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Author Topic: how does naming a fortress work?  (Read 739 times)

Grimmrog

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how does naming a fortress work?
« on: November 05, 2016, 06:31:41 am »

I have issues trying to do so with soem proper names.

Thje wiki says I don't necessarily need some of the nams components

but when I try to make names like

Vaulted Anger that doesnT' works, because the name compoition seems to require straneg rules.

same for names like

aged bloated bellies

so what are the rules for composing a name?

it does work however to make a fort called "The Bloated Bellies of Anger"

however I couldn'T be able to choose "vaulted" bellies of anger. as vaulted exists only in the list of "first compiund" yet notin the list of "first Adjectives"

So Do i have any chance to name my fort somehow "Vaulted Anger" or "The vaulted anger" at all  because everytime I seem to choose a compound there seems to be no chance to go further without the "the".

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Bumber

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Re: how does naming a fortress work?
« Reply #1 on: November 07, 2016, 04:01:42 am »

I think your only option would be "Vaultedanger".

The name format is always:
[Front][Rear] the [Adj 1] [Adj 2] [hyphen compound]-["the" Noun] of ["of" noun]

The three sections ("CompoundWord", "The X", "Of X") are effectively separate. The first, "CompoundWord", contains front and rear compounds, which (I think) can be any type of word. The second, "The X", contains a noun which can be augmented with your choice of two adjectives and a hyphen compound. You cannot use the hyphen or adjectives without using a "The X" noun*. The last section, "Of X", contains just a single noun. IIRC, it requires the use of at least one of the other sections (e.g., "Word of Noun" or "The Noun of Noun", not just "Of Noun".)

Basically, the name syntax is:
WordWord
the Adj Adj Word-Noun
of Noun

Where "Word" can be almost any word in the language. (There are currently 16 prefixes limited exclusively to the hyphen compound.) Verbs are treated as nouns, I think.

*You can select them, but they don't display in the name. I haven't tested if they will suddenly show up if an adventurer is granted the noun later via title, or if new words will be chosen at random.
« Last Edit: November 07, 2016, 04:22:44 am by Bumber »
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Reading his name would trigger it. Thinking of him would trigger it. No other circumstances would trigger it- it was strictly related to the concept of Bill Clinton entering the conscious mind.

THE xTROLL FUR SOCKx RUSE WAS A........... DISTACTION        the carp HAVE the wagon

A wizard has turned you into a wagon. This was inevitable (Y/y)?

mikekchar

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Re: how does naming a fortress work?
« Reply #2 on: November 07, 2016, 08:30:44 pm »

Indeed "vaulted" is only listed as a past participle, so it can only be used in the front or rear compound.  Adjectives can be used in either the front compound or the first or second adjective.  "cleared" is both a past participle and an adjective, so you must say "Vaultedanger", but you can say either "clearedanger" or "The Cleared Anger".

However, you can also say "Vaulted the Anger".  I recommend using the "rear compound", normally, because it gives you more options.  The front compound is used to describe the rear compound.

My impression is that "Vaultedanger" (ronstizustoth) has a slightly different meaning than "Vaulted the Anger" (ronstiz ustoth) in Dwarfish.  Similarly, from a linguistic perspective it is different than what the English translation might suggest.  "ronstizustoth" describes anger that began to vault in the past and is currently vaulted.  My reading of it is that the anger is also transitory.  In comparison "ronstiz ustoth" is anger that has always existed, but the time when the vaulting began is ambiguous.
 
Read on at your own risk... TL;DR: mikekchar is a language nerd.

You will note that the front compound allows verbs in either the present tense (first person only) or the past participle (which describes something that began in the past and continues into the present).  It also allows a singular noun.  The rear compound allows present tense verbs (1st and 3rd person), preterite form (something that happened in a specific instant), or past participle.  It allows both singular and plural nouns.

So when you modify the rear compound with the front compound, you are either saying that *you* are doing it (first person present) or that it started in the past and continues into the future.  Note that each of these forms has the exact same Dwarfish word.  There is no conjugation.  It appears that Dwarfish is a positional language where other aspects are determined by context.  In the case of place names, I would suggest that the front compound will almost always be in the past participle form, but that in dwarf names, it may well be in the first person present form (i.e. "vaults anger" would be a more reasonable person name than place name because the place doesn't really do actions).

"The X" contains a noun that is modified by one or both of the compounds or the adjectives.  Keep in mind that adjectives describe the state of something without implying when it might have started to have that state.  So "the clear anger" (esustoth) is anger that is clear, but it does not imply that it became clear in the past.  It may have been clear forever.  Whereas if we use the past participle (cleared) we get "cleared the anger" or "clearedanger" ("es ustoth" and "esustoth" respectively).  This implies that the anger was not clear in the past, but became clear and is still clear now.

The difference between "es ustoth" and "esustoth" is interesting in that is simply a space in Dwarfish.  In the English translation it is "cleared the anger" and "clearedanger", but I will posit that the difference is in the lifetime of "anger".  In "esustoth" (clearedanger), the anger is in the rear compound, which means that the "cleared" directly modifies it.  In my mind that ties the words together more closely.  In "es ustoth" (cleared the anger), "cleared" still modifies "anger", but the words are separated.  It makes sense to me that in this case the anger has always existed, but it has moved from being not-clear to clear.  In "esustoth" the anger  starts out being not-clear and becomes clear -- we are tying the time-frame of the anger to the timeframe of the clearing.  So it has been a continual gradual process of clearing.

Note that "esustoth" (clearedanger) is ambiguous.  It can either be "clearedanger" (past participle) or "the cleared anger" (adjective).  My reading of this is that if you want to show that it is an adjective (and implying that the state probably continued forever) you *must* add a rear compound.  So to emphasize "the cleared anger" you might say "ronstiz esustoth" (vaulted the cleared anger).  Note that "vaulted" can either be read "vaults", or "vaulted" and will depend on context more than anything else.  The presence of the rear compound, though, clearly emphasises the adjective, so "cleared" is actually more important than "vaulted" in this name in my thinking (even though you would get the opposite impression in English).
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Grimmrog

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Re: how does naming a fortress work?
« Reply #3 on: November 09, 2016, 10:44:44 am »

I was never good at grammar at all, especially in foreign languages.

so how would the dwarfen name then be with the current rules to describe a place (the fortress) where anger is vaulted. Would they really express ith with "Vaulted the Anger"
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mikekchar

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Re: how does naming a fortress work?
« Reply #4 on: November 09, 2016, 06:46:54 pm »

Well, that's my interpretation.  Other interpretations are equally (or more) valid. :-)  Basically as far as I can understand, the only thing we know about the Dwarfish language comes from the name builder.   As you say, the rules are strange, but I think that half of what's great about DF is the serendipity of the strange rules it has.

A quick grammar lesson (I used to teach English as a foreign language so this is fun for me.  If it gets tedious, feel free to say so!)  An adjective is a word that modifies a noun.  For example "blue" is an adjective.  I can say "blue car" and we can understand that the car has the attribute of "blueness" to it.  A verb (in this case) is an action.  "vault" means to jump over something.  If I say "The blue car vaults", you can understand that the car (which has an attribute of blueness) is jumping over something.  If we can imagine the car vaulting yesterday we would say, "The blue car vaulted".  "vaulted" is known as the "simple past" form of the verb.

In English there are also forms of the verb called "participles".  Participles act like nouns, adjectives or adverbs.  The "present participle" is formed by adding "ing" to the verb.  For example, I can say "Vaulting is fun".  In this case "vaulting" is a noun-form of the verb.  We realise that the action of jumping over things is fun.  I can also say "the vaulting blue car".  In this case it acts as an adjective (describes the noun).  Not only is the car blue, but it is also vaulting over something (right now!)  Finally, we can use it as an adverb (describes the verb)... well theoretically anyway.... um... "the blue car vaultingly drives forward".  Well, I don't think you can actually use the present participle as an adjective with "vault" :-)  But even this made up sentence is probably understandable to you.  The driving is jumping over things.

As well as the "present participle", there is also a "past participle".  In English, this usually confusingly looks just like the simple past (English is a crazy language and I pity anyone who has to learn it).  The past participle for "vault" is "vaulted".  Imagine that I vault over a blue car.  The blue car becomes a "vaulted blue car", doesn't it (indicating that I jumped over it sometime in the past).  Other forms of the part particple are a bit trickier.  I can say "Having vaulted, I was happy".  In that case "vaulted" is being used as a noun/state.  Now that I am in the state of having vaulted, I am happy (because vaulting is fun).  Again, I can't really think of an adverbial form.

Now, English is not just confusing, it's annoying.  Sometimes we use the past participle as an adjective so much, that it takes on a new meaning.  When I say "I jumped over the car.  The vaulted car was small", it's clear that "vaulted" is the past particple of "vault" -- meaning something I have jumped over.  But when I say "The vaulted ceilings are very high", I'm definitely *not* saying that I jumped over the ceilings.  Instead, there is a completely separate word "vaulted" which is an adjective.  It means something that has the shape of an arch.  It was originally derived from the verb, because when I jump over things I make the shape of an arch, but it has diverged in meaning.

So when you say, "Vaulted anger", you almost certainly mean the adjective "vaulted" (having the shape of an arch), not the past participle "vaulted" (something I jumped over).

Getting back to Dwarfish: In this case the name generator allows sentence fragments of the form:

<front component><rear component> The <first adjective> <second adjective> <Hyphen Compound>-<X> Of <Y>

Notice that the only spaces in the sentence fragment come in the "The" part.  So if you want spaces in the english translation, you must use "The X", "Of Y".  Also, I should point out that you can *only* use the adjectives with "The X" (which will turn out to be important later).  If you try to set an adjective without setting "The X", it won't be visible.

Each one of these parts has restrictions.  The front and rear components allow verbs, particles and nouns.  The adjectives allow only adjectives.  The hyphen compound allows adjectives and nouns.  "The X" allows only nouns.  "Of Y" allows only nouns and present participles (-ing words).

Anger is a noun and you want to describe the anger with an adjective (vaulted).  There are only 3 places you can put the noun in this case: rear component, "The X" or "Of Y".  If you put it in the rear component, you won't get a space in front of it.  If you want the space, you can only put it in "The X" or "Of Y".

The more difficult problem is "vaulted".  You are using "vaulted" as a adjective, I believe (it has the shape of an arc).  "Vaulted" can not be used as an adjective in Dwarfish.  It only has the past participle form.  So you can only say "vaulted anger" with the meaning "anger that I jumped over".

Having said that, it means that you can only put "vaulted" in the first or second component.  If you put it in the first component and put anger in the second component, then you get "vaultedanger".  If you put it in the second component, then you must put "anger" in "the X" or "Of Y".  "Of Y" makes no sense, so you are left with "vaulted The anger".

Which is better for your purposes?  Really, we would rather have used "vaulted" as an adjective if there was an option to do so.  If we could do so, what would our options be?  Note again that you can *not* put adjectives in the first or second component!  You can only put them in the first or second adjective place.  And you can only add an adjective with "The X".  The name generator will not let you add adjectives without the "The X" portion.

So this means, *if* we could say "vaulted anger" in the sense that you want it (with "vaulted" meaning having an arch shape), the we *must* say "The vaulted anger".  Since there is only a past participle form of "vaulted", my personal feeling is that choosing to use the "The X" shape rather than using first and second component, you are pretty much emphasising the adjective role of "vaulted", even though it is a past participle.

In my mind, "vaultedanger" means anger I have jumped over and "vaulted the anger" means anger having the shape of an arch.  Of course, this is *not* how it reads in English, but foreign languages often have those kinds of subtleties.  I have no idea what Toady was thinking when he built that name generator.  Probably not what I'm thinking when I look at it 10 years later :-)  But the weird rules have a kind of life of their own.  It's part of the fun!

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