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Syntax section

A spate of recent edits by @Wizymon: has introduced a lot of detailed but unsourced information about syntax, particularly detail about constructions that have remnants of the earlier V2 syntactic structure. As I start with revising the grammar section I am fairly sure I will have to remove most of this newly added text since it is too much detail about one particular corner of English grammar - the article should give a summary overview, and not get lost in details however interesting. I would estimate that remnants of V2 syntax merits at most a sentence with a single example - certainly not most of the syntax section. Secondly I am faced with a challenge: English doesnt really distinguish a lot between syntax and morphology - often the same function can be expressed either syntactically ("the hat of the man", "I had dinner", "the loaves of bread") or morphologically ("the man's hat", "I dined", "the baguettes"), or they require both syntactic and morphological marking. For that reason I am think that perhaps the standard division between subsections on morphology and syntax does not make sense here. Rather I am think to adopt an approach based on functions - wordclasses (i.e. subsections on nominal constructions (possession, pluralization) and verbal constructions (tense, mood) ), and discourse functions (questions, negation, statements, orders, focus constructions) and clause formation (conjunction, subordination, relative clauses etc.). I think this will allow a more fluent overview of the grammar, whichis also more in line with how recent grammars describe English.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 04:52, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

What do you think of the approach taken by the main article for that section, English grammar? I have the Carter Cambridge of English (the most cited source in that article) at hand to check references. (For that matter, I have the full text of the Huddleston Pullum 2002 grammar at hand.) -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 11:44, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

I think I will rely mostly on Huddleston and Pullum, and the way they do it is by treating the morphology and syntax of each major part of speech together. I think here what I will do is that I will have subsections on Nouns, Verbs and Sentences. Where the first two treast both the morphology and syntax relevant to that class of words - e.g. the section on nouns will include nominal morphology, and all the word types and operations that participate in building noun phrases, the section on verbs will do the same for verbal morphology and verb phrases. Then the last section will handle sentence level syntax phenomena (subordination, coordination, questions, imperatives, negation etc.). This is fairly similar to what Huddleston and Pullum do, and makes for good cohesion.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 23:41, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Verbs

I reverted some changes by Erutuon that didn't work with my plan for the section. My approach here is to first introduce the forms, and then their various functions. English verbs have three basic forms, a neutral form associated with the present tense and -ed form associated with the past tense and an -ing form associated with the progressive aspect. These forms can be used for different purposes, for example for forming the basic tenses. The participles are special functions where the verbs are used as a kind adjectives, to modify a noun. Participle functions can be carried out by past and progressive forms. But the participle will be described further down in the section. I will work on it again tomorrow and if it doesnt make sense to you how I am structuring it, then we can discuss how to do it differently.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 04:56, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

As I understand it, participle is a term for the verb form, apart from its functions as an adjective or adverb or as part of a verb phrase. Etymologically it means partaker, an in-between thing with the functions of an adjective (or noun in traditional Latin and Greek grammar) and verb. Not sure if this is the meaning of participle in modern works, but it's given in the Wikipedia article and the SIL glossary, for instance. — Eru·tuon 06:42, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

I think it would be a very bad idea to lean on Latin etymologies of grammatical terminology first devised to describe Greek grammar and then extended to Latin grammar to describe English grammar. They are all cognate languages (all Indo-European), but English is quite a bit a bit different, as a Germanic language, from either Latin or Greek, and should be approached on its own terms. The sources like Huddleston-Pullum have very good discussions of issues like this. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 10:33, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Agree with Weiji on this point: it was always a square peg into a round hole, the Classicising of descriptions of English grammar. I believe it started in the so-called grammar schools in England many centuries ago, when anything Classical was prestigious, and there was only a faint awareness that English is a Germanic language. Two more observations on a section that I've been intending to edit myself, but have been prevented for months through real-life overwork (soon to end). First, traditional word categories are probably useful to mention, but let's not go overboard in constructing them as the long and the short of grammar; in fact, they're a limited aspect of grammar, and end up being misleading at a deeper level—they say nothing beyond the sentence, cohesion, and the function of particular wordings. I'd be pleased if the description of grammar were not rooted entirely in written mode at the expense of oral mode (more on that next week). Second, as I suggested a few months ago, let's keep an eye on what is distinctive about English grammar. I'll try to come in next week or the week after to add a few points on that, some of them taken from a superb new book, English for the natives, by Harry Ritchie, London, Murrary, 2013 (231 pp.). I think you'd all love it, so ... highly recommended for holiday reading. :-) Tony (talk) 12:00, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

It turns out that Huddleston and Pullum actually did use the term participle about the form, probably because of the tradition I think. But anyway I rewrote that first part of the verbs section yesterday.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 15:55, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

That's why I mentioned Huddleston and Pullum, as I admire how they relate old terminology (which provides helpful analogies to the grammar of cognate languages) with the modern terminology of grammatical description of English. They did write the most definitive treatment of English grammar yet published, after all. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 20:33, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

"They did write the most definitive treatment of English grammar yet published, after all"—I couldn't disagree more strongly, Weiji. Tony (talk) 00:33, 15 March 2015 (UTC)orite

What do you mean by that more specifically? Do you have another favorite grammar? Or some strong criticism of Huddleston & Pullum?·maunus · snunɐɯ· 00:41, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Despite my diatribe, Huddleston and Pullum sound excellent, and I look forward to seeing their treatment of the grammar. — Eru·tuon 22:52, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

My purpose in mentioning etymology was to show the logic behind the term "participle". It was invented to describe a form that had two inflectional categories: declension and tense (tense in a broader sense, which might be best described as simply a different verb stem). It means "partaking", a form that partakes in the functions or forms of both nouns and verbs. Our ancestors weren't fanboys using Classical terms for their prestige, but because they knew the Latin terms and could see the parallels between Latin and English grammar. Use of Latin terms started in the Old English period; the OED gives a quote from Ælfric of Eynsham using the term participium for the Old English form in -end. There were clear parallels between Old English and Latin. In both languages, participles had declension like nouns or adjectives, and used different "tense-stems". Latin used the perfect passive participle to form perfect passive verb phrases, and English has always used the past participle to form passives as well.

So, from the modern standpoint, the use of the same term for the Latin and Old English forms was perfectly valid. Inflectional criteria are a way of determining word classes. And it doesn't make sense to invent a whole new term when you already know a similar term from an already existing grammatical tradition. Hence, I would defend the intellectual honor of our ancestors by saying they showed rudimentary linguistic understanding and good practical judgement. They used Latin terms because they were teaching English and Latin at the same time, and the languages showed clear parallels.

However, it's clear that since Old English the form and function of the "present and past participles" has changed, and the grammatical terminology hasn't really evolved to reflect that. (Perhaps teachers in the Early Modern Period were fanboys, unlike Ælfric, because they should've invented new terms to describe changing grammar.) The use of the term "participle" reflected the fact that these forms showed declension as well as "tense", but since there's no longer any declension, this isn't the case anymore. So it's valid to say that the term participle is no longer accurate, but because the grammatical phenomena the term was used to describe no longer exist, not because our ancestors were stupid. — Eru·tuon 18:25, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Bibliography

The bibliography section is a bit confusing. I may be mistaken, but it appears to be a very long section of books and articles added a bit at random. There are thousands (and more) academic books and articles written about English that all satisfy WP:RS but this article is not the place to list them all. Having a very long section still means having only a fraction, so how should the references for the bibliography be selected?Jeppiz (talk) 00:43, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

The eventual idea is to use exactly, and only, the books and articles that are actually used as sources in the article. You can see an example of how that practice looks in the article IQ classification, a good article that receives about one-fourth the page views that this article receives (even though it is arguably on a much narrower topic), that is more than 1 million page views per year. Right now, the bibliography section of this article is being repaired from being in a condition of 1) listing books or articles that haven't actually been used as sources in this article for years, if ever (and in some cases were miscited), 2) not listing the major sources used in the article, which until recently have almost been cited inline only, and 3) omitting in any case many sources that are easily available to readers all over the English-speaking world and are comprehensive secondary sources about the English language. Based on observation of other good articles on topics as broad as the topic of this article, I'd expect this article to have more than 100 different cited sources by the time the article is up to good article status, but it may indeed be that some of the currently listed sources will actually drop out of the bibliography, having been replaced by even more generally useful sources. How sources should be selected is of course guided by the Wikipedia content guideline on reliable sources and I'd be delighted to hear from you and from all other editors interested in this article which sources are especially reliable and useful. I have been using the suggested readings sections of some standard reference books on the English language to guide my visits to libraries and online databases. Meanwhile, I'm collecting all the sources that have ever been cited in this article in one place so what we can compare them all. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 02:02, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

@WeijiBaikeBianji and Maunus: The answer to the mystery regarding Huddlestone and Pullum: they have been accidentally deleted in bibliography update edits like this. — Eru·tuon 02:03, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Section on varieties

I want to create a new section on Dialects and Accents which will have approximately the following structure. Level three here, probably will not be set apart by headings.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 20:51, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Sounds good. I would tweak the system a bit; I think Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa (which should be added) belong in a category together, perhaps Southern Hemisphere English, and Aussie and Kiwi are basically native pronunciations, not particularly influenced by another language, unlike many of the other World Englishes. South African has some similarities with them. — Eru·tuon 21:53, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

That is not a bad idea. You may think about eventually migrating some of your pronunciation information from the phonology section into this section on varieties.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 22:23, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

• Dialects and Accents
  • Major Parameters: Rhoticism, vowels, vocabulary, grammar, substrate influence from Celtic/Norse
  • British Varieties
    • British Accents
      • Northern, Midlands, Southern/RP, Midlands, Estuary/Cockney, West Country,
    • Scots
    • Irish
  • American varieties
    • General American
    • Southern
    • AAVE
  • Southern Hemisphere English
    • Australian and New Zealand
  • Colonial Englishes
    • Caribbean
    • Indian
    • Creoles, Pidgins and mixed languages

I would leave much of this stuff (I have plenty of sources at hand) in Phonology, where it is most noticeable anyway. Some of the rest of this can be picked up by rewrites of Geographical distribution (of course). I'm mostly reading sources today, and should be typing in new content later this week. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 23:48, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

I disagree, it is not more noticeable in the phonology section and it doesnt give an actual overview of the distribution of different varieties, that is why we need a section that describes the geographical distribution of varieties and features.geographical distribution section should give statistics for speakers in different regions. The question of the diversity of English as a language is a different question. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 00:18, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

The Phonology section mainly focuses on RP and GA. Only a few dialectal differences are described there. It would probably be neatest to make a separate Dialects section and include more information there, since adding dialectal information to Phonology would complicate the portrait of RP and GA. And with a separate Dialects section, some dialectal differences (such as th-fronting, th-stopping, t-glottalization, a tap or trill for the rhotic) could be removed from Phonology, since they don't occur in RP and GA. — Eru·tuon 00:44, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I've split out the section, and created subheadings, and added some of the sources I will use. I will not be writing much tomorrow or saturday since i am going to a conference, but should be back to work on Sunday. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 22:03, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

@Maunus: On the pin–pen merger: according to Rick Aschmann, this sound change is rather more widespread than Labov, Ash, and Boberg indicate, occurring in many areas of the Western United States. Not sure if we can use Aschmann as a source on Wikipedia, but I believe him, and therefore am uneasy about prominently displaying L&A&B's pin–pen map, which omits the Western areas with the merger. — Eru·tuon 02:11, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

I think Labov et al. is a more reliable source than Aschman. Though Aschman may be correct, we should go with published information. I was a little wary of that pin/pen map myself, because it seemed arbitrary to pick that one isogloss, but it was nice to see a single isogloss that basically fit SAE. Maybe I can find a map of the "y'all" isogloss instead. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 03:43, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

The isogloss Aschmann seems to use for Southern American English is /aɪ/ monophthongization, which occurs in words like ride for both Inland and Lowland Southern. Does Labov have a map for this? — Eru·tuon 03:49, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Please avoid deleting inline references without discussing here first

Hi, everyone,

I see an editor who is not usually active here responded to an automated error message overnight and deleted a source citation. He did that because the named reference that quoted the source was no longer linked in article text, having been deleted by someone else. Please be very careful about deleting inline references that show up as named references in the article text. They have been cite-checked and point to one of the named references in the article's references section. We probably will need to delete some references from various parts of the article (I plan to delete a bunch of old references that have full citations inline, rather than in the bibliography, from the Geographical distribution and Vocabulary sections, which are bloated with primary source references), but in general if a reference shows up in article text as a named reference or as a short footnote, that means Maunus or I put it there, and we are checking each other's work as we go. This is the kind of article, heavily viewed and frequently edit-warred, that will need inline references in the lede as well as in the body. Because there are sources that write about the English language at many levels of generality, it will be easy to find appropriate references for key statements in the lede that give general overviews of topics summarized in the lede, and easy to find other sources to reference more specific statements that occur farther along in article text. In this phase of updating the article, I'm still engaged in finding the moving targets of absolutely all article references that refer to reliable, secondary sources (ahem, not blogs or personal websites) and meanwhile there is not a compelling need to delete any inline references that point to cite-checked reliable, secondary sources. Trim article text around a reference at will. But know what the references say and preserve the verified references until discussion here on the talk page decides which can be completely omitted, please. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 13:51, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

I think I'll take a break from checking other references for a while and begin using references already cited in the article to prompt changes in article text. On my first pass, after spending a few hours earlier today and many hours over the last few months reading the sources, I'll trim and rewrite the Geographical distribution section of the article. I'll add in references (and trim and revise some more) in the next few days. Then onward with the same procedure in Vocabulary (which is still very badly in need of trimming and revising) and Writing, each in turn, and each at first being rewritten without adding back in the better references at first. I'll do this by section edits, to reduce the possibility of edit conflicts. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 21:09, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Distinct influences?

Re para 2 of lede:

"Through the worldwide influence of England, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom from the 17th to mid-20th centuries under the British Empire, it has been widely propagated around the world."

May I suggest that this is pruned to :

"Through the worldwide spread of English from the 17th to mid-20th centuries under the British Empire, it has been widely propagated around the world."

Whilst I appreciate that GB, Kingdom of Great Britain, UK and its constituent parts have technical/historical differences, are those differences/renamings relevant to the spread of English, which was largely as a result of empire and colonies? I cannot help but think that the present form is confusing for no good reason. Non-UK people are often already confused by the meanings of GB/UK/EngScNIWales.Pincrete (talk) 21:33, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

That is a very good edit. Thanks. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 03:02, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Will do asap.Pincrete (talk) 11:41, 20 March 2015 (UTC) … … Ah I see you already have!Pincrete (talk) 21:07, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Official status

Is anyone else unable to see the list of countries where English has official status? The edit page contains the proper template layout for nations and lists the countries, yet on the article page this section is blank. Perhaps a system glitch? - Moalli (talk) 22:50, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Are you talking about the lists in List of territorial entities where English is an official language. I can see them. — Eru·tuon 23:03, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Nope, I can see the lists on that article too. I meant the list of countries that are supposed to be under "official status" on the language infobox on this article itself. This problem is actually not just limited to the English language article itself, but also to all other language articles. Under "official status", only language regulating institutions are shown, and not countries where it is official. - Moalli (talk) 00:27, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Oh, I see. That list doesn't display for me either. Perhaps it's a problem with Template:Collapsible list? — Eru·tuon 01:08, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps there is a problem with embedding one template in another. I'll continue to check this, as the content will have to be edited anyway. Thanks for letting us know. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 03:10, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

The markup as it is just now makes sense. What I see, as I check the article on 24 March 2015, is that the infobox field wikilinks to other Wikipedia article sections that give lists of the countries and territories where English has official status, and then lists in a collapsed list some (but by no means all) the international organizations for which English is official. Do you see something different? This behavior seems reasonable, given how long an exhaustive list of countries and territories would be for the English language. @Moalli: Please let us know if you think the current markup isn't doing what it ought to do. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 15:36, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Reference style

Currently, the article uses a mixed referencing style in all senses. For example most of the references full reference notes. But we still have a huge bibliography - most of the sources in which are not currently in use. I think the most sensible would be to remove the unused refs from the bibliography and convert the long reference notes to short harvard refs using the template {{sfn|author|year|page=}} and adding the ref=harv parameter to the full citations and move them into the bibliography. That has in fact been my plan all along but since there are three of us at work now I thought I would make sure we agree. Maybe Weiji would be willing to start the work with converting the refs and culling the bibliography to have only those that are currently used?·maunus · snunɐɯ· 14:54, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

What you mention is my next step here. I've been taking great care to gather absolutely every reference from anywhere in the article, to check what the reference says and how it is used. I've largely finished gathering all the references into an off-wiki draft document, and have been to my favorite academic library at least ten times since December 2014 to make sure that I have as many of the sources as can be found in my state (with the help of interlibrary loan too) to have all those at hand in my office as the editorial work here continues. You of course have noticed that I've included in the bibliography a lot of citations to the Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics second edition, to which I have access through Wikipedia Library. In the next day or two, I expect to make the reference style consistent throughout the article (inline named references that lead to specific named references for particular pages or sections of cited sources, with the named references linking in turn to the bibliography entries for complete bibliographic information). I'm happy to do that kind of wikignoming as other editors do the good work they have been doing on most of the article sections, and I plan to turn to extensively updating article content in the Geographic distribution, Vocabulary, and Writing sections after I've done the reference updating. As we wrap up article rewriting (I imagine, Maunus, your target is to be done by the time frame implied by the Core contest), then I'll be happy further to delete (as an inline reference, or as a bibliography entry, or both) any references we are not using in the article. I think all of you editors can see that the article has an HTML comment near the top, and at the beginning of the References section and Bibliography section, linking to an explanation of the intended pan-article citation style. P.S., Maunus, when I was at that favorite academic library on Sunday, I was able to download the full text (page by page, because of how it is licensed to that library) of the wonderful article about vocabulary you mentioned in the 2006 Cambridge A History of the English Language. Yes, that is a truly outstanding source, and that is what I will rely on most heavily as I do article content updates to the Vocabulary section. I've been very impressed by your source-spotting for this article. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 17:48, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Ok, that is great. Could I ask you to use harvard referencing with the sfn template that I showed above instead of named references? They are easier for the writer to use since we dont have to remember the name of each ref. Also note that in some of the refs the pagenumbers are wrong currently because I am reusing the named ref used in the first instance for a reference that is actually to a different page number. That is the drawback with named refs that you need to have a different name for each citation with different pages - the harv refs also makes that superfluous.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 22:35, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for mentioning the short footnote template, which prompted me to read the full documentation for the template. As I read the documentation, I saw discussion of the various trade-offs of different footnoting styles. For an article like this, I think ultimately a style that allows bundled footnotes (which the short footnote template doesn't directly support) will be more helpful for resolving issues that have been frequently edit-warred in the past, according to the talk page archives here. Accordingly, with full respect for your opinion, I'll use named references throughout the article, taking on the responsibility of wiki-gnoming into a consistent style any other kind of footnotes you or other editors labor to insert into the article. You'll see some examples of putting quoted text into references as I begin inserting those into article text. My experience with IQ classification (an article with a higher article rating currently than this article, even though this article gets many more page views) suggests that that form of referencing can provide a stable guide to the literature for readers once it is in place, while still allowing tinkering and improvement of the article. So you cite as you please, and I'll take on the task of making the mark-up uniform. (As you've observed on other articles, my preferred activity on Wikipedia is adding and checking sources even more than writing long spans of article text, although I do plan to rewrite whole sections of this article. Thanks for your continued good ideas and much typing as this article becomes significantly better this month. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 00:37, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

I disagree. And very much encourage you to reconsider. I think you should look at some of my other articles for how I use the sfn template. For example Language or Bartolome de las Casas. The template automatically combines references to the same work and place number. It is also possible to combine named refs with sfn refs as I have done on some occasions.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 00:54, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for noting your disagreement and for pointing to articles exemplifying the practice you recommend. The automatic combination of references to the same work and place is of course something I have seen on Wikipedia before in other articles. For the moment, I'll continue to catch the references you add to the article (you probably saw that I missed the new reference to Görlach 1991 at first but restored it later) and build a uniform style. The method behind what you currently think is my madness may become apparent over time, but in any event I'm happy to reach consensus with you and the other editors about what to do as a final, stable form of the article to submit for GA review. It's a pleasure discussing fine details with you here; keep up the good work. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 16:37, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

This week's to-dos include more rationalization of the references. I just chopped out a bunch of sources from the bibliography of this article (saving them off-wiki, of course, for editing subarticles and related articles) and have tweak some more inline references and other bibliography entries. This is the week for wrapping up a submission for the Core contest, right? My aim is to expand (or refine) the sections on Geographical distribution and Vocabulary and Writing system based on the sources I have been reading for the last few weeks, especially the last few days, and along the way to proof-read the entire article from top to bottom with more checking of the latest references. With so many capable hands at work on the article, it should be in fine shape for submission for Core contest review or good article review or whatever other kind of review editors desire on a schedule mutually agreed by the editors. It has been delightful looking up and reading the references found by other editors--keep up the good work. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 15:42, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Remember that the vocabulary section should not only be about the etymological origins of the vocabulary, but also about the processes of word formation. I think the Core Contest has been extended to april 14th, so we have a bit more time. I will try to be done by the end of this week though, so I can focus on my other nomination in April.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 16:37, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes, the chapter on English vocabulary you mentioned earlier, which I've read from beginning to end, is very good about processes of word formation in English and how those interact with other aspects of English vocabulary. That will be a big focus of the rewrite. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 21:59, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

• @WeijiBaikeBianji: There are some major problems with the reference style. For example the inclusion of quote in the citations may seem useful, but in fact it just clutters up the references and doesnt conform to the MOS. There is no need to include a quote with a normal reference, this should only be used when the material is likely to be contested. Secondly currently several references have a weird "Chapter=XXXXXX" addition in the foot note. This doesnt exist in any reference style that I know of, and due to the weird and annoying system fo named references that you use I cant event find out where to change this. I really find your quaint referencing style to be both unprofessional in it style, needlessly complicated and a general hindrance to improving the article. If you insist that it should be used I think I will require an RfC, to determine whether it is appropriate.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 21:46, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

I'll take a look at this. Experience tells us that some points made by the sources for content of this article English language are indeed frequently contested (as the talk page archives or article history here make plain), but if I can keep the right kind of off-wiki notes, I can probably go over to your preference for citation format before we wrap up this phase, and then see what other readers quibble about over the next few months. In for a penny, in for a pound. Now that I've gathered so many sources, I'll try to be a maintainer of this article far into the future. I think as long as the reference style is made uniform, and the bibliographic citations are complete (neither of which has ever been true of this article before), I should be able to adapt to the reference style you are using. I have found that other Brand X style that I prefer using useful on articles that used to be plagued by edit-warring, and now are not. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 21:59, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

For those instances where quotes are warranted I would prefer to separate them out in a footnote section distinct form the citations. I will start start moving the long refs into the bibliography and replace with short sfn refs in the text later today. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 22:07, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Conventional notation in linguistics, Wells lexical sets?

Hi, everyone,

Thanks for the continued great work on the article. I've been verifying references from top-to-bottom, based on however the article is organized at a given moment, and I will continue to do that, but I'll also be digging especially deeply into books already cited in the article for new references that can be used for rewriting the sections on Geographical distribution and Vocabulary and Writing. As we continue here, I'm wondering about the conventional notation used in linguistics for distinguish a word in phonemic transcription, a word in orthographic representation, a word in close phonetic transcription, and other representations of words with a special focus. As I recall, there is a particular way to indicate any of these points of view, but I'm forgetting what I learned about this years ago, in part because I think the article text has not yet been conformed to those conventions, right? Oh, and while looking for information about broad phonemic transcription of English for Wikipedia, I was able to find the link to the article about the Wells lexical sets for English, which I see mentioned in so many reliable sources that they would be useful to mention in article text here, with the appropriate wikilink. I think I have already put in article text (I don't know if that insertion has survived subsequent edits) the usual abbreviations "BrE" for British English as a broad category of dialects and "AmE" for American English. What other conventions of linguistic usage are worthwhile for introducing to readers in the text of this article? Keep up the good work; the article is much improved from when I began following it a few months ago. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 21:27, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

An example of orthographic, phonemic, and phonetic notation: The word ⟨what⟩ is pronounced as /ʍɒt/ in dialects without the whine–wine merger, as /wɒt/ in RP, and /wʌt/ in GA. In Estuary English, the final /t/ is glottalized, yielding [wɑʔ]. And at the moment, the article uses the phonemic and phonetic brackets, but italics instead of angle brackets. We can replace italics with angle brackets to the Phonology and Orthography sections, but the rest of the article, such as sections discussing vocabulary, should use italics. — Eru·tuon 22:11, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Remember that RP and EE have a rounded vowel in ⟨what⟩. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 23:12, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

I decided to move Maunus's and my discussion on angle brackets and fonts to my talk page, since I suspect editors here will prefer that we don't clutter up this section. — Eru·tuon 00:22, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Do angle brackets display in the Old English section as you view it in your browser? I still am not seeing actual angle brackets appear in the article text in the Old English subsection of the History section of the article, even though the markup for the preferred template is used in that section. Reading the template documentation, I don't see any angle brackets in any of the formatting examples there either. How many users of Wikipedia actually see angle brackets in that section now? Maybe we should use some other markup to have the effect of showing orthographic angle bracket notation. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 22:59, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

I dont see them in the above, but now I do see some ugly triangular brackets around the article's OE characters.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 23:40, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Sound examples

It would be great with some sound clips of people with accents from the US, maybe GA and SAE and AAVE, and a recording of Australian or NZ English would be great as well. A recording of Irish English and a West Country accent would be great as well. If you know any speakers of those accents try to record a short natural speech clip with some good diagnostic word for the variety, and upload it!·maunus · snunɐɯ· 05:21, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

More updates for Geographical distribution, Vocabulary, and Writing system sections coming

Wow! There has been a lot of good work on this article in the last month. I have a script installed in my Wikipedia user scripts that lets me see which bibliography references with the Harvard reference field are used in the article, and which are not, and I'm either grabbing them into the article to use them or chopping them out of the article. I was surprised to see the very useful Schneider Postcolonial English vanish from the article, especially as it is helpful for an almost empty section we still have about English in Africa. I'll use that source for the sections I'm now working on, and I think I can add content to the dialect subsection about Africa if no other editor finds it convenient to edit that subsection. Keep up the good work. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 00:37, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

I was planning to use Bailey 1982 and Trudgill and Hannah 2002 for the Africa section, but I have Schneider and will see if it is useful for that section.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 03:20, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 28 March 2015

Under the Caribbean English subheading, the first sentence, "Several varieties of English is also spoken..." should read "Several varieties of English are also spoken..." so that the subject and verb agree in number. Winterspoke (talk) 21:41, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

I've made the change. If you notice any other simple and uncontroversial changes like this, go ahead and list them here in this talk page section, and I or another editor will make them. You needn't be so formal about it, at least here in the English language article (meaning, in future requests, you don't need to use the template, just post a little comment). — Eru·tuon 22:43, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

I dont know why the article is semiprotected, but that is probably why WInterspoke had to file the request.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 22:54, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Well, it's not exactly "have to", because the talk page is not protected and Winterspoke can post anything here, whether an edit request or a random comment on a grammatical inaccuracy. — Eru·tuon 23:36, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Crafting the sentence in the lede about countries where English is used

We should probably know exactly what countries we are talking about as we describe English as "the most commonly spoken language in sovereign states including ..." to make clear how to rewrite that sentence. I'll stick with Maunus's most recent edit for the moment, but I've had my doubts about the "Caribbean" part of that sentence until we list the countries, and the other part of the sentence "and a number of" implies more countries to me than just two (and small countries at that) in each named world region. As long as we establish what the facts on the ground are from good sources, then it should be possible to rewrite the lede sentence some more (I think that would be the best approach) to closely reflect the facts. (This has been by far one of the most edit-warred sentences in the whole article, along with one of the sentences in the lede that mentions factors prompting the spread of English worldwide, which is why I have been over-researching those issues since December 2014.) Meanwhile, digging into the sources to establish exactly which countries in what world regions have English as "the most commonly spoken language" will be a constructive way forward to continue fixing the article. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 12:24, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

English is the majority language in Jamaica, Liberia, Trinidad Tobago and the Leeward Islands. In Sierra Leone, the English based creole Krio is the majority language. In several African countries English is the majority if L2 speakers are counted.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 15:58, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I think Singapore belongs on the list (which adds "southeast Asia" to "Caribbean" and "west Africa", I suppose) if we continue to speak in the lede about "most commonly spoken" language. That phrasing just designates a plurality language (MOST commonly spoken) language for a particular country in day-by-day use, even if the country has no majority language at all. The basolect form Singlish is, I think, still understandable in the broader worldwide English-language community in a way that, I think, Sierra Leonean Krio is not. That would be another issue to work out by referring to reliable sources. What I was originally objecting to, when I saw your kind edit, was the "number of countries" phrasing for what appears to be just a few countries. That could also be handled by a rewrite of the sentence to some such phrasing as "It is an official language of almost 60 sovereign states and the most commonly spoken language in sovereign states including the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, and countries in the Caribbean, west Africa, and southeast Asia." I'll be glad to discuss this further as we continue to dig into the sources. Basically, any sentences in the first two paragraphs of the lede will gain more attention from readers of the article than all the rest of the article put together, so we may as well be very careful and exact in phrasing after checking what all the sources say. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 17:21, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Like Krio, Jamacican Patois etc., Singlish is considered a creole language, separate from English. So either all of the creoles should be included or none (none is probably better). Singapore however should probably be in the list since Singapore English is a majority language. Aquestion is of course whether it is necessary to include all of the countries or whether it can simply be summed up as "the rest of the world" or "former British colonies" or something like that. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 17:32, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

I'll have to check the statement "Singlish is considered a creole language, separate from English" in the various sources I have at hand, which of course include quite a few of the sources you have at hand. I didn't have the impression that the basolect in Singapore is anywhere near as different from standard English as the basolect in west Africa, having some heard some of each over the years. But I'll check what the sources say. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 20:55, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

West Germanic tree

It is a good point that German should be included in the tree, I forgot it because I wanted to focus on Anglo-Frisian, but it does make the tree weird to omit it. Flemish should also be removed as it is just Dutch. I will take the image to the shop and add the corrections.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 19:44, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Great! Gati123 (talk) 19:53, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

If you want to make a style change while you're at it, how about removing the little circles from the tree nodes? That is, if you agree with me that they look a little odd. — Eru·tuon 19:56, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Hmm, I hadnt considered them odd. But I guess they can be removed without problems.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 19:57, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

I thought the circles were added to better distinguish the mother varieties from their daughter varieties i.e Dutch from Low Franconian etc. Which is quite useful IMHO Gati123 (talk) 19:59, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

You are right, it actually works well in the cases where there is only a single descendant.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 20:03, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the collaborative editing here. Gati123 gave voice to some concerns about the diagram that I hadn't expressed yet. It is wonderful to see the new graphics that are being added to the article. Keep up the good work. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 20:11, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

• The tree has been updated to remove Flemish and add German.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 16:17, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Is Hickey 2005 used as an article reference? Is Roach used as an article reference?

Hi, everyone,

The article looks much improved from a month ago. As I tidy up the sections Geographic distribution, Vocabulary, and Writing system, I am incidentally making sure that the entire article cites all sources in short footnote form, using as specific page references as are available and appropriate. Last month there was a request to clean up the Bibliography section of the article, and the goal is to list exactly and only all the references actually used to support article text. With that in mind, I'm wondering if the Hickey 2005 source cited in the article is expected to be used anywhere. Comparably, will Roach, listed in the bibliography, be used anywhere? When I'm sure that all the article references occur in the bibliography, I will try to trim out unused references. I've just trimmed out some books or articles I've concluded I can do without. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 16:22, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Roach 1991 and 2009 (two editions of the same book) are both cited. I was planning to use Hickey as well.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 16:26, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Okay, I'll pick that up as I change inline refs to short footnotes. But I didn't see any such citations in article text as I searched the article text for author names just now. You may want to double-check that they are indeed cited inline. I have been leaving alone sections edited by other editors that I haven't been editing, and I copy the entire text of the article to an off-wiki draft once in a while so I can search that offline. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 16:52, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Is anyone using Bragg 2004 The Adventure of English as a reference? I will be adding some references for the Vocabulary section, but for the most part I want to just 'use the sources already cited rather than add new sources at this stage of article revision. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 23:29, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

I think it was used in a chunk I removed from the "global language" section this morning, where it was duplicating stuff already mentioned elsewhere.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 23:33, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

English in Africa

I think we will need sources from more recent years than 1982 to give a good treatment of English in Africa in the text of this article. I see a statement in the Africa subsection just now that doesn't match any of the sources I have been reading, nor does it match the one of the two cited sources that I am able to check. I think we should rely on sources from the twenty-first century, rather than on sources from more than thirty years ago, to describe the fast-changing linguistic situation in Africa. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 14:55, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Which sources do you suggest? I think it would be weird if there weren't systematic differences in accent and dialect between White and Black English speakers in Africa. Sure the fall of Apartheid etc. will have had its effects, but I think de facto social segregation is probably still the case in most African countries. Just as it is in the US, which is why "White" and "Black" English differs systematically here as well. Seems clear to me that they would make up to rather distinct speech communities in most cases. And the two chapters on East and West African English in Bailey and Gorlach state so explicitly.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 15:00, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

I Dont think your edit to the section is more accurate and you havent presented any sources that contradict it. But on the otherhand it may not be necessary to include it and the Variation section is already very long, so I think condensing whereever possible is better than expanding.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 15:58, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

I see the second paragraph includes a statement that is already made in the first paragraph, so more shortening should be possible. I was looking for the exact phrasing found in the earlier version of the article in both sources, and found it in neither. But along the way, I fixed the reference to the east Africa source (one author's name had been mistranscribed in the citation), so all's well that ends well. I'll continue to check the newer sources from the current decade. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 16:42, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Coordinating the Spread of Modern English subsection and the Geographical distribution main section

As I came to this article as active watcher and editor in November 2014, one of the hotly contested issues was the role of English in different countries and factors that led to the spread of English. Sentences in the lede related to those issues have been some of the most edit-warred sentences in the article. I see that Maunus, following his sources, most of which I have in my office, has built an article subsection under History called Spread of Modern English that goes into some of the factors leading to the worldwide spread of English. He has correctly noted in earlier edits to the Geographical distribution section that those two parts of the article (which are consecutive as the article is now organized) don't need to say the same thing twice about those issues. Figuring that the History main section should cover the diachronic historial linguistic aspects of the development of English, I'll reserve the Geographic distribution section mostly for the synchronic geolinguistic facts about English and its role in the world. I'll check the preceding section simply to make sure that points that have been argued about over the years are all well referenced there, and otherwise largely leave Maunus's article text alone. As I wrap up with updating Geographical distribution today, then I'll recheck the lede to make sure it reflects the transition from the diachronic to the synchronic treatment of those issues. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 19:06, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Query for editors: referring to a word as a word

I want to check with all of you what our friendly Wikpedia Manual of Style tells Wikipedians to when treating a word as a word in article text, and the same for what to when a letter is referred to as a letter. A sentence currently in article text illustrates both issues. In the Classification section, there is a sentence, "Through Grimm's law, the word for foot begins with f in Germanic languages, but its cognates in other Indo-European languages begin with p. " Both the word and the letter are marked up in wikitext with double single quotation marks, to be styled as Italic text. I see the applicable rule says, "Use italics when writing about words as words, or letters as letters (to indicate the use–mention distinction)" but then takes that back by saying, "When italics could cause confusion, quotation marks instead may be used to distinguish words as words," which is the professional editorial practice I am more accustomed to. There are some parts of this article about which I will have to be very careful in proofreading, because, sure enough, we are often referring to words as words and referring to letters as letters, and in plain wikitext doubled single quotation marks look a lot like single double quotation marks. Just checking. I think most of the article text is following the WP:MoS rule just fine. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 20:37, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

My practice has been to use italics when mentioning words or letters, and to use quotes only for glosses or translations. That usage is shown in the MOS: Deuce means "two". Wikipedia often uses quotes for mentioned words, but that's not the standard practice in linguistics literature, and I tend to change it to italics. I did that in this article in an earlier edit. Aside from being the convention in linguistics, italics for word mentions are nice because they clutter the page with fewer little punctuation marks. — Eru·tuon 23:32, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

I see you are actively editing the relevant sections. I can go with linguistics conventions, I guess, although if I were working alone on this article I might find it helpful to distinguish English words (in quotation marks) and letters (in single quotes) from foreign words (in italics), which is by far what I am used to from professionally edited publications. Anyway, I'll let you touch up the sections you are working on while I try to make the sections I am working on consistent with your practice. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 00:26, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Dialectal variation

As suggested, here's an attempt at a dialect table. I don't have a good source for this, so I can use corrections or additions. — Eru·tuon 00:54, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

	Southern England	Northern England	Scotland	General American	Canada	Australia	New Zealand	South Africa
foot–strut split	yes	no	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes
trap–bath split	yes	no	no	no	no	yes?	yes?	yes
cot-caught merger	no	no	no	some	yes	no	no	no
rhoticity	no	no?	yes	r-coloring	r-coloring	no	no	no
l-vocalization	yes	some	no?	no?	no?	no?	yes	?
intervocalic alveolar-flapping	no	no	no	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes
t-glottalization	post-vocalic	post-vocalic	no?	before nasal	before nasal	?	?	?

I've added South African English to the table, at least the parts I understand. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 16:53, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

I've found a diagram in Peter Trudgill and Jean Hannah's International English (p. 6). It's given in Venn-diagram form, which is quite nice graphically, because it makes it easy to see what dialects are most similar, but I've converted it to a table, and modified the IPA symbols and merger and split names to those used on Wikipedia. (Also changed the order of features so that it goes from US and Canada features to British and Southern Hemisphere.) However, the table distinguishes use of the back vowel /ɑː/ in words like can't (before nasal clusters /nt ns nʃ nd mp/) from the use of it in words like bath (before fricatives /f θ s/), whereas Wikipedia covers both under the trap–bath split.

I'm still not quite satisfied that this table shows the most noticeable features, but at least it's sourced. — Eru·tuon 03:44, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Varieties of Standard English and their features

Phonological features United States Canada Republic of Ireland Northern Ireland Scotland England Wales South Africa Australia New Zealand /æ/ rather than /ɑː/ in can't + + father–bother merger + + consistent intervocalic alveolar-flapping + + unrounded [ɑ] in pot + + + syllabic [ɹ̩] in bird + + + + cot-caught merger + + + pool-pull merger + + bath with /ɑː/ + + + + + + non-rhotic + + + + + monophthongal /aɪ, aʊ/, close vowels for /æ, ɛ/ + + + front [aː] for /ɑːr/ + +

• I think it is too big, but if we can make it collapsible I would be willing to vote to include it for the sake of compromise. What do you say?·maunus · snunɐɯ· 05:05, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Heh, you certainly have a thing for smallness. Here, made it collapsible. It's still going to be wide, and it can't float. Are you okay with that? — Eru·tuon 05:24, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I don't like graphics breaking up the text too much, I think the collapsible design works.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 05:40, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

• I have Wells at work and will check Monday.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 01:16, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Heh. You predicted my request! Thanks. Also, if Wells has another term for the split in plant as opposed to bath, we should add that here as well as in the other Wikipedia article. And if he includes other dialects in a low-vowel table, it would be nice to give an expanded form of the table in Phonological history of English vowels. But I should probably get ahold of Wells and do that last thing myself... — Eru·tuon 01:23, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Query for editors: order of topics in lede?

Hi, everyone,

What's the recommended practice here for ordering what topics are mentioned first in the top section of the article (the lede)? I see the [[Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Lead_section | lead section content guideline] says, "The lead should be able to stand alone as a concise overview. It should define the topic, establish context, explain why the topic is notable, and summarize the most important points, including any prominent controversies. The notability of the article's subject is usually established in the first few sentences. The emphasis given to material in the lead should roughly reflect its importance to the topic, according to reliable, published sources. Apart from trivial basic facts, significant information should not appear in the lead if it is not covered in the remainder of the article. "The lead is the first part of the article most people read, and many only read the lead. Consideration should be given to creating interest in reading more of the article, but the lead should not "tease" the reader by hinting at content that follows. Instead, the lead should be written in a clear, accessible style with a neutral point of view; it should ideally contain no more than four well-composed paragraphs and be carefully sourced as appropriate." So what we don't need to do in the lede is summarize the whole article, right? Rather we should exercise editorial judgment (informed by past talk page discussion, which goes on for twenty pages of archives here), based on reliable sources, to identify the main points of interest about the article. That's largely what the lede does now. Is that everyone's consensus? The lede will be the very last part of the article I will proofread later this evening. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 20:20, 4 April 2015 (UTC)