Talk:Linguistics/Archive 5

Derrida
As it seems to be lost in the above thread - Derrida used Linguistics in the basis of the Deconstruction literary criticism movement. This was the evolution of linguistic analysis. Since Literary criticism is the primary field of Linguistics application and is mention in the lead, it needs to be discussed in the body of the work, which it is not adequately done. Ottava Rima (talk) 14:56, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Is literary criticism really the primary field to which linguistics is applied? What about language teaching and speech technology? Besides, it's not at all clear to me that the fact linguistics is applied to another field justifies including people who do so in the list of popular works and texts for this article. garik (talk) 15:06, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Confusion of the inverse. "linguistics is essential to literary criticism" does not establish that literary criticism is essential, or even relevant, to linguistics. The fact that you need a bottle opener to enjoy your Heineken does not imply that Heineken should be linked prominently, or at all, from the bottle opener article. --dab (𒁳) 15:28, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Or even vice versa. —Angr 15:37, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Not much I can add here that wasn't already said by Garik and Dbachmann.... but yes, while linguistics and literary criticism are relevant to one another (see, for example, books like Linguistics and Literature) and a lot of early linguistics work was inspired by literary theory (for example, early investigations of meter and prosody), literary theory is not really the main application of linguistics now, at least not in the US. Linguistics departments are still sometimes thrown in with "humanities" departments, most of what goes on now is science, and most people who use it are in fields like speech pathology, education, psychology, neuroscience, etc.  I don't know enough about Derrida to know what his contributions to linguistics were back then, but I know he's not really talked about anymore, so if he is mentioned at all in the article it should be as part of the history, not as part of the "popular works". r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 16:25, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Just look up the history of philology and see where Linguistics came from. Ottava Rima (talk) 17:02, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * So the quantum mechanics article should list biology books because both fields are derived from what was once called natural philosophy?  --Pfold (talk) 17:47, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Or, you could be more reasonable and say that quantum mechanics should discuss physics. Regardless, Linguistics is the evolution of philology, has its origins in Literary theory and study, and is primarily used as such. Applied linguistics is the most published on aspect of linguistics as a whole. Ottava Rima (talk) 19:48, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Just as the article on chemistry need not list a medieval work on alchemy in its bibliography, so, too, an article on linguistics need not list works relevant to its roots in the distant past. Put these materials in an article on the history of linguistics, not in a description of the modern field.  (Taivo (talk) 20:45, 28 April 2009 (UTC))
 * Seeing as how philology is still a major part of Linguistics and linguistic analysis, and that many linguistics journals have philology in your title, your analogy is patently absurd. Ottava Rima (talk) 21:15, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * (outdent) I have no opinion on Derrida and am not an expert on literary analysis, but like I said, literary analysis is not the main application of contemporary linguistics, and many departments I am aware of don't care much about literature. Things may be different in, for example, much of Europe, where discourse analysis is a more active field of study.  But in most of the areas of study that are big now, the main applications that linguists propose for most of their work are in areas like cognitive science, speech therapy, artificial intelligence and computational linguistics, and education.  Especially with the economic situation right now, when NSF, NIH, and other federal grant programs are hesitant to fund research that doesn't have real-world usefulness.
 * Anyway, like I said, I'm not arguing for or against including Derrida somewhere. I just want to be clear about what linguistics is used for (or, at least, how most linguists see themselves). r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 21:25, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * In the US, linguistics used to be anthropology, not philology. But either way, that was before Derrida's time. The question for us is: Does the article discuss Derrida, so that we should provide a source? and, Do linguistic or history-of textbooks today mention Derrida, or is he otherwise considered an influence in the field? AFAIK, the answer to both questions is 'no', so I agree that there's no reason to include him in the refs or bibiography. kwami (talk) 21:43, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * "Derrida on the linguistic sign and writing". I would recommend reading through this as it would enlighten many of the anti-Derrida responders. If you have Saussure, you need to have Derrida. Ottava Rima (talk) 22:02, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Without having read this book, I shouldn't pass too much judgment...but looking at the contents, I imagine what it gives is a very limited look at linguistics, with a focus only on a couple subfields. There appears to be a lot of coverage of philosophy of language (Wittgenstein, Austin) and sociocultural stuff (Sapir, Whorf, Labov) but very little of the "science" side of linguistics (it looks like it pretty much just pays lip service to the Skinner/Chomsky debate).  And the inclusion of a whole chapter on Orwell is a little disturbing....I love Orwell, and think "Politics and the English Language" is fun reading, but I wouldn't call it linguistics, and most linguists I know ridicule that essay (I think its level of credibility within the field is about on par with Bill Bryson's The Mother Tongue).  Not to say it's a bad book or anything; it's just certainly not a comprehensive look at the field.  It would be interesting to see what the other volumes cover. r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 22:13, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I read that bit that Ottava provided and I kept trying to see how it applies to the core issues of linguistics. I did my graduate work in linguistics during the 1970s and early 1980s and I don't recall ever hearing the name "Derrida".  de Saussure, Sapir, Boas, Chomsky, Bloomfield, Grimm, Jones--these names were common knowledge--but Derrida has basically had no influence on the field that I can tell.  (Taivo (talk) 22:28, 28 April 2009 (UTC))
 * I think your point also ties in to Kwami's question, "Do linguistic or history-of textbooks today mention Derrida, or is he otherwise considered an influence in the field?" While I haven't read any works on the history of the study of linguistics that I can recall, I have read a number of books and articles on various aspects of linguistics (and that includes several linguistics textbooks), and I don't think any of them mentioned Derrida. I'm not any sort of expert on the subject, and willing to concede I could be wrong, but I think Ottava Rima needs to provide some examples of modern works on linguistics (as a whole, not on a specific subfield) that mention Derrida or cite him prominently. --Miskwito (talk) 22:59, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I honestly can't believe that you ever had anything close to graduate studies in Linguistics and not hearing of Derrida. Seeing as how Linguistics was a field that gained a lot from the French scholars in the 40s-60s, not hearing of Derrida past 1970 would mean that you either didn't attend, or went through a program not worth mentioning. I -loathe- Derrida, and I have dealt with him constantly in both Linguistics and Literary criticism. All anyone has to do is type in Derrida and linguistics into google books and you will find plenty of limited view texts that you can read about his relationship. Ottava Rima (talk) 03:26, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Ph.D. in Linguistics *and* Philosophy here (MIT, 1995), currently an associate professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona. Learned about him in philosophy classes (discussed with great scorn, but that's besides the point) but never in linguistics ones. We certainly don't teach about him in any of our classes. His work is largely irrelevant to the material we study. He is, however, taught in the lit crit classes in our English department and in our Language departments. For Lit crit and Phil of Lang, he's certainly relevant -- if wrong. Modern linguistics (and frankly even linguistics in the last century) deem him, rightly or wrongly, part of a separate discipline. AndrewCarnie (talk) 04:47, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but I call BS. Even an individual talking Linguistics 101 would know that both Pragmatics and Discourse Analysis are two primary components of Linguistics, which both include the Philosophy of Language and Literary Criticism. Ottava Rima (talk) 03:31, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I heard of Derrida when I took a course on "Philosophy of Language" at the departmemt of philosophy. Never when I took courses on theory of linguistics. I think he may have been influential in semiotics, and he obviously was in philosophy and literary criticism - but he is clearly not notable in relation to linguistics.·Maunus· ƛ · 04:15, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I'll do a bit of a survey of introductory linguistics texts. Frank Parker & Kathryn Riley, Linguistics for Non-Linguists, 4th edition (2005): no Derrida in bibliography.  William O'Grady et al., Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction, 4th edition (2001): no unified bibliography, but no Derrida in any of the chapter Recommended Reading lists.  Victoria Fromkin et al., An Introduction to Language, 8th edition (2007):  no unified bibliography, but no Derrida in any of the chapter References for Further Reading lists.  Edward Finegan, Language: Its Structure and Use, 3rd edition (1999): no unified bibliography, but no Derrida in any of the chapter References lists.  Grover Hudson, Essential Introductory Linguistics (2000): no Derrida in bibliography.  Ronald W. Langacker, Fundamentals of Linguistic Analysis (1972, my first linguistics textbook): no Derrida in bibliography.  So there you have it.  Some of the most common introductory textbooks in Linguistics being used today and not a single one of them even mentions Derrida.  If his work is not mentioned in introductory linguistics textbooks, it shouldn't be included here either.  (And thanks, guys, for not letting Ottava's insult to my education go unanswered.)  (Taivo (talk) 05:41, 29 April 2009 (UTC))
 * Thanks, Taivo, for doing the library work to establish this. I've been learning and teaching linguistics at the university level for two decades, and cannot ever recall Derrida (or Foucault) being mentioned (in print or in speech) in any linguistics context. I am very sure that none of the intro texts I've ever taught from cite either of them.Mundart (talk) 13:37, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * David Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, 2nd edition (1997): no Derrida in the bibliography. (Taivo (talk) 05:45, 29 April 2009 (UTC))
 * I've gone through the books that come up on google books. The vast majority of them are not books about linguistics; they are books that mention both linguistics and Derrida, which should not surprise us, as Derrida made several references to linguistics. The others are almost all about linguistics and something else; and it's in the something else that Derrida is normally considered to fall: semiotics and linguistics; linguistics models and literary theory; linguistics and the philosophy of language. The book Ottavo Rima mentions specifically is a series of chapters about individuals who have some connection with the study of language. I use the word "individuals" on purpose: the last chapter is about Kanzi, who is a chimp. He is not normally considered a linguist; nor is Savage-Rumbaugh, the human being who has written about him. I should add that I've done a postgraduate degree in linguistics; I've taught linguistics at undergraduate level, and I'm doing a PhD in linguistics. At no point has Derrida been mentioned. I'm aware of him, but he really doesn't play any important part in modern linguistics.  And before you suggest that my program wasn't worth mentioning, let me add that, in terms of research, my department is the highest rated linguistics department in the UK. One other thing occurs to me though: while Derrida isn't really mentioned in linguistics departments, it wouldn't surprise me if he gets mentioned rather more in courses called things like "Linguistics for literary theorists", run by literature departments and the like. No one's saying he didn't write about language, and this kind of course often includes figures who wrote about language and are relevant to literature, even if they're not considered linguists in the normal sense. This might be at the root of all this. "Linguistics" as presented to literature students is not necessarily quite representative of the kind of stuff that goes on in linguistics departments. garik (talk) 09:38, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * The 12,000-page Encyclopedia and Language and Linguistics (2nd ed.) does not have an article on Derrida, though it has full articles on non-linguists like Descartes who've had an influence on linguistics. I've found several fleeting mentions of Derrida in other articles, generally on topics such as semiotics, literary theory, the interaction of linguistics and philosophy, or the influence of linguistics on other fields, and generally as just one name within a list of several others, though there is the occasional specific mention of him, such as a parenthetical remark that a footnote in a book by Derrida credits Gelb with coining the term "grammatology". He would appear to be completely unnotable within linguitics, which is consistent with the fact that he was never mentioned in my History of Linguistics course (or any other linguistics course), either in class or AFAIC remember in the readings. kwami (talk) 10:18, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I spoke a bit too soon. (Text search of PDF files is quite slow.) Derrida is prominent in the article on grammatology, which, however, is rather peripheral to the study of linguistics. He's mentioned twice on his own in the article on Poststructuralism and Deconstruction. A full paragraph in Texts: Semiotic Theory. Umberto Eco, by the way, has a 1-page biography and a 3-page article on Theory of the Sign. kwami (talk) 10:42, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Your use of bibliographies of textbooks is intellectually insulting to everyone. An individual's importance is not measured by how often he is cited, or even that he is cited in a -bibliography-. Three of my linguistics textbooks have Derrida listed in the indicies. Now, I am willing to but my multiple graduate degrees up for comparison against anyone else here. Yes, I am an expert in the field. Yes, multiple people, including those at WMF, ArbCom, and the rest have my personal information and can verify that. The very fact that many of the other "experts" here tried to state that philology is a major aspect of Linguistics shows that they lack any actual understanding of the field. Anyone reading this essay by Derrida can easily see that it is a work dealing with Linguistics. Now, for more books on Derrida and linguistics - 1, 2 (note, this is a major textbook used in many Linguistics courses), 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 (p. 69 has a discussion about Derrida and the field of Linguistics), 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, etc. There are over 9000 hits, and this is just the first couple. Ottava Rima (talk) 16:05, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

It hardly need surprise us that he's mentioned a lot in the grammatology article. But, as a brief look at the Wikipedia article on grammatology shows us, Derrida's grammatology has very little to do with linguistics. garik (talk) 10:48, 29 April 2009 (UTC)


 * We did discuss some topics like this in syntax: How much of what we conceive syntax to be is actually a product of literacy rather than inherent to language? But I don't recall Derrida's name ever coming up, and we certainly never read anything by him.


 * Ha! 2½ pages are dedicated to sodium amytal, far more than all mentions of Derrida put together. kwami (talk) 10:52, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia is not a reliable source, Garik, so what the grammatology has or does not have is not evidence of his importance within a field. Ottava Rima (talk) 16:05, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

This discussion has now entered upon discussing the relation of linguistics and philology, yet nobody seems to be aware that we have a standalone philology article. Yes, philology does combine linguistics and literary criticism in its aim at a deep understanding of a language and its literature. The philology article should certainly be linked both from the linguistics article and the literary criticism article. But a detailed account of what it is about should obviously go to the philology article itself, in the spirit of WP:SS. --dab (𒁳) 11:09, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Comprehensiveness requirements are there to ensure that all articles have the necessary information about their topic. Just because there is another page talking about it does not mean that there should not be a summary or inclusion. -All- linguistic topics should be included or summarized. Ottava Rima (talk) 16:05, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Right: all necessary information. This discussion has shown that Derrida's influence on linguistics is so minimal (basically nonexistent) that no mention of him in the article is necessary at all. —Angr 16:10, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * As I noted above, the vast majority of the hits on Google Books are books not primarily about linguistics. But even if we take, as an example, a book mentioned by Ottava with a title that seems particularly relevant to linguistics (Key thinkers in linguistics and the philosophy of language) we don't find justification for including Derrida in this article. Many people have written about language; but should this article also list works by Plato, Aristotle, Berkeley, Leibniz, Kant...?
 * But, to be fair, I can see why Ottava considers Derrida relevant to this article. S/he says: "Anyone reading this essay by Derrida can easily see that it is a work dealing with Linguistics." Well this is true in the sense that Derrida talks a lot in this essay about linguistics. But that still doesn't make him a linguist. More importantly, however, even if we were to say that Derrida was a linguist, this wouldn't justify including his work in the Popular Works section. That section is alreday bloated enough with unnecessaries as it is. As I've stated above, I'd be happy enough to see the back of that section altogether, until we can decide on a few really relevant books to list in it.
 * Now, while I agree with Angr that "no mention of Derrida is necessary in this article at all", I have no principled objection to a brief section one day appearing on what Derrida (and related thinkers) had to say about linguistics (though I would stress "on linguistics", rather than "on language"). The main problem with this is that it really is not central to what mainstream linguistics is about. And we need to improve and expand this article's coverage of mainstream linguistics before we introduce stuff like this. To add it now feels like giving it undue weight. I can imagine a point in the future when the article is large enough and ready for the introduction of more fringe topics. But now isn't the time. garik (talk) 17:05, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmmm... Having written that, I'm not entirely convinced that it would ever be a good idea. The point of this article is to explain to readers what mainstream linguistics is about. It's probably best to keep the non-mainstream to other articles. garik (talk) 17:32, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Agreed. No offense meant to Derrida (who is a swell guy), but to be perfectly frank, I think the book demonstrates that Derrida is interested in linguistics, not that linguistics is interested in him.  Which is natural; since linguistics is such a broad field and touches on so many other fields, it's something that a lot of people from other fields might take interest in and use in their work in their own field, even though they might not be making a major contribution to the field of linguistics.  I'm sure the same could be said about a lot of fields (for example, tons of people use neuroimaging methods in their field, but they're not necessarily revolutionizing the science of EEG). r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 17:54, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Agreed. This article is about mainstream linguistics and the mainstream linguists writing here have generally never heard of him in their graduate work in linguistics at several major universities.  No introductory textbook in linguistics mentions him in either the bibliography of sources or in the recommendations for further reading.  The one book that Ottava mentions as a "major textbook" has a title that indicates it has more to do with semiotics.  Derrida may deserve mention elsewhere in Wikipedia, but not here.  (Taivo (talk) 17:57, 29 April 2009 (UTC))


 * Quite so - the fact that Derrida has written interesting things on linguistics does not mean that he should be mentioned here. Even if we allow that Derrida is a linguist, there are literally thousands of linguists who are not mentioned in this article. This is an encyclopedia article introducing the field of inquiry known as linguistics, not an exhaustive list of scholars or topics under that general heading. Cnilep (talk) 18:08, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * WP:NPOV would require Derrida to be mentioned in the article in which Sausseur is mentioned. The fact that Derrida contradicted and critiqued Sausseur, which inspired a major critical movement within literary analysis (aka Deconstructionism), it would seem unethical not to mention Derrida. Ottava Rima (talk) 18:15, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Lots of people have critiqued Darwin, but that doesn't mean that they all deserve mention at Evolution. If Derrida inspired something at literary analysis, then that's where he should be mentioned, not here.  This isn't literary analysis.  (Taivo (talk) 18:19, 29 April 2009 (UTC))
 * Nice try. Saussure, or rather his structuralist program, has been criticised by any number of post-structuralist thinkers, they don't need to be included in the linguistics article either.·Maunus· ƛ · 18:20, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Saussure is one of the founders of the discipline; Derrida doesn't get a mention in any of the basic linguistcs textbooks (even as a critic of Saussure!). Case closed. This article doesn't have anything on citics of Chomsky either - it's an introductory article, for goodness sake, not the last word on the subject! --Pfold (talk) 19:11, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Funny how you continue the same provenly false claim about Derrida not mentioned in linguistic textbooks when it was 1. proven academically dishonest that you used "bibliographies" instead of indecies, 2. used less than 20 textbooks when there are thousands, and 3. have been proven wrong by the Routledge introductory text used in many colleges and what I have taught from before has a section on him and is linked above. Its one thing to lie, but to keep up the lie when you are blatantly proven wrong is really disturbing. Ottava Rima (talk) 02:27, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * And just to prove how absurd Pfold is - a list of textbooks used by Linguistic courses that have Derrida critiquing Saussure: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc. as just a small example of books used in classes. And lets not forget this: "Those whose interpretations are examined in detail include Bloomfield, Hjelmslev, Jakobson, Levi-Strauss, Chomsky, Barthes and Derrida." If you want, I can provide the huge amount of articles relying on Derrida in various Linguistics journals as can be found through JSTOR and MLA Bib. And also, lacking any critique on Chomsky is also in violation of NPOV, as he does not represent the majority opinion within the Linguistics field in any respect. Ottava Rima (talk) 02:43, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Derrida is -the- critiquer of Saussure. There is no one else that comes close. To claim otherwise is to lack any academic integrity or to have no actual understanding of the subject. I provided plenty of evidence. Not one other person has bothered to do the same. So far, you few individuals seem to have no respect for NPOV, V, or anything else that makes this encyclopedic, let alone have an understanding of the topic. Shameful. Ottava Rima (talk) 02:24, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * The wikipedia article on Derrida doesn't mention the word linguistics once.·Maunus· ƛ · 02:59, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I can name over 400 notable works that lack pages and those works are older than 100 years old. What Wikipedia lacks is not justification to keep excluding it or not improving. The Linguistics page is not a featured article for a reason. Ottava Rima (talk) 03:11, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * To be honest, I could name a lot of reasons this article isn't an FA yet, and lack of Derrida is pretty low on the list... r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 03:17, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Derrida is one of many aspects that show that the page is not inclusive. It is only 40k of what should be an 80k + sized page, as this is a major topic that needs to be both comprehensive and neutral. Ottava Rima (talk) 03:27, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

(undent) Wow, a foodfight! Where's my raincoat? PhD in linguistics here too (mostly the Applied type, though I have my fingers crossed for a more "hardcore" article I've submitted recently to a decent journal).. Ling.Nut (talk&mdash;WP:3IAR) 03:06, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * What kind of application? I was more of a genre specialist, so my degree is more traditional philology than linguistics, but historical linguistics was a major specialty of mine. Ottava Rima (talk) 03:11, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * So, Ottava, you admit you're not a linguist. Hmmm.  Well, none of those books you cite are introductory textbooks in linguistics, but in side topics--translation studies, literary criticism, etc.  None of these books would ever be used in an introductory linguistics course.  And it's very interesting that you use Google books to do your "research" and gather your citations.  That's not research, that's just an internet search.  At least when I cite a book, I hold it in my hands and turn from page to page.  And I still haven't found a single linguistics textbook that cites any work by Derrida whatsoever even though they all tend to cite the truly important works in linguistics--Sapir, Bloomfield, Chomsky, etc.  (Taivo (talk) 03:17, 30 April 2009 (UTC))
 * In the LLBA, 331 results found for Derrida... 175 of those from peer-reviewed journals. Umm, let's see what journals. I see Journal of Pragmatics. I see Applied Linguistics. Mmm, a few  literary-ish journals, no surprise... but all in all... the reality is, in Wikipedia, ties always and everywhere end up going for the inclusionists. That's simply the reality. Ling.Nut (talk&mdash;WP:3IAR) 03:20, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * And, Ottava, I checked the indexes of all the previously cited books and not a one of them lists Derrida, although I see Bopp, Boas, Sapir, Bloomfield, Chomsky, Grimm, etc. (Taivo (talk) 03:23, 30 April 2009 (UTC))
 * Perhaps you didn't read, because what I focus on is a subfield within Linguistics. Or, are you one of those types that want to remove historical linguistics and any study of anything before 10 years ago out of the field along with any critique of Saussure? I think its funny how you say you haven't found a single linguistic textbook that cites him when I have provided quite a few above. You are either blind or you are causing a disruption on purpose. I even quoted a passage which lists other linguists that you are happy to include along with Derrida. Funny how that works. Ottava Rima (talk) 03:25, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * LingNut, I'm sure that Derrida wrote articles in journals on the sidelines of linguistics, that's not in question. What is in question is whether he had any influence on the field.  The answer seems to be a clear "no".  I could find a whole raft of linguists who had more influence on the field than Derrida, but we're not going to list every linguist who moved the field by one degree to the right or to the left.  Derrida seems not to be even in that crew.  (Taivo (talk) 03:26, 30 April 2009 (UTC))
 * A basic google book search for Saussure and Derrida comes up with over 15,000 hits. No influence? The founder of a genre of literary and sociological criticism that was based 100% on denying the claims of Saussure is meaningless? Ottava Rima (talk) 03:29, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * @Taivo: I think Ling.Nut was referring to citations/mentions of Derrida, not articles written by him. r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 03:30, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * (ec) Ottava, I was very clear that I'm not going to cite a book that I don't hold in my hands. I don't think you do the same.  You seem to rely on internet searches instead of looking at the books.  And there is not a single one of the books you listed that is an introductory textbook in linguistics.  And, you don't seem to understand that this is not the article on literary and sociological criticism.  Cite Derrida there.  This is the linguistics page and Derrida's influence seems to have been virtually zero.  (Taivo (talk) 03:31, 30 April 2009 (UTC))
 * Google books allows you access to more than the selective few that you want. Just look here: "Bloomfield, Hjelmslev, Jakobson, Levi-Strauss, Chomsky, Barthes and Derrida". Bloomfield is on the page. So is Chomsky. Lets see, who else is on the page... oh, Dante is. Odd. Barthes isn't there, yet he is famous in the field of Semiotics. Probably because Barthes was a famous Semiotician that was heavily influenced by Derrida. Poor guy, he thought he was working in the field of linguistics until a handful of untrained editors declared otherwise!!! Sure seems like the page is incomplete and imbalanced. Ottava Rima (talk) 03:40, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

(undent) (ec) Errm, aside from the fact that the articles are about derrida rather than by him... to me, the solution simply abundantly self-evident: we all need to acknowledge that Wikipedia is inherently, systematically inclusionist. We need to learn to love the bomb, or at least tolerate it. Thus the article needs to mention Derrida in a section on the .. shall we say, literary types? ... and folks who only read Language (that's not an insult, of course) just need to grit their teeth and bear it. It is just the way things are. Ling.Nut (talk&mdash;WP:3IAR) 03:33, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Otava: If I criticise Newton that doesn't necessarily make me notable in the field of physics. Derridas criticism has not caused anyone in linguistics to part from the basically structuralist understanding of language (those that have parted have done so for other reasons) Derrida is important in the field of semiotics which is a marginal subfield between linguistics, philosophy and literary studies - not in linguistics it self - why is this so hard to accept?·Maunus· ƛ · 03:36, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * (ec) Rjanag, I don't see citations in what LingNut listed in mainstream linguistics journals. If Derrida was so influential in linguistics, where are the citations in Language, Linguistic Theory, Lingua, International Journal of American Linguistics, Oceanic Linguistics, Phonetica, etc.? Actually, LingNut, Derrida should be cited where he is most appropriate. Wikipedia is inclusionist only in the sense that it has articles on most subjects. Derrida has had virtually no influence on Linguistics and I can cite a 100 linguists who are not mentioned who have had more influence. (Taivo (talk) 03:37, 30 April 2009 (UTC))
 * Sell as many books and be published as many times as Derrida and you can have your own mention. Ottava Rima (talk) 03:40, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Ling.nut: thats not the way things are. Wikipedia policy does not allow for "inclusionists" to include anything they want anywhere they want. Nobody is saying that derrida is not notable or important - they are saying that he is not relevant to this article. What wikipedia does do is to rely on consensus - in this case the inclusion of derrida in the linguistics article is argued by a single editor against a group of many other editors specialising in the topic and in good standing. ·Maunus· ƛ · 03:41, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Check above. I provided over 25 books that are written as linguistic texts and deal with Derrida. I have also provided a text that focused on the most important critiques and analyzers of Saussure. If the page has Dante listed, it definitely needs Derrida, Saussure's most prominent critic. Ottava Rima (talk) 03:42, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * And Maunus, next time you try to claim "good standing", don't claim that I stand alone. I didn't start this dispute. There were two others who wanted Foucault and Derrida to stay on the page and were being edit warred. I proved beyond a doubt why Derrida is needed. Your only justifications have been built on ignorance and, like your previous paragraph, a complete mistruth. Ottava Rima (talk) 03:45, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

(undent) (ec 2x) Oofda. we all need to calm down... My point is that semiotics deserves a mention, and Derrida deserves a mention within the mention. That's all. Otherwise the article wouldn't be comprehensive. Ling.Nut (talk&mdash;WP:3IAR) 03:44, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Semiotics is briefly mentioned, but not into any detail. Criticism of Saussure is almost non-existent. Applied linguistics is given almost nothing. We have over 40k to work with, so there shouldn't be any complaining about adding a few lines here or there. Ottava Rima (talk) 03:45, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I can accept the inclusion of a section titled "related fields" or some such which includes a section on semiotics and a mention of derrida. But to mention him as having influence on the discipline of linguistics it self is simply counterfactual, as has been shown. @otava you have produced a number of books that are not dealing with linguistics but with different subfields in the area of semiotics, literary analysis etc. Taivo has explained this to you a few times already.·Maunus· ƛ · 03:49, 30 April 2009 (UTC)


 * (out) (ec) I made a similar comment to this in a quick chat with Garik at my talk page, but basically, I think this is reaching a point where we're all talking around each other, and in talking about "whether or not Derrida is relevant to linguistics" we're all referring to different things when we say "linguistics". It's natural for any of us to look at the field through the lens of whatever we specialize in, and to assume that that is the "main" part of the field.  For me, that's cognitive science; for Ottava, it's literary analysis; for someone else it might be language documentation, or typology, or generative grammar, or critical discourse analysis, or speech therapy, or SLA, or one of any number of specific subdisciplines.  Derrida (or any other author) may not be relevant to "my" linguistics, and might be relevant to "yours".  (We could turn the tables and I could list some seminal neurolinguistics studies that I think any linguist worth their salt should know about, and any of you would still be correct in saying "but in my area we don't care about those guys.)  Because this article is only meant to be a summary-style look at things, I think we're going to need to step back and look at what Derrida means for the big picture, rather than what he means for any one of us. r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 03:49, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * we need to figure out where and how Derrida goes in, perhaps bearing WP:UNDUE in mind at times.. but arguing for exclusion isn't gonna work. Sections on "softer" linguistic fields need to be worked in. Ling.Nut (talk&mdash;WP:3IAR) 03:53, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Derrida would only have to go in after mention of Saussure as a critic of Saussure. That is NPOV. Derrida was made famous because of his complete denial of Saussure, especially in France. One of the things above is that people are forgetting that, gasp, there are other languages besides English that work on Linguistics, and that Derrida and his relationship to Saussure is very important there. Ottava Rima (talk) 03:55, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * We can see the difference between what the English and French encyclopedia say by simply looking at the French page - "qui a initié puis développé la méthode de la déconstruction. Ce concept (bien que Derrida récuse explicitement qu'il s'agisse d'un concept, ni même d'une méthode[réf. nécessaire]), une critique des présupposés de la parole, a largement débordé de sa discipline d'origine et touche dorénavant[réf. nécessaire] à la littérature, la peinture, la psychanalyse, etc." Even without a strong understanding of French, a Linguist will see many key terms that Saussure used stated in the above (hint, "parole"). Ottava Rima (talk) 03:59, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I still oppose any mention of Derrida because the guy just wasn't influential in Linguistics. He may be locally influential in France, but he has had zero influence in mainstream linguistics. Literary criticism, deconstruction, and the other things that Derrida did are not linguistics. This article is a summary of the field, not a detailed analysis of everything that has ever been written. If Derrida is forced in this article, then we better be ready to add dozens of other linguists whose work is much more influential in mainstream linguistics, but who are not mentioned in the article--Kiparsky, Anderson, Hammond, Labov, Ladefoged, Halle, and Dixon, for example. The article also doesn't mention anyone who offered a major alternative to Chomsky--Fillmore, for example. None of these are mentioned in the article, but their influence is monumental compared to that of Derrida. There's no "perhaps" on WP:UNDUE in relation to Derrida in this case. (Taivo (talk) 04:18, 30 April 2009 (UTC))
 * So, the main critic of Saussure and Saussure's work shouldn't be mentioned at all when that same work being criticized forms a major aspect of the page? All that is being asked is for the NPOV to be enforced so that Saussure isn't seem as without critics. Derrida is -the- major Saussure critic. He is known for criticizing Saussure. Searching Saussure and Derrida comes up with that in over 15,000 books. That is more than enough for notability. We have over 40k that we can add. Saying that the article doesn't offer other things is not a point. It would only be more things to add along with a line about Derrida's refutation. Ottava Rima (talk) 05:26, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * And Jerry Falwell criticized Darwin. So what?  It was pointless, unknown to much of the linguistic world, and achieved nothing.  It wasn't even primarily focused on the linguistic aspects of de Saussure as far as I can tell.  And the decades of difference between de Saussure's linguistic work and Derrida's non-linguistic criticism further means that de Saussure's effect on linguistics was mighty and Derrida's effect was virtually non-existent.  The main problem is that by the time Derrida was writing, linguistics was already moving into Chomsky and so, Derrida criticizing de Saussure had about the same effect as a 20th century biologist criticizing Lamarck--the field had already moved past the point where criticism of de Saussure really meant anything.  Just because there are 40k to use here doesn't mean that it has to all be used.  This is a summary article, and, as such, needs to be tight and constrained.  It is not a complete history of the field and all its twists and turns and all its subfields.  It is a summary and needs to be concise.  Put Derrida in the literary criticism article and worship him there.  His effect on linguistics was miniscule.  Derrida is not notable in linguistics.  He may be notable elsewhere--literary criticism, deconstruction, even the article on de Saussure, but not here.  (Taivo (talk) 06:12, 30 April 2009 (UTC))
 * If Jerry Falwell created a major movement within the field in reaction to Darwin and broke down everything Darwin wrote and proved why it was wrong, then sure, Falwell should be mentioned on Darwin's page. Regardless, you don't seem to understand NPOV, one of our most important content policies. To claim that by the time Derrida was writing that people were already moving beyond Saussure, especially comparing it to Lamarck, is laughably deceptive. It is obvious from the many books above that many critics (if you look at google books, over 15,000 critics) felt that Derrida played an important role in moving beyond Saussure. The fact that you keep ignoring that only proves that you lack any true statement here. Guess what that means? Yes, you are trolling. When you lie (as proven above), when you pretend things don't exist (as proven above), and when you start making false analogies to distract from it, there is only one thing going on - trolling. And the fact that you would then claim that we shouldn't try to expand the page is absolutely disgusting. You don't care about this encyclopedia. Ottava Rima (talk) 14:32, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Let's all just drop it and either get back to a constructive discussion or go deal with something else. No one is trolling, no one is unethical, and no one doesn't care about the encyclopedia; we disagree with one another, and that's the most that can be said.  I'm going to keep my fingers crossed and hope no one responds to this thread for a couple hours, because it's getting far too ugly and everyone has already voiced their opinion 3 times already; there's nothing any of you could say that would tell me anything I don't know by now about where you stand on the issue, and the same goes for me. r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 14:38, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * The arguments make it clear that these individuals don't care about improvement. Just look at this one: "Just because there are 40k to use here doesn't mean that it has to all be used". This is used to justify not having -one line- which simply says that Saussure's ideas were critiqued by many people and most famously by Derrida (as proven by thousands of sources). The personality type that says the quoted line is the same that POV wars on Ayn Rand, on Intelligent Design, etc. Ottava Rima (talk) 14:43, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Ottava, I know people have spoken to you before about characterizing your opponents in content disputes as ethically deficient or not caring about the encyclopedia...please keep that in mind and try to tone this down, because these accusations make it very difficult for anyone to focus on improving the article. The bottom line is, this is a content disagreement, and just because people disagree about content doesn't mean they hate the encyclopedia; no matter how great or stupid someone's rationale in a content dispute may be, there's no reason to say that they don't care about the encyclopedia.  They just don't have the same views as you or I about what should be in the encyclopedia.  I'm going to try to avoid this thread (again) but please try to keep focused on the article and not the editors; I want to see this article improved just as much as you do and just as much as everyone else here, and there's no way that improvement will happen if we're all trying to kill each other. <b class="Unicode">r ʨ anaɢ</b> talk/contribs 15:03, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * If my characterization is a problem, take me to ArbCom then... oh wait, Taivo is already at ArbCom for doing the same exact thing as above on the Macedonia pages. I think it is rather obvious that the behavior from those who are against any mention of Derrida is damaging to the encyclopedia at best. The fact that these same people would pretend that books didn't exist even after they were linked is proof that they are not here to discuss. Such people should not be coddled, bowed down to, or allowed to continue. They are not here for the encyclopedia. Ottava Rima (talk) 15:10, 30 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Ottava: there is no place for ad hominem attacks in this discussion. Mind WP:CIVIL please. ·Maunus· ƛ · 14:49, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Are we going to argue this as long as Ottava keeps it up? Or shall we just drop it, since no pertinent source has been presented for discussion? kwami (talk) 09:45, 30 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I think we can safely regard it as a settled consensus at this point. No need for further debate. Fut.Perf. ☼ 12:10, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but NPOV overrides "consensus". Ottava Rima (talk) 14:32, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * not if the alleged "neutral" viewpoint is held by one person whereas other ten to fifteen disagree that its neutral.·Maunus· ƛ · 14:55, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * By "no pertinent sources" you mean over 26 books that are used in Linguistics courses no longer count? Hell, that was just the tip of the iceburg. Ottava Rima (talk) 14:32, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I know this is slightly off-topic, but I believe this is too good to not share. I did a Google Books search for "Derrida was [not] a linguist" and got exactly two hits:
 * Derrida was a linguist – Palmer, Historical Dictionary of Architecture (Google Books seems to have this in the index, but there is not even a snippet view)
 * Derrida was not a linguist – Robinson, Performative Linguistics: Speaking and Translating as Doing Things with Words --Hans Adler (talk) 13:18, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
 * The context of the second link is important: "Jacques Derrida's deconstruction of Austin in his 1971 article 'Signature Event Context' might be taken as the first signal attempt to consolidate Austin's revolutionary ideas into a new linguistic paradigm, based on the performative concept of iterability. But Derrida was not a linguist seeking to revolutionize linguistics;" He is discussed as a philosopher and a linguist along with Bahktin being discussed as one. As pointed out in the link, he is from an "outside" view if you hold the inside as the American based view. Seeing as how the American is not the majority, let alone the dominant, I think this is evidence about the problem with the above - i.e. people not taking the NPOV and putting forth a biased interpretation of linguistics. Ottava Rima (talk) 14:47, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
 * So the nasty anglophone linguists are trying to downplay a key influence on linguistics because they don't like it? Wikipédia would be an obvious place for looking for a different view, but I can't see Derrida mentioned or cited at fr:Linguistique. Same situation at de:Sprachwissenschaft and es:Lingüística. Looks to me as if the denial is pretty global. By the way, have you counted how many agree with you on this talk page? I would be interested in the number. --Hans Adler (talk) 15:31, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I find it charming that you managed to try and quote other Wikipedias as a reliable source (they aren't) while simultaneously acting as if pages cannot be improved or even expanded. The French page, for example, is a horrible wreck. But yes, even the poorly constructed French Wiki does contain some examples of Derrida's relationship with Saussure. Just look 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. Ottava Rima (talk) 15:50, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
 * But thats not about linguistics Ottava: its about deconstruction, structuralism and Saussure. Derrida didn't criticize saussure as a linguist but as a semiotician - his semiotic approach was different from Saussures, but saussure as opposed to derrida was both a semiotician AND a linguist and his approach to semiotics was succesful in general linguistics and continues to be used in linguistics to day. Nobody uses deconstruction outside the specific subfields of linguistics that deal with semiotics, literary criticism, philosophy of language, text and discourse analysis etc.·Maunus· ƛ · 15:56, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
 * incidentally J.L. Austin is a good example of a non-linguist who has had a profound impact on linguistics. Anyway there is now a subsection on semiotics as a field, you might want to edit that and include the people who you believe are pertinent. Just remember that the semiotics section shouldn't be substantially longer than any of the other subfield descriptions in orer to avoid undue weight problems. ·Maunus· ƛ · 14:53, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
 * And Roman Jakobson? I do think that Saussure's Russian counterpart deserves some mention, especially with him being a major pioneer in modern Linguistics. Ottava Rima (talk) 15:02, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I have always seen Jakobson described as a linguist, and an important one.·Maunus· ƛ · 15:08, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Removal of Popular Works and Texts section
I've gone ahead and removed the popular works and text section. I'd be in favour of having a small selection of introductory texts on mainstream linguistics and its main areas, but I suggest we discuss which ones here before putting them up. garik (talk) 11:48, 30 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Here are some of my suggestions. I'm just pulling things off my shelf and listing things I use or have used as textbooks, so they may not be the most recent editions.  I would suggest no more than three representatives of each type of thing--intros, intros to subfields, general works, etc.
 * I would suggest the following introductory textbooks. They seem to be the most common ones (or, the ones that tend to go through multiple revisions and I get the most sample copies of):
 * Victoria Fromkin, Robert Rodman, & Nina Hyams. 2007.  An Introduction to Language.  8th edition.
 * Frank Parker & Kathryn Riley. 2005.  Linguistics for Non-Linguists, A Primer with Exercises.  4th edition.
 * William O'Grady, John Archibald, Mark Aronoff, & Janie Rees-Miller. 2001.  Contemporary Linguistics, An Introduction.  4th edition.
 * The following general works:
 * David Crystal. 1997.  The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language.  2nd edition.
 * David Crystal. 2003.  A Dictionary of Linguistics & Phonetics.  5th edition.
 * Phonetics:
 * Peter Ladefoged. 2006.  A Course in Phonetics.  5th edition.
 * J.C. Catford. 2001.  A Practical Introduction to Phonetics.  2nd edition.
 * Peter Ladefoged. 2001.  Vowels and Consonants, An Introduction to the Sounds of Languages.
 * Historical Linguistics:
 * Lyle Campbell. 1998.  Historical Linguistics, An Introduction.
 * Terry Crowley. 1997.  An Introduction to Historical Linguistics.  3rd edition.
 * Classics:
 * Edward Sapir. 1921.  Language.
 * Leonard Bloomfield. 1933.  Language.
 * This is just my thinking on the matter and a start. It focuses on textbooks more than classic texts (which are sometimes inaccessible to curious beginners--both in language and availability))  (Taivo (talk) 12:15, 30 April 2009 (UTC))


 * I'd already leave out the texts dealing only with subfields like phonetics and historical linguistics. We have separate articles on Phonetics and Historical linguistics where they can be added. But I would include The Handbook of Linguistics (ed. by Mark Aronoff and Janie Rees-Miller, 2003). —Angr 12:23, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * You're probably right about the subfields--the new bibliography would get bigger than the old one. (Taivo (talk) 12:30, 30 April 2009 (UTC))


 * My preference would also be to omit the sub-fields. I would suggest grouping by function and have just: encyclopedias/reference; classics; introductory textbooks; popular works. I also think there's an argument for including one reasonably accessible book on the history of linguistics. --Pfold (talk) 12:43, 30 April 2009 (UTC) 12:43, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * For a book on the history of the discipline, I'd recommend P.A.M. Seuren's Western Linguistics: An Historical Introduction, which has been reviewed on the LINGUIST List. —Angr 13:20, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I second the inclusion of Seuren.·Maunus· ƛ · 14:22, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I would caution against including "popular" works. If (as we've gone round and round about) this is page is an introduction to the scientific field, inclusion of popular introductions for non-specialists risks muddying the waters and opening the page to POV accusations (like the one below). I'd concentrate on introductory textbooks and encyclopedias. Though I do like the two "classics" Taivo lists, I'm less sold on the viability of the category. Also, I'll try a brief survey to find out which texts are commonly used in anglophone countries just to verify whether those intros are indeed the tops. (FWIW I've used both Fromkin & Rodman and O'Grady et al. here at Colorado.) Cnilep (talk) 14:34, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Seuren is not a popular work. It is a highly specialised work on the history of linguistics as a discipline.·Maunus· ƛ · 14:50, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, sorry, I was responding to Pfold, not Angr and Maunus. I've changed the indent. Cnilep (talk) 15:16, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Another work to consider adding is the four volumes of Linguistics: The Cambridge Survey (ed. F. J. Newmeyer, 1988). —Angr 16:30, 30 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Any section of the type is biased, fails NPOV, and not encyclopedia. Wikipedia is not an advertisement. Books can be cited in the article (which is sorely needed) or are not necessary. Ottava Rima (talk) 14:26, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * WP:FURTHER. <b class="Unicode">r ʨ anaɢ</b> talk/contribs 14:28, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Further readings are rarely acceptable and are left overs for the days when there were no citations and Wikipedia was being used to whore out whatever POV you had. To have a further reading on the Linguistics page without actually citing the main article is laughable at best. Ottava Rima (talk) 14:39, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm afraid I was far too optimistic when I assumed that I could find out which textbooks are most commonly used in intro to linguistics courses in Anglophone areas. I surveyed the web pages of about 100 such programs, and found that most did not mention specific texts. Of those that did name the texts they use, Fromkin et al. (various editions) and O'Grady et al. (various editions) were mentioned, but these were such a small percentage of the pages I consulted (1-2 mentions each) that they can't really be considered reliable. I found no mention of Parker and Riley (2005), which Taivo suggests above, nor of Fasold and Connor-Linton (2006), which I've considered using myself. Cnilep (talk) 14:30, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
 * At any point did you consider that looking for such things would be a violation of OR just like the whole section on the page would be? Ottava Rima (talk) 14:48, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
 * In fact, I expected that someone would make just that charge, to which I prepared the following response:
 * Yes, I carried out research. But I did not "publish [my] own opinions, experiences, arguments, or conclusions" (see WP:OR) on Wikipedia. The purpose of my "diligent inquiry or examination to seek ... facts" (see research) was to seek "reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy" (WP:V) to cite on this page.
 * By the way, what do you recommend we do when (your interpretation of) WP:OR runs afoul of (your interpretation of) WP:V? Cnilep (talk) 20:07, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
 * OR Synthesis. :) Unless there was an article that says "these are the most popular works to use", then, well... :) Ottava Rima (talk) 20:18, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah but you see, you've elided the most important bit. The most supportable ending to that sentence is, "...Wikipedia cannot suggest that they are the most popular works to use." You seem to want to suggest that we cannot even name them as further readings on the subject. That is a notion that you could argue - indeed, we are having just that argument. But it does not follow from your ellipsis. Cnilep (talk) 23:26, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't seem to suggest - I am suggesting. "Further reading" is inappropriate and not encyclopedic. I've provided the reasons above. Ottava Rima (talk) 15:02, 2 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I use Fromkin et al. as the text for my on-line intro linguistics courses. It's so expensive I don't use it in my classroom courses.  I've never used the O'Grady text personally, but I know other linguists who have.  The other linguistics professor that I work with uses Parker and Riley or Language Files depending on what she wants to focus on in a given semester.  I generally figure that if a textbook is in the 4th or higher edition, it's fairly popular (at least popular enough for people to keep revising and redistributing).  That's the "scientific analysis" that my selections were based on.  But I don't know how you'd go about determining in an objective sense what the most popular intro textbooks are.  The only objective measurement I would think might be somewhat accurate are those texts that are in the higher edition numbers.  In that case, Fromkin et al. and Language Files really outshine the others.  (Taivo (talk) 20:52, 1 May 2009 (UTC))
 * Regardless of WP:OR, WP:NPOV, or WP:V concerns, I'm most concerned about what's practical. If we have a list of books, you know people are gonna want to come along and add theirs; it will be a lot of repeated reverting for us.  That will probably make some new editors who try to add stuff feel like we're an evil cabal and start edit warring....if we do have a book, we will need some objective way to establish what the inclusion criteria are&mdash;ideally, something like linguistlist reviews or something that give a specific list of books we can follow.  Then we could at least put in a hidden note at the top of the section saying "please don't add items to this list without first suggesting them at Talk" and then when people come to Talk we would have something objective to show them.  (That being said, though, in my experience very few people pay attention to those hidden messages anyway.) <b class="Unicode">r ʨ anaɢ</b> talk/contribs 22:17, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I think that maybe Ottava is right and we should not have a further reading section, we might as well just site those books where they are relevant, and have them in the literature list.·Maunus· ƛ · 22:24, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid I don't agree. This is a brief introductory article to a large field, and one of things people might look at it for is some books to start reading on the subject. The fact that a particular work is cited in the article as authority for some statement or other does not make it suitable reading for someone new to the subject. From my point of view, "be helpful to the reader" is a guideline which outranks all the others. --Pfold (talk) 22:59, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmmm...Point taken. Anyway there is no policy deprecating the use of further reading sections and at least one FA (Nahuatl) has one, so the OR/SYNTH point is not valid. I believe it is a question of whether we find it necessary or not. I don't feel strongly for either exclusion or inclusion of such a section.·Maunus· ƛ · 23:22, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
 * The OR Synth point is finding the "most popular works". As I stated, unless you have a reliable source saying they are the most popular, then you cannot describe them as such. Any adding works based on that premise would be inherently flawed. Ottava Rima (talk) 15:02, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Not a problem as long as there is a consensus about which works should be included and which not, and as taivo statedthe number of editions is a pretty good indication of popularity. We don't have to claim that they are "the most popular works" we can just suggest some books as further reading for interested readers.·Maunus· ƛ · 15:09, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
 * You do know that the "introduction" pages to a field commonly have introduction in the title? Check out Introduction to special relativity for an example. Such pages rarely have a further reading section either. Ottava Rima (talk) 15:02, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

since so many editors are here
.. since so many editors are here, why don't y'all seize the moment and band together to actually improve the article, top to bottom? it certainly is important enough to warrant the attention, and it just as certainly could use some help. Forex, the section on Applied Linguistics looks like a sad, wilted cabbage that's been left too long on the counter. Ling.Nut (talk&mdash;WP:3IAR) 12:49, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * It seems blatantly obvious that people are opposed to expansions of the text and would rather have an expansion of the promotional section at the bottom. Notice how there are so many "experts" in the talk page and yet not one of the group currently showing ownership has bothered to fill in citations on the article? It is obvious that a few topic bans will be needed before anyone would be "allowed" to edit the page to improve it. Ling, if you want, we can actually create something nice and fully cited at Wikiversity and then take it up to the community at village pump so that we can get around the ownership edit warriors. It seems like the only possible way to actually fix the long term damage that they have caused. Ottava Rima (talk) 14:37, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Ottava: there is no place for ad hominem attacks in this discussion. Mind WP:CIVIL please.·Maunus· ƛ · 14:49, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't really think you understand what an ad hominen is. I have not "attacked" anyone. Saying that people are owning the page and edit warring is not an attack. However, using "civil" in such a situation is actually a violation of civil. Ottava Rima (talk) 14:54, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Making disparaging comments about other editors "personality types" is.·Maunus· ƛ · 14:58, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * If that was true, then Arbitrators declaring people at ArbCom of doing exactly what I said (edit warring, showing ownership, etc), should be blocked. Oh wait, that would be a complete misunderstanding of our policies. I am allowed to comment on other people's actions. Everyone is allowed to. When you start talking about personal things outside of Wikipedia and not dealing with Wikipedia, that is when its a problem. Now, seeing as how none of this has to deal with the above, can you stop trolling the talk page? A cursory glance at WP:NPA could have told you 100% this and yet you continued. Ottava Rima (talk) 15:03, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * classifying other editors by personality types is not "commenting on actions". As for your rataliation by accusing me of trolling thats merely amusing.·Maunus· ƛ · 15:19, 30 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Maunus, Ottava is clearly either not serious or not knowledgeable about the topic, nor how to build consensus, so let's just ignore him. We've spilt too much ink on this non-issue as it is. Lingnut's right that it's energy that could be spent improving the article. kwami (talk) 15:29, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Funny how you can say -I'm- not knowledgeable on the topic when I have been the only one proving that I have knowledge and provided a huge amount of sources directly and indirectly that verifies it. Hmm, lets see, who here has an FA dealing with a major historical linguistic topic? Or who here has credentials that are known by both the foundation and ArbCom? That would be me. Ottava Rima (talk) 15:34, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * You are trolling. There is no purpose for you to make such accusations, yet here you are disrupting. And personality type is not a personal attack in any regard. The absurdity of your comments is amazing. Ottava Rima (talk) 15:34, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Ottava Rima is the troll in this thread. Denouncing WP:OWN isn't a personal attack. But turning a thread calling for an effort to improve the article into a forum to whine about personal frustrations isn't exactly proper WP:TALK behaviour. As Ling.Nut says, a number of qualified editors have shown up on this talkpage, but so far their contribution has mostly been the prevention of attempts at derailing the article rather than positively improving it. A significant number of qualified editors agreeing on something, even if the agreement is simply to not include some point, is the very opposite of WP:OWN. --dab (𒁳) 13:24, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Subfields organization
Ling.Nut, I like your suggestion and am going to take it as an opportunity to do a shameless plug for one of my projects I've been hoping to try.

Anyway, to be perfectly honest, I'm not a fan of the way Linguistics is organized; it seems like a rather arbitrary way to break down the field and to lump various subfields into categories, and furthermore it seems to leave several holes. To name just a few examples..."diachronic linguistics" doesn't necessarily have to be a whole separate category of subfields, it's more often a method used to inform other areas of research (for example, phonologists, syntacticians, etc., all often bring in diachronic evidence to support whatever they're doing). Of course, people also do study historical linguistics for its own sake, but still... As for the Contextual linguistics section, it's quite ill-defined and broad, not to mention just plain wrong in parts (I would never say that psycho and neuro "relate linguistics to the medical sciences"....the goals of psycho and neuro are just like other subfields, to better understand language and how it is represented in the brain, they only differ in the methods they use and the amount of cross-talk they have with fields like computer science and cognitive science....while the goal is often ultimately to do something that is medically relevant&mdash;I certainly don't want to waste my life doing silly experiments about parsing of phrase structure errors if it turns out that work is never going to help anyone&mdash;it's certainly not a medical science). Likewise, I don't see why Linguistic analysis has its own subsection; from my skim of that section is sounds an awful lot like forensic linguistics, which I would put under applied linguistics in any case.

Basically, I don't know where these divisions in the article originally came from or who put them there, but maybe it would be better to guide ourselves by a division that is attested somewhere else&mdash;for example, the way most intro textbooks divide up the field, or even something silly like which way the rooms are divided up at the LSA. Having some more structure in this section would allow for a better treatment, I think, of the various subfields that exist. <b class="Unicode">r ʨ anaɢ</b> talk/contribs 14:52, 30 April 2009 (UTC

Definition
"Linguistics is the scientific study of natural language". Linguistics is the scientific study of language. period. Natural, constructed or possible doesn't matter. There is no reason linguistics couldn't treat Esperanto, Klingon, Sindarin or C++. ·Maunus· ƛ · 14:47, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Good point; I've changed it to "language". Not sure when that "natural" crept in there; it has also recently said "human language", which I'm sure the Gardners, the Premacks, and Herbert Terrace wouldn't appreciate. <b class="Unicode">r ʨ anaɢ</b> talk/contribs 14:57, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I believe the decision to include "natural" was intended to exclude mathematical and computer languages and artificial languages like that, but not to exclude constructed languages which are meant to look like natural languages. If anyone can think of a better term... AndrewCarnie (talk) 15:14, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Comp Sci uses many linguistic terms, and many of the linguistic pages share information with computer science. Those like Rosalind Picard when researching Artificial Intelligence work with those like Chomsky (both are at MIT). The "natural" would remove the actual of linguistics. Ottava Rima (talk) 15:36, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * HI Ottava, I know you are feeling under attack here, so please don't take my comments the wrong way, but you've actually missed my point. Computer science and linguistics are definitely linked. Computer science definitely uses terms from linguistics, and computer science is a useful vehicle for studying natural language processing etc. etc. etc. The point I was trying to make, a point that computer scientists themselves make, is that there is a distinction between computer languages (C++, Basic, Haskell, COBOL, Java, etc.) and "natural" languages (including constructed "natural" languages like Elvish and Klingon). Linguists don't study the structure of computer programming languages. The point of adding "natural" to the definition was to exclude specialized invented code systems that don't fall in the traditional domain of study of linguists, but to allow for the study of language as done by computational linguists. Computational linguists (like the ones in my department) refer to what they do as "natural language processing" (NLP), Natural Speech Synthesis etc. with precisely this distinction in mind.AndrewCarnie (talk) 15:49, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * That's fine, but my point was not about computer language. It was about understanding language acquisition as a whole, which is more than just "natural". AI is concerned with how computers would develop language on their own. Chomsky, in trying to understand the natural language acquisition device, has pursued many different paths (natural and artificial) to understand how language development works. Ottava Rima (talk) 15:52, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * (ec) Echoing Carnie here...I think his point was not that programming languages and natural languages are unrelated, but that linguists may not necessarily study programming languages for its own sake like they do natural ones. Of course there is a lot of cross-talk, and linguists use computer science to inform their theories (for example, look at the augmented transition network grammars that were big in the 70s/80s, that's all from computer science) and computer scientists use linguistics, but that may not necessarily mean that most linguists are going to spend a lot of effort studying, I dunno, left dislocation in C++ (even if such a thing existed). That being said, I don't know if there's any reason they couldn't if they wanted to, and I personally don't have a strong opinion on what the lead sentence says. <b class="Unicode">r ʨ anaɢ</b> talk/contribs 15:54, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * @Ottava the problem here, I think is that you are using "natural" in its intuitive common usage, and I'm talking about the technical usage of the term. Natural language in computational linguistics includes among other things studying how computers learn languages, how you can make a computer imitate language, how you can use computers to analyze languages etc. etc. etc. The term "natural" here is being used in its technical sense (a sense already established on wikipedia Natural language) AndrewCarnie (talk) 16:08, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * (irrelevant aside) I just reread the Natural language article. It's seriously a mess. if anyone want to clean that up, sure needs it.AndrewCarnie (talk) 16:15, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Many of the core linguistic pages need clean up. But yeah, we need to come up with a a lead sentence that has a link to an adequate page that covers all aspects of linguistics. If natural language was used as you defined it above, then I would support it. If it is defined as the natural language page seems to define it, then I wouldn't. Ottava Rima (talk) 16:30, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm the one who changed "language" to "natural language" several months ago. I did so to emphasize that the purview of linguistics does not include computer languages, most constructed languages (people may study Esperanto to gain insight into the human language faculty, but I doubt any serious linguist attempts to study Quenya or Klingon that way), forms of animal communication like bees' dances and birdsongs, or other nonlinguistic forms of communication like body language and traffic signs. I did this precisely because Supriyya kept wanting to pretend linguistics does include that sort of thing, and the sources I added are sources that specifically said that linguistics is the study of natural language (in the technical definition of that term). If the lead has been changed back to "scientific study of language", I hope the sources I added have been replaced with other sources backing up this different claim. —Angr 16:21, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I think pretty much any intro textbook by someone respected in the field could be used as a source for the current wording. But I was being hasty and BOLD, and if the consensus is to keep "natural language" for the reasons described above I'm ok with that.  That being said, I do think constructed languages are included at least a little bit...they may not be a matter of lots of study, or the main way people learn about the human language faculty, but there are at least a couple people out there who take interest in the general phenomenon of constructed languages for its own sake (I'm not one of them, but they exist).  Of course, the article shouldn't give undue weight to that, but for the sake of having a simple and clear definition at the beginning (we certainly don't want to replicate this discussion, in the lede, for lay readers) we should probably be relatively inclusive.  The fact that the rest of the article barely mentions conlangs, if at all, would be enough to show that even though they may be included in the definition the lead sentence gives, they aren't exactly a big deal. <b class="Unicode">r ʨ anaɢ</b> talk/contribs 16:38, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Lets keep the sources as are and put back "natural" - I don't agree with the definition but it seems sufficiently well supported for now.·Maunus· ƛ · 17:05, 30 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, constructed languages are the subject of linguistic study, but their presence is so minor as to be almost negligible (I don't know if anyone's even looked into creolization with native Esperanto speakers, for example). The term 'natural' is generally used, AFAIK, to draw a line against computer languages, which are not considered language in the linguistic sense at all. (Though people may look at them to see what they can tell us about language, just as people may look at birdsong, they are AFAIK not the subject of linguistic study.) kwami (talk) 17:45, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * O'Gradys "Comtemporary linguistics" a commonly used primer has a chapter on animal communication (chapter 17).·Maunus· ƛ · 18:14, 30 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, but note it's 'animal communication', not 'animal language'. That's like a book on Slavic languages adding a chapter on Indo-European: outside the subject area, but relevant. I've never heard of linguists studying animal communication for its own sake, certainly not calling it 'linguistics', but there is research to see what light it can shed on human language/linguistics. (I expect if it's ever demonstrated that some animal communication fits the definition of language, then the field of linguistics will expand to cover it, but so far that hasn't happened.) kwami (talk) 18:45, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Topics to be included
We need a section on theories of language. It should cover the universalist and functionalist debate and their different perspectives on what language is including such notions as "innate", Universal Grammar, formalism, linguistic relativity, language instinct, the neurological basis of language, denotation, pragmatical theories of language, theories of language and logics etc.

We should also subdivide the history sections into schools or periods, e.g. "pre-linguistics" and early grammarians, Neogrammarians, european (Saussure, Hjelmslev, ) and american schools of structuralism ( descriptive structuralism Boas/Sapir and Bloomfield and Generative structuralist schools, functional schools, cognitive linguistics etc.·Maunus· ƛ · 18:57, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * There is a section call "schools of linguistics". It could definitely be expanded, but wouldn't this section serve this purpose.AndrewCarnie (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 05:57, 1 May 2009 (UTC).
 * I think that section should be exchanged for the ones I have suggested. It is much more readable and well organized to describe the schools in a historical development in connected prose. That lets the reader see how schools emerge from and supplant one another, and describe how their ideas are new in relation to previous schools. The section I proposed on theories of language should substitute the one we have on Variation and Universality - since these are only two important concepts on which schools of linguistics are divided when it comes to theories of language.·Maunus· ƛ · 13:09, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

The speech acts in the free media: is it all right here anyone to agree or disagree something of linguistics? Is it useful at all?
I think this type of question triggers many, so this is my point.

We have never seen such a place like the Wikipedia few years ago for any global citizen to participate a choice of topic. And it is not just the mass media, though it serves as if it is alike by controlling (or not controlling) the inputs--like a knowledgeable person act as a minor, a minor takes the ownership of an input from a knowledgeable person, inserting something with or without identities, acting as a serious and honest administrator but avoiding the necessary contents purposely, etc; it serves nevertheless as a great knowledge source (that sometimes one can not even find in a great university).

It seems there are many linguists here, and some of them are the global experts in these fields. And that I have some problems as well. Not because in a thought like that they do not aware that they can also make mistakes sometimes but on the question whether such critics and errors can be acceptable to them if such things are found to be from anyone in a free and non-archetypical environment while in architypical environments such things are rare. Nevill Fernando (talk) 05:02, 4 October 2009 (UTC)


 * What? <b class="Unicode">r ʨ anaɢ</b> talk/contribs 02:50, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Perhaps it's a "Colorless green ideas furiously sleep" comment? (Taivo (talk) 03:19, 16 October 2009 (UTC))

I think there are skilled linguists (not few but many)who are not known in the Wikipedia, and one of the problems why they do not participate for some inputs here is most likely the fear for peers and outsiders in edit wars, self-image, inner conflicts, misunderstandings etc. One might also say however that the Wikipedia is not a right place for such discussion because of these kinds of problems (as noted above) or of a pragmatic assumption which has its non-conventional meaning. That is, there may be fortifying issues for facile recruitment of issues than issues in linguistics as they appear. It is of course sometimes seems as the powerful collaboration and cooperation. However, unfortunately, I also fell recently in two such traps (but escaped without serious intellectual losses in UNE and USU). Nevill Fernando (talk) 00:11, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I still don't see what you want. Are you asking a question? Proposing a change? Proposing anything?
 * And I still barely understand what your messages mean. Do you know there are Wikipedias in other languages? Your native language's Wikipedia could probably use your help. <b class="Unicode">r ʨ anaɢ</b> talk/contribs 04:30, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
 * In 'talk: linguists', it is useless to approach a person of this character with a comment or question. Sorry, this is only my view; others may see things completely different. Nevill Fernando (talk) 05:13, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
 * rjanag, telling someone they should go away and speak in their own language amounts to linguistic discrimination. if you don't cognize someone's comments, please use a dictionary. Alinovic (talk) 09:32, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Alinovic, perhaps your dictionary use could increase as well ("cognize"). Rjanag and I had the same problem...Nevill F's comments contain perfect English words, but his choice of words and the syntax of his comments was not even close to normal, grammatical English.  I don't think he/she is using machine translation, but it's possible.  If a non-native speaker's comments are not being understood by native speakers, then they need to back up and simplify their sentences so that clarity is maximized.  Five short, clear sentences are far, far superior to one long, convoluted, ungrammatical sentence that no one understands.  (Taivo (talk) 12:39, 19 October 2009 (UTC))
 * This is still primarily an encyclopedia. People who are unable to help with building the encyclopedia because they can't express themselves clearly are tolerated up to a certain point. But it's perfectly acceptable to make constructive suggestions, such as going to a different language version (e.g. http://es.wikipedia.org for the Spanish version), in what seems to be an obvious case. Upon a closer look it seems that Nevill Fernando lives in Canada, but that's surprising given the way he expresses himself. Hans Adler 13:03, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
 * additions to articles in broken English can be reverted. "Linguistic discrimination" is actually a good thing here, considering that we are English Wikipedia and considering that its opposite would be indiscrimination. Garbled comments on talk are a different matter. A bona fide effort should be made to figure out what the user is trying to say. If no sense can be made of the comment even when charitably trying to read sense into the comment, it can be ignored. In the present case, it is rather easy to discover Nevill Fernando's gist, but as it happens, he isn't making any specific suggestion, he just appears to be musing on the nature of Wikipedia. Therefore (and not because of the broken grammar), it is safe to say that this section is serving no puropse within WP:TALK and can safely be removed. --dab (𒁳) 13:09, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
 * The hidden tone here seems to me the reflection of fear to express something, though one has understood what is being uttered at least in the subconscious level. On my passage above, for example, the sentence “Sorry, this is only my view; others may see things completely different” is very clear but is grammatically not correct. That is, the sentence does not have a proper complement but completes its sentence by an AP instead. In linguistics, these are the basics to talk about. Of course, I have still lots of these problems. However, it is wrong to believe that all English linguists are free from such problems or they understand these problems very clearly. It is stiil though not very nice such occurrences are pointed out for linguistic reasonings, in linguistics, i think these are interesting thing to talk about.Nevill Fernando (talk) 15:27, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
 * The problem was not that there were mistakes in your grammar. The problem was that the meaning of what you were saying exactly was lost in them.  While Dbachmann has, correctly, pointed out that a general tone and point-of-view was expressed, the details of what you wanted to say exactly were lost.  I don't care if you make a grammatical mistake (my wife is a non-native speaker), but I do care whether or not I can understand what you are trying to say despite any errors.  (Taivo (talk) 17:01, 19 October 2009 (UTC))
 * Nevill, why don't you just explain to them again and be done with it? Alinovic (talk) 11:11, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
 * And I still find the headline too long. Pruning. Alinovic (talk) 11:13, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I do not understand how a heading can cause problems to anyone. So it seems to me a false presupposition or a false assumption of readers who assume “speech acts” as assertions that only consist of locutionary act, illocutionary act, and perlocutionary act. If I am correct, the speech acts are simply the norms of utterances in a given language use (can be of semantics or pragmatics). A speech act in Wikipedia, for example, asking the editor if a heading is not understood rather than changing a heading is the best conduct. And as there are options for anyone to create questions and give answers, at least giving suggestion to the editor of a question for change is an example of a speech acts in public domain. Nevill Fernando (talk) 04:00, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Adjectival vs. Adverbial
The pages of ‘Adverb’ and ‘Adverbial’ here (Wikipedia) need some improvements. I think the word 'adverbial' is not used for adjective in any modifications or complements but somtimmes an adjective as an adjectival also in a false sematic assumption. Can anyone clarify this, perhaps with two examples? Nevill Fernando (talk) 02:01, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I just got these examples from someone by email.
 * Adjectival: Brett is fast in flipping pages with the helps of Andrew and Paul.
 * Adverbial: Brett can also prune trees fast with a joystick.
 * These examples seem correct, but there are still some problems in syntactic analyses. Nevill Fernando (talk) 05:03, 22 October 2009 (UTC)


 * When I checked these explanations in Wikipedia and other sources, I found many different explanations which lack their logical formations or easy explanations. Here are two explanations on the subject, which are simple explanations. However, my question also whether there is a verbal element in the example A, and should the complement in the example B a prepositional phrase.


 * Linguist A:
 * Example: The eye is bigger than the belly. (A verb phrase that can consist of simply a verbal element.)


 * Linguist B:
 * Example: Nels retired before Max joined the faculty. (An adverbial (adverbial clause) consisting of NP VP PP.) Mihkaw napéw (talk) 22:42, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I think the complements in 'A' and 'B' are good examples of Adjectival and Adverbial respectively.

On the question about the verbal element in the sentence 'A', it is only stated that it can consist of verbal element (to mean, possible occurrences). However, the predicative complement in the sentence The eye is bigger than the belly does not have any verbal element; an adjective phrase.

On the question about the grammatical categories of the sentence 'B', it is varied among linguists according to their approach to available syntactic theories. However, the economical treatments have two options--(a) showing the adverbial as an adverb phrase, (b) showing the grammatical classes as they are. So the syntactic categories of the sentence 'B' should be S → NP VP, i.e. the word ‘before’ as an open class instead of closed class (preposition). Nevill Fernando (talk) 03:31, 24 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Nevill, don't mind if I ask, but what is the purpose of this lesson? Alinovic (talk) 17:24, 24 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Let me answer this. What do you think about the purpose of this page? Or can you perhaps better describe how a meaningful talk in linguistics should be other than the edit that you now referred? If you can understand this edit fully, you definably have at least a question, comment, agreement, disagreement, or explanation. Do you have any?--Mihkaw napéw (talk) 18:05, 24 October 2009 (UTC)


 * . This is not a page for discussing linguistics; this is a page for discussing improvements to the attached article. <b class="Unicode">r ʨ anaɢ</b> talk/contribs 18:30, 24 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree with the above remarks. However, there are no articles or articles which lack explanations or correct explanations. So an appropriate way of bringing miscellaneous issues to many contributors of similar articles is to brink the issues to their main subject, i.e. ‘Talk: Linguistics’. One may however see things differently and say—it is better to discuss only matters about how to improve an attached page, though such approch may be usful in some cases but not in all cases. Nevill Fernando (talk) 19:40, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
 * This talk page is only for talking about how to improve this specific article. If you want to discuss how to improve Wikipedia's coverage of linguistics in general, the thing to do is to join WikiProject Linguistics and start a discussion on that talk page. +Angr 20:31, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
 * It seems everybody has some problems (including myself) to get things straight. This page per se not about improvement of the affiliated page ‘linguistics’ so far but about its components. That is, as it appears, there is not even ONE discussion about improvement of this page ‘linguistics’. I do not see any appropriate discussion page other than this. However, one may redirect this if it is appropriate that way. Also, I love to see any other meaningful discussions about ‘adjectival vs. adverbial’ than oterthings (perhaps not necessarly very important).--Mihkaw napéw (talk) 22:27, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Sometimes we all leave little bit crispy in our communications without their smooth flow as to their linguistic correctness. But talking about that purposely in a state of angriness, misunderstanding, etc. or for a good cause is other matter. I do by the way have more problems in phonetic articulations than people in general, which I have so far never recovered fully.

Now I come back to see any further discussion on ‘adjectival vs. adverbial’, which i have explained for corrections on Wikipedia articles about 'adverb vs. adverbial', 'adjective vs. adjectival', 'adjective phrase vs. adjectival', 'adverb phrase vs. adverbial', and about some syntatic components. And these are not just confusing grammatical concept in a secondary or post secondary schoolings, but one may find more about who else have these kinds of problems and why.Nevill Fernando (talk) 23:36, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Suggestions
1. The intro says: "linguistics is the scientific study of natural language"

A lay reader may not understand this sentence. It's too specific. This article should be for the lay reader. How about just "linguistics is the study of either one language or a comparison between many languages"?

2. Why has the discussion ended on this page? Is there a problem?

3. Why don't you create a test page or sandbox for these editors you refer to who create sock puppets to make comments there?

4. The first paragraph is too long. It's hard to read. There should be only one line in the intro and then paras following it. Instead you have thirty lines in the first introductory paragraph, and noone will read us.

Alinovic (talk) 12:51, 4 December 2009 (UTC)


 * The first sentence is accurate and easy to understand; I don't see any reason to change it. <b class="Unicode">r ʨ anaɢ</b> talk/contribs 13:40, 4 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Many mightn't know what is natural language, science, etc Alinovic (talk) 13:56, 4 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I am not sure whether you are in the right place. This is an encyclopedia. We don't censor information according to someone's idea that perhaps 5% of the population in some country might not know the word "scientific" or might not know that there are artificial as well as natural languages. (Or whatever it is you are trying to argue. I made up the details to illustrate that I have no idea where you are coming from that you even think your proposal makes sense.) If you want to do radical simplifications that lead to a loss of encyclopedic information you might be more happy with the simple English Wikipedia.
 * I actually agree with you to the (very limited) extent that the first paragraph is too long and too heavy. Apparently someone tried to cram all the disciplines of linguistics into it. But it's hard to see what you have done precisely in your edit apart from splitting it. Your change to the first sentence was definitely not OK. Hans Adler 14:15, 4 December 2009 (UTC)


 * The target audience for this article is not people who don't know what "science" is. I don't think such a person would be looking for this article in the first place. <b class="Unicode">r ʨ anaɢ</b> talk/contribs 15:38, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Even if they were, that's one of the reasons the two terms link to articles. garik (talk) 10:10, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Does Wikipedia have a "target audience"? I thought advertisements did. Now that this has been argued about for very long on the discussion page can someone suggest any other different way of wording it? Thanks, A. Alinovic (talk) 14:59, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
 * No one agrees with you that a different wording is needed. <b class="Unicode">r ʨ anaɢ</b> talk/contribs 15:00, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The wording is perfectly fine just as it stands. (Taivo (talk) 15:05, 17 December 2009 (UTC))


 * But my question about the target audience is still unanswered. What do you mean by target audience and who is our target audience? Wikipedia doesn't need a target audience. It is for anyone to read who clicks on it. Alinovic (talk) 13:09, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Many also previously have debated about whether this article is appropriate and simple for the lay reader. I'm only discussing that. -A. Alinovic (talk) 13:21, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Please point to the "many" who have argued that nonsense so we can start a sockpuppet investigation in case you are right. I seriously doubt that more than one person has proposed such a nonsense, even on the wide internet. Hans Adler 13:58, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Looks like you're thinking the same thing as I was...I think the "many" is all Supriyya. <b class="Unicode">r ʨ anaɢ</b> talk/contribs 14:27, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I think the comment about "sandbox for sockpuppets" pretty much summed it up. (Taivo (talk) 14:34, 21 December 2009 (UTC))


 * Well, here's one on here.

"Mixing them up is confusing to the lay reader." AndrewCarnie (talk) 05:26, 29 June 2008 (UTC)


 * A.
 * Alinovic (talk) 14:37, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
 * If you're going to cite another discussion, please learn how to cite a diff. Your link is worthless because it just points to an entire page of text.  I'm going to ignore your links until you actually point to what you want us to read.  (Taivo (talk) 14:43, 22 December 2009 (UTC))


 * No, bring your attention only to the thing there said by AndrewCarnie. Not the entire link. Ignore the link. The link's not important, just a reference for further prodding and reading. AC refers to the importance of the lay reader in that line. And I think he was right in there. Why don't you agree with him? We could continue the debate if we all please Alinovic (talk) 14:50, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
 * AC is not talking about the intro in that discussion. It's irrelevant. <b class="Unicode">r ʨ anaɢ</b> talk/contribs 16:25, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
 * But AC does mention the lay reader. Why doesn't AC join in to this discussion? Perhaps he can clarify what he meant? I mean he says lay reader. I think he's right. So, I ask again - who is our target audience? We must define this for further clarity. The student of linguistics or the teacher of linguistics, the general curious by-reader of linguistics or those working in the professional applied linguistics fields? Thanks, Alinovic (talk) 19:08, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
 * He never says the introduction is confusing to the lay reader, so I don't see how this is relevant.
 * And when I said "target audience" above, what I meant is that someone who doesn't know what "science" and "language" mean is not going to be looking up this article anyway. I don't see why you've taken that one comment of mine and obsessed over it so much. <b class="Unicode">r ʨ anaɢ</b> talk/contribs 19:18, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Alinovic obsesses because it's part of Suppriya's plan to inject non-linguistic speculation into the linguistics article. (Taivo (talk) 19:31, 22 December 2009 (UTC))
 * No, I'm not obsessing. Why use non-linguistic speculation? This is not non-linguistic speculation, this is linguistic speculation itself. Rjanag, I'm asking about your target audience comment because I myself would like it if one was specified for each wikipedia article. Not all subjects can be for everybody and we must be acceptant of that Alinovic (talk) 19:41, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
 * That discussion does not fit here. If you want to make a community wide discussion about how to make articles fit better to their target audiences (traditionally the target audience of encyclopedia has been the "lay reader") then take it somewhere else, for example the village pump. If you just want to change the definition of linguistics to not include "science" or "language" then I think we can safely say that consensus does not agree that that is a necessary change.·Maunus· ƛ · 20:46, 22 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Also I agree with "scientific" because one can't get philosophical with linguistics. But I have a problem with the word natural. Many languages are studied in linguistics and linguistics is not about natural or artificial languages but language in general. So I think we should remove reference to the word natural. Alinovic (talk) 14:32, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Like how generative grammar actually stands against the concept of natural language Alinovic (talk) 14:44, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * That's got to be one of the most ill-informed comments I've ever seen here. If one "can't get philosophical with linguistics", what is Philosophy of language, and how did philosophy play a role in the development of cognitive science (File:CognitiveScienceSeptagram.png)? And since when were philosophy and science opposites?
 * And nearly all linguists do focus on natural language. If you go to any linguistics conference you will find very few, if any, people who are interested in, say, the acquisition of Perl.
 * As for "generative grammar stands against the concept of natural language", that is your own opinion. The whole generative thing is one of the major controversies in linguistics, and you think you can boil it down to one sentence because you read it in a book somewhere? <b class="Unicode">r ʨ anaɢ</b> talk/contribs 14:59, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

But philosophy of language is a separate discipline. It's different from linguistics in it that linguistics is the scientific study of language. Philosophy of language is not a scientific study of language. As for the generative grammar statement, Chomsky himself says in many of his writings and interviews that generative grammar is "alanguage" (that's in my own words but you get the drift). He says it's not about languages but about language in general, etc, etc. We can quote and reference him generously in the article too if that's what it takes to prove my point. It's unfair of you to say my comment is ill-informed without reading the whole thing. Chomsky has been one of the greatest influences on linguistics and we mustn't deride that. Alinovic (talk) 09:49, 11 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I have stated before that I am in basic agreement with Alinovic in this regard - While "natural languages" is what many linguists study, just as many linguists simply study "language" - I don't think "natural" is a necessary qualifier and that it introduces an artificial barrier in the description of the field's topic.·Maunus· ƛ · 15:36, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Then if we agree with each other why can't we change it? Let's please remove the word natural. I also think we should make it amply clear in the first paragraph that this is not a philosophical subject. Alinovic (talk) 11:46, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Alinovic, while Maunus may agree with you on the deletion of "natural" in the introduction, the majority of other editors here do not. If you change it without consensus, you will be reverted (again).  I must respectfully disagree with my colleague Maunus on this issue.  Even though many linguists say they study "language", they don't add the "natural" qualifier because in the context where they make that statement, the qualifier is not necessary.  In the context in which it was written (or said), disambiguation was not necessary as only natural languages were clear from the context (or at least that was the assumption).  It's all about necessity.  In this context, it has proven necessary to distinguish natural language from other language.  How many times have you done a Google search including the word "language" only to find that the majority of hits are to computer programs?  That's the key here--necessity.  (Taivo (talk) 12:22, 12 January 2010 (UTC))
 * It is true that there does not seem to be consensus for changing "natural language" to simply "language", I just felt I needed to reiterate my position now that the topic was brought up again. ·Maunus· ƛ · 12:26, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

The hatnote, the hatnote (and other)
I see the sysadmins have taken this one over. I can't say that I blame you, as these linguistics contributors - they appear to be mainlycomputer/linguistics double majors - can be pretty stubborn. But now the question arises, can one actually work with sysadmins, or is the temptation to power too great? The question comes up because the article still needs work; for example cite web formats for the external links, see also missing and various and sundry points. The hatnote isn't too good; it only covers one topic, but there are a good many. I thought, let's put in a disambig; however, there are more topics than would be covered by the disambig, so I put in a ref to the index of linguistics articles. It was reverted. Well OK. I can see rjanag's argument, if he wants a strictly disambig page there, according to a narrow interpretation of disambig, I can see that, even though I wouldn't take so narrow an interpretation. However, the disambig does not currently exist. Maybe it should, I don't know. There are a good many linguistics disambigs and other lists. My inclination currently is to do the linguistics disambig and change the hatnote. The problem I have with working on this article is that I do not care to butt heads with sysadmins. They dont reason and they don't discuss, they just decide and then the force that decision. I'm aware that such a trait is human nature. I'm not against sysadmins; good Lord, we need Wikicops. But who now is going to work on this article? It's the same case as the A article, no one dares to work on it. Tell you what, I will try a few changes, being an experienced editor. I think the first will be the see also and then the disambig page and the hatnote; subsequently the cite web formats for the links. Let's see how you behave. If you prefer to butt heads, then I suppose you will have to finish and polish this article yourselves; however, sysadmins don't usually do that, so the article will be unimprovable until the lock comes off. If you disagree with any of these intentions, try to let me know in advance so I don't waste my time, hey? However it turns out, merry Xmas.Dave (talk) 14:41, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
 * admins don't really have any particular power in determining content - it is a coincidence that some of the editors who take a special interest in the linguistics article are also admins. Admins are supposed to discuss reasonably and abide by consensus just like all other editors, so don't worry about not agreeing. If there is a disagreement then it will have to be discussed rationally and decided by consensus - and a decision cannot be taken until we know what we're discussing. So feel absolutely free to lay out your plans or visions for improving the linguistics page here. ·Maunus· ƛ · 14:59, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Btw I agree with rjanag that there is no need to link to the index of linguistics article form the hat note. That is a non standard way of using hat notes - hatnotes are for avoiding confusion by linking to dab pages or articles with similar titles. A link to something like that should be in see also or in the navigation bar. Your other ideas sound fine, especially cleaning up the refs. ·Maunus· ƛ · 15:04, 24 December 2009 (UTC)


 * First of all, Botteville, I didn't revert you as an "admin", I just reverted as an editor. The fact that an admin makes an edit doesn't mean "sysadmins have taken over"; admins are just regular editors, and can edit just like anyone else. (Even Jimbo Wales makes edits here and there; that doesn't mean "omg Jimbo Wales has taken over the article.)
 * Secondly, your hatnote is entirely unnecessary. Hatnotes are not for directing readers to related topics (that's what the See Also section is for). Hatnotes are for linking to pages with the same title--ie, other pages that someone may have been looking for when they type in "Linguistics". Someone who types "Linguistics" in to the search bar might actually be looking for the journal; they certainly wouldn't be looking for Abudiga, Accusative case, X-bar theory, or the other articles in the index. <b class="Unicode">r ʨ anaɢ</b> talk/contribs 15:27, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Well OK, revert me as a regular editor and not as a sysadmin if you like. It makes no difference to me at this point as I see I am outnumbered by consensus. I don't agree about the disambig. There might be a number of words that differ from the word by one letter or a grammatical form. Or, the word might be included in a phrase. Names are a good example. The reader might like to know what use in what phrase, so we list the names. What you say is not really according to practice. To follow your opinions strictly we would have to take out most disambig pages. Do you really think that should be done? Most disambigs in fact practice quite a bit of freedom, or wiggle room. For example, if the there is a Wiktionary box you are not supposed to repeat the definition at the top but that is quite common practice. It doesn't really matter to me as I thought the article was not bad to begin with. I'm only trying to make it better. What I value most on Wikipedia is quality. Typically "on the street" so to speak, whenever you mention WP, people laugh or become scornful. I believe in the concept. Thanks Jim Wales for starting WP and sticking with it despite no doubt formidable obstacles. I would like to see respect instead of laughter. This isn't a try-out for personal articles and personal egotism. You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. But, seeing that I am outweighed I give in gracefully. Now, the links down the bottom, I think you should check those out because that is a favorite place for editorial opinion and advertising. We have cite web, which supplies enough information to identify the site. We don;t need to know what the editor thinks of it. And, I would suggest someone put in the see also with all the lists, as this is an overall introduction. For my further role in the article - well I perceive myself as having reached the point of diminishing returns, so I'm getting off. It is really too hard just to improve it a little. You do it. I trust with all that talent between you, you can come up with an A rather than a B article. Six months from now I look confidently forward to seeing an unlocked article properly formatted and referenced and checked. If I see nothing done I will know that SOMETHING went wrong. I will not even speculate what at this early stage. Maybe everything will go better than expected; that often happens. I remember there was one on the human being and another on the military history of Rome that seemed hopeless but now appear to be superior. The human being one was asserting that man is a great ape and the main editor being a powerful man he would brook no interference. He would remove any template put in. He did not prevail; what it says now is fairly accurate. It took months to achieve that but the public prevailed. Well, I am sorry you did not want me in your correctional clique. I'm going back to the articles that need more work. Ciao, and merry Christmas. I may not peruse this discussion for a time; I'm off the article. I accept your assertion that it was not your intent. Handle the article your way. If you want to tell me something and it seems urgent, send me another message; otherwise, I presume our business is closed here.Dave (talk) 20:35, 24 December 2009 (UTC)


 * The article is semi-protected because of a sockpuppet who has been messing it up for years, and for no other reason. Semi-protection doesn't mean that people aren't interested in improving the article. <b class="Unicode">r ʨ anaɢ</b> talk/contribs 04:01, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Can we have a section on neologisms?
Alinovic (talk) 16:01, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Neologisms aren't really a major branch of linguistics. They are more appropriately discussed under lexical issues.  (Taivo (talk) 16:38, 8 January 2010 (UTC))
 * I agree. It's not really the right article for it. garik (talk) 16:51, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

But we do study the lexicon, don't we? (Ally) Alinovic (talk) 09:30, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, and linguistics is concerned with many things for which this would be the wrong article. The point of this article is to give an overall survey of what linguistics is, not to go into detail about such specific topics as neologisms.  Similarly, this isn't the right article for sections on Verner's Law, verb raising, final devoicing, syntactic priming, assimilation, autosegmental theory, language attrition, social selection, code switching, c-command, initial consonant mutation, Sprachbünde, faithfulness constraints, or any of a whole host of similarly fascinating topics with which linguistics is concerned.  These all deserve their own articles; there is no space for sections on them in this one.  garik (talk) 10:45, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

But there are books specially written on neologisms if I'm right? Alinovic (talk) 14:30, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * There are books specifically written on everything, that doesn't mean we have sections on everything. I just bought this book, but I'm not going around saying we should add a "Processing the Chinese language" section to the article. <b class="Unicode">r ʨ anaɢ</b> talk/contribs 14:52, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * That was kind of my point: there are probably books written on most of the topics I mentioned. As Rjanag says: doesn't mean we need a section on them in this article. garik (talk) 20:32, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I think the laystructure out of an article like this would do best by following more or less that of a couple of well chosen linguistics 101 textbooks - I have yet to see one that has a chapter on neologisms. ·Maunus· ƛ · 16:00, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I like Maunus's suggestion that we model the organization of the article after a few well chosen intro books. That makes total sense to me. Comhreir (talk) 18:28, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

"Phonetics is a related branch"
"Related" seems redundant to me. That appears in the first paragraph --212.120.247.186 (talk) 23:28, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, isn't it a related branch? We did study that it is. Alinovic (talk) 16:56, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
 * It's simply a branch of linguistics. "A related branch" makes it sounds as if linguistics anmd phonetics are both branches on the same node of a large macro-discpline.·Maunus· ƛ · 17:56, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
 * It does say "related branch of linguistics". I think the point is that it's related to phonology, mentioned in the preceding sentence.  The word's not doing much work though, since most readers almost certainly know that the two sub-fields are closely related.  garik (talk) 20:39, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Wouldn't the appropriate thing to say be "phonetics is a branch within linguistics"? assuming that any branch could be related to another and if it is written about in the article all branches are related, then wouldn't it be an assumption to re-state it? I'd say so. I also removed the word scientific because it is like stating the obvious. Would you say a sentence like "garik is a boy" while he is standing in front of you? there are many such words in this article. 1. linguistics is a science; 2. artistic literature 3. related branch. (it's obvious) Alinovic (talk) 12:39, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
 * No, it's not obvious. Linguistics is a science.  Without directly saying that linguistics is the scientific study, then the door is opened for all kinds of impressionistic "linguistics" that is not within the field.  This has been discussed before and consensus is strong that "scientific" remains.  For too many casual (and other) readers, linguistics can mean many unscientific things.  "Artistic" is another one of those words that is important.  There is "scientific literature", for example, that is not covered by literary criticism.  (Taivo (talk) 13:17, 15 January 2010 (UTC))

You have an interesting point. What is scientific literature about? Alinovic (talk) 13:29, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Read the link you provided. (Taivo (talk) 13:45, 15 January 2010 (UTC))

Things there are hardly very clear. The writing is cloudy. I wanted to inquire whether what you were referring to was literature that was about science or literature that was created in a scientific way. That is my question and the link doesn't explain clearly. You see, the question I have is about whether science is the content of the literature or the form of the literature. Thanks, Ally. Alinovic (talk) 14:44, 15 January 2010 (UTC) All these words are simply too obvious. Alinovic (talk) 14:52, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually thinking about I guess the addition of "related" is probably due to the fact that some people do not consider phonetics a part of linguistics proper but rather a branch of acoustics, and consider phonology to be the branch of linguistics that studies sounds patterns as a part of language.·Maunus· ƛ · 15:39, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Heres a definition: (pg 284) "Scientific discipline with the goal of describing language and speech in all relevant practical and theoretical aspects and in their relations to adjoining disciplines". HEres another one: pg 37 "Linguistics is usually defined as 'the science of language' or alternatively, as the scientific study of language" (oh, and in "Cours" Saussure describes linguistics as a subbranch of semiology).·Maunus· ƛ · 15:51, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
 * As it happens, it was me who added "related". I put it that way purely to make a link with the previous sentence: phonetics is related to phonology in a way that it's not related to other linguistic fields. I meant nothing more by it. It certainly had nothing to do with any idea that phonetics might not be a part of linguistics proper. The sentence explicitly states that phonetics is a field of linguistics. garik (talk) 16:05, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

But wouldn't copying definitions get wikipedia into trouble for plagiarising? Alinovic (talk) 16:37, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
 * It's not plagiarizing when the wording is found throughout the linguistic literature: "Linguistics is the scientific study of natural language".  Just as no one can copyright the phrase, "Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492".  (Taivo (talk) 16:54, 15 January 2010 (UTC))
 * Whether or not they're the same person (and, in spite of recent changes to Alinovic's user page, I still strongly suspect that they are), Alinovic seems to have Supriyya's penchant for drawing editors into long and pointless discussions on this page. Let's not feed them.  garik (talk) 16:58, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Semantics
There's little on semantics in the article. I am a semantician and I can prepare some contributions and show it to the community. If we all agree on it, let's add it in. Fellowscientist (talk) 11:36, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Go ahead and add a short introduction to the field of semantics and its relation to general linguistics. Sounds fine.·Maunus· ƛ · 12:31, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, I don't seem to be able to edit the article. It's limited. Fellowscientist (talk) 21:57, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry about that. You can post your addition here at the talk page, and one of us will move it over to the main article after reviewing it. <b class="IPA">r ʨ anaɢ</b> (talk) 22:17, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from Drclausen, 1 July 2010
Outside of anthropology I don't know anyone who considers linguistics a subfield of anthropology, especially considering it is almost never housed in the department of anthropology and actually contains its own sub discipline of Anthropological linguistics. A more accurate description would be that it is a division of Cognitive Science. See http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cognitive-science/

Change: and is one of the four subfields of anthropology. To: and is one of the subdivisions of Cognitive Science.

This edit would also add consistency with the Wikipedia page on Cognitive Science. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_science

Drclausen (talk) 22:42, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm no expert however I think this is debatable. I'm also hesitant to make the change because the current wording has a citation, and it would mean removing/invalidating that citation. Perhaps if you could reword your proposal to append "subdivisions of Cognitive Science" in some way instead of replacing the current text? -- &oelig; &trade; 00:11, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
 * While many departments of Linguistics are independent now, many are housed in different places in the campus structure. There are several common places:  in Languages, in Anthropology, in English.  Cognitive Science is not one of those locations.  I resist being categorized as a "cognitive scientist".  My natural leaning is toward either Languages or Anthropology.  Only theoretical syntacticians (following Chomsky) might lean towards Cognitive Science.  I would prefer Social Science as a super-category that includes more of linguistics than just Chomskyan-inspired subfields.  While none of the intro textbooks I just glanced at say, "Linguistics is a subfield of X", they all emphasize language's social function and none really talk about language as a cognitive function.  Without that social angle, language has no function.  Therefore, it is more natural that linguistics is a social science, not a cognitive science.  The connection with anthropology is traditional not from the angle of linguistics, but anthropologists consider linguistics to be one of their four branches.  Linguistics has two main parents:  Anthropology and (Classical) Philology (depending on whether you come from the New World or the Old World).  The sentence, "linguistics is one of the four subfields of anthropology" is 100% accurate because that's how anthropologists define the field of anthropology.  But linguists don't say that.  But as a super-category, introductory textbooks emphasize the social aspects of language, so "Social Science" is far more accurate than the limited "Cognitive Science".  When I was doing fieldwork and writing the first grammar of a language, "cognition" had nothing to do with it.  --Taivo (talk) 00:59, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your response. I agree that Cognitive Science may be a little restrictive and Social Science would be an appropriate super category. I certainly don't want to imply Chomskyian linguistics is the primary focus of linguistics. While Linguistics may be historically related to Anthropology, it is also related to many other fields including Philosophy and Psychology. As it is currently practiced however, it operates as a completely separate academic discipline. According to the NSF it falls under a category completely separate from Anthropology http://www.nsf.gov/div/index.jsp?org=BCS. I also provided a reference that indicated that other groups consider Linguistics a subdivision of Cognitive Science. Given the contentious nature of classifying one area of academic research as a subpart of the other maybe it is best to simply say "and is one of the subdivisions of Social Science." We seem to all agree that it is a Social Science and this leaves the issue of privileging one discipline over the other out of it. It might be better to highlight the large degree of overlap in both methodologies and subject matter between subparts of the two disciplines. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Drclausen (talk • contribs) 18:00, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Can't we just not call it a sub-field of anything, at least not in the very first sentence of the article? "Linguistics is the scientific study of natural language" is a simple, straightforward description of what linguistics is. Continuing with "Linguistics is a sub-field of X" is just an attempt at pigeon-holing that is not overly informative to the average reader (how does it help them understand what linguistics is?), and is rather contentious for the informed reader (it's just begging for a turf war -- I'm a linguist and I certainly don't consider myself an anthropologist). I'm not saying that we shouldn't try to classify linguistics, but I don't think it needs to be leading the article. (Furthermore, the citation doesn't even explicitly state that linguistics is a sub-field of anthropology -- it says that traditionally, in the US, some anthropologists have been trained in linguistics. Saying that some anthropologists do linguistics doesn't mean that all of linguistics is a sub-field of anthropology.) WillNL (talk) 11:03, 9 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Similar discussion has come before, though sometimes in passing. See especially /Archive 4 and other discussion in that archive, as well as mentions in /Archive 5 and /Archive 3. (But beware that you are wading close to the whole "post-structural linguistics" morass.)


 * To offer a very short rehash from my own point of view: Historically (roughly 1890s-1970s), linguistics was considered a subfield of anthropology in North America, especially the USA, but not so much in Europe, India, the former Soviet Union, etc. Since about the 1970s North Americans have often treated linguistics as a separate field, not a subfield of anthropology, modern languages, psychology, or other fields to which it is related (but see also Taivo's list of sundry university departments housing linguistics divisions, above). Cnilep (talk) 15:36, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

"Language and Natural Language"
This is a rather silly repetition. It's one or the other, not both. --Taivo (talk) 06:43, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

In fact, especially in the first sentence, is should NOT be "natural language." Linguists were behind Esperanto--a wholly artificial language. Linguists also study other artificial languages, from computer programming languages to communication codes. Reynoldst (talk) 16:05, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
 * L. L. Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto was not a linguist but an ophthalmologist, and generally constructed languages are not of interest to linguists as more than curiosities. Some semioticians might study programming languages, but you would be hard pressed to find linguists working on that. ·Maunus· ƛ · 16:23, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Hello. Can I care to contribute? I feel the word natural is a bit ambiguous. How would we explain computational linguistics then? Fellowscientist (talk) 09:04, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Computational linguists usually work with processing natural language through computers, not by applying the tools of linguistics to programming languages.·Maunus· ƛ · 12:04, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
 * But I'm not talking about that kind of language. HTML is also called a language. Artificial languages? Sans artificial intelligence? Don't computational linguists work on artificial language? Fellowscientist (talk) 13:15, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
 * It is not coming across clearly what you are trying to suggest. If you are suggesting that computational linguists study programming languages such as html that is wrong. Programming languages are called languages but they are not languages in linguistic sense but codes. Artificial languages are languages that are constructed by humans for specific purposes - they do not really have anything to do with artificial intelligence. Some linguists do try to make computers emulate natural language processing by creating kinds of artificial intelligence, but their interest is natural language and how to make computers produce it.·Maunus· ƛ · 13:51, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Have you seen the article computational linguistics? Maybe you are using an idiosyncratic definition for the term? Just because linguists study language doesn't mean they must study everything that is called a language. Words have different meanings in different contexts. E.g. in mathematics a "language" is just a set of strings, with no semantics attached (a priori). Hans Adler 14:04, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I know Maunus. I think you are right too, Hans Adler. But it would still sound nice if we broadened the scope of language. What's the harm in doing that? Fellowscientist (talk) 19:41, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree with the idea of broadening the definition to language in general - or maybe to "human language".·Maunus· ƛ · 19:51, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I think that "human language" is better than "natural language", but disagree with just plain "language". "Language" has become too broad a term, encompassing "body language", "language of love", "computer language", "animal language", etc.  Linguistics is not scientifically interested in these other things except as they touch on the understanding of "human language".  --Taivo (talk) 20:58, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, conlangs do not generally hold much interest for linguists, but linguistics would be properly concerned with them, e.g. if they were to creolize and thus become more interesting from that POV. (After all, several sign languages are probably at least partially conlangs.) So 'natural' in the sense of 'non-artificial' is not necessary IMO. — kwami (talk) 21:10, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually I think a linguistics professor close to where you are Taivo, Dirk Elzinga, has done work on conlangs, Marc Okrand was also a linguist.·Maunus· ƛ · 21:27, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, Maunus, they have invented conlangs, but that is taking linguistics and applying it beyond human language. The directionality is different.  It's like the difference between the physics of sound and music.  One is the artistic application of the other, but the reverse is not necessarily true.  It's the difference between science and applied science.  Like I mentioned above, studying conlangs in a linguistic sense doesn't help us to describe conlangs themselves, but is a way to understand aspects of human language.  Understanding human language is the goal of linguistics.  --Taivo (talk) 21:38, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
 * But conlangs are invented by humans, how can they go beyond human language? For me it is the stuudy of possible languages and can I believe the study of conlangs could possibly constribute to our understanding of the human language faculty, at least to the same extent as for example introspective data form English. I also know some linguists have worked with studying acquisition of constructed languages in order to understand constraints on learning etc. Many linguists have worked with animal communication as well - e.g. Tomasello uses data form animal communication to develop a theory on the origins of human language. I am just arguing that linguistics can take data from many different places and bring it to bear on the study of human languages. ·Maunus· ƛ · 21:44, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, I agree with you that information from other places can enlighten our understanding of human languages. But whenever a linguist explores the wider world, it is always with the goal of bringing more understanding to the fundamental issue of linguistics--human language.  With that aim, a linguist can look at geography or religion or history or physiology or psychology, etc., but he/she always brings it back to human language.  So rather than saying a linguist studies "A, B, C, D, E, and F", it is fundamentally the case that a linguist studies "human language", bringing to bear whatever variety of tools he/she feels is useful.  --Taivo (talk) 21:55, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Btw. Now that we are all gathered here, have any of you had a chance to look at the rather substantial rewriting process I have begun over at Language - your comments and contributions would be appreciated.·Maunus· ƛ · 22:36, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I support the change of "natural language" to "human language" as it more accurately captures my understanding of what Linguistics is. Allformweek (talk) 23:13, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
 * The use of "human" here is a pleonasm - all language is human; the term is only extended to other species in a metaphorical sense. Also, artificical languages, which are not the subject of linguistics, are clearly part of human language. "Natural" is the term needed to circumscribe the aspects of "human language" which are the subject matter of linguistics. --Pfold (talk) 14:10, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Artificial languages are not human language. --Taivo (talk) 14:30, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I also believe that conlangs and certain "unnatural" languages could be of interest to the domain of cognitive linguistics, a very valid part of linguistics study as a whole. Fellowscientist (talk) 16:30, 4 October 2010 (UTC) Fellowscientist (talk) 17:03, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Many things are "of interest" to linguists, but only as they shed light on the primary subject of human language. --Taivo (talk) 17:38, 4 October 2010 (UTC)


 * I would certainly like to see the overextension of the word "language" end, but I'm not convinced that there is anything metaphorical about it. I think to most people, "language" is a totally natural way to describe any system of communication or information representation. What do you guys think about this possibility: "Linguistics is the scientific study of language. Among linguists, the term "language" has a technical meaning, from which artificial language, computer code, and animal communication are excluded." Allformweek (talk) 20:27, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry, no. Linguistics isn't the "scientific study of language", but the scientific study of a specific type of language--human language. The other is too broad a statement, even with the qualifying statement following.  --Taivo (talk) 20:36, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm looking in one of the most popular textbooks--An Introduction to Language by Fromkin, Rodman & Hyams--and the first quote at the beginning of chapter one is from Chomsky: "When we study human language".  Then the first line of the second paragraph:  "The possession of language, perhaps more than any other attribute, distinguishes humans from other animals."  The rest of that paragraph includes the words "language" and "human" in nearly every sentence.  The entire context is "human language".  --Taivo (talk) 20:41, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, but Taivo, that would mean relying only on Chomsky, which is dangerous. It would not be neutral. Is there anyone else whose reference we can draw? Fellowscientist (talk) 20:49, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I think Taivo seems to be the only one who feels this way. All the rest of us seem to be interested in a broader meaning of language. How about having a poll or something here; is it allowed on talk pages? Fellowscientist (talk) 20:45, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
 * No, you are not correct, Fellowscientist. Read the comments above and you will see that I am not the only one who objects to plain "language" in this context.  We have had this discussion many times before with others who wanted to remove "natural" or "human" from the equation and then include such things as semiotics or computer language or animal language or other things into the too-inclusive term "language".  (See here, for example.)  You must remember that most of our readers will come here and think that dolphins and whales use "language" as well.  --Taivo (talk) 20:49, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, Taivo. My suggestion had been to use the term "human language" instead of "natural language". "Natural" will disclude many human languages. But "human" will not include animal language. We both seem to be saying the same thing. So why use the term "natural", then? Fellowscientist (talk) 20:56, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
 * The text now says "human". --Taivo (talk) 00:13, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, thanks, Taivo. Fellowscientist (talk) 15:52, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Invitation to editors to vote/discuss definition of science in Talk:Science
There has been an extensive discussion on the Talk:Science of what the lead definition of the science article should be. I suspect this might be an issue that may be of interest to the editors of this page. If so, please come to the voting section of the talk science page to vote and express your views. Thank you. mezzaninelounge (talk) 18:40, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

...language

 * for anyone reading, the edit in question is . <b class="IPA">r ʨ anaɢ</b> (talk) 19:08, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Rjanag wrote: "rv good faith edits: innate language is an issue in much of linguistics study but there is certainly ling. that doesn't concern itself with innate language. putting it in 1st sentence is WP:UNDUE" - At issue is the fact that linguistics does go beyond the study of natural language to the study of language itself, which I represented as innate language. I think this basic point needs to be made clear in the article lede. -Stevertigo (t | log | c) 02:17, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't think it's fair to suggest that all fields of linguistics concern themselves with innate language. Sure, more psychological ones do (psycho/neurolinguistics, language acquisition, syntax...), but plenty of legitimate fields of linguistics, such as sociolinguistics and anthropological linguistics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, and corpus linguistics, are not really all that concerned with the innate representation of language. <b class="IPA">r ʨ anaɢ</b> (talk) 02:20, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
 * The issue is not to suggest that all fields of linguistics study one thing or another. I don't understand why you are imparting this qualification to what I propose. -Stevertigo (t | log | c) 06:14, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
 * We can't just introduce the concept of innate language like that - it is not an assumption with which most linguists agree that there is such a thing. Language as a mental faculty is not the same as innate language.·Maunus· ƛ · 11:50, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Well then what does "innate language" mean if not the symbolic system of the cognitive faculty itself? -Stevertigo (t | log | c) 23:54, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Innate language is a concept used in relation to the notion of Universal Grammar that holds that a large part of actual language is innate. Not all linguists believe that there is any basis for believing in the reality of innate language. The human capacity for acquiring language isn't necessarily a kind of "language", many linguists see it particularly as a neurally conditioned propensity for symbolic communication that can be developed though social interaction, they wouldn't describe that as "innate language". ·Maunus· ƛ · 14:51, 22 September 2010 (UTC)


 * If I'm not mistaken, the point of saying "natural language" rather than "language" is to exclude constructed languages, computer languages, animal languages, &c. from the scope of linguistics. What does "innate language" include that "natural language" would exclude besides a Chomskian connotation? Allformweek (talk) 22:55, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
 * That's a good point, but my sense is that "natural language" is used here to differentiate from "language" which to my mind points directly to the innate concept, not the other types you list. Got to run. -Stevertigo (t | log | c) 23:54, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
 * It seems pretty clear to me that "natural language" is used here to differentiate from artificial languages (like, say, Python or Esperanto) and the non-linguistic communication systems of other species. The reason for using that term (in fact, I think I vaguely remember the disputes that led to its being used instead of just "language") is to exclude these things, not to exclude the innate part of language.  The study of natural language, in other words, still encompasses quite a lot of things: Universal Grammar; acquired grammar; I-language; E-language; competence; production...   garik (talk) 10:57, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
 * That is exactly what the "natural" is there for - it was included after long discussions with Supriya about what exactly linguistics is studying. I still favour just having "linguistics is the study of language" unqualified - but I don't think there is consensus for that.·Maunus· ƛ · 14:51, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Maunus wrote: "I still favour just having "linguistics is the study of language" - In its purest form, to my mind at least, that's what linguistics actually is. I think the lead suffers a bit from the idea that natural language is the conceptual top of the ladder. Im simply suggesting that the intro mention the cognitive sciences and (in the way article leads need to differentiate from related concepts) mention that one of the objects of CS is the fore mentioned "innate language." -Stevertigo (t | log | c) 17:35, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I strongly agree with Stevertigo :Fellowscientist (talk) 19:48, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Like I said at the top, it's fine to mention that, but it would be wrong to imply that linguistics is only concerned with teh cognitive side of things. There is plenty of linguistics that is not cognitive science. <b class="IPA">r ʨ anaɢ</b> (talk) 17:42, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Understood. Will come up with some proposed additions. -Stevertigo (t | log | c) 18:54, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Why can't we just say "linguistics is the study of language?" as Maunus suggested and as Stevertigo emphasises? That sounds so nice. :-( Fellowscientist (talk) 20:56, 7 October 2010 (UTC) I even might suggest "linguistics is the systematic study of language"' Fellowscientist (talk) 20:56, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Because the word "language" has been used in much wider contexts than what linguistics is concerned with. Computer language, animal language, body language, etc. all fall outside the interest of linguistics.  --Taivo (talk) 21:57, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Additions

 * I know I have been meaning to do this since a while (following my discussion with Allformweek) but haven't been able to take out the time. I have a few suggestions for additional sections and content. Please leave suggestions.
 * 1. Semantics. There is very little mentioned about it. That included, anthroponomastics and onomastics are subtopics that we can talk about too.
 * 2. Cognitive linguistics
 * 3. Stylistics
 * 4. Functionalism
 * Do we have any specialists here who could do a good job in helping out with content? Fellowscientist (talk) 21:10, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't think so, Supriya, especially on the last part of the list. We've been over this many times before and your suggestions have no consensus.  --Taivo (talk) 00:14, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Huh? I didn't get what you said? What's the matter with the last part of the list and what is Supriya? Fellowscientist (talk) 15:46, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Stylistics and functionalism don't belong here. They are not linguistics.  We've discussed this here many times before and there is a broad consensus that they are inappropriate in this article.  Read WP:BRD, Fellowscientist.  If you make a change and it's reverted, then you don't just change it again, but you discuss on the Talk page and get consensus.  --Taivo (talk) 20:36, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Functionalism is an important theoretical field in linguistics - and it will have to be covered once this article progresses from the current abysmal state. Cognitive linguistics for example is just one of many functionalist schools. I agree stylistics doesn't belong here.·Maunus· ƛ · 22:00, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm willing to follow Maunus's word on this. Let's start with functionalism please. And semantics. Isn't semantics important? Fellowscientist (talk) 22:25, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
 * If that's what is meant by "functionalism". But it isn't a subfield of linguistics any more than transformational grammar or structural grammar are--it is one possible theoretical approach to linguistic description.  And I didn't say anything about semantics.  That is a subfield of linguistics.  --Taivo (talk) 22:27, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree with you Taivo. As long as we can mention Functionalism as a theoretical approach in linguistics, great. Sure, who denied anything about structural grammar and transformational grammar? We are not here to compete with each other; I think it should be more important to make this article complete in terms of its research. It looks like a skinny child right now. Fellowscientist (talk) 10:02, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I think that stylistics can be added later. I'm willing to wait on that front. Fellowscientist (talk) 10:05, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Don't hold your breath about stylistics. Most of us here do not think it is part of linguistics at all, but part of literature.  --Taivo (talk) 12:37, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Well then. Who am I to oppose community consensus if that's really the case? Fellowscientist (talk) 13:07, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

(out) What's the difference between stylistics and discourse analysis? I, too, have never heard about stylistics in any linguistics class or textbook, but it appears to cover the same issues as discourse analysis. Is this just an issue of two different fields' approach to the same phenomena? <b class="IPA">r ʨ anaɢ</b> (talk) 22:24, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Discourse analysis is mostly about how different kinds of spoken texts are made to cohere by the usage different linguistic devices, it analyses parts of speech larger than a sentence. Stylistics is mostly a kind literary analysis that is occpuied with genre and register specific norms of linguistic usage.·Maunus· ƛ · 22:33, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
 * This is not however what the current artcile about Stylistics (linguistics) says - so maybe there is room for discussion and improvement somewhere (maybe both here and there).·Maunus· ƛ · 22:35, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I guess the intro of Stylistics (linguistics) makes it sound to me like a mixture of topics that are covered by discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, and pragmatics (all of which can address, in one way or another, why people choose to speak the way they do--whether it's an issue of which variety or register they choose to use, what statements they choose to make in order to make a particular speech act, etc.). <b class="IPA">r ʨ anaɢ</b> (talk) 22:37, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, the stylistics article definitely doesn't reflect the general view within linguistics.·Maunus· ƛ · 22:40, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I moved it to stylistics (literature) and merged the page histories. — kwami (talk) 23:36, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
 * That's not really a solution - the content still describes the discipline as a main branch of linguistics. And whats worse is that it seems to be supported by sources... We really should resolve the relation of linguistics to the literary disciplines, semiotics, philology, stylistics and all that. Has no one written about this?·Maunus· ƛ · 23:45, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with Maunus 100%. We do have to resolve that issue. Let's start thinking of how we can do so. I'd suggest that you guys find quotes and sources etc that explains the link. Let's all chip in a bit. Fellowscientist (talk) 11:46, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
 * How about asking for help from some literature people on this? Frankly, literature is not my subject so I don't know how much I'll be able to contribute. From what I can see, most people here are also more into linguistics and science. I think I should post a "help us" message on the literature, philosophy, sociology talk pages. Let me know if I can speak for the community there and do so. I think this is the best idea we can think of. Fellowscientist (talk) 11:55, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I found sources after ten minutes of online searching - sources that clearly are more relibvale than the ones used and that also plainly contradicts the articles viewpoint. I have therefore rewritten the lead of Stylistics. Both of the sources I found (one was an introductory textbook to stylistics at the university level) says that stylistics is a field that applies linguistic methods to literary criticism. This makes it clear that stylistics is not a part of linguistics, but that it uses methods from linguistics.·Maunus· ƛ · 12:23, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
 * That's exactly what my understanding of stylistics is--a bit of linguistics applied to literary criticism and not the other way round. --Taivo (talk) 12:32, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree. Then, Maunus, just go ahead with finding links only between literature and linguistics. Like you said earlier. Fellowscientist (talk) 13:15, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Functional linguistics
Maunus had asked us to bring functionalism into the article. It has not been rejected on the talkpage, Rjnag. Fellowscientist (talk) 21:19, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
 * If you want to add that, why wait? Just make sure that it doesn't sound like a vague essay, the way the rest of the article sounds. There are hardly any sources to the article. And this article is about a field of study. Shameful. Squarrels (talk) 08:05, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Functionalism
Fellowscientist added a section (with a top-level header) that reads like an advertisement for functionalism ("growing field", etc.). I see the in the discussion above several editors have pointed out that functionalism deserves a mention but needs to be kept in context. Perhaps a subsection of the "Schools of study" section might be a better place to put this (or a cleaned-up version of it)? <b class="IPA">r ʨ anaɢ</b> (talk) 21:20, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Alright. Let's start a section called ==schools of study== then. And add functionalism there. Fellowscientist (talk) 21:27, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
 * There already is such a section. What still needs to be decided, though, is whether functionalism should be included there, and how that subsection should be written as it is. Given that you clearly cannot follow Wikipedia's guidelines and write about it from a neutral point of view, that you frequently misinterpret other editors' comments on this page, and that several others here think you are Supriyya, you probably should not be the one to edit this section directly, although you are welcome to provide suggestions and feedback at this talk page.
 * If a functionalism section is added, someone needs to bring sources for it. Specifically, I think someone needs to clarify the extent to which it is an autonomous "school of thought" within linguistics as opposed to just a more general lens/perspective through which linguistic issues may be looked at. (I'm thinking of, for example, something like behaviorism, which is not a "school of thought" in linguistics but is a more general approach that is also applied to psychology, sociology, etc.; or connectionism, which again is a more general approach that may be applied to neuroscience, computer science, and psychology as well as linguistics.) <b class="IPA">r ʨ anaɢ</b> (talk) 21:34, 12 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Ok, now FS has rewritten the subsection on functionalism, under the "schools of thought" heading. As is, though, it's redundant to what is already in that heading (saying that linguistic approaches can be broadly divided into formalist and functionalist approaches). This kind of makes a mess of the section, which was already messy (was it presenting "generative" and "cognitive" as two sub-types of formalist approaches, or generative as an exemplar of formalist and cognitive as a third alternative, or what?). In any case, FellowScientist's new section doesn't actually add anything, it just repeats (less nicely) the stuff that was already there. <b class="IPA">r ʨ anaɢ</b> (talk) 21:39, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
 * So delete the Supriya page. That's the best suggestion, isn't it? Why this angst?
 * Add a line on functionalism.
 * Bring the discussions on Supriya to close. Lets move on. Fellowscientist (talk) 21:53, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't care about the Supriyya issue, I am moving on; do you care to respond to any of the issues I raised above? Particularly the fact that your "line on functionalism" was already in the article? <b class="IPA">r ʨ anaɢ</b> (talk) 21:59, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Alright rjanag. I am willing to let you guys write the Functionalism intro. But please do it soon. I think we need to flesh up the whole article. My only reason for suggesting stylistics and semantics and functional linguistics was that the article looks incomplete and having more information will only help it look healthier. It looks so slim and skeletonish right now. With more topics, even if they are slightly outside linguistics, the article will look and sound better. We can mention them as related fields. But let's first concentrate on functionalism, please. That's an important part of linguistics and must be mentioned. We should also put in a para about formalism, as it will help the reader differentiate between the two. Maunus has accepted that he too would like to move on and work on a good article and leave the Supriya issue behind, esp. since I am not a sockpuppet. We must bury Supriya in the grave for once and for all. I think we need to start working on the article urgently, and I would urge you to let me edit it too. Please improve upon what I write, because as a Wikipedia writer, I am definitely a novice still. I have not been here for as long. Fellowscientist (talk) 06:38, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Post Structural Linguistics

 * Not a good-faith suggestion, nothing more to discuss. <b class="IPA">r ʨ anaɢ</b> (talk) 18:09, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

I read up some of the archives, and came up this page that Supriya started which got deleted? Is this what the conflict was about? I don't think it's a bad idea, personally... Suggestions? Fellowscientist (talk) 18:16, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

This is not bad! Fellowscientist (talk) 18:23, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Someone even has a degree in post structural linguistics! Fellowscientist (talk) 18:31, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

It has also been mentioned on the LINGUIST LIST as someone's specialisation. Fellowscientist (talk) 18:46, 13 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Linguist List directory entries are user-submitted, not created by Linguist List staff. <b class="IPA">r ʨ anaɢ</b> (talk) 19:27, 13 October 2010 (UTC)


 * It's a staff member who is listed to be specialised in it, rjanag Fellowscientist (talk) 19:36, 13 October 2010 (UTC)


 * My point is, she listed herself that way; the fact that it's listed as her specialization doesn't mean it's "officially sanctioned by Linguist List" or however you were trying to present it. <b class="IPA">r ʨ anaɢ</b> (talk) 19:39, 13 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Linguist List is FILLED with references to post structural linguistics. I'm thinking of reviving that page latter. After this one is done/complete. Fellowscientist (talk) 19:43, 13 October 2010 (UTC)


 * We went through all this "post-structural" mess with Supriya and many of us are not interested in rehashing it with you, Fellowscientist. Before embarking on some post-structural crusade, I strongly suggest you spend some time reading the archives of this page to see what has been said before.  --Taivo (talk) 19:48, 13 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Why, what's so wrong with it? Fellowscientist (talk) 19:57, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Please read the archives. --Taivo (talk) 20:26, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Here is an easy link for you: Talk:Linguistics/Archive 4. <b class="IPA">r ʨ anaɢ</b> (talk) 21:51, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, I don't agree. I think we should have a section on post structural linguistics. If you look at deletionpedia, the old post structual linguistics article anyway comes up as one of the first few searches on google. We might as well mention it here now. Fellowscientist (talk) 05:25, 14 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Thats not going to happen untill you can produce a basic textbook in linguistics that devotes a section to it. Post-Structural linguistics is like neuro-linguistic programming in that it uses the word "linguistics" to feign a connection to the scientific study of language. Post-structural linguistics is part of the de-constructionist programme, not a part of linguistics.·Maunus· ƛ · 12:31, 14 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Fellowscientist, I don't think you've read any of our past discussion. The consensus here is no post-structural linguistics.  --Taivo (talk) 05:38, 14 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Why can't it be a seperate page then? The consensus here is no post structural linguistics, but it can be a seperate page. Fellowscientist (talk) 05:41, 14 October 2010 (UTC)
 * No it can't. The consensus is that the article should not exist at all, as it was a made-up topic cobbled together by synthesizing unrelated materials. See (again) Articles for deletion/Linguistics (poststructural). <b class="IPA">r ʨ anaɢ</b> (talk) 06:17, 14 October 2010 (UTC)
 * So you should have improved it, added the right material, instead of having deleted it. Why didn't you change it if it were like that and add authentic information to it? Fellowscientist (talk) 09:12, 14 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Read the discussion, Fellowscientist. We have given you the answer to your question.  That answer is found at the link Rjanag provided.  Further discussion here is pointless if you are not willing to read what has already gone before.  A consensus already exists on the matter.  --Taivo (talk) 12:53, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Maunus there are sections devoted to post structural linguistics in books. I think one of those books is also referenced in the old deleted article. There we are. I've given you what you want. Now start the article and a section of it here. Fellowscientist (talk) 21:31, 14 October 2010 (UTC)
 * You are being disingenious. There are no basic textbooks in linguistics that I have read that as much as mention Derrida or post-structuralist anything. I am not necessarrily adverse to the idea of an article on the topic, but it would have to be a lot better sourced than the old one. It still wouldn't merit mention in the article on linguistics - but maybe in the articles on Philosophy of language or Post-structuralism.·Maunus· ƛ · 22:23, 14 October 2010 (UTC)
 * The only book in the deleted article is a philosophy book by Derrida, and it doesn't have a "section devoted to post-structural linguistics"; the author of that article grabbed a quote from Derrida's book and used it to try to argue that Derrida was a post-structural linguist, which is synthesis.
 * No offense, but judging by how poor a job you're doing understanding other editors' points in this and previous discussions and understanding various articles and sources, I am beginning to suspect you lack the competence to contribute positively to articles.
 * Also, making ultimatums and demands ("now start the article") is not going to get you far. <b class="IPA">r ʨ anaɢ</b> (talk) 21:36, 14 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Some of us have suspected a connection between Fellowscientist and Supriya. Judge for yourself.  (BTW, giving him/her my phone number is not an option.)  --Taivo (talk) 23:51, 14 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Taivo, do you think I would really make such a statement on your talkpage if I were Supriya? The person who I suspect she is, is a woman who works as an admin at one of the universities I teach. If we are having problems with her, my suggestion is that we catch her and confront her - or report her to the police. That will also make you sure that she and I are two different people, not the same. It will put an end to this matter for once and for all. That's why I'd like one of your phone numbers. No I am not talking about Derrida. Let's forget about Derrida. I'm talking about chapters that have been called post structural linguistics. They are called PSL but don't mention Derrida. They are there. Fellowscientist (talk) 07:07, 15 October 2010 (UTC)
 * You don't report people to the police for sockpuppeting on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a courtroom. <b class="IPA">r ʨ anaɢ</b> (talk) 12:43, 15 October 2010 (UTC)
 * That is pretty funny--"He reverted my edit, officer, please take him to jail and lock him up next to the serial killer." Fellowscientist, I examine multiple intro texts on linguistics every year to select textbooks for my courses, and not a single, solitary one of them has a chapter on post-structural linguistics.  Not a single one.  --Taivo (talk) 13:11, 15 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I was looking for more clues about poststructuralist linguistics. I looked through thr book Language and Gender by Jane Sunderland - it mentions the word "post-structuralist" more than a hundred times throughout - but not once in the combination "Post-structuralist linguistics".·Maunus· ƛ · 17:01, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

I just got this zinger from Fellowscientist on my talk page; I see Taivo got a similar one. I don't know what Fellowscientist's game is, there are several possibilities, but whatever game it is it's still a game, and it's pretty clear that this user is not contributing in good faith (either FS is Supriyya trying to pretend not to be, or it's a user trying to disrupt the project in order to out someone), so maybe it's time to start ignoring him/her. <b class="IPA">r ʨ anaɢ</b> (talk) 17:15, 15 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Hey rjanag and Taivo, I was just responding when I got disconnected. I'm sorry. I should not have suggested that. I had just thought we could have fun. That's all. I take back my statements. Fellowscientist (talk) 17:43, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Subfield of anthropology?
Regarding this edit (first by ResidentAnthropologist, then by Maunus in a toned-down form): I am skeptical about calling linguistics a "subfield of anthropology", especially in the first sentence of the article. Certainly anthropological linguistics is, and certainly a lot of anthropologists do linguistics (and a lot of linguistics do anthropology). But the field as a whole is not part of anthropology. There are lots of parts of linguistics that have little or nothing to do with anthropology (much of psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, theoretical syntax, acoustics, etc...). Furthermore, plenty of academic sources list them as related but separate fields (for example, see this famous figure adapted [somewhat heavily] from Miller (2003) in TICS, a review article detailing the birth of cognitive science in the 50s and how linguistics and anthropology, among other fields, contributed to it); not to mention that many universities have them in separate departments. Calling linguistics a subfield of anthropology, especially in the first sentence of the article, cheapens it (in my opinion). <b class="IPA">r ʨ anaɢ</b> (talk) 02:52, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I must say I agree with Rjanag. Linguistics is not a sub field of any other discipline, be it biology or anthropology or philosophy. To call it a "sub field" is to disrespect it! You may be all means discuss anthropological linguistics in length in the article, but to call it a sub field of anthropology. No way. Fellowscientist (talk) 10:11, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
 * This comes close to being historically correct, but it doesn't fit current usage. For instance, if someone asks me, "Have you taken courses in linguistics?" I would say yes, because I have. If someone asked me if I have taken courses in anthropology, I would say no, although I have taken courses in linguistics. This is current English usage, I am quite sure. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 04:15, 18 October 2010 (UTC)


 * In Europe, linguistics was a subfield of philology, as the context was looking at the history of well-known European languages within the context of their culture. In America, it was a subfield of anthropology, as the context was looking at little-known American languages from outside the context of their culture. In Usonian schools, anthro had four branches: cultural, physical, archeology, and linguistics.
 * If you've taken a course in archeology, would you answer yes to the anthropology question?
 * Anthropological linguistics is a blend of two of those branches, linguistics and cultural anthropology. No-one would consider examining Neanderthal fossils to see if they could speak "anthropological linguistics", so it isn't just any anthropology. — kwami (talk) 10:20, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't think anyone would disagree that it was treated as a subfield of anthropology in the US at one point, but just as I don't think many people in Europe (or at least the UK) would consider it a subfield a philology today, I don't think many linguists in the US would consider what they do to be a subfield of anthropology. I actually suspect that more linguists would consider what they do to come under psychology or biology, at least ultimately, though that's a hunch on my part and I don't suggest we put that in the article! In any case: it seems to me the question at issue concerns the synchronic, not the diachronic, status of linguistics, and currently, I doubt that most linguists think they're anthropologists. garik (talk) 10:59, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
 * It is a development that is specific to the US and mostly predates the development of linguistics as its own science. I am not sure it needs to be in the lead - but I think that it is important to stress the differences between the American and European developments of the discipline. Still in the US there are anthropology departments that have a four field approach and employ both linguists and archaeologists. ·Maunus· ƛ · 11:47, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Of course it all leads back to the fact that American linguistics started out with a heavy focus on documenting the languages of native America and that work was pushed by practitioners such as Franz Boas, who was an anthropologist. Historically, most of the powerhouse American linguistics departments in the U.S. have that as a basis until the 1950s and 1960s--Berkeley, Indiana, Columbia, etc.  Chomsky changed all that and the anthropological connection was severed as the documentation role withered away and the theoretical role became primary.  Today only a very few programs have any kind of anthropological connection at all.  I would say that if we are going to mention the anthropological connection in the U.S. at all, it should focus exclusively on the historical aspect.  I'm not certain it should be in the lead because it is simply not part of the contemporary linguistic scene.  American anthropologists may still think that linguistics is one of their subfields, but that doesn't make it so.  Very few linguists take anthropology courses anymore.  In my graduate work, I was the only one of my contemporaries to do so, and that was only because my focus was Native American languages and primary documentation.  If you look at linguistics students today, the same is true--the only ones taking anthropology courses are those who are doing primary documentation.  It is much more akin to computational linguists taking computer science courses or psycholinguists taking psychology courses.  In neither case would we claim that linguistics is a subfield of psychology or a subfield of computer science.  --Taivo (talk) 12:26, 18 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Importantly, the first sentence of the lede should be describing what linguistics is, not what it was. Maunus and Taivo both put it well in their messages above: doesn't this addition belong in the History section, not the first sentence of the lede? A reader coming to Wikipedia just to learn what linguistics is doesn't necessary need to know what it roots are and how its roots differ between Europe and the US. <b class="IPA">r ʨ anaɢ</b> (talk) 13:19, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Agree. I think its better to keep it out of the lead and place it in the history section. ·Maunus· ƛ · 15:45, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
 * It's good to see consensus develop here. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 17:04, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Arbitrary break in discussion

 * I'm seeing a lot of borderline edit warring going on pertaining to this topic. I'm glad to see it's being discussed. I think that the old American classification deserves some mention out of historical interest, but not in the article lead. I think that's the basic consensus that has developed above, right? Hopefully the turbulence in the article itself can start to calm down now.&mdash;Bill Price (nyb) 18:34, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Intro
We all feel that formalism, functionalism, descriptive, and structural should be part of the first paragraph, as it gives a proper explanation of how linguistics is approached. We have a very good source too. I hope we don't land up edit warring over this. &#39;&#39;FellowScientist&#39;&#39; (talk) 13:56, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
 * If there is no response, I will re-add it myself later. But I don't really think there's anything much to be said. How are the schools hand picked? These are the main ones. Which others are missing that you wish to have, Rjanag? You can always add those too, with sources of course. Unless you are hinting at the one that has NO consensus, which is post-structuralist linguistics... &#39;&#39;FellowScientist&#39;&#39; (talk) 14:08, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Fellowscientist - you have to read WP:BRD. It will tell you how editing here functions. It is good to be bold - but when someone reverts your bold edit you don't revert back - but start to engage in discussion immediately. ·Maunus· ƛ · 14:11, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Then respond to my discussion, M &#39;&#39;FellowScientist&#39;&#39; (talk) 14:15, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
 * You posted your discussion at 13:56 - less than half an hour ago. You have to be somewhat more patient than that. PErsonally I don't have a huge problem with your edit - I think it is a good idea to mention the dichotomy between functionalist and formalist approaches in the lead - I don't think however that descriptive and structuralist schools are opposed to formalist and functionalist. Most formalist and functionalist schools are both descriptive and structuralist. And most descriptive approaches are structuralist. You are putting up a false fourway dichotomy the way you word the sentence.·Maunus· ƛ · 14:22, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree with Maunus' assessment. The edit in question is trying to set up a bunch of different things as "opposing approaches", when really they are all different levels of comparison. Descriptivism is not an alternative to structuralist or functional linguistics, it's an alternative to prescriptism. Relational grammar is not an alternative to structuralism overall, it's an alternative to other specific grammatical theories. This edit is comparing apples to oranges. The first is like saying "Human beings can be classified into three types: right-handed, left-handed, and blonde"; the second is like saying "there are three races of people: Caucasian, African, and French". <b class="IPA">r ʨ anaɢ</b> (talk) 17:51, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
 * 1. Well OK, I never said these are opposing or alternate. I just listed them. 2. I am fine with Maunus's suggestions too. I just think formalism/functionalism should be mentioned in the first line as they are important to linguistics. Want to remove structuralism and descriptiveness? Sure. But I never wrote them as opposing to formalism and functionalism. They were all in one sequence. Same goes with relationalist grammar. Why in the world would you think I wrote them as opposing to each other when in fact I wrote them all in one line as a list? &#39;&#39;FellowScientist&#39;&#39; (talk) 04:56, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
 * You are totally not getting what I just said, and it seems you don't understand what was wrong with your edit at all. On top of all the other problems I listed above, you even made up a nonexistent term ("relationalist grammar"?) when the source actually had the real term; obviously you didn't read the source very carefully. It's becoming more and more clear that you, as I have already pointed out a few times, are not competent enough in your writing skills to edit the article directly. <b class="IPA">r ʨ anaɢ</b> (talk) 05:03, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Synonymous words that mean basically the same thing
I've reverted the needless expansion of synonyms to "sub-fields" twice now. "Branches of linguistics" is not different than "sub-fields of linguistics". --Taivo (talk) 05:54, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Not really, sir. Sub fields, branches, and schools are all different. Squarrels (talk) 16:45, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
 * This isn't going to get anywhere unless you make clear how they're different. garik (talk) 16:49, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Branches are study areas that can be independent, but are connected to the larger area of linguistics. For example, um, neurolinguistics. Or psycholinguistics. Or biolinguistics. These can be independent specialisations, but they emerge from linguistics itself. Sub fields can never be independent; they are sub for a reason; they are the microer aspects of the main field, which is linguistics. Like syntax? Morphology? Phonetics? Syntax is a a sub-field, not a branch. Syntax cannot be part of biology, it can only be part of linguistics. You can't have an MA in Syntax, and even if you do, not without it being connected to general linguistics. This is not the case with neurolinguistics. Or applied linguistics. These are independent, but related. Parallel. You can have an MA in Neurolinguistics without talking about basics of general linguistics. You get me now? And schools are philosophies. Or approaches. They apply to any branch or sub field. Like the generative school. The functionalist school. And so on. I hope I am clear. Squarrels (talk) 20:31, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I think squarrels has a point. The article needs to describe the relation between the different areas better - using precise terminology is a beginning.·Maunus· ƛ · 20:40, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Squarrels may have a point about differentiating between different disciplines within linguistics, but his categorization into "branches", "subfields" is unsupported by reliable sources. I think he has made those subtle distinctions between synonyms up.  Does he have any general linguistic textbooks that make those distinctions?  We can describe this prosaically without using artificial distinctions between synonymous terms.  --Taivo (talk) 00:49, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't know what he means by "You can't have an Ma in syntax [but can in neurolinguistics]". Is that referring to what's written on the cover of an MA thesis, or what people put on their CVs/websites? As for the latter, both those statements are wrong; some people do say "I got my MA/PhD from University X in theoretical syntax", or people who specialized in neuro still say their degree is in linguistics. As for what's written on the cover of an MA/PhD thesis, this may vary from one school to another, but in all my experience it's the name of the department (and perhaps a label for a particular division of the department). People who do their thesis on syntax, neurolinguistics, or whatever on a linguistics department have Linguistics on the cover of their thesis; people who do neurolinguistics in a psychology department have Psychology written there, etc. In any case, I don't think it's true at all that "you can't have an MA in syntax [but can in neurolinguistics]". <b class="IPA">r ʨ anaɢ</b> (talk) 18:51, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure if the sources thing matter greatly here - to me it is a question of having a different terminology to describe the different kinds of relations between e.g. "syntax" and "psycholinguistics" to "linguistics". I think subfield and branch might work well - but other words might also do the job. "Subdiscipline" for the "x-linguistics" and "field" for different fields that constitute linguistics semantics/syntax/phonology etc. might also work.·Maunus· ƛ · 00:58, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
 * But it's all ad hoc, that's the problem. We're going to spend X amount of space describing the difference and then X+Y amount of space describing the difference and describing what our ad hoc terms mean.  Why not just save the Y and describe the difference without coming up with ad hoc terminology that we also have to describe?  --Taivo (talk) 01:40, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
 * But how are we going to "just describe the difference" without using terminology? we don't need to describe the use of the terminology in the article, but we can discuss it here and make sure that we use it ina consistent way. ·Maunus· ƛ · 02:06, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
 * But if we are using "branch" and "sub-field", which are identical and interchangeable terms otherwise, in a special way, then it must be defined--whether it's consistently used or not. There's no point to ad hoc terminology here if we spend more space defining it than we would by just talking about the differences without inventing ad hoc meanings to otherwise completely synonymous terms.  --Taivo (talk) 03:08, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
 * "Branch" and "sub field" are not identical and interchangeable terms. I just explained why. Squarrels (talk) 05:21, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
 * You also can't have sources to explain things that are a matter of common sense. Maybe then, we should have a source for the line "Linguistics encompasses of a number of sub fields." Please find a source for that. Why should I believe you or not think it is ad hoc that linguistics has different sub fields and isn't one big sea of gurgling information? Is this community's intelligence so poor? This is not an issue to be wasting talk space over in the first place, and neither is anyone seeming to attempt arriving at consensus because it is a non issue. I feel as if I'm writing to five year olds. Squarrels (talk) 10:15, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Squarrels, if you want us to follow particular terminology, it's up to you to demonstrate that it's appropriate. Period. If you can't manage that, then we're wasting our time here. — kwami (talk) 10:50, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
 * You may also want to read this. garik (talk) 10:57, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I have been perfectly civil. Allegations and offensive-defensive behaviour of this sort is what your statements seem like. Your insecurity deserves no sympathy. I have also explained the terminology perfectly well. Your arguments are also an insult to Maunus, who was being the only reasonable one here. This article needs change. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Squarrels (talk • contribs) 11:52, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Sources. You need sources. Read WP:RS. — kwami (talk) 13:22, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Squarrels, we do not change things just because "Squarrels says so". As Kwami states more succinctly, prove it--we need sources, preferably linguistic sources that show a difference in usage between "branches" and "sub-fields".  No one is insulting Maunus (or you, for that matter).  --Taivo (talk) 13:31, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
 * (undent)I'm good with distinguishing schools (although I prefer the term "framework"), but I've never heard of this branches/subfields distinction, and to be honest I don't really understand Squarrel's definitions. As far as I can tell, psycholinguistics is a subfield just like Syntax, except that it's an interface area. We actually already make that distinction in the lede. We distinguish between core areas and areas that are interfaces with other disciplines, so I don't really see why the made up distinction between branches and subfields is necessary. Perhaps I just don't understand the terminology.Comhreir (talk) 18:39, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree with everything Comhreir says. A good way to settle this would be to look through a sampling of intro linguistics textbooks (something I've been meaning to do for this article anyway, for other reasons) and see how they choose to refer to all these things, since they generally have a chapter on each. <b class="IPA">r ʨ anaɢ</b> (talk) 18:54, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I suggest you add more sources to the other parts of the article that are in dire need of sources. Squarrels (talk) 08:07, 1 November 2010 (UTC)