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Dwelling on controversy

There's is a pattern to Drew's posts. I think he dwells on the controversy. He presents an unsual or bizaar analysis and fails to back it up with literature. He then overwhelms the exchange with verbiage. I think the appropriate reaction is ignore him as much as possible, but to keep a sharp eye out for any edits that he may attempt. I know I am doing this with the articles that I patrol. --Tjo3ya (talk) 17:41, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Tjo3ya, as usual you're wrong. That said, there is an obvious pattern to your activities as well. You make fairly drastic changes to articles (including this Grammatical Tense one) without discussing, justifying, or backing them up. Then, when someone disputes it add in a single source or two that support (maybe) your edits yet deny credence to the usually much larger body of sources that oppose them. You haven't even bothered to respond to any of the replies I've made in good faith to you above when you've clearly conflated tense with other things like aspect and when you've focused on your views on tense rather than on the topic at hand which is yet again, Grammatical Tense.Drew.ward (talk) 17:51, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
Drew, I will be watching for your edits. --Tjo3ya (talk) 18:12, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Reporting Drew

Due to a recent edit war with Drew on the article do-support, I have just filed a complaint about Drew's behavior with the Wikipedia:Administrator's noticeboard. I have linked in to the talk pages that document Drew's bizaar and at times insulting way of communicating, e.g talk:do-support, talk:auxiliary verb. Those of you here who are familiar with Drew's behavior, you might consider delivering a statement to the administrators under my post. --Tjo3ya (talk) 08:11, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Tjo3ya is failing to point out that it was he that was edit warring. Just look at the comments on the article's history page. Rather than provide citations for the changes (keep in mind it was he making changes, not I), before editing again, he simply kept reverting and reverting. When it became obvious he was unwilling to either discuss or provide a citation and instead would only keep repeatedly putting his change back, I quit reverting and reported him on the edit warring notice board. I also, as is policy, placed a notice of this on his user page, which he immediately deleted (check his user page history). "My behavior" Tjo3ya is so upset about is expecting him to hold himself and his own edits to the same level of scrutiny and the same demand for citations and referenced that he demands of others.Drew.ward (talk) 14:09, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
You both were edit warring. Also, notifications go on user talk pages, not user pages. Even if he had deleted a notification on his talk page, that's fully within his right. Anyway, this dispute has now expanded to four different places and is getting increasingly disruptive. — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]
Well, we both obviously made more than three reverts, but I think it should be noted that my reverts (the first of which I had no clue had anything to do with Tjo3ya) were in line with both wikipedia policy on backing up claims with citations and sources (as Tjo3ya has repeatedly emphasized) and in line with the discussions on that article's talk page. And, once I realized Tjo3ya had no intention of engaging in civil discussion or in addressing the reason I had reverted (but rather was just going to keep reverting over and over with no other action), obviously intent on making it an edit war, I walked away. I left the article with his changes exactly as it was and reported the situation. Disagreeing with someone and attempting to ensure that changes made are in accordance with wikipedia policy are not "abusive behavior" nor it is disruptive.Drew.ward (talk) 15:26, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
That's a drastic oversimplification of Wikipedia policies. Nothing but vandalism justifies reverting more than three times in a 24 hour period. If you don't figure that out soon, you'll find yourself on a short leash. You've also misrepresented your own actions. You initially removed it because you felt it was theoretically-driven, and only mentioned citation issues in this edit, even though the claim was already cited in the article. — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 15:49, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
I said it was opinion from the beginning and that that's why I was reverting. Opinion isn't allowed. That's supposed to be obvious. If someone reverts something because they say it's opinion and you disagree, the appropriate response is to provide a citation that disputes it being called opinion and establishes it as fact. When it became obvious that this idea obviously wasn't being processed, I specifically said citation. Saying that I could "soon find myself on a short leash" for taking the exact same sort of actions that every one on here including you and Tjo3ya do on a regular basis is insulting! Apparently it's perfectly ok to revert people's changes and to require they provide citations when that person disagrees with the consensus but when they are in the majority they're supposed to be free from those same requirements. Or, at least that's how it seems to repeatedly appear regarding all of the discussions in linguistics. I made 1 revert of a change made by a random IP address. I repeated that revert 3 times for Tjo3ya and each time gave a reason that he could have easily chosen to address. I never even once disagreed with his assertions (I don't agree with them). I pointed out that it was opinion and that it needed citations. In total I did make more than three reverts (4) and once I realized this and further that there was nothing positive to come from continuing to protect that article, I stopped. Tjo3ya did not. If you feel someone needs a leash, you might want to look at who is the aggressor and who isn't.Drew.ward (talk) 16:18, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
Spare us your emotional indulgences. You edit warred and that's frowned upon, even if someone else is edit warring and even if they're doing it in a way that's worse than you. — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 16:42, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

I think the main consideration that should impact how these difficulties are judged is basic competence with the material that is being presented. The reason Drew fails to cite the literature may be due to the fact that he hasn't really spent much time reading the literature. For instance, on this page talk:auxiliary verb, he argued that the concept of light verb is something that some small group of linguists made up and that the article on light verbs should be killed entirely. Any syntactician who has been around awhile will have encountered the light verb concept and would not challenge the validity of that concept. To take a second example, he argued that examples such as Ask not what your country can do for you... must suggest that ask is an auxiliary verb, since it appears with the negation not, the conclusion being that the negation diagnostic for identifying auxiliary verbs should be rejected. Most experienced syntacticians instinctively know that the combination ask not is a lexicalized form (probably surviving from an earlier stage of the language) and would never conclude based upon such data that the negation diagnostic for identifying auxiliary verbs is invalid.

Many of us are spending a large amount of time communicating with someone who often doesn't really know what he is talking about. The appropriate response is to ignore this person. The problem remains, though, when this person performs edits. The edits cannot be ignored! --Tjo3ya (talk) 19:20, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

OK seriously, if you are going to insist on behaving like an insolent child and demanding that those whom you disagree with be somehow controlled or limited or expelled or whatever, at least do so without lying!
The section of that talk page that Tjo3ya is referring to Talk:Auxiliary_verb&section=13 deals with a series of drastic changes he had made to the auxiliary verb article which included a supposed "diagnostic" in which negation was argued to be a qualifying characteristic of an auxiliary. I reverted that edit and created the section within the talk to explain why I had made the revert and the problems I had with his version. Tjo3ya acknowledged this saying, "Drew, You are correct that the negation diagnostic was presented in a manner that was glossing over some caveats. I think the diagnostic is, however, quite valid. The verb need can indeed be viewed as an auxiliary, but for me it sounds a bit stilted when it is used as an auxiliary. It is about like ought and dare, which can also be viewed as auxiliaries, but sound stilted (at least to my ear).. Tjo3ya (talk) 04:28, 16 July 2012 (UTC)" Note that (considering he claims I have far too deficient a grasp on linguistics to be here) he acknowledges in the first boldfaced section that my criticism was correct. Note too in the second boldfaced section that he states that his willingness to ignore linguistic facts that he acknowledges run counter to his changes, are based not on the sound linguistic knowledge and sourced theory -- a supposed deficit of which is his primary criticism of me -- but rather on his own opinion that to him, it sounds funny. After further discussion regarding his proposal, he eventually provides a very wordy, roundabout, and technical justification for how his proposed diagnostic works and references the very specific narrow (not mainstream) framework and theory that readers would have to be familiar with and subscribe to in order for it to work. He finishes off by showing a disdain for the (perceived by him too low level of) intelligence of Wikipedia readers by saying, "I do not think it is worth trying to explain this caveat, however, since doing so would occupy too much space and challenge too many readers.Tjo3ya (talk) 04:28, 16 July 2012 (UTC)"
It's further in this discussion that I provide the example from JFK (in response to his claim that 'not' could not appear after a verb and modify what followed) "Ask not what your country can do for you...". As Tjo3ya knows, and as anyone who would bother to read through that thread can see, I never once proposed as Tjo3ya has accused me of above, "that ask is an auxiliary verb, since it appears with the negation not". I'm sure it's quite easy to disparage someone else's linguistics knowledge and academic prowess when you base that on "examples" you've completely fabricated, but I don't think that's how the world normally works.
I have better things to do with my time than find reasons to deride Tjo3ya and his abilities, even though it would not be difficult to find plenty of examples of questionable edits and statements by him if I bothered. But I won't. All that these various witch hunts by Tjo3ya targeting me are doing is making him look like an ass and wasting everyone's time. I've been silent on most of his attacks, but I won't tolerate him fabricating lies about me and in such cases as this, will respond as I feel is justified.Drew.ward (talk) 20:45, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
Drew, I will continue to be very vigilant concerning any edits you may attempt. --Tjo3ya (talk) 20:57, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
Tjo3ya, you should "be very vigilant" concerning everyone's edits just as we all should. What you have to do though is learn to separate editor's disputes of or criticism of your edits from personal attacks on you. As was pointed pointed out earlier, assume good faith. Certainly, continue to be vigilant. Something else that might be considered though is a public apology here in light of your having made quite public false claims about me as noted above.Drew.ward (talk) 21:16, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
Drew, Yes, of course, I patrol for all edits. But anything you attempt is going to receive special attention. Let's leave it at that. --Tjo3ya (talk) 21:37, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of WorldBet

The article WorldBet has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Fails WP:GNG - no indication of use by anyone other than its creator, no independent coverage.

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Angr (talk) 14:21, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Disagreement over hyphen in "second(-)language acquisition"

There is a dispute at Talk:Second-language acquisition#Hyphen in the title: second discussion over whether or not to include a hyphen in "second language acquisition". Feedback/input would be appreciated. Thanks, rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:49, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

What's going on here? Why does somebody keep deleting old talkpage comments? bobrayner (talk) 02:10, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
Most of those edits appear to be coming from open proxies. It may be the same user making each edit via different IP addresses. Given the cryptic edit summary, I have no idea why the user would be doing so, though.
To the editor removing this section (if you exist): Please stop. This talk page section will be archived automatically in a few weeks if no one edits it. Cnilep (talk) 03:22, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
It happened again, so I've semiprotected the talk page for a week. Angr (talk) 10:20, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Australian substratum in Proto-Dravidian?

Anyone have access to the following essay?

Blažek, V. Was there Australian Substratum in Dravidian? Mother Tongue XI, 2006, 275-285

This description, unfortunately, makes me suspect it's methodologically complete bullshit, comparing everything with everything and finding resemblances that won't surprise anyone with even the most superficial grasp of statistics.

Of course, there have been typological comparisons made before, a singularly famous feature common to Dravidian and Australian languages being retroflex consonants. Curiously, here (p. 49) Witzel states:

However, it must be noted that the retroflex sounds in Australian are a relative new development as well and cannot be the cause of their (almost) Pan-South Asian prevalence in prehistoric times.

I wonder how Witzel would know? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 16:29, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Maybe he read the wikipedia article on Pama-Nyungan languages which includes the reconstructed consonant inventory which doesn't have retroflexes.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 17:25, 30 September 2012 (UTC)
Look again. There are retroflexes in the table under Pama-Nyungan languages#Consonants. (Perhaps you were confused – as Witzel might have been – by the fact that the column in question used to be labelled "apico-postalveolar", but that's just a more accurate description of a subtype of retroflexes, and the basic opposition laminal-postalveolar/palatal vs. alveolar/dental vs. retroflex in the coronals, characteristic also of South Asian languages, Proto-Dravidian in particular, is still there. Despite the differences in phonetic realisation, the overall structure does admittedly look similar.) --Florian Blaschke (talk) 09:04, 2 October 2012 (UTC)
I didn't even look at the columns just saw no retroflex IPA symbols - why are they written as digraphs with r? Does that suggest that they were originally clusters?·ʍaunus·snunɐw·
No, it's just English orthography. — kwami (talk) 13:21, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Alveolar/Dental merges

Recently, Kwami began parsing a "true" dental vs. "denti-alveolar" distinction at the dental consonant pages (see, e.g. dental nasal). This has prompted me to think that we ought to restructure how we deal with the dental/alveolar distinction in our consonant pages. Some problems:

  • Generalizations about these consonants overlap considerably. Saying, for example, that X many languages have /n/ includes a wide variety of articulations. Having separate articles unduly spreads the knowledge out that we can put in generalizations that we try to make about such sounds.
  • Sources are not normally clear about whether a given consonant is dental, denti-alveolar, or alveolar. For the sake of simplicity, they may even group together dental and alveolar sounds into one class. Sources are even less commonly clear about whether a given consonant is laminal or apical. In some instances (such as Russian /r/ and Catalan /z/), a consonant may actually be postalveolar.
  • It's clear that dental, denti-alveolar, alveolar, and in some cases postalveolar consonants form an exclusive sound class, but the name for such a sound class isn't clear. The IPA is clear that an "alveolar" sound is alveolar, not alveolar-or-dental-or-postalveolar and Kwami is of the opinion that having an article titled e.g. "alveolar nasal" that treats "alveolar" as such a catchall term would be too far from accepted usage. I have suggested the title "coronal"; this would technically include retroflex consonants.
  • Our current treatment of retroflex sibilants is also pretty messy, with this disambiguation page that indicates a split between apical and laminal alveolar sibilants that actually features the knowledge-spreading problem I'm concerned about.

I am of the mind that merging the dental/alveolar articles would be the best way to go, with "coronal" being a potential name of the PoA, but I wanted to get some input from others first. Thoughts? — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 23:25, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm not opposed to merging, though I think we need to keep the tables separate, perhaps in separate sections. However, IMO it's useful to have 'alveolar X' as the article title, and that's what they're called in most treatments. Perhaps "Alveolar or dental nasal"? — kwami (talk) 02:36, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
Hi. Apologies for not responding earlier; I took a self-enforced Wikibreak this summer since I found myself procrastinating too much using Wikipedia.
I think merging would be a good idea. I've noticed this same problem myself. On top of this is the fact that many sources often say "dental" or "alveolar" somewhat randomly with no clear evidence that they actually mean what they say. For example, the pages on Old Chinese and Middle Chinese speak of "dental" stops and sibilants, largely (I think) because the Chinese sources refer to these sounds as "tooth-head" sounds. There's actually a note on the Middle Chinese page saying that even though these sounds are listed as "dental", it isn't actually known whether they were dental or alveolar. It goes on to say that the sounds in modern Chinese varieties are largely alveolar, but I don't trust this. The quoted source is Baxter's book on Old Chinese -- certainly a good book but I doubt it actually says much about modern phonology. I suspect that the book simply uses "alveolar" for the modern sounds because someone else did that, probably as a catch-all term. The Wikipedia articles on Mandarin phonology use "alveolar" in the text (including for the historical sounds), but one table labels them as "apical" and another labels them as "(denti-)alveolar", which strongly suggests to me that no one really knows.
I'm not sure what the best term is. Simply using "alveolar" or "dental" is technically incorrect and feels wrong to me. However, "coronal" also feels quite wrong, because sounds like /ʃ/ and /ɕ/ and /ʈ/ are likewise coronal. This more general usage of "coronal" is pretty standard across linguistic texts and there are good reasons for keeping it this way, because many languages have (morpho)phonological characteristics that apply to all coronal sounds (e.g. in American English stressed /ju/ reduces to /u/ after coronals, and in Arabic the article /al-/ assimilates to coronals). (Older texts often use "acute" rather than "coronal", although technically I think they're slightly different in that /ç/ and /ʝ/ are acute but not coronal.) "Apical" is common in Chinese literature (again, probably because of some corresponding term in the native tradition), but again it's technically incorrect.
For the moment I can't think of a better term than "alveolar/dental" or "dental/alveolar". This is a bit awkward but I think does a good job of conveying that we're talking about a more general category. I do think these terms are better than "alveolar or dental", which (IMO) is significantly more awkward. A possible alternative is "alveolodental", which is a medical term defined as "pertaining to teeth and the alveolar process" is about right -- but OTOH this is barely shorter than "alveolar/dental" or "dental/alveolar", and it's also a neologism.
I don't really think the fact that postalveolar sounds are occasionally grouped into this category is something to worry about. This is simply an instance of the more general issue that sometimes the phoneme used to describe a given sound isn't a prototypically accurate description of the sound. For example, prototypically, /s/ and /z/ are clearly dental or alveolar, and the fact that they're traditionally used in Catalan (and many varieties of Peninsular Spanish) to describe sounds that are evidently postalveolar isn't really our concern when describing the sounds in general -- any more than the fact that /ɣ/ is supposedly a "velar fricative" but is actually used in Spanish to denote an approximant, or that /b/ /d/ /g/ in English are often unvoiced, or that unaspirated /p/ /t/ /k/ etc. in Mandarin Chinese are often voiced.
A related issue is the confusion between "fricative" and "sibilant" throughout the phonetics pages. For example, the Coronal consonant page lists /z/ as a "voiced alveolar fricative" but the page that's linked correctly describes voiced alveolar fricatives as a more general category that can include non-sibilants like /ð/ -- yet the infobox in the upper right says "voiced alveolar sibilant" (not "fricative") and has an image of /z/. In this case the fault is clearly in the IPA, which claims that the difference between /ð/ and /z/ is that the former is "dental" and the latter "alveolar" even though the reality is that both sounds can be either dental or alveolar.

Benwing (talk) 19:19, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

I like "dental or alveolar" because that makes it clear to the reader that we don't know which it is. "Dental/alveolar" looks more like a set term, and IMO has the effect of sweeping our ignorance under the rug. If we make our ignorance obvious, maybe someone will do the research to fix it!
A truly dental /z/ or alveolar /ð/ would be most unusual. The latter could be written [ɹ̝]. — kwami (talk) 19:41, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
Although a quick look through JSTOR and Google Scholar shows that use of alveolodental in linguistics sources isn't completely novel, it seems like it's mostly used as an alternative to denti-alveolar. I also prefer the version without slashes, particularly if we view it as a placeholder until a better name comes along rather than the preferred term.
I'm still not a big fan of splitting the information into separate tables (which Kwami and JorisvS prefer), even if they're on the same page. As it became clear here, the ambiguity of many sources would mean that we would either have to choose one table or another for these ambiguous cases, or have a whole table for languages with indeterminate articulation, which isn't very helpful. — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 20:35, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
Or, we could simply not use any language for which we cannot find an adequate source. There are too many sloppy entries as it is. — kwami (talk) 00:17, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
I can get behind that, but how adequate is adequate? Must the source be specific about whether the sound is apical/laminal, dental, interdental, denti-alveolar, alveolar, or postalveolar? — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 02:06, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
If you want to be able to pronounce the language decently, yes. I struggled for years trying to pronounce French, because I'd learned that /t d n l/ were dental, which makes it just about impossible to pronounced adjacent vowels correctly. It wasn't until I happened across the teacher's appendix in a 1950s high-school textbook that explained what they actually were that I acquired a decent accent. I guess that's why these details are important to me: if I'd known that from the start, it would have saved me a lot of frustration and wasted effort. In the other direction, there are (supposedly) French people who mispronounce English /ð/ as [z], but any description of English that conflated them wouldn't be worth using, and we wouldn't want to merge the two articles here. It doesn't really matter if we get the wrong /n/ for French, but then it doesn't really matter if you say zey or dey for 'they' either. To me the magnitudes of the differences are comparable. — kwami (talk) 04:13, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
(insertive new comment) You had problems with dental occlusives and /l/? Well, the hardest articulation for me is alveolar. I can do the sibilants and rhotics perfectly, but not the /t d n l/ that are denti-alveolar in my native language, except for [ne], [nɪ] and [nʊ̜], which are way easier. Lguipontes (talk) 10:03, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
I understand that those details are important enough to add when we have them, but they aren't all necessary to the point that we should delete examples that don't have all of that information. I think that's a bit too high of a burden. — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 04:35, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
Maybe. But what's the point of the examples? Illustrating the most widely known languages for each C or V would help our readers. But many are for editors who want to see their language represented. That's more vanity than value, IMO, and it wouldn't be much of a loss if half of them were deleted. — kwami (talk) 08:09, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
As it stands, there's no standard for what constitutes too long a list of examples (which we can see at close front unrounded vowel) and the exact purpose of them is unclear other than, you know, that they're illustrative examples. I personally don't have a problem with "vanity" inclusions if we can cite them. If we do decide on an alternate reason for the examples or some sort of discriminating criteria, it should be consistent across all the sound pages. — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 13:16, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

IPA & USDict help

I was wondering if anyone could help me create the appropriate IPA representation at top of the article Strepsirrhini. I don't know if any online dictionaries list the IPA for various terms, but I certainly don't feel comfortable constructing it myself. Help with USdict pronunciation would also help. I'd like to do the same thing as what is seen at the top of the Lemur article. – Maky « talk » 23:50, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks to the people who have made attempts at helping so far. I have tried to build on some of it, plus I have started recording an uploading pronunciation files to help. If you disagree with the IPA currently listed, please correct it. Again, this is not my strong point. – Maky « talk » 01:14, 2 October 2012 (UTC)
For globally relevant articles like this, by the way, I'd argue in favour of Template:respell rather than Template:USdict. The latter, as the name suggests, is rather US-specific. garik (talk) 02:30, 2 October 2012 (UTC)
Good to know. I learned something new today. – Maky « talk » 02:38, 2 October 2012 (UTC)
I've heard it pronounced as strepseREEni not strepseRYEni. And then i've heard "strepsirhines" [strepseRYEns] ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 02:40, 2 October 2012 (UTC)
Hmmmm... it may be like "Primates" and "primate". I wonder if I can find a source... – Maky « talk » 03:19, 2 October 2012 (UTC)
I couldn't find anything definite for strepsirrhini, but I assume platyrrhini would be pronounced similarly, and there is an entry on platyrrhine and platyrrhinian at Dictionary.com. That gives platyrrhine as PLA-ti-ryn, and platyrrhinian as pla-ti-RI-nee-ən. That makes me think that strepsirrhini is probably pronounced strep-si-REE-nee, as Maunus suggested. Your mileage may vary. — Mr. Stradivarius (have a chat) 06:45, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Diacritics in Portuguese IPA transcriptions

Hello everyone. There's a discussion over at Help talk:IPA for Portuguese and Galician#Brazilian Portuguese unstressed vowels about whether we should include diacritics in our IPA transcriptions for unstressed vowels in Portuguese. Your input would be very welcome. — Mr. Stradivarius (have a chat) 07:00, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes, please enter the discussion. Portuguese unstressed vowels really need a novel way of transcribing because we don't have a standard dialect in Brazil anymore.
It was Rio de Janeiro's until after the second half of the 20th century, and the unstressed /e ~ ɛ/ and /o ~ ɔ/ of our dialect tends to be mid. It would be more accurate to transcribe them using the open-mid ones (majoritarian among Brazilians that, unlike we cariocas, don't use mids) if diacritics are really to be avoided, but transcriptions of it in Wikipedia, much as what already happens with our unstressed /a ~ ɐ/ (supposed to be transcribed primarily with the latter one, what is rare), are likely to be inconsistent, as most online Brazilians are from the dialects that use them close-mid.
Also, Portuguese, much as Catalan, uses height to contrast stressed and unstressed vowels, but in the Brazilian variant, it is often inconsistent (among the reasons it sounds more similar to Spanish), and raising the unstressed "mid" (minor variation of the paragraph above) to either a close or a near-close vowel (i.e. [u ~ ʊ] and [i ~ ɪ] depending on dialect) depends on regional variation, so it adds to the confusion. I proposed representing the enormous variation, [u ~ ʊ ~ o ~ o̞ ~ ɔ] (/u/ in Portugal) and [i ~ ɪ ~ e ~ e̞ ~ ɛ] (/ɨ/ in Portugal) with [ʊ] and [ɪ], respectively, with the single purpose of denoting this variation in a broad transcription of Brazilian Portuguese. Most dialects lack near-close vowels, and in the dialects that they appear, they are present in all raisings of the "mids", including final position (that I don't meant to change its present broad transcription with [u] and [i]), so its use will be not phonetic.
Example: por obséquio! (I pray you/If you please)
[pʊɾ o̞bˈsɛkju] (broad transcription proposed here), [poɾ obˈsɛkju] (present broad transcription), [puɾ ɔbˈsɛkju] (second best broad transcription, though more confusing and irrealistic than that adding uncommon characters), [puɾ o̞biˈsɛkju] (Rio de Janeiro's pronunciation), [pʊɾ obɪˈsɛkjʊ] (São Paulo's pronunciation), [poɾ o̞bɪˈsɛkjʊ] (Porto Alegre's pronunciation), [puɾ ɔbiˈsɛkju] (pronunciation in Fortaleza/Recife/Salvador), etc.
I felt it necessary because it respects the pluricentricity of Brazilian Portuguese in the regard to its dialects, with no preferences to those of the north or south. Your suggestions and comments will be welcome, so that consensus can be build. Thank you! Lguipontes (talk) 15:09, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Proposed move of Template:Code-switching

I have proposed moving Template:Code-switching to "Interlanguage varieties". The template does not link to pages about code-switching but to pages on named admixtures / fused lects / interlanguage varieities such as Spanglish or Portuñol. Discussion is here. Cnilep (talk) 06:18, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

English words without vowels

This is yet unrated. I would like to see it rated - preferably as "worse than appalling", because it is probably the most nonsensical drivel I have ever seen in wikipedia (and given some of the pages I've corrected that's rather a strong statement). The only reason I want it rated, instead of deleted, is that I see that two recent attempts to get it deleted failed - so obviously there is a concensus on retaining this utter nonsense (which, one can see bfrom the talk page, was identified as nonesnse the best part of a decade ago); but I can always hope that there is no concensus on denying that it's nonsense. Michealt (talk) 01:06, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

What's nonsensical about it? This is a common point of interest for kids. Not all of our articles need to be at a professional level. — kwami (talk) 03:00, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
I've given it a once-over. I'm not sure what all you've considered when deciding to rate it "worse than appalling" but it seems as though it's based on one sentence in the lede that didn't make any sense (and seemed irrelevant anyway). Or maybe you're just being hyperbolic.
Either way, it's pretty damn rude to be so inflammatory just because an article isn't good enough for you. You do realize that actual human beings work on these things, right? The the article needs some work, but it is far from "worse than appalling." The article talk page might be a useful place to bring up your concerns. In fact, it looks like there's a discussion about content going on right now. I recommend you be a bit more polite there than you are here. — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 16:45, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
OK, yes, Aeusoes1, that comment was over the top. But I see that in your once-over you tried an edit which removed about a third of the article, only to get the revision undone (twice) so I think you probably have some idea what the rant was about. Over the last week, the article has come down to about half the size (9k from 18k) of the version that provoked the rant, and is a much better article as a result of the changes. Michealt (talk) 22:37, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Vowel-initial roots in PIE?

Some input to the discussion at Talk:Proto-Indo-European root#Vowel-initial roots would be welcome. It's basically about whether vowel-initial nouns such as *eḱwos contain a root that violates the phonotactic rules described in the article. Thanks --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 16:50, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Merge proposal of CATESOL

Hello everyone, I have proposed a merge of CATESOL into Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages if anyone is interested in commenting. The discussion is over at Talk:Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages. Thanks — Mr. Stradivarius on tour (have a chat) 00:49, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Margaret Masterman

Could editors please check my proposed contribution to Margaret Masterman in that talk page.Robotics1 (talk) 17:32, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Merge proposal for Speech signal processing

Hello everyone. I just noticed that we have an article on Speech processing and on Speech signal processing. These look like exactly the same topic to me, and I have proposed a merge. The discussion is at Talk:Speech processing if anyont would like to take part. Best — Mr. Stradivarius on tour (have a chat) 05:41, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Catherine McBride-Chang

I'm not sure that Catherine McBride-Chang passes WP:PROF at the moment, but I've never been good at judging PROF criterion #1. What do others think - would it be a good idea to nominate the article for deletion? — Mr. Stradivarius on tour (have a chat) 07:12, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

I should probably also add that I just trimmed the article substantially - this is the version with the old material still present. — Mr. Stradivarius on tour (have a chat) 07:14, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
I've gone ahead and nominated the article for deletion. The discussion is at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Catherine McBride-Chang if anyone is interested. — Mr. Stradivarius (have a chat) 02:06, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

{{PUA}}

Created this template to mark PUA characters we wish to keep. There's a proposal to find a way to search for PUA characters, which should normally be replaced. — kwami (talk) 23:10, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Sorely needed article

We apparently don't have an article on Brain and language/Language in the brain/Neurology of language/Neural bases of language. We have an article on Neurolinguistics, but its about the discipline and its history and methods - it doesn't outline its findings. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 19:24, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Due to my own communication disability, I have a problem with both verbal and written language, however you might find this collection of research papers of some use for your proposed article, the CiteULike Group: Language And Brain library which currently has 1162 articles.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Dolfrog (talk • contribs)
Thanks!·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 15:40, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
See Broca's area and Wernicke's area.—Wavelength (talk) 20:36, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
We also have Neurology of multilingualism, which might be of use. — Mr. Stradivarius on tour (have a chat) 06:12, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Indic languages

Hello all, I need a third party opinion on this edit. Thank you, — Nearly Headless Nick {c} 07:42, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Seems not insane to me. I've improved (I hope) the descriptions. Stuartyeates (talk) 07:51, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
I dispute the change on the basis of the fact that in the context of linguistics, "Indic languages" refers only to Indo-Aryan languages and Brahmic scripts are not the same as Indic scripts. The article on Brahmic scripts also lacks proper academic sources that use "Brahmic scripts" and "Indic scripts" interchangeably. Please let me know what you think. — Nearly Headless Nick {c} 08:08, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics by PH Matthews distinguishes Indic scripts from the Dravidian scripts, clearly specifying that Indic refers to the languages belonging to the Indo-Aryan Family (see page 175 of 410)

Text reproduced below:

"Indian scripts . Writing systems derived directly or indirectly from the *Brahmi script, attested in ancient India from the second half of the 1st millennium BC. Modern forms include *Devanagari, used in particular for Hindi, and the separate scripts, often with characters of very different shapes, that have developed for other major*Indo-Aryan and for the *Dravidian languages: in addition, those of *Tibetan, and of most languages in South-east Asia, including *Burmese, *Khmer, *Lao, and *Thai. Earlier forms were used still more widely, in Central Asia with the spread of Buddhism and e.g. for *Javanese before the Muslim conquest.

The basic type is *alpha-syllabic, as *Devanagari. The precise historical links, both within and outside ,are still partly uncertain: but for those in South-east Asia, the Mon script, attested in Burma ( Myanmar) from the 11 th to the 12th century AD, and before it the Grantha script, used in the coastal area of Tamil Nadu from the 5th century AD, were major intermediaries.

Indic = Indo-Aryan."

Source: questia.com : link — Nearly Headless Nick {c} 09:33, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

  • I agree that Indic languages should not be a disambiguation page, as it is not an ambiguous term. It can refer only to the Indo-Aryan languages. The languages of India are never called "Indic languages", and the Indic scripts are never called languages. The redirect should be restored. Angr (talk) 21:08, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Comment this is a disambiguation page, focused on helping readers find the page they're looking for. How experts use the term is irrelevant. "in the context of linguistics" is irrelevant. What matters is how the great mass of English language speakers (both native and second-language speakers) use the term. Stuartyeates (talk) 21:47, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
    • But it doesn't help anyone, because no one who lands at [[Indic languages]] is going to be looking for anything other than [[Indo-Aryan languages]]. Sticking a disambiguation page in their way isn't going to help them. Angr (talk) 20:41, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, the dab is silly, as Angr explained. There are two reasonable approaches: rd to Indo-Aryan, or move Indo-Aryan to Indic. — kwami (talk) 20:44, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Language school category names

Hi all, I'm having a bit of a problem coming up with category names for Category:Language schools by language, and I would appreciate your advice. I want to make categories for schools that teach a particular language, but this is hard because of how English works. For example, for schools which teach English, I thought of the following:

  • English language schools (problem - this could be taken to mean all language schools in England)
  • English-language schools (problem - this could be taken to mean schools which teach all subjects through the medium of the English language)
  • Schools of English (problem - could be taken to mean a school of thought rather than a physical school)
  • Schools of the English language (better, but perhaps overly formal)
  • Schools that teach English (sounds too informal to me)

I think that a valid category name would be something like the last two that I mentioned here, but those two don't seem quite right. Can anyone think of something better? — Mr. Stradivarius (have a chat) 16:03, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

"Schools that teach English" won't do, because every primary school and secondary school in the English-speaking world teaches English. What you're after is schools specializing in teaching English as a second or foreign language, right? Angr (talk) 20:59, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
Yep, that's right, and good point. I like the idea of including "as a second or foreign language". How about "Schools of English as a second or foreign language", "Schools of French as a second or foreign language", etc.? — Mr. Stradivarius (have a chat) 05:31, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
Actually, I like that idea enough that I'm just going to go ahead and implement it. Thanks! — Mr. Stradivarius (have a chat) 05:52, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
Actually I don't like the idea. Why not "Schools of French as a THIRD or foreign language"? Some people grow up with two languages as their mother-tongue. Suggest: "Schools of French as non-native language" OR "Schools of French as a foreign language". ChemTerm (talk) 17:27, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
Thank you for this category. Recently I found an article about a Bengali language school, and another article about a school for another language, probably a Slavic language. I hope to find those articles and categorize them in this new category.
—Wavelength (talk) 14:13, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
You're welcome! I want to avoid overcategorisation, and I think if a language is too obscure then we should just categorise schools that teach it in the parent category Category:Language schools. I'm not sure what a good cut-off point would be, though. Maybe we could have a separate category if five or more schools exist for that language, or if the language appears on the List of languages by number of native speakers? Let me know what you think. Oh yes, and if you want to help me diffuse Category:Language schools into the child categories you will have my eternal gratitute. :) — Mr. Stradivarius (have a chat) 14:37, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
I found again Bangla Academy, and there is also Bangla Language and Literary Society, Singapore, which is an organization.
—Wavelength (talk) 16:29, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

CFD discussion regarding Toponymy categories

Hopefully some linguists could assist with a scholarly perspective?

Ta. --Mais oui! (talk) 04:43, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Oronym

Now that I've resurrected the latter, which we lost about seven years ago, you might care to decide what to do about the former, which is a recreational linguistics approach to it. Before you go thinking about the length of juncture, note that it is by no means complete. It doesn't even blame the idea on Bloomfield, via Bloch and Trager, at the moment. ☺ (For seven years, if you'd asked Wikipedia, it would have told you that Gyles Brandreth invented the whole idea!) Or link the concept to minimal pairs. Or even discuss juncture in German or Mandarin Chinese. It's a very needy stub. Uncle G (talk) 12:49, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Extended quality scale for the project template

I have been thinking recently that we should convert the {{WikiProject Linguistics}} template to use the extended quality scale. This would mean that as well as being able to tag pages as the usual classes ("stub", "start", etc.) we would also be able to tag them as "Category", "Disambig", "File", "Portal", "Project" and "Template". The immediate reason that I would like to do this is because it would be easier to keep track of all the project's categories. At the moment we have lists like Wikipedia:WikiProject Linguistics/Applied/Categories which I used to set up automatic talk page tagging last year, but these become outdated every time a category is renamed. Using talk page tags would make the system much more robust, and if we enable the extended quality scale we would easily be able to distinguish categories from other miscellaneous linguistics pages. (At the moment all such pages are lumped together in Category:NA-Class Linguistics articles, but with the extended scale there would be a Category:Category-Class Linguistics articles.) What does everyone think about making the change? — Mr. Stradivarius (have a chat) 13:42, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Ok, I'm taking the lack of response as approval. I'll go and do it now. — Mr. Stradivarius (have a chat) 12:59, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Stonewalling nominated for deletion

The article Stonewalling has been nominated for deletion. Participants of WikiProject Linguistics may like to contribute to the discussion. Bazonka (talk) 21:16, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Inuit phonology talk page(s)

For some reason, the discussions for Inuit phonology are in the redirect Talk:Inuit language phonology. I'd move (to keep the history) but Talk:Inuit phonology already exists. Could an administrator fix this, please?— Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 15:43, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Ok, done. — Mr. Stradivarius (have a chat) 21:25, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 21:46, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Backhanded compliment

The article Backhanded compliment has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Wikipedia is not a dictionary. The article consists only of a definition and does not tell why this phrase is Notable.

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. GeorgeLouis (talk) 03:12, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Merge proposal of Childhood Bilingualism Research Centre

Hello everyone. I've just proposed the merge of Childhood Bilingualism Research Centre into Chinese University of Hong Kong, and as always I would be very grateful if you could give your opinion. The discussion is at Talk:Chinese University of Hong Kong#Merge proposal. Regards — Mr. Stradivarius on tour (have a chat) 05:31, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Ok, I've performed the merge. — Mr. Stradivarius (have a chat) 10:21, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Polyvalence

The page Polyvalence is a bit of a mess. Currently, it describes the notion of multivalency in chemistry, and then links to four lexically- but not necessarily thematically-related pages: Polysemy, Polyvalent vaccine, Polyvalent antibody, and Antivenom. This is a strange mix of disambiguation and dictionary definition. Earlier versions of the page were no better, giving an etymology of the word in place of the short description of chemical valence.

I'm not sure that WikiProject Linguistics is really the place to bring this up, except that (1) polysemy is one of the current links, and the notion of bivalency/multivalency in pragmatics and discourse analysis could potentially be added to the list, and (2) any discussion of deleting the page would probably be sorted at WP:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Language, which is not technically a related project but has cross-over interest. I guess I'm just looking for other editors' to cast critical eyes over the page. Cnilep (talk) 07:21, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

It doesn't seem like polysemy should be a link from a (linguistic) article along these lines. Is there really a need for a ling article on polyvalency? After all, every verb is 'poly'valent.Drew.ward (talk) 23:25, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
I'm not sure polysemy belongs in a list of terms to be disambiguated. But there are at least two notions (or is it one polysemic metaphor?) that are labeled "bivalency" in linguistic analysis. J. Thomas's (1986) "bivalent illocutionary act" is a single utterance that accomplishes two pragmatic functions; K. Woolard's (1998) "bivalency in bilingualism" refers to forms that are alike in two languages, therefore complicating analyses of code switching. As Drew.ward points out, there is also the notion of valence in morpho-syntax, but polyvalent doesn't seem to come up there. Cnilep (talk) 01:09, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
I should add, I'm not sure that either Thomas's or Woolard's bivalency is sufficiently notable by Wikipedia standards to warrant an article—though Woolard's concept has a fair bit of uptake in linguistic anthropology. Cnilep (talk) 01:16, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
I've removed polysemy from the list. It definitely doesn't belong there, as it's not a chemical concept. The linguistic concepts you mention don't seem to qualify for disambiguation either, as we don't disambiguate partial title matches. A concept would actually have to be called "polyvalency" or "polyvalent" etc. to qualify for disambiguation. It might be worth disambiguating Thomas's and/or Woolard's bivalency with Principle of bivalence and Bivalent (chemistry), if Thomas's or Woolard's concepts are covered anywhere on Wikipedia or if those specific meanings are red-linked from other pages. (See MOS:DABRL and MOS:DABMENTION for what happens if the concepts don't have their own articles.) I don't think there's anything more we need to do at Polyvalence, though. — Mr. Stradivarius (have a chat) 07:26, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

WP Linguistics in the Signpost

The WikiProject Report would like to focus on WikiProject Linguistics for a Signpost article. This is an excellent opportunity to draw attention to your efforts and attract new members to the project. Would you be willing to participate in an interview? If so, here are the questions for the interview. Just add your response below each question and feel free to skip any questions that you don't feel comfortable answering. Multiple editors will have an opportunity to respond to the interview questions, so be sure to sign your answers. If you know anyone else who would like to participate in the interview, please share this with them. Have a great day. –Mabeenot (talk) 18:23, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Is anyone interested in representing this project in the Signpost interview? If not, we'll have to pick another project. –Mabeenot (talk) 17:38, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
Sorry, I've been putting this off. I'll try to put something up by the end of the day. — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 17:56, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Adding IPA for Haile Selassie I

I seem to have provoked an edit war. Some outside mediation would be helpful. Thank you. -Devin Ronis (d.s.ronis) (talk) 20:53, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Safir English Language Academy

Hello everyone. This is just to let you know that there is a discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Safir English Language Academy about the possible deletion of Safir English Language Academy, a language school in Iran. Best — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 01:16, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Accent (dialect)

I moved the article to distinguish it from accent (phonetics) (which should be expanded; many WP projects have an accent rather than stress article, and by 'accent' I mean the topic, not the name). I'm not happy with the dab, but I don't think an earlier move to accent (sociolinguistics) was correct either, nor is regional accent, which has been chosen on other projects. Discussion of a final name on the talk page, if anyone here has an opinion. — kwami (talk) 22:46, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Pygg

Hello guys. Please see Pygg and its talk page, Talk:Pygg. I believe that this entire thing is a folk etymology, or even a hoax. I can't find any information about "pygg" clay, only modern Web pages (and a few unscholarly books) claiming it is the origin of "piggy bank". Can we either find good sources (e.g. archaic books talking about the "pygg" clay, before piggy-banks existed), or put this folk etymology to rest, rather than inappropriately promoting it? 86.174.188.81 (talk) 23:21, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

"Pygg" is an old spelling of "pig". Per the OED there are a few related modern uses; the only common one being Scottish for "Earthenware as a material; also, a pot-sherd or fragment of earthenware such as children use in some games." Survives in standard English in pigs and whistles, pig-ass, pig-cart, pig-man, pig-wife, pig-shop. Merged to earthenware. — kwami (talk) 00:25, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
Is pig iron (pig iron) etymologically related to pygg?—Wavelength (talk) 01:37, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
It's related to the animal. "Sow-iron" was also used; per the OED, the difference may have been size of the ingot (a pig was originally a young swine), but that wasn't certain. Later on the sow-iron was the ingot in the main channel, and the pig-irons were the smaller ingots from the side channels, but that was a later adaption of the metaphor. "Piggin" (vessel) may derive from earthenware "pig", but that's obscure too. Or at least it was when the OED was written. — kwami (talk) 07:08, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
Thank you.—Wavelength (talk) 15:51, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

TAFI

Hello,
Please note that Slang, which is within this project's scope, has been selected to become a Today's Article for Improvement. The article is currently in the TAFI Holding Area, where comments are welcome about ideas to improve it. After the article is moved from the holding area to the TAFI schedule, it will appear on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Today's Article for Improvement" section for one week. Everyone is invited to participate in the discussion and encouraged to collaborate to improve the article.
Thank you,
TheOriginalSoni (talk) 11:24, 26 January 2013 (UTC)
(From the TAFI team)

Tense confusion

I just spotted this new stub, and to me it looks like a likely candidate for merging, possibly to Sequence of tenses. I thought I would bring it here for more opinions though. Let me know if you think this should be merged, or if you know of a good merge target. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 14:07, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Very interesting little bit, and something I disagreed with while reading it, until I read your target and happily discovered it is a source of controversy and disagreement. So, I think your target is excellent, but perhaps point it more precisely to Sequence of tenses#Attracted sequence, which gets to the heart of the confusion. —Torchiest talkedits 14:43, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
I agree that Sequence of tenses sounds like an appropriate target for merging. Although most of the sources here are self-published, at least one is a commercially published textbook (though that one doesn't appear to use the label "tense confusion"). At any rate, I am persuaded that "tense confusion" is one view on style for tense sequencing in English. Cnilep (talk) 01:34, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Direct speech

Direct speech has been expanded lately – part seems to be copypasted, part is written in rather bad English, and part is unencyclopaedic. Could someone more knowledgeable have a look and judge whether there is something that can be saved? Thanks, ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 19:13, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Proposed merge of Institute of Modern Languages (Queensland)

I have just proposed that the new article Institute of Modern Languages (Queensland) be merged with the main article University of Queensland. If you are interested, I would be very grateful if you could comment on the merge proposal over at Talk:University of Queensland. Best regards — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 15:09, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Proposal regarding usage of term "initialism" on Wikipedia

FYI, I have started a discussion at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Deprecation_of_disproportionate_usage_of_.22initialism.22_on_Wikipedia. 220.246.155.114 (talk) 14:07, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Linguistic frequency

I've just noticed this new disambiguation page, and I'm not quite sure what to do with it. Is the term "linguistic frequency" in use anywhere? If not, then it can't really be disambiguating anything. I'm thinking it should probably be merged into Frequency (disambiguation), or maybe even into the main Frequency article, although that would be quite a job. I'd like to hear others' opinions before proceeding, though. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 15:20, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

I'd say merge to Frequency (disambiguation). — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 15:38, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
  • If the exact term is used, this could perhaps become a broad concept dab page. But if not, I would suggest merging and redirecting to Frequency (disambiguation). older ≠ wiser 15:48, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
  • I, the "inventor" of the disambiguation page, wrote that just for the sake of connecting the two concepts and also reuniting them with other terms spreaded around (I was looking for information and I had to search a bit hard for it, so I tried to ease the task for anyone after me). No objection to include or merge into the broader disambiguation page as far as letter- and word- freqs are kept distinguished. I have no knowledge of the combined term being used for something very specific. I wouldn't merge the contents into the article however (which has no mention to any frequency used in Social Sciences). Thanks for warning me on my talk page, by the way. And now I know about this WikiProject, maybe I come sometimes here, but after we celebrate the 10th anniversary of Galician Wikipedia and maybe 100.000 articles on March 8th. ※ Sobreira ◣◥ (parlez) 16:04, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
Obviously, as Sobreira's experience shows, the concept of frequency comes up in various ways in linguistics. But, as Strad points out, none of these are called "linguistic frequency", so a DAB is not really the way to go. The suggestion at the top of the page to create a "broad concept" article seems appropriate. In addition to letter frequency in cryptography there is word frequency or string frequency in corpus analyses, and relative frequencies of various sorts of things (phonetic variants, words, word classes, etc.) in historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, or stylistics. What other notions of 'frequency' could be included in a broad-concept article? Cnilep (talk) 02:47, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Covert links to advertisements

I've noticed recently that links to advertisements are appearing in the articles I patrol. These links appear in blue like a normal link, but they are also underlined. For instance, see the underlined words in blue in the "Examples" section in the following article:

Idiom

When I go in to try to edit out the links, they are not visible. Does anyone know what is going on with these links? How do I/we guard against them? --Tjo3ya (talk) 20:11, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't see any blue underlined links. I think it's your browser. — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 21:15, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
The links are showing up with both browsers that I use, Mozilla and Explorer (I cleared all cookies). Interestingly, the links appear first only after a couple seconds. Please check the article Idiom again. There are numerous underlined words in blue that are links to advertisements. In the "Examples" subsection, the words "money", "phone", and "Word combinations" all appear as links to advertisements. Check the article predicate (grammar) for a second example of the links. The word "order" in the fourth sentence is a link to an advertisement for Amazon. But again, the links show up first after a couple of seconds. If you still do not see the links, then something is going on with individual machines. Something nefarious is afoot. --64.134.134.127 (talk) 21:39, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
It is your particular computer. You have some adware installed. Check your extensions for evidence, some are blatant and install there, and some may be not so obvious. Elizium23 (talk) 21:45, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict)It sounds like your browser has downloaded one of those add-ons like "Browse to save". It isn't happening Wikipedia-side. Angr (talk) 21:47, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
Yes, you guys are right. Thanks. --Tjo3ya (talk) 21:50, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Transcreation

Dear linguists, would you please be so kind and take a quick look at what I fell is a dodgy article. (Maybe I am overreacting?) Thank you, Littledogboy (talk) 14:46, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Duplicated article

The article on subject-auxiliary version is duplicated:

Subject-auxiliary inversion

The one article merely contains a redirection link to the other. How can the two merged into one article? The empty article with the redirection link should be removed. --Tjo3ya (talk) 19:34, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

It's just an ordinary redirect. The real article has a dash in its title, in line with Wikipedia's style predilections. This is a redirect from the same title with a hyphen in place of the dash. Everything seems to be as it should be. Victor Yus (talk) 19:40, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the helpful clarification. --Tjo3ya (talk) 20:00, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Sociolinguistics task force

Hello all. I was just rating our much-discussed article diasystem, as it was categorised as being supported by the Applied Linguistics Task Force. This is because it was automatically tagged because of its category, "Language varieties and styles" (the somewhat tenuous connection being that language planning and policy is part of applied linguistics, and language varieties and styles is related to language policy). However, I think it would make much more sense for this article, and others like it, to be part of a sociolinguistics task force. My interests are much more in the language education/SLA area, but that does have some overlap with sociolinguistics. Would anyone else here be interested in contributing to a sociolinguistics task force if I set it up? — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 13:38, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

I suppose I could give it a try. — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 15:19, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

AfD at Definitions of Pogrom

Hi everyone, we'd be grateful for your thoughts at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Definitions of Pogrom. Oncenawhile (talk) 18:35, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for these articles

I just want to thank everyone who has worked on the linguistics articles over the years; I have learned so much about linguistics (especially phonetics, historical linguistics, and typology) from them. The amount of amazing information available here is really astounding and I owe a lot to what you guys have done, so thank you.  :)

~MaiyaH78 04:42, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Renaming/moving an article

Would someone please point me to directions on how to rename/move an article.

The current article with the title "Adjectival phrase" should be renamed "Adjective phrase", since the latter term is the one preferred by most syntax and grammar textbooks. The issue is discussed in two places on the talk page, whereby there is now agreement that the article should be renamed. But how do I do this? How do I rename/move the article so that it carries the title "Adjective phrase"? --Tjo3ya (talk) 06:03, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Add the template {{move}} at the top of the talk page. Someone should come along to move it. — kwami (talk) 06:26, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
Well, you're supposed to add {{subst:Requested move|NewName|Reason}}, providing your recommended name and a reason why. That will initiate a discussion, not an automatic move by someone else. If the move is uncontroversial you can move it yourself by selecting "Move" from the dropdown menu to the right of the star at the top right of the page if you're using the default Vector skin. This isn't possible for anons and for brand new accounts, but Tjo3ya has been here for over 3 years and so should be able to move a page himself. Angr (talk) 18:29, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
It also isn't possible if the title you want to use is already "occupied". In that case you need to be an administrator to perform the move. Victor Yus (talk) 19:35, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
Yes, perhaps I cannot do it myself. In the instructions on how to move, it says it won't work of the article is going to replace another article that has a history. Since "Adjective phrase", which is basically just a redirection link, has a some (minimal) history, perhaps I cannot take care of this myself. Is there an administrator out there who can do this? --Tjo3ya (talk) 22:29, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
If a move is uncontroversial or already has consensus, but it isn't possible for you to technically move the page, you can request it by using {{db-move}} on the target page. In this case, though, I think sticking with the requested move would be best, because this move was contested before (the 2007 discussion) and the previous recent discussion veered off-topic and didn't focus very much on the title's merits with respect to the article title policy. I'm not saying that the move is a bad idea - I haven't checked into that yet - just that it's usually better to discuss things rather than move unilaterally if there's any doubt about there being a consensus. — Mr. Stradivarius on tour ♪ talk ♪ 01:20, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

American Accent

The recently created page American Accent partially overlaps several other articles, including North American English regional phonology‎ and American English. Ƶ§œš¹ has proposed merging it to the latter page. Discussion is at Talk:American English#Merge proposal. Cnilep (talk) 07:19, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Requesting an assessment

Hi. I have recently done a complete re-write of the Gaelic revival article. The article has a "WikiProject Linguistics|applied=Yes" tag on the talk page, but going to the respective assessment pages I can't see any procedure for requesting an assessment. Can anybody give me help or guidance here? Scolaire (talk) 10:33, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Evolutionary psychology of language

The recently created page Evolutionary psychology of language seems to cover a topic quite similar to that of Origin of language and may constitute a content fork. I claim no particular expertise in evolutionary psychology, but the topics appear similar and several of the same scholars are cited on each page. In addition, the page Evolutionary linguistics seems to cover very similar ground. Perhaps these three articles need to be merged, or at least made to refer to one another in consistent ways so as to avoid duplication. Cnilep (talk) 03:30, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

I have asked participants at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Psychology and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Evolutionary biology to contribute to the discussion here. Cnilep (talk) 03:42, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

[edit conflict]

The topic is actually the closest to the language section of the Evolutionary psychology. I think that the editor who started the page copy and pasted the information from that article and added a few sections. I raised the topic of discussion about differentiation of those two articles on Talk:Evolutionary psychology of language#Differentiation between this article and Evolutionary psychology.
As I understand it, and I'm not an expert, "Origin of language" is a quite broader topic and more historical, biological and anthropological to the more scientific exploration of Evolutionary psychology. There's an immense number of articles that overlap this topic - see Evolutionary psychology of language#See also - and the templates on the same page.
It would be helpful if people who know much more about this than I do should weigh in, though. I am happy to support whereever the more informed folks say it should go.--CaroleHenson (talk) 03:47, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
this is actually a better list of users. Stuartyeates (talk) 03:58, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
Evolutionary psychology of language and Origin of language definitely have overlapping scopes, with the latter being broader. I would suggest merging the content of the former into a section of the latter and then have a shorter section on the Evolutionary psychology page that links to the specific evolutionary psychology section in Origin of language. Evolutionary linguistics seems at first like it might be a separate topic, but we already have language change, meaning that it would probably be best as a disambiguation page, if anything. — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 13:58, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Sound samples in 'IPA for' pages

Has it been considered before? Would it be a welcome addition? — Lfdder (talk) 14:27, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Adding more symbols a symbol to the IPAlink, IPAslink and IPAblink templates

Hello there! Could you add these symbols this symbol to the three templates mentioned in the title? Dental fricatives and affricates [z̪ t̪͡s̪ t͡s̪ d̪͡z̪ d͡z̪] (dental t͡s d͡z are written both ways, so please add them both), and the vowel [ɵ̞], a mid-central rounded one (Belgian Dutch "eu" and Swedish short "u", it's kinda annoying to have to link to the unrounded schwa). Cheers. EDIT: It appears that the first part of my message is no longer true, as those consonants are already present in the template. But the point about the rounded schwa is still valid. --Ahls23 (talk) 23:23, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

The template you'd have to edit is {{IPAsym}}. You can discuss changes you'd like done on its talk page. — Lfdder (talk) 17:36, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
Thanks very much. --Ahls23 (talk) 21:48, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
Remember that if you rename a letter, you will have to manually point to its sound sample in the article. — Lfdder (talk) 21:59, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for reminding. --Ahls23 (talk) 22:06, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
And thanks for cleaning up the rest of the mess I left, I didn't quite know that renaming the consonants would make that much of a change. Anyway, it's a little bit too late to restore the old names, it would look mighty confusing with the sibilants merged on the same page with non-sibilant fricatives and what have you. Why would we do that anyway? Seems we have to ask to rename the audio every time we rename the sounds, as there are instances where you can't simply link to the file. Too bad Wiki Commons mods change the extention to .oga every time they're asked to rename an .ogg file... Is there any way to make the templates read .oga as a variant of .ogg? Cheers. --Ahls23 (talk) 01:28, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

> it would look mighty confusing with the sibilants merged on the same page with non-sibilant fricatives and what have you

I agree. I think the changes you've made are good; there were far too many articles.

> Is there any way to make the templates read .oga as a variant of .ogg?

I'm not sure. You'd probably have to rework several templates. I've added exceptions for these 4 oga files in Template:IPA audio filename/filename for the time being. — Lfdder (talk) 01:40, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll rather pass on reworking them, I'm pretty sure I'd make more damage than good. --Ahls23 (talk) 12:10, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Fuck (film), freedom of speech-related quality improvement project

As part of a quality improvement project on a topic related to freedom of speech, I've greatly expanded upon and improved the quality of the article at page, Fuck (film). Any further suggestions for additional secondary sources and referencing would be appreciated, at the article's talk page. — Cirt (talk) 20:19, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Formatting of discourse excerpts

An editor recently changed formatting on Code-switching, adding smallcaps and color to highlight elements in several transcriptions of discourse data. I'm not aware of any standard on the use of smallcaps or other typographical styles in such data, but perhaps some should be established. Comments are invited at Talk:Code-switching#Formatting. Cnilep (talk) 02:07, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Number of languages

An editor (or likely two) seems convinced that there are precisely 7,105 languages spoken in the world today, due to an over-zealous reading of Ethnologue. I have reverted edits to Language twice today, and don't want to technically violate 3RR. Members of this WikiProject may want to pay attention to that page. Cnilep (talk) 06:17, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Extended Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet charts

The article Extended Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet charts has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Not an encyclopedia article; entirely redundant to X-SAMPA#Charts

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Angr (talk) 16:09, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

WorldBet

Could members of this WikiProject please comment on the notability and sourcing for WorldBet, a proposed ASCII encoding of the International Phonetic Alphabet? Discussion is at Talk:WorldBet#Sources, notability. Cnilep (talk) 09:01, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Fuck peer review

  1. Fuck (film)
  2. Wikipedia:Peer review/Fuck (film)/archive1

I've listed the article Fuck (film) for peer review.

Help with furthering along the quality improvement process would be appreciated, at Wikipedia:Peer review/Fuck (film)/archive1.

— Cirt (talk) 00:36, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Hydronymy and ancient toponymy

Hallo to everybody here. I am interested in hydronyms and toponyms especially of the old world. I have read many articles in order to collect more and newer information on the subject. As I expected the issue of hydronymy is very vexed as it goes back to prehistoric times: German linguist Hans Krahe tried to give a systematic overview of the subject. After researching European hydronyms I started to look at those of India, Pakistan, Iran and Syria. I came to the provisional conclusion that the etymologies given by western scholars or local Asian erudites may in some instances be sometimes arbitrary and that perhaps there was indeed some sort of ancient unifying protolanguage behind them. An idea which is not new and was already floated by Italian linguists since the twenties and more recently by H. Krahe and T. Vennemann, who thinks of a Protovasconic substrate. I will give these instances that I find typical:

Narmada (India): interpreted as "giver of pleasure" in Sanscrit (article). Looks instead to mean "river": from "nar" basis for river from Spain to Italy to Syria (and cfr. Arabic nahar, river) and south Indian languages nir(u/e).

Alvand < *Harvant (article) from root *har high and band cognate to German bund group, league. Looks to be an instance of Krahe' Al(a)va+ant/d.

Alborz (Mounts, Iran): interpreted as a corruption of Hara Barazati, Hara from a root *ser (article). Looks to be cognate with Albula fl. m., Albion (oros), Albioara fl. etc.

Orontes (Syria); from ancient Persian "Haeravanta" that of the high (article). May be in fact from basis ur water common to Sumeric, Hittite and PIE. Urvent rich in water. Cfr. Tiliamentum (Italy) rich in tilium lime trees; Malamantus (Pakistan) rich in mountains from substrate basis mal very widespread throughout Europe; Maleventum/Maloeis now Benevento, place of rocks. The alternating of suffix -amentum/eventum was present already in Sanscrit, noted e.g. by A. L. Prosdocimi.

I append here below a list of names I consider interesting in this respect:

India:

Mula, Hoara, Surma, Someshwari, Dorika, Son, Sarayu, Gori Ganga, Mandal, Sabari, Sileru, Varada, Sal, Savitri, Som, Sebarmati, Durduria, Dras, Neelum, Suru, Beas or Vipasha, Khambhat, Son/Saun/Sawan, Pamba, Mandovi, Ulhas.

Pakistan:

Malir, Indus/Sindhus, Neelum, Soan/Swan/Sawan/Sohan, Haro, Lora Haro, Stora Haro, Neelan, Swat/Suvastu (Vedic), Sarayu (Vedic), Gauri (Vedic), Susoma Vedic, Sohan, Saraswati (Vedic).

Iran:

Karum, Karkheh, Shaur, Sirwan, Ghareh Soo, Alwand, Mand, Shur, Aras, Balha, Tulun, Alamut.

Syria:

Orontes, Wadi Jerrah, Barada, Awaj, Arwand.

Burma

Salween/ (in Thai: Salwine/Salawin)

Thailand

Swaria/Sawan

Cambodia

Tonle' Saap

Ancient Anatolia

Paduandus/Podandus, Purandas, Pallaconta, Saraconta, Simoeis-entos.


If anybody is interested in or has researched the topic of hydronymy (of the Balkans, Near East, Iran, India and North Africa as well), I would be pleased to exchange information, bibliography and views.Aldrasto11 (talk) 03:44, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Evergreen State College course assignment

It appears that several students from one or more linguistics courses at Evergreen State College have been assigned to edit Wikipedia. Does anyone know if the instructor has set up a course page, or has anyone contacted any of these individuals? I don't see a listing at Wikipedia:School and university projects.

Articles being created or edited include:

Some of these edits are from as early as March, others as recent as last week. Cnilep (talk) 06:16, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Created new article: Fuck: Word Taboo and Protecting Our First Amendment Liberties

I've gone ahead and created a new article for the book, Fuck: Word Taboo and Protecting Our First Amendment Liberties.

Collaboration and particularly suggestions for additional secondary sources would be appreciated at the article's talk page, Talk:Fuck: Word Taboo and Protecting Our First Amendment Liberties. — Cirt (talk) 06:37, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Semeiotic

Semeiotic is a short article on Charles Peirce's variant spelling of semiotics, and debate among some scholars about whether and Peirce and Saussure's different spelling preferences relate to their different theories of sem(e)iotics. Various discussions have begun in 2004 and again in 2006 at Talk:Semiotics (see "Peirce spelled the subject semeiotics" and "Semeiotic, Semiology, Semiotics") and in 2006-07 at Talk:Semeiotic#Merge with Semiotics? but no clear consensus ever emerged and no action has taken place.

I very nearly merged the content of semeiotic to a section of semiotics, but thought better of it. It is best to see if there is controversy on this action, and try to find consensus. Therefore I am inviting participants in WikiProject Philosophy and WikiProject Linguistics to comment at Talk:Semeiotic#Merge to Semiotics? Rename? Rewrite? Cnilep (talk) 01:28, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Fricative plus stop

An affricate is a stop followed by a fricative in the same syllable. What is a fricative followed by a stop called?? Georgia guy (talk) 18:59, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

It's actually not quite true that an affricate is a stop followed by a fricative in the same syllable. The syllable [bats], for example, doesn't end in an affricate in English, but it does in German. In other words, an affricate is really a phonological entity, not a phonetic one. I'm not aware of any language with consonant phonemes that being is a fricative and end as a stop. garik (talk) 19:31, 28 June 2013 (UTC)
A fricative followed by a stop is a type of consonant cluster, but I don't know any more specific name for it. This book calls it an obstruent cluster. --Mark viking (talk) 19:37, 28 June 2013 (UTC)
To clarify my point: A stop-fricative combination is an affricate if and only if the combination is treated as a unit in the language in question. One test of this is to ask speakers to reverse syllables. So if you ask English speakers to reverse the syllable /bats/, they typically say /stab/. A German would typically say /t͡sab/, suggesting that [ts] functions as a unit in German, but not English. An English speaker, on the other hand, would reverse /bad͡ʒ/ ("badge") as /d͡ʒab/ ("jab"), suggesting that [t͡ʃ] is indeed an affricate in English, and not simply a sequence of a stop and a fricative. Since [d͡ʒ] doesn't exist as an affricate in Russian, you'd probably expect a Russian to reverse [badʒ] as [ʒdab]. garik (talk) 19:39, 28 June 2013 (UTC)
FWIW garik presents the phonological definition. Phonetically, a P+F cluster is an affricate iff the plosive is released directly into the fricative, rather than separately. English [bæt͡s] is pronounced with as much of a phonetical affricate as [bæt͡ʃ] is, despite that this is not one phonologically.
Also note: the term 'stop', in its widest sense, can include affricates. If you want to specify the stopped component of an affricate, 'plosive' is the safest term.
Anyway, I believe no phonetical distinction between F+P as a single segment or as a cluster is possible, and hence no separate term exists for this kind of a sequence. Hypothetically, maybe for implosives though? :)
F+P as a phonemic unit is also vanishingly rare. I've still seen that analysis posited for Awngi though, where they're called "post-stopped fricatives" at least in our (Wikipedia's) analysis. The shift from *tʲ *dʲ to /ʃt ʒd/ in some parts of South Slavic also seems to call for a monophoneme analysis at least in some fleeting period. By analogy to prenasalized stops and preaspiration, perhaps "prefricated stops" would work better here. There's even a subtle distinction possible between this and "post-stopped fricatives" (perhaps transcribable as something like /sᵗ/ versus /ˢt/), depending on if a segment like this would function more like a fricative or more like a stop. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 21:06, 28 June 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Not true. Clusters can surface as affricates. Affricate is a phonetic term. — Lfdder (talk) 21:11, 28 June 2013 (UTC)
I'm confused by the statement that F+P clusters are rare. /st/, /ʃt/, /ft/, /vd/ , /zd/ are quite common (some even initially). −Woodstone (talk) 09:13, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
F+P that are phonologically unitary are rare. — Lfdder (talk) 09:41, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
So if you ask English speakers to reverse the syllable /bats/, they typically say /stab/. A German would typically say /t͡sab/, suggesting that [ts] functions as a unit in German, but not English. I'm not so sure. If it's spelt bats, I think the German speaker might say /stab/ too. Asking someone to say something in such-and-such way to see how a language's phonology works is always kind of a rubbish test. — Lfdder (talk) 11:30, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
That is a really interesting experiment. It should be done by illiterate speakers though because otherwise there is the risk that spelling interferes and both groups simply reverse the order of letters.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 14:10, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

I guess I should probably backtrack somewhat. Those people who've pointed out that affricates can be defined phonetically are right, although it seems to me the term is more commonly used in a phonological sense. It's also quite true that the pronounce-in-reverse test is a very rough and ready one—hardly definitive. Maunus and Lfdder also raises an important point about literacy. That said, I'm quite sympathetic to concerns that most answers to phonological questions are influenced by literacy. Or, to put it another way, that becoming literate exercises a serious influence on how one structures one's own linguistic knowledge. garik (talk) 14:56, 29 June 2013 (UTC) edited by garik (talk) 16:11, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

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