Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Linguistics/Archive 1

Other topics?
I think that phonologies and general languages are where Wikipedia is, at least now, doing alright. We need a group to concentrate on other areas of linguistics. Coverage, for instance, of Discourse analysis is very poor. jnothman talk 11:14, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Reflex in linguistics
Somebody on Talk:Reflex action asked for it, since I don't know anything (if the request is valid), I am echoing it here. Samohyl Jan 04:16, 13 November 2005 (UTC)


 * As cognate is to cousins or sisters, so reflex is to daughters or granddaughters. If a sound or form A in a daughter language is described as a reflex of sound or form B in a parent language, then A is the sound or form that B became. For example, English initial "h" is a reflex of PIE kʷ. Does that help? 207.245.124.66 15:39, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Theoretical linguistics
Would be great to get this project to cover theoretical linguistics too. A lot of the pages are in a right state. e.g. Language acquisition and principles and parameters - FrancisTyers 22:55, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I would be interested in helping, although my knowledge is kind of stale (I completed my Ph.D. 30 years ago, but haven't worked in Linguistics since then). --  Dalbury ( Talk )  13:53, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Requested merge
I have requested that the new British language (Celtic) article be merged into the Welsh language article. Contribute at Talk:Welsh language.--Mais oui! 11:01, 12 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Scottish, Manx, and Cornish are also "British" Celtic languages (you could probably even say that Irish is too, although that's politically touchy). I'm not sure what makes Welsh special among the non-Gaelic siblings. I guess this is supposed to be about the proto-language of Cornish, Welsh, and Breton, i.e. P-Celtic. Why should it be merged into Welsh and not Cornish or Breton? Mike Dillon 16:33, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Anthropology wikiproject?
I just made a proposal for an anthropology wikiproject on the "list of proposed wikiprojects" page. If you're interested, you can sign up at our entry and on the temporary project page. Thanks. Ungovernable ForceThe Wiki Kitchen! 21:08, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Linguistics subtypes
I neglected to mention this earlier, but some time ago I proposed a number of possible sub-stub-types (as it were) of ling-stub, which is somewhat oversized. (WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals/2006/October) Having split out phonetics-stub, I'd find any domain-expert input on which to tackle next very welcome. Alai 04:18, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Project Directory
Hello. The WikiProject Council is currently in the process of developing a master directory of the existing WikiProjects to replace and update the existing WikiProject Council/Directory. These WikiProjects are of vital importance in helping wikipedia achieve its goal of becoming truly encyclopedic. Please review the following pages:
 * User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory,
 * User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory 2,
 * User:Badbilltucker/Philosophy and religion Directory,
 * User:Badbilltucker/Sports Directory,
 * User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory,
 * User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory/United States, (note: This page will be retitled to more accurately reflect its contents)
 * User:Badbilltucker/History and society directory, and
 * User:Badbilltucker/Science directory

and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope to have the existing directory replaced by the updated and corrected version of the directory above by November 1. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 22:46, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Sorry if you tried to update it before, and the corrections were gone. I have now moved the new draft in the old directory pages, so the links should work better. My apologies for any confusion this may have caused you. B2T2 14:45, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards
Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 16:50, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Request for assistance at Redundancy (language)
Can someone who actually understands it please de-linguageek this passage at the referenced article: A common concept in linguistics is economy of storage; only unpredictable information is said to be stored in one's "mental grammar". The rest must be reconstructed by the speaker in conversation, or "on-line".&#91;citation needed&#93; Redundancy aids this process, increasing the odds of predictability by acting as a "noise" filter.&#91;original research?&#93; I have an undergraduate in linguistics and even I can't meaningfully parse that! Thanks in advance. :-)

PS: If "economy of storage" is such a "common" concept, why does it have no article?

&mdash; SMcCandlish &#91;talk&#93; &#91;contrib&#93; ツ 13:41, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I am not a linguist, but it appears to read easily enough: Because our brain has a limited capacity, we need to economize in what we store in memory and in the retrieving process. Therefore whatever appears predictable, we do not need to compare with what we have in our memory and analyze it; we only go and retrieve ('mental grammar') what is not readily understood from what we anticipated. Redundancy makes it easier to recognize something to be in line with what could be anticipated. Else we might more often think for a moment that we receive surprising information while such would not really be the case, causing us to already start the process only to find out it had not really been needed; such unuseful process is a 'noice', a hindrance, for these processes at occasions that actually require them. Redundancy avoids traffic jams; just how I read it, of course. This assumes a more readily available process centre for 'on-line', almost instantaneous, analysis of e.g. conjugation etc: "she say" would trigger the more profound process when hearing "say" (perhaps to realize that a loud (real) noise must have overstemmed a preceeding "What did", else we will ask to repeat); contrarily, the "says" of "she says" is spotted as predictable. This allows us to let someone feeling compelled to tell an entire story to rattle on, without our paying much attention, but still we would spot an unexpected tweak: that novel information is the only thing interesting for us. Without this capacity we would have a headache by a continous effort of really listening and possibly, having become tired and blurred, even miss the one thing we should have paid attention to. — SomeHuman 15 Feb2007 23:41 - 16 Feb2007 00:14- (UTC)

Slave trade and nautical language theory of Creole Genesis on AfD
The article Slave trade and nautical language theory of Creole Genesis has been proposed for deletion. If you have an opinion in the matter, you might consider contributing to the discussion at Articles for deletion/Slave trade and nautical language theory of Creole Genesis. --Lambiam Talk 18:36, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia offer on Linguist List

 * Linguist List Vote: To Wiki or Not to Wiki
 * Offers grad student to work on linguistic articles in WP if their fund-raising collects $6000 in the next 48 hours
 * Must use special "Wikipedia offer" donation page: http://linguistlist.org/donation/fund-drive2007/wikipedia/
 * Calls WikiProject Linguistics "...quite dormant and not really organized"; ; makes no mention of WP:ENLANG, WP:MESO or other WikiProjects actively involved in languages/linguistics articles.
 * Ling.Nut 00:36, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Hello from LINGUIST List!
I hope you have all had a chance to read about LINGUIST List’s new effort to recruit linguists for updating Wikipedia pages. It is good to see that there is an active group of editors already working away. For those of you who haven’t already heard, The LINGUIST List was nominated by Dr. Partee (in Russia) to coordinate academic linguists in an update of the linguistics and language pages. In April, our online linguistics community confirmed this with an overwhelming vote, and as promised, I am the graduate research assistant working to recruit linguistics editors. For the past few weeks, I have been reading about WikiProject Linguistics, familiarizing myself with all the subprojects, and trying to get a handle on the many activities you’ve already started. Here at The LINGUIST List, we’ve decided to place our focus on any areas is not being actively worked on yet. This might be tackling the “to do” lists of a few subprojects, adding to those lists, or whatever else is appropriate. Feel free to make suggestions on this page, or shoot me an email at hannah@linguistlist.org (my name is Hannah Morales). Looking forward to working with everyone, --Linguistlist 15:28, 9 May 2007 (UTC) Hannah, LINGUIST List

New WPTL tasks list
I've drafted a new WikiProject Theoretical Linguistics task list template: WPTL todo. Comments and suggestions would be greatly appreciated--please discuss at the WPTL talk page. Thanks! mitcho/芳貴 21:55, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Sharon Inkelas Articles for Deletion
The article on Sharon Inkelas is currently proposed for deletion (Articles for deletion/Sharon Inkelas). It looks like consensus is building for keeping, but it does not seem like we have any experts with personal knowledge of her contributions to the field of linguistics. It would be great if people who know the field could comment either way about this scholar. Thanks. --Myke Cuthbert 05:13, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Discussion on Noam Chomsky Talk Page
I would like the assistance of some members of this project in an ongoing discussion regarding material being added on to the Noam Chomsky article. Please see Talk:Noam_Chomsky. Thank you.--Jersey Devil 15:30, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Help needed with Bushisms
The analysis in the Bushisms article is currently original research, or, more forgivingly, strongly suffers from WP:SYN. Attention is needed from anyone with an expertise in linguistic speech errors or American English dialects. Thanks, nadav 05:54, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

See Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Herero Wikipedia
If anyone here has any Herero language proficiency, please take a look at this proposal and at the small Herero encyclopedia itself to see what should be done with this wikipedia (keep it or delete it.) Keeping it implies more than a sentimental commitment ("it would be nice to have a wikipedia in every language ...") but also that it can be something more than a 10 or 20-article spam and vandalism trap -- and not just "someday" but in the here and now. (Otherwise, it may be best to delete it for now and wait until there's more interest in the future.)

Please do not respond here but rather at that discussion (Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Herero Wikipedia).

Thanks, --A. B. (talk) 12:15, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Help, template, DAB names
There is a need to disambiguate (DAB) biography articles where the first name (personal name)? causes confusion, where the last name causes confusion (surname and surname), and were two or more terms from a single human name cause confusion namedab. The template hndis uses "human name" to mean first name. There also is something called proper name. The DAB template scheme for human names is not set up well, largely because of the confusion between personal name, surname, name, human name, proper name, etc. Also, some countries use the last name (surname?) as the name by which others ordinarly call that person and some countries use the first name for the same purpose. I think this is a linguistics problem. There should be three DAB templates to disambiguate articles having human name titles: 1. where the first name causes confusion (e.g., John), 2. where the last name causes confusion (e.g., Smith), and 3. were two or more terms from a single human name cause confusion (e.g., John Smith). These three templates should be tied to three separate Wikipedia articles from which they may derive meaning for their term. surname seems clear. My question, what is the correct linguistic term for the first name of a human and what is the correct linguistic term for the entire name of a human? Also, given how different cultures use different names, do you think this three template approach should cover the human name DAB matters are is there some additional linguistic term needed to cover the human name DAB matters? -- Jreferee (Talk) 17:14, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Suffix deletion
You may be interested to know that two suffix articles I created are up for deletion at AfD now: -ship and -manship. Apparently there is a move toward transwiking possibly all of them to Wiktionary. Dhaluza 16:55, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Missing major article!
Proto-Italic language is pretty much the only article in that entire Proto-* series of articles that is still a redlink. Pretty serious omission. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 11:25, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Proposed deletions (WP:PROD)
no articles presently proposed for deletion --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 11:46, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Help request for Talk:Sḵwxwú7mesh
Hi. There is a discussion at Talk:Sḵwxwú7mesh concerning what the article title should be. An RfC in September didn't come to any solid conclusions, so I thought I'd ask for input from here. Thanks for any help. --Quiddity 06:28, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Notice of List articles
Page(s) related to this project have been created and/or added to one of the Contents subpages (not by me). This note is to let you know, so that experts in the field can expand them and check them for accuracy, and so that they can be added to any watchlists/tasklists, and have any appropriate project banners added, etc. Thanks. --Quiddity 20:03, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
 * List of basic linguistics topics

Greenspun illustration project: requests now open
Dear Wikimedians,

This is a (belated) announcement that requests are now being taken for illustrations to be created for the Philip Greenspun illustration project (PGIP).

The aim of the project is to create and improve illustrations on Wikimedia projects. You can help by identifying which important articles or concepts are missing illustrations (diagrams) that could make them a lot easier to understand. Requests should be made on this page: Philip_Greenspun_illustration_project/Requests

If there's a topic area you know a lot about or are involved with as a Wikiproject, why not conduct a review to see which illustrations are missing and needed for that topic? Existing content can be checked by using Mayflower to search Wikimedia Commons, or use the Free Image Search Tool to quickly check for images of a given topic in other-language projects.

The community suggestions will be used to shape the final list, which will be finalised to 50 specific requests for Round 1, due to start in January. People will be able to make suggestions for the duration of the project, not just in the lead-up to Round 1.


 * General information about the project: Philip_Greenspun_illustration_project
 * Potential illustrators and others interested in the project should join the mailing list: greenspun-illustrations

thanks, pfctdayelise (talk) 12:45, 13 December 2007 (UTC) (Project coordinator)

Articles for deletion/J. Alan Groves -- input sought
This AfD may be of interest to some linguists. Groves, a theologian, developed methodology and databases for studying Biblical text. Any reliable sources for this article would probably come from this Google Scholar search which is a little hard for laymen to interpret.

Thanks for your help. -- A. B. (talk) 14:45, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Imperative mood: Help request
I was wondering why en.wiki was the only big wikipedia project without a separate article about the imperative mood. So, now a new stub is created. The only problem is about spelling and grammar :( English is not my mother tongue.

Is there anybody who wants take a look there for corrections? Thanks! --Invitamia (talk) 17:23, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your help, I really appreciate it. --Invitamia (talk) 13:42, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

comparison of wikipedia with Encylopedia of Linguistics

 * A recent comparison of wikipedia's topical coverage with that of print encylopedias (Alexander Halavais & Derek Lackaff (2008) 'An Analysis of Topical Coverage of Wikipedia', Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13 (2), 429–440) has compared wikipedia's coverage with that of Philipp Strazny (ed.) Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Dsp13 (talk) 12:17, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
 * What lessons should we draw from this? It doesn't seem to name specific subareas as needing changes in coverage. --JWB (talk) 20:31, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure. I've asked one of the authors if we could have the list of missing headwords they found: if I get them I'll post them.Dsp13 (talk) 22:58, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Project merge?
I can't help noticing that there are two linguistics projects: this one and WikiProject Theoretical Linguistics. Both seem to be sleepy and almost completely inactive; would it not be better to just consolidate them? linas (talk) 16:52, 24 March 2008 (UTC)


 * To quote from the top of the main page:
 * WikiProject Linguistics is, for now, just an umbrella project for WikiProject Languages, WikiProject Language families, WikiProject Writing systems, WikiProject Phonetics, and WikiProject Theoretical Linguistics.
 * So, isn't it already? Msanford  T 04:58, 25 March 2008 (UTC)


 * There are too many of them though, which might explain the inactivity. I think a merge of some sort is long overdue. — Zerida  ☥ 21:30, 29 March 2008 (UTC)


 * You might be right actually, re-creating (rejuvenating) WikiProject Linguistics and transforming the rest into task forces might be a great idea. Msanford  T 13:06, 30 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Isn't WikiProject Language families effectively synonymous with Historical Linguistics? It should be renamed Wikiproject Historical Linguistics, and made a descendent of WikiProject Theoretical Linguistics. --Peter Farago (talk) 19:10, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Propose merge of timing articles
There's a proposed merge of Syllable-timed language, Mora-timed language, and Stress-timed language into Timing (linguistics). There's further discussion at Talk:Timing (linguistics), and input or help would be valuable. Kingdon (talk) 17:20, 24 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I suppose I should mention that I did this a week or so ago, with no noticeable protests (and few even noticing? ;-)). Kingdon (talk) 21:55, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Major edits to Linguistics article
I noticed today that the Linguistics article has been considerably revised over the last few weeks by one individual (here is a comparison). The resulting article was in a couple of places very POV and in general seemed to give undue weight to such things as narrative theory and semiotics. I spent some time today considerably revising this revised version, in many cases returning the article to something like how it had been previously, although with some changes of my own (see here for a comparison). As this has all involved a fair amount of serious editing, I thought I should bring it up here so that everyone can compare versions and judge whether or not I've been fair, and whether I've cut out anything that should have remained, or added anything that shouldn't be there. In general, it would be great if we could bring at least this article to featured status. garik (talk) 19:53, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

French profanity
This has been a requested article for quite some time. Been trying to get a handle on sources for this. We have an excellent article on profanity in the French of Quebec. For metropolitan French, currency is my chief concern. I've got a number of books that profess to introduce you to colloquial and profane French, but colloquial French seems to change even faster than colloquial English. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 11:40, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Danger of edit war on Linguistics. PLEASE have a look and get involved
Two editors of Linguistics, one of whom is me, have two very different visions of how the article should look. I was perhaps over-hasty in reverting Supriyya's edits today, but I feel that s/he is trying to turn the linguistics article into something that is not about mainstream linguistics.

What is desperately needed is for more linguists to compare the two visions of this article and get involved. Thank you. garik (talk) 19:34, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Garik, I actually have a degree in the field myself and I'm inclined to agree that the other user's edits appear to be motivated by a desire to fundamentally alter the direction of the article. I believe most people who have studied the field or in the field would agree that a Linguist is not merely one who "engages in language" as Supriyya's edit states.  If that were literally true than my husband, who is a filmmaker and director is as much as linguist as am I despite his having no involvement in the study of languages, their uses, their changes over time and the cultural significanes of all the aforementioned.  he "enages in language" by speaking language and making decisions about dialogue in his work but he ain't a linguist.


 * Further, his/her edits that insert a postion about Narratology so early in the article tilt it in the direction of experience-based "engagement" and away from the idea that a Linguist first and foremost has a foundation of knowledge based on study. That is a minority POV that might be worthy of discussion in the article but again, not so high up in placement which gives it the illusion of prominence within the field.  He/she also characterizes certain debates as "interesting" or some views as "Traditional" or "unfortunate" - all of which is outright POV pushing not to mention some of the other edits that border on Original Research.


 * His/her characterization of Chomsky is also rather odd and clearly his/her personal opinion or the opinion of an unreferenced individual. Chomsky's views have shifted so greatly over time that one cannot sum them up that simply.  Indeed, When I was in Graduate School, one of his major shifts on transformational/generative grammar threw us all into personally tizzies since our work relied on the intricacies of transformations.  When he went essentially to his "Move A" argument, I threw my hands up in amused surrender and went back to working on  extinct languages rather than dip my toes back into the turbulent sea of high level theory!


 * I feel your version is the more appropriate one since it avoids loaded adjectives, weasel words and POV-Pushing. Let's assume good faith here and go with the assumption that this Supriyya is an excited and enthusiastic student with a hypothesis and that he/she misunderstands the Encyclopdic nature of Wikipedia. Perhaps you can gently explain all these issues that his/her edits have raised, provide links to the pages that explain what Wikipedia is and is not, give some examples of neutral versus loaded language and then encourage him/her to write his/her view of what Linguistics is as an original essay for publication or presentation as a paper.  I can tell you that this is the type of thing that Symposium organizers just adore putting on schedule due to the lively debate and dialogue that results!  Good luck and let me know if I can help in any way.LiPollis (talk) 21:44, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Can we centralize the discussion at Talk:Linguistics? —Angr 21:51, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Requested move: Ordinal number (linguistics)
While I have little doubt that set theorists will weigh in shortly, looking at the history of Talk:Ordinal number I suspect that the supporting view may be overly silent. The participation of any interests is invited to discuss at Talk:Ordinal number (linguistics). 217.36.107.9 (talk) 13:01, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Yiddish words and phrases
I recently removed the category Category:Yiddish words and phrases from several articles which are about words of Hebrew origin that were incorporated into Yiddish with no change in meaning. This was reverted by User:IZAK. Is there any relevant guideline or consensus about this? Note that such articles as Chutzpah and Gadol would still get the category, because in those cases the word has taken on new connotations in Yiddish. --Eliyak T · C 17:29, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Rename proposal for the lists of basic topics
This project's subject has a page in the set of Lists of basic topics.

See the proposal at the Village pump to change the names of all those pages.

The Transhumanist 10:11, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme
As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.
 * The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
 * The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
 * A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.

Each WikiProject should already have a new C-Class category at Category:C-Class_articles. If your project elects not to use the new level, you can simply delete your WikiProject's C-Class category and clarify any amendments on your project's assessment/discussion pages. The bot is already finding and listing C-Class articles.

Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot  ( Disable )  20:53, 4 July 2008 (UTC)