The Oxford 2012 Results Day Discussion Thread

Odd use of the emoticon... Fruit fetishes?

Indeed. Ah, fair enough. I should've perhaps picked up on that. It very much got to me when I first heard about it, because I was sure that I would've refused...but...

If you say so. Again, an intriguing use of the face...

I have no words.

I'm not so sure its that they've adapted to their environment, I think its that there is no selection pressure acting on them to keep them simple. e.g. when proto-whales entered the sea, they no longer had to worry about gravity, and retained (and indeed developed) their hugely complicated ungulate-like digestive system even tho for a krill-eating baleen whale this kind of complexity was un-necessary. But with bouyancy acting against the typical selective pressure of 'don't make it too heavy!', there was selection against heavy and useless winding digestive systems.

Similarly, say we have an ancestral language group of 5000 people, and twelve speakers dissappear into the darkest jungle to found a tribe. We could end up with a monoglot speaker population of 200 people, all speaking the same language, permanently isolated from the original population. Over hundreds of years, the jungle language evolves and gets way more complicated. One day someone invents a new gender, or tries out a new tense, or adds a new suffix for emphasis, and it catches on in the community. Because the only 200 people I know in the world speak this language, I'm obliged to speak the language, whatever frippery has been added - there is no pressure to keep it simple because no one from outside our jungle community speaks the language, we don't need to write it down, our children have all the time in the world to learn grammar rules... this happened with navajo, I think - a child wasn't fluent til they were 12, unlike English where we manage it by six.

So I suppose what I'm getting at is that in the 21st century there is tremendous pressure on speakers to keep English simple, standardized, easy to learn, but for my jungle language - used only by the community, associated intimately with their way of life - it can get as complicated as it likes and it will in no away affect its rate of proliferation cos no one was gonna learn it anyway!

Language is complex and beautiful and brilliant, but I think with 90% of the world pop speaking just 20 world languages, we're gonna see a decline in diversity and craziness. All the more reason to learn random languages like Anutan (or Gaidhlig for that matter!)

Yeah, i would use 'craobh daraich' or 'darach' for an oak. ('dair' is fairly archaic, it appears in druid at least: oakseers, apparently - a Roman combination of dair and draoigh). That is so cool. I think I might be right in saying a Sanskritter like you would agree with my view that William Jones made a conceptual and indeed scientific discovery on par with the likes of Darwin?

Ohh, I love Proto and just plain Indo-European, even if some of the reconstructions are somewhat dubious.. one of my favourite claims is the way it (apparently) sheds light on the way these people lived. So I came across some people saying that Indo-European has no root words for agricultural tools, but it does for horse-related stuff, therefore the Indo Europeans were the nomads who domestricated the horse. (On the other hand, Cavalii-Sorza the famous geneticist was big on the idea that it was the Indo Europeans who in fact introduced agriculture to Europe!).

Well, not for me to interrupt, but that is just to patently untrue and out of date. The idea that they were definitely nomads etc, we are able to reconstruct a large series of vocabulary related to fixed abodes, indeed the majority of sacral vocabulary attests to this. Also there are several problems with the horse/chariot idea i.e can't work outside of part of (central and south) Asia and there is no need to associate PIE speakers with any serious changes in Europe. Genetics with PIE populations and Europe is such a gigantic dead end because none of the groupings we associate with them are significantly attested here, outside of a few Slavic places.

So your earlier comment about much of the reconstruction being dubious is spot on, but then we can indeed learn a lot about them. It depends how you take it. So, that we can reconstruct sentences like "I fart loudly and then kill my mother in law" is not useful but certain other things are.

yes, Jack, fruit fetishes; a way to a woman's libido is oranges, always remember that son

Human beings a fairly scary and simple underneath it all....

no words are needed..

(ok I'm actually making myself feel uncomfortable now.....)

Thank you for that sound, albeit dubious, advice...noted...

I'm not surprised. You're also making me feel uncomfortable. Enough, foul beldame...

Oh, and I'm sleeping now. We're having building work done and I need to be up to let the builders in. Consider your poetry/the size of your task in convincing me of your trustworthiness...

Yeah I'm really looking forward to it, a couple of my friends went last year too and really liked it. Some of my favorite bands are playing - have you heard of The Skints?
Why don't you steward as well? then you meet people through that and get the tickets for free

Well, not for me to interrupt, but that is just to patently untrue and out of date. The idea that they were definitely nomads etc, we are able to reconstruct a large series of vocabulary related to fixed abodes, indeed the majority of sacral vocabulary attests to this. Also there are several problems with the horse/chariot idea i.e can't work outside of part of (central and south) Asia and there is no need to associate PIE speakers with any serious changes in Europe. Genetics with PIE populations and Europe is such a gigantic dead end because none of the groupings we associate with them are significantly attested here, outside of a few Slavic places.

So your earlier comment about much of the reconstruction being dubious is spot on, but then we can indeed learn a lot about them. It depends how you take it. So, that we can reconstruct sentences like "I fart loudly and then kill my mother in law" is not useful but certain other things are.

kinda clogged up the thread, sorry guys...

Has this turned into a classics thread?

I go away for three days and the thread grows by ten pages :-o

(Ah well, there was a time when it was growing ten pages in three hours )

I had too much time on my hands...

I had too much time on my hands...

Yeah, that revision stuff is overrated... almost similarly, I was on holiday in Dublin and took no revision
(Now lets hope you haven't got an an unconditional offer, because what I've just said would be nonsense...)

I'm another SJC person btw

Clearly you don't, as I'm still awaiting my epic poem...

I need divine inspiration....

One would hope it comes soon...

I'm not allowed to ask the 'bum-head' oracle for advice though, I'm assuming?

Given the amount you make reference to the aforementioned 'bum-head', you appear to have deified it; as such, I advise consulting the oracle to your heart's content.