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Lesson 2 - Critical Inference (FALL 2024)

Posted: Tue Aug 06, 2024 5:13 am
by Prof. Will Lestrange
Recall the prompt for this part of Assignment 2:

I showed Basl a few more images; he described each of them with a sentence in Parseltongue. The images are linked below (with small English language descriptions directly underneath serving the role of alt text), along with how Basl described each of them. Note that the English and Parseltongue descriptions are NOT necessarily direct translations of each other!

IMAGE 1:
Image
Image shows a black dog lying under a brown table next to a white bed.
'Tasi doʃe kura fasi stabsle gara sliʃe athne.'

IMAGE 2:
Image
Image shows a red patterned chair on a bent red patterned carpet. On the chair are three mice, holding and looking at a book.
'Isisi naus gira asa ʃira fasi khair ara raʃe sobne.'

IMAGE 3:
Image
Image shows a large, gorgeous python curled up in brown sand. A cute young boy is lying on his back, snuggling and hugging the python.
'Fasi ʃen tina fasi snek ʃena koeslʃe.'

To earn the full ten points, please do the following two things.
1. Pick one word from one of those three images that did not appear in Lesson 2. Post in this thread with an explanation of what you think that word means and why. (DO NOT use later lessons or the class word list as your only explanation!)
2. In the same thread, reply to someone else's post explaining whether or not you agree with their translation. Make sure to choose a different word than the one you chose for the previous part! If no one else has replied to the thread by October 25​ I will make my own post for you to reply to.

Re: Lesson 2 - Critical Inference (FALL 2024)

Posted: Fri Oct 25, 2024 9:14 am
by Prof. Will Lestrange
NOTE: This 'response' is intended to give students a chance to earn reply points right away. Each word in the sentence does have an intended Parseltongue meaning, but I'm forgetting that fact for now!

The third image, showing a cute boy very happily hugging a gorgeous snake, was described with the following sentence:
"Fasi ʃen tina fasi snek ʃena koeslʃe." As of now, we know the meaning of the words 'fasi' ('that'), 'tina' ('small'), and 'ʃena ' (large).

So this sentence would be glossed as "That [ʃen] small that [snek] large [koeslʃe]". Based on Parseltongue word order, adjectives are normally immediately preceded by nouns, so [ʃen] and [snek] should refer to the subject and object of the sentence, respectively. I am interested in the remaining word: koeslʃe. It takes the position of the verb of the sentence, and will briefly take a literal approach - the word is pronounced like the word "coil" and the sound "shay"... so I would guess that a literal translation of the word might be something like "to coil someone"/"to wrap someone up in coils". But this doesn't quite match the image - as I don't see any obvious coiling in the picture. Does anyone have further thoughts?