Talk:Grebo languages

Where's the beef?

I had hoped to include material on phonology, syntax and lexicon here. But after wrestling with the ambiguities of classification, it became clear that I would have to either (a) limit the discussion to one flavor of Grebo (say, Seaside Grebo)—in which case a separate article would probably be appropriate, since there are so many differences between the various varieties—or (b) I would have to write an article on the comparative linguistics of the Grebo group, which is a much bigger task than I was prepared to undertake at this point. (Actually, it might take a book.) But perhaps something representative needs to be stuck in.

-- Ziusudra 01:58, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Ah, I know how difficult that can be sometimes. However, the big problem I have with this article at present is that it is based solely on the Ethnologue. It is more like a discussion of SIL's classification of these languages than a discussion of the Grebo language (group) itself. That is attaching far too much importance to the Ethnologue. It would be better to just cite some of the academic works on the language on the issue of classification, and to proceed giving typological characteristics. — mark ✎ 08:16, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

With respect, I would protest that it is a bit overstated to say that the article is "based solely on the Ethnologue", since I began by citing Greenberg's classification. But it is quite true that the bulk of the article treats SIL material, and with good reason. SIL is the officially designated Registration Authority for the ISO 639-3 Draft International Standard. Alas, anyone with less than expert knowledge on the situation would be inclined to accept the classification of the International Organization for Standardization at face value.

Perhaps I was being overly diplomatic in the way I brought out the inconsistencies and arbitrariness of their taxonomy. IMHO they have made a muddle of the classification through being so driven by their sociolinguistic engineering agenda. The construct of macrolanguage is particularly problematic.

If you wish to rename this article to "Grebo language classification", and write another Grebo language article that satisfies you more, I would have no objection. Which Grebo language will you write about?  :-)

--Ziusudra 17:35, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I definitely think this article as it is at present would be better off at Grebo language classification, or possibly Linguistic classification of Grebo. As your heading says, "where's the beef?". There simply isn't any linguistic information about Grebo here, and that's the primary business of language articles (though I agree with you that the classification is not unimportant too). — mark ✎ 20:52, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

A less drastic solution might be to organize the present article with Classification as a single subsection, then add sections on Typology, Syntax, Lexicon, Phonology, etc. Adding the "beef". But the question again arises,, if this is a "language article," about which "Grebo language" should it be? Do you propose to try to cover both Jabo and Grebo? Glio-Oubi?

--Ziusudra 22:54, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

I think I would approach it roughly like Dogon languages, where I note that "Dogon has traditionally been described as a single language; however, Hochstetler et. al. (2004) estimated that the Dogon language family consists actually of at least 17 highly internally divided languages".

The problem with the Ethnologue is that it is a secondary source, crunching information from certain primary sources into very brief and succinct profiles (with a lot of information loss). Therefore, I think it would be advisable to work directly from primary sources like Ingemann & Duitsman (1976). Additionally, ethnographic sources like MacEvoy 1977 ('Understanding ethnic realities among the Grebo and Kru peoples of West Africa', in Africa, 47, 1, 62-80) might be of help to clarify the sometimes rather nebulous nomenclature. — mark ✎ 19:40, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Government

Name any four branches of government of grebo state on the grain coast. 41.191.104.109 (talk) 01:07, 26 November 2021 (UTC)