Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2012 November 10

November 10

Caegory:Abazins

• Delete Category:Abazins
• Nominator's rationale this category is in Category:Ethnic groups in Russia which makes sense for Abazins. Except all the biographical articles in the category are Ottoman people , already in the applicable category Category:Ottoman people of Abkhazian descent. The rest of the contents are already in workable categories. There is no reason to have a category for this specific ethnic group at this time. This is especially true because the contents of Category:Ethnic groups in Russia are supposed to be articles on ethnic groups, and categories or articles on ethnic groups. Categories should generally be in Category:Russian people by ethnic or national origin, except since none of the people in this category were Russian, they are all Ottomans, this can't go there. So the best course is to just delete it.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:41, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
• Delete. It looks like you're basically making a good argument for emptying the category, which would result in a C1 speedy deletion if we were't prohibited from emptying categories for this purpose without a CFD. I agree with your reasoning; none of these people belong here, so it should be deleted unless we can come up with some Russian Abazins. Nyttend (talk) 13:04, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
• Keep -- The straight forward reading of the main article makes it clear that this is an ethnic group with its own language and a diaspora through the Middle East. The complaint appears to be that the article all relate to a period before the they were overwhelmed by Russian imperialism. Their homeland is now de facto part of Russia (though Georgia may dispute that), so that a Russian ethnic category is appropriate. However, it might also be appropriate to categorise them as an an Category:Ethnic groups of the Ottoman Empire or perhaps Category:Ottoman ethnic groups, neiother of which seem yet to exist. Peterkingiron (talk) 10:20, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
• Comment except the bio articles are all about people living in the Ottoman Empire and better categorized already. We do not need categories for every possible ethnic group. Most of the contents of Category:Ethnic groups in Russia only have articles, not categories, and considering how many articles we have that really fit here, it seems this category is not needed.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:58, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Category:Greyhound racing in Great Britain and Category:Greyhound racing competitions in Great Britain

• Rename to United Kingdom per convention. See also the note at Talk:Greyhound racing in the United Kingdom. I cannot add the CfD notices since I am topic banned from categories. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 04:26, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

• Keep -- The talk page cited indicates that the sport is orgainised on a GB basis and an all-Ireland basis. Accordingly, the present form of the names is absolutely correct. WP should reflect the world as it is, not try to impose its own agenda on the world through its category scheme. If the British organisation only covers GB (ie UK less northern Ireland) rathen tha UK, we should have a GB category. Peterkingiron (talk) 10:25, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Category:Second language acquisition

• Propose renaming Category:Second language acquisition to Category:Second-language acquisition

Nominator's rationale: Rename. This category was renamed from Category:Second-language acquisition to Category:Second language acquisition as a result of this CfD discussion in August, but there was a bit of a miscommunication between the CfD discussion and the requested move that was going on at the same time. (This was not helped by the fact that it was a completely different set of editors who participated in each discussion.) The requested move was closed as "not moved", leaving the article at Second-language acquisition, but the category was moved to Category:Second language acquisition. So at the moment the category and the article title use different punctuation. After consulting with BrownHairedGirl about this I nominated this category for speedy renaming, but the nomination was contested. So I am starting a new discussion here to try and match the category name with the article title.

The argument for using a hyphen is that "second language" is a compound modifier of "acquisition", and that per MOS:HYPHEN #3 this should take a hyphen. The argument against using a hyphen is that the vast majority of the scholarly literature on the subject omits the hyphen. (Usage is split between using the hyphen-less "second language acquisition" and capitalising it as "Second Language Acquisition".) Myself, I am slightly inclined towards sticking with the Manual of Style and using the hyphen, but mostly I would just like the category name to match the article, whichever punctuation we use. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{(have a chat)} 02:34, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

• Rename per nom.John Pack Lambert (talk) 05:26, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
• Calm keep. There is indeed an orthographic principle by which "second-language acquisition", "leatherbound-book collection", "excess-precipitation records", etc, are so hyphenated. For the WP contributor who has at least a little metalinguistic awareness, it's an easy principle to apply. However, it seems to be going out of style. And it most certainly has gone out of style when referring to first and second language acquisition, as can easily be seen from a quick survey of book titles from CUP, OUP and publishers of similar status. -- Hoary (talk) 06:10, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
• Comment. I forgot to mention it earlier, but I've sent notifications to all the users who either joined in the discussion about this issue on Talk:Second-language acquisition or who participated in the previous CfD discussion. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{(have a chat)} 06:45, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
• no hyphen. I would repeat my previous argument that non-hyphenated Second Language Acquisition is the standard and has been for well over 50 years (it also meshes with First Language Acquisition). The field is represented by the acronym SLA which shows initial letters for three separate words; hyphenating 'second-language' would result in "SA". As Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia and the non-hyphenated version is the norm, then it seems only right that WP should go with the accepted version rather than attempting to innovate. Also, @Strad: "The argument for using a hyphen is that "second language" is a compound modifier of "acquisition", and that per MOS:HYPHEN #3 this should take a hyphen." If this is your reason for preferring the hyphen, then it's based on a false analysis of SLA. "Second language" is not a compound modifier of 'acquisition' (as in 'second language' acting adjectivally to modify 'acquisition'). It's the subject of a verbal noun with 'acquisition' being a noun that retains its verbal character, particularly in this case passive voice with second languages being what whomever would be 'acquiring'. It's the noun that refers to the activity (or rather study of the activity) of acquiring second(ary) language(s). 'Second language' is itself not a unit, but rather second is an adjective which in this context means non-native which contrasts with 'first', which in the overall field of language acquisition means native. This all means that MOS:HYPHEN doesn't apply to this case.Drew.ward (talk) 07:26, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

  It wasn't me that made the compound modifier argument - I was just presenting the main argument made on Talk:Second-language acquisition. (I think it was Tony1 who made it first.) Also, I want to point out that while sightings of the hyphen in the literature are rare, they do exist. See Research Methodology in Second-Language Acquisition by Tarone, Gass, and Cohen (1994), for example. It's not really a question of Wikipedia trying to innovate, but a question of which style we prefer. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{(have a chat)} 09:52, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

  Yes, you're right: there are indeed sightings of second hyphen language acquisition. But as you say, they're rare, and your example is almost two decades old. Indeed it's not a question of Wikipedia trying to innovate; it's instead one of choosing between a faded orthographic convention and the prevailing orthographic convention. And to see how the latter prevails, click on the link that Mike S gives a short distance below. -- Hoary (talk) 11:30, 10 November 2012 (UTC) amended 22:57, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

• Keep. The name of the field is "Second Language Acquisition." There's no hyphen in it, and wishing does not make it so. Just look at this Google image search. There are dozens of books here, and none of them has a hyphen. The article is incorrectly named, and the category is correctly named. So I suggest keeping it. (Full disclosure: I'm the son of a professor in the field, Larry Selinker.)--Mike Selinker (talk) 08:57, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

  Well well, small world. Just three metres from where I sit is a copy of G and S's Second Language Acquisition: An Introductory Course (3rd ed), to whose title Routledge refrained from adding a hyphen. It replaced my copy of the 2nd edition, to whose title Erlbaum refrained from adding a hyphen. I think that Erlbaum and Routledge knew what they were (not) doing. -- Hoary (talk) 11:30, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

  Just three meters from where I sit is that book too. I've been surrounded by this phrase my entire life, and it has never had a hyphen in any book I've seen on the subject.--Mike Selinker (talk) 17:36, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

• Definitely the hyphen, please. How on earth was it removed in August? The article has a hyphen. It's standard English to hyphenate such a compound item, and although many outside sources don't, we write for common folk here, not experts. Tony (talk) 10:52, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
• Keep it this way, please. It's the form that a great majority of reliable sources use, as shown by Mike S.. Drew.ward explains why WP:HYPHEN is misapplied here. --Enric Naval (talk) 12:47, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Also was John Pack Lambert said in the previous CfC "Rename you can have multiple second languages. That is because to aquire something as a third language is to have even less skill in it". Another argument for why WP:HYPHEN was misapplied when moving the article. ---Enric Naval (talk) 13:10, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

• Move. I don't care whether we have "second-language" or "second language", but the category should always follow the article. Content-based arguments and WP:HYPHEN arguments should be given at the article's talk page. The speedy rename should never have been contested. Nyttend (talk) 12:59, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

• The article's title is wrong and the move request failed because of people giving mistaken reasons, I don't see the wisdom in propagating the error. --Enric Naval (talk) 13:10, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

• "Wrong" and "Right" are irrelevant for this type of CFD. You're confusing the reader by making it harder to use category and article together; since you disagree with the article's current title, you should file an RM instead of making the system harder to use with a WP:TRUTH argument. Note that I'd say precisely the same thing if the category were Second-language and the article were Second language — I'm only here because of the procedural question. Nyttend (talk) 13:16, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

• Then you should re-read WP:BURO. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:07, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
• There's no point requesting a move for the page name article. It's been stoutly opposed before and it will no doubt be stoutly opposed again -- citing MoS. Presumably the only way to change it would be to change MoS. My own lifespan is too short and valuable to be used up in verbose arguments about proposed changes to WP:MOS, but if somebody else cares to attempt this I'll add a "me too". Meanwhile, "Second-language acquisition" will be so titled because MoS mandates it, and MoS mandates it because, I suppose, half-century-old style guides prescribe it. (Me, I'd have thought that the editorial decisions of CUP, OUP, Routledge, Erlbaum, Benjamins, etc would carry more weight.) -- Hoary (talk) 15:55, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

• Nyttend, did you just say "Wrong" and "Right" are irrelevant for this type of CFD.? So if something is demonstrably wrong in a category title, I can't suggest it be fixed on the basis of it being demonstrably wrong?--Mike Selinker (talk) 17:41, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

• Projectwide, our category names follow our article names. If something is demonstrably wrong in a category that's named for an article, the right thing to do is to try to have the article name changed, and the category should follow it. Note that I said "this type of CFD", since the nominator's rationale depends on synchronising category and article. If it were based on something different (e.g. too-small-in-scope, NPOV-violation, name format that doesn't go with other names in its tree), I'd not make that statement. Nyttend (talk) 06:35, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

• Support move to restore the recently removed hyphen. Yes, hyphenation is "going out of style" as a continual process as compounds become "permanent" and sufficiently familiar to readers, but as some guides point out, you can never go wrong including those optional hyphens when writing for a general audience who may be less familiar with either these idiomatic compounds, or the meaning that they intend to represent. The hyphen here is clarifying (a little bit), and serves the reader to let her know that it's about acquisition of a second language, as opposed to one's second time of doing language acquisition, subtle though that disctinction may be. Dicklyon (talk) 16:33, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

• Did you read the other comments? The hyphen clarifies nothing because it conveys the wrong meaning..... --Enric Naval (talk) 19:54, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

• Thank you Enric for reiterating this. Please see my comment above. WP:HYPHEN does not apply to this concept and any application of a hyphen would be an error in syntax. @Hoary, WP:MOS may spell out style regarding hyphenation, but it does so for instances when a hyphen is grammatically correct, syntactically valid, and semantically justified. Regarding Second Language Acquisition, in all three cases hyphenation fails to pass muster. Regardless of anyone's choice in style or beliefs on the topic of the article, attempts to apply a hyphen to this article are in error and thus should be reversed.Drew.ward (talk) 01:56, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

• No hyphen. The acquisition of a second language is also the second acquisition of a language. Being weary of long-hyphenated-phrase overuse in these modern times, I say, embrace every legitimate opportunity to not use a hyphen! —Tamfang (talk) 02:12, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
• No hyphen - My understanding, and reading of the arguments given, and questioning of the SLA teachers I work with concerning the parts of the grammatical arguments I didn't follow, is that having a hyphen is not correct in this phrase. Even if it were, not having a hyphen has clearly been demonstrated to not be incorrect. In which case, we should clearly follow the majority of reliable sources. I would also argue that a 'general reader' would be more likely not to expect a hyphen, because there is none in Second language --Qetuth (talk) 04:37, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

OK, now you're just being silly. No hyphen in second language as a noun phrase is perfectly consistent with hyphenating when it's used as a compound modifier. The general reader who doesn't expect a hyphen will certainly not be bothered to find one, indicating that these words are to be taken as a unit. Dicklyon (talk) 04:45, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm really not sure exactly what you're trying to say with your third sentence, other than that you apparently disagree with my final sentence (which was really just an aside to my main points before it). But I was thinking, at the time I wrote it, in terms of helping general users find the category (and article), not in terms of of clarification. Because I honestly don't feel the non-hyphenated form is ambiguous. --Qetuth (talk) 06:17, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

---

Why hyphenation is an error in this instance:

It seems like this overall discussion is going the way of previous ones over style choices and preferences in linguistic terminology. However, at the core is an insistence that hyphenating SLA is in line with WP:HYPHEN and WP:MOS and thus 'must' be done regardless of what the standard form is. As I've pointed out on the discussion and above, the application of a hyphen in this case is based on falsely identifying the syntactic components of the topic title and trying to assign it a structure in which acquisition is the head of a compound noun with second language acting adjectivally as a unit within that greater compound |_{_[_adj_[_noun_]_]_-adj-_}_>_noun_|. In actuality, the structure is acquisition as a verbal noun in the passive voice with language as its passive subject (active object); second could be viewed in two ways, either as an adjective modifying the subject language or as an adjective modifying language acquisition (the overall field of which this is a component genre). This would yield one of the following: |_{_[_adj_[_noun_]_]_noun_}_<_verbial_| or |_adj_{_[_[_noun_]_<_[_verbial_]_}_|.

The passive voice versions Second Language Acquisition and First Language Acquisition are tough to decipher because the use of first and second clouds the way it looks but if you substitute the meanings of 'first' and 'second' as native and non-native, it becomes clearer: Native Language Acquisition & Non-native Language Acquisition. When shifted to active voice you get: Native Acquisition of language & Non-native Acquisition of language. The more usual structure requires swapping out one non-finite mode, the verbial, for another more familiar, the infinitive, as the infinitive is functionally a verb while the verbial is functionally a noun, this also allows for modification with an adverb versus an adjective: 'Acquiring Language Natively' (or 'Natively Acquiring Language') & 'Acquiring Language Non-Natively' (or again, 'Non-natively Acquiring Language').

You see, once substitutions are made, there's no possible way 'first' or 'second' could be viably made to modify 'language' or for second language to modify acquisition. If these units are neither modifying nor acting as a single whole of a two-part unit, nothing about the syntax of FLA or SLA permits hyphenation. Thus, any use of a hyphenated form is itself an error on behalf of those who've chosen such form.

This is my main point, that this discussion shouldn't even be had because hyphenation is an error, not a stylistic choice.Drew.ward (talk) 05:24, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

• Yes, this exactly.--Mike Selinker (talk) 06:02, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
• Hate to say this, but.... although I think I can infer the meaning of "verbial" -- a word I've never seen in my life (and alas I lack a copy of Crystal's dictionary in which to look it up) -- and even the notion of a "passive" (or "active") NP, you lose me here. You seem to be implying the possibility of "acquiring language secondly", which sounds utterly bizarre. My own analysis of "second language acquisition" is that "second" is a dependent of (modifies) "language", and the resulting NP "second language" is a dependent of (modifies) "acquisition" (and thus the NP "SLA" contains a second NP, an entirely normal phenomenon in English). Thus "SLA" parallels "reflective clothing market", "lightweight tent blueprints", "rustproof cutlery sales", etc; none of which seems to call for a hyphen this century. (Meanwhile, "child language acquisition" has a rather different structure.) -- Hoary (talk) 13:53, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

• @Hoary: a verbial is a type of verbal noun. Verbials are one of the non-finite modes of verbs in English along with infinitives, gerunds, participles, etc. The various non-finite modes may perform functions otherwise assigned to non-verb parts of speech, but are internally still verbs regardless of whether they are acting as a noun or adjective or adverb or so on. This is different from a verb-derived noun which, while having its root in a verb semantically, is an actual noun as a part of speech, and no longer retains it's verb-like characteristics. Crystal's understanding of the English verb is lacking to say the least, so you probably won't find much on this in any of his books.Drew.ward (talk) 17:34, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
• Because verbials are verbs and not nouns, they retain many of the characteristics and capabilities of the finite modes including things like voice, aspect, perfection, modality, having a subject, object, etc. Thus, your concern / confusion over "the notion of a "passive" (or "active") NP" is irrelevant because the construction 'second language acquisition' is not a noun phrase; it is instead a self-contained verbal construction with its own internal syntax (just as with an infinitive or a gerund) but, as a verbial, that entire construction functions in whole, in a nominal role (as a noun). This is the very purpose of the non-finite modes: non-finite means unbound meaning that the non-finite modes allow a means by which verbs can appear within a sentence without actually being bound to the overall verbal syntax of the construction in which they appear (imagine non-finite modes acting like a forcefield around their verb that lets the verb be in a sentence without interacting with its other verb parts). In the case of this topic, the non-finite verbial second language acquisition is internally a verb but acts externally as a noun. Thus, while it would be used as a noun phrase (or part of a noun phrase), it is itself, NOT an NP.Drew.ward (talk) 17:34, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
• Thus @Hoary, your analysis above "My own analysis of "second language acquisition" is that "second" is a dependent of (modifies) "language", and the resulting NP "second language" is a dependent of (modifies) "acquisition" (and thus the NP "SLA" contains a second NP, an entirely normal phenomenon in English)." while in an actual NP would be perfectly valid, does not apply to this particular type of construction because you're assigning an NP syntax to a verb construction. I'm guessing this mistaken analysis is the root of the various arguments for hyphenation among supporters of such here and on the other related discussions.Drew.ward (talk) 17:34, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

• I wasn't suggesting that anyone follow Crystal, but in his linguistics dictionary (now large and in its sixth edition or thereabouts) he does make a brave attempt at explaining the terminology of a variety of other people. ¶ the construction 'second language acquisition' is not a noun phrase: Er, what? I can't claim to be well versed in all schools of grammatical analysis, but this analysis amazes me. Whose is it, and where can it be found? ¶ I'm unfamiliar with any analysis of "acquisition" as anything other than a noun (despite indeed being derived from a verb), and "second language acquisition" as either (A) a NP or (if one wants functional heads) (B) a DP with no overt determiner. ¶ (All of this reminds me yet again of why I generally avoid writing up grammar in WP: different people, otherwise calm and reasonable, quickly infer that each other's understanding is mistaken, bizarre, or worse.) -- Hoary (talk) 23:10, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

• As I said above, yes yours is a mistaken analysis, but it's a perfectly understandable one and certainly I mean no offence or anything derogatory in saying it's wrong. In fact, your analysis is probably the most common as without knowing what's actually going on, this does in fact look like a noun phrase. There are two verbials usually for most English verbs, one ending in -ing (originally -ung) and another that uses some sort Latinate suffix. The latter were generally adopted to cut down on confusion as by the middle Modern English period, the present participle, verbial, and at least one form of the infinitive, gerund, supine, absolutive, and instrumental had all merged into a common -ing endings. The problem today is that most people (and especially grammarians and linguists) assume that all -ing forms are either present participles or gerunds, and that all occurrences of to-verb are infinitives (and conversely that all infinitives are to-verb, and that all gerunds and present participles are -ing). This is the route of most incorrect analyses about English syntax or grammar. Anyway, google Alexander Bain. Any of his grammars (google books has all of them) will discuss verbials (over the 50 or so years he was publishing grammars, he alternately uses 'verbal', 'verbial', and 'verbal noun').Drew.ward (talk) 03:14, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

• There's even an article about an Alexander Bain in some online encyclopedia. I doubt that more than one Alexander Bain published grammars whose scans (at first glance, atrocious scans) are available from Google books. So although we are now in the 21st century, it would seem that you are citing mid 19th century works. Unlike piffle about grammar from incomprehensibly respected ignoramuses, understanding of grammar by linguists has not stood still. Can you name a substantial reference grammar of English, published in the last thirty years by a major university press or publisher of comparative standing, that treats "acquisition" as something other than a verb, and "second language acquisition" (however hyphenated) as something other than a noun phrase? -- Hoary (talk) 08:25, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

• I can't name a reference grammar published in the past 30 years that's worth the paper it's printed on. Every 'modern' (post-WWII) grammar of English I've run across is so pathetically incorrect that I doubt they'd even be able to separate infinitive from the to verb structure. Bain's works (actually printed as late as the 1920's) are well-respected and as far as I know, not in dispute. The age of the text would only be of concern if the content were based on understanding that modern linguistics has disproven. In the case of this topic, it is not. Also, these descriptions of the non-finite modes are not Bain's alone, but can be found in most grammars from the mid 1700's on. Any mention (and for that matter most understanding of how verbs work) disappears in the first of the new generation of 'modern' grammars that appear in the late 1940's and into the 1950's. They either lost awareness of this knowledge or chose to ignore it. Either way, second language acquisition is a verbial and while you might not find it described as such in one of your more recent grammars, you'll not find a single thing out there that can refute that it's a verbial either (or for that matter prove it's something else).Drew.ward (talk) 14:30, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

• Ah, I see, you reject serious reference grammars of English of the last sixty-plus years because they are "pathetically incorrect", and instead urge adherence to books written well over a century ago and out of print (other perhaps than very recently, as curios conveniently in the public domain) for almost a century. You thereby announce that you are in a tiny minority of linguists. Although "acquisition" is a noun and "second language acquisition" (with or without hyphen) a noun phrase, as adequately explained in (for example) the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (which incidentally presents its reasons for rejecting both "infinitives" and a distinction between "gerund" and "present participle"), you are of course welcome both to hold some fringe opposing view and to argue from this view in this project page. Just remember to keep your fringe view out of articles (other than those on Bain or the past history of grammatical analysis). -- Hoary (talk) 13:38, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

• Excuse me?!? You just cited Pullum and Huddleston who don't even seem to understand what gerunds, participles, and infinitives actually are, and who have put out a grammar book with their own creation of the gerund-participle and you call what I'm talking about "a fringe view"? Sorry, no. You just cited a fringe view and are disputing accepted attributes of not just English grammar but grammar in general that has a body of records to back it up going back nearly a thousand years. I don't understand what your issue is with this. You yourself said above that you don't have that much understanding of the topic, yet you seem intent on disputing the validity of these concepts just because many of the sources are not 'new'. Would you also dispute that our solar system is not heliocentric? Afterall, Copernicus did publish around 1700... (yes I' being a smartass, but to make a point, I assume to get what I'm saying). I have to say that your fringe theories assertion is a bit offensive, especially as (and you've looked it up already) you know this is not some idea I've created but something that is well written about. Just because someone is currently popular, currently published, or has declared themselves or been declared an expert does not make their opinions any more valid than the centuries of grammars that run counter to their views. I don't want this to degrade into a 'my grammar vs. yours' tit for tat, but would instead ask that you consider the following: there was a break in publishing of materials on English grammar of nearly 35 years coinciding with the two World Wars and the Great Depression (I'm guessing people worry less about grammar when they are busy not being shot or starving). Up to the 1910'-1920's, grammars of English were published with reasonable continuity with various revisions based on established grammars going back hundreds of years. After this break, when life got back to normal and companies needed to get their usual lines of business running again, the major publishing houses sought to put out new products and as there was a need, from the late 1940's through the late 1950's, they all introduced new, what they called 'modern' grammars. These were not modern due to new linguistic theories and research, but 'modern' in the same marketing way that merely facelifted pre-war automobiles were being marketed as 'modern' by car-makers; they needed to sell books and by calling the new ones 'modern', they encouraged customers to replace their older (obviously not 'modern' as they were generally 30+ years old) grammars with these bright, shiny, new ones. The content of these grammars was lacking to say the least, most likely not from an ill intent on behalf of the publishers, but rather because the teams who would have been putting together these grammars (they're reference grammars, so not so much 'written' as 'compiled') would themselves likely have never been properly exposed to the pre-war grammars. Thus, they approached their compiling of these new grammars not with the foreknowledge that is accounted for in Bain, but equipped only with their own intuition and the general grammar and usage guidance of their schooling (which during the time they'd be in school was lacking to say the least for obvious reasons). This is not to say that those post-war grammars are of poor quality, but instead that they are based on assessments of the language undertaken with a lack of awareness that should have been there. The pioneers of modern linguistics, many of whom like Chomsky were university students in the 1950's - 1960's, would have also had a similar exposure to grammar, much of them actually having only had exposure to these 'new' grammars. Thus, their linguistic analyses and frameworks are further based on this incomplete view of the language. The 'current' reference grammars you prefer (and especially Pullum's works and to a lesser extent Rodney Huddleston's) are based on grammars or grammatical analyses based not on the whole centuries old body of knowledge and understanding of English, but rather on only that that's been published since WWII. Perhaps it's unintentional, and perhaps it's academic snobbery to assume that because 'we' (modern linguists) think we 'know' something 'new' and because the field has made great strides in research, that those who have come before us must have 'obviously' gotten it 'wrong' (if we don't know it, or understand it, and we're experts, then it must obviously be incorrect...). I would simply ask that you consider the background and history of our understanding of English grammar and keep this in mind when encountering views that conflict with your own.Drew.ward (talk) 17:26, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

• Linguists may present their reasons for disagreement with a variety of classifications within CGEL, e.g. its rejection of the long-established distinction between gerunds and participles. The book's rejection is explained on pp.82-83. The explanation may not satisfy you, and it may not satisfy other linguists. You'll see it rationally discussed here, for example. Imaginably it is an entirely wrong view. However, it is not a fringe view, as it appears in a chapter primarily written by Rodney Huddleston, a mainstream linguist (and more particularly a descriptive grammarian of English) within a large, recent, and highly respected book edited by a group of respected linguists of a variety of backgrounds and theoretical affiliations and published by CUP. Certain other classifications by CGEL, e.g. its treatment of "the cabbage" as a NP and the pronoun as a species of noun, certainly are rejected by substantial numbers of linguists. But neither treating "the cabbage" as a NP nor treating it as a DP is "fringe": plenty of recent linguistics books from CUP, OUP and so forth can be found to support either the one view or the other. ¶ You say: Just because someone is currently popular, currently published, or has declared themselves or been declared an expert does not make their opinions any more valid than the centuries of grammars that run counter to their views. Correct. But just because centuries of grammars have said one thing is no reason why inquiring linguists should not question it and rationally reject it, and when these linguists are employed by universities and when their views (as published by CUP, OUP, Longman, De Gruyter Mouton, etc) have come to so dominate the field that no non-trivial percentage of current linguists can be found to support the centuries-held view, then the centuries-held view, however rational its past appeal, has become a fringe view. And there's nothing surprising about this: Contrary to much of the tosh that's written about language, real understanding of language progresses. In fits and starts and sometimes up wrong alleys, of course; but it generally progresses. ¶ Imaginably, a wrong alley could be a boulevard sufficiently capacious to take in the huge majority of linguists, of widely varying affiliations, for decades. Yes, imaginably your man Bain got it right, and for decades virtually all academic linguists have been wrong headed, so (for example) "acquisition" isn't a noun and is instead a species of verb. But WP can't accept this on the say-so of any one of its editors. ¶ Is "acquisition" a noun? Of course it is derived from a verb and of course it in some ways resembles a verb. "Theft" is not derived from a verb yet it is similar to "acquisition": both can take PP complements headed by "of" and "by". Still, I was mildly interested to see what Bain wrote, and therefore I looked into one of his books. Here is a legible scan of A Higher English Grammar (new ed., 1879). It's bristling with what are now oddities, but it clearly is not the work of a crank and instead looks like a solid work for its time. On p.22, Bain writes that Other Abstract Nouns are formed from Verbs; as 'occupation', 'relief', 'conference', 'choice', 'service'. Understandably for one writing in his day, his understanding of derivation seems to be diachronic. I'm no expert in the English of his era (or that of Bacon, whom he quotes) and do not propose to trawl though some corpus to see its relative frequencies of "confer" and "conference"; all I'd say is that for somebody acquiring English now, "conference" is most unlikely to be derived from "confer". More specifically, Bain writes that "conference" is a verbal abstract noun, which if I understand him correctly means an abstract noun derived from a verb and one that behaves similarly to conferring (which he would call either an "infinitive" or [again] a "verbal abstract noun"). ¶ Above, you say that "acquisition" is a "verbial" aka "verbal noun", and that this is "one of the non-finite modes of verbs". I'm not eager to look through Bain's work to see how a certain kind of "noun" is actually a certain kind of "verb", but a quick look at his treatment of the verb shows that no matter how sensible this treatment was for his day, it was even then terribly sketchy. (Consider his treatment of "auxiliary verbs": he defines them in such a way as to exclude the modals and "do", which in itself is not necessarily unreasonable; but he then seems not to cover the modals -- and perhaps not "do" either, though I didn't look.) ¶ As for your analysis of the recent intellectual (or anti-intellectual) and commercial histories of grammatical analysis, it looks to me like an unsourced conspiracy theory. Yes of course you'll find books arguing that, say, generative syntax and all its derivatives have amounted to a giant confidence trick. But where is the serious allegation that the fraud is so multifaceted as to encompass Jespersen, Quirk, Svartvik, Biber, Huddleston, etc, and force us to return to Bain? ¶ Then again, perhaps tradition is inherently worthy of respect. Perhaps (to look at another field) that uppity woman Florence Nightingale was impertinent to challenge it, and we should now belatedly reject her newfangled ideas and happily let people live amid excrement. -- Hoary (talk) 02:29, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

@Hoary: I do have to flatly disagree with your assertion that the general acceptance of a new view makes an older view 'fringe' and likewise (and I seem to remember this being one of Jimmy Wales' main tenets) that the place of employment, position

held, or published status of someone has no bearing on whether their views are valid. Regarding Huddleston and Pullum being published by CUP, I was just talking to one of the senior editors at CUP (whose department oversees CGEL) the other day about some of the holes in Pullum and Huddleston's theories and analyses presented in the book. He acknowledged these with no problem and said that they tend to take the works as they are right or wrong, and in no way do they base their editing or views in their other grammars or works on CGEL, but rather let Pullum and Hudleston's work stand on its own, and let their other authors' works stand on their own, and if they're in opposition, no problem. Along those lines, it's pretty obvious that CUP places no particular hierarchy on views or theories just because they publish them, so I see no reason why someone having been published by CUP should have any bearing on this. Regarding Bain, thanks for taking the time to read through some of it, most WP editors never bother to take the time to actually read things when disputing something. Bain certainly has some views that we wouldn't accept today, but they're not so much wrong as they are just worded in a way that doesn't work, or right but based on wrong information. This is understandable as so much of the understanding of many facets of language and linguistics were not available to him at the time. Regarding the speech of the time itself, it really wasn't much different from that of today. I think perhaps you've missed part of my point: I don't propose abandoning say Pullum and going back full force with someone like Bain. Rather, I am saying that there are things that are missing from Pullum's view of grammar likely because he's not aware of them, but that these things are quite well documented and irrefutably backed up in numerous other texts. In fact, when it comes to things like these verbal nouns, and Bain's view of the infintive, gerund, and participle versus Pullum's & Huddleston's, whereas the information listed in Bain's works may be foreign to you (and many), they work, fully; the same cannot be said for H&P's take on the same topic. Bain and H&P are not exclusive of each other, especially as relates to the topic at hand (what SLA is syntactically). H&P simply leave out any mention or awareness of what Bain does include. I've provided an explanation (and sourced it) that shows why 'second language acquisition' is a verbial in the passive voice with 'language' as the subject of 'acquisition' and 'second' as an adjective modifying the whole thing. Can you refute this analysis from your sources?Drew.ward (talk) 07:18, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

No, you have not explained why "second language acquisition" is "a verbial in the passive voice with 'language' as the subject of 'acquisition' and 'second' as an adjective modifying the whole thing" (whatever that might mean); and category labels aside you haven't even explained how "second language acquisition" is the second acquisition of language. Rather, you have asserted both, with the sketchiest of explanations, using terminology that seems odd at best, and an appeal to the works of a mostly forgotten part-time linguist who wrote well over a century ago, and (if I understand you correctly) a condemnation of the work of all grammarians since. ¶ Nobody at all knowledgable would dispute that NPs -- or what you oddly call "verbials" (a term that Crystal doesn't bother with in his ecumenical linguistics dictionary) -- have remarkable similarities to clauses. This is so for (i) NPs headed by nouns likely to be derived from verbs during a speaker's process of language acquisition, (ii) those headed by nouns historically derived from verbs, and (iii) those headed by nouns not derived from verbs. ¶ Of course CUP does not ally itself with the content of CGEL (whose primary author is Huddleston, not Pullum), and of course CUP publishes grammars that are smaller, conventional, or both. But to suggest that CUP regards CGEL as just another grammar is far-fetched: publication of such a book represents a large financial risk. ¶ I looked in a recent grammar that's as far from CGEL as I could find, R. M. W. Dixon's A Semantic Approach to English Grammar, 2nd ed (OUP, 2005). At the top of p.27, Dixon, a student of Michael Halliday and a linguist who has no time for anything Chomskyan, points out the relationship between "arrival" and "destruction" on the one hand and "arrive" and "destroy" on the other, and calls the former pair nouns. ¶ One obvious reason why there are omissions in CGEL is that the book is a mere eighteen hundred pages long; if a second edition had a larger editorial committee, considerably greater funding, and six thousand or so pages to play with, no doubt (for example) the subordinate imperative clauses of English (the subject of a long paper that I skimread today) would get more than the single, terse footnote that they now get. If on the other hand you find serious faults with CGEL's analyses, feel free to write these up and submit them to a relevant academic journal. When your reanalyses win wide acceptance, they'll merit coverage in Wikipedia. -- Hoary (talk) 14:55, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

You're full of crap in saying that I haven't explained this, but since you seem intent on ignoring what's been written and reiterated above:

"the structure is acquisition as a verbal noun in the passive voice with language as its passive subject (active object); second could be viewed in two ways, either as an adjective modifying the subject language or as an adjective modifying language acquisition (the overall field of which this is a component genre). This would yield one of the following: |_{_[_adj_[_noun_]_]_noun_}_<_verbial_| or |_adj_{_[_[_noun_]_<_[_verbial_]_}_|.

"The passive voice versions Second Language Acquisition and First Language Acquisition are tough to decipher because the use of first and second clouds the way it looks but if you substitute the meanings of 'first' and 'second' as native and non-native, it becomes clearer: Native Language Acquisition & Non-native Language Acquisition. When shifted to active voice you get: Native Acquisition of language & Non-native Acquisition of language. The more usual structure requires swapping out one non-finite mode, the verbial, for another more familiar, the infinitive, as the infinitive is functionally a verb while the verbial is functionally a noun, this also allows for modification with an adverb versus an adjective: 'Acquiring Language Natively' (or 'Natively Acquiring Language') & 'Acquiring Language Non-Natively' (or again, 'Non-natively Acquiring Language')."

"Once substitutions are made, there's no possible way 'first' or 'second' could be viably made to modify 'language' or for second language to modify acquisition. If these units are neither modifying nor acting as a single whole of a two-part unit, nothing about the syntax of FLA or SLA permits hyphenation. Thus, any use of a hyphenated form is itself an error on behalf of those who've chosen such form."

Now, maybe instead of spending a couple of days disparaging the works and worth of linguists I prefer whilst promoting the works and worth of those you prefer, and especially instead such juvenile tactics as questioning my own personal abilities or understanding ("Nobody at all knowledgable would dispute that NPs..." -- you), you could take the time to prove my analysis wrong (and thus invalidate all those "mostly forgotten part-time linguists"(-you) you seem to so disdain). You may also want to look up Benjamin Worf. He's considered one of the greatest linguists of all time but he was an insurance assessor who not only did linguistics in his (very part-time) spare time, but only set out to figure out language in order to make his insurance job easier. If my sources are so outdated and incorrect and yours are so obviously correct because they're newer, then you should have no problem disproving the validity of my analysis and proving the validity of your own alternative analysis. I've taken the time to explain mine and show what's going wrong every step of the way, and when you've questioned it, followed up with explanations, descriptions, and sources. Since you feel so entitled to deride my efforts and to judge my abilities and those of many other well-respected scholars, certainly you should be willing and able to do the same. Let's have it...Drew.ward (talk) 03:24, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Your repetition of a passage doesn't make it more convincing. I'd read it the first time around. ¶ Of course I have heard of Whorf (with an "h"); but I haven't heard him described as one of the greatest linguists of all time. His greatness aside, he is I think only the second linguist you've cited approvingly. ¶ If my sources are so outdated and incorrect and yours are so obviously correct because they're newer: the only one (I think) that you had previously cited is outdated; I have not claimed that mine are correct. ¶ Are there "many other well-respected scholars" active now who consider that "acquisition" is some kind of verb; if so, let's hear of one or two. -- Hoary (talk) 03:42, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Just as I thought, you can neither prove my analysis incorrect nor prove your analysis correct. Didn't think so.Drew.ward (talk) 04:49, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

You're missing my point, which is not one of (in)correctness. I can imagine that you are right and I (together with the linguists I've either cited or alluded to) am wrong. My ability or inability to show that your analysis is wrong is by the way (and a serious attempt to show that it was wrong would not only be inappropriate here but also almost certainly be pointless). My point was that your analysis seemed to be from the fringe. (I regret the pejorative connotations of this term; but its denotation is clear enough and it is routinely used in discussions about editing WP.) Apparently the analysis is backed up by a linguist of the 19th century, and you seem to be saying that it's backed up by Whorf as well. Maybe there's more, but I don't think you've specified it. Now, if you wish to argue from a fringe PoV in a CfD, fine; but I was surprised that Mike Selinker accepted the argument so quickly, and was (and remain) alarmed by the possibility that you'll alter language articles here (many of which are admittedly dreadful) to accord with this PoV. -- Hoary (talk) 06:02, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps the reason others are embracing this is because it's not a fringe point of view. It's a well-documented, well researched, well-accepted part of English grammar. It's covered by Bain who is a very well respected linguist and whose grammars are highly praised. Correct English & Contemporary Literary Review by Josephine Baker (1900) Syntax of -ing Forms in Legal English by Slavka Janigova (2008) An Advanced English Grammar by George Kittredge & Frank Farley (1913) The difficulties of English Grammar & Analysis simplified by W.J Dickenson (1878) A Guide to English Syntax by H.A. Davidson (1903) The Syntax of Technical English by Ulrike Miske (2008) Descriptive Adequacy of Early Modern English Grammars by Ute Dons (2004) Structural-Functional Studies in English Grammar by Hannaym Steene, & MacKenzie (2007) -- those all discuss this type of verbal noun.

The following all cite Bain's Higher English Grammar (even though it's old):

• Fries, Charles Carpenter. The structure of English: An introduction to the construction of English sentences. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1952.
• Wolfson, Nessa. CHP: The conversational historical present in American English narrative. Vol. 1. De Gruyter Mouton, 1982.
• Curzan, Anne. Gender shifts in the history of English. Cambridge University Press, 2003.
• Sakita, Tomoko I. Reporting discourse, tense, and cognition. Elsevier Science, 2002.
• Ross, Charles Hunter. The absolute participle in middle and modern English... The Modern Language Association of America, 1893.
• Dekeyser, Xavier. Number and case relations in 19th century British English: a comparative study of grammar and usage. De Nederlandsche Boekhandel, 1975.
• Smith, Nicholas, and Paul Rayson. "Recent change and variation in the British English use of the progressive passive." ICAME Journal 31 (2007): 129-159.
• Gruen, Ferdinand Bernard. English grammar in American high schools since 1900. Catholic university of America, 1934.
• Grzebieniowski, Tadeusz. Gramatyka opisowa języka angielskiego. Państwowe Wydawn. Naukowe, 1954.
• Kaunisto, Mark. Variation and Change in the Lexicon: A Corpus-based Analysis of Adjectives in English Ending in-ic and-ical. Vol. 63. Rodopi, 2007.
• Valeika, Laimutis, and Janina Buitkienė. "An Introductory Course in Theoretical English Grammar." Valeika, J. Buitkiene–Vilnus: Vilnus Pedagogical University (2003).
• Little, Greta D., and Michael Montgomery. Centennial usage studies. University of Alabama Press, 1994.
• Welte, Werner. Die englische Gebrauchsgrammatik. Vol. 1. Gunter Narr Verlag, 1985.
• LEITNER, GERHARD. "Eduard Adolf Maetzner (1805-1902)." Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science. Studies in the History of the Language Science 62 (1991): 233-255.
• Marvin, Suzanne, James E. Rush, and Carol Young. "GRAMMATlCAL CLASS ASSlGNMENT BASED ON FUNCTlON WORDS." The social impact of information retrieval: the information bazaar (1970): 71.
• Stuogys, Arūnas. "Principals of Formation of Negation and its Differences in Contemporary Romanic (French, Spanish, Italian) Languages." Coactivity: Philology, Educology/Santalka: Filologija, Edukologija 15.4 (2011): 61-67.
• MAETZNER, EDUARDADOLF. "1. The historical context of Maetzner's life and work." English Traditional Grammars: An International Perspective 62 (1991): 233.
• Knudsen, Laura G. The historical present tense in modern Hungarian narratives. Indiana University, 2001.

I got tired of typing, but considering all of these people also find Bain's Grammar a valid source for their research ranging from the 1890's to this past year, I think I can ask you...so who's dealing with fringe theories and unnoteworthy linguists? Maybe you should consider that rather than the grammatical analysis I've given being based on fringe theories, that maybe you and the linguists whose views you subscribe just aren't familiar with this aspect of English grammar.Drew.ward (talk) 07:11, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for the long lists. (Though you seem to have cast your net wide.) ¶ You talk of linguists who aren't familiar with this aspect of English grammar: "Grammar" of course has a variety of common meanings. I wouldn't be surprised if the linguists whose books I've read or used were unfamiliar with Bain or his books. If on the other hand you're suggesting that they're unfamiliar with strings (they'd say noun phrases) such as "second language acquisition", then no, they're not unfamiliar with them. ¶ You write some way above that "the construction 'second language acquisition' is not a noun phrase". Which recent analysis says that it is not? (NB the analysis does not have to be a novel one; instead, it might be a new expression of an older analysis.) -- Hoary (talk) 07:55, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

• (e.c.) Drew, I'm with Hoary on this later part of the thread, even though he and I are opting for opposite solutions to the original issue. But my more fundamental questions concerns my impression that you're embedded in formal grammars. Halliday's functional grammar is the only game in town, I say arrogantly. Hard to get into at first, but once you get it there's no turning back. As the rap song says, "The MOOD is the SUBject and the FINite TOO, ALL the other BITS are the RESiDUE." I never understood something fundamental about the way the English-speakers' brains think until I understood the clause-as-exchange thing. For example. Tony (talk) 08:29, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
• The 'Second-language acquisition' in 'Category:Second-language acquisition' / 'Second language acquisition' in 'Category:Second language acquisition' is a proper noun, because the page is a unique entity, so the category name should cannot be mutilated by adding or removing a hyphen but has to follow the proper noun. There was a recent proposal to change the proper noun and it failed. I don't care what these are called, so long as they're aligned. Stuartyeates (talk) 23:33, 22 November 2012 (UTC)