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Linguistics Undertaking
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Note: I have been relatively inactive for a while, so this 'undertaking' is kind of on hold. (To Do List last updated 04/03/08)
I am currently undertaking a personal project to root through all the articles about various aspects of language, in order to clear up what I have come to see as a plague afflicting this whole class of articles: The word linguistics has at least two usages. One (as you'll see if you click on that link) refers to the scientific field of formal linguistics. The other refers more loosely to any sort of discipline relating to language (including, but not limited to: translation, style guides, prescriptivism, pedagogical grammars, etc).
This ambiguity is, I believe, responsible for much dubious and misleading article content, article categorization, redirects, and linking. I am attempting to clear up this whole issue by rewriting/re-organizing articles where necessary, writing short disambiguation sentences into introductory paragraphs, re-categorizing articles and changing redirects if necessary, and fixing misleading links. I will attempt to minimize impact on article content as much as possible.
If you have arrived here through an invitation that I left on the talk page of an article or on an edit summary, please give me your feedback/grievances/suggestions on my talk page. If you are interested in helping me, please contact me via my talk page. As of March 20th, 2006, I have only just begun this project, and as I make progress, I will post short summaries of any changes I make below under "Changes Made" (as well as on the talk pages of the affected articles), removing them from the "To Do List", so that you can:
- bitch at me informedly,
- undo everything I have done, with a convenient reference point, or
- help me proceed, with a convenient reference point
I will add to this list of planned actions as I have time to go looking for afflicted pages:
- In Linguistic prescription, try to add something about distinction between written and spoken language. I.e., academic linguistics is always descriptive about spoken language (the primary form of language), but no linguist would bat an eye over correcting a spelling mistake. For example, no linguist would prescribe /æsk/ over /æks/, but every linguist would correct the written 'aks' to 'ask'.
Rewrite Prescription and description article to eliminate ambiguous/conflicting uses of 'linguistics' within the article Now under Linguistic prescription, seems to be much better written than the last time I was there.Sort out Descriptive linguistics/Linguistic descriptivism confusion (perhaps simply add disambiguation sentences, still have to examine more closely) Nevermind: the articles appear to have been merged. In any case, one redirects to the other, and it seems that while I've been away, the article has much improved, no thanks to me.- Last June, someone created an Elliptical construction article, as I had intended to do, which sufficiently and clearly defines ellipsis from a linguistic perspective. I have nominated Ellipsis (figure of speech) for deletion.
See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ellipsis (figure of speech) for discussion. note: The articles were merged.
- Added mention of descriptive/prescriptive distiction to Syntax (to eliminate confusion over use of the word 'grammar')
- Changed 'a language' to 'language' on Prescription and description article
- Removed reference to "spelling errors" as example of prescriptive thinking on Prescription and description article (prescriptive/descriptive distinction does not apply to writing systems; see my talk page)
- Added sentence noting ambiguity on the linguist page
- Redirected linguistician to linguist (see Talk:Linguistician)
- Rewrote sentence on polyglot disambiguation page to say that linguist "technically" refers to one who studies linguistics, not a speech therapist or a grammarian.
Articles I have created
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