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Welcome to the talk page for WikiProject Linguistics. This is the hub of the Wikipedian linguist community; like the coffee machine in the office, this page is where people get together, share news, and discuss what they are doing. Feel free to ask questions, make suggestions, and keep everyone updated on your progress. New talk goes at the bottom, and remember to sign and date your comments by typing four tildes (~~~~). Thanks!

Edit warrior in the area of Serbo-Croatian[edit]

Kajkavian is currently being attacked by a nationalist edit warrior who keeps changing the classification of Shtokavian and Chakavian as Serbo-Croatian to an unscientific classification of them as "Croatian", which makes no sense and is clearly against the consensus. Sol505000 (talk) 23:23, 6 May 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

This is not a question for consensus, but what is written in the source, and in the source it is written in Croatian, not Serbo-Croatian, as you would change what is written in the source, and that is against editing Wikipedia because it is based on sources. And stop attacking me on a personal level. Here is a source [[1]]that the user Sol505000 does not respect. I just fixed what the vandal ip changed what is written in the source here added and invented [[2]], but unfortunately it is supported by user Sol505000.93.143.79.158 (talk) 23:49, 6 May 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
It does not matter what is written in the source. There's plenty of books written by authors confused by nationalist propaganda ex-Yugoslavians are bombarded with from cradle to grave that says that Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian are separate, distinct languages which they are not. They have extremely similar grammar, pronunciation, spelling and vocabulary (when you're dealing with their standard varieties) and hard scientific research cited in Serbo-Croatian has proven again and again that these are merely varieties of the same language. If you're looking for truly separate languages check Slovene or Macedonian. Those are genuinely distinct languages. Wikipedia is not a place for nationalist propaganda. Sol505000 (talk) 00:01, 7 May 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Wikipedia is not a place for your propaganda, which is based on adding and inventing something that is not written in the books. I won't comment on the rest of what you insult me, it all says about you.93.143.79.158 (talk) 00:26, 7 May 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
As I explained to you before, the name Serbo-Croatian language was a form because we lived in the same country from 1918-1990 in Yugoslavia, that's why it had that name when that country fell apart, the Serbo-Croatian language no longer exists, something like Britain today has English-Scottish, for example. Today it has the Croatian language, which is also recognized in the EU, as will be the Serbian language and the Bosnian language when they enter the EU. The name Serbo-Croatian language no longer exists, it went with Yugoslavia. And the languages are very different, there are a lot of different words, and in addition, the Serbian language has "Ekavica" and Croatia has "Ijekavica" in the Štokavian dialect. Don't let me explain the difference between Croatian and Serbian, Croats write in Latin and Serbs in Cyrillic, etc. 93.143.79.158 (talk) 00:42, 7 May 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
No, the standard varieties of Serbo-Croatian are not "very different" and the research cited in Serbo-Croatian proves that. What you're describing are mere regional differences in vocabulary and pronunciation (and orthography, every standard apart from Croatian uses Cyrillic to a bigger or lesser extent) that do not match national borders and there's variation within the countries themselves (I'm talking about the standard language alone), exactly as in the case of English, German and Spanish. If you asked a native Spanish speaker from outside Argentina and Uruguay if they consider Rioplatense Spanish a separate language in the same sense that Portuguese and French are foreign to them they would think you're crazy. The same applies here. You will not convince me otherwise. Sol505000 (talk) 00:53, 7 May 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
You think what you want, I wanted to explain to you about that Serbian-Croatian name, that's how people in Serbia and Croatia think about that name, as I wrote here. They are very different languages, there are many different words, if they weren't, one wouldn't be called Croatian and the other Serbian, but they have nothing to do with each other.93.143.79.158 (talk) 01:05, 7 May 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
"But they have nothing to do with each other" - Right, I forgot that they are language isolates. I'm sorry for my confusion. Sol505000 (talk) 01:09, 7 May 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I only returned what was written correctly in the source, I did not say that Štokavian is only a Croatian dialect, it is Serbian as well as Bosnian. And now it is written correctly as it says in the source that it is a Croatian dialect, someone can use that source and write on the Serbian page that Shtokavian is a Serbian dialect or on the Bosnian page that Shtokavian is a Bosnian dialect, I have nothing against that. That's what it says in the source, and don't add something that isn't written.I hope you understand what I'm talking about. Goodbye93.143.79.158 (talk) 01:18, 7 May 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
So one dialect belongs to three unrelated languages? I learn something every day. —Tamfang (talk) 22:22, 16 July 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Academically this is not a debate. The Declaration on the Common Language was published recently, long after the fall of Yugoslavia. --Antondimak (talk) 23:10, 22 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
“what is written in the source” — do all sources agree, or is there only one? —Tamfang (talk) 22:21, 16 July 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I once met a Croatian linguist, who related a discussion he had with a visiting scholar to his university. It took him two hours to realize that the guy was speaking Serbian rather than Croatian. — kwami (talk) 13:34, 18 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Explanation of linguistics use of * and ?[edit]

Per a discussion at WT:DYK § Horror aequi, I was wondering if some boilerplate explanations of the use of * and ? in linguistic contexts could be discussed here before using them in articles. (See Asterisks § Linguistics for more info on the subject.) My suggestions are (depending on the usage):

  1. An asterisk before a form indicates an ungrammatical or impossible form, while a question mark indicates that the form is questionable, but not outright ungrammatical.
  2. An asterisk marks words or phrases that are not directly recorded in texts or other media, but that are reconstructed on the basis of other linguistic material.

I'm not crazy about using "form" in the first example, but "word, phrase or sentence" is a little long.

What think ye? Is there already something better out there? —  AjaxSmack  18:00, 7 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

How about the number sign for infelicitous or semantically ill-formed utterances? Aamri2 (talk) 22:29, 7 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I don't think a lengthy explanation is needed in an article. The text already explains what is meant; you could just add "marked with X" where relevant. For instance, then it could say "the latter of each pair is unacceptable (marked with *)" and "...can be nearly incomprehensible (marked with ?)". You could link to the article(s) explaining the symbols in detail, I guess. But this makes it easier to stay close to the sources. The text should in any case make it clear what an example is supposed to show. //Replayful (talk | contribs) 08:04, 8 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I actually think a larger problem can be pointed to here: any page that employs such symbols should either define them or pipe them to some article that will explain their meaning. For example, the template IPAc-en sends newcomers in a helpful direction. Wolfdog (talk) 22:47, 14 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Proto-Dené–Caucasian language and Proto-Dené-Caucasian roots at AfD[edit]

Since the Dené–Caucasian languages appear to be lumpering, I've nominated their proto-languages for outright deletion rather than merger. Feel free to discuss the nomination if you are so inclined. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 03:19, 16 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Proto-Altaic Language at AfD[edit]

In the spirit of @John M Wolfson's AfD above, I've thrown up Proto-Altaic as well. Please join the discussion if you're interested. Warrenmck (talk) 21:02, 16 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Variety → Lect RM[edit]

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Variety (linguistics) § Requested move 25 September 2023. Nardog (talk) 23:23, 25 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Merger discussions for various Southern England dialects[edit]

Please contribute thoughts to two merger discussions:

  1. Proposal to merge Norfolk dialect and Suffolk dialect into East Anglian English; see reasons here.
  2. Proposal to merge Essex dialect, Kentish dialect, Sussex dialect, and Surrey dialect into English language in Southern England (specifically, the already-existing section English language in Southern England#19th-century Essex, Kent, Sussex, and Surrey English; see reasons here.

Thanks for any comments. Wolfdog (talk) 01:30, 9 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

FAC of Communication[edit]

Hello, I wanted to let you know that I nominated the article Communication for featured article status, see Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Communication/archive1. So far, there has not been much response from reviewers and I was wondering whether some of the people here are inclined to have a look at it. If you have the time, I would appreciate your comments. For a short FAQ of the FA reviewing process, see Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-04-07/Dispatches. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:00, 9 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Help-class[edit]

Hello project members! Note that per WP:PIQA, all the class ratings are being harmonised across different WikiProjects so we are looking to remove any non-standard classes like Help-class from your banner. If Help-class is removed, then all the pages in Category:Help-Class Linguistics articles will go back into Category:NA-Class Linguistics articles where they were originally. Please let me know if you have any questions — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:27, 12 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Ontology of articles on Chinese Characters[edit]

There is a discussion about what ontology to use to organize a series of articles about Chinese Characters. A key topic is what ontological patterns have been used for other similar groups of articles about other languages, so I'm seeking views from editors that have experience in this space. — BillHPike (talk, contribs) 20:39, 15 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

AfD note[edit]

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of unsolved problems in linguistics. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 00:31, 19 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

ALL-CAPS for "keywords for lexical sets"?[edit]

See [3]: An anon is putting various words in ALL-CAPS (misusing ((sc2)) in the form ((sc2|FOOT)) which simply outputs regular all-caps not small caps), insists this is proper for "keywords for lexical sets", and claims that this is how they "are generally represented ... across Wikipedia", yet I have never encountered this before here, and it is not to be found in MOS:ALLCAPS or any other guideline I'm aware of. The anon seems to want to do this for any word containing a sound that is under discussion in the article, such as the ʊ in foot, to be rendered FOOT. I can't see any rationale for doing that instead of just writing foot. If there's a good reason to do it after all, then it needs to be accounted for at MOS:ALLCAPS. However, it seems to conflict with a specialized linguistic use already codified there:

* In linguistics and philology, glossing of text or speech uses small caps for the standardized abbreviations of functional morpheme types (e.g. PL, AUX) ....

The only thing like this I'm finding elsewhere on-site is at Help:IPA/English, where it has been done seemingly to random words, then veering back into lower-case, e.g.:

ɔː — THOUGHT, audacious, caught

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:50, 20 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

It is standard (on Wikipedia and elsewhere discussing English phonology) to have keywords for lexical sets in all caps, see Lexical set, Fronting (sound change) (See "GOOSE-fronting"), the alternate name LOT–THOUGHT merger in Cot–caught merger, throughout in English phonology, New Zealand English phonology, Rhoticity in English etc., etc. Umimmak (talk) 23:09, 20 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Also see : Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters/Archive 26#I'm still confused on difference between sc and sc2 templates Umimmak (talk) 01:34, 21 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Well, there's some followup discussion at Talk:Hiberno-English#Merger of monophthong and diphthong sections (which is rather confusingly trying to address two things at once, but this is one of them). Anyway, the fact that some people write a lexical set this way doesn't seem to imply that it is "standard" that WP has to follow, especially when it is not likely to signify anything to more than a vanishingly small fraction of readers. Where is this standard published, and what body issued it? Also, doing ((sc2|GOOSE)) seems to serve no purpose at all, since it renders and copy-pastes the same as just typing GOOSE without a template. If we're certain we want to render lexical sets in all-caps, then this should be accounted for at MOS:ALLCAPS.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:05, 22 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
some people write a lexical set this way — everyone writes the keyword to lexical sets in small caps (or all caps if there are typological limitations). The IP editor and I have both provided a few of the many Wikipedia pages already doing this, because the sources used for writing the articles also do this because everyone who refers to keywords for lexical sets does so in capital letters. See myriad sources noting this explicitly if you search Wells lexical sets "small caps" in Google Books.
These are J.C. Wells’ lexical sets, so if people make use of his sets they follow his typographical conventions (1982, p. xviii):

Words written in capitals
Throughout the work, use is made of the concept of standard lexical sets. These enable one to refer concisely to large groups of words which tend to share the same vowel, and to the vowel which they share. They are based on the vowel correspondences which apply between British Received Pronunciation and (a variety of) General American, and make use of keywords intended to be unmistakable no matter what accent one says them in. Thus 'the KIT words' refers to 'ship, bridge, milk . . .'; 'the KIT vowel' refers to the vowel these words have (in most accents, /ɪ/); both may just be referred to as KIT.

Note this isn’t in violation of MOS:WAW because GOOSE is referring to more than just the word goose.
Also GOOSE and GOOSE do appear differently so I’m confused what you mean by them rendering the same? Umimmak (talk) 12:22, 22 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
They were pretty close to indistinguishable in a particular browser, that's all. Anyway, I've (belatedly – forgot about this for several months) updated MOS:SMALLCAPS to account for this use of them [4], and hopefully avoid another revertwar about it as happened at Hiberno-English in October last year. I'm honestly skeptical this is a good idea, because it's based on the style used in a partcular primary source, and smallcaps are already used for at least two other unrelated linguistics markup purposes (ones I was already familiar with from my own university linguistics department days). But if there's already a strong consensus among people who care about it that it should be done this way, and we're already doing it consistently in articles and even in documentation like Help:IPA/English, then it should be accounted for in the guideline.

PS: In the same MoS section is an HTML comment reading: This next part does not appear to actually be applicable on Wikipedia; will get clarification from WT:LINGUISTICS: Transcription of logograms (as opposed to phonograms) can also be done with small caps or all caps. Not really sure what to do with this. Is there anything Wikipedia-important that needs to be accounted for here?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:56, 3 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thanks for that. And as for the second point, articles with transliteration of Sumerian text have that distinction see
NIN (cuneiform), EN (cuneiform), Sumerogram#Transliteration and examples. It might be used in other languages too, but I mostly associate it with Sumerian. Umimmak (talk) 15:44, 3 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Should these be in full-size ALL-CAPS or SMALL-CAPS?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:21, 5 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I guess we never got a clear answer when you asked before: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ancient Near East/Archive 6#MoS cleanup point: all caps and small caps. But I'm seeing all caps in journals:
  • Dalley speculates whether gišṭû (GEŠ.DA) is to be distinguished from the Sumerogram GEŠ.ZU, Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History doi:10.1515/janeh-2023-0010
  • BARA2-mar is an alternative spelling of BARA2.DUMU, Journal of Cuneiform Studies doi:10.1086/725217
  • The original writing is dPA4.SIG7.NUN.ME = disimu4(-d). In this NUN.ME is a semantic marker, which had no consequences for the pronunciation, IRAQ doi:10.1017/irq.2022.7
And Foxvog's textbook on Sumerian [5] writes:

In unilingual Sumerian contexts, Sumerian words are normally written in lower case roman letters. Upper case (capital) letters (CAPS) are used:

  1. When the exact meaning of a sign is unknown or unclear. Many signs are polyvalent, that is, they have more than one value or reading. When the particular reading of a sign is in doubt, one may indicate this doubt by choosing its most common value and writing this in CAPS. For example, in the sentence KA-ĝu10 ma-gig 'My KA hurts me' a body part is intended. But the KA sign can be read ka 'mouth', kìri 'nose' or zú 'tooth', and the exact part of the face might not be clear from the context. By writing KA one clearly identifies the sign to the reader without committing oneself to any of its specific readings.
  2. When the exact pronunciation of a sign is unknown or unclear. For example, in the phrase a-SIS 'brackish water', the pronunciation of the second sign is still not completely clear: ses, or sis? Rather than commit oneself to a possibly incorrect choice, CAPS can be used to tell the reader that the choice is being left open.
  3. When one wishes to identify a non-standard or "x"-value of a sign. In this case, the x-value is immediately followed by a known standard value of the sign in CAPS placed within parentheses, for example dax(Á) ‘side’.
  4. When one wishes to spell out the components of a compound logogram, for example énsi(PA.TE.SI) 'governor' or ugnim(KI.KUŠ.LU.ÚB.ĜAR) 'army'.
  5. When referring to a sign in the abstract, as in “the ŠU sign is the picture of a hand.”
In bilingual or Akkadian contexts, a variety of conventions exist. Very commonly Akkadian words are written in lower case roman or italic letters with Sumerian logograms in CAPS: a-na É.GAL-šu 'to his palace'. In some publications one also sees Sumerian words written in s p a c e d r o m a n letters, with Akkadian in either lower case roman letters or italics. In other newer publications Sumerian is even printed in boldface type.
So it definitely seems to be in ALL CAPS over SMALL CAPS, and that seems to track with usage on Wikipedia. Again still under the assumption this is about Sumerian/Sumerograms; might be worth asking Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Writing systems as well. Umimmak (talk) 01:06, 5 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Articles for deletion/ELRA Language Resources Association[edit]

Your input is invited at Articles for deletion/ELRA Language Resources Association

--A. B. (talk • contribs • global count) 03:40, 26 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Linguistic elaboration[edit]

Hi, folks! Hope you're doing well. Found this redirect, Linguistic elaboration, but the phrase doesn't show up and is not linked anywhere in Wikipedia. Thought I'd ask some knowledgeable Wikipedians because I don't want to take it to WP:RfD if it's easier to insert and wikilink the phrase somewhere and "rescue" it that way.

Details: the target article, Abstand and ausbau languages, doesn't even have the string "elaborat" (the closest is langue par élaboration). Autonomy and heteronomy defines ausbau as the elaboration of a language to serve as a literary standard; Standard language mentions elaboration of function (and defines Ausbau as further linguistic development).

An extremely rushed Internet search has led me to "linguistic elaboration" as a translation of sprachlicher Ausbau, a concept introduced by Kloss (1929) and popularized by Haugen (1966).[1]

tl;dr what should I do? a) take the "Linguistic elaboration" redirect to RfD or b) find some way of mentioning or wikilinking the phrase in existing articles? Thanks in advanced for reading and for any input!

References

  1. ^ Schultze, D. (2012). Sprachlicher Ausbau: Konzeptionelle Studien zur spätmittelenglischen Schriftsprach. Anglia - Zeitschrift für englische Philologie, 130(3), 426-428. Via The Wikipedia Library

Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 03:58, 29 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Pinging @Mr. Guye: who created the redirect in question. Umimmak (talk) 09:53, 31 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • (pinged) You can take it to RfD for deletion, I don't remember why I created it, though it probably did have to do with the translation from German. My guess is that I was trying to find a general term for the subject (e.g. "magnetic polarity" instead of "positive magnetism and negative magnetism") but I don't think this term does a good job of that (and could be considered OR), so I have no issue with deletion, especially since I am not an expert on the subject. — Mr. Guye (talk) (contribs)  02:59, 5 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

FAR for Harold Innis[edit]

I have nominated Harold Innis for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" in regards to the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Z1720 (talk) 01:29, 6 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Specialization (linguistics)[edit]

The discussion Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Specialization (linguistics) has been relisted three times but has received minimal participation. If you have ideas about the article, please consider commenting. Cnilep (talk) 03:50, 10 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Discussion on Talk:Romance languages: Representation of Classical Latin–Vulgar Latin split in infobox?[edit]

If anyone here is interested in this discussion, it can be found at Talk:Romance languages#Representation of Classical Latin–Vulgar Latin split in infobox? Arctic Circle System (talk) 09:56, 11 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Help needed in Synthetic language[edit]

More than a month ago, I opened a discussion in Talk:Synthetic language#Fusional and agglutinating languages, about a number of changes by a single editor in Synthetic language, changes that I found flawed. There's been no reply so far. Please help, any comment is welcome. Jotamar (talk) 22:14, 13 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Please anyone familiar with Mandarin/Dahalo/Danish/Loloish phonology take a look at alveolar approximant[edit]

This article, terribly Anglocentric until 27 February 2015, is still somewhat lacking a global viewpoint. The recording since 27 February 2015 may be somehow called an "alveolar approximant" but anyone who read John Wells[1] uses the detailed transcriptions ⟨sz̞ᵚ⟩ for si and The Nuosu language has two similar "buzzed" vowels that are described as syllabic fricatives, [β̩, ɹ̝̍[citation needed]]. from apical vowel, an article itself is also problematic and labelled by me, would find the two alveolar approximant totally different, much more different than the recording of the alveolar approximant and of the postalveolar approximant.

I initiated a discussion after the thread of a German IP: Talk:Voiced alveolar and postalveolar approximants#Two symbols; only one explained. However, given the fact that the exact nature of the stereotypical "rhoticized alveolar" approximant (such as the recording) as opposed to plain alveolar approximant is not at all well-studied, it is unlikely to give a wellsourced scientifical definition in Wikipedia. However, the writing of Wikipedia should not work against common sense, when the ears of a billion people can notice the difference of the sound it is no longer a minor difference but a phonemical difference or at least a difference of potentially phonemical importance. I have basically stopped actively pushing the idea of separation of the two sounds but the writing style of that article should be changed. Ten years ago when I first read that article I found it absurd because no matter how hard I try I cannot articulate any sound that is remotely similar to the English sometimes alveolar sometimes postalveolar approximant, and always get a acoustically non-rhoticized sound - this is not what Wikipedia intends to do. I no longer actively push the idea not only because the topic is itself not well-studied but treated like an elephant in the room by people in the circle, but also because I myself cannot give an accurately describe all ways to make an alveolar approximant rhotacized (what I can say is, when one keeps one's tongue flat except for the articulation point it's a plain sound while when one's tongue is relaxed and curled somewhere other than the articulation point, or sulcalized, etc. it tends to produce a rhotacized sound acoustically not very different from a postalveolar approximant) and I do not want to give any original research or even misstatements (I might already did by saying Huashan Mandarin has two oral alveolar approximants phonemically but they seem to be only semi-phonemically different). It is much easier to say the difference is not something than is something: I can seriously tell that Sol505000's idea that the Dahalo and English difference is apical/laminal difference or the difference between alveolar this way and postalveolar were wrong and original research, but I don't want to characterize it either (if someone can characterize this acoustic rhoticity by F3+ it's highly appreciated). Both Nardog and Sol505000 in the discussion are unfamiliar with the topic (Mandarin/Dahalo/Danish/Loloish phonology, thus outside that part of the academic circle) so I don't trust their opinion, and I don't trust myself either. So please if anyone in the circle can take part in that discussion I would appreciate that and may comfortably leave the talk. Note that the discussion were filled with unrelated wording-problem such as "rhotic". Here's the last version that distinguishes the rhoticized alveolar from plain alveolar approximant, where you can find the academic primary source that indicate the Huashan Mandarin to have two semi-phonemically distinct alveolar approximant:

(P.S. With the help of pronouncing a rhotic alveolar approximant as in the recording, I now can pronounce a strongly fricative alveolar or even dentialveolar sibilant, apical or laminal, that are acoustically not very different from a postalveolar/retroflex sibilant, but this may be entirely a different topic and may be just a strongly hushing dentialveolar.)

The separation of sounds dealt in the article is also ad hoc: I didn't see any source making a separation between apical postalveolar and apical retroflex approximants phonemically, I guess the only difference is how back your tongue curls but both Mandarin and English seemed to have the two adjacent approximants in free variation (some even argued that all Mandarin retroflex series are all merely postalveolar - tongue tip not going toward as back as palatal). Given the fact that when pronouncing an approximant your tongue doesn't touch the passive place of articulation, the difference between the two are even harder to define. However, Wikipedia has them in different articles anyway. On the other hand, Sol505000 (talk · contribs) argued that dentialveolar approximant would be my original research, well I am not sure but I have seen some Chinese linguistic graduate student using "prealveolar approximant" [ɹ̟̍] in their blog to describe the Chinese flat-tongued apical vowel because the stereotypical rhotic alveolar approximant is acoustically too different from that apical vowel but sounds closer to retroflex apical vowel. Of course saying a dentialveolar approximant to have a passive place of articulation sharply at the edge between your teeth and your alveolar ridge is not possible, but I don't think use the term "dentialveolar approximant" to emphasize the sound to be neither close to interdental/front dental nor close to the Dahalo-like "alveolar tending toward post-alveolar" may cause any problems. I have no idea why Sol505000 considers the distinction between apical postalvelar and apical retroflex to be founded while dentialveolar to be unfounded, and I would promote the ExtIPA [ð͇˕] for Dahalo language apical-alveolar series instead of [ð̠˕] because the current usage of [t̠] and [d̠] in Dahalo language is not quite accurate. 146.96.28.10 (talk) 02:59, 2 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I have also included many well-sourced examples of Sinitic languages, which are reverted by Sol505000 without explanation. Nardog once had some problem with it but they no longer opposes that. My point is, if the article apical vowel describes the these vowels in three controversial ways, these examples should be listed as examples in all three articles rather than neither. Similar treatment should be done with the Mandarin final nasal approximants (like the Burmese one), such as Tian'anmen (tʰjɛ́͢ð̠̃˕.á͢ð̠̃˕.mə̌͢ð̠̃˕): if Mandarin phonology describes it in some way, it deserves to be mentioned as an example in corresponding articles. The awkward treatment of apical vowel and the IPA rejection of Sinologist IPA shouldn't be used as a tool to intentionally ignore the existance of these sounds in Mandarin (I personally find it very discriminative to assign Swedish ɧ an IPA symbol but the Chinese ones and Danish ones rejected). The latest version with these example but without the controversial rhotacized/plain difference is here. --146.96.28.10 (talk) 04:08, 2 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

References

  1. ^ John Wells (March 15, 2007). "Chinese apical vowels Archived 2021-10-24 at the Wayback Machine. John Wells's phonetic blog. Accessed Feb 21, 2013.

Third opinion for Talk:Hindi request[edit]

@Austronesier and I can't achieve consensus on our last discussion on the talk page. I'd like a third opinion. Rolando 1208 (talk) 12:52, 10 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The misleading Adage redirect[edit]

FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Talk:Proverb#Adage needs to stop redirecting here. Summary: Proverb has a very narrow scope, and that of the term adage is much wider (proverb is a traditional folkloric subset). We probably need a set-index article for such terms, either a new one at Adage itself, or develop the even more generalized bare list at Saying into a proper set-index article with encyclopedic content not just links to articles. At any rate, Adage needs a more appropriate link target than just going to Proverb.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:06, 13 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Long-term OR abuser, now inactive[edit]

Thanks go to Doric Loon for this removal of an entirely unsourced OR paragraph at English phrasal verbs. Unfortunately, that paragraph survived ten years in the article, added in 2012 by Tjo3ya (talk · contribs), now inactive. Glancing at their contrib history, they were a heavy contributor to linguistics-related articles, and I notice an unusual proportion of their edits being reverted by other editors, some fat cuts and restores, and where content is added, it's either unsourced (diff1, diff2) or appears to have a citation or two, but they often don't back the preceding article content, instead, they are more of a forward-looking, "see-also"-style explanatory note within <ref> tags, of the "See Foo & Bar (2000) for a debate" type thing. There are a lot of big cuts of 5, 10, or 20kb of content, indicating a bold style, but that bothers me less, as at least they don't introduce OR content (well, one can't be sure without examining the diff, but probably not) and mostly they are not reverted.

The 2012 OR paragraph at English phrasal verbs is the first time I've encountered Tjo3ya, so I don't really know how much damage they may have done. I wonder if anyone who enjoys gnoming articles for old OR content would like to try and tackle this, or at least, provide a better idea of the scope of the problem? I notice that Botterweg14 appears to have tangled with them in April 2021 at Predicate (grammar), and had edits at half a dozen other linguistics articles around the same time, so perhaps they will recollect those edits and be able to give their impressions about this editor, in order to to better scope the extent of the problem, if indeed there is a problem. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 22:45, 14 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The problem is generally WP:NPOV more than WP:OR. Their contributions often argued in Wikivoice for their idiosyncratic version of dependency grammar, and even their less argumentative contributions still give undue weight. I removed some blatant instances, as did Kaĉjo, but there's still a lot out there. This isn't trivial to fix, since this editor was the main person working on syntax articles for quite a while, and their problematic contributions are often intertwined with good ones. I'll do what I can when I have time, but unfortunately their battleground behavior contributed to an unwelcoming environment for many of the people best positioned to fix it. Botterweg14 (talk) 03:51, 15 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
To add to this: their idiosyncratic version of dependency grammar is based on the notion of a catena, so I used Special:WhatLinksHere/Catena_(linguistics) a couple of times. The trouble was that, when edited to give a neutral point of view on catenas, the passages generally looked OK to me, but gave undue weight to this theory in the context of the article. So the best solution (I thought, not being very familiar with wiki guidelines) would be not so much to cut down on the catena content but to add content about other approaches to make articles more representative. Unfortunately this would take much more work than simply cutting down on catena content, and should also be done with someone with much more knowledge of syntax than myself. Kaĉjo (talk) 16:01, 15 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Perhaps some of this text can be moved to catena, since it wouldn't be undue weight in that context. Botterweg14 (talk) 04:48, 16 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Pinging Mundart and RM_Dechaine, since their syntax expertise goes far beyond mine. Botterweg14 (talk) 03:59, 15 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Your diagnosis of the effects of Tjo3ya's edits is exactly right: a very large weighting of a very marginal (in the literature) theory using the catena, and a driving away of editors who didn't want to engage in endless small skirmishes over how to make the catena theory appropriately cited, and not give it undue weight. It was exhausting, and more than one of us simply decided to cut back on editing wikipedia. Really, as you say, all the syntax articles need a pretty thorough eye to rebalancing. Perhaps once I retire! Mundart (talk) 16:37, 23 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Putting Template:WikiProject Linguistics into Coverb and Converb[edit]

Not part of the project but I noticed that both articles were lacking the Template, I am being bold and adding said template to them, if someone who is from the project desagree that it should be added, feel free to remove it. Also, since I don't understand the class and importance level of those terms, I didn't added them so please, if you find it is relevant, add them. —Nanami73⚓ (talk) (contributions) 23:20, 16 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Periphrastic tenses[edit]

Hi, I've been noticing that our articles on the history of the verb systems of the Germanic and Romance languages seem to focus almost entirely on the conjugation of synthetic tenses and give very little information about the development of periphrastic/analytic tenses. For example, Romance verbs has only the very briefest mention of periphrasis, Germanic verbs never mentions the Germanic perfect, and Gothic verbs gives no hint about whether Gothic had a perfect at all (though it does mention a Gothic past participle and leaves us guessing about what that might have been used for).

Right now I'm interested in the fact that the modern Romance and Germanic languages share a perfect tense that has a very distinctive feature: the auxiliary "have" (j'ai mangé, ich habe gegessen) changes to "be" in a verb of motion (je suis venu, ich bin gekommen). That is so idiocyncratic that it has to be an areal feature, and the fact that it is even found in Icelandic and Romanian, both conservative outliers in their respective groups, suggests it is very old. But it is not Indo-European, so it is an innovation in both Germanic and Romance. Although the "have" construction has a tentative predecessor in Vulgar Latin, I can't find any discussion of the origin of the whole system, or how it came to be shared by two geographically adjacent language families.

Does anyone here have the expertise to write this up? Or at least to point me in the direction of literature so I can try it myself? Doric Loon (talk) 08:19, 18 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Doric Loon: I have found this book[6]. This looks maximally interesting, especially since intra-family morphsyntactic calques (and how to distinguish them from genetically shared innovations) are one of the things that I work on in a language family in a different part of the world. –Austronesier (talk) 21:08, 18 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Doric_Loon -- There wasn't a compound Germanic perfect in any historic origins sense, but there was a medieval Western European sprachbund (including both Romance and Germanic languages) where there was a contrast between a simple past tense versus a compound perfect tense which was formed with HAVE + past participle for transitive verbs and BE + past participle for intransitive verbs. English has retained this system, except for now using "have" with all verbs, but the contrast between the two tenses doesn't really exist in modern French (where the simple past now is a literary form), or in many forms of spoken German. In Old English, the compound perfect was mainly used with a past tense auxiliary to express a pluperfect meaning... AnonMoos (talk) 23:14, 18 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Opinion sought on potential original research in article[edit]

Hello. Another editor and I are in disagreement about what constitutes original research in the article on the phrase Tory scum. I believe the article is being held to standards different to other articles as it seems the other editor insists examples of the phrase come from sources that say something like, "This incident is an example of when the phrase "Tory scum" was used". The fullest the article has been, with the most examples given, was this edit. After discussion with the other editor, I suggested this more limited edit. After both, the other editor deleted the section containing examples of use of the phrase. Other opinions are sought as at the moment it's only the two of us so perhaps we're caught in ruts. The active discussion on the talk page is here. Thank you for your involvement. Woofboy (talk) 15:10, 18 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Difrasismo and Dvandva[edit]

There's a discussion regarding a merge between Difrasismo and Dvandva at Talk:Difrasismo#Merge? that could do with some input (there). The key current query is whether there is a suitable over-arching article into which both could be merged, but please also consider the reasonableness of the primary proposal. Klbrain (talk) 18:45, 27 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Komi languages[edit]

According to Oxford Guide to the Uralic Languages (2022), there is a single Komi language, for which two literary languages, Komi-Permyak and Komi-Zyryan were created. Neither of these languages seems to be primary one in any sense and deserve the designation as 'the Komi language', but for some reason Komi-Zyryan now holds that title. Also, Komi-Permyak is under a name Permyak, contrary to the reliable sources. I am not familiar with linguistics articles in Wikipedia, so I am asking for opinions on what should be done.

Should we move Permyak > Komi-Permyak, Komi>Komi-Zyryan and make Komi language into a disambiguation or a short article explaining the variants and the historical reason for their existence? This would probably affect many links. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 23:17, 29 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I expect the move to Komi-Permyak to be the least controversial step so I opened a discussion about it at Talk:Permyak language#Requested move 30 December 2023. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 14:01, 30 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Discussion at Talk:Voiced palatal approximant § Do not undo the alveolo-palatal approximant[edit]

 You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Voiced palatal approximant § Do not undo the alveolo-palatal approximant. Nardog (talk) 15:54, 30 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Linguistic input could be useful in a WP:V wording matter[edit]

Wikipedia talk:Verifiability#Merge WP:SELFSOURCE and WP:BLPSELFPUB to WP:ABOUTSELF has stalled out, with stonewalling by a single party, who claims that the syntactic problems in the policy material's opening sentence, which I've outlined in considerable detail, are just "[my] opinion" and that doing anything about them is "not needed" and is "WP:CREEP". I think these grammatical-meaning and parseability issues are objectively factual and not a matter of subjective opinion, but that editor will not engage on the matter further, there or in user talk [7], where I demonstrated that the revision actually complies with is not against the goals of the CREEP essay.

The discussion has too few active participants (despite "advertising" the thread to WP:VPPOL) to move past this issue. Either I'm correct that the sentence is syntactically faulty or I am not, and additional voices should get us past this blockage one way or the other. If I'm simply wrong about the problems I see in the original wording, then feel free to say so.

It's basically come down to a choice between the versions in the last two subthreads there (unless someone wants to propose a new revision); no real need to pore over the entire revision process.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:26, 31 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Query about IPA transcription of the latin word "tricolor"[edit]

I was reading the article Rubus tricolor and thought the IPA transcription was interesting: /ˈruːbəs ˈtraɪkʌlər/

I am no expert, but it was my understanding that the difference between the vowel sounds ʌ and ə was simply that the former is under stress, and the latter is not under stress. But in this word, the main stress falls on the first syllable, meaning that the second syllable must be unstressed (unless there is secondary stress?). Therefore, we should have both unstressed syllables (i.e., second and third syllables) rendered as schwa, correct? Anyway, I am not sure if it is correct, or if my previous understanding was not accurate. Many thanks, Moribundum (talk) 17:51, 8 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The second syllable has a subordinated stress like the second syllable of "homemaker" etc. I don't think the second and third syllables have the same degree of stress in the most usual pronunciation of the word... AnonMoos (talk) 18:09, 8 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Unsourced edits[edit]

Someone might want to review the edits from 90.241.160.140 and 84.68.219.93. The editor has changed many articles without any sourcing, mostly related to letters and alphabets (especially Armenian, Cyrillic, Glagolitic, and IPA ones), and the edit summaries range from vague to patent nonsense. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 21:24, 8 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I would block if they don't heed the warning to start sourcing. Just spot checking a few, they seem more in the realm of theories or original research. For example, here the editor adds some dubious origins of the grapheme ⟨X⟩ to the article on its descendant ⟨X̂⟩ but that same claim was removed from ⟨X⟩ a few weeks before for failing verification. Here they add some sister graphemes to ⟨U⟩, including ⟨उ⟩ which has a completely separate history from the Latin ⟨U⟩ and only shares a name. The 84... IP is slightly better in the sense that this edit at least is partially supported by the article text but we also get edits like this where the summary is just a skibidi toilet reference and the edit is unsourced. I'll probably just go through and revert them in bulk when I have some spare time since I don't have faith these are going to stand up to scrutiny if we took the time to research them (and the editor[s] should really be providing that if it's not in the text). — Wug·a·po·des 04:00, 9 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Based on those examples and the other reverts, it's likely that the best course of action is to undo every one of these edits, but we could wait another day to see if anyone here can make sense of some of them. I wouldn't object to undoing them now, though. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 06:36, 9 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I have undone most using this edit note: rv dubious edits by user:90.241.160.140 per Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Linguistics#Unsourced edits and left a note at their talk page inviting them to explain why they consider their edits to have been valid. The facetious tone of many of their edit notes do not inspire confidence. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 14:05, 9 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
All my edits are constructive, I simply just ran out of ideas for edit summaries and went for silly things I’m sorry. 90.241.160.140 (talk) 16:13, 9 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Which, apart from showing your immaturity, doesn't respond to Wugapodes's demand that you produce evidence to support your changes. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 23:23, 9 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

90.241.160.140 is now reverting my reversions. I have no inclination to get bogged down in an edit war so if anybody cares about these topics, they will need to open a WP:ANI report and redo the reversions. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 23:23, 9 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@JMF: I blocked them from article space for a week which prevents further problems but allows them to still discuss the changes. They were warned twice (three times if you count me saying above that I'd block them) and clearly knew there was an ongoing discussion, but they kept going. I don't see the need for ANI when it's that clear cut. If they want to discuss, they can do so here or make edit requests. — Wug·a·po·des 02:39, 10 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
The IP address has resumed adding unsourced changes, coupled with inappropriate edit summaries, upon the release of their block. I've filed a report and am working on reverting their edits. Panian513 16:04, 17 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

sourcing for the etymology of "whore" as well as potential etymological missing link[edit]

Prostitution#Etymology_and_terminology I noticed the section here and thought that going from the proto-german *hōrōn to PIE *keh₂- and thought it strange, and decided to take a look over on our sister site for a source, and while not finding one, suggests a missing link between the two was another PIE word, *kéh₂ros, which i can see the connection better if it can be sourced. Anyone more familiar with sourcing etymology taking a look into this would be lovely. Akaibu (talk) 15:20, 25 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Help on untangling some Alaska-Eskimo scripts[edit]

It appears that the Commons images used in Yugtun script among other articles are mislabeled, but I can't figure out at all from the christusrex source which script image corresponds to which language/dialect, which script, and which script inventor -- each of which may have their own article and each of which may be scrambled. (It also used in ru:Эскимосская_письменность among others -- that page seems to have a better organization of how some of the scripts coordinate to dialects.) Someone who has the willingness to take the time to take a couple hours' dive into (or has background already of) the differences of several Eskimo dialects + phonetics, scripts, and transcriptions -- their efforts on this would be appreciated.

[Addendum:] I'd also appreciate ideas on how to verify the photo of Uyaquq /(Uyaqoq?) on Rovenchak 2011 (p. 8), which unfortunately seems like a very cruddy article. (That said, it passes WP:V and a very-most superficial reading of WP:RS, so it'd only be a matter of licensure to get the photo, else one could just link to it. However, I think it'd be irresponsible if we didn't try to independently verify ourselves.) SamuelRiv (talk) 04:21, 30 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

As for the second part, Rovenchak 2011 takes the image from http://uyaquk.com/, which has been archived via the Way Back Machine in 2005: [8]. That has an invitation to Contact the author with comments or to request a full set of bibliographic references/footnoted article, that Yahoo email address was also used as the contact for doi:10.2307/1357795, I found her LinkedIn page which lists that BASOR article and provides her personal website with a different, but available email address. I'm not sure how much I can spell out directly, but it might be worth emailing her to ask if they recall where she got the image of Uyaquk from? Umimmak (talk) 05:07, 30 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Needless free variation (or a confusing dialectal one) denoted in many Help:IPA guides[edit]

In the following guides, there are issues with multiple symbols (listed like ⟨◌ ~ ◌⟩, ⟨◌, ◌⟩ or ⟨◌ or ◌⟩, or as multiple symbols in multiple rows in the table), most likely denoting free variation. In other cases, it looks like a dialectal variation is described, but without specifying the dialects. Either way, it defeats the purpose of those guides, we need either to choose one symbol and stick to it or, possibly, separate the entries and list the allophones separately (assuming there is no (or little) free variation involved) or simply specify which allophones occur in which dialects. Either way, all instances of ⟨◌ ~ ◌⟩ etc. need to be fixed.

The following guides are affected:

Also, Help:IPA/Hmong lists loads of consonant clusters which are clearly not single segments. Sol505000 (talk) 20:08, 20 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

There is nothing wrong with variation in our IPA guides. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Pronunciation says: “For foreign-language pronunciations, a phonetic transcription is normally used, with a link to Help:IPA or to various language-specific IPA keys.” Many languages have phonetic variation. Other editors have agreed that a guide should contain phonetic variation, cf. Help talk:IPA/Standard German#Should we use Austrian (or Swiss) Standard German pronunciation for topics related to Austria (or Switzerland)?.
You appear to prefer phonemic transcriptions. I have never understood why. People who do not speak the language may lack the information to correctly read a phonemic transcription. People who speak the language may be upset by a phonemic transcription when it is based on a different variety of the language. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 19:09, 1 March 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I don't think you understood my post at all. At no point did I say that we need to switch to phonemic transcription in those guides. What we need to do is to remove (or fix, see above) needless and/or unexplained free variation (which is not the same as phonetically relevant allophony, which you should know) per WP:IPAINTEGRITY, which says Again, if the language you're transcribing has such an IPA key, use the conventions of that key. If you wish to change those conventions, bring it up for discussion on the key's talk page. Creating transcriptions unsupported by the key or changing the key so that it no longer conforms to existing transcriptions will confuse readers. It means that those conventions must be established, i.e. the transcriber (as well as the reader, which goes without saying) must know which symbol is used in which environment. This follows the practice of all pronunciation dictionaries and most books on linguistics I'm aware of (and even if it didn't, our MOS takes precedence anyway). Sol505000 (talk) 13:59, 3 March 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
O.K., your anti-variant point of view is not about phonemic transcriptions, but about exactly predefined transcriptions. The same arguments still apply: People who do not speak the language may lack the information to correctly read those exactly predefined transcriptions, and people who speak the language may be upset when they are based on a different variety. And I still have no idea why you reject variants so strongly.
You are interpreting too much into WP:IPAINTEGRITY. It only says that the convention of our IPA keys should be used. It does not say that the convention of our IPA keys must not contain variants or that they must only contain variants if exactly defined. That is just your personal point of view. On the other hand, what the MOS clearly says is that there should be discussion before changing the keys, so please stop changing the keys without prior discussion. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 20:56, 3 March 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Questions regarding ubiquitous six-ring diagram[edit]

Me and @Phlsph7 had a brief discussion regarding this diagram, which seems to be useful in the broadest sense but is also more erroneous than it has to be. Obviously, each of these fields is not neatly contained, but that is not a problem in itself in my mind, that's the nature of science. While phone → phoneme → morpheme, word → phrase, sentence at the very least is "true enough" for a visual aid, what is the direct analogy between syntax and semantics? In what sense is the Syntax–semantics interface expressed as one being contained by the other?

Also, I believe non-phonocentric approaches should be more represented if possible.

I think this sort of diagram is obviously appealing, but it needs another look. It is used on many important linguistics articles, so I think we seriously should consider redesigning or replacing it. Remsense诉 14:11, 25 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thanks for raising this point here. The bottom half of the diagram about the different parts of language has some issues but seems to do better than the top half of the diagram about the different fields of inquiry. For example, a sentence is made up of words but morphology is not generally considered a subdiscipline of syntax. Phlsph7 (talk) 14:26, 25 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I would very much support removing this diagram. It's misleading, to the extent that it makes any sense at all. Botterweg14 (talk) 15:15, 25 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I think some sort of visual aid like this is feasible, but it should be correct. Do you think there's any hope of such a presentation? Remsense诉 15:16, 25 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I can't think of how I would structure such a diagram. But the boundlessness of the human creative spirit always gives me hope :) Botterweg14 (talk) 15:28, 25 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Do you feel that the inner four rings are "true enough" in the sense I've described, or is any hierarchical nature a non-starter? Remsense诉 15:36, 25 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
The hierarchical structure lives within (some) of the subfields, not between them. Combining words gives you a phrase, but combining phones doesn't give you a phoneme. So I think the minimally misleading approach would be to represent it as a sound vs form vs meaning split, while lumping together phonetics/phonology and semantics/pragmatics. That would compromise on informativeness rather than truthfulness. Ranking the Maxim of Quality above the Maxim of Quantity, if you will. Botterweg14 (talk) 16:55, 25 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
A couple additional thoughts. To be less phonocentric, the diagram could say "sound/sign" or "externalization" rather than "sound", though it might be worth asking around further to see if there's a better term. Morphology could be lumped with syntax, though I would argue for leaving it out entirely since people generally split it into morphophonology/morphosyntax/morphosemantics these days, at least within theoretical linguistics. (Since you haven't mentioned psycholinguistics or sociolinguistics, I'm assuming you're thinking of a diagram with a relatively narrow scope.) Botterweg14 (talk) 17:10, 25 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Excellent guidance, thank you very much. I'll let this thread know if I come up with anything. Remsense诉 18:35, 25 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I also find the diagram problematic. You can certainly draw the hierarchy in a good old structuralist vibe up to syntax. But semantics doesn't fit into the scheme; staying in the naive picture, you can depart from morphology either to syntax or to semantics. Also the choice of pragmatics as "outer" ring is a bit arbitrary. You could just as well have discourse as the outer level. –Austronesier (talk) 18:59, 25 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I don't understand the last part of this comment- the "discourse" is, in a sense, the fundamental unit of analysis of pragmatics, and this is reflected in the diagram by the presence of the string "meaning in context of discourse" in the bottom half of the ring whose top half contains the string "pragmatics". Brusquedandelion (talk) 01:20, 26 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Personally I feel that while the way the diagram presents relations between the rings is problematic, for the reasons discussed already, the relations it expresses within a ring- that is, between the text in the top part of the ring and in the bottom part- is true and should be included in Wikipedia articles.
What if we converted this into a table, where the left column consists of linguistic disciplines, and the right consists of the fundamental unit of analysis in that discipline? For example, the discourse is the fundamental unit of pragmatics, as the morpheme is the fundamental unit of morphology. Brusquedandelion (talk) 01:33, 26 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I mean, any attempt at a diagram of linguistics and/or its units is going to be regarded as erroneous or inadequate somewhere by some linguist. It's not that great, but there can be no "perfect" diagram of linguistics. I suppose it's right that the combination of meaning-side as just "another" layer further out is a different metaphor or logic than "a morpheme is bigger than a phoneme" of the iner layers. Removing it is no big deal to a large extent, and it's probably mostly or only relevant in cases where different conceptualisations of linguistics is discussed. But I think it would be even better if such discussions also had alternate visualisations to the extent possible (which I suppose is in line with what Botterweg14 is proposing). In boring conclusion, different articles call for different visuals and one visual should not be overused, but I don't see how useful it is to discuss one visual's removal without discussing the removal 'from where'. Instead of replacing it, creating multiple alternatives would be great. Disclaimer: I used to have this picture as my desktop background in high school! //Replayful (talk | contribs) 17:53, 26 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Requested move at Talk:Vyaz (Cyrillic calligraphy)#Requested move 26 February 2024[edit]

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Vyaz (Cyrillic calligraphy)#Requested move 26 February 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Vanderwaalforces (talk) 11:43, 26 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Requested move at Talk:Dobrujan Tatar dialect#Requested move 14 February 2024[edit]

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Dobrujan Tatar dialect#Requested move 14 February 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. asilvering (talk) 19:47, 29 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

There is a conversation...[edit]

at Talk:Optimality Theory that may be of interest to this project. Primergrey (talk) 01:31, 1 March 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

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