Talk:Linguistics/Archive 7

graphics
How about more graphics? The article's at a B level, and graphics might help. Saussure, for example: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ferdinand_de_Saussure.jpg Chomsky ... several Wikimedia Commons options: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Noam_Chomsky — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cecilemckee (talk • contribs) 22:13, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

How about more graphics? Saussure, for example: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ferdinand_de_Saussure.jpg Chomsky ... several Wikimedia Commons options: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Noam_ChomskyCecilemckee (talk) 22:17, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

research field
It can be applied too. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.126.132.139 (talk) 09:23, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Research is always an activity that is applied. But linguistics is not applied, in it that, can you use the word linguistics as a verb? You can't. You can say translation is theory and practice, because translation is the noun (for the theory) and translating, etc is the verb (for the activity). Lexicography too is an activity. So is also describing, and so on. But linguistics is just linguistics. Its knowledge is applied, but it's not an activity; it cannot be used as a verb. MrsCaptcha (talk) 13:28, 28 July 2014 (UTC)


 * What? Utter nonsense. "Activity" ≠ "verb"! See Applied linguistics:
 * Applied linguistics is an interdisciplinary field of linguistics that identifies, investigates, and offers solutions to language-related real-life problems. Some of the academic fields related to applied linguistics are education, psychology, computer science, communication research, anthropology, and sociology.
 * --Thnidu, retired Research Administrator at the Linguistic Data Consortium (talk) 06:45, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Clean up of intro section
I undertook a clean up of the intro section, into which had crept various unsourced assertions about Indian grammarians, and which had moved away from the long-standing consensus version of the first sentence (discussed way back when and finally settled on; changed this summer with no discussion to a very much less pithy version). Overall, the intro had too much in it, and repeated info found in the body of the article. It was also less than professionally written. I tried to sort these things out. My computer's auto spell check also flagged the non-American spellings; if someone wants to change those back to the -ise forms etc., I really don't mind. But all the other, non-orthographical, changes are for the better, in terms of the content and writing, in my judgment. If someone would like to debate them point by point, I'm happy to do so here. But the version produced by User:Heartily was a major step backwards in my opinion, from the earlier consensus-built one. In their note on this talk page, it was clear that Heartily has some difficulties in felicitous expression in English, and these difficulties were reflected in part in the phrasings introduced into the intro section. So I'm going to revert to the version I spent some valuable time cleaning up, trying to make it something I could direct college students and others to without embarrassment.

The major changes I made (besides phrasing) are: 1. Cut sentence about the Prague school (it's a little too much detail for the second paragraph, and the source cited doesn't establish the point) and Bakhtin. Undue weight. 2. Moved and partly rewrote sentence about corpus linguistics out of third paragraph (corpus linguistics isn't coordinate to morphology, syntax, phonology: it's one method for studying such things). 3. Followed with paragraph on Saussure and Chomsky, moving mention of other subfields like socioling and discourse analysis lower. 4. Contrasted formal approaches with nonformal (not informal!) ones. 5. Cut superfluous and unsourced references to Indian grammarians I've never seen mentioned in any intro ling textbook. 6. Cut Derrida paragraph; the inappropriateness of a prominent mention of Derrida in the intro to the linguistics article (and even elsewhere, according to some) was well discussed in these talk pages in the past. 7. Left most of the rambling paragraph with Esperanto etc in, though it should really be condensed for this intro. 8. Reduced the muliti-sentence treatment of areas outside linguistics per se (translation, literary criticism, speech pathology, etc) to a single sentence.

(The other things I cut were the two irrelevant paragraphs under "Variation and Universality", which were poorly written and not germane.)

Perhaps I should've cleared these changes here first, but given how straightforward I thought they were, I thought they'd meet with the approval of the majority of editors here. I apologize for doing laying out this rationale post-facto. I do hope that before any more reverting to the previous version, any particular changes can be debated here first, if anyone wishes to. Mundart (talk) 19:22, 23 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Those changes were not made by Heartily; they were made by me, and I have no language difficulties. Those changes were discussed over several months on the above talk page with consensus having arrived upon them. Please note that in its present condition the article was also nominated for recording (see discussion above on this page itself). As for the areas you don't see of importance in belonging to "ling textbooks", those are very much covered in the syllabi of universities here in the UK where I have taught for several years. Paucity of material published in the area of linguistics is no excuse to it not being covered in a main article such as this. Yet, all of the claims have sources cited, if you would take a deeper look. If you have a problem with the way the language is worded anywhere in the article, nobody would mind you improving upon that. But it shouldn't lead to mass deleting material from the article without any good reason. Whatever seems overstated to you may not seem so to a lot of university departments outside the United States of America (or even some others within, like User Beverley's for instance), for this is no article on American linguistics. MrsCaptcha (talk) 12:07, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
 * As an aside, it may benefit your students a lot more if you would allow them their own research space, instead of imposing upon them any particular encyclopedia, book, or other reading material. Wikipedia doesn't belong to anyone, and therefore anything that's written on it shouldn't even embarrass anyone. MrsCaptcha (talk) 12:26, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
 * So we seem to be an something of an impasse. Besides the spelling issues (about which I truly don't care) and some rephrasings, I made 8 substantive points, and explained their rationale above. Regardless of how or when the material which I changed was originally introduced into the article, I hope you could try to take up these points in turn and help us understand which ones you find objectionable, so we can work out compromises as needed. I find the current version, obviously, inferior in many respects, from the very first sentence, which moved away from the standard "linguistics is the scientific study of language" to something else. In reading over the talk pages you mention, I still conclude that few regular editors here would object to removing mentions of Bakhtin and Derrida in the intro.


 * My mention of linguistics textbooks was in regard to those obscure Indian grammatical terms: if you can supply a reference to them in an intro ling textbook used anywhere in the English-speaking world with a page number, I will gladly stand corrected. I made no claims about the importance or not of related areas such as literary theory, and no claims about their appearance or not in linguistics textbooks. But in fact let me point out that if no intro to ling textbook covers the area in question, it is indeed a very good reason for assigning it little to no prominence in a general encyclopedia article on linguistics: any other approach would constitute original research or undue weight. I was therefore surprised to read your assertion that "Paucity of material published in the area of linguistics is no excuse to it not being covered in a main article such as this": in fact, such paucity is precisely the reason it should not appear in the intro to this article. We do not make the field here; our aim is to reflect it.


 * (I also take objection, for the record, to the insinuation that I am somehow unaware of how linguistics is taught outside the US (where I happen not even to be at the moment). I have taught linguistics in the UK, and have studied and taught linguistics elsewhere in Europe and Asia, for extended periods of time (numbering in years). I have not "mass delet[ed]" material from the article: I cut a few sentences which in my professional judgment don't deserve the weight that they receive from being prominently placed in the intro to the overview article on my field. My professional judgment is formed from wide experience with many intro textbooks and more than two decades of teaching the subject. I am very much committed to the idea that Wikipedia should be a place for all to come to find reliable, accurate material reflecting the most widespread understandings in my field.) Mundart (talk) 12:56, 24 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Bakhtin and Derrida are very much associated with linguistics, and so are the Indian grammarians who formulated several key concepts in linguistics that have been applied to modern theory. Only textbooks can't be sources to a Wikipedia article. This is not a school tuition class. It's meant to cover the research done in the subject area. If you look at several other topics, which are not even studied in schools, you will find the large amount of material comes from academic journals and so on. Linguistics is not studied in schools. It is an advanced topic. So you will not find "textbooks" on linguistics; you will find academic journals and research papers. And newspaper articles. MrsCaptcha (talk) 17:48, 24 August 2014 (UTC)


 * There are very many textbooks on linguistics, including introductory ones (and advanced ones on specific subfields, like sociolinguistics and syntax). I am aiming to make this intro section of the article reflect what such textbooks present, and how they present it, including the relative weight they give to various aspects and ideas. There is widespread consensus in the field, as established in the pages of introductory textbooks, about whether Bakhtin, Derrida, and Indian writers such as Katyayana and Patanjali and their putative roles and influences should be mentioned in introductory material: as far as I know, none of these four have appeared in the pages of an Intro to Linguistics textbook. Again, if you can find a citation to them in an intro textbook, I'd be happy to be corrected. But mere assertion isn't enough. (It should go without saying that the textbooks I'm referring to are those used at university level, not secondary schools. I'm unsure where you got the idea that there are no textbooks on linguistics.) Mundart (talk) 13:00, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Firstly, reflecting only textbook articles is dangerous and can make the field sound too nascent, and this article as if it belonged to the simple Wikipedia. Secondly, my hands are full right now and there's not much time I can devote to this right now. We'll have to just wait for a while. MrsCaptcha (talk) 22:04, 28 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Your part in the exchanges in the previous section (where also see my reply to you) led me to doubt your familiarity with the field of linguistics. After reading through the exchanges directly above and your user page ("Mrs. Captcha is a retired sub-editor and grammar teacher"), all my suspicions have been thoroughly confirmed. While of course a sub-editor and grammar teacher should have a fair bit of linguistic knowledge, that is very far indeed from being a linguist. My advice to you is "Cobbler, stick to thy last."
 * If you wish to discuss this with me, please me. Thnidu (talk) 07:16, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Offered for mining: Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It covers not only particular languages, like French and Nicaraguan Sign Language, but extends to the nature of language in general, to its production, understanding, and acquisition, to the changes languages undergo, to the ways language is used, and to the ways our language ability sometimes goes awry. Since language is pervasive in our lives, linguistics is a huge field. It is also multidimensional: it can be, and has been, divided into subfields in many different ways. The pervasiveness of language results in overlap between linguistics and other fields. Some specialties are defined by overlaps: psycholinguistics, for example, centers on issues of importance both to linguists and to psychologists. As a science, linguistics is concerned with data and with theories that organize and explain that data. To linguists, primary data are the things we say or sign in all our languages. By convention, such data are called utterances, whether spoken or signed. (One of the fruits of modern research in linguistics has been the determination that the languages used by the deaf  are as expressive, as complex, and as resistant to satisfactory explanation  as any other human language.  [Cite notes 10 & 11 in the William Stokoe article.]) Utterances provide direct evidence for a variety of theories. They also provide indirect evidence for theories concerned with structures and functions that are not directly observable in detail, because they are internal and unconscious. Halfb1t (talk) 00:09, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

Clean up needed
I'm undertaking a quick spring cleaning to try to restore the best parts of the version from Oct 2014, while keeping the helpful improvements made in the meantime and cutting the superfluvia and other undue weight items that have crept in. Mundart (talk) 15:37, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

"Humanities" category/template need citations consistent with existing ones or need to be removed
All citations in Linguistics, Humanities, Social Science, and Cognitive Science indicate that the enterprise of linguistics is scientific in method and aim (not humanistic) and that if it ever could be considered to have had anything more than a tenuous relationship to the humanities historically, that has long since ceased to be a notable or relevant description of the field; the relationship of linguistics to the humanities field of philosophy (via logic, semantics, and philosophy of language) is no more compelling a reason to classify linguistics as a part of the humanities than any other discipline that also leans heavily on the same elements of philosophy for either their formal foundations (theoretical computer science and foundational mathematics) or their concern for the scientific modeling of language, belief, and communication -- artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, and the cognitive sciences broadly also have contact with many of the same areas for the same or similar reasons (see e.g. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computational-linguistics and http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cognitive-science).

Appeals to library classification or occasional instances of university institutional structures are transparently facile, ignoring the substance of the matter and the history of linguistics; such appeals also leave unresolved the inconsistency between what is indicated by the weight of evidence of existing citations in the articles mentioned and the lingering presence of the humanities category tags/and template. Either the humanities tags/templates need justification (presumably citations) that doesn't conflict with the existing citations offered, or (the most straightforward resolution), the humanities template and/or category tags should be removed. 128.54.50.250 (talk) 19:57, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

I concur with 128.54.50.250's reasoning, and no one seems to provide reason to disagree, so I'll go ahead and remove the category and template tags. 24.16.211.19 (talk) 21:11, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Recent Unintelligible Edits
Someone seems to be adding lines to the introduction that are a. meaningless b. grammatically wrong c. in an attempt to create problems for this article {...also knowns as Universal Grammar (UG)} MrsCaptcha (talk) 20:34, 1 January 2017 (UTC)


 * I agree with (b), but do not believe (a) and (c). So please give justifications when reverting any changes. Strasburger (talk) 12:28, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

==justification for recent revision

Linguistics is the scientific study of what makes us human; Language. Its study is not limited to communication and what is known as "e-language". It is, according to Chomsky(1957)(1963)(1976)(1993)(1994)(2002)(2013)(2014)(2016) and many other scholars in a number of subfields and branches of linguistics such as theoretical, cognitive, psycho, neuro, bio,etc. the science of linguistics focuses hugely on the role of language in cognition, thought, perception and consciousness. Language is human-specific, no other organism is equipped with it, it is arguably what makes us human. It is primarily used as an internal system responsible for generating an infinity of recursive thought at the conceptual-intentional interface. And later interpreted to sensory-modality and could be externalized. Thinking as sophisticated as we have evolved to possess, would be most ideally like what monkeys do if we weren't equipped with Language. Also there is all sorts of connection between thought (at least language-related) and what we perceive (relativity) and there is a huge number of work on what is called Language and Consciousness. Too many details I won’t go into, yet they can be easily found anywhere you look. Therefore I believe the revision for Linguistics is absolutely necessary since it is one of the most important branches of cognitive science and the very thing which ultimately makes us human. For further reading: Noam Chomsky; Why Only us; 2016 Noam Chomsky; What kind of creatures are we? 2016 Noam Chomsky; The Minimalist Program Noam Chomsky; Aspects of the Theory of Syntax George Miller; Language and Perception Ray Jackendoff; Semantics and Cognition Massimo P.Palmarini; The Bio linguistic approach Massimo P. Palmarini; Language as a natural object; Linguistics as a Natural Science Cedric Boeckx; Syntactic Islands Cedric Boeckx; Language and Cognition Massimo P. Palmarini; Linguistics and some of its underlying dynamics Steven Pinker; The Language instinct — Preceding unsigned comment added by Linguist91 (talk • contribs) 10:52, 2 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Linguist91, you are still making no sense. You are simply putting up chunks of information about linguistics that we all know about. The article already covers everything you are saying here in a different way than you are lecturing us about, all of which you have attempted to add into the article randomly. I request you to first read the article as it stands first with an open mind rather than make your own assumptions. So the end result is that you are simply messing around with the structure of the article meaninglessly, by inserting statements that are unverified, grammatically wrong, and have no context whatsoever at the place that you are attempting to place your philosophical statements. I saw that you have placed similar sermons on linguistics on your own talkpage as you are doing just now on this article's talkpage, but what you simply don't seem to get is that the article has already covered all of this through different sections and references that already exist. Please discuss what you wish to add to the article here on the talkpage first. Thanks. MrsCaptcha (talk) 16:41, 2 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Strasburger, reverting is being done because there are so many tiny meaningless sentences being duplicated by Linguist91 in the middle of the article without any context like I explained, that the only way to cure his/her edit later is to revert back to the older structure, which is and was absolutely fine. He/she is not making any actual contribution to the article, only editorialising the article in an un-encyclopedic fashion. MrsCaptcha (talk) 16:41, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

the first paragraph is not at all well defined. revision NECESSARY
I have tried to address the problem before, and I have provided justification for my claim. linguistics is about understanding the very nature of language in the first place and how it relates to other cognitive processes such as: thought, consciousness, perception, etc. it also studies form, meaning, and context. but the main article about linguistics is only about (what is usually called) E-language. please, some linguists help me out here. the article is being revised by people who do not know the first thing about linguistics — Preceding unsigned comment added by Linguist91 (talk • contribs) 12:02, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Linguistics is the scientific study of what makes us human; Language. Its study is not limited to communication and what is known as "e-language". It is, according to Chomsky(1957)(1963)(1976)(1993)(1994)(2002)(2013)(2014)(2016) and many other scholars in a number of subfields and branches of linguistics such as theoretical, cognitive, psycho, neuro, bio,etc. the science of linguistics focuses hugely on the role of language in cognition, thought, perception and consciousness. Language is human-specific, no other organism is equipped with it, it is arguably what makes us human. It is primarily used as an internal system responsible for generating an infinity of recursive thought at the conceptual-intentional interface. And later interpreted to sensory-modality and could be externalized. Thinking as sophisticated as we have evolved to possess, would be most ideally like what monkeys do if we weren't equipped with Language. Also there is all sorts of connection between thought (at least language-related) and what we perceive (relativity) and there is a huge number of work on what is called Language and Consciousness. Too many details I won’t go into, yet they can be easily found anywhere you look. Therefore I believe the revision for Linguistics is absolutely necessary since it is one of the most important branches of cognitive science and the very thing which ultimately makes us human. For further reading: Noam Chomsky; Why Only us; 2016 Noam Chomsky; What kind of creatures are we? 2016 Noam Chomsky; The Minimalist Program Noam Chomsky; Aspects of the Theory of Syntax George Miller; Language and Perception Ray Jackendoff; Semantics and Cognition Massimo P.Palmarini; The Bio linguistic approach Massimo P. Palmarini; Language as a natural object; Linguistics as a Natural Science Cedric Boeckx; Syntactic Islands Cedric Boeckx; Language and Cognition Massimo P. Palmarini; Linguistics and some of its underlying dynamics Steven Pinker; The Language instinct — Preceding unsigned comment added by Linguist91 (talk • contribs) 12:06, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Please look at : Language as a Natural Object; Linguistics as a Natural Science (by Massimo P. Palmarini; Cedric Boeckx)  Why Only Us (Noam Chomsky)        Linguist91 (talk) 12:41, 2 January 2017 (UTC)


 * As the article shows other linguistic traditions are well alive, and making the Chomskyan approach part of the definition would constitute an infringement of Neutral point of view, one of our five pillars (fundamental principles). See also Describing points of view. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 14:40, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Exactly! Let us stick to the "neutral" point of view. There is, as you can see, absolutely NO introduction to the role of language as an instrument of thought. That is not necessarily Chomskyan so much it is linguistics as cognitive science. Please, even if you despise Chomsky, let the article express the truth Linguist91 (talk) 15:45, 2 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Linguist91, what LiliCharlie is saying to you is that it is your edit that's making the article lack the Neutral POV. By adding Chomsky's concepts into the introduction you are unnecessarily duplicating stuff that is already covered. Secondly, the view on linguistics being cognitive/linked to thought is in fact covered in the article if you read the entire thing. If you feel there should be more coverage on cognitive linguistics, please go ahead and add it in the right place - not randomly in the introduction or wherever you wish to. To add a source/reference that you feel is not being covered, you need to use the "ref" tag at the appropriate place in the flow of the article, which will help you to add works/citations by cognitive linguists as well as by Pinker. Since you seem new to Wikipedia, I suggest you look at the way that references/sections are structured first. MrsCaptcha (talk) 16:49, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Linguist91, all this is not a matter of whether I "despise Chomsky" or not. (FWIW: The contrary is true, my own approach is heavily influenced by Cartesian and Chomskyan thought.) Wikipedia is, however, an encyclopaedia, and we cannot pretend the truth is found as long as serious linguists like Daniel Everett and many others contest this "truth." And yes, MrsCaptcha is right, I was also talking about presentation and the place where certain statements are made. Notably the first paragraph of the intro is reserved for a definition of the term linguistics, not for its apparent findings (hypotheses) that might be disproved by some "linguistic genius" tomorrow, maybe by Chomsky himself. (Once again, as this wouldn't be the first time for him to disprove his own hypotheses.) We should accept that a number of different schools of thought exist in this colourful world, and justifiably so. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 19:08, 2 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Thank you, LiliCharlie. I agree with you, and your above message, completely. In fact, not just does the article sufficiently cover Chomskyan/formal linguistics (besides functional/communicative approaches), the very first line in the introduction also already refers to Chomskyan linguistics through the phrase language form - ("Linguistics is the scientific study of language, and involves an analysis of language form, language meaning and language in context.") - which is what Chomskyan linguistics is anyway all about. I don't think we could do more justice to Chomsky than that, and I would be very glad if either Linguist91, or you, or anyone else, would be interested in adding a reference or source there (immediately to the phrase "language form") that includes information on his theories or work, or on generative/cognitive linguistics or universal grammar from the Chomskyan point of view. MrsCaptcha (talk) 21:35, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

I still believe that the first paragraph is "too" simplified. It is also not at all clear what "language form" refers to for an amatuer reader since it does not even link to anything about linguistics) Linguist91 (talk) 06:42, 4 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Like I said, please go ahead and add a reference to language form if you wish, and also to language meaning, and language in context in the bargain. The first paragraph has to be simple in order to help an "amateur reader" understand what linguistics means, because if you add random information about universal grammar there it will make no sense to him/her at all. Moreover, we all know that linguistics is not all about universal grammar, but also about sociolinguistics. That aspect needs sufficient expansion in the article too, irregardless of whether you are concerned with Chomsky or not. I'm not saying that the introduction/first para has no scope for improvement, but not in the way that you were trying to amend it. MrsCaptcha (talk) 19:47, 4 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Moreover, it still doesn't seem like you have understood the need to maintain NPOV in the article, a problem that has dogged this page since years if you read the talk archives. There seem to have been many folk like you, Linguist91, who wished for a greater Chomskyan/formal focus to linguistics, but it has not helped them or this article to hold on to such a biased POV. If you would read the entire article with an open mind, like I said once again, and particularly the first paragraph too, you would know why "language form, language meaning, and language in context" are the appropriate terms that are meant to be juxtaposed with each other in order to maintain theoretical and methodological diversity in the definition of linguistics. Please co-operate. MrsCaptcha (talk) 20:05, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Hello again dear MrsCaptcha I have changed the link of formal to theoretical linguistics and meaning to semantics. Linguist91 (talk) 07:11, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Improving the page by adding a photo
I think if someone please uploads a photo to the top, it will improve the page. I highly recommend a picture of Mind or a cognitively-based photo for that matter. Linguist91 (talk) 06:47, 4 January 2017 (UTC)


 * The Commons feature pictures and other media in Category:Linguistics with lots of subcategories, one of them being Category:Cognitive linguistics. There's also Category:Noam Chomsky and many many others. For how to insert a picture into an article read Picture tutorial. Please only choose media that make sense and insert them in the right place, where they really illustrate what's being discussed in the respective paragraph. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 15:19, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Would you please do it yourself? Or someone please do it. As I do not know how to insert a picture to a page Linguist91 (talk) 07:15, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

How about Cognitive Linguistics?
Even though I do not identify myself as a proponent of cognitive linguistics, I believe that we should do fair contributions to the article regardless of our personal interests. Linguist91 (talk) 07:03, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Would appreciate it if you would be a little more specific too. MrsCaptcha (talk) 02:32, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Linguist91 (talk), if you are referring to cognitive linguistics alone, then the cognitive aspect already applies to several other aspects of linguistics, from language form to language meaning to language in context. If you are talking about Chomsky's theory, that applies to language form alone. So language form involves both Chomskyan theoretical linguistics and language cognition. There is the cognitive aspect even in non-Chomskyan linguistics, including in sociolinguistics and functional/communicative linguistics. I am all happy to add more information in the article to language cognition, but, as we have discussed above - one must be very careful as to which aspect you want to expand in the article in connection to expanding such an aspect of language cognition research in linguistics or the aspect of what is known as cognitive linguistics. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MrsCaptcha (talk • contribs) 05:32, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

No, by Cognitive Linguistics I did not mean the Chomskyan tradition. CL is different in its approach towards language as it does not consider the mind having several modules, one of which specific to language. I recommend creating a new section about the topic. Linguist91 (talk) 07:13, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

I can provide you with more information on the topic. Linguist91 (talk) 08:37, 7 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Cognitive linguistics is a tradition within the non-generative, functional paradigm of linguistics associated with linguists like Ronald Langacker, William Croft, and recently Vyvyan Evans. It already has its own section in the article.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 09:01, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Linguistics is both a social and natural science.
I think the fact that linguistics can be considered both a social and natural science should be added to (preferrably) the first paragraph. Thoghts? Linguist91 (talk) 07:52, 31 January 2017 (UTC)


 * An uncontroversial source would be required for its being a natural science like chemistry or astronomy. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 14:40, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, sources that demonstrate that this is a generally held view would be required. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 14:46, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Sure. Here is one. http://www.dingo.sbs.arizona.edu/~massimo/publications/PDF/BoeckxMPPLingReview2005.pdf Linguist91 (talk) 14:57, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

I can easily provide you with as many books and articles as you want. Linguist91 (talk) 14:58, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
 * This article makes a claim that linguistics can be brought closer to the natural sciences. It does not state that it is both, and it makes it clear that this argument is novel and not generally accepted.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 15:52, 31 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Note that we suggested was that the sources be "uncontroversial" and "demonstrate ... a generally held view." Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 15:32, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Look, in linguistics, we have people of different interests. One may be interested in sociolinguistics and that is certainly not the natural part of linguistics. However, biolinguists embrace language as a natural object and apply the laws of natural science to their work. (particularly Biology and Physics) there are tons of papers and books defending all my statements, but if you decide to ignore that, is really not fair. Linguist91 (talk) 15:41, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
 * If your statement is generally accepted it should be very easy for you to pull down a general textbook in linguistics or a similarly high quality general source and find the place where it makes the statement that linguistics is both a social and a natural science.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 15:50, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Furthermore, it is surely not a generally held view as there are people doing historical linguistics who would tell you that what they are doing has nothing to do with the natural sciences. Linguist91 (talk) 15:43, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Does the number of articles and books to which I can introduce you mean nothing to you? They are all written by well-known scientists. What more reliable source do you want? Linguist91 (talk) 15:45, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

The article has paid good attention to the social aspect of linguistics, but practically nothing to the more scientific part of it. Isn't that a problem? Don't you think that it's a problem? Linguist91 (talk) 15:48, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
 * It is a problem only if you can demonstrate that reliable sources about linguistics as a general topic do it differently.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 15:50, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

I really hope you understand my concerns...i really do. Thank you Linguist91 (talk) 15:51, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Maunus Would you please be more specific? Linguist91 (talk) 15:52, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Here is a reliable source. It is the Cambridge Handbook of Biolinguistics. I really think this one can satisfy your need for a "reliable" source. https://books.google.com/books?id=6b33CwAAQBAJ&pg=PT301&lpg=PT301&dq=textbook+in+biolinguistics&source=bl&ots=cwwOwvoV6H&sig=Al_RZTusSSYWo7CEXpInEfP6hv8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi-_pmK6-zRAhVCBBoKHUqdDg8Q6AEIJjAG#v=onepage&q=textbook%20in%20biolinguistics&f=false Linguist91 (talk) 16:58, 31 January 2017 (UTC)


 * If the source is from a handbook of biolinguistics it belongs to that article where it is possible to explain in what sense this label is meant. In this article biolinguistics is treated rather superficially and is described as "a highly interdisciplinary field, including linguists, biologists, neuroscientists, psychologists, mathematicians, and others." Simply calling it a "natural science" here would be highly misleading as Wikipedia defines this term as "a branch of science concerned with the description, prediction, and understanding of natural phenomena..." I am afraid more space would have to be given to the specification of "natural science" in the context of the interdisciplinary (i.e., not purely linguistic) field of biolinguistics than to its current description in this article. I don't see what is gained by ascribing such "metalabels." Anyone interested in the details should consult the relevant articles. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 19:43, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

I cannot possibly understand what you mean by "details" ! This is what all Generative and biolinguists believe in; what we work on, has absolutely nothing to with social aspects of language. We believe that language is not a means of communication and it is primarily used as an instrument of thought. This is by no means a minority view. Ok, fine, if you still think stating that linguistics can be a natural science is too much, the least we can do is to say that it embraces the natural sciences in some respects. I think that's basically what Wilki is for. To give sincere information so that people have a better understanding of the topic. Linguist91 (talk) 03:43, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Moreover, both in theoretical and biolinguistics, we consider language as a mental organ (just like heart) and that it's part of the biological world which basically means a physical entity. We use the scientific methods used in natural sciences NOT in social ones. Linguist91 (talk) 03:55, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

I am soon making changes to the article for reasons extensively discussed. Linguist91 (talk) 03:27, 4 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Changes are not made if they are not supported by a consensus. If this is such a common view it really should be very easy to source it to a number of general linguistics textbooks.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 13:47, 4 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Linguist91, your title itself states that Linguistics is both a social as well as a natural science. Then why are you only pushing sources and articles that are pertaining to natural science? If you come out with articles and sources (no matter how many in number), and "how much that may mean to us", there will be others who may be also able to come out with sources that are counter arguments to yours too, isn't it? I think you are still not attempting to really understand the problem with the one thing that you are obsessed with, which can be loosely defined as your desire to resurrect Chomsky, generative linguistics, cognitive linguistics, natural science, and an entire stream of things that are already incorporated within the unbiased nature of the currently existing article as it stands and reads right now. MrsCaptcha (talk) 12:00, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
 * That is not to say, by the way, that several sections following the introductory section after "Nomenclature" do not need expansion, including the ones pertaining to Linguist91's interests. L91: It would be wonderful if you would do the honours of properly adding more information to those sections instead of trying to add improperly structured stuff into the very first intro paragraphs and sections alone. Why not expand on the later sections in the article too? MrsCaptcha (talk) 12:06, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

MrsCaptcha; Thank you. I will do that. Linguist91 (talk) 12:10, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
 * L91, Why not start with adding material to 3.1, 4.1, 6.3, 6.4, and 6.6 in particular? MrsCaptcha (talk) 16:27, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Wider scope for language science
Check this — Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.97.9.79 (talk) 06:25, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Verbal communication
I noticed that verbal communication now redirects to this article, although it does not mention verbal communication at all. Is there another page that it should be targeted to instead? Jarble (talk) 04:42, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

Linguistic practices with purported psychological benefits
Contributors to this page may be interested in a proposal to create a new Category:Linguistic practices with purported psychological benefits. Discussion is found at Talk:Psychology. Sondra.kinsey (talk) 16:09, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

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Step-by-step Explanation of Tree Derivation
Hi everyone. I tried to expand on the explanation of the context-free tree derivation. But, this is my first significant edit, so please let me know what I did wrong. Thanks! Le neant (talk) 06:09, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

Theoretical / Descriptive
What a terrible division in the top right, with links to inappropriate articles that bear no relation to the choice of subfields. So - phonetics and sociolinguistics are DESCRIPTIVE and not theoretical?! Tell that to people working in those fields. This is a humanities bias here, where "theoretical" maps more to philosophical and notation-based analysis of linguistic structures, and the so-called "descriptive" fields are, in fact, founded on real theoretical concepts drawing on linguistics and factors outside narrow linguistic ones - in order to create new and genuinely explanatory models. Phonetic theory, and Sociolinguistic theory both have more theory in them (in the philosophy of science sense) than straightforward theoretical syntax, and someone should be ashamed that they have parcelled the subfields of linguistics up in this way. There is no shame in being a humanities researcher - but if you want to call linguistics "the science of language", at least choose the subfields best able to support that label, because they are properly scientifically theoretical! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.83.93.22 (talk) 14:48, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

Linguistics, the study of imbedded utterable and none utterable sounds.
Language, is none complete, in any language.

There are a fast number of linguistical sounds, MANY OF them, NOT utterable by the vocal chords of men, woman, NOR child. These sounds are a part of the underlying linquistical set of any neuronal system that has come into contact with these sounds, but are NOT linguistically described. That defacto makes the current linquistical set none complete, and that none completion hinders progress in other areas of endeavor, including psychology, neurology, medicine, veterinary sciences, even physics, mathematics, quantum mecanics, or for that matter engineering, robotics, or anthrolpology and treaty trade relationships between distinct regions, and exo studies.

It is imperative for these sounds to have a minimally quantifiable definition, which currently is not imbedded in the defined sounds within linguistics. An oversight of such size that even a 'black hole', could move through it and not leave much of any dent.

Linguistics itself must be reviewed, the definitions adjusted and other forms of acoustic boxed sounds added for completion.190.39.94.16 (talk) 11:42, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * If you can point to reliable sources that support those statements, we can discuss whether and how to incorporate them in the article. Wikipedia does not allow original research. - Donald Albury 13:59, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Aristocratic linguistics
Have there been any studies into the linguistics and cognitive linguistics of royals, and how they have innate vocabularies which are built upon ideas of power grabbing, sedition, and wealth acquisition? -ApexUnderground (talk) 19:33, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Too short
A lot of material has been removed in attempting to compress the lead-in/introduction. Is this correct? Can we add some back and incorporate some of the content back into it? MrsCaptcha (talk) 05:33, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Per MOS:LEADLENGTH, a long article (more than 30,000 characters) should usually have a lead section of three or four paragraphs. The current lead has an appropriate length by that guideline. - Donald Albury 13:20, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
 * The lead should also provide an overview of the whole article. Seeing as there are whole sections that are not summarized in the lead (such as the major subdisciplines and others) it could still be expanded.--Megaman en m (talk) 14:02, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
 * The earlier lead-in had so much of material that had been painstakingly added, and all of that has been thoughtlessly deleted in a lazy attempt to reduce the length. This is not right. It might be more fruitful to revert to that lead for now and then carefully summarize it and reduce the length in a more systematic way. But there are also a lot of other articles on Wikipedia with a long length. For a subject with a scope as broad as such a discipline, it needs a longer introduction. There's nothing wrong with that. MrsCaptcha (talk) 18:00, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Talking
Hello! I'm find out some linguist, do you have a bit time? If you see this, please go to that website https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gong_language Juidzi (talk) 14:35, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

I add some discussion, and don't forget to read it. Juidzi (talk) 14:36, 20 April 2020 (UTC)
 * The editor is looking for more input on their edit request at Talk:Gong language. — Wug·a·po·des​ 22:04, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

Why? Juidzi (talk) 05:23, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

Feedback and collaboration to improve the article
The section formerly known as "Recent edits by BombaiyyaMag"

Could you explain what you're doing? You've just reverted ~80 edits spanning the last 9 months and the only explanation is I'm seeking to add back info into the article, from many of the older and more comprehensive edits because of the notice at the top. We can edit it from here on in order to improve it. The notice at the top was referring to the lead section at the top of the page which if anything is now shorter than it was before your edits. This strikes me as a regression, not an improvement, but I would like to hear from you before reverting. — Wug·a·po·des​ 19:32, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Give me a few minutes to explain myself. I am adding info from those ~80 edits spanning the last 9 months into it now too. If you wait a little, you'll see how it will benefit. BombaiyyaMag (talk) 19:36, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your patience. (1) I am expanding on the intro. Please give me some more time. (2) A lot of the newer edits removed vital aspects of the article and that is why the intro was too short. I know it still is as you are saying or is shorter, but this will help me to build on it better. (3) I think the article/concepts need to be simplified further for a lay person without repeating things and using very technical jargon. (4) I had split the intro into two parts by creating a section called "key concepts" because that old intro from 9 months ago was a bit too detailed. (5) Again, I would simplify the concepts and then expand, as I believe it is easier to expand or can be more substantial to do so if it the material is first simplified. BombaiyyaMag (talk) 19:56, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * When making such sweeping changes, it would be beneficial to first make a mock-up using your personal sandbox User:BombaiyyaMag/sandbox (at least I think that's the correct link) and then check with the people on the talk page if they accept these changes. If it turns out your changes are not accepted it would be a nightmare to undo them all if you have unrelated editors interweaving their own edits with yours over the span of several days. While I have not examined your edits in detail, I will say early that you should make sure that all major claims are properly sourced with in-line citations. I would source minor claims as well, but some people might see that as overzealous.--Megaman en m (talk) 20:34, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you, Point noted. I'm still working on the article, only give me some time. And I will ensure what you have told me. Please let me know specifics of what you think needs improvement once you see the edits in detail. BombaiyyaMag (talk) 23:58, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Moreover, I'd just like to clarify that the "sweeping changes" I made aren't content related but only structure related. I will ensure that all the material remains intact. BombaiyyaMag (talk) 00:03, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I suggest reverting BombaiyyaMag's edits because the article is now worse off. You can come back when you've finished the job, but all changes should be for the better, and not just in order to return to a previous version. "No content change" – why was the earlier structure better? Weidorje (talk) 17:18, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * +1. As Megaman en m said, they should use their personal sandbox "and then check with the people on the talk page if they accept these changes." Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 18:29, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I'll use the sandbox, LiliCharlie, but we can still discuss what problems you or anyone else have out here. BombaiyyaMag (talk) 20:58, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi Weidorje, though I never reverted to any previous version, it is you who says we should revert edits. I just took some material out of the history. What's wrong with that? I never said anything is better or worse, but please let's discuss what we want to change further instead? BombaiyyaMag (talk) 20:58, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I didn't mean for this to turn into a dog-pile on BombaiyyaMag, and I do appreciate their work. I think we can all agree the article was in rough shape even before their edits, and one of the benefits of bold edits like theirs is that it starts discussions and collaboration. I agree with Megaman and LiliCharlie that testing major changes in a sandbox is better, but it's not required and you have done nothing wrong; I did the same thing in February and it would be hypocritical for me to tell you not to make bold changes. We should take this opportunity to discuss the goals of this article and current problems as BombaiyyaMag suggests. I have a meeting in 5 minutes, so I cannot type out all my thoughts right now. I will read through the current article when I get the chance and post my thoughts. It would be helpful if everyone could say what they think the ideal article would look like, who it would target, what it would cover, and what kinds of changes we need to get there. — Wug·a·po·des​ 21:58, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you Wugapodes, I appreciate your perspective and honesty. I'm happy to wait for you to read it and add to it. BombaiyyaMag (talk) 22:30, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Comments by Wugapodes
As a caveat, I treated this review as I would a good article or featured article review, and so it may seem harsh. This article is in a rough shape, and I would rate it currently as between a start- and C-class article. There is a lot of work to do, but my hope is that by cataloging issues it makes resolving them easier and encourages collaboration. My intent is not to just raise a bunch of problems and do nothing, and I would appreciate ideas and help on fixing these.

Those are my thoughts at the moment. I hope to get other ideas and areas to to improve as well so that we can begin to fix these and hopefully bring this to GA or FA quality. — Wug·a·po·des​ 00:45, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Factual inaccuracies and misleading juxtapositions
 * A lot of content is incorrect, inaccurate, or misleading. While I won't go through to do a total name-and-shame of them (I'd rather just fix them) I want to point out some particularly troubling aspects to encourage action. Many of my examples come from material without citations, and one way to fix (and prevent) these mistakes is to be more rigorous in our citations and the quality of our sources (more on sourcing issues later).
 * (Largely fixed by revert to 3 Nov) The theory of variation looks at the cultural stages that a particular language undergoes. It's not clear what "the theory of variation" is because variation isn't a theory, it's an empirical phenomenon. To the degree that we theorize about patterns of variation, there is no single theory and many of them are emergent from larger theories of language change. But while some theories of language change make predictions about patterns of variation, not all do and not all relate these changes to cultural forces. Around the time of Weinreich, Labov, and Herzog's "Empirical Foundations for a Theory of Language Change" the claim that sociocultural forces were worth including in language change models was contentious in historical linguistics. While that paper and subsequent work established some role for sociolinguistic forces in language change, there is still active debate on the degree and relative importance of it. See for example the direct debate on this topic in Eckert 2019 and Bermudez-Otero 2020 where the authors debate the relative importance of social meaning and asocial phonetic biases in causing and propagating language change.
 * (Largely fixed by revert to 3 Nov) That same section implies that all languages go through pidgin and creole stages which is uncited and incorrect. Viewing pidgins and creoles as "stages" in language development is contentious because on of the main insights of that literature is that not all language contact situations yield a pidgin or creole, but rather they tend to result out of economic and political power imbalances. Of course, readers of this broad article don't need every detail, but these subsections oversimplify the concepts.
 * Later on in "Methodology" the article incorrectly exports ideas from pidgin-creole studies: Prescription, on the other hand, is an attempt to promote particular linguistic usages over others, often favouring a particular dialect or "acrolect". Acrolect is a term of art in pidgin-creole studies and is unrelated to the topic of prescriptivism.
 * This was present in the most recent stable version of 3 November.
 * The "Methodology" section has a subsection titled "Anthropology" which is a field not a method. It vaguely refers to "anthropological methods" as a monolith without any explanation of what they are or how they are used. Not all language documentation or sociolinguistic projects use participant observation or ethnography.
 * This was present in the most recent stable version.
 * (Largely fixed by revert to 3 Nov) The current section on history of the field is largely an overview of linguistic theories, not the history of the field itself. The juxtaposition and ordering of these sections makes it seem like functional linguistics and cognitive linguistics have supplanted structuralism and generativism. In reality, these frameworks still coexist. Phonology is still largely structuralist. The comparative method is still in use by historical linguists and linguistic typologists. Syntax and semantics still largely use generativist paradigms. Pragmatics is moving towards functional and cognitive frameworks. These are not stages in the history of the field, and if you look at History of linguistics that article is incredibly different from this section which ought to summarize it.
 * (Largely fixed by revert to 3 Nov) "Style" is a heading under "Applied linguistics" but few if any sociolinguists of style would consider themselves applied linguists. Eckert, Podesva, Mendoza-Denton, Campbell-Kibbler, King, Calder, Pratt, Van Hoffwegen, D'Onofrio, and many others working in the domain of stylistic use of language are primarily descriptive sociolinguists, not applied linguists. While insights of this work may be applied to accent training, rhetorical training, or public policy, the juxtaposition makes it seem like stylistics is firmly in the domain of applied linguistics which it is not. At least no more than pragmatics or discourse analysis.
 * Major omissions
 * The section on "Variation and universality" makes no mention of Greenberg universals, the uniformitarian principle, or universal grammar which are foundational aspects of linguistic universalism.
 * The section on variation and universality was recently introduced, but this information was still missing from the most recent stable version.
 * The "Methodology" section contains almost no information on actual linguistic methodologies. There is no coverage of the comparative method which is a foundational methodological development of the field. Wellformedness and syntactic judgments--a major theoretical and methodological development of generative linguistics--makes no appearance here. Acoustic analysis and spectrograms--revolutionary developments for documentation, phonetics, and sociolinguistics--are also absent.
 * This is a problem inherited from the most recent stable version.
 * (Largely fixed by revert to 3 Nov) The article has serious problems with due weight for topics. Applied linguistics, biolinguistics, and forensic linguistics (to pick on 3) get whole sections, but the major branches of Phonetics, Phonology, Syntax, and Semantics (things that are units in intro linguistics classes) each get about one sentence under the nonsensical heading "Grammar".
 * Scanning through the citations, this article relies too heavily on primary sources. For example, we cite Chomsky and Bloomfield extensively, but we should be citing secondary and tertiary sources which analyze their impact and contribution to the field. John Joseph, for example, has written histories of Saussure (Joseph 2018a; Joseph 2019, the American-European linguistic divide ( Joseph forthcoming), the development of structuralism (Joseph 2018b), and the importance of the new grammarians on the development of modern linguistics (Joseph 2017) among many other topics in linguistic history (though his main focus is Saussure). We should be citing this historical analysis for our coverage, not improper original research by synthesis or interpretation of primary sources. That Joseph, a major writer in the history of linguistics, is absent from our bibliography is a bad sign.
 * This is a problem inherited from the most recent stable version.
 * Article structure
 * (Largely fixed by revert to 3 Nov) As a whole, the article is incoherent and information is scattered all over the place. For example, we have two sections titled "sociolinguistics".
 * The lead is too short per MOS:LEAD but this will be hard to fix without fixing the rest of the article. It should ideally cover the main points of the article for a complete layperson. What is linguistics? What are its main branches? What has it contributed to science and society? I think of it similar to the intro chapter of a textbook, but much shorter.
 * This was a problem of the most recent stable version.
 * (Largely fixed by revert to 3 Nov) While textbooks are helpful for figuring out what level of detail we should use, Wikipedia is not a textbook and we should avoid starting with "Key Concepts" or similar sections. As an encyclopedia article, it should start with a history of the field and its development. Coverage of Sanskrit, Greek, and Roman grammarians as well as the modern development from and relationship with history, anthropology, and philology are important to cover and important to cover at the beginning of the article. See Physics and Anthropology for example.
 * Currently, footnotes and citations are mixed together. Citations are not consistently formatted and in fact we use multiple different styles such as CS1 and sfn. Personally, I believe we should standardize to sfn because it eases the maintenance burden, encourages citing specific pages, and looks more professional.
 * This was a problem of the most recent stable version.
 * Given the comment by I went back to see what issues were present in the most recent stable version from 3 November, and which issues were introduced in BombaiyyaMag's 9 Nov edits/reverts. While many issues were present in the 3 November version, most of the factual inaccuracies I pointed out can be resolved by reverting BombaiyyaMag's edits to the most recent stable version. I have marked the issues that are resolved by my revert, and noted which ones still remain to be fixed. — Wug·a·po·des​ 22:59, 11 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Response #2 from BombaiyyaMag:
 * Hello Wugapodes. Here are my responses to your remarks. I will keep the conversation going. While I do see that you carried out the revert, I am willing to work on what I was doing on this version of the article as well and will start editing it in a while.

There are some points that I agree with you on, but there are many others I'd like to respond to as well. Give me some time to do so as I, too, am in the middle of multitasking and it is taking me time to formulate long answers right now. BombaiyyaMag (talk) 05:20, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
 * 1) Variation can be a theory too. Just as generativism and universality have been theorised, the same is possible with variation. I do not disagree that it is an empirical phenomenon; of course it is. But then so would be universal grammar. These are empirical phenomenons as much as they are theories. I am willing to cite variation theorists in the article if you wish me too. A theory is not "predictive". If it were, literary theorists would be looking at the forecast of writers, but they do not. No social science theorists look at predictive forecasts; yet they are theorists because they have cohesively placed their arguments into a narrative, and their thoughts are applied into new applications time and again. Here are a few examples: Towards a Unified Theory of Linguistic Variation by Hans-Heinrich Lieb, for one. Our own Wikipedia article also refers to variation as a core concept and core concepts are theories.
 * 2) I would find and add counter citations to what you said about pidgin and creole not being stages, and to what you said about anthropology being a field and not a method. As for pidgin and creole, what you say in effect paradoxically implies that these are "stages", because you seem to allude that they are inferior versions of a language, when you state that they emerge due to power politics. Pidgin and creole are stages that all languages go through irrespective of power politics. Secondly, anthropology, like all fields, is a much broader discipline than that and can interdisciplinarily be applied to linguistics or to any other discipline as well.

Discussion of comments

 * Response:
 * Dear Wugapodes, thank you for your extensive comments and feedback. This is very helpful, and I find myself agreeing with you on almost every single point. I will come back to this and respond to each of these points until we are able to find a way to make the improvements and edits that you have pointed out the need for. BombaiyyaMag (talk) 01:11, 11 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Hold on guys. It's true that there are shortcomings in the article, but do first note that what you're seeing is an old version, not the proper current one. We should look at the current version and see what's missing there. Then, we should work on the sections and subsections that need improvement. I'm sorry to keep suggesting reversion, but that's because all I see is BombaiyyaMag having, in practice, reverted the article to a previous state. Weidorje (talk) 08:07, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Weidorje, I clarify once again that I did not revert the article to a "previous state", I simply borrowed material from multiple versions of the history and added new material to it. That is a common thing that is done on many articles on Wikipedia, not just this one. If you go ahead with the reversion you are suggesting, you will also be reverting many of the other editors who have made corrections to my last version. I would request you to read the article's current version now and not the one before mine and provide your feedback, suggestions, improvements, and corrections, that we can now incorporate in the next version. BombaiyyaMag (talk) 15:52, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Also, Weidorje, I would like to add in asking, is there something specific that you would like included in the article from the version before mine? Please go ahead and point it out. I will be happy to add it, or you could do the same. As for Wugapodes' points, I will respond to them soon too. BombaiyyaMag (talk) 15:55, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
 * So, let's clarify what BombaiyyaMag is saying.
 * He did not revert the article to a previous version because he did not use the 'undo' command, but carried out a manual reversion instead. Take note of that.
 * Now that's been done, it cannot be undone because other people have already participated in fixing multiple issues with the material he re-introduced.
 * He says this is normal procedure in Wikipedia and happens to all articles. So, something like, once a year we return to the version we had a year ago and start the work all over again.
 * Any questions or ideas, we are free to approach BombaiyyaMag, a brand new WP user who is now in charge of making the article great again.
 * Great, but can you explain to us why you are doing this? What is it you're trying to achieve? Weidorje (talk) 17:21, 11 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Weidorje:

BombaiyyaMag (talk) 19:44, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
 * 1) You say: "Great, but can you explain to us why you are doing this? What is it you're trying to achieve?"Well, the same as what you might be thinking of achieving on the article. Is this an existential question? About why we are all on Wikipedia? I really don't know the answer to that.
 * 2) You say: "Any questions or ideas, we are free to approach BombaiyyaMag, a brand new WP user who is now in charge of making the article great again."Thank you, of course you are, but I don't know why you see me as being "in charge". You are as much in charge as I or anyone else is. You also do not need to "approach" me; you can just post on the talkpage or make edits on the article just like that, and someone or the other (me or any other), will respond. We do not need to approach each other for that. Do we?


 * I don't think so. You must have had some reason to do exactly what you did. Are you really a newbie or an experienced WP editor? Weidorje (talk) 20:11, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
 * What is this exact thing that I did? I re-structured some of the content. Is that what you're referring to? I created this account some time ago, but I mostly read the pages initially and started editing more only recently. I don't know what you mean by newbie or experienced. What do you think? How would you rate me? BombaiyyaMag (talk) 21:08, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
 * To me you seem like an experienced user. User:Wugapodes has now reverted BombaiyyaMag's edits, so this will be the starting point for future improvements. I think BombaiyyaMag's point was to restore Chomsky's name on the page. I don't think it's necessary. The primary goal of the article should not be advertising Chomsky ("what does Chomsky think of dialectology? Hmmm."), and he doesn't need the advertisement anyway. The Noam Chomsky page gets 6,000 views a day while linguistics only a half of that. So let's just focus on what's relevant for each page, alright? Weidorje (talk) 08:28, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you for thinking of me as experienced, Weidorje, but your analysis about my wanting to restore Chomsky's name on the page is absolutely wrong. You may completely delete Chomsky from every part of the article if you like. On a serious note, I am not into Chomsky and haven't read much of Chomsky. I have no idea why you would think so. I still wish you would believe me when I say that I was trying to re-structure the article with the help of insights from previous editions. But you don't seem to want to accept that, so I think we should move on and continue to work on the article instead. BombaiyyaMag (talk) 08:51, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Historical linguistics / Etymology chart
That huge chart about the etymology of John, etc, in the historical linguistics section isn't very productive, if you ask me. It just looks like an intruding distraction, and the font in the image is so small that one can hardly read it. It can be placed elsewhere in the article below or would even suffice to be discovered directly on the historical linguistics page. I think the first section should be crisper to begin with and needs to focus on helping people read it and understand what historical linguistics actually means in clear terms. Nobody who comes to the article trying to understand what linguistics is for the first or second time is going to squint at what's written in the chart or even find it relevant if they do. Currently, it looks very messy with all the notices up there, and the chart only adds to the mess. Heartily (talk) 22:37, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Go for it — Wug·a·po·des​ 23:28, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Rewrite history section?
The history section is now focussed on presenting competing grammar frameworks which are already presented in the Approaches section. The focus of the history section should be on historical events and innovations, not so heavily on the frameworks. I think there needs to be an overhaul this year. Weidorje (talk) 17:50, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Would you consider Joseph Eidelberg "Bambara (A PROTO-HEBREW LANGGUAGE?)" https://josepheidelberg.com/blog/ as an example of innovative linguistics analysis which explains two of the most puzzling, and mysterious, historical events of the Jewish History, where genetic and archeological theories do not seem to unite with a convincing alternatives? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Beidelberg (talk • contribs) 14:10, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

Comments invited on new template: Linguistics notatation
Coming at this question from typography rather than linguistics, I don't want upset any applecarts accidentally, so this is to alert editors to my proposal.

I have created a new sidebar [right] along the lines of contains special characters for articles that are mainly about graphemes but inevitably include information about IPA symbols and sometimes phonemes. We must assume that most visitors will not be familiar with the $⟨x⟩$, /x/ and [x] notations, so the new template will tell them where to go to find out.

I have opened a discussion section at Template talk:Linguistics notation to invite any advice, comment, observations or reservations, please. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 21:35, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

Rewriting the lead section
The lead section has become bloated and bizarre, with almost no references, and several unusual things ("sound particles"? "macrolinguistic"? "disfunction"?). I will try to take a pass at making this sound encyclopedic and professional, and eliminating the speculation, original research, and idiosyncratic takes on the field this week. But I have limited ability to police this going forward, and ask for help in doing so. Mundart (talk) 21:24, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm on board (though I have very limited time for Wikipedia at the moment). Botterweg14 (talk) 01:26, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I watch the page and will keep an eye on it. Though remember WP:CITELEAD: as long as you're summarizing cited material in the article, you don't really need to cite too much. — Wug·a·po·des​ 23:08, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I've tried to be concise and synoptic. Still a bit rough, but much clearer, I hope, less idiosyncratic. The rest of the article could use some help, too. Mundart (talk) 23:23, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Restoring revised version from anon IP editor.Mundart (talk) 19:13, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
 * I admit I liked the IP editor's version more. It was less technical and so easier to understand. It also skilfully avoided the ignotum per ignotius type definitions (combinatorics? excuse me?). It was also incomparably better sourced. My recommendation would be to restore it and start working from it per WP:PRESERVE. — kashmīrī  TALK  23:21, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
 * I reverted to the IP's version per Kashmiri. I also prefer the anon's version and think it's a better place to work from. — Wug·a·po·des​ 06:38, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

Speech sounds
The following is based on Internet data and my own pronunciation exercises.

ORIGIN OF SPEECH SOUNDS.

An accent arises when a foreign language is spoken with the sounds of the first language.

At some point on the path from monkey to human, the addition of a new gene made it possible to create an activation surface on the pharyngeal wall that is suitable for making voiced sounds. Every sound has its own place there, together they form the pronunciation nest of a certain language. It was now possible to bring an idea into the sound combination that the entire herd of people understood in the same way. The voiceless consonants clarified the words and made it possible to increase their number.

Genetics should look for a sound gene rather than a language gene to determine the approximate time to the onset of human speech.

When monkeys get a suitable surface on the pharyngeal wall to form voiced sounds they begin to speak to an extent commensurate with their mental abilities.

Leonhard Klaar


 * Sorry, but none of that is usable in Wikipedia. Please see Wikipedia:No original research. Everything in articles in Wikipedia must be verifiable from reliable sources. -- Donald Albury 18:29, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

The history section should be re-edited
The history section should be re-edited

I also think that the focus of the historical part should be on historical events and innovations, rather than on the framework too much. The history of linguistics is very old.

The earliest language research of mankind began with the interpretation of ancient documents, and the study of language for the purpose of studying philosophy, history and literature. During the Han Dynasty, China produced elementary schools, including writing, phonology, and exegesis. In India and Greece, grammar was established from the 4th to the 3rd century BC. Modern linguistics was established in the early 18th century. As Western linguists discovered the similarities between Indo-European languages and Sanskrit, historical comparative linguistics came into being, aiming to find the primitive language of various languages.05:39, 6 November 2021 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yifannn (talk • contribs)
 * As I mentioned in my edit summary, you need to provide a citation to a reliable source to support your addition. More broadly, the section on historical linguistics is about a specific sub-discipline within the modern study of linguistics, it is not about the history of the field broadly. If you want to add well-cited information on the history of linguistics you should do that in the history section. — Wug·a·po·des​ 07:02, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Whether linguistics is scientific
The first sentence claimed that linguistics is the scientific study of language. Aside from the obvious problem that it isn't true (What do they think we call the non-scientific scholarly study of language?), the cited source is entirely inadequate for the claim. The cited source says:

"From the papers in this volume we find a compelling presentation of Professor M. A. K. Halliday's perspective on linguistics as the scientific study of natural language".

Michael Halliday may be an important linguist, but the cited source can only support a claim that one linguist holds this viewpoint, not that the viewpoint is correct or widely accepted. I have therefore remove this dubious claim. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:43, 22 November 2021 (UTC)


 * I'll assume good faith here: linguistics is widely and universally acknowledged as the scientific study of language. If you really want to find more sources on this you're free to just pick any encyclopedia or introductory textbook and use it as a source.--Megaman en m (talk) 08:05, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * @Megaman en m, do you believe that it is impossible to study language in a non-scientific manner? For example, is it impossible to study languages in an artistic way, or in a historical way?  Is humanism a non-science for all other fields, but somehow it suddenly transforms into a scientific one within linguistics, so that we can have a "scientific humanistic linguistics"?  That would ordinarily be considered a contradiction in terms.
 * It has been fashionable since the post-war era for all subjects on the borders of the social sciences and humanities to declare that they are scientific disciplines, but complex subjects do not always classify neatly, especially if you don't carefully define what you mean by "science". If you are re-constructing a lost language, that's generally considered linguistics, right?  But it's not science according to common definitions, because science is progressive, which means that our generation knows more about biology than the previous ones.  However, we know less about that lost language than the people who spoke that language in life.  Ergo, either linguistics is not purely scientific, or reconstructing lost languages is not linguistics.  Of course, as any high school debate student knows, if you define your terms "correctly", you can call anything "science". WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:05, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Also, it seems that this is still being debated within the field. Geoffrey Sampson published a book a few years ago saying that linguistics can be a scholarly field (philosophers sometimes use the German word Wissenschaft to differentiate rigorous scholarly study involving accepted sciences [e.g., chemistry] from rigorous scholarly study involving anything else) but cannot be generally considered scientific because somewhere between little and none of it is subject to Falsifiability. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:21, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The linguistics department at Harvard University is in the "Arts & Humanities" division. At Oxford, it's in the "Humanities" division. Cambridge puts linguistics in the "School of Arts and Humanities". Cornell University has them in "Humanities and Arts", with a definition that I think does a good job of encompassing the entire field:  "Linguistics, the systematic study of human language, lies at the crossroads of the humanities and the social sciences, drawing on a special combination of intuition and rigor that the analysis of language demands".
 * Duke places the department in the Social Sciences division, along with History and Education, both of which are generally not considered to be scientific subjects, and they are quite up-front about the fact that their social science division includes non-scientific subjects: "Our social science disciplines apply both quantitative scientific and interpretive humanistic methodologies " (emphasis added).  Yale also places linguistics among the social sciences.
 * The result of my random survey indicates that most prestigious schools consider linguistics to belong to the non-scientific humanities division, or at least to have the possibility that the field straddles the border between scientific and non-scientific study.
 * I think we are better off describing linguistics as "the scholarly study" than as "the scientific study", and only later developing the problem of what, exactly, counts as being scientific. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:00, 22 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Encyclopedia Britannica starts by simply stating: "linguistics, the scientific study of language". this textbook also starts by saying that it can be defined as the scientific study of language. Same with this one and this one. I looked at four authoritative sources and three of them start by saying that linguistics is the scientific study of language (the fourth was a textbook that didn't describe linguistics in its introduction, but rather language in general). Your original research and reference to how universities categorize their classes does not constitute authoritative evidence contrary to the claim that linguistics is a science. The book by Geoffrey Sampson is your best piece of evidence yet, but from what I gather it is the opinion of a single scholar that pales in comparison to the general prevailing view; it would not be WP:DUE to mention in an article as general as this, not unless you can find a great number of authoritative secondary sources that support his views. As it stands, I am not convinced that the status of linguistics as a science should be doubted in an encyclopedic format.--Megaman en m (talk) 18:30, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * That sounds a bit like the Lie-to-children approach: Some part of modern(!) linguistics is scientific, at least for moderately expansive definitions of science, and therefore we will simplify down (and burnish our reputation up) by saying that all linguistics is always completely scientific.
 * Do you think that humanistic linguistics is scientific? This article says "The fundamental principle of humanistic linguistics is that language is an invention created by people."  Does that sound like science to you?  What if I wrote that "The fundamental principle of humanistic music is that music is an invention created by people"?  Would that sound like science to you?  The next sentence in the article says that humanistic linguistics is Semiotics, which is a field in the non-scientific study of philosophy.  Is that 100% science, too?
 * I see that this section refers to Human science. That article seems to have a very interesting section at Human science, which basically re-defines science as any form of systematic knowledge, including the study of "languages, literature, music, philosophy, history, religion, and the visual and performing arts".  I don't think that the average educated English speaker would expect these to be called science.  (The average French speaker might; there's still an idiom in French, similar to the texter's "AFAIK" that translates to "According to my science".  You can see an example of this in some translations of Dionysius the Areopagite, who writes "This, then, according to my science, is the first rank of the Heavenly Beings which encircle and stand immediately around God" – not exactly what we would call science these days.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:41, 22 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Does it count that I earned my M.A. in the Experimental Linguistics section of a Communication Sciences Lab? (The degree was an M.A. because the lab was under the Speech Department, in the College of Arts and Sciences.) University organizational charts can be idiosyncratic. - Donald Albury 21:13, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The speech department in which academic division of the college? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:05, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * In the College of Arts and Sciences. - Donald Albury 22:39, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The usual structure for a university is:
 * College
 * Division
 * Department
 * For example, at Cornell University:
 * College of Arts and Sciences
 * Humanities and Arts division
 * e.g., the Linguistics department
 * Social Sciences division
 * e.g., the Political Science department
 * Sciences and Mathematics division
 * e.g., the Chemistry department
 * The College of Arts and Sciences is the top-level division of a university. I'm asking what the middle level is, not the top level.  At most universities, it seems to be the humanities division.  In some universities, it's the social studies division.  In no universities is it the science-and-math division.
 * If you'd like me to look it up for you, then you could use Special:EmailUser/WhatamIdoing to privately send me the name of your alma mater. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:19, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * My MA was awarded in 1970 (University of Florida). I have no idea what structure may have existed between the college and department level at that time. Frankly, I don't think the research to find out is worth it. - Donald Albury 20:38, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Did they have a completely separate Linguistics department back then? I know that they had a Speech department in their Social Sciences division (think public speaking and debate, not speech pathology).  WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:28, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * An interdepartmental Linguistics program started in 1971, I don't know when it became a department. I was in the first group of students, but not quite the first to finish a PhD. Three of the members of my dissertation committee had dual appointments in Linguistics and another department (another was in the Speech Department, and the fifth was from FSU). The Speech Department had 5 sections in the late 60s, including drama, speech pathology, and the Communication Sciences Lab. The plan was to divide up the department when the chairman retired.
 * That makes sense. You wouldn't expect to find drama (which is clearly fine arts) and speech pathology (which is always healthcare and usually education, too) in the same academic division these days.  For you, it was a social studies degree.  For the subsequent generations that previously would have been in that department, it could now be anything (including at least fine arts, biological sciences, social science, and business/marketing).  WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:38, 28 November 2021 (UTC)
 * From OED, linguistics: "The scientific study of language and its structure. Also: this as a subject of educational study or examination. Cf. philology n. 3." — the non-scientific study of language takes many forms, including folk etymology. (Of course, none of this is any mystery to those of us who hold linguistics degrees.) &#58;bloodofox: (talk) 02:58, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * From Merriam-Webster: "the study of human speech including the units, nature, structure, and modification of language"
 * From The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary: "the branch of knowledge that deals with language"
 * From The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics: "Effectively of any investigation of language and languages if not clearly belonging to some other discipline, such as philosophy, the study of literature, etc." (I checked the 2nd edition.)
 * The top of page 3 in ISBN 978-3709140031 directly explains what the undergraduate textbooks are trying to communicate when they say that linguistics is "scientific": The "Four aims of the scientific approach to language, often cited in introductory works on the subject, are comprehensiveness, objectivity, systematicness, and precision."
 * If that's your idea of science, then, sure, it's scientific. That's not the idea of science given at the beginning of our article about Science, though, and it's not my idea, either.  Comprehensiveness, objectivity, systematicness, and precision are good things for any scholarly field, but that definition of "science" is missing empiricism, falsifiability, the scientific method, the idea that scientific knowledge only increases and cannot be decreased through the death of people (or a language) – a whole lot of things that make science be specifically science and not any other form of scholarly study to me.  Linguistics then is not "the scientific study of language" for the common definitions of the word science; it would have to be "the scientific* study of language", with a little footnote saying that "science" in this sentence means that it's comprehensive, objective, systematic, and precise, but it doesn't have anything to do with the scientific method or any of the other things your science teacher was talking about when you were 13 years old.  You could equally have a comprehensive, objective, systematic, and precise study of a poem or a painting.  I still won't use the word scientific to describe poetry studies.
 * I would, however, be perfectly satisfied to have this article begin by saying that "Linguistics is the comprehensive, objective, systematic, and precise study of language". There can be no ambiguity about whether a "comprehensive, objective, systematic, and precise study" involves the scientific method, and it is directly informative about the field's core values. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:26, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Obviously, as anyone with more than a passing familiarity with the field can attest, there's no shortage of the authorative sources that refer to linguistics as 'the scientific study of language' or similar. Wikipedia runs on reliable sources, and the higher the source quality, the better. Not a lot to discuss here. &#58;bloodofox: (talk) 07:58, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The problem isn't whether we can source the word. The problem is whether the word is using the definition that the average reader expects it to have.  They're using this word to mean that it's a serious area of academic research.  Look at https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/science:
 * 1 : knowledge about or study of the natural world based on facts learned through experiments and observation
 * modern science
 * the laws of science
 * 2 : a particular area of scientific study (such as biology, physics, or chemistry) : a particular branch of science
 * Students are required to take two sciences.
 * students majoring in a science
 * 3 : a subject that is formally studied in a college, university, etc.
 * the science of linguistics
 * Notice what's strange about that: Linguistics is given as an example of a subject that is not "study of the natural world based on facts learned through experiments and observation" or an "area of scientific study".  It's given as an example of "a subject that is formally studied in a college, university, etc.".
 * Following this definition, you would write sentences like this:
 * It's important to take a class on a modern science, that is, a class about the study of the natural world as based on facts learned through experiments and observation.
 * It's important to take a class on science, that is, a class about a particular area of scientific study (such as biology, physics, or chemistry).
 * It's important to take a class on linguistics, that is, a class about any subject that is formally studied in a college, university, etc.
 * These aren't interchangeable, and I don't think that readers' comprehension is promoted by saying the word that they associate with "the study of the natural world as based on facts learned through experiments and observation" when the meaning we're supposed to be communicating is closer to "a serious, systematic area of scholarly study, including those that have little or nothing to do with the study of the natural world as based on facts learned through experiments and observation". WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:18, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * There really is nothing to discuss here, linguistics uses the scientific method like any other science as attested by high-quality sources. No amount of ad-hoc reasoning based on university classes and your own personal thoughts is going to change that. This is not a debate class, Wikipedia runs on reliable sources and nothing else, it's that simple. As the above user said, anyone with even a passing knowledge of linguistics should be able to tell you that it's the scientific study of language, having to source that would enter the sky is blue territory. I'm going to stop responding now unless you can get me several high-quality sources (i.e. academic ones) that manages to cast doubt on these claims.--Megaman en m (talk) 08:46, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Where is your source saying that all of linguistics, including the parts that are "humanistic" and based on "intuition", use the scientific method? Where is your source that says the definition of science is "uses the scientific method"?  That's not the definition we give at the top of Science.   WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:10, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * You're talking about the demarcation problem between natural sciences and humanities. The name 'science' in Latin refers to knowledge or to the increase thereof. In that sense, linguistics is obviously a science. However, if you argue that only natural sciences should be called science in the first place, then you'll find that the field is divided into two: the humanistic (philosophical/semiotics) tradition, and the sociobiological (naturalist) tradition. On the other hand, if you say that any empirical research is science, then we have a totally different divide. We'll conclude that field and corpus linguistics is true science, as is field research in biology. But any philosophizing about empirical science is not science (but philosophy). Thus, evolutionary biology is not science because evolution is an abstraction, it does not exist empirically. So, in practice, some of what is called science is actually philosophy or what is usually called "theory". User:WhatamIdoing does have a point. I think linguistics is the scientific and theoretical study of language - philosophical, to be more precise, though it's not the same as philosophy of science. Weidorje (talk) 09:29, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * @Weidorje, I agree with you. There's the question of whether linguistics is "properly" considered a science, which depends upon both what you mean when you say "linguistics" and what you mean when you say "science".
 * Separately, and what's weighing more on my mind this week, is whether readers will correctly understand this sentence. Even if we agreed that liguistics is (primarily) a True and Proper Science™, if readers see this sentence and think, "Oooh, cool, they can put words in test tubes or something", then Wikipedia has failed at the most basic level. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:38, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * You're talking about the demarcation problem between natural sciences and humanities. The name 'science' in Latin refers to knowledge or to the increase thereof. In that sense, linguistics is obviously a science. However, if you argue that only natural sciences should be called science in the first place, then you'll find that the field is divided into two: the humanistic (philosophical/semiotics) tradition, and the sociobiological (naturalist) tradition. On the other hand, if you say that any empirical research is science, then we have a totally different divide. We'll conclude that field and corpus linguistics is true science, as is field research in biology. But any philosophizing about empirical science is not science (but philosophy). Thus, evolutionary biology is not science because evolution is an abstraction, it does not exist empirically. So, in practice, some of what is called science is actually philosophy or what is usually called "theory". User:WhatamIdoing does have a point. I think linguistics is the scientific and theoretical study of language - philosophical, to be more precise, though it's not the same as philosophy of science. Weidorje (talk) 09:29, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * @Weidorje, I agree with you. There's the question of whether linguistics is "properly" considered a science, which depends upon both what you mean when you say "linguistics" and what you mean when you say "science".
 * Separately, and what's weighing more on my mind this week, is whether readers will correctly understand this sentence. Even if we agreed that liguistics is (primarily) a True and Proper Science™, if readers see this sentence and think, "Oooh, cool, they can put words in test tubes or something", then Wikipedia has failed at the most basic level. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:38, 29 November 2021 (UTC)


 * I'm a little confused as to the point of this discussion. Linguistics is a broad field incorporating aspects of physical sciences (acoustic phonetics), cognitive sciences (linguistic perception), social sciences (language in interaction), and humanities (philology). The reason linguistics is generally referred to as a science has nothing to do with whether we can put words in test tubes; the claim that linguistics is a science is fundamental to the historical development of the field as distinct from anthropology, philosophy, or foreign language studies. One of the corner stones of modern linguistics, central to historical linguistics, phonology, and sociolinguistics, is the neogrammarian hypothesis, and the proponents argued for it precisely on the grounds of its adherence to the scientific method. A main component of the hypothesis, uniformitarianism, was a theoretical trend in other sciences such as geology and biology, and a direct appeal to wider scientific (rather than humanistic) discourse (see Susan Kemmer's essay on the Neogrammarian Manifesto (1878)). This theoretical tradition of positioning linguistics as the scientific study of language continued to influence further theorization both syntax and sociolinguistics. Chomsky's generativist theory was intended to abstract away from humanistic intuitions and instead focus on biological plausibility and reproducibility (see David Lightfoot's introduction to Chomsky's Syntactic Structures (1957)). Chapter 6 of Syntactic Structures is entitled "On the goals of linguistic theory" and explicitly considers the desiderata of a scientific theory of language in order to develop an empirical way to select between competing grammatical hypotheses. In the realm of sociolinguistics, Weinreich, Labov, and Herzog (1968) built upon the neogrammarian hypothesis in response to growing challenges brought about by then-recent research into linguistic variation. Labov's work on variation, for example, suggested that the hypothesis was false and that the competing hypothesis--lexical diffusion--was the correct mechanism to explain how language changes. Weinreich, et al (1968) sought to clarify this state of affairs, and in a foundational work for sociolinguistics articulated a set of desiderata for an empirical study of language change. This work, aptly titled "Empirical foundations for a theory of language change", explicitly cited Chomsky's desiderata in Syntactic Structures and was framed as an extension of the neogrammarian focus on a scientific study of language. The work of John Joseph, a historian of linguistics, describes more completely the role of "science" as a motivating factor in the continuous development of the field (see "Linguistics" in Modernism in the Social Sciences).So the whole debate to me seems to miss the point. The article describes linguistics as the scientific study of language because for nearly 150 years that has been a defining feature of the field. Empiricism and its ability to position linguistics as a science is one of the core motivations of the most influential works in linguistic theory since 1878. I'm not particularly tied to the previous phrasing (I didn't even notice the change), and I'm sure the article can be improved, but being a "science" is definitional to linguistics as a field. I don't mean that abstractly either, empiricism and science were what have repeatedly been used to define what is and is not linguistics from Osthoff to Chomsky to Labov. We should not be so pedantic as to sweep a century of scholarship under the rug. — Wug·a·po·des​ 02:42, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I think the point is that all the evidence accumulated on this talk page indicates that linguistics is not just the kind of scholarly enterprise that we describe at the start of Science, and yet some editors insist that it must be labeled "scientific", without qualification or explanation, at the very beginning of this article. I think that's misleading.
 * (Also, Empiricism is not exactly the same thing as Science; one could be empirical without being scientific. English-speaking Children learn to associate the word red with a particular color empirically, not scientifically. Ditto for learning to ride a bicycle.)  WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:05, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
 * But User:WhatamIdoing, you would still classify evolutionary biology as science although the concept is not empirical. And User:Wugapodes, Chomsky's introspective method is not prototypical science. I think linguistics has different aspects, some scientific, some philosophical. I'm not sure what semiotics is, maybe phenomenology. Many linguists consider linguistics as belonging to the social sciences. Then the question is whether these are sciences or not. I don't mind the lede, but it's easy to see that this question is an essential one, and it motivates much of what is happening in the field. Sometimes silly claims are made because grammar needs to be science, otherwise we're not as good as the other guys... Weidorje (talk) 08:24, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
 * At least some parts of evolutionary biology produces hypotheses that can be tested and predictions that can be made and either verified or falsified. The initial development of life in the universe is not, of course, presently considered to be a repeatable experiment.    WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:31, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Also, User:Wugapodes, I had a look at the Neogrammarian manifesto. Now, their claim that soundlaws are exceptionless is quite clearly bogus, and this is of course what Saussure demonstrated in detail in his Course in General Linguistics. It is an important point that making false claims does not make you a scientist, even when it is a matter of false scientific claims. Same goes to Chomsky's grammar gene, which has no basis in research. Clearly people have faced a choice between non-science and pseudo-science and opted for the latter... it did not improve linguistics. Weidorje (talk) 09:10, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Linguitics is not my main field of study, I'm more into history and philosophy. This discussion has been very interesting to me since the beginning, so I thank for starting it, and for keeping it going so far.
 * What finally prompted me to join, despite the lack of time to devote to wide research on the topic, was the sentence above: "Many linguists consider linguistics as belonging to the social sciences."
 * In my view, "Social Sciences" is a Positivistic 19th century misconception, that lives on in the English speaking pragmatist philosophical universe of discourse exclusively. I don't think there remain many serious theoreticians of the human experience who still consider "Sociology" a "science," though I may be mistaken, of course. But to my mind, the most egregious example of this blatant 19th century illusion and misconception are the big Universities, mainly in the US, who still promote and advertise an academic degree from heavily funded departments of "Political Science." I think that Linguistics could have some modes of research that could come close, if one is a pragmatist that does not pay attention to any theoretical consistency, to an empirical, precise, mathematical, classical science, such as Physics or Chemistry. But "Politics" is a field that absolutely does not have anything akin to that. The name "Political Science" is just a ridiculous oxymoron, in my view, a legacy of that same 19th century Positivistic illusion and misconception that defined "Sociology" as a "science" to begin with. Thank you, warshy (¥¥) 16:27, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks, User:warshy! Could be, but what about computer science? That's clearly not (natural) science, either. Weidorje (talk) 18:03, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Computer science is definitely one of the new "empirical, precise, mathematical, classical science, such as Physics or Chemistry," in my view. The proof is in the pudding. If you mess up your code the machine will misread it, and it will eventually wreck havock too. There is no room in it whatsoever for any mathematical unpreciseness, I think. Wikipedia itself, in addition to being a product of it, also depends on it for its life. warshy (¥¥) 18:22, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I believe it's common to describe computer science as an applied science or a form of engineering. It would be just as much a science as, say, building a house or inventing a better mousetrap. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:34, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm not particularly convinced by the WP:OR arguments made in this thread. Multiple text books and encyclopedias presented above, secondary and primary sources by subject matter experts presented in my comment, and the literal words comprising "social science" show that personal beliefs as to whether linguistics should be described as a "science" are simply that: points of view unsubstantiated by reliable sources. This thread started as a complaint about a specific source used to justify the claim, and now that multiple, independent, reliable sources have been presented to substantiate that phrasing, the goalposts have been moved to decide whether, in our estimation, those sources are correct or not. That's not how this works, and I expect you all know that's not how this works. The idea that the use of science here is inconsistent with the definition at science is ludicrous (partly because Wikipedia is not a reliable source). That article's first line defines science as a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the world which is innately tied to empiricism and empirical evidence which the sources used to support this claim focus on developing for linguistics. Secondary and tertiary sources then summarize this by literally describing linguistics as a science. But because someone on the talk page thinks exceptionless sound change is wrong, I'm supposed to second guess text books and other encyclopedias? The fact that exceptionless sound change is a hypothesis that can be tested and falsified supports the empirical argument; I wasn't arguing that exceptionless sound change was correct, but that the motivation for formulating the hypothesis was to create a falsifiable prediction that can be tested and evaluated (literally, science). The only arguments against the existing phrasing outright reject reliable sources in favor of personal viewpoints about philosophy of science, original research regarding academic divisions, and citations to Wikipedia's definition of words elsewhere. If you all can come up with citations on the controversy, I'd be excited to expand the article to cover historical debates in the framing and development of the field, but I'm going to oppose changing the lead based on arguments so blatantly contradicted by policy. — Wug·a·po·des​ 22:50, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Multiple reliable sources say that linguistics is a science.
 * Multiple reliable sources do not say that linguistics is a science. (A small minority claim that it is not.)
 * The question is: When they say that "it's a science", what do they mean?  Do they mean "Linguistics is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the world"?  Or do they mean something else?  Because if Linguistics = Science and Science = a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the world, then it logically follows that Linguistics = a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the world – only, I doubt that's what they mean, and the reliable sources – the very same reliable sources that (a) say "Linguistics is a science", and also (b) then go on further to elaborate on what they mean, seem to be saying that linguistics is a science if and when science is defined as being comprehensive, objective, systematic, and precise.
 * I do not think that we violate OR by noticing that "comprehensive, objective, systematic, and precise" ≠ a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the world. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:39, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * What most biologists do is they go to a location to make an inventory of the plants or animals they find, or observe something related to them. That doesn't predict much, and it's also not a good example of testability. What they find is what they find. So that's probably not a science. But if you sit down and make hypothetical models based on the data, only then you're a scientist. Then, there's no science without theory... but theory is philosophy. Weidorje (talk) 11:03, 1 December 2021 (UTC)


 * I would like to remind everyone that Wikipedia is not a forum. This has gone on for long enough. Either bring in some new sources or stop it here, original reasoning is strictly prohibited on Wikipedia.--Megaman en m (talk) 22:20, 1 December 2021 (UTC)