User talk:Cnilep/Archive/05 September 2012

Linguistic Relativity GA
Hey, Chad - I think it's great that you've nominated Linguistic Relativity as it definitely has potential but I think it still needs some work to make it - particularly the references should be standardized, and I think that there is still some of the literature that could be better covered - for example some of the newer stuff by Boroditsky and the Max Planck people, and also I think it would be nice to describe how the debate fits into alrger philosophical (Putnam, Quine, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Davidson etc.) and psychological (Vygotsky, Piaget, Pinker (et al.)) debates. It would be great if we could devise a plan of intervention on the talk page - i assume it will be a little while before a reviewer takes it up for review. Also depending on the reviewer and her background knowledge we may have to spend some time justifying/explaining that Pinker is not the main authority on linguistic relativity and that the issues are as alive as ever. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 16:06, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, I agree. The page is looking pretty good, but there is always more to be done. There is quite a backlog for GA reviews, but I thought it would be a good opportunity to get a relative outsider's (i.e. someone not already involved with the page) view.


 * There is some mention of Romantic philosophy, at least Humbolt and Kant, but I suppose there's room for more. Likewise, at least Vygotsky is mentioned. I struggle with the idea of how comprehensive the page should be. I feel like most Wikipedia readers probably need an introduction rather than a master class, but that introduction should be as comprehensive as possible to send them off in the most appropriate directions for further reading.


 * Somewhat related – what do you think about the relationship between the page and related WP pages such as Linguistic determinism, Linguistic relativity and the color naming debate, Eskimo words for snow, etc.?　I guess what I'm wondering is if there should be sort of 'daughter' pages for related but not directly relevant concepts. or something like that. maybe main-style dependencies? Cnilep (talk) 02:00, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I think that ideally there should be a spin-out aricle for every major section such as the ones you mention. And yes the aim should be to include pointersto as many of the major intersecting topic as possible. I just added mention of Vygotsky today - I don't think he was mentioned before. I've already taken home the main literature from the library and will get to work over the next week or so. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 02:33, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I've been working on Benjamin Lee Whorf in preparation for the GA drive. If you have time I would love for you to look it over.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 02:41, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I did a little copy editing, and added Maya script to the "Known for" line of the infobox. I'll look more when I have time. Cnilep (talk) 08:18, 4 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately it looks as if we are in for a rough time. I'd consider retracting the nomination, we'll have enough to do with keeping the article intact.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 03:11, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I have had to take the article off my watchlist. He is so base a human being that I really can't engage with him, he begins with ad hominem attacks going directly after personal and professional humiliation in the first blow. I hope some of the article will be left when he is done.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 03:29, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I'll keep my eyes open and hope for the best. Thanks for all your hard work. Regarding GAN, I'm afraid the article will not satisfy the "relatively stable" requirement now. Cnilep (talk) 08:00, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
 * In your work with Ling.rel. you may want to look at the Whorf article which is at this point a better summary of the relation between Whorf and his detractors than the main article and it is well sourced so that you can find the relevant literature to put universalist claims into perspective. The main sources you may want to rely on is Penny Lee 1996 (and 1991 regarding Malotki) and Roger Leavitt 2011.138.16.115.57 (talk) 14:57, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi, Cnilep; Maunus has asked me to work on this group of articles. I do serious wikification, but don't know the subject or sources, so I'll be leaving that to you as I seems your domain (and talk him down off the REICHSTAG, pls;). Cheers, Br&#39;er Rabbit (talk) 17:50, 11 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Maunus is back; I'd like to suggest that you restore the GA-nom (Dale is indef'd for cause and will not be back other than as a whackable sock;)  Br'er Rabbit  06:17, 13 June 2012 (UTC)


 * I'd like to wait with the GA nom for Linguistic relativity just a few more weeks. I think I can restructure the article to be even better - writing BL Whorf was a good way of getting in to the material. Some of Dale's suggestions are reasonable - for example to give am ore extended treatment of the arguments of the Universalist school (even though sources clearly do not consider Malotki to have "pulverized" Whorf's argument about Hopi time - since several sources such as Penny Lee, David Dinwoodie, Roger LEavitt and Bernard Comrie have doubted Malotki's analysis - but we should still give an account of his argument)·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 16:13, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that's sort of where I am too. I think it is a good article, but there's no harm in waiting a bit longer before nominating it as a Good Article. Cnilep (talk) 06:24, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Sage, California
This page, which you PRODded, was a useful dab page. The location in Riverside County was linked from List of places in California (S) and from an article about a road, as well as the dab page you mentioned. (It was also mentioned, though unlinked, at Riverside County, California, now linked). I don't see why you thought of PRODding that completely compliant small dab page. Pam D  07:09, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Great, thanks PamD. I couldn't find any redlinks to the page using the search feature. (I'm embarrassed to say I forgot to check 'What links here'.) I'm glad you've noted this and removed the prod. Cnilep (talk) 01:06, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

AN notice
Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is [Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive755#Dale Chock at Russian phonology|Dale Chock at Russian phonology]]. Thank you. — Æµ§œš¹  [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 03:09, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

It's all good
No prob man. I wasn't upset and honestly haven't been very concerned about that article (I only say that because I saw where something had been changed to preempt a "mini edit war" to which I was a bit like woah what?)

There's a linguistics forum called lingforum that I am on. A couple of months ago there were several weeks-long threads centered around the prescriptive vs descriptive debate (and in particular the very recent view of this that seems to be something people are being taught in college (or who knows, maybe reading it on wikipedia lol...I've never checked to see if there is an article). The end result after everything from wrangling to name calling to whatever was a semi-consensus that while there are certainly a few and historically have been some rather loud ones, that few prescriptivists actually desire to change the way people speak or to prescribe a certain way of communication while disparaging all others.  This idea that some people seek to control the language and either shape it or freeze it seems key to this current idea of prescription.  Unfortunately along with that what's happened is that you now have a huge chunk of linguists and linguistics students who think that anyone who uses forms in line with the established standard (especially if that usage differs from their own (obviously not incorrect) usage) somehow uses that form via an active decision to do so and that in doing they have some ulterior motive in which they aim to force their linguistic will on anyone who does not use whatever usage it is. At the other end of this version is the idea that just because something is observed (and thus described) that it is deemed correct. It's really a silly mess where those who would declare themselves a proud descriptivist end up being more of a prescriptivist by pushing their anti-standard but in their mind observationally justified (and in my experience always coincidentally matching their own personal usage) version in opposition to the agreed standard that differs.

My point (and I don't mean to say this is something that applies to you or anything) is that in our world of linguistics today, especially among younger or less established linguists and students, people tend to assume that we mean something more than what's typed on a page and that the whole linguistic realm is somehow divided into oppositional camps and that when they see something that's disagreeing with their own views, that such a station is somehow an attack or hidden blow from the enemy. Even when we know better than such goofiness, it leaves us all a bit suspicious of each other and looking for motive and subcontext in everything we see. With wikipedia, add in guys like Kwami who take it to the level of rewriting the whole linguistic world to meet his views of the moment and then bullies those who disagree via his admin status, and being involved in linguistics on WP becomes filled with pitfalls and potential to be leery of each other at each turn.

All I meant in that statement you'd quoted was that purely having the ability to document that something exists is not sufficient to say it's correct. There is a problem in general with that word 'correct' and I think that's where some of the debates get going. There isn't really a linguistic concept of 'correct' (of course we can say an analysis is correct or not but not that x is linguistically correct from a theory standpoint). We talk sometimes about correctness, but that's really just another way of referring to well-formedness -- a matter of whether something is organised in such a way as to fit the syntax and such of that language. Prescriptive forms are almost always well-formed, but a good chunk of descriptive forms that differ from prescriptive ones are also well=formed. Many others tend to be well-formed within the confines of a particular speech variety. Only those described forms which fail to fulfill the grammatical restrictions of the standard, the mutually intelligible average, and the specific allowances of their individual variety -- a failure in communication are said to be universally ill-formed. Those might linguistically be said to be incorrect but it's just not something that is worried about that much.

It's been my experience that when most people both in linguistics and philology, grammarians, educators, writers, etc say that something to do with grammar is correct or not, they mean that it either is or is not congruent with the rules of the prescribed and officially accepted standard. Only an idiot would pretend that the idealised standard is something that everyone uses all of the time. But, not only in English but with all languages, it's generally accepted that there has to be a standard agreed upon grammar and that even though speakers and varieties diverge from that standard, that the need to have a set of rules representing the language as a whole is a must have and a valuable tool. It's also however acknowledged that linguistic correctness can extend beyond the more limited scope of grammatical correctness. Such forms or usage while not the standard may experience widespread enough usage that it becomes as universally intelligible as the standard is and in many cases may in fact enjoy greater frequency of usage than the standard form. Historical linguistics shows that often such alternatives, even those enjoying widespread acceptance are often temporary (in linguistic terms this could be hundreds of years) and fade away or change again and again whereas the prescribed standard tends to be more stable and often regains its dominant footing. Obviously historical linguistics also shows that standard forms sometimes fall so far from use so as to lose their communicative value, and, when this happens and especially in conjunction with an alternative form having become cemented into seemingly permanent usage, the standard is rewritten to reflect this.

It's almost like a sort of tradition of checks and balances to make sure we don't as speakers or grammarians or linguists jump to conclusions too soon and go off attempting to rewrite the grammar every time we find something new. Linguistic correctness and grammatically correct tend to get blended for many people and they have a hard time separating the two. This is where I think the more heated nature of grammar debates comes from. Because WP is multilingual, multidisciplinary, and at its core meant for lay people versus members of any particular profession or academic background, I feel that we should limit our use and actions regarding correct or not to the forms that are in line with the standard grammar and by that I mean the written prescribed grammar that's found in long-established mainstream grammar guides that deal with the whole language (some of the ones that target a specific variety such as BrE or NAE tend to artificially push a grammar view that wreaks of regionalism or politics). Using a standard that sometimes stagnates is not perfect, but its the established protocol and has served us all well for centuries.

Certainly we should not exclude commonly accepted alternatives to the standard, but what we don't want to do is argue that because something is common that it is correct or that common is the same as standard. In a way these can all be thought of as synonyms, but when it comes to dealing with language, they do have specific connotations and meanings so how things are labelled in articles should reflect that. When something is commonly accepted and eventually fully overtakes a differing standard form and especially if/when that standard form becomes less than universally intelligible while the common alternative is, then the grammar will be changed to reflect that. In the meantime though, 'correct' should be limited to the established standard with alternatives if need to present them exists, could be touted as not technically grammatically correct, common and generally in use. Our examples and the grammar discussions here on WP should reflect this. As I said before, not excluding the common form, but also not proclaiming a common yet nonstandard alternative as correct when it disagrees with the established grammar. And most importantly, even if a non-standard form is far more common than the standard form, so long as that standard form is intelligible and recognised in the official grammar, the standard form should never be said to be wrong or incorrect in favour of an alternative.

Thus why I opposed the accusative usage of who in the example. The other reason I didn't think it should have been changed or that it was really the place to discuss it was because that particular issue had nothing to do with the topic of the article and I felt that putting a non-standard form in an example, even if more common (and in that particular case, an alternative that's been common for centuries) risks detracting from the point of the example and the article itself and risks confusing non-native speakers as well.Drew.ward (talk) 06:14, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Articles for deletion/Bloke (word)
I have nominated Bloke (word) for deletion at Articles for deletion/Bloke (word) per my close at Talk:Bloke, a discussion in which you participated. Cunard (talk) 19:44, 11 July 2012 (UTC)