from the subject of an intransitive verb -- so this is quite relevant information. As far as prodrop goes, I didn't see it in your descriptions anywhere, but there were some example sentences that had subject pronouns omitted. Also, I see what you mean about the tenses now. Your table format makes it look like there are four different suffixes for each person/number combination, one for each tense. If the table is going to contain TWO different types of suffixes, you should label it appropriately.

If the language is still ergative-absolutive, the important part about transitive verbs is not that they require an object, it's that they require a transitive subject (i.e., they use the absolutive, which is not going to get used with intransitive verbs). Are you still making it prodrop, or not? It appears that you are allowing pronouns to drop if they are ergative subjects, or absolutive subjects, but not ergative objects. I still think that makes little sense, for an ergative language, since it's basically dealing with pronouns as if they were nom-acc. Your writing is mostly simpler and clearer, which is good, but there are still some really bad typos (transitive vs intransitive are mixed up in 1 or 2 places). If I am reading your conjugation charts correctly, then it is impossible to tell the difference between 1st 2nd and 3rd person in any tense besides present tense. Right? Um... not good in combination with prodrop! Oh yeah. And is it STILL called Nephilian?

Well, the Exile trilogy package did (still does, actually) offer a small discount for each game you'd already registered.

So basically, if we can convince some Nephilim to start playing Avernum 4, maybe we'll get some more Nephil icons, eh?

Nice point, Shine. Although I've always wondered why everyone in Exile was so damn tolerant. I suppose being thrown into the underworld for your own differences might make you more tolerant of others -- but for many people, it would probably make them bitter, and make them search out scapegoats. I suppose the nephils and sliths sucked up a lot of the hateful energy, and some of those people ended up in the Abyss. But Exile still seems inconceivably tolerant to me. (Maybe it's better that way.) ...on the other hand, Nance and Elspeth don't seem to be entirely out of the closet. (I suppose I wouldn't be either, in their shoes.)

Well, I appreciate your saying those things. And I applaud your suspicion of people who claim to know what they're talking about -- many of them don't. But I think one should be suspicious of what you think you know, too. Subjecting your own arguments to the same scrutiny you demand of others is the only way to keep yourself from turning into a pompous airhead. (And yes... I have had in my life occasion to be a pompous airhead ) Anyway, I guess I'll contribute my opinion again if you want, though I think you'll understand if I don't debate things. --t

I stopped helping because it was getting frustrating, and it felt like I was spinning my wheels. You constantly misinterpreted the statements I made, and answered questions I did not ask. The genitive is the big thing. It took 2 pages of Kelandon explaining something very simple to you, suggesting your disagreement was related to English/Dutch word differences, and imploring you to look it up yourself -- during which time you repeatedly told us we were wrong -- before you finally looked it up and lo and behold, we weren't wrong. Meanwhile, attempting to address that question another way, I asked you for a reference to substantiate the claim you'd made about Sumerian genitive. Despite clarifying my question many times in very specific terms, you have now offered me references to Akkadian and Hurrian but NOT Sumerian. (No, I do not want the reference anymore!) As somebody else observed, you seem much more interested in winning an argument than in resolving it according to logic. And you seem more interested in arguing than in producing a grammar that is accurately described and understandable to the reader. That last part, of course, is what I was trying to help with. I wish you good luck with the grammar, as I said, but I have no interest in helping someone who is going to argue with everything I say. -- Slartucker, who really should know better than to fan flames, however reasonable he may think he's being

Interesting question, wz. Keep in mind, though, that the idea of a universal grammar is FAR from universally accepted. Personally, I am inclined to think that Chomsky has observed a number of useful patterns that run across languages, but I don't buy most of his theories about grammar operation. Syntactically, in particular, I find it really suspicious that with his UG it's (relatively) simple to get from deep structure to surface structure in English, but in languages with different word order, suddenly you're doing all these twists and turns. Not to mention agglutinative languages... judge for yourself, though. UG is based largely on generalizable human cognitive structure and development. To the degree that sliths or nephils are cognitively different from humans, they might have a different UG. But it seems to me that (like almost all fantasy/SF races) they are almost identical to us, cognitively. Differences in temperament are as likely to be cultural as anything else, and both seem to be capable of more or less the same stuff humans are capable of. -- slartucker, who is trying to resist the temptation to reduce everything to Optimality Theory

Okay, I am so very done here. Thralni, good luck with the language. I hope you are more receptive to constructive criticism you receive in the future.

First of all, Cale Johnson, the author of the page I linked to, is at UCLA. Are you thinking of Chuck Jones, who used to run the computer lab at the Oriental Institute? Different person, different name. Thralni, I was not shooting down your source. The point of my comment about the GAG was that I know, like, and respect it very much! However, it simply did not address the point in contention *whatsoever*. Quote: I can give tons of references saying what Sumerian uses the genitive for, that is not a problem. What is a problem, is to give references to books, where is said what Sumerian doesn't use the genitive for. I'll await the Hurrian's expert's email, and directly copy and paste it into a post. And that *is* the problem, Thralni. I was not complaining about your assertions of what the Sumerian genitive *was* for, those were quite correct. I was complaining about your assertions of what it was *not* for -- which you have just admitted you have no evidence for! Quote: They may be right about the genitive in general terms, but in this specific language, hurrian it is I'm talking about (My language was based on hurrian), I'd rather await what experts on the language have to say The point that we have been trying to get across to you is that terms like "genitive" are the same no matter what language you apply them to! The English word "genitive" means one thing and one thing only. It may be that in Dutch, the word used for "genitive" is also used for "possessive" and that distinction is not made. That's why Kelandon asked you to do something very specific in order to clarify the issue. Edit: And you looked it up!!! HALLELUJAH! As we suspected, this is all a translation problem. Thralni: In English, the case "my" is in is NOT called genitive, it is called possessive. In other words, English uses two different words for genitive and possessive, but Dutch uses the same word for both of them. Therefore, if you are writing in Dutch you are correct to use that word to describe a case that only deals with ownership. But if you are writing in English, you need to check whether "genitive" or "possessive" is the correct word to use. If it only deals with ownership, "possessive" is the correct word.

Thralni, I asked for a reference to something very specific. Quoting myself: "Give me a citation for a book or a scholarly article stating that in Sumerian the genitive is only used for possession." Your reference: - is about Akkadian, not Sumerian - does not state that any genitive, let alone the Sumerian genitive, is ONLY used for possession. (I spent many hours buried in the G.A.G. learning cuneiform...)

Mr. Salmon, you speak wisdom. I have one really important question... is "jezus Bok" something in Dutch, or is there now a Christian Vahnatai conspiracy? I knew "Vahnatai Creationism" sounded fishy... About the words Nephilim and Nepharim... it seems reasonable that words like those could have irregular plurals, since they are important and unique. Personally, I always figured that they were words created by humans, either based on misapprehending something a nephil said, or some kind of mage language name for the kitties. Quote: For clarity: it didn't say that it is used for posession only. *facepalm* *facepalm* *facepalm* Thralni, you do realize that the only reason I was arguing with you about this was because you said its genitive was only used for possession? OY.

Aaaaaaaaaaahhh!!!!!!!!!! Thralni, I am not discussing the genitive further unless you do one of two things: 1) Do what Kelandon asked. Find a book about English grammar which is written in Dutch and report the name of the case of the personal pronoun "my". 2) Do what I asked. Give me a citation for a book or a scholarly article stating that in Sumerian the genitive is only used for possession. That way, I can go look it up in the research archives at the university. It doesn't need to be online. (And if the book or article is not in English, that's fine too.) Quote: I'll explain that clearer on the webpage. there definetly is a difference: The multipartite-group verb is the group of finite verbs, while the bipartite-group is more the one of the non-finite verbs. I chose to name the group to their construction instead after what they are. !!!!!! Finite and non-finite are just classifications of different forms of the same verb. This is like talking about "present tense verbs" and "past tense verbs" as two totally different sets of lexical entries, which they are not. They are just different forms of the same verb! The problem is that transitive verbs and intransitive verbs are two different groups of verbs. Regular verbs and irregular verbs are two different groups of verbs. Finite and infinite verbs are two different groups of particular verb forms... but you can't logically separate out types of verbs after you separate out verb forms. Once you separate out groups of verb forms, you are no longer dealing with entire verbs, you are dealing with verb forms! Furthermore... looking at the verb page, it seems that your explanation of what finite and non-finite verbs are is really misleading. A verb form is classified as "finite" or "non-finite" based on the presence of markers specifying person, number, gender, and so on. It does not matter whether the markers are prefixes or suffixes or pronouns! In English, the suffixes are mostly other information. In Nephilian, however, they are always part of the suffixes! Perfect evidence of this confusion is in your table showing how a finite verb is constructed. How can a finite verbal form be an infinitive? That is a contradiction.

Sigh. Okay, a few points: 1) Nobody's attacking you. If you don't want any more feedback, then when you post that you have updated the site, I suggest you specify that you don't want feedback. Otherwise, please stop responding to my questions by saying "it's under construction." If it's really *that* unfinished, why are you publicizing it? (Rhetorical question, no need to answer 2) Almost any book about ancient near eastern language is written for a specialized audience. General overviews are no exceptions. First-year graduate students in such a field are expected to have (or to very quickly pick up) a WEALTH of knowledge on the subject that 99.99% of the world does not have. It is absurd for you to claim that any material giving technical details about the language is written for a general audience. It's not. (For what it's worth, grad students at uofc aren't even allowed to take Sumerian until they have had a year of Akkadian; the faculty feels the scholarship is significantly more obscure to a newcomer.) 3) I am a little confused about this persistent disagreement over the genitive. I assume your mother knows what she's talking about, but it's strange that my sources disagree. Is it possible that this is some kind of discrepancy between English and Dutch? Alternately, can you point me to a bibliographic reference to a book, article, whatever which states that Sumerian has a genitive which is only used for possession? 4) Source wrote: "including possession, location and composition" You said: "How can it be location? they already have a seperate case for that: the locative! The locative would be made useless if this is true." — ALWAYS, in a language, there is more than one way of expressing the same or similar things. Sometimes, one of these ways is specific to the grammar (like a case). Interrogatives are a really good example: many languages have more than one way of marking an utterance as a question, including those that rely on inserting words, on changing word order, on prosody, and so on. Often, these different ways are mostly interchangeable. Does that render any of them useless? No! Languages are subtle creatures. Semantics interfaces with everything; variations on meaning are infinite. So be careful before you go calling a linguistic structure "useless." 5) Me: "It is probably worth noting that most Indo-European languages are Nom-Acc languages, however, the two terms are NOT the same thing, so talking about the enormous difference between ergative and Indo-European languages is really misleading." Thralni: "I didn't say they are the same thing. What exactly is your point?" — Okay, I will try to be clearer. Quoting from your nouns page: Quote: It is essential to be aware of the enormous difference between an ergative langauge (like nephilian) and a standard indo-European language. An indo-European language uses in a sentence the nominative to denote the subject, and an accusative to denote the object... What you go on to contrast here is the difference between an ergative-absolutive language and a nominative-accusative language. However, what you SAY you are contrasting is the difference between an ergative language and "a standard Indo-European language." Basically you say the above phrase in place of saying "a nom-acc language" — very misleading. It's extra misleading because there exist Indo-European languages that are partially ergative. Hindi and Urdu, which are ergative-absolutive in certain situations, are one well-known example. 6) "I thought the chart would be clear enough. What I mean is, is that the irregular verbs, like the transitive and intransitive verbs, form a seperate sub-group in the bipartite-group." — EVERY verb is either transitive, or intransitive. EVERY verb is either regular, or irregular. They are two binary features which are completely unrelated. Your chart clearly suggests that if a verb is irregular, it isn't transitive or intransitive. 7) Now that you have explained the meaning of bipartite/multipartite, the names make more sense. It's still a really weird naming convention, and I am confused as to what the discrepancy between those two types of verbs is supposed to add to the language, anyway. --slartucker

Regarding our assertion that the genitive has wider uses, Thralni asked: "Then how come I don't see anything about it in already two or three books?" My guess would be that you are reading highly technical books about languages like Sumerian and Hurrian, which are read by a very tiny pool of highly specialized scholars! They probably assume a broad base of knowledge both about the ancient near east and about general linguistics.

"You clearly didn't get it. The verb part is an introduction." — If it's an introduction, then Kel's criticism is even more relevant. The intro is supposed to be clear and easy to understand. If it's confusing, your full text is probably doomed, and you should really fix the introduction before moving on to the more detailed work. "The cases. Sigh. Look, I already wrote that that might change as I first will have to experiment with these grammar parts, and modify the cases when necessary." — Thralni, you ask us for feedback, and then when you get it you deflect it by saying everything is going to change anyway. If you're not ready to get the feedback yet don't ask for it. "There are other languages in which it may be different." — Not really. While there are of course differences in how cases are used, the case names are NOT language-specific and are applied based on which one fits best. "I have been looking in books about Sumerian and Hurrian to see how they do it. In Sumerian it is not done as you say, also in Hurrian it is not as say it is." — NOT TRUE. I don't know about Hurrian, but for Sumerian see for example this partial grammar , which states (my italics): "the genitive case codes any relation between two noun phrases, including possession, location and composition as well as a variety of extended syntactic functions." But I am skeptical, with Kel, that Hurrian scholars would possibly call it the genitive if it is only used for possessive functions! "I don't understand the fact that you don't seem to understand what I mean, although others whome I asked to look and read what I wrote (people who know less about linguistics) seemd to understand it enough to know what I'm talking about." — Well, we are used to precision in describing language. We understand the basic gist of what you are saying as much as anyone else. However, if you want to produce a grammar that people can use to translate into or out of Nephilian, people will need to get more than just the basic gist! They have to understand the details, too. Looking at the anatomy of a cat's mouth sounds like a cool idea. Don't forget, though, that nephils in A1-4 seem to be capable of producing most English words with minimal phonetic alterations, so their mouth probably isn't too different from a human's. Thralni, I think some of the confusion in your writing is not caused by bad understanding of English, but simply by sloppy translating! In your nouns page by the part on [a] and [ina] markers, you say: "Some cases can only be used with animate, some only with animate, and some with both." I think what you meant to say is "Some NOUNS can only be used with animate, some only with INANIMATE, and some with both." This is a small error, but these small errors ruin a grammar! Nouns page comments: It is probably worth noting that most Indo-European languages are Nom-Acc languages, however, the two terms are NOT the same thing, so talking about the enormous difference between ergative and Indo-European languages is really misleading. Verbs: If I understand you right, the difference between "bipartite" and "multipartite" verbs is that multipartites have 4 possible suffixes, whereas bipartites have 3 -- the person and number suffixes are combined into one. Right? In that case why the HECK are they called BIpartite and MULTIpartite? Like Kel said, you need to stop using postposition. A suffix that indicates person, number, tense, or voice is presumably not ever used as its own word in a sentence, so it is not a postposition! Pro-dropped subjects are not postpositions, either! It seems weird to me that you are using pro-drop on the SUBJECT despite making the language ergative-absolutive. I guess that would make the language one that employs partial ergativity. This is one of the few ways in which ergative languages really *are* messier. Also, in the chart, it looks like you are saying irregular verbs are neither transitive nor intransitive. Is that true? Because that makes no sense! "The difference between the normal bipartite-group and irregular verbs, is the way the stem and the ending are formed. The stem changes, and the ending adapts to that, sometimes getting totally different verbs in comparison to the infinitive." — Totally different verbs?!? Do you mean "different-looking endings"? This is *really* unclear. If you don't want to explain it better in the introduction, you are better served by just referring the reader to a later section. That last sentence is spectacularly confusing. "Only the four most necessary tenses exist." — That's a bit of a value judgment. Also, it seems counterintuitive that aspect is only used for the past tense, not for present or future. ...Slartucker, who hopes that his comments are helpful, but fears that they are not

No harsh back of throat sounds? What, they can't cough up hairballs? 'My father told me about Hurrian: "Most students can easily translate a text after about nine weeks of taking courses." We are talking here about the more difficult texts, and not "Aenaes Trojanus est" stuff.' Presumably your father is also talking about graduate students, all of whom (1) are pretty intelligent, and (2) have had previous training in languages. And I am a little skeptical that it is the more difficult texts -- the more difficult texts for any ancient near eastern language are going to involve ambiguities related to lect, these are the sorts of things that professors spend days analyzing and write papers ardently defending one interpretation or the other. Also, *nobody* is going to spend many hours per day for nine weeks learning to translate Nephilian, so I'm not sure how the comparison is useful... Perhaps it would be good to take one step back. I have a question. What do YOU want to get out of the language? If you want other spidwebbers to use or enjoy it, you have to be able to communicate it PRECISELY, as I commented earlier. As you observe, it is harder for you to explain things in English. So, what do you propose to do about that?

"In the middle east they pronounce the H as a G. I have been in Isreal enough times to know that." I don't know what you're talking about here either, as far as Semitic languages go (and I -have- studied them). As for "the middle east" -- you're making a ridiculously broad claim above ("in the middle east" does not equal "in Israel")! Here's the thing -- H and G are really, really, REALLY different sounds. (I assume you are talking about a hard G like in "game" (the stop).) Try making them one after the other and pay attention to what your vocal chords feel like, where you are putting your tongue, put your hand in front of your mouth and see if the air coming out feels different... they have very little in common! "I want your opinion, your advice, whatever. I want to know what you generally think of the language (at least the part that is finished)." I think it's great that you are working on the language, and there are a number of ideas you've had that I think are very fitting and cool (the animate vs. inanimate gendering, for example). However, in general, I think you are reaching WAY TOO FAR. You have given yourself a very ambitious project, and you are reaching for complications that you don't totally understand. How can you expect yourself to come up with a complete pronounciation system when you haven't learned about phonetics? It's silly. And with nouns and verbs, you implement things that you read about in other languages and that seem cool to you, without understanding all of the implications of those things. The result is a pile of cases and grammatical rules that are hard for anyone else to understand, and which are occasionally contradictory. My suggestions would be: 1) KEEP IT SIMPLE. Take small steps. Add 1 or 2 things to the language at a time. You will always be able to add more later. Start with a very basic set of cases, tenses, and so on. In the first version of your grammar, aim to be able to make a simple sentence like "She hit the shaman." You can worry about more complicated stuff later. 2) USE WHAT YOU KNOW. Take ideas from languages you speak, not from Sumerian or Hurrian. 3) NO PRONOUNCIATION. Assume that the language is pronounced 100% phonetically, that is, each letter is always pronounced the same way, and there are no digraphs (like "TH"). This way you can completely ignore phonology (and you have plenty to learn and to do without having to deal with phonemes). You can always do it later if you want. I like a lot of what you've done. I like that you are trying to give the language a Nephilim "feel." You're just walking into a big puddle of chaos, that's all.

Maybe familiars just went out of style. There used to be lots of lizards with dog tags running around the caves.

Thanks for pointing me to this thread, Kelandon. Replying first to the website thread : No, Thralni, I am not an Assyriologist. I spent a year studying the field (mostly Akkadian, and mostly the Old Babylonian lect) at U of Chicago before switching to structural linguistics. (The phonemic attrition caused by weak verbs rivals anything in Greek and was starting to drive me crazy.) (After all that, I am now a social worker.) The example sentences are definitely useful. Examples are *never* a bad thing. Hurrian is not a Semitic language. It is part of the tiny Hurro-Urartian language family. Now this thread: Language family (Semitic, Indo-European, etc.) is NOT the same kind of descriptor as "ergative-absolutive" or "nominative-accusative" -- those describe two basic types of interaction between case system and semantic role assignment. "Isolate" goes in the language family category however, as it describes languages that are not part of a language family. Unlike Kel, I like ergative languages. Actually, I'd love to see a language that distinguished all three roles morphologically (intrans subject, trans subject and trans object) as I appreciate the kind of clarity that forces on you. Too much unneeded clarity for a natural language I suppose, as such systems are extremely rare. However, ergative languages aren't any more "logical" and I don't see any significant difference in how verbs are conjugated. "I only copied that part from a book, written by a gret Sumerologist, so wht exactly is it you want to say?" Sumerian is a really, really, really, really, really, really bad language to use as a model of ANYTHING if you don't know a lot about it. It's an isolate, it's agglutinative, and in general it's just one of the most unusual languages there is. Getting rid of the center alignment made the nouns page much easier to read. Thank you! Some of the sections are clearer now, but I think I would still be really confused if I didn't have a background in linguistics. On the use of the genitive: I can't speak for Sumerian or Hurrian, but the Akkadian (= Assyrian) genitive is definitely used for more than just ownership. In Akkadian the only case options for nouns are nominative, accusitive, and genitive, plus the status constructus form which is used in conjunctive with the genitive. The latter two are used for everything except subjects and objects. So the genitive is quite versatile. Absolutive: check the grammar on your first sentence there. Your second sentence is misleading -- without looking at the example it's impossible to tell you mean "with the appropriate gender ending." Also, you probably mean "These two take the same case," not "these two are the same." They are definitely not the same. In the Ergative section, your use of "often" is confusing. "Often" means "frequently." It sounds like you may want to say "always" or "almost always." If you really mean often, then you are providing really patchy information about one of the most critical elements of sentence construction! Also, the way you say "transitive verb or two-participant verb" makes it sound like they are two different things. The "two-participant verb" part is also misleading, since there are three-participant verbs (and in some languages, even more) and if you do not allow prepositions, it seems to me they are a necessity. I could go on... when you are using a language, it's okay to make mistakes and to be imprecise, because people can usually figure things out from the context of what you say. That's a basic part of how we process language. However, when you are describing a new language, it is VITAL to be extremely PRECISE. I know very well how hard it is to do that in a language that is not native to you. That doesn't make it any less necessary, though. --slartucker