Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Linguistics/Archive 13

"Open[-]front rounded vowel", etc.
In doing some random WP:RM cleanup on unhyphenated "open source foo" constructions, I noticed that about 4/5 or more of our articles on vowel classification were in the form "foo-bar baz quux vowel" (with more or fewer parts as the case may be) and the remainder were "foo bar baz quux vowel", with no apparent rhyme or reason to it. Since WP:CONSISTENCY is a policy, which should be implemented across closely-related articles even in the sometimes lo-o-ong interim until a question like this gets sorted out, I normalized all the outliers that I ran across, to use the majority [on WP, anyway] style.

However, I have strong personal, linguistics [university minor, not major], and MOS:HYPHEN-interpretational senses that none of these should be hyphenated except for the cases where an element is a prefix or forms a unitary compound modifier (as in "mid-front" or "near-open", respectively), or is a suffix if applicable (I'd have to go look it up to see whether the "mid" in "open[-]mid[-]back unrounded vowel" should be glued to the open or to the back, and strongly suspect the latter because mid as a suffix is a bit aberrant). In all other cases – stand-alone descriptive words – the hyphens should be removed ("open front", "high back", etc.). Sources don't seem consistent on it, and our editors have not been, so we should just apply MOS:HYPHEN, in a mass-RM, then massage the text to conform to the article titles. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:30, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Undo the moves immediately. You do not seem to understand what these technical terms mean. "Close", "mid", and "open" refer to the vowel height, and "front", "central", and "back" refer to the backness. "Near-close", "open-mid", etc. are hyphenated because, as you suspected, the one component is modifying the other. The names you moved from are what scholars call those vowels (although there is some variation between "high" vs "close", "half-open" vs "open-mid", etc.), including the International Phonetic Association (see IPA Handbook). Nardog (talk) 04:13, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
 * The issue is that when I went through these pages they were even for the exact same term.  Is there a preferred and actually authoritative source we want to follow?  I'm happy make them all match one.  But what I found was worse than, say, "Open-mid foo" for one page title followed immediately by "Open mid bar" (no hyphen) at another – it was often not even consistent for the exact same term in the same paragraph in the same article.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:39, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Most articles already follow the IPA, which is the authority, and you made them not. They were already [not] hyphenated except for the cases where an element is a prefix or forms a unitary compound modifier, and you made them otherwise. Please revert them, as I can't do it myself because you have edited the redirects. I'm still having a serious hard time understanding how such an experienced editor like you could boldly move those article when the articles have stood where they were for over a decade. You could have just looked at the IPA chart. Nardog (talk) 04:47, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
 * And I don't understand what "inconsistency" you are speaking of. As far as article titles go there is no such inconsistency that I'm aware of, and whenever such an inconsistency is found in the running text, they should be corrected so they follow the hyphenation the article titles (and the IPA) adopt. Nardog (talk) 04:55, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I, too, am having trouble understanding what sort of inconsistency would lead one to change (and move!) open central unrounded vowel ‎to open-central unrounded vowel. The hyphen occurs when there is an in-between point on the same axis. So there can be an open front unrounded vowel and a near-open front unrounded vowel. The same goes for open-mid and close-mid. The hyphen doesn't occur between elements of different axes, so open-central would be incorrect because the hyphen is going between the first element that goes along the open-to-close axis and the second element that goes from front to back.
 * If there is inconsistency in this, the IPA handbook should be your guide as you fix this, SMcCandlish. — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 05:24, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I'll go with that one if it's the preferred reference. In the interim, I'll just self-RV it all.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:07, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you for cleaning them up. Just so we can be on the same page, though, what are some examples of the "inconsistencies" your summaries say exist? As Aeusoes1 and I explained, the titles of the vowel articles are consistent in being  and I don't think you have provided an example from an actual article of the inconsistencies you've been referring to yet. 06:41, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I'd have to dig back through them all. The titles do in fact appear consistent, but I saw inconsistencies in the article texts. It was an error on my part not to confer with IPA or some other source before trying to do anything with it (that failure on my part led me to a mid- error, etc.).  Having been outside formal linguistics since university days is one reason I'll come to WT:LINGUISTICS to make sure I'm not breaking something if I'm in doubt.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:53, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
 * If you know the titles are indeed consistent and the IPA is where to look for authority, then I think you know how to correct such an inconsistency upon encountering one in an article. I'm putting up a resolved tag (which you may remove if you have further questions). Nardog (talk) 00:05, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
 * No objection at all; it just was a brain-fart on my part. I was in "hyphenate compound modifiers" WP:GNOME mode, saw in-article inconsistencies even for the same construction, thought "just normalize it all to hyphenation that looks right in English" including in the titles, then remembered that this is technical topic I haven't had training in 20 years, and so came here for a sanity check after the doubt started to nag. I'll be much more careful henceforth.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:40, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Mid and (near-)open central vowels
Split from the discussion near-front and near-back

A dedicated section for the mid central rounded vowel makes sense in the article Mid central vowel, but not in the chart I don't think. Think of the coronals we list in the consonant chart. Nardog (talk) 13:31, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
 * So you're saying that we shouldn't split mid central vowel into two articles? Mr KEBAB (talk) 08:21, 14 May 2018 (UTC)


 * I've just realized that if we do that, we should revert the split of near-open central vowel and preferably move open central rounded vowel there as, AFAIK, the sources provide not enough data to prove whether the vowel is fully open or near-open and the article lists only three examples anyway. It's WP:TOOSOON to have more than one article on (near-)open central rounded vowels. Mr KEBAB (talk) 06:42, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
 * [ə] and [ɐ] are deliberately kept ambiguous with respect to roundedness, as the rounded–unrounded dichotomy is not as robust in open vowels. So our IPA vowels is currently unfaithful to the official IPA in this regard. I really, really think the split of Near-open central vowel was unnecessary. I agree Open central rounded vowel is also unnecessary, but I'd rather Open central unrounded vowel and Open central rounded vowel merged into Open central vowel, which is yet another TOOSOON article. Then, we can remove [ɒ̈] from the template and move [ä] to the center (which is faithful to the definition given in Handbook, p. 13). Nardog (talk) 10:43, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

Split undone for Near-open central vowel. I plan to merge Open central unrounded vowel and Open central rounded vowel in a few days should no one contest. Nardog (talk) 10:36, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I think I agree with keeping unrounded and rounded variants of mid and near-open central vowels in two instead of four articles, but I don't think we should merge Open central rounded vowel with Open central unrounded vowel. Rather, Open central rounded vowel should go to Near-open central vowel, which has a somewhat poorly sourced section (with one example language) dedicated to the rounded variant. Plus, the symbol is unambiguously unrounded like, not unspecified for rounding like  and . Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 16:16, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Are you suggesting that we redirect Open central rounded vowel to Near-open central vowel? Or that we move the content of the latter section to the former article? I can get behind the second option, but not the first one—if the sources provide not enough data to prove whether the vowel is fully open or near-open, then it seems to me the reasonable option is to gather them as open, not as near-open. Nardog (talk) 05:37, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
 * The problem I have with this is that is an unambiguously unrounded vowel. It's  that isn't. On open front rounded vowel, open back unrounded vowel and open back rounded vowel we list open and near-open vowels. I don't see a reason why we shouldn't do the same on near-open central vowel. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 11:04, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Again, are you suggesting that we redirect Open central rounded vowel to Near-open central vowel, or that we move the content of the latter section to the former article? Nardog (talk) 11:17, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
 * What I'm suggesting is that Near-open central vowel is the best place to list both. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 13:21, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Why not Open central rounded vowel? And what do you propose to do to Open central rounded vowel, which would be rendered redundant by your suggestion? You just said we shouldn't be removing [ɒ̈] from the chart, which at this point I echo. Nardog (talk) 13:26, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Because, like , is unspecified for rounding. If we were to make near-open central vowel only about the unrounded vowel it'd be inconsistent with how we treat the varieties of.


 * Another possibility is spliting into two articles, making near-open central vowel only about the unrounded variant and listing the lower-than-open-mid central rounded vowels in open central rounded vowel. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 13:47, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Why is it prerequisite that we list both unrounded and rounded variants at Near-open central vowel just because we do so at Mid central vowel too? Or that we split Mid central vowel to maintain that parallel if we were to go the other route? What's wrong with listing only the unrounded variant at Near-open central vowel just because no occurrence of the rounded variant that is inarguably near-open and not open is found? Nardog (talk) 13:56, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Because doing otherwise is inconsistent with how the IPA treats the symbols, which makes listing unrounded and rounded variants of in one article less logical and also inconsistent with other articles.


 * Judging by what the source says, the vowel we list on Near-open central vowel is unambiguously near-open. It's the vowels on open central rounded vowel that are ambiguous in that regard. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 14:06, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Okay, suppose we move the content of Open central rounded vowel to Near-open central vowel, then what do we do to the former article? Redirect to the latter section? Nardog (talk) 14:08, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I guess. What'd be the alternative? Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 14:11, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Then at that point I'd rather leave them where they are. We don't know if they are really fully open, granted, but if we moved them to near-open we'd be suggesting that they are near-open, until we clarify in the notes that they are described in the sources as "open", not "near-open", which would be quite silly IMHO. Nardog (talk) 14:32, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
 * What about splitting mid central vowel into two articles (that way we could also have a separate section for protruded and compressed schwas, akin to close central rounded vowel etc.), making near-open central vowel only about the unrounded variant and merging the section about the rounded variant with open central rounded vowel? Because the section about the rounded variant of is almost empty and it lacks proper sourcing. I'd rather not leave it as is. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 14:53, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

I don't like the idea that we'd have to split Mid central vowel just because we listed the unrounded variant only at Near-open central vowel (not doing so doesn't prohibit separating the protruded and compressed variants either). How about we move the content of Near-open central vowel to Open central rounded vowel, but we keep the sections of the article ("Near-open central (un)rounded vowel") and put up a navigation such as For or Further in the now-empty section? That's the only reasonable way I can think of aside from the status quo. Nardog (talk) 13:39, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

Consonants in general
Hi everybody! I've been interested in phonetics and studying it for a while yet I wish somebody would explain to me or provide me with some information on what principle consonants are added to the Wikipedia and thereby classified. To be more specific I'll show an example: Voiceless alveolar non-sibilant affricate uses the symbols [tɹ̝̊ tθ̠ and tθ͇] but what is it included in the IPA pulmonic consonants chart? IPA does not include it. Isn't it just a realization of /tr/? And if it is and we still include it in the chart why doesn't we include other realization of certain phonemes such as dental voiceless dental alveolar sibilant /s̪/, and many many more? I hope someone will able to explain it to me :) Tashi   Talk to me  17:27, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
 * You're confusing phonemes (abstract language-specific entities) with phones (actual sounds). Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 17:29, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
 * So do you think that the chart should consist of phonemes or phones? If phonemes, there shouldn't be any [tɹ̝̊] sound in it, if phones there why there is no [s̪] (just an example) included? Tashi   Talk to me  17:59, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Again, phonemes are abstract language-specific entities that aren't even sounds but just containers for them. They have nothing to do with our table of consonants, which is a table of phones. Please read phoneme and allophone.


 * The dental version of is listed on voiceless alveolar fricative. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 18:06, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Discussion
I recently made some major changes to Linguistics, and I want to get wider feedback on the template, content- and style-wise.

At the top I added "Part of a series on" and added links to the overview page, page on the history of linguistics, and the index page. I couldn't decide on a good image like other sidebar boxes, so feel free to suggest on. As for content I removed a number of links, shortening the overal length. I made the sections collapsible allowing readers to open or hide sections as they need. It defaults to fully expanded.

I redid the sections entirely. Firstly, I removed the distinction of theoretical and descriptive linguistics in favor of a simple "subfields" header. The inclusion criteria was already being in the template and being on the list of subfields maintained by the Open Language Archives Community and The Linguist List, so a number of links were removed but none were added. Feel free to suggest ones to add or different criteria to use. I added a section on grammatical theories. The inclusion criteria was being a top level link in the list on Grammar. I think a more general list of important theories in linguistics would be more useful to readers, and it would include things like Montague grammar, Source–filter model of speech production, and optimality theory. I think it's better to get a consensus on what things should be on that list, so suggestions are welcome. The Topics section is similar, though it's inclusion criteria was topics I thought were relevant. Suggestions for pages to add or remove there would be particularly welcome so that the list is useful. Wugapodes [thɔk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɻɪbz] 05:14, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

Edit notice for Code-switching
Code-switching, and I imagine other linguistics articles, is frequently targeted by copy editors who change non-standard usage example to standard language. This often defeats their purpose of illustrating particular linguistic behavior.

Yesterday I tried to request an edit notice for the page, but today I notice that I forgot to add edit template-protected to actually make the request. D'oh! But on second thought, that turns out to be fortunate.

I hereby invite editors interested in this project to view the request at Template talk:Editnotices/Page/Code-switching and help improve the proposed template. Alternately, if you disagree that a template is necessary you could let the admins know that. Cnilep (talk) 23:39, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Sources regarding gender in English
Are there any good reliable and definitive sources on how gender is handled in English, and about how English would be classified in terms of gender usage. Sometimes I think discussions run into semantic issues, with some arguing that the presence of gender in pronouns means English should be classified as a language with gender like how Spanish and German are; and others arguing that English lacks the noun classes that make up what we think of grammatical gender and so should be classified separately, and classified with the languages that don't have grammatical gender like Turkish and Korean. I was able to provide the 2008 source from Jenny Audring which was published in morphology, which looked at pronominal gender systems and compared such systems across multiple languages, including English.

Does anyone else have good sources on the subject? Also, how do you think should we present this information on Wikipedia?--Beneficii (talk) 21:23, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Have you seen Gender in English? — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 22:34, 28 August 2018 (UTC)


 * One (gender-neutral third-person-singular pronoun) is uncertain. Narky Blert (talk) 00:06, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Categories - Grammarians and Linguists
Struggling to find appropriate categories for Wendy Ayres-Bennett (Professor of French Philology and Linguistics) I'm puzzled why within the tree Category:Linguists by language of study there are "Linguists of ..." many languages but Category:Grammarians of French (to which I've added her) and of most other major European languages and some others. I'm not a linguistics specialist so this distinction between Linguists and Grammarians may be perfectly obvious to some although not to me. But when I look at the dab page at Grammarian, the only senses which apply to contemporary people are Linguist or Philologist. Category:Philologists by subject includes Category:Romance philologists (to which I've added her). Category:Grammarians redirects to Category:Linguists. Does this category tree make sense, to subject experts? Should the "Grammarians of ..." categories be renamed as "Linguists of ..." for contemporary languages?

Ah, after typing the above and looking at the history of Category:Grammarians I have now found Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_September_17 where this was discussed nearly three years ago. The close included: "Follow-up speedy nominations would be needed to merge/rename Category:Grammarians by nationality and its subcats to Category:Linguists by nationality and its subcats, and to rename the modern language sub-cats of Category:Linguists by language of study to "linguists". Is it now time to do this? Pinging those active in that discussion: If there's a better venue for this discussion, please advise. Thanks.  Pam  D  11:10, 12 September 2018 (UTC)
 * you could ask for help at WP:AWB/Tasks to tag all the pages with cfr-speedy. – Fayenatic  L ondon 19:06, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I've not got any experience with renaming categories. Do you think these are speediable as Consistency with established category tree names or one of the other C2 criteria? The documentation about speedying Cats seems very firm that one of the C2 criteria must be met. If they're definitely speediable it won't be much work to tag them all as there are only 21, hardly worth using AWB... though I'm out of practice with AWB and it might be a useful exercise.  Pam  D  21:04, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
 * thanks for getting that done. Please note that I've asked for "Grammarians of Arabic" to be reinstated, see Categories for discussion/Log/2018 September 24. Participants at this project may also be interested in the wider nomination, and the one above it re orientalists. – Fayenatic  L ondon 12:03, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

Automated audio for IPA?
Just a heads up about the following proposal: Village pump (proposals). – Uanfala (talk) 11:21, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

"Directive" needs attention
Basic_English lists among the grammar rules of Basic English (quoting originator Charles Ogden ):


 * Make combined words (compounds) from two nouns (for example "milkman") or a noun and a directive ("sundown").

I don't know what a grammatical "directive" is.

The disamb page Directive says


 * A particular kind of speech act which causes the hearer to take a particular action

(This doesn't seem to correspond to Ogden's usage.)

Speech act contains no mention of the term "directive".

Not helpful.

Therefore:

(A) If "directive" is really a thing in grammar, can we please make a stub article about it?

(B) If it's not, then can we please add a note to Basic_English explaining what Ogden meant in standard modern terms?

thanks - 189.122.52.73 (talk) 01:49, 9 October 2018 (UTC)


 * Ogden apparently used the word "directive" to mean preposition (or something close to it, perhaps limited to prepositions indicating a direction).


 * More concerning to me, the 'rules' section that 189.122.52.73 refers to looks very, very similar to this summary of Ogden on the web. That web page says it was last updated in 1996, so it can't have been copied from Wikipedia. Does it seem likely to anyone else that the Wikipedia page is a possible copyright violation? Or is my plagiarism detector simply too sensitive right now? Cnilep (talk) 08:15, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree, that looks like a copyright violation. -- 11:25, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I've tagged the section and listed the page at Copyright problems/2018 October 9. Cnilep (talk) 23:52, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

Useful source for linguistic articles
I found The Oxford Handbook of the History of Linguistics and a bunch of the chapters seem like they can be useful for improving articles, especially history/development sections. I have full access to the book so if you want any of the chapters for an article you're working on (or want to work on), email me and I can send you a pdf. Wugapodes [thɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 17:59, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

HELP WANTED


For a number of years we have been experiencing a steady decline in the number of administrators as a result of attrition and a declining number of editors willing to consider adminship. Things have reached a point where we are starting to experience chronic backlogs in important areas of the project including noticeboards, requests for closure, SPI, CSD & etc. If you are an experienced editor with around two years (or more) of tenure, 10k edits give or take and no record of seriously disruptive behavior, please consider if you might be willing to help out the community by becoming an administrator. The community can only function as well as we all are willing to participate. If you are interested start by reading WP:MOP and WP:RFAADVICE. Then go to WP:ORCP and open a discussion. Over the next few days experienced editors will take a look at your record and let you know what they think your chances are of passing RfA (the three most terrifying letters on Wikipedia) as well as provide you with feedback on areas that might be of concern and how to prepare yourself. You can find a list of experienced editors who may be willing to nominate you here. Finally, I may not have this page on my watchlist, so if you want to reply to me directly please ping me. Thank you and happy editing... -Ad Orientem (talk) 21:59, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

Featured quality source review RFC
Editors in this WikiProject may be interested in the featured quality source review RFC that has been ongoing. It would change the featured article candidate process (FAC) so that source reviews would need to occur prior to any other reviews for FAC. Your comments are appreciated. --IznoRepeat (talk) 21:38, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Links to DAB pages
I have collected several articles with linguistics-related links to DAB pages, which need expert attention. If you can solve any of these puzzles, remove the disambiguation needed tag, and add done to the list below. Thanks in advance, Narky Blert (talk) 07:16, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Radical 213 ✅ — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 15:58, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Distributional semantics ✅ — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 16:00, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Quantitative comparative linguistics ✅ by someone else
 * Romic alphabet ✅ Umimmak (talk) 14:23, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Palaeotype alphabet ✅ — Cnilep (talk) 08:03, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Antisymmetry (see also below)
 * Cretan Greek ✅ — Cnilep (talk) 08:03, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Palatal stop ✅ — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 16:50, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
 * List of Indo-European languages (see also below)
 * List of loanwords in Indonesian (several bad links) (see also below)
 * Index of Islam-related articles ✅
 * Ubykh phonology (see also below)
 * Alp (folklore) (see also below) ✅ — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 14:31, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Nikola Vulić (see also below) ✅ — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 14:31, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Buga (deity) ✅ by Narky Blert
 * Nyâlayu language ✅
 * Judit Kormos ✅
 * East Flemish ✅ — Cnilep (talk) 08:03, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

I have collected a bunch of pages which contain links to DAB pages relating to language- and linguistics-related topics which need expert attention. (I am pleased to be able to report that when I reviewed my bookmarks just now, 2/3 of the problems had already been fixed.)

These problems remain. Search for 'disam' in main text and for '{{d' in edit mode. If you can solve any of them, post done here, and remove the {{tl|dn}} tag from the article.
 * Antisymmetry ✅ — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 17:08, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
 * List of Indo-European languages ✅ — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 17:08, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
 * List of loanwords in Indonesian ✅ — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 17:08, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Ubykh phonology ✅ Cnilep (talk) 08:51, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Alp (folklore) ✅ — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 14:31, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Nikola Vulić ✅ — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 14:31, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Nyâlayu language ✅
 * List of glossing abbreviations ✅
 * Nilo-Saharan languages ✅ Wugapodes [t{{sup|h}}ɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 20:25, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Santa language ✅ — Æµ§œš¹  {{sub|[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]}} 14:31, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Languages of Australia ✅
 * Kalinga alphabet ✅ — Æµ§œš¹  {{sub|[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]}} 17:25, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Rudolf Ernst Brünnow ✅

Thanks in advance, Narky Blert (talk) 00:08, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Could someone please create a stub about or link to Escher sentence?
I don't see any information on Wikipedia about the topic Escher sentence - ... this kind of sentence (is it a sentence?) has a peculiar property: at first people seem to think it is grammatical and means something. Given a few moments to think, though, they soon realize that it is just plausible-looking English-style gibberish. It seems to be an intelligible sentence of the language but it is just masquerading. McCloskey has no explanation for this. Neither do I. And more people have tried to find one than we have. - http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/%7Emyl/languagelog/archives/000860.html

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000862.html -

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/%7Emyl/languagelog/archives/000860.html -

https://curiosity.com/topics/escher-sentences-make-sense-even-though-they-shouldnt-curiosity/ -

https://rationalhunter.typepad.com/close_range/2004/05/escher_sentence.html -

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=39477 -

https://academic.oup.com/jos/article-abstract/35/3/543/5065172?redirectedFrom=fulltext -

https://linguistics.stanford.edu/events/flexible-repair-escher-sentences -

Could someone please create a stub about this, or make the redlink direct to any existing information that I may have missed?

Thanks - 189.122.238.134 (talk) 13:18, 1 November 2018 (UTC)


 * I've mostly just heard this referred to as the "comparative illusion". Sometimes "Russia sentences" since that's the famous example (even if the original one was Berlin). Are there so-called "Escher sentences" which based on a comparative? Is that a common term in the literature? I'd recommend "comparative illusion" be the title unless people have strong thoughts. Oh and also I'm pretty sure there isn't already an article about this on Wikipedia btw. I might start working on a stub draft tomorrow if no psycholinguist takes up the cause. Umimmak (talk) 14:33, 1 November 2018 (UTC)


 * I've started a draft: Draft:Comparative illusion. And while it's in the draft stage, you're not supposed to have articles wikilink to it or to add categories, but I'd appreciate if people had good ideas for how to make this not immediately an (almost) WP:ORPHAN upon creation or what good categories would be. Feedback in general on the draft is welcome as well -- it's very much in early stages. Umimmak (talk) 10:45, 3 November 2018 (UTC)


 * IMHO a very nice start. Kudos - 189.122.238.134 (talk) 12:09, 3 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I've moved it to the main article space (Comparative illusion) and submitted it for a DYK. There's definitely more which can be said, but I'm not sure what level of detail is needed -- particularly since research is still fairly nascent. Umimmak (talk) 23:24, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

WikiJournal of Humanities published first article
T.Shafee(Evo &#38; Evo)talk 09:30, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Greek letter templates
Folks here might be interested in a discussion I've opened at Templates for discussion/Log/2018 December 3. I believe at least one of these was used for IPA stuff. Please feel free to notify any other pages that might be interested as well. Thanks, –Deacon Vorbis (carbon &bull; videos) 03:01, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Sámi vs. Sami vs. Saami
Please see: Talk:Kildin Sami orthography – multi-page RM primarily about diacritics in an endonym. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:22, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Appositive or relative clause?
The sentence "Yewberry jelly, toxic in the extreme, will give you an awful stomachache." in Implicature contains what the source (Potts 2005:3) calls a nominal appositive. Is this correct? I'd have thought it was a reduced relative clause. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 14:47, 3 January 2019 (UTC)


 * If it were appositive, you'd be able to use it by itself:
 * * Toxic in the extreme will give you an awful stomachache.
 * Utterly impossible in my own lect of English; thus my asterisk.


 * Yewberry jelly, which is toxic in the extreme, will give you an awful stomachache.
 * is grammatical; and within it, "which is toxic in the extreme" is a supplementary relative clause. But I haven't heard of this notion of a "reduced relative clause".


 * According to The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, "toxic in the extreme" in the original example is an AdjP supplement (see p 1359). -- Hoary (talk) 12:18, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

Digital dependencies and global mental health
There is a lot of linguistic misunderstandings and scientific misunderstandings around linguistics in regard to the digital dependencies, specifically "addiction" vs "dependence", "social media addiction" as a "diagnostic category", "digital media use", and "correlates" rather than specifically saying "addiction" and several others are notable. I've made both the pages digital dependencies and global mental health and social media addiction in regard to them. I'd like some help and have RfC'd for comment [|here] from your wiki project if that's OK, as well as from policies at social media addiction. I'd like anyone with a lot of experience with linguistic misunderstandings on Wikipedia to assist with the impasse. Many thanks to all involved contributors. --E.3 (talk) 04:24, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

PCVC Speech Dataset
It would be great if interested editors could comment on the AfD discussion for this article at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/PCVC Speech Dataset. Thank you. GermanJoe (talk) 13:58, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

List of eggcorns
Would List of eggcorns be a good plan?


 * Eggcorn

Anna Frodesiak (talk) 12:29, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Also, a category would maybe be good. Examples to be in this category could include: Toe the line and Potluck. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 12:36, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Maku people vs Maku language
A discussion of Maku people and Maku language is taking place at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation. Please join the discussion. Leschnei (talk) 19:40, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

Macrolanguage
A discussion related to ISO classification of "Serbo-Croatian" as a macrolanguage is taking place here. Please, feel free to join the discussion. Sorabino (talk) 10:25, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

Pronunciation of Allah
Could someone who knows a bit about Arabic take a look at the section Allah? I have heard enough Arabic to pick up on the difference between the pronunciation of "Allah" vs what might be expected to be the same consonant in "bismillah", but I would feel less dubious about the passage if some professional phonetics terminology or sourcing could be incorporated. There is also something a bit 'Wikihow' about a sentence like "In order to pronounce the word Allah correctly, one has to focus on the second “l”" appearing in an encyclopedia. Absolutely ideal for this section would be to illustrate the point being made through sound samples, which would include a hypothetical pronunciation of "Allah" without the special articulation, or whatever it is that's happening here. Note there is some discussion of this already in the talk page archive. Beorhtwulf (talk) 18:00, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

Dubious "consensus" claims on "Serbo-Croatian" linguistic controversy
Hi, can anyone produce any reference for dubious claims that there is some kind of "consensus" on Serbo-Croatian linguistic controversy? Several linguistic sources that prove the non-existence of such "consensus" are mentioned here. Sorabino (talk) 08:45, 1 February 2019 (UTC)