#having clause syntax

[sannehnagi]

Ni þoa’eheola ni ueia’egaihetai ai ni sī ni a’e’e ueiāhesua’a.

I may not have gone where i intended to go but i think i ended up where i needed to be.

[coquelicoq]

Quelques semaines après la publication de son enquête, alors qu'elle regardait avec une émotion dont elle était la première surprise la tombe de sa confidente, Brigitte Bollème me dit qu'elle s'était demandé, exactement, dans le cimetière de ce petit village, sous un ciel sale de fin d'automne, si la défunte lui avait révélé la vérité. (La plus secrète mémoire des hommes, 2, 2e, II, p 212)

this sentence is a nightmare (which i think is probably on purpose, as it is the first sentence of the chapter and we at this point have not heard anything about any enquête or confidente or tombe and don't know what vérité this is referring to...i think he means for us to be confused right now on multiple levels) and i thought i finally got it but then realized i still can't account for the dont clause. "la tombe de sa confidente" is the direct object of "regardait" (took me forever to figure that out 😭), so if you move the sentence around, it becomes "elle regardait la tombe de sa confidente avec une émotion dont elle était la première surprise". okay first of all what is elle referring to in "dont elle était la première surprise". brigitte? émotion? surprise? is surprise a noun or an adjective? ohhh wait is it saying she is the first to be surprised by the emotion? yeah i think surpris(e) takes de (rather than, e.g., par) as preposition so that would account for the dont if so...brigitte était la première [d'être] surprise de l'émotion [qu'elle retentissait] alors qu'elle regardait la tombe de sa confidente? is that what we're cooking with here?

[sentence-arborist]

[ID: Huge syntax tree for the sentence "California man [whose billionaire stepfather is on missing sub] asks OnlyFans model to sit on him 30 minutes after pleading for prayers, as he triggers war of words with Cardi B over Blink-182 concert". The tree is very broad and has many layers, indicating the amount of time, energy, and stress that must've gone into making it.]

[squarebracket-trickster]

Seeds Planted: 2/12

Thank you for planting the seed.

The Ox will return when the other seeds have been planted.

A man standing on a scorpion cries in anguish and curses the clouds, before following the Ox.

oh! fascinating! this is an ask game! So curious to see where it goes.

[babesies]

was very seriously considering going to an 11 pm screening of querelle (1982) despite having a 12 pm exam and another assignment due the next day. however my baby sister who i called for consult firmly forbade me from doing it

[dedalvs]

Hi! Quick High Valyrian translation request: I was wondering how you would translate this sentence: "You don't look well, father."

(Context: a character seeing their dad for the first time in a while and noticing that they look tired/a bit haggard)

I did try looking on the wiki dictionary for a verb like "to look", "to appear", or "to seem __" but didn't find anything that seemed right — sorry if it is there and I just missed it, though!

Thanks for your help :D

This needs to be recast as "You are not well it seems, father". That might make it easier. A little syntax discussion. In English, verbs like "seem" can be tricksy. You can say both of the following with roughly the same meaning:

You seem to hate onions.

It seems (that) you hate onions.

Slight differences in meaning aside, it's the syntactic difference I want to draw attention to. In sentence (1), "seem" is the main verb of the sentence and "you" is its subject. "You" is also the subject of the nonfinite clause "to hate onions". In (2), however, that entire thought is rendered as a subordinate clause. Now it's "you hate onions", which is subordinated by "that" (which can be omitted), which is governed by this matrix clause "It seems". Now "seems" is the matrix verb, its subject "it", but "it" doesn't meant anything. It's a dummy subject (or expletive) that is required because English clauses require a subject.

Whatever your syntactic theory, something in the English language allows both of these structures to exist. Not all languages allow for this. High Valyrian is one that does not.

The verb vestragon which means, ordinarily, "to tell" can be used to mean "to seem". Crucially, though, it can never be used in the manner of (1) above in English. In fact, if you think about the original meaning, you can see how there would be very little sense in it. Taking that sentence (1) and translating it literally:

Zāliapossa buqagon vestrā. "You say to hate onions."

It wouldn't make any sense for this to end up meaning "It seems you hate onions" or "You seem to hate onions". Of course it would seem that way if you were saying it! There's no seem about it!

Instead, the way things work in High Valyrian is usually "Here's the main thing in question, now here's a comment about it". And that is, indeed, why vestragon came to mean "to seem". It does so like this:

Zāliapossa buqō vestras. "It seems you hate onions."

That is "Onions you hate, it says". Now that "it" doesn't refer to anyone in particular. It's that dummy subject again. But it's not required in Valyrian. In Valyrian it's enough to have the clause (with a verb in the subjunctive) and then vestras at the end. It's a bit like saying "it is said" or "one says" or "it is heard" or the like. Another way of thinking of it is saying "The situation or my pereceptions tell that you hate onions". In fact, you can actually say as much, by adding a pronoun in the dative:

Zāliapossa buqō ynot vestras. "It seems to me you hate onions."

That is "Onions you hate, to me it says".

Now, back to your original question.

"You don't look well, father" should be reacast as, "You are not well it seems, father". That would be:

Rytsa iksō daor vestras, kepus.

That is, "Well you are not it seems, father".

And there you have it. Thanks for the ask!

[literaryvein-reblogs]

do you have anything on syntax? i'm currently in the middle of writing a story that uses old and modern magic, and i want to emphasize the differences in syntax. thanks 🫶

Writing Notes: Syntax

Syntax - the study of sentence structure.

In spoken and written language, syntax refers to the set of rules that determines the arrangement of words in a sentence.

Along with diction, it is one of the key ways writers convey meaning in a text.

Comes from the Ancient Greek for “coordination” or “ordering together.”

Syntax is the part of grammar that pertains to a speaker’s knowledge of sentences and their structures.

Any speaker of any human language can produce and understand an infinite number of possible sentences.

Thus, we can’t possibly have a mental dictionary of all the possible sentences.

Rather, we have the rules for forming sentences stored in our brains.

Essential Rules of Syntax in the English Language

The rules of syntax can be quite complex and vary greatly by language (as well as by time period and place). Depending on the language you are speaking or writing in, these rules might be very restrictive, or quite flexible.

There are 4 baseline rules when it comes to English syntax:

A complete sentence requires a subject and a verb and expresses a complete thought. This is also called an independent clause. A sentence without a subject and a verb is considered a fragment.

Separate ideas generally require separate sentences. A sentence containing multiple independent clauses that are improperly joined is considered a run-on sentence.

English word order follows the subject-verb-object sequence. (It’s usually the same in French and Spanish.)

A dependent clause contains a subject and a verb—but it doesn’t express a complete thought.

The Rules of Syntax. Combine words into phrases & phrases into sentences.

They specify the correct word order for a language. [Example: English is a Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) language. ✓ "The President nominated a new Supreme Court justice." ✗ "President the new Supreme justice Court a nominated."

They also describe the relationship between the meaning of a group of words and the arrangement of the words. [Example: "I mean what I say" vs. "I say what I mean"]

The rules of syntax also specify the grammatical relations of a sentence, such as the subject and the direct object. [Example: "Your dog chased my cat" vs. "My cat chased your dog"]

Syntax rules specify constraints on sentences based on the verb of the sentence. ["Zack tries to be a gentleman" ✗ "Zack tries Robert to be a gentleman"]

Syntax rules also tell us how words form groups and are hierarchically ordered in a sentence. [Example: “The captain ordered the old men and women of the ship”]

This sentence has 2 possible meanings:

The captain ordered the old men and the old women of the ship.

The captain ordered the old men and the women of any age of the ship.

The meanings depend on how the words in the sentence are grouped (specifically, to which words is the adjective ‘old’ applied?):

The captain ordered the [old (men and women)] of the ship

The captain ordered the [old men] and [women] of the ship

These groupings can be shown hierarchically in a tree:

These trees reveal the structural ambiguity in the phrase “old men and women”. Each structure corresponds to a different meaning.

Structurally ambiguous sentences can often be humorous:

Catcher: “Watch out for this guy, he’s a great fastball hitter.”

Pitcher: “No problem. There’s no way I’ve got a great fastball.”

UG Principles and Parameters. Universal Grammar (UG) provides the basic design for all languages, and each language has its own parameters, or variations on the basic plan.

All languages have structures that conform to X-bar schema*

All phrases consist of specifiers, heads, and complements

All sentences are headed by T**

All languages seem to have movement rules

However, languages have different word orders within phrases and sentences, so heads and complements may be present in different orders across languages

*The internal structure of phrasal categories can be captured using the x-bar schema:

**All sentences contain information about tense—when a certain event or state of affairs occurred, so we can say that Tense is the head of a sentence. So sentences are TPs, with T representing tense markers and modals:

Sign Language Syntax. The syntax of sign languages also follow the principles of UG and has:

Auxiliaries

Transformations such as topicalization, which moves the direct object to the beginning of a sentence for emphasis, and wh movement

Constraints on transformations

That UG is present in signed languages and spoken languages shows that the human brain is designed to learn language, not just speech.

Ways to Use Syntax in Literature

Besides being critical to conveying literal sense, syntax is also one of the key tools writers use to express meaning in a variety of ways. Syntax can help writers:

Produce rhetorical and aesthetic effects. By varying the syntax of their sentences, writers are able to produce different rhetorical and aesthetic effects. How a writer manipulates the syntax of their sentences is an important element of writing style.

Control pace and mood. Manipulating syntax is one of the ways writers control the pace and mood of their prose. For example, the writer Ernest Hemingway is known for his short, declarative sentences, which were well-suited to his terse, clear style of writing. These give his prose a forceful, direct quality.

Create atmosphere. By contrast, Hemingway’s fellow story writer and novelist William Faulkner is famous (or infamous) for his meandering, paragraph-long sentences, which often mimic the ruminative thinking of his characters. These sentences, which often ignore the standard rules of punctuation and grammar, help create an atmosphere as much as they convey information.

That said, all writers vary their sentence structure from time to time. Using a variety of sentences is one of the key ways writers engage and maintain their readers’ interest.

Sentence Types in the English Language

The English language is extraordinarily flexible when it comes to building sentences. At the same time, all sentences in English fall into 4 distinct types:

Simple sentences. Consist of a single, independent clause. For example: “The girl hit the ball.”

Compound sentences. Consist of two or more independent clauses joined by a coordinating conjunction. The coordinating conjunctions are “but,” “or,” and “so.” For example: “The girl hit the ball, and the ball flew out of the park.”

Complex sentences. Consist of an independent clause and one or more dependent clauses joined by a subordinating conjunction. Some subordinating conjunctions are “although,” “because,” “so,” “that,” and “until.” For example: “When the girl hit the ball, the fans cheered.”

Compound-complex sentences. Consist of multiple independent clauses as well as at least one dependent clause. For example: “When the girl hit the ball, the fans cheered, and the ball flew out of the park.”

Syntax Examples in Literature

To get a sense of some of the ways writers use syntax to express meaning, it’s worthwhile examining a few famous examples from literature.

Moby Dick, by Herman Melville (1851). Melville begins with this famous line: “Call me Ishmael.” This first line—one of the most famous in literature—is short and direct. The sentences that follow, though, are significantly more sophisticated. In the fourth sentence, Melville uses a number of dependent clauses (“Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth,” “Whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul,” and so on) to create a sense of anticipation.

Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy (1877). Tolstoy’s novel begins: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” This is actually two simple sentences joined by a semi-colon. Tolstoy could easily have just written them as separate sentences, but by joining them into one sentence he shows that these two thoughts are related and balanced.

Sources: 1 2 3 ⚜ More: Notes & References ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

You can find more details and examples in the sources. All the best with your writing <3

[german-enthusiast]

Scary scary German syntax... right?

The following sentence exhibits a typical mistake German-learners make: Heute ich gehe in ein Museum.

It's not conjugation ("ich gehe" is correct!), it's not declension ("ein Museum" is correct too!). The issue is "heute ich gehe". Correct would be: Heute gehe ich in ein Museum (or: Ich gehe heute in ein Museum.)

What's the rule here?

It's unfortunately not simply "there can only be one word before the verb"

German word order is so difficult be cause it is so variable. All following sentences are correct and synoymous (though emphasis shifts):

Der Opa schenkt seiner Enkelin zum Geburtstag ein Buch über Autos.

Seiner Enkelin schenkt der Opa zum Geburtstag ein Buch über Autos.

Ein Buch über Autos schenkt der Opa seiner Enkelin zum Geburtstag.

Zum Geburtstag schenkt der Opa seiner Enkelin ein Buch über Autos. All mean: The grandfather gifts his niece a book about cars for her birthday.

What do they all have in common, syntax-wise? There's only one phrase in front of the finite verb. What does this mean? A phrase is a completed (!) unit that can consist of one or more words (depending on the word class (-> noun, verb, …)) Typical word classes that can be a phrase with just one word are:

Proper nouns, plural nouns, personal pronouns, relative pronous (Lukas kocht. Busse fahren. Ich schreibe. Der Mann, der kocht, …)

Adverbs (Heute, Morgen, Bald, Dort, Darum, …) Most other word classes need additional words to form a full phrase:

adjectives need a noun and article: der blaue Ball, der freundliche Nachbar

nouns need a determiner (= article): der Mann, eine Frau, das Nachbarskind

prepositions need… stuff (often a noun phrase): auf der Mauer, in dem Glas, bei der Statue

…

A finite verb is the verb that has been changed (=conjugated) according to person, time, … All verbs that are NOT infinitive or participles are finite. ich sagte -> "sagte" is the finite verb ich bin gegangen -> "bin" is the finite verb The infinitive and the participle are called "infinite verbs" and are always pushed towards the end (but not always the very end!) of the sentence: Ich bin schon früher nach Hause gegangen als meine Freunde.

So: Before the verb (that is not the participle or infinitive) there can only be one phrase.

Since "heute" is an adverb (-> forms a full phrase on its own) and "ich" is a personal pronoun (-> forms a full phrase on its own), they can't both be in front of the verb "gehe" You have to push one of them behind the verb: Heute gehe ich in ein Museum Ich gehe heute in ein Museum.

Both of these are main clauses (Ger.: Hauptsätze), which in German exhibit "V-2 Stellung", meaning the finite verb is in the second position (after one phrase).

What happens if we push all phrases behind the finite verb?

Gehe ich heute in ein Museum? (Watch out: Gehe heute ich in ein Museum would be ungrammatical! The subject has to come in the second position)

It's a question now!

In German, question sentences (that do not start with a question word like "Was?", "Wo?", …) start with the finite verb (called "V-1 Stellung").

Questions, main clauses,… what's missing?

Dependent clauses!

The third type of sentence exhibits "V-letzt Stellung" or "V-End Stellung", meaning the finite verb is at the very end of the sentence. Ich bin gestern in ein Museum gegangen, … main clause -> V-2 Stellung … weil es dort eine interessante Ausstellung gab. dependent clause -> V-letzt Stellung If you want to practice this....

... determine if the following German sentences are correct. If not, what would be the right way to say it?

Der Zug war sehr voll.

Gestern ich war in der Schule.

Die Lehrerin mich nicht hat korrigiert.

Gehst du heute zur Arbeit?

Das Buch ich finde nicht sehr interessant.

To practice this further, translate the following sentences into German and focus on the order of words:

The boy gave the ball back to me.

I called my girlfriend because I missed her.

The girl saw her brother at the train station.

The horse, which was standing on the field, was white and black.

[blamgranules]

WWW: What's the "reflexive indicative"?

I've been meaning to write this for a while, but I wasn't sure what it really meant and now I have a theory. I am a professional linguist. I teach translation, so grammar/syntax is something I have spent a lot of time on.

Now, brace yourselves, because I'm going to be explaining modern English grammar and most schools in the English-speaking world are still teaching traditional grammar. I don't know how well versed BLeeM is in modern grammar, but we'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

Let's start with the basics. Indicative is a grammatical mood. Moods effect the reality or truth of a clause. The indicative mood is one of the realis moods, meaning that the clause is true in the tense. (Irrealis moods can make the clause possible, hypothetical, desired, etc.) The other realis mood in English is declarative. The difference is that a declarative clause uses a verb as its predicate and an indicative clause uses a noun or adjective as its predicate.

In modern grammar, the predicate is the word or phrase with the most important meaning. To put it another way, the predicate is the word or phrase that the rest of the sentence "depends" on (see: Parse Tree). So, "I am running" is declarative and "There is a shotgun in the drawer" is indicative.

Whatever magic's "reflexive indicative" is, it's roughly equivalent to "a thing exists" or "a thing is [adjective]".

Next, reflexive is term used in grammar to refer to anaphoric nouns. An anaphor is a word that refers back to another word or concept. In "we climbed a mountain and said mountain was tall", the participial adjective 'said' marks the following noun as an anaphor. Anaphoric nouns are usually analyzed as pronouns; e.g. "itself". Some English pronouns are only sometimes reflexive, like "that".

This means that the "reflexive indicative" has to be a couple things. First, we know it's somatic, so sign language basically. Second, it's a full clause. One gesture for a full clause isn't difficult. In many languages, there are verbs that do not need any nouns to be satisfied. Consider: "It is raining". 'It' is a dummy pronoun; it doesn't mean anything. In ASL, it is a single gesture. However, a reflexive indicative clause must have a noun. In short, the somatic gesture most likely means "a thing mentioned before exists".

My theory is that the reflexive indicative is used as a kind of anchor. It may be a conjunction between two magical actions: "Control the edges of the tear. Those edges are there. Bring them together." It might also be used as punctuation to end an action: "Bring the edges of the tear together. That tear does not exist." or "Connect the edges of the fabric. That fabric is whole."

If this is true, I would theorize that early in the development of wizardry, the reflexive indicative was used either 1) to assist the wizard in their focus (assuming that WWW's magic is the manifestation of will) or 2) doing magic this way was so new that it was "low context". Low context communication involves a lot of specifics and reflexive nouns are more frequent in low than high context communication. Insulated communication systems tend to become higher context over time.

Brennan mentioned that the more people who know a particular spell, the less potent it becomes; hence the Citadel tightly controlling who has access to spells. However, more people knowing a spell might also increase the level of context the spell has, thus making the reflexive indicative unnecessary.

This would make even more sense if magic was always an interaction with the spirit world. Whatever spirit is making Mending possible has become so familiar with it that the reflexive indicative is understood.

But at this point, we are into untethered speculation. That's the theory. We'll see what info Brennan drips out next and if my theory holds up.

[autistic-harley-quinn]

as if songs always follow prose syntax? and within the context of the song it is clear that line refers to herself. I'm not even saying she couldn't be bi etc I don't personally know her, I just think it's a bad example because she is obviously referring to herself in a self deprecating way and there are better examples you could use especially since you are saying it is queer flagging so surely wouldn't be so direct when she usually says she is talking from a 'male perspective' in her other songs that talk about women

You are STRAIGHT UP talking out of your ass. Lyrics are LYRICAL POETRY they follow the SAME CONVENTIONS as all poetry and they follow the same SYNTAX as English bc if we just decided words go in any order we want I could say that saying "I eat spaghetti" means "spaghetti eats me" syntax is how you understand speech/writing that does not follow typical grammatical standards. Syntax is how we understand how to put words in a specific order to get our point across. An English professor has already debunked this claim.

It is not "clear" that she is referring to herself that is a fantasy you are presenting as fact. As a matter of fact she called HERSELF a pathological people pleaser on another song in the same album, what part of "pathological people pleaser" sounds argumentative to you? She has refered to a romantic partner being an argumentative contrarian in songs like gold rush.

Yeah she usually gives the male perspective excuse, maybe that's why her first live performance hits different with how clearly nervous she was to sing it in public. Also she literally played Betty for the first time with a rainbow string guitar, named the male POV character James when she's literally named after James Taylor and used cryptic Easter egging to have her lyrics say "jaMEs" with the ME capitalized. Maybe that's why she put Hits Different on the album with the tagline "meet me at midnight" maybe that's why she put it on the same album as the song where she confirms she's been misleading the public about what her private life is like (Dear Reader.) Context clues are important.

You ever heard of a morality clause? That's just one of many many reasons someone may want to be obvious and not declare. Flagging isn't always about being subtle sometimes it's about being so obvious you don't have to say anything (and the ignorant will keep on ignoring it. I once dyed my hair the lesbian colors bc I wanted ppl to see at a glance that I was a lesbian. Joan Jett and Lil Nas X are very prominent examples of ppl who wanted to be seen as queer without having to declare and then ended up having to bc ppl refused to see it.

"Dead ass thought I made it obvious" -Lil Nas X

There are many queer people who want to, who are begging to be seen without having to label themselves. Respect that and stop putting your head in the sand.

[max1461]

Have people on here (not the linguists I mean everybody else) fully appreciated the "spoken French is mildly polysynthetic" thing? Let me caveat this be saying that I am not a proficient French speaker in any capacity; the paper (or conference talk, I guess?) which lays out this argument is fairly convincing to me assuming that its facts are right, but I have no capacity to judge how well the grammatical claims about spoken French hold up empirically.

Anyway, the take away for the non linguist is basically this: traditional French grammar, as it is taught to French schoolchildren and to foreign learners, is significantly divergent from how French is actually spoken, i.e. the grammar that a culturally-neutral linguist producing an analysis of French would come up with. In particular,

Spoken French has a complex prefixal verb template involving subject, object, and indirect object marking. In traditional French grammar these prefixes are considered independent pronouns and auxiliary verbs and are written with spaces between them, but their rigid ordering with respect to the verb root, significant phonological reduction, and the inability to dislocate them from the verb (e.g. with intervening adverbs) suggest that analyzing them as prefixes would be more standard. The fact that they are able to co-occur with independent nominals and that such constructions are quite common furthers this analysis.

If the above analysis is taken up, then spoken French is verb-centric and moderately non-configurational, in the sense that the inflected verb is the only obligatory element of the clause, and independent NPs are somewhat free with regard to the positions they can occur in. This is another typical characteristic of polysynthetic languages.

This is a strikingly different analysis than the largely analytic and moderately inflecting, strictly SVO picture of French syntax one is usually presented with. Certainly this latter picture is more descriptive of the written standard, but it seems that the spoken language either has evolved or is in the process of evolving away from that standard.

My impression from various discussions is that the more traditional, analytic constructions still widely exist in spoken French, but the "polysynthesis-like" constructions are becoming increasingly common and favored in the spoken language. So perhaps we might say that French is "becoming mildly polysynthetic", rather than that it's already there. Still, this should be very striking even for the non-linguist: the language you see on the page is very much not always the language that is in people's mouths!

[coquelicoq]

annoying thing about not being fluent is i can never be sure if something is a mistake or just an exciting type of construction that i'm not accustomed to. flaubert apparently wrote the sentence "Je ne m'étais pas couché et le matin j'avais été me promener en barque sur l'étang, tout seul, dans mon habit de collège" in a letter and there must be some reason it's not "je m'étais promené" but i don't know what it is??

[skopostheorie]

As for MY exams I have been once again rotating in my mind the Chinese-French syntax juxtaposition to english. the difference being that chinese likes to have the "consequently" word (so, therefore, then, etc) after the subject whereas in French it's after the verb.

so Like, the sentence at the bottom puts 于是 after the subject, so it's almost "all of my classmates encouraged me, I so regained my confidence". (or perhaps "I thus regained my confidence"), meaning "so I regained my confidence".

And in french words like donc, alors, du coup etc can be plonked after the verb, like

[...]J'ai regagné donc la confiance en moi-même (lit. I regained so my confidence, "So i regained my confidence")

Elle m'a dit alors de ne pas la contacter (lit. she told me so not to contact her, "So she told me not to contact her")

and the reason this rarely clicks with learners is because I think it's rarely explained and in English the "consequently" word is almost always before the entire clause; exceptions being "thus" (which in turn comes across as formal) and "then" at the end of the clause e.g "Huh! so much for that, then!" (EDIT but I think "then" in that sentence, while likely "alors" if in French (bah! tant pis alors!), would be more like 啦/呀/吧 in Chinese, ESPECIALLY 啦 since I think the "then" implies a sort of change in perceived events that 了 communicates)

[relleytrots]

Gehenna War

It's pretty neat, yo.

Like Blood-Stained Love, it transforms the core "personal and political" horror of Vampire into another subgenre. Unlike Blood-Stained Love, it has a lot of concrete advice for Storytellers on structuring scenes, assembling pools, building characters to interact with, and making that subgenre work at the table.

An effort has been made, here. There's a little chart in the introduction claiming that Chapters 2 and 3, and the Appendices, will be of use to any action chronicle, be it more high concept or street level, and having read the durn things I think that claim's borne out. I'm gonna talk about those sections first, and later loop back around to the specifically Gehenna War stuff.

Chapter 2 has neat archetypes for characters in various armed conflict roles - generals, spies, intelligencers, recruits, veterans - with recommendations for priority stats rather than statblocks, so these can be flipped for player or Storyteller use. Suggestions for bonus XP amounts if you want more powerful starting characters, and focused specialisations that advise you to focus particular areas of your character sheet - almost like soft classes, or playbooks. A handful of new Merits and Flaws (one of which is getting slammed onto Penny), and a mixed bag of Discipline powers. Bloodform is back? Woo! There are "reroll Rouse checks for raising this one Attribute or using this one Discipline" openers for the Physical Disciplines? Swing and a miss, more filler. There's two incredible new high-end Blood Sorcery rituals (I shall be using both of them very soon), and some funky Thin-Blood Alchemy if you want your Duskborn to join a Methuselah cult.

Then: advice on running Basic Combat, and explicit guidance on the modularity of the Advanced Combat rules, and a few new ones. This is brilliant stuff for new Storytellers, reflective of the demand for the Combat Primer, and it's given me some ideas I didn't have before, and ALSO. VINDICATION. OBSERVE.

One of the things that waters down play over time is if the characters need to build the same dice pool every time for the same task. To avoid this, Storytellers should vary the traits involved according to the situation, to keep things interesting and to curb players trying to optimize their pools.

Leaving aside that awful syntax at the start - "Play becomes predictable if the characters need to build the same dice pool every time they attempt a task" - activate your voice, and dismiss "is" clauses, you cowards! - anyway, leaving that aside, this is how I've been doing things all along and I love that a book explicitly says "do it and don't get hung up on the exact RAW every time."

Car chase mechanics, cute new gear (I like the Scourge Blades, nasty-ass duelling swords that delay vampiric healing). Then it's on to story advice!

Chapter Three does something I wish Blood-Stained Love had done for romance: getting into the structure of action stories, how action interacts with other genre qualifiers (crime, horror, survival, thriller etc.), the escalating role of villains - like, actual formalist thinking about how stories work. We then get some mechanical advice on how to shift the mode of play, how to approach things like Hunger and Frenzy to make them more or less of a factor. It's short, but it's fuckin' GOOD.

Appendix I is all about dice. When you should and shouldn't roll, as opposed to taking half. Grouping those moments into broad types by what they do to the emergent story. How to add variation with tracker rolls or unusual dice pools. How to manage failures on tests and what to offer players to keep the story moving. And, most important of all, how to deal with the Beast, going through each Skill and showing how the Beast impacts a Messy Critical (still a success, remember!) or a Bestial Failure.

You need this Appendix. The corebook needed this appendix. Maybe it took six years of best practice and sharing ideas to get these ideas fully understood. Maybe if there'd been one dev team since the start we might have had this sooner. At least we have it now.

I'll talk about the Gehenna War itself in a follow-up post. That's Chapters One, Four, Five and Six, and Appendix II.

[thelostmetallurgist]

A Describing of Dwemeris...

Here’s an over‑the‑top deep dive into Dwemeris, the enigmatic tongue of the vanished Deep Folk—part archaeological fact, part wild conjecture, all pure Dwemeric swagger.

In essence, almost nothing of Dwemeris survives beyond scattered inscriptions and a handful of toponyms, and what we do have is written in a fiercely angular runic script that scholars can only partially “read” by comparing it to Aldmeris. Despite this, the language’s guttural-metallic phonetics, hammer‑and‑anvil rhythms, and fractal‑complex grammar hint at a civilization whose very speech was fused to the art of forging and machinery.

Origins and Relationship to Aldmeris

The Dwemer tongue evolved directly from Aldmeris, the primordial Elven speech, but diverged so radically that it became mutually unintelligible with its parent language. After the Aldmer exodus from their ancestral isles, the proto‑Dwemer settled in northeastern Tamriel (“Dwemereth”) and, in isolation, let their language ossify into a new, subterranean dialect of mechanical precision.

Script and Runic Architecture

Alphabet Structure: Dwemeris runes employ 28 characters—26 roughly corresponding to Latin letters, plus two unique “meta‑glyphs” (one marking numeric values, one indicating capitalization and sentence onset).

Fierce Strokes: Each rune is carved in sharp, angular lines—“fierce strokes” that mimic the pattern of gear teeth and steam vents.

Bilingual Artifacts: The famed Calcelmo’s Stone at Markarth bears parallel Dwemeric and Falmeric inscriptions, proving the script’s use for both mundane records and arcane incantations.

Phonology: Hammer‑Metal Melody

Imagine a choir of forlorn bellows, tempered steel singing against itself. Dwemeris phonemes are dominated by:

Resonant “kh” glottals—a fierce exhalation like steam escaping a forge.

Click‑like alveolar stops—tiny metallic sparks of sound.

Subharmonic drones—low‑frequency hums that seem to vibrate rock. Accents vary by clan, with Blackreach dialects favoring deeper, earth‑shaking tones, while Vvardenfell scholars favor sharper, high‑pitched inflections.

Grammar and Syntax: Fractal Complexity

Far from linear, Dwemeris sentences often nest subordinate clauses within morphemes that themselves encode entire phrases—like gears within gears. A single word can express subject, object, instrument, and purpose all at once. Scholars theorize this arose from a “compact‑encoding” philosophy, where efficiency mirrored their subterranean architecture’s cramped tunnels.

Glimpses of the Lexicon

Only a handful of words are confidently identified:

Dum (“duumz”): “underground dwelling”

Duum (“duumz”): “Dwemer”

Eft (“eft”): “benefit, help”

Eftar‑: verb root “to promise, to swear”

Fahl (“fahlz”): “great, big, huge”

Nchuand‑Zel: the original Dwemeris name for Markarth, meaning “Radiant City”

Beyond these, most inscriptions remain tantalizingly opaque—strings like MZAHNCH or BTHURKZ that defy translation but resonate with a raw, industrial poetry.

Mystical Resonance and the “Mechanical Word”

Legend holds that certain Dwemeris phrases, when uttered with the correct tonal modulation, could activate ancient tonal locks or awaken dormant machinery. These “words of power” were embedded in automata and tonal conduits, their semantic meaning lost but their vibrational signature preserved in crystalline resonators.

Modern Study and Untranslatability

Despite decades of study, Dwemeris remains largely untranslatable, with pronunciation itself hotly debated among scholars. Most contemporary “translations” rely on context and Aldmeric cognates, leaving entire passages as mechanical gibberish. Yet every new artifact unearthed sends ripples through academic circles, fueling hope that a more complete lexicon may someday emerge.

In short, Dwemeris is less a language and more an echo of a civilization that spoke in the tongue of forging and engineering—a fractal linguistic engine whose full capacity may forever lie buried beneath the earth.

[ewaneneollav]

everyone has multiple different kinds of intelligence in them

i think theres a variety of intelligence that likes to hash everything out in words good & strive for clarity

it has its uses but it is flawed too so it shouldnt be the only one

you can read david hume immanuel kant soren kierkegaard georg hegel jacques lacan if you want to you just dont have to to prove to yourself youre an adult willing to tackle the responsibility of figuring out whats up with reality & stuff you can just want to, if youre hunkering down to be serious dont forget to see it as a specific mode so “true reality” isnt transfigured into smeary black-on-white old type & you live there

so im sitting there trying to write a message

by default i try to write with as much clarity & syntax as i can with certain flairs of deviation that spark something into it that i cant get across otherwise

its by default. its become an unconscious process

but im sitting there trying to write a message & i want to try abating that & not striving for whatever it is i usually do with words. i want to give a different intelligence a chance to have the words as its vehicle

(i dont know the name of the intelligence that encourages me to pick one intelligence over another so that the former has a time to shine. it manages the others)

im struggling & deliberating over how much detail or clarity i should write with

since by default i try to write with detail, it means letting the other intelligence have a voice will consist of coming up with the same words & paring it down

grimly i can feel it; i’m calculating the application of less detail. calculating. i want to know which words should be included, i am scrutinizing which clauses are too much, too freezing & un-for-tun-ate-ly ar-tic-u-la-ting - free-zing

the alternate intelligence i’m trying to let speak is not here. if it was here then it’d just be happening, i’d write its statement

what’s happening is my words-intelligence is trying to approximate the other-intelligence with its words

(i dont know the name of the intelligence that encourages me to pick one over another, but it seems ive fooled it, given it a fake difference instead of a true one thats different in essence. now ive wised up to my own trick. but i dont know where to go now. it might just come when it comes)

​

@aloe-verity :

hi hope your day is going ok.  re: your recent post 775114038474620928 i wanted to say i think that i get it, and changing the medium of the words might help (like writing in a notebook instead or something), and/or changing the conditions of the words’ existence (like how a tumblr post is intended to be viewed by others).  in my experience not all intelligences are immediately comfortable with being seen and privacy can mean a lot.  also, while i certainly recognize and appreciate the ability to use words at all—if words aren’t working out, offering a different intelligence a different medium of expression entirely might also be worth a shot.  from there i have often found that there is more internal understanding afterward.  words might not always be more wanted than actions, etc.  i do also think you’re right that it’ll happen when it happens

hate to be the guy giving strangers advice on the internet + obviously it’s chill if this is not valuable to you and i don’t expect a response or anything, i just really related to the experience of trying to let another voice speak and struggling to disengage the incredibly precise language/filtration/calculation habits. articulation is a gift and sometimes i want the receipt. hope you take care