Talk:South Cushitic languages

Nurse & Ehret

Rationale for the recent edit:

• The extinct SC languages deduced by their influence on Bantu languages are not Taita Cushitic. That's just one example of several.
• The details of Taita Cushitic belong on the Taita Cushitic page, not here, per WP:CONTENTFORK.
• A language can be both extinct and divergent. The two have nothing to do with each other.
• Per at least some of our sources, Taita Cushitic was not Rift, but a branch of South Cushitic outside of Rift.

— kwami (talk) 08:10, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Taita

Stop deleting tags for clarification, as you keep doing at Taita language. I'm trying to work with you, but this is a blockable offense. If you don't know the answer, or don't feel like supplying it, then leave it for someone else to handle. — kwami (talk) 19:36, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Well, provide clarification is what I did ("Loanwords in the present-day Bantu languages, Dawida and Saghala, reveal the former presence of at least three separate and different South Cushitic languages"). The tag after "Dawida" is therefore unnecessary [1]. At any rate, are you perhaps unsure whether Nurse and Ehret mean the Taita language itself or a variety of it? It's indicated in the link that they mean a variety of Taita [2]. Regards, Middayexpress (talk) 19:50, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, but which variety? We list three varieties, none of them called "Dawida". You didn't provide clarification, you just duplicated a reference that was already there. — kwami (talk) 19:52, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

It's actually not a duplicate. I linked to a specific page on the Sommer work, where the allusion to Dawida is found. Anyway, Ehret also repeatedly indicates in his solo work that the loanwords are in Dawida and Saghala [3]. Given this, how do you think the phrase should be presented? Middayexpress (talk) 20:06, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

None of that answers the question as to what Dawida is. A reader of the article cannot tell what Dawida is. When you remove a tag asking for clarification of what Dawida is, you should replace it with an explanation of what Dawida is. — kwami (talk) 20:46, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

That was already indicated in the wiki-text ("the Dawida and Saghala varieties of Taita"). Again, I'm trying to understand what is your concern here so that we can resolve it. Middayexpress (talk) 21:18, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

And please stop creating content forks, as you are at South Cushitic languages. The details of a language belong in the language article, not in the family article. — kwami (talk) 20:01, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Content forks are separate pages, so I'm not sure what you're talking about there. The question is, why do you keep indicating that Taita Cushitic is more divergent than extant South Cushitic languages when Nurse and Ehret do not? Middayexpress (talk) 20:06, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, and we have separate pages here, the family and the language. The description of the family should be in the article on the family, and the description of the language should be in the article on the language. Per WEIGHT, with this much info here on Taita Cushitic, we should have several pages on Iraqw. That's not the purpose of a family article: This article should be about the South Cushitic language family, not a conflation of the various South Cushitic language articles.

I said it's the most divergent because we have several sources that it's the most divergent: that it's not in Rift, but part of "Greater Rift", which consists of Taita Cushitic and Rift. You supplied those references, so I'm following what you yourself provided. — kwami (talk) 20:46, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

There were two wiki-sentences on Taita Cushitic both before and after, so there actually isn't much difference in that regard. However, I see now what you mean by "more divergent than extant Rift languages". This is pretty vague, though, and could mean any number of things. We should instead be specific and indicate what Ehret and Nurse actually propose i.e. that TC is "co-ordinate with Proto-Rift within a Greater Rift branch of SC" [4]. Middayexpress (talk) 21:18, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

That works for me. — kwami (talk) 23:37, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

 Done Middayexpress (talk) 15:57, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Adjusted the wording. All of these deducted languages, not just Taita A & B, are inferred from loanwords in Bantu languages. There's nothing special about Taita, except perhaps that the evidence is better, and such details should be left to the language article per WEIGHT. (Otherwise we'd need to double the size of that section to account for all the other languages.) Also, we only know the name in Nurse '88, and we're citing Nurse '88, so we should say Nurse '88. — kwami (talk) 19:21, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

There is no doubling necessary since Ehret and Nurse only discuss Taita Cushitic A & B in their 1981 work "The Taita Cushites". They also do not indicate that the Taita Cushitic languages were replaced by Bantu languages, as was indicated in the wiki-text. This latter assertion seems to erroneously suggest that the Taita Bantus themselves switched from speaking Cushitic languages to Bantu languages, which Ehret and Nurse of course do not propose. They instead state that the Taita Cushitic languages are extinct because their original Cushitic speakers were gradually absorbed by the local Bantu population [5]. Additionally, it's Ehret and Nurse (1981) that suggests that TC is "co-ordinate with Proto-Rift within a Greater Rift branch of SC" [6]. Middayexpress (talk) 18:14, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

(1) I don't know what you mean by "doubling", since you're the one who's doubling refs. (2) That what "absorbed" means. There is no such implication. (3) No, that quotation is from Nurse (1988). — kwami (talk) 01:11, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

1) By "doubling" I was referring there to your assertion above that "otherwise we'd need to double the size of that section to account for all the other languages." I also didn't list any refs twice; rather, I used the same Bechhaus-Gerst link for two separate passages. 2) The wiki-phrase "several additional and now extinct South Cushitic languages are deduced from their influence on the Bantu languages that replaced them" could easily be misinterpreted as being an allusion to language replacement amongst Taita Bantus, which Ehret and Nurse certainly do not suggest. 3) The assertion is indeed from Nurse (1988); however, Nurse attributes its ultimate source in there to his earlier 1981 work with Ehret ("The phonological characteristics of the three sets appear to suggest the same single source, called (mis-called?) Taita Cushitic, co-ordinate with Proto-Rift within a Greater Rift branch of SC (Ehret and Nurse 1981:134-135)" [7]). Middayexpress (talk) 19:03, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

(2) No-one would read "replaced them" to mean "they replaced", so this is a non-issue. (3) But you're quoting Nurse 88. That's not the same thing. We have no idea if Ehret & Nurse 81 speak of "Greater Rift". — kwami (talk) 00:55, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

2) The "them" in "replaced them" is an allusion here to the "extinct South Cushitic languages". The phrase thus literally suggests that Bantu languages replaced South Cushitic languages, which Ehret and Nurse do not assert. They instead indicate that Bantu speakers replaced Cushitic speakers in the Taita Hills, and this population replacement of the Taita Cushites (not language replacement amongst the Taita Bantus) was accelerated by assimilation. 3) That passage is indeed from Nurse (1988); and in it, he explicitly attributes the assertion's origin to his own 1981 work with Ehret (including the exact page numbers). Nurse does the same for assertions originating in Ehret (1974) and his own '86 work. At any rate, I've attributed it to Nurse '88. Middayexpress (talk) 16:11, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

(2) Of course that's what it means. That's what they say: "the Cushitic languages were finally absorbed by the neighboring Bantu languages". (3) Yes, he does, but we're getting the wording from him, and we can't know if the same wording was used in the older ref w/o referring to it. — kwami (talk) 17:55, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

2) Those are George Sommer's words, not those of Ehret and Nurse. They indicate the following on the pre-Bantu settlement of the Taita Hills by Cushitic peoples [8]: "The sorts of word-borrowing that took place [between Southern Cushitic and the neighbouring Bantu languages and also a Ma'a-speaking community] reflect several long-term situations of extensive bilingualism or more probably multilingualism, and indicate that at least two of the Southern Cushitic societies at some point in time formed a significant, probably majority proportion of the Taita population, in all likelihood constituting the original pre-Bantu agricultural settlement of the hills." 3) I already substituted Ehret and Nurse '81 for Nurse '88. Middayexpress (talk) 17:29, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Who cares whose words they are? Ehret and Nurse clearly imply they were absorbed – they could hardly be clearer if they said "they were absorbed" – and in any case this article is not about Ehret & Nurse, but about South Cushitic. Reverting again. Knock off this obnoxious edit-war until we've worked out a reasonable compromise. — kwami (talk) 19:36, 17 May 2014 (UTC)