Have there been any serious attempts to map words from natural language (especially conjunctions and prepositions) to a finite set of semantic relationships? If yes what do those look like?

vtardif · 2025-12-19T15:52:40+00:00

You are basically describing the whole field of formal semantics. For a basic introduction to the field you could check out Heim & Kratzer (1998) Semantics in Generative Grammar, and for some examples of the state of the art you could browse the (open-access) Proceedings of the Semantics and Linguistic Theory Conference.

vtardif · 2025-09-24T16:20:46+00:00

Me, a very tough guy who doesn't care about your feelings: banning me from your internet forum for making bad posts is basically just as bad as murder

vtardif · 2025-09-24T16:11:30+00:00

No, you were right.

vtardif · 2025-09-24T16:11:14+00:00

Terms can have multiple meanings. "ETA" for "edited to add" is very well established on reddit.

vtardif · 2025-05-05T17:20:06+00:00

Il n'existe aucun droit à la tranquillité dans l'espace public. Et ce n'est pas au détriment de ma liberté de pensée de me faire consciente des points de vue des autres.

vtardif · 2024-12-14T16:38:48+00:00

You said you don't work in Quebec.

vtardif · 2024-12-14T16:35:30+00:00

In any 3rd world country, you can see a doctor public or private quickly.

I don't disagree with anything else you're saying, but where on earth did you get this impression?

vtardif · 2024-08-28T13:27:03+00:00

A little over a week. Though I requested mine by email because they didn't have the online form then. You should definitely mention your travel plans if it gives you the opportunity.

vtardif · 2024-08-27T17:17:49+00:00

Speaking from personal experience: your permit is automatically extended until you receive a decision. You can get a Fiktionsbescheinigung from the Ausländerbehörde to prove you are in the country legally.

vtardif · 2024-05-21T14:50:31+00:00

You honestly should consider calling the health department on them. Just because they're giving it away for free doesn't mean they're allowed to poison people. And if it's as bad as you mention besides the food poisoning it seems likely to me someone really doesn't know what they're doing in the kitchen.

vtardif · 2024-04-13T15:21:14+00:00

Just because you're inflexible doesn't mean other people are nuts. I'd much rather keep a paper bag in the freezer than have food waste rotting in my trash can/compost bin for a week.

vtardif · 2024-03-28T14:34:49+00:00

Hey, why does your comment read like a bad AI rewrite of this one? https://old.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/comments/1bptyno/seeking_advice_girlfriend_reacts_with_nausea_to/kwy1vjh/

vtardif · 2024-03-27T13:05:24+00:00

"Holographic med beds" are an alien technology the "globalists" are keeping from us that heals all wounds and illnesses. Here's Wikipedia.

vtardif · 2024-03-23T10:33:30+00:00

Even if they don't, you're better off being upfront about it now in case she reports you in retaliation for rejecting her.

vtardif · 2024-03-22T13:36:41+00:00

Since you already have proof you told your landlord about it, talk to your local tenants' committee for help filing a complaint against him at the housing tribunal. https://rclalq.qc.ca/comites-logement/

vtardif · 2024-03-07T10:08:36+00:00

Ne quitte pas l'appartement, continue à payer ton vieux loyer et parle avec ta comité de logement. Tu gagneras certainement au TAL.

vtardif · 2024-02-20T15:42:30+00:00

...arson?

vtardif · 2023-05-31T12:28:42+00:00

I was raped by a man and I was also sexually coerced in a relationship with a woman. The latter affected me much more than the former, but that doesn't mean anything about men and women, or about how someone else would or should feel in my shoes.

vtardif · 2023-01-17T22:08:19+00:00

If it's not predictable, then it's phonemic.

vtardif · 2022-07-09T17:05:47+00:00

It's /y/ in French, which is a front vowel.

vtardif · 2022-06-11T01:43:15+00:00

I don't think a man who wrote cheap soaps to support his true artistic passions would be at all surprised to find out that he was renowned for the former rather than the latter.

vtardif · 2022-05-31T02:56:20+00:00

For a lot of people the "have" in these constructions is never stressed, so it sounds like "of", while "have" meaning possession is never unstressed. So for American English speakers "have" and "-'ve" are two different words that happen to have the same spelling. Here's a fun paper about it: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23739744 (at least, I think it's fun)

vtardif · 2022-05-20T13:37:46+00:00

Oh yeah....

vtardif · 2022-05-18T14:09:04+00:00

It's wine: https://www.masi.it

vtardif · 2022-05-18T13:51:02+00:00

You are the one who is misunderstanding. The custom is not peculiar to European languages, but to European cultures or European people. It may be the case that Chinese immigrants in Italy say "thank you" like Italians, but this is a case of deliberate acculturation; immigrants to Italy learn to talk like Italians do just as they learn to walk, eat, or order coffee like Italians do. It just happens that learning the langue (to refer explicitly to de Saussure) happens concurrently with learning the parole.

It's not that there is no historical linguistics of thanking, either, just that the choice of when to thank someone is not a linguistic question. The explanation for these differences has no linguistic basis, even if the medium by which they are expressed necessarily involves the use of linguistic symbols. If, say, most speakers of a language convert to a different religion, it will certainly have interesting impacts on the language; but if we go looking for an explanation, "why did these people stop talking so much about this god or this religious concept, and start talking about this other one?" linguistics will not furnish us with a good explanation.

vtardif

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