Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Linguistics

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

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:

• Help:IPA/Amharic
• Help:IPA/Arabic
• Help:IPA/Egyptian Arabic
• Help:IPA/Lebanese Arabic
• Help:IPA/Armenian
• Help:IPA/Australian languages
• Help:IPA/Bulgarian (regarding the laterals and l-vocalization to [w])
• Help:IPA/Persian
• Help:IPA/Emilian-Romagnol
• Help:IPA/Franco-Provençal
• Help:IPA/Georgian
• Help:IPA/Alemannic German (possibly, regarding the open vowels (⟨ɑ⟩ can cover both back and central varieties, and ⟨æ⟩ both near-open and open front varieties), the velar/uvular fricatives and affricates (we can use ⟨x ɣ̊ kx⟩ throughout unless a categorical phonemic merger with /r/ is involved in any dialect) and the rhotics (⟨ʀ ʕ⟩ can both be replaced with ⟨ʁ⟩, unless there's a phonemic distinction between them in some dialects, which I highly doubt. Also, the fortis-lenis distinction must be transcribed in one way. Now, ⟨p t k f s ʃ x⟩ can stand for either fortes or lenes, which is ridiculous and not just unhelpful but harmful.)
• Help:IPA/Khmer
• Help:IPA/Ligurian
• Help:IPA/Manx
• Help:IPA/Neapolitan
• Help:IPA/Piedmontese
• Help:IPA/Quechua
• Help:IPA/Romansh
• Help:IPA/Shan and Tai Lue
• Help:IPA/Swahili
• Help:IPA/Tagalog (possible free variation disguised as "Regional and marginal consonants")
• Help:IPA/Telugu
• Help:IPA/Tibetan
• Help:IPA/Tigrinya
• Help:IPA/Ukrainian (regarding the superscript parentheses used for transcribing optional palatalization)
• Help:IPA/Yiddish

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

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)

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)

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)

Questions regarding ubiquitous six-ring diagram

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

Why not just phoneme? For a while, Stokoe tried to push chireme and then we would've needed a term that encompassed both, but it didn't stick, and sign language linguists pretty much just use phoneme now for both, and so could we. Mathglot (talk) 09:13, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

hm. I'm still pushing things around on paper for this, but I think including a general, agreeable, but common word like "externalization" would be a good thing for our crucial audience: people who have acquired an interest, but are still trying to get their bearings for what anything in linguistics is. Remsense诉 09:16, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Not entirely sure I follow. Are you saying, externalization is better for the learners, because phoneme will make their eyes glaze over? But we're okay with pragmatics and morphology? I think a bit o' jargon is tickety-boo in a jargony thingie like all of linguistics painted onto a Frisbee. Mathglot (talk) 09:31, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

I think jargon is necessary, and one of the most difficult things to do in technical writing (or graphing) is to introduce all of it in the right order. Remsense诉 09:47, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Phonetics is primarily concerned with phones, not phonemes. Nardog (talk) 09:32, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes, but the original sound/sign comment wasn't an exact matchup, as the analog of phone isn't a sign, but a parametric unit (handshape, location, movement, etc.) Mathglot (talk) 10:00, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

"Articulations" maybe? That seems to be used in sign language literature (like "phoneme"). Nardog (talk) 13:25, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

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)

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)

This discussion seems to have run stale, but I think there's some more thoughts to be thunk: I believe it's really useful for Wikipedia to have some sort of diagram for this "kind of thing" (showing the relationships between linguistic structure and fields of study). It's hard enough to illustrate most linguistics articles as-is, and this is a good sort of diagram in principle.

I suggest that we perhaps focus less on the fields of study and more on the structure; the image is called "Major levels of linguistic structure", after all. We could, uncontroversially I think, have some sort of hierarchical diagram (coencentric circles or a pyramid or something) in the order sounds, phonemes, morphemes, and phrases/sentences. Then, somewhere else in the image (think a thought cloud or something), a label for "meaning" (this could be split into "literal meaning" and "meaning in context"). If we do want to connect these linguistic units to their respective fields of study, I could see simple labels ("Phonetics", "Phonology",...) with lines/arrows drawn to the parts of language they study working nicely. I'd also like to note that in my introductory linguistics class, a visiting professor from Gallaudet had this image on a slide and critiqued it briefly, for many of the same reasons being brought up here - I'm glad we're workshopping it! AviationFreak💬 04:22, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

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

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)

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

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)

There is a conversation...

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

Template:Etymology section

There is a discussion about this template, which may be of interest to the project, and we would be interested in guaging your views about whether this template is still needed, and if so, how we can preserve the functionality while making it work better with the assessment process. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:45, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Small notation question

Angle brackets ⟨<>⟩ are conventional to denote the historical evolution of objects of study in linguistics, of course. However—for technical reasons, linters and other tools like to complain about "unpaired angle brackets", among other concerns, since they're heavily used in HTML and WP:Wikitext. Would it be explicitly acceptable to use an arrow ⟨→⟩ where one would normally use an angle bracket, or is this too much of a novelty? Remsense诉 07:26, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

In what context? And the brackets {{angle bracket}} produces aren't used in HTML (those are ASCII less-than and greater-than signs). Nardog (talk) 08:07, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

I knew I should've provided an example:

傳
OC *drjon > MC drjwen^H > mod. 'a record'

So, just using ⟨→⟩ in lieu of ⟨>⟩ there. Remsense诉 08:14, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Oh, those. Well I've seen → already used in that context (and I've probably replaced > with it). > is probably used out of laziness. → is more semantic anyway. Nardog (talk) 08:45, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. I just wanted to check before I make a habit of doing so as part of my hysterical checklist of style fixes. Remsense诉 08:48, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

WP:Articles for deletion/Gyat

This could use some input from experts. S0091 (talk) 17:06, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:TACL#Requested move 12 March 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:TACL#Requested move 12 March 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Brusquedandelion (talk) 01:05, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Linguistic anthropology vs Anthropological linguistics

I have started a discussion at Talk:Linguistic anthropology § Linguistic anthropology vs Anthropological linguistics that might be of interest to members of this WikiProject. The discussion concerns whether these two articles should be merged (although it is not—yet—a formal merger discussion as such), or if not, how to clean up the articles, which are problematic in a number of ways. Brusquedandelion (talk) 12:10, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Task force importance parameter for the WikiProject template

I have seen various talk pages that are part of this WikiProject have a parameter in their declaration of {{WikiProject Linguistics}} that looks like [name of task force]-importance, e.g. applied-importance, etymology-importance, etc. However I don't actually see documentation for such parameters on the template page, and it seems to throw a warning in the preview (e.g. Preview warning: Page using Template:WikiProject Linguistics with unexpected parameter "etymology-importance").

Why are these parameters seemingly used on so many pages? Are they really supported or not? Thanks in advance. Brusquedandelion (talk) 11:03, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Digital extinction of language

Your feedback at WT:WikiProject Languages#Digital extinction of language would be appreciated. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 20:12, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

Renaming Nonfinite verb

Please see the Nonfinite verb RfD discussion and comment accordingly re prospective next steps. Cheers. Kent Dominic·(talk) 23:46, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Phrases

Hello, I have noticed that phrases on Wikipedia often need work and are caught in limbo between WikiProjects. I am considering starting a Phases Wikiproject, but I want to make sure that it isn't within the scope of this WikiProject but often missed. Phrases aren't covered by this or other WikiProjects, right? I can do stuff! (talk) 03:25, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

For English phrases there's WikiProject English Language. It doesn't look very active, but I doubt a whole new WikiProject just for phrases can fare better. Nardog (talk) 03:36, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

Can you give examples of the sorts of phrases you are referring to? Brusquedandelion (talk) 04:39, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

RM needs definitions for "proper noun" and "loanword'

It's at Talk:Pied-Noir#Lowercase. Thanks Elinruby (talk) 20:04, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

Should Wikipedia use the term "imaginary language"?

Hello. I hope by bringing this topic to the attention of people with linguistic knowledge I am doing the right thing.

Currently the article List of languages in the Eurovision Song Contest – in my opinion at the very least a linguistics-adjacent topic – identifies three songs as having been sung in an "imaginary language". I think the articles on the individual songs do likewise, but I have not checked yet.

I may well be mistaken, but "imaginary language" does not sound like the proper term to me. I think the more accurate term would be (some sub-category of?) Conlang.

However, there are some popular press articles that use the "imaginary language" terminology. Should we follow what a non-specialist source says over the correct terminology? If so, when and when not?

I hope that you will be able to tell me whether I a wrong and thank you in advance for your help in hopefully clearing this up. 2001:A62:1514:6A02:4CE8:A2CC:ACB2:2E38 (talk) 17:09, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

"Imaginary languages" is generally a term used as a synonym for conlangs, though I don’t think this is applicable here. From what I can tell, the lyrics in the songs listed don’t hold any particular meaning or structure, (which means that they wouldn’t fit the definition of a conlang, or a language at all for that matter) so at best "gibberish" may be a better descriptor. See the article on the song Prisencolinensinainciusol.

In the case I’ve missed something and these songs do have the characteristics of a conlang, than "artlang" would be the best term to use. Slamforeman (talk) 17:51, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Content dispute over usage examples at talk:Franglais

I seem to have waded into a minefield by restoring six example sentences at Franglais. They were deleted last year and again after I restored them as "unsourced" and "original research". I don't think they're research at all, and don't require sources as simple examples of something that's just been defined and cited to reliable sources. But another editor is equally certain that they are, and do. What we need now is other editors to weigh in and give opinions as to whether usage examples need to be cited to anything, or constitute "original research". This seemed like a reasonable place to ask. P Aculeius (talk) 23:32, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Merging (linguistic) Monogenesis and Polygenesis

Hello. I think that Linguistic monogenesis and Linguistic polygenesis could be merged into the article I translated, like in [1] Spanish, [2] Catalan, [3] Galician and [4] Dutch. They're about similar topics and having an article about linguistic polygenesis would give it undue weight, because the mainstream scholars advocate for monogenesis (see [5], a paper defending linguistic polygenesis but starts with the line "Monogenesis of language is widely accepted..."). Is this a good idea? Pcg111 (talk) 08:23, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

One Standard German Axiom

Could someone interested in linguistics please look into Talk:One Standard German Axiom and give their opinion. --Rießler (talk) 05:45, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Discussion of Pronunciation of 'vaush'

There's a discussion regarding the IPA transcription of 'Vaush' here which may be of intrest to some of yous. A Socialist Trans Girl 07:50, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Sino-Xenic pronunciations#Requested move 14 May 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Sino-Xenic pronunciations#Requested move 14 May 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. ASUKITE 16:11, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Incorrect audio for IPA [e]

The audio for IPA [e] is a diphthong and in my opinion should be replaced as there is a superior recording freely available on Wikimedia Commons. Discussion here. Stockhausenfan (talk) 00:16, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

Help with draft

Please, could someone help to expand Draft:Linguistic monogenesis and polygenesis (for more context, see this)? Pcg111 (talk) 10:55, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

GA Nomination: Weise's law

Hi all. I recently nominated a page I created for GA status and forgot to mention it here in case anyone wanted to review. I invite anyone interested in historical linguistics in general and PIE in particular, as it deals with phonological change in PIE. Let me know what you think! ThaesOfereode (talk) 23:06, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Indo-European ablaut#Requested move 16 June 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Indo-European ablaut#Requested move 16 June 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Remsense诉 20:09, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

User:Eshaan011's uploads

He has been uploading sound files as illustrations for various exotic sounds. I ran across his recording at Voiceless alveolar tap and flap and I really don't think that what he is pronouncing there is a voiceless alveolar tap or flap (if you are wondering why, you can see my more specific comment on the talk page of that article). As I look through his other uploads (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File_talk:Voiceless_velar_nasal.wav, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Voiceless_velar_trill.wav, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Voiceless_alveolar_non-sibilant_affricate.wav, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Voiceless_palatal_nasal.ogg), I find many of them unconvincing, too (again, I've left comments on their discussion pages, in case someone is wondering what I don't like about them). I feel far from equipped to judge all of his uploads, as many of the sounds are rather obscure, but my impressions from the ones I can judge with some degree of certainty don't make me very confident about the ones I can't. It looks to me as if he simply overestimates his pronunciation skills - both his ability to control what his speech organs are doing and his ability to correctly categorise by ear the sounds that he ends up producing. This results essentially in misinformation. I am not sure by what procedure such a problem is supposed to be solved on Wikipedia - there is no way to apply the verifiability policy in such a case, so I suppose that it's just something to be solved through consensus. I am just leaving this note for you people who are more involved in the phonetics articles on Wikipedia and I hope you can work out how to react to such a situation. 62.73.69.121 (talk) 00:23, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm actually working on fixing a bunch of them at the moment. Eshaan011 (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 16:15, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Blowing in from Chicago#Requested move 25 June 2024

An editor has requested that Blowing in from Chicago be moved to Blowing In from Chicago, which may be of interest to this WikiProject. You are invited to participate in the move discussion. Graham (talk) 05:14, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

Example numbering and crossreferencing

I have started a new discussion at the Technical Village Pump about developing the functionality for cross-referenceable running example numbers. The idea being that Wikipedia could have a system sort of like sort of \ex, \label{}, and \ref{} in LaTeX. I know the absence of this feature has been an annoyance for editors in this topic area for quite some time, so I thought I would link the discussion here in case anybody wanted to chime in. Botterweg14 (talk) 18:21, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

RfC: Should we keep our non-standard use of single slashes to enclose diaphonemic transcriptions?

{{rfc|lang|style}}

Single slashes are widely used in Linguistics to indicate phonemes. Our transcription system for English (cf. Help:IPA/English, Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Pronunciation) does not use phonemes, but diaphonemes. Nonetheless, we are enclosing the transcriptions in single slashes (mainly through {{IPAc-en}}, e.g. /ˈwʊstər/). This non-standard use of single slashes confuses readers and editors alike and regularly leads to disputes, for instance the recent edit war in Richard D'Oyly Carte.

What could we do?

1. We could stop the non-standard use of the single slashes by using a different delimiter to enclose our diaphonemic transcriptions, preferrably a delimiter used outside of Wikipedia such as double slashes. A transcription might look as follows: //ˈwʊstər//.
2. We could keep the single slashes and change our transcription system to be phonemic, thus restoring the standard meaning of the single slashes.
3. We could do nothing and keep our non-standard use of the single slashes to enclose diaphonemes.

This request for comment is a follow-up to the recent bold replacement of the single slashes by the DOUBLE SOLIDUS OPERATOR ⫽. It was soon reverted after protest on Template talk:IPAc-en#What's with the double slashes? There had been a previous consensus on this page to use double slashes, cf. Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Pronunciation/Archive 11#Distinction between varieties of English. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 21:27, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

@J. 'mach' wust: Your statement is neither neutral nor brief. Your use of "standard" and "non-standard" is highly loaded, and you seem to have taken this opportunity to sneak in the option of making the diaphonemic key not diaphonemic. Though I don't discount the option of creating new keys for different varieties of English coexisting with the diaphonemic key, especially once automatic audio generation becomes available, making the diaphonemic key phonemic is such a tall order I don't even know how it could be done. Let's focus on the delimiters. Nardog (talk) 04:31, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

As you know, other editors have immediately questioned the diaphonemic transcription system upon seeing the double slashes. That is why I thought it must be mentioned. But since you don’t like it, I will reword. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 07:42, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

RfC: Should we keep delimiting diaphonemic transcriptions with single slashes?

Our transcription system for English (H:IPAE) uses single slashes (/…/) to delimit its diaphonemic transcriptions, even though single slashes are widely used in Linguistics to indicate that transcriptions are phonemic. Should we keep delimiting our diaphonemic transcriptions with single slashes, or should we choose a different delimiter to indicate that our transcriptions are not phonemic, but diaphonemic (e.g. double slashes //…//)? --mach 🙈🙉🙊 07:51, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

• I support the change to double slashes, but I'm afraid that this won't be much more than a cosmetic change. Sol505000 (talk) 08:59, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
• Weak support using double slashes. The opposition to the change highlights the mistaken perception that our English IPA is the same thing as phonemic transcriptions you see in dictionaries. Different delimiters would at least signal readers that it's a different type of representation. That they wouldn't know exactly what it means is irrelevant for me because, let's face it, most people don't even know the difference between [ ] and / /, but we make the distinction anyway because it's contextually important. Phoneme vs diaphoneme is also important, as the same notation can be sensible as a diaphonemic one but not as a phonemic one and vice versa. Nardog (talk) 09:46, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

• ⫽...⫽ would be technically correct, if we aspire to precision. It's unfamiliar to most people, though, and so may be problematic if we aspire to practical accessibility. (Though, as Nardog remarked /.../ is probably also unfamiliar to most of our readers.) I don't have an opinion either way (for now at least), because of the social dimension. But ideally we should use ⫽...⫽.

When I first saw it, I thought it was a template coding error. When I realized it was intentional, I wondered if it would create a lot of drama, then forgot about it.

BTW, Usonian dictionaries also use a diaphonemic system, though without the IPA. — kwami (talk) 10:46, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

• Support double slashes //…//. Sure, non-linguists will not know about these delimiters at all. But I imagine that virtually all persons with at least some training in linguistics will know about the convention that single slashes indicate a phonemic transcription. I believe this convention is so well-established that it can be called a standard, which means we are using the single slashes in a non-standard way. In my opinion, we should be careful to avoid non-standard symbols since they are confusing to readers and editors alike. Using double slashes would make the diaphonemic nature of our transcription system much more visible. While that might lead to increased discussion, we have chosen this diaphonemic transcription system, so we should be able to justify our choice even if (or when) it becomes more visible.

Technically, I believe that double slashes (two slashes, //tɛst//) would be the best choice. I do not know the reasons in favour of using U+2AFD ⫽ DOUBLE SOLIDUS OPERATOR instead (⫽tɛst⫽), whereas lacking font support is an important reason against. Regarding the other delimiters mentioned in Diaphoneme#Representation, exclamation marks or braces (!tɛst!, {tɛst}), I believe they are less suited because they have been used even less and because they resemble less the well-known single slashes. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 12:49, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it is standard. The IPA ''Handbook'' defines square brackets as "begin/end phonetic transcription" and the solidus as "begin/end phonemic transcription" (e.g. p. 175), though on p. 27 they say, "conventionally ... symbols for the phonemes of a language are placed within oblique lines: / /."

I suspect the reason for preferring U+2AFD is that it takes up much less space (depending on the font) and doesn't look like an HTML hack. — kwami (talk) 13:04, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

• Weak support: The double slashes are a quite technical usage in linguistics, however, they look close enough to single slashes by laypersons that I think the latter group will simply pay attention to the actual letters and the tooltip, with the slashes avoiding notice or comment by most. I think the larger problem, however, is: do we want to keep rehashing the same type of battles, like at the talk pages of Richard D'Oyly Carte or Melbourne? (See this archived talk from last year on this very topic.) A solution to this might be to make the tone of MOS:RHOTIC a bit more assertive, perhaps. Wolfdog (talk) 14:08, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

We might also make it more permissive, following the example of MOS:ENGVAR, which allows for moderate regional variation. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 14:56, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Can you expand on that a bit? I think the focus here is, on a page like Richard D'Oyly Carte or Melbourne, we already have a system that works quite well, Wikipedia-wide, to provide a singular pronunciation useful across most English dialects. Why would we undermine that by making the wording more permissive? (Perhaps an example or two could be helpful.) Wolfdog (talk) 16:14, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

The focus of this discussion should be on the delimiters. I don’t know whether our system works so well when we keep rehashing the same type of battles. I believe marking more overtly that our transcriptions are diaphonemic will help. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 20:51, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

One way to make the diaphonemic nature clearer is to use superscript letters like ⟨ʳ⟩, as discussed here. I said we would have to make sure it's not used before a vowel, but now that I think about it, that can be automated in Lua. Nardog (talk) 05:34, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

• My primary reason for weakly opposing the use of double solidus is its poor font support and being needlessly distracting in the lead of many articles.

But the idea that it would be somehow more correct or better aligned with some standard than single slashes just because the transcriptions are diaphonemic rather than phonemic seems mistaken in the first place. The distinction between [...] and /.../ is a convention well established. The distinction between /.../ and ⫽...⫽ is not. Using the latter without further explanation tells the reader nothing beyond that it's something different from the usual phonemic transcription. However, what is usual differs widely between readers as there is no single "standard" at all (and some dictionaries do use diaphonemic spelling, although usually not IPA). From the reader's point of view, lay or not, there is simply no need to distinguish diaphonemes from phonemes in the lead of an article that has nothing to do with phonetics or phonology. It wouldn't be wrong to use double slashes, but IMO, the single ones are just as appropriate in the first place.

The previous consensus seemed to operate under the impression that double slashes would, thanks to their unfamiliarity, discourage editors from assuming they know what they are doing before reading the MOS and help pages. I don't believe this would be the case. – MwGamera (talk) 20:47, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

I agree with you that U+2AFD ⫽ DOUBLE SOLIDUS OPERATOR would be a poor choice. That is why I would prefer double slashes //…//.

I disagree with your point of view that we there is no need to distinguish between diaphonemes and phonemes. Such a need arises regularly around the diaphoneme //r//, when editors insist that phonemic transcriptions in articles tied to non-rhotic varieties of English (e.g. Richard D'Oyly Carte or Melbourne) should not include the /r/. For these cases, it makes a real difference when we explicitly indicate that it’s something different from the usual phonemic transcription. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 21:18, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, Americans don't seem to care that we transcribe British vowel distinctions that they don't make. But //r// has been a chronic objection.

Merriam-Webster uses \back slashes\, or at least they used to. I don't know if that's an intentional distinction.

There's also the vertical pipe. I wouldn't want curly brackets; that's too much like set theory, and IMO appropriate when delimiting sets of phonemes that constitute archiphonemes, but not something like this.

MwGamera, the distinction between /.../ and something is well established. There's just variation on what that something should be. — kwami (talk) 22:32, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps my wording could be clearer regarding the need to distinguish it. There is nothing to distinguish the diaphonemic transcription from because no phonemic one is provided alongside it in these articles. Thus, only one kind of delimiter is needed, and a single slash is a valid choice for diaphonemic transcription. There is nothing wrong with our current practice.

Of course, editors need to be familiar with the conventions used, and this includes the fact we use diaphonemes. But double slashes aren't unambiguous in denoting that, and I wouldn't expect changing delimiter to make these discussions any shorter. – MwGamera (talk) 00:03, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

There is nothing to distinguish the diaphonemic transcription from: I believe there is. It is a distinction between the meaning we intend to communicate on the sender side (‘these are diaphonemes’) and the meaning a linguistically informed reader will understand on the receiver side (‘these are phonemes’). When a reader misunderstands the single slashes to mean ‘these are phonemes’, it is not their fault on the receiver side – ‘these are phonemes’ is the well-established meaning of single slashes. Instead, it is our fault on the sender side – we should have chosen a different delimiter that does not convey the meaning ‘these are phonemes’. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 12:16, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

• Support double slashes. It's technical indeed, but I think we should avoid using single-slashes in a nonstandard way. Double sharp (talk) 08:45, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose ⫽…⫽ (solidus) – No strong opinion on /…/ or //…// but some reservations and questions:
  • IPAc-EN is on 50,000 pages. There may be a gap between what some Project users think Wiki's English IPA usage is/should be, and how it's actually being used. (E.g. cases where use was intended as phonemic transcription, not diaphonemic). Samples of some articles' usage should be examined to check that, before we make large changes that may cause some (other) errors. I believe User:Nardog alluded to something similar (7 July), "I've replaced {{IPA|/.../}} in the [Template] Key section where they were unambiguously referring to diaphonemes rather than phonemes as far as I could find, but it can be ambiguous sometimes. (E.g. should it be "/A/ is merged with /B/ in accent X", "⫽A⫽ is merged with /B/ in accent X", or "⫽A⫽ is merged with ⫽B⫽ in accent X"?)"
  • It's a mistake to rush such widespread changes in response to edit wars or incivility on one or two articles.
  • User:Adumbrativus said (8 July), "Suddenly changing only this template [IPAc-EN] means that such pages now use a combination of / and ⫽, in a haphazard way which confusingly appears as if the use of the two notations is contrastive but is actually unintended."
  • Exactly how many Templates would be affected by this? Template:IPAc-en/Module:IPAc-en obviously, but which others?
  • ⫽…⫽ would have several drawbacks (U+2AFD ⫽ DOUBLE SOLIDUS OPERATOR) for the technical and aesthetic reasons given last week; it would also be preferable to use symbols that display universally. - Thanks, 1RightSider (talk) 23:59, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose changing to double slashes, mostly per mwgamera, but also I want to add that it is very unlikely that changing to double slashes will reduce conflict related to non-rhotic pronunciations, like at Richard D'Oyly Carte or Melbourne. It seems silly to me to imagine that a person who was going to complain about the /r/ will see that there are double slashes instead of single slashes and think "oh, of course, it's a diaphonemic transcription!". No, they will still object and the response will still have to be "Wikipedia uses a diaphonemic system, see Help:IPA/English" etc.

I also want to reiterate the comment by Adumbrativus, that some articles use a mix of various templates and non-templated transcriptions, and that changing only the template will introduce distinctions that were never intended. This is not as simple as changing a template; if the change is made, someone will have to go through every article that has (dia)phonemic transcriptions and manually fix any conflicts that arise. For example, Cot–caught merger includes the sentence: "The phonemes involved in the cot–caught merger, the low back vowels, are typically represented in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ɒ/ and /ɔ/, respectively (or, in North America, when co-occurring with the father–bother merger, as /ɑ/ and /ɔ/)." To be fully correct, I think you would need to replace only the first two uses with double slashes, but not the second two. (Note that the mixing of different slashes would probably be confusing to many readers.) This would be a lot of work and would involve some difficult judgement calls. --Un assiolo (talk) 01:23, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

No, /ɒ/ and /ɔ/ in those sentences are phonemes, not diaphonemes, as evident from the fact it says "The phonemes are" and /ɔ/ lacks a length mark. Nardog (talk) 02:47, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

The text must be wrong, then, because /ɒ/ is not a phoneme in most American English dialects. This just demonstrates the difficulty involved in introducing this distinction. --Un assiolo (talk) 23:20, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

@Un assiolo: [T]hey will still object and the response will still have to be "Wikipedia uses a diaphonemic system […]." I believe the benefit of using double slashes would be that they could no longer answer with a big “but Wikipedia explicitly indicates that the transcriptions are phonemic by enclosing them in single slashes.” --mach 🙈🙉🙊 13:55, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Transitioning to any convention is going to be a headache, but I'm starting to think more and more that double solidus is a good idea.

As for the examples when it's unclear how we would fix them, that shows that they're either inherently ambiguous or poorly written. Perhaps explicitly using diaphonemic delimiters will ferret out other badly thought out transcriptions in our articles. — kwami (talk) 14:09, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Do people currently answer with that? The distinction between phonemic and diaphonemic transcriptions is incredibly obscure. And a transcription with an /r/ could be interpreted as phonemic even for non-rhotic varieties as long as you assume there is an underlying /r/ that is not realized except in certain contexts. The proposal to make it a superscript or enclose it in parentheses makes this more explicit. --Un assiolo (talk) 17:26, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps we can do both. Nardog has recommended the superscript above (perhaps you've already seen). As for The text must be wrong, then, because /ɒ/ is not a phoneme in most American English dialects, the text is merely talking about the symbols and how they're commonly used to represent a certain phoneme (across a variety of dictionaries, for instance). Wolfdog (talk) 20:22, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

But they don't represent a phoneme, they represent a diaphoneme. Any system using /ɒ/ for General American is automatically diaphonemic. And if it's talking about symbols, then I guess technically they should be angle brackets (see International Phonetic Alphabet#Brackets and transcription delimiters). But that's getting off topic. I am really curious how people in favour of double slashes would handle this situation. Is anyone in favour of mixing double and single slashes? --Un assiolo (talk) 23:56, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Sure, if we mix phonemic and diaphonemic transcription, just as if we were to mix phonemic and morphophonemic transcription, which is a rather common occurrence. — kwami (talk) 00:48, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Regarding the Cot–caught merger page, I see no claim that there is a /ɒ/ phoneme in General American. What it says is that General American has /ɑ/ instead. The wording “in North America, when co-occurring with the father–bother merger,” is misleading. I have made a clarification about the phonemes involved in North America. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 13:42, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

• I don't have much more to add right now, but I agree with mwgamera's analysis and I am inclined to oppose. Adumbrativus (talk) 06:33, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

What should we call the study of writing systems?

(In a perfect world, I would post this on WikiProject Writing systems, but I'll just drop a redirect there instead.)

Here are the most important articles about writing, by my estimation: Writing, Literacy, Writing system, History of writing, Written language. Grapheme, Glyph.

While the existence of Writing system has likely kept others over the last 20 years from asking this question, I think we need to sort out a proper article for "the study of writing systems". There are presently two underdeveloped articles that seem to be coterminous in having this scope: Graphemics and Grammatology. From everything I've read, if we are to decide what name to use, these two plus Grapholinguistics are our viable options for an article title.  Disregarding site policy, "grapholinguistics" is my clear personal preference: it is a fairly new term—though there seems to be considerable recent work advocating and employing it, though much of it in German (Schriftlinguistik). Sadly for me and my cause, If we go purely by ngrams it doesn't even chart—again, this would seem to be biased against post-2019 work using "grapholinguistics", but it's still a tough case for me to make. Even so, I think I'd have to argue it'd be the best, most natural and recognizable for readers—"graphemics" may not reliably indicate a scope wide or narrow like "writing"; "grammatology" will make most think of grammar, and a smaller minority think mostly of Derrida. But I really just want a clear mandate one way or another. Remsense诉 08:58, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Is there any reason not to call the main page "Study of writing systems"? If the term is that nebulous and/or neither term dominates the literature, it seems reasonable to me that we would call the main page something extremely obvious and maybe distinguish the nuances of "grammatology" or "graphemics" either with their own sections, in a terminology section, or with an "also known as" splice in the lede, whichever is most appropriate. I don't really have any policy to cite (mostly out of ignorance), but this seems at least like an option to consider. It also seems like "graphology" is an option, looking at the Graphemics page. All in all, of the ones you've picked, I think "Graphemics" is likely the best candidate, given the possibility of confusion with grammar and Derrida. ThaesOfereode (talk) 14:17, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Study of writing systems

I pondered this too, but it just happens to be quite unlike most other article titles.

graphology

Unfortunately not: graphology is taken by a much narrower field, much to my consternation. Remsense诉 18:44, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Then I would probably just stick with Graphemics as the main one then. ThaesOfereode (talk) 21:57, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

"Study of writing systems" seems reasonable. We don't need to use a technical term; we generally do so because it dominates the literature. That doesn't seem to be the case here. I don't think we should be obscure when the only purpose is to use technical jargon for the sake of technical jargon.

Though, "study of writing systems" would presumably include paleography, which "graphemics" would not. — kwami (talk) 00:26, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

My primary reason for preferring "grapholinguistics" is because it seems more likely to scan to the average reader, given corresponding subfields almost always end in "linguistics", either as one word or otherwise. Remsense诉 00:38, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Would "grapholinguistics" include reconstructing an ancient language from its writing system? That wouldn't be covered by "graphemics", which is the study of the writing system itself. — kwami (talk) 01:00, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Neef defines it as the linguistic subdiscipline dealing with the scientific study of all aspects of written language. I think that broad definition makes sense—it doesn't bother me that there's overlap with palaeography; there's plenty of overlap between subfields linguistics and with adjacent disciplines. Remsense诉 01:09, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Isn’t this just at some level epigraphy and its adjacent disciplines like palaeography? I’d probably just use epigraphy here in casual conversation, but that’s obviously imprecise. I agree with @Kwami that it feels like a jargon neologism for the sake of a jargon neologism creates more confusion that it would resolve. Warrenᚋᚐᚊᚔ 11:46, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

No. Epigraphy is the study of inscriptions. Both it and palaeography are inherently historically-minded disciplines. This is the study of written language as a modality like speech and signing. Study of this kind has been published since the 80s, and I think categorization as jargon just seems ill-informed. Remsense诉 18:11, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

But at some point the study of writing systems, in a historical context, does become pretty exclusively the study of inscriptions. I did misunderstand a bit of what you were saying, but I thought you were actually grasping for a new term here, sorry. Warrenᚋᚐᚊᚔ 03:08, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

No problem! I hope I haven't been unclear in general: if anyone else has questions about what I'm talking about here, please let me know.

Also, it might help to peruse Meletis, Dimitrios; Dürscheid, Christa (2022). Writing Systems and Their Use: An Overview of Grapholinguistics. Trends in Linguistics. Vol. 369. De Gruyter Mouton. doi:10.1515/9783110757835. ISBN 978-3-110-75777-4—as well as the sources it cites to get a better grasp on what is being studied here and why I think this should likely be reflected onwiki. Remsense诉 19:34, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Halliday and Matthiessen (Halliday's introduction to functional linguistics, 2014) use the term graphology, opposing phonology, for both synchronic and diachronic studies of 'writing'. However, one can also say study of writing and study of sounding (like many researchers do when telling the non-initiated what they do). In my honest opinion, we should stop the practice of searchig for Greek-origin morphemes to name new field of science and start glossing more frequently traditional terminology as in 'he is a cardiologist, a heart specialist.' In the end, I find no reason for science to be communicated systematically by words that no one uses in their daily lives. – Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 12:59, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Not to seem overly partisan, but I've just picked up The Cambridge Handbook of Historical Orthography (2023): despite the title it seems to be a rather general reference work in this vein, and it 1) admits there is and presently cannot be a high degree of consistency among terminology used by its contributors, and 2) "grapholinguistics" nonetheless seems to pop up for the inclusive sense of "linguistic study of writing" in multiple chapters, more than "graphemics" does.

From its introduction:

“ In Chapter 6, Vuk-Tadija Barbarić provides a brief introduction to grapholinguistics, focusing mainly on its core subdisciplines: graphetics and graphematics (or graphemics). Historically, grapholinguistics can be perceived as a neglected subdiscipline of linguistics, though it also explores the topic of written language in its totality, which is not entirely linguistically oriented. The author specifies that its beginnings, as an organized movement, date back to Germany in the 1970s, but various instances of grapholinguistics emerged at different places (and in different languages). The field now has an established textbook, a special section in the online Dictionaries of Linguistics and Communication Science, and, as of quite recently, a proposal for a unifying general theory. This chapter is centered on graphetics and graphematics in order to expose the crucial linguistic dichotomy – that between form and function. ”

Remsense诉 08:07, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

Good work! With these examples of use, I think grapholinguistics is very reasonable (and they also show that there is something to write in the article). I had a look at the Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems (Coulmas 1999) some time ago, which doesn't contain grapholinguistics, but describe some of the other proposals in ways unfit for what we're talking about here. //Replayful (talk | contribs) 12:00, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

I likewise tentatively suggest that we generally work within what seems to be the nascent framework of this self-describedly emerging field. This would include adjusting the scope of Graphemics to reflect the "subfield" of grapholinguistics akin to phonology within the study of speech—i.e. the study of graphemes, with graphetics likewise reflecting the study of glyphs à la phonetics for phones. Remsense诉 16:50, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

Draft:Grapholinguistics

I still crave others' input (of course), but as I've continued to survey the recent literature I think the above plan (Grapholinguistics as the top-level field, with graphemics adjusted in scope as to be roughly analogous to the scope of phonology within the study of speech) is the best reflection of the field. I've started a draft article, and of course I invite people to contribute if they fancy. Remsense诉 12:46, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

If no one has outstanding objections, once I've finished a self-standing draft my plan is to

1. Make Grapholinguistics the top-level article, incorporating content from Graphemics and Grammatology
2. In line with Meletis & Dürscheid (2022), move Graphemics ⇒ Graphematics (i.e. as the subfield studying emic units, like graphemes, orthographic words, and punctuation)
3. Redirect Graphemics → Grapholinguistics
4. Redirect Grammatology → Grapholinguistics § Derrida and grammatology (or equivalent)

Remsense诉 04:22, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Pinging @Kwamikagami, @Warrenmck, @Daniel Couto Vale, and @ThaesOfereode as potential (welcome) objectors, as those who had concerns above while I was doing my research. Remsense诉 04:26, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

In English, the term for 'the study of writing systems' in functional linguistics is Graphology (grapho = writing system; logy = study) and it opposes Phonology. In German, we tend to place any subject of a field as a modifier of the field like "Schriftlinguistik", "Atomphysik", "Kernphysik", "Biochemie", but in English the common practice is to reserve this slot for types of research (applied vs basic linguistics), realisation (psycho- vs neuro- vs socio-linguistics) and stratal viewpoint (functional vs formal linguistics). Within linguistics, the endings 'logy' and 'tics' are preferred for the subjects. In German, we used to use an analogous suffix for that: namely, "-lehre" as in "Wortlehre", "Lautlehre", "Schriftlehre" and so on. In English, there is one single exception for that rule: "grammar" which is both the composition and the study of composition (a.k.a. "grammatics" if one wants to be pedantic). Therefore, generative grammar is the generative formal study of grammar and systemic functional grammar is the systemic functional study of grammar. So I'd recommend we stick with common practice in English and analogy to other terms that already exist in English instead of projecting German word composition onto English grammar. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 05:17, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

References

Manuscripts and presentations by Blench as sources

Having been poking around languages of Africa more recently, one phenomenon that sticks out to me is frequent reference to unpublished works by Roger Blench, maybe especially in various classification sections. For one example just now, Chadic languages refers to his 2006 ms. on Afroasiatic classification, and relatively prominently advanced (now edited down by me) a claim about Kujarge language possibly being Chadic based on nothing but one presentation of his. Has anyone else been paying attention to this phenomenon? I can start listing more examples if this does not ring a bell for others. Less common outside of Africa I think, but I've seen other examples too.

The issue is of course that none of these can be flat-out presumed to be WP:RS. Some of these even includes drafts that come with explicit requests for them to not be cited without permission! Is there some backstory here, where there has been discussion on which of them might be reliable, and/or where some editor has actually asked for permission to cite these? Or is all of this just a bad habit of citing easily web-accessible documents in lieu of looking up actual published works on the topic? He is a linguist with very diverse interests; WP:EXPERTSPS could apply at times but I think at most to some areas where he has done substantial work (languages of Nigeria maybe foremost) — on many other topics he has a habit of advancing audacious novel or minority views, which of course might lead to somewhere eventually, but already citing them prominently across Wikipedia sure seems like WP:UNDUE weight. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 11:44, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

@Tropylium: Yes, this phenomenon also has crossed my path in articles about languages of SE Asia and Oceania. I have trimmed and thrown out quite a lot of material based on citations of Blench's works per WPUNDUE. Unlike his work about languages of Africa, his unpublished (and also published) papers about let's say Austro-Tai, Enggano or Palauan have little impact in the field and are rarely cited (his Enggano paper is mostly cited – if ever – as the flop it is; see also my slightly caustic Wikivoice assessment in the second paragraph of Enggano language). I also tried to track where all these citations had come from and found out that much of it was the work of an editor who openly pushed for the uninhibited use of open-access material. Amateur linguists seem to have a faible for certain authors, next to Blench, late Sasha Vovin is also on the top list of language fan kids. Btw, said editor who dumped all the Blench stuff in Austronesian-related articles was blocked in 2019 for allegedly being involved in an undisclosed paid editing case. –Austronesier (talk) 16:50, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

Sourcing claims in technical linguistics articles

I'm seeking some guidance in working with more technical articles where secondary sources may not be readily available. On a topic like poverty of the stimulus, for instance, there just isn't much outside of research papers that discusses it. This creates problems for sourcing even pretty basic claims: for instance, that article states that Noam Chomsky coined the term "poverty of the stimulus" in 1980. It's definitely verifiable via a citation to Rules and Representations that Chomsky was using the term in 1980, but not that that was its first instance (i.e., "coining"). While I believe the article's claim to be true, I can't see a good way of sourcing it that doesn't run afoul of WP:SYNTH or WP:OR. I worry that in the course of trying to improve the PoS article or others like it, I will run into lots of other similar cases where the lack of significant secondary sourcing creates problems for verifying pretty basic claims (it's a shame that the news doesn't cover linguistics research!). How have other editors dealt with this in the past? Is there a good way of approaching this problem? AviationFreak💬 13:30, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

With any claim like this about history of science / scholarship, what you're dealing with here seems indeed like original research; but then even without secondary sources, also primary sources might be findable, that is say papers that assert "…poverty of the stimulus, as first introduced by Chomsky (19XX)…". Views like these should be attributed of course, especially if they're only in passing. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 13:42, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

I concur with this comment, but wanted to add that there are sources about the history of linguistics which can be useful in these kinds of moments. You could take a peek at work by Randy Allen Harris and Frederick Newmeyer to see if there are any useful citations there. Botterweg14 (talk) 14:04, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

The best secondary sources for these kinds of topics are handbook articles, scholarly encyclopedia articles, and their kin. For instance in the case you mention, Lidz and Lasnik have this article in the Oxford Handbook of Universal Grammar, the MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences has this, and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has this. When these kinds of sources are sparse, I have sometimes used advanced textbooks, though one has to be careful since even advanced textbooks may oversimplify or make pedagogical choices that could mislead out of context. Also worth noting that research articles can be secondary sources when they present a synthesis of earlier work (e.g. this) though these kinds of articles are likely to be more opinionated than the average handbook article. Botterweg14 (talk) 13:47, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

You're definitely pointing out a relevant problem (for instance, I don't think pro-drop was first coined in 1981 by Chomsky). Besides considering sources such as those nicely suggested by Botterweg14, it may be worth reconsidering making such historical statements, i.e. formulating with something else, such as "Chomsky defined the term as XYZ in his 1980 book this way", without claims of coinage or being the first. //Replayful (talk | contribs) 15:45, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

I agree with all three comments (by Tropylium, Botterweg14 and Replayful). As Replayful says, we should refrain from making a claim about someone being the first to use a term when there is no independent source for that claim. As Botterweg14 suggests, handbooks and similar kinds of secondary sources are the best sources to support such statements, but I also agree with Tropylium that even primary research articles still can serve as secondary sources for certain statements especially when they summarize earlier research. –Austronesier (talk) 17:21, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

WP:Articles for deletion/Semantics and Pragmatics

Thought I would give a heads up about this deletion discussion which might be relevant to members of this project. Botterweg14 (talk) 16:44, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

WP:Articles for deletion/Glossa Psycholinguistics

Thought I would give a heads up about this other deletion discussion which might also be relevant to members of this project. Botterweg14 (talk) 16:46, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Different importances for "Latin tense" and "Latin tense (semantics)"

In the Project Latin, there is an effort by me and @Kanjuzi to improve two articles on Latin tenses: namely, Latin tenses (high importance) and Latin tenses (semantics) (low importance). The former is a listing of all verb paradigms and verb periphrasis paradigms and their uses. It focuses on the paradigms whose names include a tense component (present, future, imperfect, perfect, pluperfect, future perfect) and it list the various uses of the paradigm: for instance, the indicative present paradigm can be used to represent future, present and past events. In contrast, the latter article is a description of how primary tenses (future, present, past) and relative tenses (posteriority, simultaneity, anteriority) are realised by verbs and verb periphrases. However, though very similar, these two articles are scored very differently for importance in the Project Linguistics (high importance vs low importance).

Why is this the case? Are formal descriptions of language more important than functional descriptions? Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 13:11, 7 August 2024 (UTC)