Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Linguistics/Archive 10

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Formatting of IPA keys

I recently made several changes to Help:IPA for Maltese, including a switch to the two-column format (one column for consonants and one for vowels) which is used in most IPA keys. 62.228.126.211 (talk · contribs) undid my format change, with the comment "(no tables for layout)". I redid the change, arguing that using tables is standard for IPA keys. 62.228.126.211 reverted, saying "doesn't matter if it's standard, it's still bad practice (and so is row headings). see wp:otherstuff, wp:accessibility". He also undid a similar change I had made to Help:IPA for Korean last month. I understand his reasoning, but I have a few questions:

1. How come he only changed the keys where I had changed the format, and not the countless others that use tables?
2. If it's bad practice, does that mean all the other IPA keys shouldn't do it?
3. Is there some other way to put the consonant and vowel tables side-by-side? It looks better that way.
4. Pardon my ignorance, but what are row headings and how are they relevant?

— pʰeːnuːmuː →‎ pʰiːnyːmyː → ‎ɸinimi → ‎fiɲimi 17:27, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't know the answer to any of these questions; I'm just a linguist and more interested in the content of pages like those than their presentation. Maybe the folks over at WP:WPACCESS could tell you how to make the pages more visually appealing for sighted users while not losing accessibility for blind users. Maybe they could also tell you what row headings are and why they're bad practice. WP:Village pump (technical) might be able to help too. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 11:15, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Solution

I consulted my brother, and he came up with the following solution:

<div style="width: 48%; display: inline-block; margin-right: auto;">

[insert consonant table]

</div>
<div style="float: right; width: 48%;">

[insert vowel table]

<br />

[insert next table, repeating as necessary]

</div>

This should solve accessibility problems and still look about the same. See Help:IPA for Japanese, the first page on which this format has been installed. pʰeːnuːmuː →‎ pʰiːnyːmyː → ‎ɸinimi → ‎fiɲimi 19:05, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

The above solution works for desktop browsers, but makes the page (almost) completely unusable for mobile devices.

I brought up this issue to the folks at the Village Pump, and they suggested using the {{div col}} template. I have an example of it in action on my sandbox.

There is one issue, in that the columns must be the same size (which might be awkward on pages like the IPA for Irish). Is that okay with everybody, or do you need a different solution? Quidmore (talk) 22:03, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Well, that'll work for most pages, but not for Irish, Russian, Ukrainian, and any others that have palatalized and unpalatalized consonants in separate columns. pʰeːnuːmuː →‎ pʰiːnyːmyː → ‎ɸinimi → ‎fiɲimi 03:42, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Universal Networking Language

Are there any plans to integrate UNL with Wikipedia articles? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Networking_Language — Preceding unsigned comment added by Greg.collver (talk • contribs) 21:51, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Notification of a TFA nomination

In the past, there have been requests that discussions about potentially controversial TFAs are brought to the attention of more than just those who have WP:TFAR on their watchlist. With that in mind: Fuck: Word Taboo and Protecting Our First Amendment Liberties has been nominated for an appearance as Today's Featured Article. If you have any views, please comment at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests. Thank you. — Cirt (talk) 22:16, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:IE etymology ref

Template:IE etymology ref has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 21:20, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

There is another template that is also quite obscure: {{proto}}, 5 mainspace transclusions. Are people here interested in using it, or should it also be nominated for deletion? --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 21:26, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

ISO_639_name_en-XX templates not populating categories

Template:ISO 639 name en-GB and Template:ISO 639 name en-US are not populating their categories the way they are supposed to and the way that Template:ISO 639 name de, etc., do. The categories are totally empty. Anyone know why and how to fix?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  11:41, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

The problem is that {{Lang}} assumes the variant is not English. For example, {{ISO 639 name en-GB}} calls {{Lang|en-GB|...}}, which is trying to populate Category:Articles containing British English-language text, which doesn't exist, so it places Category:Articles containing non-English-language text, instead. We will either need to move the category Category:Articles containing explicitly cited British English-language text to Category:Articles containing British English-language text or fix {{Lang}} to use "explicitly cited" in English sublanguages, as well. (It currently only does so for en or eng codes, so English dialect categories should not contain "explicitly cited" unless this is changed.) —PC-XT+ 04:58, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

To fix {{Lang}}, the #switch could possibly test the characters before "-", instead of the whole value. —PC-XT+ 05:07, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

I currently have an example implementation at User:PC-XT/sandbox/temp that appears to be working. —PC-XT+ 05:36, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for working on this. I believe the intent is that they all be at "explicitly cited" categories. The only legit uses for these templates are in words-as-words cases, e.g. comparing British and US phrases, spellings or names for things, in tables and glossaries and such. It would never be used to mark up a whole article, for example, as being in British (or whatever) English. I.e., millions of pages are "Articles containing Briths English-language text", but we don't mark them up as that and we don't care; we only care when BrEng text is being cited explicitly as such. Sorry if I'm belabo[u]ring the point; just trying to be clear, so that changes aren't made that needs to be re-done differently. PS: It's desirable that any case of {{lang|en-XX}} or {{lang-en-XX}} do this categorization. I'm don't think there are or would later predictably be others. The unpredictable part is what ENGVARs get such templates. There aren't any for en-IE or en-NZ, for example, but that could change in a hour or in 3 years, but it likely to happen eventually.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  06:36, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

PS: I played with your sandbox code, but wasn't able to get it to generate any categories; maybe I need a nap or some coffee. ;-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:45, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification! It's always good to document intention to keep everyone on the same goal. I don't consider that belabo[u]ring. ;) I don't really think that the categories should be renamed. I was mostly describing the problem, and would prefer fixing the template issue. {{Lang}} will only categorize mainspace pages. I used Show Preview to test it in articles. I just modified my sandbox version so testcases will work in userspace, instead, but that will need to be reverted if it is to be used in an EPR or something. (I think it's also generally bad form to leave article categories pointing to userspace very long, so I'll revert it myself, hopefully before too long.) If the ISO 639 name template doesn't exist, it currently inserts code, but that could be changed, as well. (We'd have to decide how to fail gracefully.) —PC-XT+ 00:50, 21 August 2014 (UTC) 00:58, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm reverting the testcases, so this will again only work in mainspace. The testcases can still be viewed at Special:PermanentLink/622131175, but it will no longer actually include the page in the categories shown. Feel free to revert and play with it, if you like. It will also work again in mainspace Show Preview tests, now. —PC-XT+ 03:53, 22 August 2014 (UTC) 03:57, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

suffix endings that signify part of speech

Rdbooker12 (talk) 03:58, 24 August 2014 (UTC) Roland Booker rdbooker12@outlook.com --

I visited the wiki to learn more about how English signifies part-of-speech in a sentence functionally and with

suffix flags. There isn't any information. Is this an oversight? I read the NOUN page closely, but could find only its shortcomings in this area. I thought about fixing the lack, but decided to confirm that there was not an effort to retire this information to the past. So I visited the other part-of-speech pages and noted that the lexical topics were (inadequately) covered, but functional topics were absent. I checked the suffix page and found that it was seriously deficient. I am only 62, so English can't have changed that much since I was taught to read in the 2nd-6th grades. Practically everything I learned then is lost to the past as regards source, but I have confirmed that the use of the words continues to be documented by various dictionary entries.

 For nouns, I remember the following noun-forming suffixes which may modify the stem word:
  lemon -ade,  mile -age, deny -al, American -an, contrive -ance, assist -ant, beg -ar, dull -ard, etc.
 For verbs, I remember verb-forming suffixes like person -ify, length -en, atom -ize, imperson -ate, etc.
 For adjectives: eat -able, person -al, sparta -an, resist -ant, etc.
 For adverbs: up -wards, cross -ways, clock -wise, happy -ly, etc.
 Then there are words like iron which can function as a noun, verb, adjective, or adverb.

All these usages are common in English, but the whole topic is completely absent from wiki. So should I add the missing information, or am I hopelessly out of date?

Suffixes also can be grouped by the language they came from. I've also found the coverage lacking. How many sources can we find? And how many kinds? Just textbooks? —PC-XT+ 06:58, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

The best sources I know of are Marchand (1960) and Bauer, Lieber & Plag (2013). But, is this really appropriate for an encyclopedia? It seems like it would fit better in a dictionary or grammar resource. It looks like wikitionary has separate entries for affixes (like this one) -- maybe that's where it should go? --Rmalouf (talk) 16:43, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

That makes sense. We could link there from part-of-speech articles, if the information would be helpful as an external aid. —PC-XT+ 18:34, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia course project in syntax: September to December 2014

I'm piloting a Wikipedia course project in syntax. It involves 3rd year undergraduate students majoring in linguistics; they'll be working on stubs selected from the WikiProject_Linguistics list. For more information about the course, as well as a list of the stubs that the students will be developing, go to [1]

I am a novice Wikipedian: the only Wikipedia editing that I've done has been in the context of setting up the Wikipedia course page for this project. I'd appreciate any & all help, encouragement, and advice. It would be great if more experienced Wikipedians (with an interest and expertise in Linguistics) could keep an eye on the progress of the student projects. (The course will run from September to December 2014.) RM Dechaine (talk) 02:32, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Sounds great to me. If you haven't already, I suggest checking in at the teahouse, which has volunteers who specifically specialize in easing the transition to Wikipedia. I don't have a ton of experience with this sort of thing, but I think the biggest hurdles that people are going to come across are 1.) style problems: an encyclopedia article is written very differently than a college paper, so you'll want to warn your students to read a few other articles and look through the manual of style if they want their edits to stand; 2.) Verifiability and Original research issues - there are a lot of articles with plenty of {{citation needed}} tags floating around out there, but I find that these days if you add unsourced material to a given article, you're likely to be reverted pretty quickly, I think there's been something of a change in attitude towards how to go about building the encyclopedia since the early days and "add first verify later" is no longer tolerated. Make sure that your students know that if they make a statement, there should be a reliable source that can attest to it.

One other piece of advice I'd give is to advise your students to make use of the talk pages and to at least familiarize yourself with the dispute resolution processes. Chances are if you're just expanding stubs with high quality, verifiable writing, there will be no disputes, but the process goes bold, revert, discuss, so if your students do get reverted, they should pop into the Talk page to get more detailed feedback. Good luck with the project! 0x0077BE [^talk/_contrib] 14:22, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Welcome! This project also sounds great to me. I second 0x0077BE's good advice. In addition, check out Wikipedia:Education program; this page is the portal for educators to get help from wikipedians in guiding their students in writing and expanding articles. --Mark viking (talk) 15:07, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Count me in. I will be happy to monitor their work, help them write in an appropriate style and with appropriate sourcing, and make sure that their articles fit with wikipedias goals and policies.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 03:52, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

My experience with undergraduate students trying to edit Wikipedia pages on syntax has not been positive. They tend to parot received wisdom and therefore have a flat writing style. There is a lack of overview of issues that are important for producing well-organized and thought-out content. The articles end up rambling. In any case, the consistent guidance and proofing of expert syntacticians is crucial for the success of such an effort.

Looking at the plan of content that is going to be addressed, there are crucial holes in the coverage. For instance, I see nothing in there about dependency-based systems. In fact the focus is limited to a rather narrow understanding of the syntax of natural languages. This suggests also that the content that will be added by the students is going to be overly narrow: that of constituency-based systems limited to the Chomskyan tradition. This should be a concern for those who want to see broader coverage with the inclusion of alternative views and approaches. --Tjo3ya (talk) 05:01, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

I don't know that it really matters if they expand only a very specific subset of the encyclopedia. Consider that if this course is successful, the only way to repeat it would be to find a bunch more stubs to expand. I think it's actually a smart strategy to choose a very narrow subset of a given subject and ask the students to expand articles within that scope, because presumably this will be most successful of RM Dechaine is overseeing the content, and I imagine it would be harder for him/her to intelligently comment on articles covered by a very broad scope rather than a narrow scope. In any case, I think as long as the students are adding good content, it's not for us to decide what they want to cover.

Regarding undergraduates' flat writing style, I have to say I agree, which is why I made it my first point in the response - undergraduate writing style is very different than encyclopedia entries. Still, I think there are strategies that will help here. For one thing, you can start editing the article in your sandbox, or create a sandbox in your userspace or in a namespace dedicated to this course. RM Dechaine can then take a look at the progress the students are making and give them pointers. This, again, would be a good use for the teahouse - ask a host there to take a look at a few of the sandboxed articles and give a critical assessment, that way, you can get a sense of which ones are going to be seen as non-encyclopedic and which ones aren't. The other thing you might want to do is not just dump all the content into the page all at once. Once you have a given section polished in the sandbox, add it to the article, one edit at a time. People tend to be a bit defensive against huge changes in content, and it's hard to have meaningful edit summaries if you expand the whole article in one go. If you update it as you go, you can address content and style disputes early and let it inform the future development of the article. And finally, I think that making sure that all the statements have good, inline citations, using the citation templates ({{cite}}) will go a long way and should help with the problem of "parroting received wisdom". If every statement you make is actually a distillation of something you read in a secondary source and possibly backed up with a primary source, then I find that a neutral, encyclopedic tone tends to emerge naturally.0x0077BE [^talk/_contrib] 14:47, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Many thanks for the encouragement and great ideas about how to make the project work better! I'll check out the Teahouse, as suggested. Regarding concerns about style and verifiability, we're trying to control for that by having students do mini-exercises before they tackle editing the stub that they're working on. If you look at the timeline on the course page [Wikipedia Education Progrm University of British Columbia Linguistics], you'll see there are five Milestones that guide students through the editing process. These Milestones are based on the guidelines provided by the Wikipedia Education project, which as Mark viking suggests, we are actively consulting with. In particular, Milestone 1 asks students to assess another Wikipedia article (using Wikipedia criteria), and contribute to the talk page of that article. And Milestone 2 asks students to prepare an annotated bibliography before they start contributing to their assigned Wikipedia article. We're hoping that this will go some way towards bringing students up to speed concerning Wikipedia protocols and conventions. The strategies that 0x0077BE suggests are very constructive — namely actively sandboxing, adding one section at a time to the article so as to permit timely discussion, emphasizing the importance of citation, becoming familiar with the dispute resolution process — and I'll emphasize these points to students during the workshops that we do with them. As for concerns about the quality of the writing, the students have lots of opportunities for revision. Also, as these are group projects, it's likely that, within each group, there will be group members with strong writing skills, and they will be able to function as models for the other students. (The student cohort is quite advanced: they're mostly 3rd and 4th year students.) Finally, it's true that the topics selected have a relatively narrow coverage (a concern voiced by one of the editors); this was done deliberately, as the course (Ling 300) within which the Wikipedia projects are embedded focuses on introducing students to the nuts and bolts of formal constituency-style analysis. So the projects that were selected from WikiProject_Linguistics were chosen on the basis of their fit with the course. But I do l agree that broader coverage is a goal to work towards; my hope is that Wikipedia course projects such at this one will become a regular activity (something that another editor mentions). If so, then over time, the issue of broad coverage will resolve itself.

RM Dechaine (talk) 17:31, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Here's the problem with the plan: the students are going to be inundating Wikipedia with one particular view of the syntax of natural langauge. Here's an example of what I mean:

B3 Equative: An "equative" construction involves two terms (x and y) that are in identity relation with each other such that 'x = y'. Syntactically, equatives involve the equation of DP or CP; this yields four logical possibilities: (i) 'DP1 = DP2' (e.g., Lucy is the president., What Lucy told Emily is the truth.); (ii) 'DP = CP' (e.g., The truth is that Lucy won the election.); (iii) 'CP = DP' (e.g., That Lucy won the election is the truth.; (iv) 'CP1 = CP2' (e.g., ??). In many languages, equatives involve special morphology (e.g., a special form of the copula), special syntax (e.g., different word oder restrictions), or special semantics (e.g., presuppositions).

This a description of the the "equative" concept taken from the project outline. The "equative" stub is one of the ones targeted for the project. The students are now going to produce an article that takes the DP-hypothesis for granted. The problem with doing that is that it shouldn't be taken for granted. Many theories of syntax do not assume DPs, they assume the traditional NPs instead. Here a second example of the problem:

A3 Locality: A key aspect of the study of sentence structure (syntax) is the recognition that elements that combine with each other depend on one another, and that this dependency is "local" in some way. A consequence of this view is that dependencies that involve elements that are apparently non-local — called "non-local dependencies" or "long-distance dependencies" — are in fact local. The apparent non-locality arises from the application of "movement transformations" that displace (i.e. "move") elements from one position to another in a sentence.

The students are now likely going to produce an article on locality that takes "movement" as the best way to address discontinuities and long distance dependencies. Monostratal theories of syntax do not acknowledge movement. Hence the students are probably going to produce an article on locality that ignores other approaches to long-distance dependencies. They are going to ignore the HPSG, LFG, CxG, etc. accounts.

Undergraduate students desire above all to get a good grade and in order to do this, they often do what they can to please their instructor. They will hence reproduce the instructors views on syntax as the best way of getting on his/her good side. This is not a criticism of undergraduates; it's very understandable; they are doing what is necessary to get ahead. It does not, however, portend good things for the content and coverage of the Wikipedia articles on syntax. --Tjo3ya (talk) 02:21, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

I think this problem can be mitigated if 1. students identify the sources they use and give in text attributions pointing out which theoretical framework they use, and 2. if they take Basic Linguistic Theory (as used by e.g. Dixon, Aikhenvald, Dryer, Haspelmath and most descriptive linguists and typologists) as the baseline for descriptions and analyses. Also for most syntax topics coverage is so sparse that any information at all is an improvement. Additional theoretical viewpoints can always be added later. Furthermore some syntactic theories are just much more widely used than others, and the most widespread ones do deserve more coverage. These more widespread theories would include particularly BLT and Chomsky's minimalist program. Maybe undergraduates are prone to using whatever theory their teacher favors, but other editors are just as prone to do that, just using whatever theory they tend to favor themselves (in fact i think an introductory undergraduate course is more likely to adopt a perspective from one of the more widespread theoretical frameworks, whereas specialist professional editors are more likely to make an idiosyncratic choice based on their own personal preference). What we don't want to do is discourage possible new editors in the area of syntax from contributing. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 03:03, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Here's the difference between the two scenarios just described: the individual editor who is devoting his or her time and energy to editing articles on syntax is an individual. He is not being paid; he is not getting a grade for his work, and above all, he is not tasking squads of undergraduates to propogate a particular view of the syntax of natural language, e.g. DPs. --Tjo3ya (talk) 03:31, 6 September 2014 (UTC) --Tjo3ya (talk) 03:34, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Students are individuals too, and being graded for one's work should lead to a higher quality of contributions as far as I can see. I don't know why you would be assuming that a teacher of an intro course to syntax would be using undergraduates as tools to "propogate a particular view of the syntax of natural language". I think that is a very clear assumption of bad faith, and an unwarranted one at that. I would assume that a teacher of an introductory course on syntax would teach their students the basics of one or more of the most common and widely accepted syntactic theories, and to think and argue about syntactic phenomena and to find and summarize sources that describe syntactic arguments. And that would be a highly welcome contribution in my opinion.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 03:49, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

If the ideal situation you describe comes to pass, it will be because awareness of the issue I am now concerned about is high. To state the point in terms of the example I have now mentioned twice, perhaps the instructors for the course will now teach the students that most work in many other frameworks outside of GB/MP continues to assume the traditional NP analysis of noun phrases (e.g. HPSG, CxG, most DGs, school grammars, Reed-Kellogg diagramming, most computational models for parsing). I did not get the sense that this is going to happen, however, not from the descriptions provided in the course outline. In fact it looks to me like the course in narrowly focused in the GB/MP tradition. That tradition of course deserves a prominent position in Wikipedia, but it should not be allowed to crowd out other, quite well-etablished views and approaches.

I can state, however, that I agree with your point about descriptivist sources. If the students rely heavily on the descriptivist/typological grammars you mention, that will a good thing. --Tjo3ya (talk) 05:13, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Spelling prescription

How to name in English a kind of spelling prescription: a book containing a list of words in their prescribed spellings but without meanings (except when words may be confused)? In many languages, it is called a "spelling/orthographic dictionary/vocabulary": German 'Rechtschreibwörterbuch', Russian 'орфографический словарь', Catalan 'diccionari ortogràfic', Romanian 'dicționar ortografic', Portuguese 'vocabulário ortográfico', and so on. But Dutch 'woordenlijst', Afrikaans 'woordelys', and Swedish 'ordlista' mean just 'word list'. Currently Wikipedia is inconsistent. The article Duden uses the terms 'orthographical dictionary' and 'spelling dictionary', Retskrivningsordbogen is given as an 'orthographic dictionary', Svenska Akademiens ordlista is defined as a 'glossary' (but is it right?), and the Word list of the Dutch language is stated as just "a list of words in the correct official spelling of the Dutch language", and the article states that "it differs from a dictionary in that it does not give the meanings of the words". Burzuchius (talk) 15:02, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Lithuanian IPA key: example words needed

I have just created Help:IPA for Lithuanian, because it seemed like a major gap in Wikipedia's IPA keys. As I have no knowledge of the language other than what I've read online, I would appreciate it if someone would add Lithuanian example words to the chart. _{(suoı̣ʇnqı̣ɹʇuoɔ · ʞlɐʇ)} nɯnuı̣ɥԀ 19:16, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

Looks like a good job. Peter238 (talk) 22:02, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Cover Language

Dear linguistics experts: This old AfC submission seems a little cryptic. Is this a notable topic? —Anne Delong (talk) 21:40, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

This topic is more concerned with computer science than linguistics. "cover language" automata gets 42 hits in GScholar and the synonym "cover automata" gets 142 hits; it looks like there are sufficient sources out there that notability is plausible. On the other hand, "cover automata" are already described in Induction of regular languages#Cover automata. On the gripping hand, the article itself seems fine as a stub and in my opinion, should not have been rejected. I think it could go into mainspace and survive. --Mark viking (talk) 23:20, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

Mark viking, it seems that the article has already been deleted, just because no one had edited for so long. (I can't keep up with the pace of these abandoned drafts) However, it can be refunded and moved to mainspace. Alternatively, it can be refunded, moved to mainspace, and redirected to Induction of regular languages#Cover automata. Should I do one one of these? —Anne Delong (talk) 16:21, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, sorry about my indecision here. Refund and redirect would be OK, or I could just create a redirect ab initio from Cover Language to Induction of regular languages#Cover automata. Thanks, --Mark viking (talk) 18:03, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Okay, it's at Cover language now as a redirect. Anyone who wants to make an article out of it can find the starter draft in its history and continue from there. Thanks, Mark viking, for taking the time to check it out. —Anne Delong (talk) 05:12, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Anne! --Mark viking (talk) 07:28, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal

Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Category:Lists_of_placename_etymologies

(originally posted at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2014 October 5) This is probably the wrong place to post this, but I posted it at the category and it errored me here, so if anyone knows where this really goes, please help me out. As was done with x-y relations international articles and multiple other categories, this Category:Lists_of_placename_etymologies category's article names need standardized. I am not partial to one style over any other, but I do believe they should all start with List of... I have cleaned up excessively wordy and clunky names already. Possible models include List of x-ian placenames; List of x+local administrative division etymologies, etc. but I would stay away from the clunkier Origins of x -there is a word for that, and we should use it. In addition, I do not know which is preferred, "place name" and "placename" (no hyphen or space) seem to be used interchangeably, but we should choose one and stick to it. "Toponym" could be used in its stead but that may be too jargony for many readers. Anyway, I invite debate, and hope to see this cleaned up. --Kintetsubuffalo (talk) 03:48, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

I've made some corrections to the way this CFD nomination was formatted. Note: I recommend in future that you use WP:Twinkle for doing any CFD nominations or copy the format of an existing nomination. I think "I have cleaned up ... already" probably refers to these edits[2]. DexDor (talk) 04:41, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose. It's not clear what exactly you want changed about this category or even whether you want the category changed or its contents changed. DexDor (talk) 04:49, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

As I said very clearly, the category's article names need standardized. If this is the wrong place, as I asked, tell me where it should go.--Kintetsubuffalo (talk) 05:36, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Have you thought about asking Wikipedia:WikiProject Linguistics/Etymology ? If you don't propose to change this category itself then please withdraw this CFD (e.g. by striking out the nomination). DexDor (talk) 06:01, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

This is definitely the wrong place to discuss that, sorry. But if you feel that List of... should be the right format (which sounds very reasonable), you can just make the changes yourself. Marcocapelle (talk) 07:25, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Okay, then per WP:BOLD, I will! :)--Kintetsubuffalo (talk) 09:49, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Nomina im Indogermanischen Lexikon for DYK

See Template:Did you know nominations/Nomina im Indogermanischen Lexikon. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 11:38, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

I reviewed this hook, and I think it looks good, but I left comments there that I think need to be addressed in the article itself. 0x0077BE [^talk/_contrib] 15:14, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Language Deprivation wiki page is incomplete and misleading in its current form.

The page lists 5 known cases of language deprivation in HEARING children in the last 200 years. The situation is actually far more common than the page implies.

As Dr. Sanjay Gulathi says in his lecture below, he sees 5 cases a DAY in his practice because he works with deaf children. I agree language deprivation is a form of child abuse, unfortunately it is all too common in the deaf community. I believe this page should at least provide a link to deafness topics, at a minimum, since as it is written it currently seems misleading.

He is not a linguist but this following Youtube lecture will provide some key references and a better understanding of the subject and its implications for theory of mind, literacy and other issues. Thank you.

<iframe width="640" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/8yy_K6VtHJw?feature=player_detailpage" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I have met many people with varying levels of language deprivation within the deaf community. This man says nothing I did not already know, but at last the scientific research is finally catching up with what has been known by the deaf community. It's time Wikipedia caught up, too. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.2.146.214 (talk) 02:25, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

Need eyes on an article

Can you guys please keep a watch out for the linguistic imperialists/descriptivists on the letter H article? Editors are suggesting there is only one way to say the letter (it would be like suggesting "zed" is an incorrect pronunciation, despite it being used by millions worldwide) .124.148.212.227 (talk) 05:37, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/IPA for X

Some Help:IPA for x pages have been nominated for deletion. I was not the nominator, but noticed the nomination and thought a link should be provided here. Visit the nomination page for more information. — Eru·tuon 00:17, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Language

I am in the process of improving the main article for our project. All help and assistance will be appreciated. Specifically I have an inquiry on the talk page about whether we should explicitly restrict the scope of the article to cover only natural human language, and relegate programming languages and animal communication to another article. Also I need expert eyes on the section on syntax. And on the sections on classification, typology and areal linguistics.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 15:16, 14 August 2012

Evolutionary linguistics article

• Evolutionary linguistics (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

My name is Nicholas Yates and I am taking a linguistics course at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA called Language and Species. I am part of a group that is working on improving the quality and accuracy of the Wikipedia article entitled Evolutionary Linguistics. If there are any other users who use this page, I am interested in hearing their thoughts about the areas in which they feel it could use some improvement?-Yatnic25 12:21 PM, 8 February 2013 (PST)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Francesco Perono Cacciafoco

Although a BLP, it is basically an article about the Teoria della Conciliazione or New Convergence Theory - an attempt to " 'reconciliate' apparently irreconcilable approaches to the topic of Indo-European origins,the 'pan-Indo-European' (cf. the works of Dr Gianfranco Forni on Basque, for example) and the 'pan-Semitic' (by Dr Giovanni Semerano and his followers)." according to the article's author. I couldn't find evidence that it meets our criteria for notability. Dougweller (talk) 10:07, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject Academia?

Please see here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Academia. Thanks. Fgnievinski (talk) 18:40, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

Irish linguists

I found the categories Category:Linguists from Ireland and Category:Linguists from the Republic of Ireland and made an effort to unify them, by moving members of the former into the latter. My edits were reverted, and I had to learn that there are susceptibilities I hadn't expected. After some fruitless discussion at User talk:Timrollpickering#Irish linguists, I decided to post the issue here.

I think it is obvious that both categories should be unified (for example, they both share literally the same description text). As for the name of the unique target category, I'm impassionate. I suggest that you discuss this in the project, and perform the member page moves. Best regards - Jochen Burghardt (talk) 19:18, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

I see no linguistic issues here — the dispute seems to be 1) political in nature and 2) concern the wider topic of "Xs from Y" categorization of people. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 20:34, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

I opened a discussion at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2014_December_2#Category:Linguists_from_Ireland. Someone may wish to contribute. - Jochen Burghardt (talk) 13:54, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Editing conflict: Head directionality parameter

An editing conflict has arisen with the Head Directionality parameter entry that relates to theoretical and terminological differences between "dependency theory" and "X-bar theory". Guidance is needed in how to resolve this. Currently, the article (which is being developed from a stub for a course-related project) states that "dependents" are ordered relative to the "heads" that they are associated with, and then goes on to consider how this plays out for the [Head-Complement] relation. However, this section has been over-written by a proponent of dependency theory, which results in both theories being inaccurately presented. Consistent with Wikipedia's neutrality policy, I suggest that a more appropriate solution would be to present the two approaches separately (in two separate sections), rather than conflating them into one section (as is the current situation). Any & all constructive suggestions about how to proceed would be much appreciated.--RM Dechaine (talk) 01:14, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Launch of WikiProject Wikidata for research

Hi, this is to let you know that we've launched WikiProject Wikidata for research in order to stimulate a closer interaction between Wikidata and research, both on a technical and a community level. As a first activity, we are drafting a research proposal on the matter (cf. blog post). Your thoughts on and contributions to that would be most welcome! Thanks, -- Daniel Mietchen (talk) 02:16, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

IPA font links gone

The font links have disappeared from International Phonetic Alphabet; see Talk:International Phonetic Alphabet#Font links gone. Please take any discussion to that Talk section, as I am also posting this note to another project's Talk page. Thnidu (talk) 04:48, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X is live!

Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

Note: To receive additional notifications about WikiProject X on this talk page, please add this page to Wikipedia:WikiProject X/Newsletter. Otherwise, this will be the last notification sent about WikiProject X.

Harej (talk) 16:57, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Indo-European linguistics

I hope some informed linguists can provide input in this debate: WP:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard#Proposed Hypothesis/Theory as fact. Cheers, Kautilya3 (talk) 18:03, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

RfC

I've opened an RfC at Talk:Indigenous Aryans#RfC: the "Indigenous Aryans" theory is fringe-theory. Let's keep it civilised. Best regards, Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 16:30, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Split of Palatalization

I'm proposing that we move material on palatalization as a sound change from Palatalization to Palatalization (sound change). Material on the secondary articulation would remain where it is. Voice objections in Talk:Palatalization § Move material on sound change to Palatalization (sound change). If nobody objects in the next few days, I'll go ahead and do the move, since I think it's pretty commonsense and uncontroversial. — Eru·tuon 23:21, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

The result of discussion is that the article will be split into Palatalization (phonetics) and Palatalization (sound change). If there are no objections, I will make the move in a day or two. — Eru·tuon 23:53, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Phonology articles

If I were a phonologist writing articles on phones I would want to add spectrograms of each phone with some prose description of the relevant formants. I dont think most (any?) of our articles on phones have this. And it would be really useful as a reference.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 00:00, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

That would be nice. But we'd want e.g. all vowels from the same speaker and the same frame, so they could be compared. Would be difficult to find someone would could pronounce all the vowels or fricatives as well as a native speaker. — kwami (talk) 00:21, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

I am not sure they would need to be the same speaker. In textbooks or studies they are not necessarily by the same speakers, just whichever speaker is considered to be illustrative of a given sound. We can simply note the native language of the speake pronouncing the phone. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 03:22, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

This is a very good idea. Whether the spectrograms are all from the same speaker or not: it would be nice if they were all

• produced from audio recordings actually used in the articles, with the same software (e.g. Praat), using the same options/parameters and
• included with a template that shows that recording and spectrogram derive from the same recording session and represent the same utterance. —LiliCharlie (talk) 09:48, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Some general phonetics–phonology articles, like Voice-onset time and Tenseness, could also use more soundfiles and perhaps spectrograms. Some of these require native speakers: although I could try to manufacture the French voice-onset distinction, it would probably be not quite accurate; and the Korean tenseness contrast is beyond me, and probably beyond most English-speaking linguists. Palatalization (phonetics) and Labialization have a few examples, but need more examples from specific languages. Labialization could use examples of the different types of labialization, which would require the help of native speakers of some relatively obscure languages, or the authorization of phonetics researchers. — Eru·tuon 22:38, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Examples from ancient languages in vowel and consonant pages

One of my areas of interest is historical linguistics and reconstructed phonological systems. At the moment, the vowel and consonant pages do not include examples from ancient languages, like Latin, Greek, and Old English, though I have added notes on ancient languages in some of the articles, like Close front rounded vowel § Occurrence. I think I once tried to add one, but my addition was reverted because the example was not from a living language whose pronunciation is known from observation. This is understandable; however, it would be ideal to include reconstructed languages somewhere on the vowel and consonant pages.

We should create a section, where necessary, in which reconstructed forms can be listed. It should be placed as a subsection under Occurrence. It could be titled "Reconstructed forms" or "Ancient languages", or something else if someone has a better idea.

This section could be reserved for ancient languages that are actually attested, and whose phonological systems we know in a fair amount of detail, like Ancient Greek, Classical Latin, Sanskrit, Old English, Old Norse, Gothic, and Old Church Slavonic. And where the pronunciation of the phoneme is uncertain, we can note this fact.

It's doubtful whether we should include languages that are not attested and only reconstructed, such as Proto-Italic, Proto-Germanic, Proto-Indo-Iranian, Proto-Greek, or Proto-Indo-European — and languages that are attested but whose phonological systems are known in less detail, like Mycenaean Greek, Etruscan, Hittite, Akkadian, Phoenician, and Ancient Egyptian. However, in theory we could include these with a clear note that their pronunciation is much more uncertain than that of the ancient languages noted above. — Eru·tuon 21:47, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

For reference, here are the guidelines as they currently stand for these pages. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 00:29, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

I have to disagree with User:Erutuon. No matter how well we think we know the pronunciation of some symbol in some ancient language, we can never be completely certain. The same is not true of languages which a competent modern linguist has recorded. Just look at Φ, for example. Was it [f] or [ɸ] or [pʰ] or something else? As much as we think we know from educated guesses based on circumstantial evidence, they are still guesses. --Taivo (talk) 02:49, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

You are quite right about lack of certainty, and as you say, reconstructed phonology and phonetics is essentially a "guess". It is clearly different from phonology and phonetics of spoken languages, which we know from observation. I don't disagree with you on this point, and I don't propose that we imply that reconstructed phonology and phonetics is completely certain.

Uncertainty by itself does not mean that reconstructed phonetics should be excluded from phonetics pages. It simply means that the uncertainty must be stated explicitly and that dead and hypothetical languages must not be placed in the same table as living languages.

Uncertainty regarding the pronunciation of dead languages is limited by certain parameters. For the case of ⟨Φ⟩, which you mention, uncertainty regarding the sound it represented in Ancient Greek is actually limited as follows. There is no uncertainty regarding the phonological feature of place: the sound represented by the letter has always been labial (bilabial or labiodental), as opposed to dental, alveolar, palatal, velar, uvular, pharyngeal, or glottal. The feature of manner is known: the sound patterned with stops in Ancient Greek. The feature of phonation is certain because the tenuis stop ⟨Π⟩ became ⟨Φ⟩ before the rough breathing, and ⟨Φ⟩ was even written ⟨῾Π⟩ (I think) or ⟨ΠΗ⟩ in some regional orthographies. In addition, the change from an aspirated stop to a voiceless fricative is typologically frequent; it is an example of lenition, and has occurred in the phonetically described forms of the Indo-Aryan languages, for instance. These facts establish certainty, within certain parameters, regarding the pronunciation of ⟨Φ⟩ in the Ancient Greek period: the sound was bilabial, a stop, and aspirated.

We also know that the sound changed to a fricative during the Koine Greek period. However, there is uncertainty how it occurred: what the phonetic stages were between the [pʰ] of Ancient Greek and [f] of Modern Greek. We can propose that it went through the stages [pʰ], [pɸ], [ɸ], and [f], but this is only based on typological considerations relating to phonetics and phonology, not on actual evidence (as far as I know). In addition, the when is uncertain: it seems to have changed at different times in different places and social registers, but we cannot establish the precise times in the various sociolects of each regional variant of Koine Greek.

There is also uncertainty regarding its muscular tension and precise voice-onset time. We know it was a labial aspirated stop, but we cannot determine whether it was pronounced with greater muscular tension and an audible pop, as the Hindi voiceless stops, or with less tension and no audible pop, like the Thai ones (this observation derives from my listening to recordings of these languages); or how aspirated it and its tenuis and voiced counterparts were relative to the voice-onset times of the stop phonemes and allophones in French, English, Thai, Korean, Hindi, or other modern languages. These areas of uncertainty are similar to the uncertainty in phonetic description of living languages, and the level of uncertainty present in phonetic transcriptions of these languages: there is no system for unambiguously representing the different levels of aspiration or muscular tension in stops, only some ad-hoc systems used in the transcription of English and High German dialects, and in the transcription of Korean, and the muscular tension and voice-onset time are not recorded for all living languages. The transcriptions in, for instance, Voiceless bilabial stop therefore do not note these fine distinctions.

Thus, given the uncertainty already existing in phonetics articles, it would be entirely appropriate to include some examples from ancient languages — if they are clearly separated from the examples of living languages, and their status as reconstructions explicitly stated, along with the parameters within which they are uncertain, as well as a note of alternative reconstructions in cases where they exist. — Eru·tuon 07:23, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

You make my point, Erutuon. With modern languages, there is certainty about the sounds--with ancient languages there is none, just guesses and assumptions. The charts of vowels and consonants don't need uncertainty when there are ample examples from modern languages that are certain. Why include a symbol from an ancient language that requires three paragraphs of footnote (as you have written above) or, (gulp) actual text, in order to clarify or explain the educated guess that its inclusion is based on? There are plenty of places where data from ancient languages are appropriate. The pages for consonants and vowels are not included. --Taivo (talk) 08:13, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

One way to think of this is along the distinction between phonetics and phonology. We have reasonable certainty about the phonology of ancient languages; certainty reasonable enough that we can include information about these languages with minimal qualification in their respective phonology pages or sections. However, we don't have nearly as much certainty about the phonetics of these languages. The articles regarding phones are phonetics articles, which puts ancient or poorly attested languages less squarely in their purview.

That said, the prose of any of these articles can be expanded with generalizations about the distribution of sounds both geographically and synchronically. This includes information about their presence in ancient languages, which I think would be appropriate as long as the necessary qualifications are provided. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 08:40, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

"Necessary qualifications" is the problem, of course. When the text of the "qualifications" becomes greater than the text of the article and phonetic description itself, then we have simply opened up more problems than it is worth. None of these ancient languages offer any illumination to any of the phones that would be under discussion. Do we really need another three languages demonstrating the existence of the phone [p] when we have 6000 other modern languages to illustrate it? Is there really any question that [p] existed 2000 years ago when we're 100% certain that it also existed 100,000 years ago? Is the cost (in terms of justification and qualification text) really worth the virtually non-existent benefit (yes, there was [p] 2000 years ago)? --Taivo (talk) 13:59, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

• I dont see what we gain by adding examples from ancient languages to phonetics articles. There is no reason lists of occurences of a given phone should strive towards being exhaustive.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 15:45, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

@Taivo: Actually, my comment was an explanation to you; I don't propose adding verbose explanations of linguistic reconstruction to phone articles, any more than I propose adding extended discussion on phonetics and phonology of living languages. Extended discussion belongs in X language phonology articles. Some discussion of the reconstruction of Ancient Greek is provided in Ancient Greek phonology and in the sources used for that article.

No more verboseness is required for ancient languages than for living languages, if the examples from ancient languages are chosen well. The details required are: 1. the language and the dialect, sociolect, or time period, 2. the example word in standard orthography, 3. its transcription, 4. its meaning, 5. a brief note on phonemic contrasts and allophony relating to the sound. These items can be provided, and the detailed information above can be boiled down to a concise note quite easily, just as it is for examples from living languages.

@Aeusoes1: While in many cases phonetics is uncertain, in other cases the phonological distinctions provide enough detail for a phonetic transcription. For instance, we have enough phonological certainty regarding the short vowels represented by ⟨Α⟩ and ⟨Ι⟩ and the consonants represented by ⟨Φ⟩ and ⟨Σ⟩ to provide phonetic transcriptions: [a i] and [pʰ s]. There are a number of uncertainties. The open vowel was most likely front or central, possibly back; but it was probably very near completely open. The close vowel was likely near completely closed and front; but it might have been slightly lowered or centralized. The aspirated stop could have one of several degrees of aspiration, and the sibilant might have been be postalveolar, alveolar, or dental, apical or laminal.

However, these articulatory details are not necessary for a phonetic transcription, since many transcriptions of modern languages don't make these distinctions. We have enough phonetic detail to transcribe the word ⟨φάσις⟩ in Classical Attic pronunciation as [pʰá.sis]. Other words can also be transcribed in sufficient phonetic detail, though some words are more difficult, because their constituent sounds changed more in pronunciation than the sounds above.

@Taivo and Maunus: Is illustrative usefulness actually applied as a criterion? I don't see anything relating to it in User:Aeusoes1/Phone tables. The current practice regarding examples of phones seems to be 1. exhaustiveness, 2. substantiation from reliable sources, 3. a sufficient level of accuracy. These criteria would be satisfied by some examples from ancient languages.

If illustrative usefulness would exclude ancient languages from lists of examples, it would also exclude some living languages — perhaps more obscure living languages, or living languages from the same language family as others. Which living languages, then, are excluded, and how precisely is the criterion of illustrative usefulness defined by current practice, if not by written policy? How is this criterion not satisfied by examples from ancient languages?

It would be preferable not to have an exhaustive list in the phone articles, but rather to put it in a separate List article, but at the moment, we do not have such list articles.

A final point: we have an IPA help page providing an IPA transcription system for Ancient Greek, and one for Latin. In addition, we discuss these languages in articles on phonetic features, implying that we know their phonetics in some amount of detail. It is therefore a little odd not to include examples from these languages in phone articles. — Eru·tuon 22:06, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

I think the normal criteria for what to include in an article applies. I think having an exhaustive list of every language in which a phone occurs is clearly outside of what we usually put in articles and probably a violation of WP:NOT. So yes I think that the correct thing would be to remove those lists of examples should be removed to list articles or simply removed. There may be examples where adding descriptions of some ancient language (e.g. as an example of sound changes involving a specific phone) might be useful, but I dont think we should ever add them just for the sake of adding them. I feel the same about examples from obscure living languages. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 23:58, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

@Erutuon:"However, these articulatory details are not necessary for a phonetic transcription". If that is your opinion, then you don't seem to know what a phone actually is. Articulatory detail is precisely what makes a phone a phone. And without a recording, you simply don't know if that Attic Greek <φ> is [f], [φ], or [pʰ]. Classical Greek is simply not the most important language in the world and it simply doesn't belong in every chart of "this is what languages do". I can tell that you love the language very much and are a specialist, but you simply have to realize that it doesn't belong everywhere. This is one of those places. Without audio recordings or a modern phonetic transcription, dead languages don't belong in articles about phones. --Taivo (talk) 03:34, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

@Taivo: Excuse me, but as I said, Classical Attic Greek ⟨Φ⟩ was an aspirated stop, not a fricative. As such, it was phonetically [pʰ], not [f] or [φ]. There is clear consensus on this point among scholars of linguistic reconstruction. There are far more lines of evidence available for attested ancient languages than for hypothetical proto-languages. Therefore, the phonetic details of Classical Attic Greek are known in greater detail and with greater certainty than the phonology and phonetics of Proto-Indo-European. The identity of the three PIE stop-series, the so-called voiceless, voiced, and voiced aspirated stops, is unknown, as well as the identity of the three PIE dorsal series, and there is great disagreement among reputable scholars on these points, as well as others. By contrast, all reputable scholars I am aware of agree on the basic phonetic distinction between the three stop series of Ancient Greek. Uncertainty only arises regarding their pronunciation in the Koine Greek period; the three options you give belong to Koine Greek, not Classical Greek.

I am aware of the definition of a phone, and I repeat, not all articulatory details are always transcribed. In the case of [p], the sound must be a pulmonic egressive bilabial stop and not voiced. There is more transcriptional latitude relating to other features. The aspiration of the stop is only marked in more narrow transcriptions or where it is phonemically distinctive. Different levels of aspiration are not distinguished; only aspiration and non-aspiration, if anything. Muscular tension is not marked, except in ad-hoc ways (using voiceless diacritics on letters for voiced obstruents). We have enough information to transcribe the Classical Greek stops as [pʰ p b], and no more phonetic detail is required.

It would be wonderful if we could corroborate the results of linguistic reconstruction with direct observation, but we can't. Unless the reasoning used by scholars of linguistic reconstruction is invalid, their findings are worth mentioning. In many cases, their reasoning provides enough phonetic detail for a phonetic transcription; in other cases, it provides certain phonological features, or the endpoints of a sound change. Examples can be selected that have the least phonetic uncertainty, especially regarding the phone being exemplified. Properly chosen examples would not require several paragraphs of caveats and transcriptional options.

My argument for inclusion of Ancient Greek does not rest on my love for the language, but rather on the fact that examples, at the moment, are included without regard for illustrativity. The practice is to make exhaustive lists of phone occurrences; no examples are excluded because they are from the same language family as another example, or because they are too obscure to be useful to readers. If so, then there is no reason to exclude examples from dead languages whose phonetics are agreed upon by scholars of linguistic reconstruction.

If we create a policy on illustrativity, it will not only exclude examples from ancient languages, but also some examples from living languages. It would probably also require that we do include examples from ancient languages that illustrate typologically rare features: see below. ([p], as you say, is a typologically common feature, but a contrast in aspiration is a little less common.)

@Maunus: Okay, I can respect the principle of illustrativity as long as it's applied consistently. I think mentioning Ancient and Koine Greek in a few cases, like for voiceless resonants (ʍ l̥ r̥), the close rounded front vowel, and different heights of mid vowels, would be useful illustratively, as well as in the case of sound changes like monophthongization, lengthening, raising, and fronting. Some of these notable features would be appropriate to mention in phone articles, others in phonetic feature or sound change articles.

It would be beneficial to move examples of phones to a separate article: then allophony and phonological distinctions could be discussed in more detail. We should also list sound changes that different phones either undergo or develop from. At the moment, sound change articles are largely divorced from phone articles. — Eru·tuon 18:02, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

@Erutuon: Whether we are talking about an exhaustive list or an illustrative list, languages for which we have no audio recordings or no modern phonetic description should be excluded because, no matter how good you think scholars have postulated the sounds of an ancient language, it is still nothing more than a hypothesis without concrete, non-circumstantial, evidence. It is unattested and must therefore be marked with a star (*[pʰ] or *[f] or *[ɸ] or whatever). Ancient Greek pronunciation may be more certain than Proto-Indo-European pronunciation, but it is still unattested. --Taivo (talk) 18:38, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Some evidence is not circumstantial: the direct descriptions of grammarians, for instance. Let me grant, however, that reconstructed pronunciation is hypothetical and must be marked with an asterisk. Still, however, the reconstruction is phonetically specific, and can therefore be included. At the moment, the only reason for not including it is the a priori one: that we only include living languages, not dead or constructed. This a priori reason is not justification for itself. It must therefore be reconsidered, and only retained if there is further justification for it.

If the reason behind it is lack of direct observation, this reason is not sufficient: reconstructed phonetic features are still phonetic features. Phonetic features belong in pages on phones. Hypothetical phonetic features are established by the reasoning of linguistic reconstruction, which is equally as valid as the direct evidence of auditory or articulatory analysis. The hypothetical nature of the phonetic features is not the same as lack of clear substantiation for them.

If the reason is lack of illustrative value, this reason is only sometimes sufficient: sometimes the reconstructed phonetic features of dead languages are typologically common and not worth mentioning, while sometimes they are typologically rare or would provide further examples of features that occur in living languages. If dead languages have no illustrative value because they lack audio recordings, this reasoning is invalid, since it does not exclude the examples of living languages that lack audio recordings.

If the reason is a preference for direct observation over theorization, this reasoning is invalid, since other phonetics, sound change, and language phonology articles do not exclude dead languages for lack of direct observation — unless there is some reason why phone articles are unique? — Eru·tuon 19:55, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

All your sophistry simply does not eliminate the simple fact of the matter. 1) we are talking about distinct sounds in human language that we call "phones". 2) Extinct languages without audio recordings or accurate phonetic descriptions by modern linguists have no direct evidence of their sounds. That's the simple fact that with all your argumentation you want to mask or avoid. These sounds are unattested. And if these sounds are unattested, then they have no place in the articles that describe sounds. --Taivo (talk) 21:07, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I do not see the fundamental distinction between phones as defined by the evidence of linguistic reconstruction and phones as directly observed in acoustic and articulatory analysis of living languages. As I understand it, certain types of arguments used in linguistic reconstruction are relevant to establishing the details of the phonetic distinctions made in dead languages. The phonetic precision of these arguments is comparable to the precision achieved by basic acoustic or articulatory analysis in modern phonetics. If so, then there is no fundamental distinction between phonetic details established by linguistic reconstruction and phonetic details from modern phonetics. The only distinction is that some phonetic details are established by phonetics, and others by linguistic reconstruction; this distinction should certainly be noted.

My arguments are not sophistical; I give them in good faith, with no intent to deceive or to blur concepts that should remain distinct. If my arguments are unclear, logically invalid, or inaccurate, it doesn't help to cast aspersions on my motives or my argumentative ability, but rather to present a more clear, logical, and accurate picture of the theoretical question. I do not see the point you are making as entirely accurate. Perhaps it is because I am more familiar with the lines of evidence used in linguistic reconstruction, and their relevance to phonetics, than you are.

If you are familiar with the evidence, I would appreciate some explanation of why evidence used to establish phonetic details of dead languages is insufficient: for instance, how it is unclear whether the Classical Attic Greek aspirated stops were indeed phonetically aspirated and stops. If it is clear from the evidence, then the theoretical distinction between linguistic reconstructive evidence and direct observation is not relevant. If it is not, then perhaps the linguistic reconstruction is indeed too uncertain to be presented in the page on a phone. — Eru·tuon 22:21, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

I am a historical and descriptive linguist by training, by profession, and by publication record, so I know precisely the lines of evidence that are used in hypothesizing the phonetic values of the phonemes of dead languages. And that is why I can very clearly and succinctly say that there is a fundamental and irrevocable difference between actual evidence from living languages and hypothetical deduction from ancient languages. Hypothetical deduction from ancient languages, based upon circumstantial evidence as it is, is not valid as illustration of modern linguistic phones that are described from audio recordings and modern linguistic description. --Taivo (talk) 22:37, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Things are better with early stages of living languages, such as Old English or Old French. But even here there are difficulties. Much better to use modern languages as illustrations of what Old English sounds are thought to have been, than to use Old English as an illustration of what a living language is described to be. — kwami (talk) 23:19, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

@Taivo: Oh, I was not aware of that. My apologies; that gives you much more authority on this matter than me.

@Kwamikagami: I like that proposal. Supposing we added more information on phonological distinctions, typology, and sound changes to phone articles, then it might be appropriate to give examples from dead languages. For instance, if we mentioned the aspiration distinction in Armenian in the article on [p], we can also mention the aspiration distinction reconstructed for Ancient Greek and Sanskrit and give examples of words in which the distinction is hypothesized to have occurred. Or if we mention vowel fronting in the article on [y], we can mention that fronting is hypothesized for early Attic Greek. Similarly, we can mention Latin and Sanskrit in the context of discussing vowel quality distinctions between long and short vowels, etc. Mentioning dead languages here has value, since the features are hypothesized for dead languages partly because they occur in living ones. This is assuming we do add more information on these topics to phone articles, and do include several examples of each feature.

What do you think, Taivo? I accept your point regarding dead languages not being useful examples of phones; but what about mentioning hypotheses of linguistic reconstruction in connection to the other topics above? This idea needs more developing, I admit, but I think it would make more sense than placing dead languages in tables of examples. — Eru·tuon 23:56, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

I hadn't intended to suggest that, but I don't see any harm. Except that I think a lot of these articles have gotten ridiculously overwritten. What's the point of illustrating a sound with an obscure language no-one but linguists and its speakers have ever heard of? unless it's the best-known language that illustrates the sound? Personally, I think these articles should just give examples from just a few languages that most people will have heard of, and leave it at that. For reconstructions, IMO those should be in the articles on those languages, with the phone articles illustrating the sounds for readers who do not know what they are. Only for truly obscure sounds, where a reconstruction would be notable because of its rarity, would we want to mention the reconstruction in the phone article, and then separately from the illustrations. But then that's from the POV of someone who would gut most of these articles. If we truly wish to illustrate [a] with examples from all 4,000 languages (or however many) that have it, then I suppose we could add all reconstructions with *a (even if the reconstructor has no idea if it was actually [a]), and maybe all Pokemon characters with 'a' in their names as well. (That snark is directed at the state of these articles rather than at your suggestion.) — kwami (talk) 00:15, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami: Well, like I said somewhere earlier in this ridiculously long thread, I think the lists of examples are stupid and unmotivated. We don't have definite reasons for inclusion or exclusion besides adequate sourcing. It would be best to come up with a policy on which examples to keep in the phone articles, then move the rest of the examples to another article, titled, for instance, List of examples of the voiceless bilabial stop, Examples of the voiceless bilabial stop, or Voiceless bilabial stop (list). And then the phone article could briefly discuss typology, allophony, phonemic distinctions, sound changes, and the list article could provide a more comprehensive set of examples of all phonemes from every documented language (tenuis, aspirated, ejective, palatalized, labialized, pharyngealized, etc.: whatever variations are already included under a certain phone). Even all the phonemes of Ubykh! Maybe allophones could also be mentioned. The hypothesized phonetic examples of ancient languages could be placed in a separate category of the exhaustive listing, but only in the main article if illustratively useful, which might be never. Not sure precisely how the list article would be organized, or if it's possible to include all these things. The details must be figured out along the way. — Eru·tuon 00:40, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Allophones are only defined with respect to phonemes, which strictly speaking are not sounds. We could have yet another section on which other sounds are allophones of this sound, in various languages, but inclusion would yet again be difficult to decide. They would also overlap so much that we might end up with more noise than clarity. — kwami (talk) 02:16, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Thinking out loud here. It seems that the maximal amount of information in a comprehensive list would be something like as follows: That [t] is an allophone of the phoneme "by default" pronounced [d] in languages with final devoicing, an allophone of an oral stop also realized as [k] in Hawaiian, etc. That the phone [t] has under its purview certain variants, distinguished by aspiration, secondary articulation, and other articulatory features, and that some of these variants are allophonic in some languages, in others phonemically distinctive. That the phoneme whose "default" realization is [t] undergoes lenition in some languages, yielding [d ɾ ð θ s z ʔ], or palatalization, yielding [tʲ ts tɕ tʃ tʂ c], and that some lenitions and palatalizations are allophonic, and others created phonemic splits.

Listing this information requires distinguishing between phones and phonemes, allophones and historical sound changes, and the creation of an organizational system. Some categories of information could be excluded. Not sure how precisely this would be done. Maybe I'll try. — Eru·tuon 05:08, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Check out User:Erutuon/Voiceless alveolar stop for a test-case of the proposed phone-article extension and restructuring. — Eru·tuon 01:11, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

To clarify, this is a possible outline for an exhaustive list. How much of this information belongs in the main article remains to be decided. — Eru·tuon 23:55, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Tips for enthusiasts in Australia

We're gonna be joining the lingwiki collaboration down here in Canberra later in March. I was just wondering if you wanted to highlight and specific series of articles that you'd like us to work on in particular. There are potentially people who don't know what to write about and I'd be handy to have some clear and easy tasks lined up. Marshagreen (talk) 12:41, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Smallcaps

I have initiated a discussion regarding the use of small caps which some editors consider to be deprecated by the MOS in general but which are of course necessary for writing interlinear gloss in language and linguistics articles.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 19:55, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Here is the RfC about the issue: Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Capital_letters#RfC:_Proposed_exceptions_to_general_deprecation_of_Allcaps You input will be valued. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 21:16, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

#lingwiki

Spotted in the wild: an apparently recurring edit-a-thon of linguistics articles on Wikipedia, with online organization via Twitter. Next upcoming event announcement --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 15:34, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi! Yes, I've been organizing these edit-a-thons to try to get more linguists involved with editing related Wikipedia articles, especially stubs, under-documented languages, and outdated/insufficient BLPs. I attended a local Art+Feminism editathon last year despite knowing nothing about art because I figured I could provide tech support (I have a long-running habit of lurking Wikipedia/Wikimedia policy pages, I've worked with several independent class wikis, and I used to do some WIkipedia editing under a long-defunct account way back when) and I ended up helping a bunch of people get started with editing, which was really satisfying.

I do a lot of linguistics outreach writing on my blog and for other places, so I end up linking to Wikipedia a lot, but I fairly often come across pages that could use improvement. So I thought, since I'm actually a linguist, why not do an editathon for linguistics? Doing in-person or even via-Twitter events is more fun, plus a specific time makes it easier for academics to fit in their schedule than a vague exhortation to do stuff. And I've got quite a good network of linguists that I can reach out to to get involved. So the first editathon I organized was in person at the LSA annual meeting in January 2015 with parallel virtual editathon on Twitter. It went quite well and there was a lot of enthusiasm for further events -- I collected some stats and comments about it here. I'm also hoping that making recurring editathons will both develop expertise among linguists as editors and encourage participants to go back to articles they were working on and keep adding to them, resolve any warnings, etc.

The next editathon that we have planned is for the weekend of March 28-29, via Twitter, with spinoff events in Singapore and Canberra (that I'm aware of so far), so anyone here definitely feel free to use that date as motivation to do some editing, whether or not you want to check out the #lingwiki hashtag! I'm also planning a series of in-person editathons for four Wednesdays in July as part of the LSA summer institute in Chicago, plus a workshop on how to have linguistics classes edit Wikipedia (I'm talking to people from the WikiEd Foundation about that because I know there are pitfalls there for insufficiently prepared instructors). So if anyone is in the Chicago area in July 2015 and wants to come out, or join virtually from anywhere, it would be great to see you! Anyway, I'm glad to see some signs of life from WikiProject:Linguistics -- I've been sending people to the list of linguistics stubs but I didn't really see much going on from the main project page. But now that I notice people seem to check the talk page occasionally, I'll be sure to also post updates here so we can try to combine forces. Do let me know if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions of things for people to work on! --Gretchenmcc (talk) 21:30, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Importance scale

The importance scale might need some revision. It takes two things into account: the familiarity of the subject to non-linguists and its importance inside linguistics. For instance, Phoneme is rated as mid-importance. This seems to be based on the familiarity criterion, because as far as importance in the field of linguistics is concerned, phoneme is pretty fundamental and would probably be ranked as High. Maybe this is only importance within the subfield of phonology, or of theoretical linguistics, but if not, then the importance scale is somewhat problematic, since it blurs the distinction between reader interest (or whatever else you might call it) and importance within the field. I don't know if Wikipedia allows making a distinction between importance defined by readership and importance in a field, but if there's the possibility of making these two distinct, it would be beneficial. — Eru·tuon 18:39, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

I suppose the other option would be to rate some less familiar concepts as higher importance even though they're not well-known under their typical name to non-linguists. — Eru·tuon 19:09, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

I think most people dont care about the importance scale really, and that noone will likely object if you change the importance on any article. It is really only meant for project internal processes and no one is carrying out those processes currently so the whole rating thing is a little redundant.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 22:30, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Cyrillic letter articles

Would anyone be able to check the veracity of new Cyrillic letter articles and changes made to existing articles by User:PGCX864 and User:Spc10K? Alakzi (talk) 12:41, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia Corpus

Wikipedia Corpus is a new text corpus among the corpora at http://corpus.byu.edu.
—Wavelength (talk) 01:51, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

RfC: The MoS and the generic he

I'm copying a post made on the WikiProject Languages talk page, since members of this WikiProject will also be interested: — Eru·tuon 00:39, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

A conversation about the Wikipedia Manual of Style's stance on the generic he and gender-neutral language that started on this talk page has progressed to two RfCs at the village pump. Further opinions are welcome. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:57, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Mid vowels in Ecclesiastical Latin

I started a discussion on the pronunciation of mid vowels in Ecclesiastical Latin. Head over to the WikiProject Latin talk page if you know anything about this. — Eru·tuon 01:30, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Linguistics guidelines

I've suggested in the RfC on capitalization that WikiProject Linguistics create a set of guidelines for linguistics. This is in response to Margin1522's comment that new editors find Wikipedia guidelines too dense and hard to understand. If a set of guidelines for linguistics were created, the use of small caps for interlinear glossing could be removed from the general guidelines on capitalization, or briefly mentioned with a link.

These linguistics guidelines could include the following:

• general notes on using the IPA
• instructions on IPA, script, and language formatting templates
• instructions on use of italicization and quotation marks in language examples and glossing
• instructions on the usage of angle brackets, square brackets and slashes
• a list of morphological and syntactic abbreviations for interlinear glossing
• notes on the formatting of phoneme and phone tables in language phonology articles
• notes on occurrence tables in phone articles

Guidelines for occurrence tables already exist, but I haven't seen guidelines on these other topics. — Eru·tuon 04:12, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

What do you mean by general notes on using the IPA? — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 21:55, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Notes on using the IPA could include links to the Help:IPA for X and other IPA pages, or the other item, description of bracketing and the difference between phonemic and phonetic transcription, etc — or notes on adding IPA transcriptions, sound files, and translations to articles, and converting orthography to phonemic and phonetic transcription. The categories above bleed into each other. — Eru·tuon 23:18, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Oh, ok. We should also cover the degree of precision in phonetic transcription (e.g. tiring [ˈtaɪrɪŋ], RP [ˈtˢʰa(ɪ)ɹɪŋ]), perhaps in the article about the difference between phonemic and phonetic transcription. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 23:39, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

We have a list of glossing abbreviations, and brackets are covered in the IPA article. — kwami (talk) 03:04, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Given our recent decision to use Leipzig gloss as standard perhaps the abbreviations should be updated.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 01:42, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Okay, good — glossing abbreviations are covered.

However, I think creating a separate explanation on IPA usage on Wikipedia would be useful. The IPA article is long and difficult to wade through. It contains information irrelevant to Wikipedia editors, like history, real-life usage, IPA symbols in African alphabets, letter names. It also isn't explicit or detailed enough on topics that I think are important to Wikipedia IPA usage, like diphthongs and syllabification, diacritics for places of articulation, specific examples of bracket usage. These topics are difficult for new and inexperienced editors (from personal experience), and somewhat fragmented, scattered across different Wikipedia articles. Placing this information in a single article or set of articles with examples would be helpful — both for editors and readers — and might result in more consistency in IPA transcription and example formatting throughout Wikipedia. — Eru·tuon 04:17, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Finally actually looked, and found the pages Help:IPA and Help:IPA/Introduction. These are the sort of pages I'm thinking of, although at the moment the first is just a list, and the second is about English. — Eru·tuon 23:53, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

I've started writing guidelines at Wikipedia:WikiProject Linguistics/Guidelines. The page only discusses IPA at the moment, but the other topics mentioned above can be added. Later on, when the guidelines are filled out, we can decide whether to keep them there or move them to the Wikipedia or Help namespace. — Eru·tuon 19:28, 17 March 2015 (UTC)