Talk:Metalanguage

Metalanguage

149.167.148.77 18:34, 21 November 2006 (UTC)Metalanguage recently survived vfd. See: Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Ah Liveto Domun, etc. -- Wile E. Heresiarch 16:31, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

'J'Bold textust noticed the link to Michael Reddy is about a football player. I am a little suspicious that the same person is also a linguist. 66.153.117.118 22:09, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Strange stuff

"Reddy estimates that fully 70% of the language we use to talk about the English language is based on this metaphor. While recognizing the prominence of this metaphor, Reddy is deeply troubled by it. He thinks of it as erroneous, misleading, and dehumanizing."

WTF?? There should be some type of reference for these bizarre facts. Crakkpot 10:46, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Also, "Like a maggot in a turd" -- really? Would "worm in an apple" work?72.64.76.67 (talk) 04:40, 27 November 2009 (UTC)Josh

Copyediting

I did a lot of copyediting on this article. With no insult intended, here are some tips to the original writer, whoever they might be:

• Don't capitalize something unless it's a proper name or is typically capitalized in other modern writing. In particular, capitalizing Important Concepts is not standard writing, and will lead to incorrect links to other articles. Deco 03:31, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)
• You must leave a blank line between paragraphs in wiki syntax, or else they will run together into a single paragraph.
• Omit needless words. If you can rearrange how you say something to say it in half as many words, do so — it saves the reader time and makes the writing more forceful.
• Spellcheckers are your friend.

I hope this helps, if you read it. I agree with most of the people on VfD who said this article describes a notable concept. Deco 03:31, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thank you, Deco. Unfortunately, there are still lots of errors. (Perhaps they've been introduced since your edits?) Actually, I find it ironic that an article on language uses such poor English. For example, let's look at the section "Embedded visual metalanguage." The second sentence has a subject-verb agreement error: "In its turn the various languages belongs to the metalanguage superstructure and are necessary only for image description." The fourth "sentence" isn't a sentence at all: "Feeling - a sensual image of individual aspects, processes, phenomena of the objective world." The next sentence is ungrammatical and makes little sense: "Due to the vigorous activity of the human mind the feeling images, coming into the human brain, undergo an active handling and transformed into images of perception, giving a prerequisite for granting the meanings of these images." It's hard for me to clean this up since I don't know what the author was trying to say. Could someone who knows this topic better than I do either fix the language or delete the portions of the article that don't make sense? 74.71.77.150 (talk) 00:35, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Bad link

in section called "Role in metaphor" Michael Reddy is said to have proven something in 1979 but the link given leads to a football player born in 1980. I am new to wikipedia and I dont know how to fix the problem myself.

Can this be cleared up and clarified perhaps with a glossary and more examples?

This seems to the layperson very hard to understand. Can someone please clarify with a re-working, plus some real life examples? thankyou. 149.167.148.77 18:34, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Merge "Metasyntax" stub into "Metalanguage" article?

Should the Metasyntax stub be mergerd into this article, or does that precise topic warrant an article of its own?

Stephan Leeds (talk) 13:13, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Adjectives as metalanguage

There needs to be a citation for the claim that adjectives and adverbs are an embedded metalanguage, since that is a precise theoretical claim. Does it really make sense to say the sentence "this is a red barn" is making a metatheoretic statement about a theory (maybe the theory is "this is a barn")? If so it seems like verbs are a metatheory on nouns as well and nothing can be said in logic or natural language without using a metatheory. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.241.137.116 (talk) 16:47, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Even if this comes form Hofstadter, it is a very dubious example. Terms like "English languagge", "polysyllablic", "prose", "pentameter" and so one are better examples. 1Z (talk) 21:54, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Adjective as metalanguage ⇒ "red" as metalanguage ?

The statement

Thus, the adjective “red” in the phrase “red barn” is part of the embedded metalanguage of English; the noun “barn” is part of the object language. In the phrase “slowly running,” the verb “running” is part of the object language; the “slowly” is part of the embedded metalanguage.

appears to be based on the author’s understanding of a view taken in his citation 3, where the relevant passage appears to be

When we use a language to talk about language, we may conveniently call it “metalanguage.” Such words as word, sentence, clause, preposition, adverb, adjective, pronoun, noun, and verb belong to metalanguage. Words such as object, actor, action, goal, event, relation, and attribute may be either language or metalanguage, depending upon whether they are used in speaking about ordinary aspects of experience or about grammatical features of discourse…

from page 56. The italics are the cited author’s own. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.45.20.146 (talk) 15:18, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm not an expert on linguistics but based on the definition given in the introduction, there doesn't seem to be any basis to the claim that adjectives are in a metalanguage describing the English language. I think, rather, that the correct understanding is that the specific word "adjective" as well as other words describing grammar and parts of speech are members of such a metalanguage. I am going to be bold and simply correct this in the main article. Joshua Davis (talk) 19:48, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was not moved. Angr (talk) 13:02, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

---

Metalanguage → Meta-language – This is a compound word. A hyphen also makes the title easier to read, as the current title when read quickly seems like "metal language". Lmatt (talk) 12:18, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Here are three reasons to prefer the current version:

• The word is used in print quite often without a hyphen (try a search on google books for "metalanguage"). I perceive "meta-language" as significantly in the minority, as someone who works in logic and sees the word very often.
• In general, compound words do not get hyphens except in special circumstances. This is described in our MOS [1]. This is a general trend in English style in which hyphens are now omitted unless needed, so most compound words are written without hyphens (so-calls "closed compounds").
• The Merriam-Webster online dictionary [2] and the Cambridge online dictionary [3] both include the word without the hyphen.

You could bring this up at WT:MOS to see what the people there think. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:35, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose – prefixes generally don't need hyphens; this word is no exception. Dicklyon (talk) 04:08, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Metalanguage and Meta-communication

I think that the two articles, Meta-communication (mostly concerning Bateson's work - a cybeneticist AND linguist) and this one, could be related better. In this article there is also no reference to the bringing of the term Metalanguage to prominence in 1933 by Alfred Tarski, nor to the work of Frits Staal on metalanguage in Indian languages. Together with the observation made on the article by the message box from Sep 2010, this all seems to me to suggest that the article needs a considerable overhaul. LookingGlass (talk) 15:47, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

is this article metametalanguage — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.94.71.166 (talk) 18:13, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Problem linking

Linking to "Role in computing" not working. It goes to "Role in metafore" or above "Meta theories".

metalanguages

is the problem link. Not going to Metalanguage#Role in computing.

Can an expert in wiki markup look at the problem. Added extra metaprogramming heading that also has same problem.

Metaprogramming also fits.

Note. Using android app. My computer is down.

Steamerandy (talk) 16:40, 12 December 2014 (UTC)Steamerandy (talk) 16:37, 12 December 2014 (UTC) Steamerandy (talk) 21:18, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Does anyone know the origin of the term metalanguage? The first use of meta as a prefix was metamathmatics in 1920.Steamerandy (talk) 21:14, 22 June 2016 (UTC)