Talk:Otomi language/Archive 1

Archive 1

Orthography question

In the phonology section, it is stated that the "orthography" has been a matter of some debate. Is this referring to the orthography or transcription as used by and for linguists when writing about the language, or an orthography which might be used to write the language by the people themselves, or..?--cjllw | TALK 12:31, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

the debated issue is the practical orthography to be used when writing otomi in publications etc, not the phonetic transcription. Also I changed a formulation: it is wrong to say that otomi "can be described as a tonal language". This is simply fact and not debated or debatable. In fact all otomanguean languages are tonal. Maunus 20:40, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

OK. Is Otomi written as such by the people themselves, or to put it another way is a written orthography for Otomi used in any other context than linguistic publications on the language?

Another clarification request: where the article presently says that Bernard has "noted the desirability of vowels in a practical spelling/orthography of Otomi", not sure I follow what this is intended to mean, possibly something has been left out? Cheers, --cjllw | TALK 08:14, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

otomi like nawatl and indeed all other indigenous languages in mexico (the almg is guatemalan) there is no single standard orthography, but many varying, competing and largely personal (from writer to writer)orthographies. The mexican indigenous languages are not currently "written languages" there is no literacy in indigenous languages and what happens is that indigenous populations that are literate in spanish use spanish style systems to write their languages if they feel a need to write something, or linguists invent "alphabets" for a specific language, dialect or mostly for a special publication that they intend to make. However after indigenous languages were made "official" (in 2003) the secretaria de educacion publica have the responsability of making indigenous populations literate in their own languages and are beginning to develop bilingual education, literacy programmes and practical "standardized" orthographies. This is however very new and they have had only little succes due to an immense number of reasons.

The discussions about otomi orthography were between linguists working with the language only and I doubt that any of the orthogrphies proposed have been widely accepted in the communities. bartholomew argued that tone should be shown consistently in the orthograpy but bernard argued that it should only be shown were it distinguishes a minimal pair and only vowel quality should be shown in apractical orthography. The text as it is is ambigous and not easily understandable. Also the word examples provided by clyde winters are less than clear and not verifiable. However i must wait till i have better information to better the article, there is almost no reliable information on otomi, and what is there is hard to come by. Maunus 13:31, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Rhythm

The mentioning of Otomi being rythmical was deleted with the following rewason given: "To say a language is "rhythmic" means it has rhythm because of its stress--all languages do, so it's not noteworthy to say that Otomi is rhythmical.) " This is not true because the interesting thing about Otomi is that many words and affixes have two different forms one that is bisyllabic and one monosyllabic and the choice between them is only governed by euphonious, rhytmical reasons. That is the otomi speakers choses wordforms that will form utterances with a certain stresspattern - this is certainly notable because it is not very common in languages. Apparently it is so uncommon that the anonymous editor had not heard of it before which leads me to think that it deserves and even more detailed explanation.·Maunus· ·ƛ· 05:57, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes- perhaps some additional words in the text along the lines of your paraphrase above would help. Which of the refs to hand cover this aspect?--cjllw | TALK 22:31, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Anonymous editor: I had in fact heard of this phenomenon in Otomi and I agree that it merits a more detailed explanation. The author of the discussion post above seems conversant with the phenomenon, so I'd encourage him or her to put down some examples and expand the section a bit. My point was more about the term "rhythmical," which is non-technical and does not describe the phenomenon the person has so eloquently described. What one is saying is that the rigid stress pattern forces the use of certain forms, a denotation not covered by the term "rhythmical." Without having studied the matter, I cannot say whether these are morphologically distinct or produced by phonological alternations. My more global concern is with non-technical terminology and vague linguistic definitions. Inherent in the use of the term "rhythmical" is the notion that Otomi is a non-standard, "unique" language that has rhythm in a way other languages don't. Altering the form of words to adhere to prosodic structure is in fact quite common cross-linguistically. The rich inventory of affixes and clitics in this language might make this apparent, but it is by no means exceedingly uncommon. In sum, I think the term should be taken out and replaced with the wonderful explanation provided above; this way, it will provide more detail rather than try to make a non-technical distinction between "rhythmic" and "non-rhythmic" languages.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.59.105.33 (talk • contribs) 19 March 2007.

In the only grammatical description otomi that I have read which mentions the phenomenon the term "rythmical language" is used to describe it (Voigtlander & Echegoyen 1985) - and it does make it seem as if this is a uniqueish feature among the worlds languages. I did not know that it is not. I will have to find some more information about this and see how to best describe the phenomenon. I am not sure that "rigid prosodic structure" describes it best - since I more get a feeling that it is governed by the aesthetic sense of the speaker - but that may just be the way it's described in the echegpyen grammar which is a bit weird really.·Maunus· ·ƛ· 08:03, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Edits

Removing the paranthesis from footnotes is probably not an exact requirement, but as far as I am aware of, it is unusual to have "Miller (2000: 11)" instead of "Miller 2000: 11". Of course, if it is part of a text, this has to be handled differently. Anyway, you originally had both styles in the footnotes which was inconsistent :-). I'll turn to more important things (maybe even content!) as soon as I'm done with that. G Purevdorj (talk) 22:47, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

I've done the other sections, but the Grammar section still needs IPA formatting. G Purevdorj (talk) 23:17, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

"the classical period (200-900 BC)": BC would have to be 900-200 or 2000-900, or AC 200-900. "Poetry in Otomi has been collected by anthropologists and has been noted for its simple beauty." Doesn't sound very lexicon-like. G Purevdorj (talk) 23:27, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

• White Carr 2005a or 2005b in footnote 3?
• Some linguistic (possibly very general) info on Classical Otomi (here or in a separate article) might be nice. You might also limit yourself to stating what kind of (concrete linguistic) info is actually available.
• The statement on Stress in Otomi must be sourced. G Purevdorj (talk) 10:01, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

There is information about Classical Otomi in the Grammar section - am treating it like one of the dialects and only mentioning it when it has something that is special/different. Also information about the sources to linguistic data about classical Otomi is in the section called classical otomi - there are grammars, dictionaries and documents. I have sourced the note on stress and disambiguated the Wright Carr citation.·Maunus·ƛ· 12:49, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

It would be nice to have some info on how Otomi adapts to Nahuatl phonology when loaning words. Then, how can we loan Spanish /r/ as "[l]" if we don't have /l/ (which isn't present in Proto-Otomi and is not mentioned as having developed in "Phonological diversity of modern dialects". If you usually have an allophone [l], then it becomes phonemic in loans, doesn't it? If I am not overlooking something obvious, some additional info might be needed here. G Purevdorj (talk) 23:17, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

The wording in the section on "Poetry" is somewhat lyrical, eg "stand out". The section on Media could be larger (to what extent is this media used, what is is target audience (eg the elderly, the youth ...)), but I wouldn't be surprised if this info isn't present in the literature. G Purevdorj (talk) 23:35, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

The section on media was inserted by an anon user who inserted advertisement for indigenous langauge radio in almost all the articles about mexican indigenous languages. Maybe that section should just be cut all together as I have no way of knowing whether it is actually notable. I don't have more info about how Otomi adapts Nahuatl loans than what is already implicitly there - Lastra 1998 mostly treats spanish loans. There are of course different phonemes from the inherited ones in loanwords - i will add that as a short mention. The phonemic inventory given only treats inherited words. ·Maunus·ƛ· 23:55, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Copyedit question

When you refer to "eve" of Spanish conquest, I think it needs to be more specific and less of a clichè. Can you give me a sense of how much time is involved: a year; months; etc? Thanks. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 19:45, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

You're right i had actually thought that i might be overusing that term. Its just a way to say immediately before 1521 it could be as early as ten or twenty years before that.·Maunus·ƛ· 16:30, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Reaction to the August 2009 enlargement

Preliminary thoughts.

• The lead is much longer than Wikipedia wants leads to be.
• We should consider renaming this article "Otomi languages". Compare the articles "Zapotecan languages" and "Mixtecan languages".
• There are some lengthy discussions of history which I recommend be moved to articles on Otomi history or the Otomi peoples.
• The numerous mentions of the propagation of negative beliefs about the Otomi need to be consolidated into a single section. The current presentation is a harangue.
• This article seems composed more like an essay for the professional literature and less like an encyclopedia entry.

Dale Chock (talk) 21:19, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

The lead is not too long, see Wikipedia:LEAD#Length. The article is not consistent in identifying Otomi either as a language or as a language family, so that should be unified in one or the other way. The spread of info on negative stereotypes over the article appeared a bit overdone to me as well, but I wouldn't say that it may only be mentioned in one place. While the extensive info on history is unusual for a language article on Wikipedia, I perceived it as one of the strengths of this article that should not be altered. As for Dale Chock's last point, I would like him to detail this claim a bit more. As stated now, it doesn't point to any substance that might / might not be desirable to change. G Purevdorj (talk) 23:29, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

The concerns about which sections should be moved are not relevant in my opinion - other language FA's have similar sections or even longer as e.g. Swedish language. Zapotecan languages and Mixtecan langauges are language groups on a different level - they are on the level of Otomian languages which include Mazahua. Otomi is best considered a dialect continuum like Nahuatl. Nahuan languages is also different from Nahuatl as I know you know. Zapotecan includes Chatino and Mixtecan often is said to include Trique and Cuicatec. I grant that the negative beliefs could be better centralized. Your concern about it being written like an essay is also not relevant as per the same style being used in other FA's. I know you have expressed the same concerns about Nahuatl, but you seem to be pretty alone with them. In short I think that some of these concerns, such as length of lead, length of history section and encyclopedic style, stem from disagreements between you and I about how a wikipedia langauge article should be, there are no policy requirements that your concerns should be given precedence in articles you haven't written. I will adress the issue about condensing the references to the negative self image. ·Maunus·ƛ· 23:51, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Responding to the two responses.

Lead length. Thanks to G.Pu. for directing me to the explicit guideline. Nevertheless, although leads of "four paragraphs" in length are welcome in general, I still find this particular lead to be too long and rambling. It's not a bad lead, but there's significant room for improvement.

"Language" vs. "languages". As with the previous point, I still think there's room for improvement even though my argument was flawed. In this case, I failed to notice that the articles "Zapotecan languages" and "Mixtecan languages" referred to branches of Oto-Manguean and not merely to the Zapotec group proper and the Mixtec group proper, respectively. The valid point that remains is this: that these "dialect groups", Zapotec, Mixtec, and Otomi, are groups of multiple languages. However, the "dialect continuum" nature and perhaps other theoretical difficulties lead me to concede that before we would rename the related articles using the plural, "languages", we should engage in more discussion.

Writing genre. I suggest that if you read a professionally produced linguistics encyclopedia (or any professionally produced encyclopedia for that matter) with this issue in mind, you will realize they avoid some of the practices used in this article — and in lots of other academic articles at Wikipedia. Real encyclopedia style is more sparing in using names of researchers and real encyclopedia style avoids mentions of mere speculations. There is' a place in encyclopedia articles for "name checking" and reporting ephemeral speculations, but the key point is to err on the side of too little of such. For example, instead of "Wright-Carr proposed that XYZ", "XYZ has been suggested (Wright-Carr 1995:xxx)". Another example, here is a great example of a statement that is inappropriate for an encyclopedia article:

In fact, the Mesoamericanist scholar, Garibay speculated that the Acolhua people and their most famous king Nezahualcoyotl, may have spoken Otomi as their second language."

An encyclopedia article on the Otomi language really ought not be mentioning a speculation on Otomi history by a lone scholar fifty to eighty years ago that has received no confirmation (at least none that any editor here has seen fit to report). (This Garibay died in 1967, 42 years ago.) Plus, let's not forget, that this sentence originally (two days ago, 23 Aug) read "Renowned mesoamericanist" — totally inappropriate in an encyclopedia entry on an academic topic. I'm the one that took out the offending word.

To be concise about the comparison between genuine encyclopedia style versus any old academic monograph: encyclopedia style is "drier", more impersonal, tends to limit itself to reporting the major research issues and what the professional consensus says has been accomplished. Dale Chock (talk) 19:20, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

We are simply in disagreement about this and there is no need to make it look like you somehow have a monolpoly on defining encyclopedic style. What i have read of your edits at Nahuatl, Mixtec langauges and Pochutec strikes me as completely out of encyclopedic style by using large amounts of what i would characterize as pure editorializing. I am frankly offended at your insinuation that I haven't read professionally produced linguistic works. I am a professional linguist publishing in peereviewed journals and I would prefer to be treated with at least a minimum of courtesy here - at least if you expect the same form me. Wikipedia is not a "real" encyclopedia it is a colaborative encyclopedia and this means that there has to be more leeway in what is considered "proper" encyclopedic style. Your snide comments make it sound as if I somehow committed a crime by writing what is now the single most comprehensive introduction to the Otomi language on the internet, because I chose to use some words that you don't agree with. Please reconsider your way of interacting with content contributing editors.·Maunus·ƛ· 22:37, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

I think I'll just jump in here. I've been trying to copyedit the article, but in fact have stopped twice because edit conflicts caused me to lose more work than I like. In my view, it might be helpful to wait until the copyediting process is done, during which I hope to reword the prose to be more accessible to the lay audience. Once the copyediting is finished, the article may have fewer things to complain about. Whilst copyediting I'll place the copyedit template on the article from now on to avoid edit conflicts and remove the moment I'm done with a copyediting session. Thanks. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 21:08, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

As the copyedits I've made have been rewritten, in my view it's best to have only one copyeditor. Dale Chock considers my work to be subpar, so I'll bow out here. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 04:52, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Cárceres

His name was Pedro de Cárceres not Cáceres. If you have this from Lope Blanch he is simply wrong - he is also not an authority on Otomi. Lastra consistently writes Cárceres as do the following cites [1][2][3][4].·Maunus·ƛ· 19:17, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Also two copyeditors have now changed the reference "Wright Carr 2005" to "Wright & Charles 2005" it is written by one person called David Charles Wright Carr. For somereason (probably the difference between Spanish and English naming customs) he is always alphabetized as "Wright Carr".·Maunus·ƛ· 19:58, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

And its Alonso de Urbano - not Urbanoa.·Maunus·ƛ· 20:51, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Monograph addressing "fusion", "portmanteau", "exponence"

(http://www.uni-leipzig.de/~bickel/lehre/infl.pdf): Exponence. To appear in the second edition of Shopen (1st ed. 1985). When I saw the mention of the verbal prefixes in Otomi, the terminology that occurred to me is PH Mathews' "cumulative exponence" (which he introduced in his textbook, Morphology (1972)). But the cited book chapter goes into more detail. From our article, I deleted "portmanteau" because that describes words like "smog" and the suffix "-gate",and it describes also, according to Bickel and Nichols, French [dy] 'du'. "Portmanteau" (first used in linguistics by C. Hockett) was never meant to refer to cases like the Slavic or Latin declensional endings, and this source just confirms that. As for "fusional", traditionally that refers not to an affix alone, like Russian '-ov', 'genitive/plural/masc-or-neut' or like the Otomi verbal prefixes, but to a partially unanalyzable form that results from inflecting a stem, i.e., the stem "fuses" with the affix. (Unfortunately, I can't recall a sure example at the moment.) These scholars offer what they call cumulation without fusion ("Thus exponence type is independent of flexivity. And it is independent of fusion: although cumulative exponence is best known from bound morphology (e.g., Russian case-number exponence as mentioned above), some West African languages have isolating (free) formatives cumulating person agreement and tense/aspect/mood values."). Now, granted, as a matter of theorizing, one may claim that at some relevant level, cumulative exponence and fusion are the same phenomenon. But this is my defense of removing the characterizations of "fusional" and "portmanteau". Dale Chock (talk) 21:29, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

"cumulative exponence" is very far from being an established term in linguistics at this point - and "fusion" is the standardway of referring to morphemes inflecting for multiple grammatical categories at once. I am going to reinsert fusional. I don't agree that the original intention of what "portmanteau" "should mean" overrides the current actual usage which is a morpheme with multiple inherent meanings, but I am not going to argue on that account. ·Maunus·ƛ· 21:36, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

I think it's really important to remember the audience for this article -- get too specific with jargon and there won't be an audience. This from a lay reader. Thanks. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 21:42, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Whether to mention discredited 19th century speculations

Maunus, in an edit summary to the article, calls this paragraph irrelevant and just a curiosity. I agree. I thought he was the one who inserted that material (because this article is a project of his), or at least since he let it be, I surmised he approved of it. I would not just shorten it, as he advocates, I'd delete it altogether. But if you're going to mention this topic in the article, scholastically you need to include a mention of tonogenesis! To change the subject, fragment sentences such as his latest edit where a sentence begins with "Because" are OK in lots of writing, but not most encyclopedia articles. Dale Chock (talk) 22:40, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

This is the only paragraph in the article that I have not inserted - it was inserted by User:Ptcamn - I think because he wanted to show people whpo had been mislead by Gavin Menzies popularised 1421 hypothesis that Otomi is indeed not related to Chinese. Several editors have expanded it but I have tried to keep the mention to a minimum so as to not assign undue weight to a rather minuscule point in the classificational history of the language. It should certainly not be given more attention than the actual classification. I don't like the inclusion of explanations on tonogenesis because it borders on editorializing and OR. I would not object to the paragraph being stricken altogether. I would of course have spliced the two senctences with a comma before "because" but I was too quick. ·Maunus·ƛ· 23:00, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Duplication of content: separate article on Otomi grammar

Maunus created an article, Otomi grammar ten days ago. He spent 15 minutes on it and it hasn't been edited since. (I only mention his name because simultaneously, he is the one who has enlarged this article greatly, just during this month.) There is almost total duplication between it and the grammar section of this article. I see two appropriate courses of action. (1) Enlarge Otomi grammar. If there are plans to do this, then shorten the grammar section of Otomi language considerably. (2) Delete Otomi grammar, merge any distinct content into this article. Dale Chock (talk) 22:50, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Do you really have to sound like such a WP:DICK every time you write a comment here? I did not spend 15 minutes on it I spend several days. It contains much more details of otomi Grammar than this article that I moved there because I realized that I was going into to dep a level of detail for the general article. I only left here what I thought was essential for the reader to get a feeling of the language's grammar - and the grammar section here is not considerably larger than grammar sections in other FAs that also have a spinnout grammar article. If you have any specific concerns aout which parts of the grammar section might be providing too much detail please discuss it here before removing anything. The existence of that article has NO influence on what should or shouldn't be in this article nor do the contents of this article have any influence on whether that article should be deleted. They are separate articles on separate topics. OF COURSE I am going to expand that article eventually, but this is completely besides the point. I suggest you tealize that this is not a paper encyclopedia but an encyclopedia in perpetual progress - it does not have to conform to your ideas about what a perfect encyclopedia would or wouldn't do. ·Maunus·ƛ· 22:58, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

As an uninvolved lay editor/reader, I'd recommend keeping the Otomi grammar as it can be expanded. I wouldn't recommend adding to the grammar section here. Although technical, the section in this article is comprehensible to a lay audience. If a person wishes to know more, then the subpage would be the place to expand. Also, I do agree that there does seem to be an emphasis on the editor rather than on the edits themselves. Assuming good faith is worthwhile. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 23:31, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Application of linguistic theory and practice: shortcomings in this article

(1) Incorrect notation: demarcating glosses with double quotes instead of the conventional single quotes. (Has been rectified)

(2) The syntax section is still virtually empty after three weeks of high effort. All it mentions is word order. Lastra's publications provide details of Otomi syntax.

(3) The description of Otomi language as "agglutinative". First of all, the tendency among linguists these days is to shy away from categorizing languages as "isolating-agglutinative-fusional" except in extreme cases. Nahuatl is an extreme cases of agglutinative morphology. Lastra 1998, a sketch of Ixtenco Otomi, for example does not describe that dialect as "agglutinative". Another argument in this regard is that Otomi is comparable to Classical Greek in both fusion (in the sense of cumulative exponence) and agglutination. There are two or three senses of "fusion" in morphology. For explication of the term "fusion" and of the morphology of the verb in Classical Greek, see Mathews 1991, Morphology, 2 ed., 180-181. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dale Chock (talk • contribs) 19:27, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

1.Go ahead and change it - no reason to make a fuss about details you can change yourself.

2. Wrong. Lastra 1992 has one poage on syntax. Lastra 2006 doesnt mention syntax. Lastra 1989 only has example sentences - one has to make the analysis oneself. The only book about Otomi syntax specifically is Hess 1968 and I dont have access to that.

3.Could you please provide a quote stating that linguists are going away from applying the labels, agglutinative, fusional, etc. ? That would be one step. Second step would be to realize that readers of wikipedia articles are not for the most part linguists - and that the article should use terms that they are likely to know - fuisonal, agglutinative polysynthetic etc. are widely known among layreaders. The comparison to Greek is irrelevant.·Maunus·ƛ·

For Otomi syntax, see for example Lastra 1998 (already included in the bibliography). To say "the comparison to Greek is irrelevant" is pathetic, for at least two reasons. First, substantively I've already made the point: I've evaluated this claim about a structural trait in one language (Otomi) by comparing it to other languages which are conventional reference points. In this instance as in others, you rebut me with a simplistic "not so". Second, it contradicts your — academically unjustified (to be explained momentarily) — appeal to what the lay reader knows, since any lay reader who actually knows of those terms will cite Latin and Greek and epitomes of fusional languages. In this latter regard, a professional academic sometimes needs to educate the lay reader as to what to stop believing as well as what to believe. Dale Chock (talk) 19:53, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

What is pathetic is your continued accusations of me having misunderstood, misrepresented or otherwise botched the job of making this article. I have citations for the fact that otomi is agglutinating and fusional. Your comparison is irelevant because it is original research about a topic you aboviously don't know much about. Take your "professionally academic evaluations" and pack'em away - then start reading wikipedias policies about verification, and original reserach and read some actual articles to get a feel of what is considered encyclopedic here. ·Maunus·ƛ· 22:23, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

If you have acces to material about Otomi syntax then why don't you go ahead and add some content? ·Maunus·ƛ· 22:43, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Syntax is always a funny thing. There are two publications specifically dedicated to Mongolian syntax (Standard theory and FG), but you can learn very little from them about actual syntactic constraints such as case marking of subordinate clause suffixes, functions of adverbials (adverbial, depictive, resultative), conversely, the expression of resultativity etc. Compiling this info (which I tried to some extent in Mongolian language) almost surpasses what can be done without actually doing research. So that’ll actually have to wait until suitable research is forthcoming. That is, I actually know some of the info in Mongolian language to be imprecise, but I cannot do something about it before someone (including myself) publishes more precise and, moreover, trustworthy analyses. So Dale, if you think that you can improve the syntax from the available material, please go ahead! And, pray, try to utter your concerns in a less harsh way (or, if you think that something is uncontroversial, just correct yourself)! The article is making headway, and when your concerns take the form of accusations, it almost sounds like a denial of that. G Purevdorj (talk) 23:21, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

While I agree that published syntactic analysis of Otomi is sorely lacking, nevertheless I have found four helpful items from this article's own bibliography. (Jeez, who put those citations in the article, after all, long before I came along?) One of them is the Hess book and I take Maunus's point that he doesn't have access to that. I have today discussed the other three in detail at Talk:Otomi grammar. I have looked at them, so I know for a fact they contain relevant information. Changing the subject, a professional linguist, seems to me, could do plenty with a professionally designed corpus of 550 plus sentences. Each volume published by the Archivo de Lenguas Indígenas de México has such a corpus, precisely to facilitate professional research. A professional linguist would certainly derive more career benefit from producing a professional paper from such a corpus than from writing an article for Wikipedia (which is not meant to say quit contributing to Wikipedia). Dale Chock (talk) 04:23, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

(4) In regard to the discussion of the phoneme inventory and the reconstruction of Proto-Otomi. Today, Maunus claimed I put in editorializing and original research. There is no O.R. because everything I mentioned is out of sources besides his.

One of the criteria for a Good Article and a Featured Article is "anticipate likely objections". Maunus didn't achieve that here because (1) he didn't notice that Newman and Weitlaner's phonemic analysis was phonetically unusual cross-linguistically; and (2) he didn't report what other Otomi scholars had to say that diverged from N & W. He didn't report it because he was unaware of it.

Stanley Newman and Robert Weitlaner did not even spend a long time studying Otomi. They published their reconstruction of Proto-Otomi in 1950 and that's about it.

This last point is characteristic of Maunus's scholarship. He has a yen for outdated theoretical positions from 30 to 60 years ago. This is the third Mesoamerican language where he has demonstrated it: he latches on to some old classification (twice before) or old analysis (this time, with Otomi), makes categorical pronouncements in its defense, and either is unaware of superseding scholarship, or rejects it even though publishing linguists accept it. What's so hot about a phonological reconstruction done 60 years ago by nonspecialists? That's bad scientific reasoning in general, but specifically he erred in showing more concern with the protolanguage's phonology than with that of the modern dialects.

He should be giving bigger play to the research of Doris Bartholomew, who first publishing on Otomi in 1954. Her 1965 dissertation was on "the reconstruction of Otopamean". She did decades of field work in the language. In 2004, she wrote the grammar appendix to the most substantial dictionary of Otomi so far. It includes a phonological discussion. Dale Chock (talk) 06:41, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Lastra's orthography misreported

The article was reporting that Lastra marks the rising tone with the circumflex, and the article itself was using the circumflex. All you have to read Lastra's publications on Otomi to see the error in this: she uses the caron (inverse circumflex, often called háček by linguists). See for example Lastra 1996, a PDF that in fact was already included in the bibliography. One can also look at Lastra 2006 and Lastra 1998a from the article's bibliography. In the opening pages of Lastra 2006, she explicitly states her system uses the caron, except she doesn't use a single word designation for it. (Incidentally, the Spanish language too has single words to name it, see). The mistake has just been corrected. Dale Chock (talk) 19:42, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

I didn't misreport it - I don't have a hacek onm my keyboard so I substituted it with a circumflex. I should of course have noted that but i didn't. Once again you are showing your good manners by making it look like a case of intellectual dishonesty instead of simply asking if it shouldn't be changed for a hacek. Thanks for correcting it. ·Maunus·ƛ· 22:20, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

possible revisions

• It's often difficult to separate the language from the people and vice versa. I too feel there is a bit too much overlap between this article and the one about the Otomi people. However, I caution against sudden, wholesale slashing and deleting. First, the decisions regarding "what goes where" should be undertaken judiciously, with proper care and deliberation. Second, the Language article, by virtue of being at FAC, has received numerous copy edits and is grammatically far superior. If any duplicated text is to be removed from the language article, the "kept version" should be that of the FAC (i.e., the language article), and should be moved over to the People article. Carefully. I suspect that the total amount of text removed from the language article need not be too large...

• OK, I'm just gonna jump in and make suggestions:
• Whenever a huge chunk of text is removed from one article or the other, it should be read carefully, probably leaving behind a sentence or two of summary to prevent jarring changes of context.
• The entire "Political developments" section should be rmvd from the language article. It should be copied to user space – again, its text is far superior to the text in the People article – and carefully moved over there. The removal from the language article can be done in one fell swoop; sprinkling it back into the people article (a process that is irrelevant to this FAC) can be done judiciously.
• The "Colonial period" of the People article corresponds to the "Colonial period and Classical Otomi" section of the language article. Some of the first paragraph of the Language article could be moved to Sociolinguistics, I think. The second and third paragraphs in the Language article overlap the Classical Otomi section, and should be moved down there. I don't think it matters what is done to this section of the People article, but essentially, much of this is language-related and could be removed.
• The "Modern Otomi: demography and internal classification" section should be left undisturbed in the language article. In the People article,everything below "There is a significant degree" should be removed. That leaves some overlap, but some overlap is not fatal.
• And then Exeunt, task completed. Ling.Nut (talk) 10:31, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

I disagree very strongly that the material on the historical and sociolinguitsic development of the languag in the precolumbian and colonial periods should be moved. I see no rason for this whatsoever. No work on the Otomi language would be published without an overview of the languages history describing how it ended up in the territory it occupied today and describing the different sociolinguistic developments and the changing status of the language - along with the way in which the language has been written in different periods. Look at an FA like Nahuatl and you will se the same. I do of course agree that the material copied to Otomi people needs to be tweaked mostly because it deals with the language and not the people. But this is a separate task that i will undertake when I have the time and which has no bearings whatsoever on the present article.·Maunus·ƛ· 12:31, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Those sections, in my opinion, could be trimmed to their bare bones. Then they would offer the info you believe is required, but not be too long or too redundant with respect to the People aticle... Ling.Nut (talk) 12:37, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

I disagree - thewy offer the information I believe is required. The people article of course needs a lot of expansion - but anyway it is irrelevant since that article is separate form this.·Maunus·ƛ· 12:43, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Tables

I don't see any reason whatseoever for changing the tables to include borders and different coloration. I chose the layout i chose because it doesn't break up the page into chunks and because it presents the examples ina neatly flowing way such as it would be in a book. I would ask whoever changed it to change it back.·Maunus·ƛ· 12:44, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Did you look at the history? I changed it, or course, as is obvious from the history. I will of course change it back, if you insist. Ling.Nut (talk) 12:48, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

I did, but I couln't find the change. Anyway in the absence of a consensus to the contrary I do insist.·Maunus·ƛ· 12:51, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Done. Ling.Nut (talk) 12:54, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks.13:01, 28 August 2009 (UTC)·Maunus·ƛ·

Leaving

Just to state that I now commend this article to you editors who have taken interest in it, to expand (or condense) and improve as you see fit. I am not going to argue anymore - I believe that I have made my points. I would ask you however, to take into consideration that currently the article is the single most comprehensive introduction to the Otomi language on the internet - there is nothing similar anywhere. Please also consider that the choices (bar errors and accidental omissions of course) I have made in writing it, I have made deliberately. Consider this before changing my choices to something that appeals more to your tastes: is it just a change to make the article look more like the way you like articles to look, or is it a change based onp arguments? Now I am off and I leave my baby in your care.·Maunus·ƛ· 13:08, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

In the end, back so soon. Dale Chock (talk) 21:17, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Edits to the subsection on classification of Modern Otomi dialects

After doing reference checking and additional research, I made the following changes. The reference I checked was Lastra 2001:24.

• Lastra in fact does not state the basis of her classification, although one can suppose that she followed standard accepted theory and practice. Specifically in regard to the tenet of "shared innovations", in the history of historical linguistics this has not been the sole criterion, as explained by one of the leaders of this subfield, Lyle Campbell, in such works as his textbook, Historical linguistics: an introduction (1st ed. 1998) and American Indian Languages : The Historical Linguistics Of Native America (1997). Campbell maintains that this criterion should be the sole one used by linguists. But again, Lastra 2001:24 does not touch on any of this. Although she does state that she considers certain dialects to be the most innovative, this statement is not made in the context of detailing how she arrived at her classification.
• I caught the discrepancy between Lastra and Hekking on the classification of the Amealco dialect, thanks to the source Hekking and Bakker 2007 — a source already included in this article for some time, by other editors. As Lastra herself credits him (Lastra 2007:25) Hekking is a longtime specialist in that particular dialect, having coauthored a grammar of it in 1984 and a dictionary in 1989.
• I do not see where Lastra stated that the dialects of Tilapa and Acazulco have many points in common with the Highland dialects specifically (as opposed to the broader point that they are classified in the Eastern group).
• For the sake of academic depth, I made note of the precedent for Lastra's classification, using yet another source already relied on by other editors. Dale Chock (talk) 22:19, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

In my view, a consistent citation style should be used in the article. As WP:CITESHORT is used throughout the article, the edits described above should adhere to that citation style. Beginning a sentence with an in-line citation, although fine for academic writing, in my view, should be avoided here. Thanks. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 23:42, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

The Good Article nomination: if an article is unstable, it doesn't qualify

Eight days after failing promotion in the FA process, this article has been nominated for GA by the same contributor who made the FA nomination, as of yesterday.

The prose and the content have changed massively in less than three weeks, and I believe it needs to be begun over from scratch. This article is as unstable as it can be, which is a violation of GA criterion 5.

I allow the possibility that this could some day deserve the GA designation. The reasons why this article is currently poor are simple. The promoter choose a weak topic, and he's been in a big rush to get this article honored.

There are only two people working on the content of this article, the one campaigning to get it an award and me. We do not agree on much of anything about the content of this article. There are two other people who have done a significant amount of time on it, but their work is just copy editing.

I have made numerous arguments about the article content and the promoter's process at the FA nominations page and here, in which I invoked both linguistic theory and FA criteria. The promoter, Maunus, has consistently brushed them aside, with one exception. Even if I might sometimes be mistaken, the arguments I make are reasonable and educated. Thus they merit being addressed in full, but my adversary has the opposite opinion. Dale Chock (talk) 06:03, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

You were the one who suggested i nominated it for GA instead of FA. If a GA reviewer decides to fail the article although it more than meets the GA criteria then so be it. The article is not poor - the only thing poor around here are your manners.·Maunus·ƛ· 13:46, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

I have blanked the page and redirected it to Oto-manguean languages. Go ahead an rewrite the article from scratch It would be swell to see you actually write content in stead of just pissing allover those who do. ·Maunus·ƛ· 13:54, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

For whatever it's worth, my recommendation is to respect the process and to allow others to comment, rather than making disparaging remarks here and elevating the conflict to an unreasonable level by using terms such as "adversary" and "just copy editing." Truthkeeper88 (talk) 15:04, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

I've reinstated the page, although god knows anyone would sympathise with Maunus after all the self-serving and consistent provocation around here of late. Unintentionally perhaps Dale identifies the problem—Dale's perception and treatment of Maunus as an "adversary", when he is nothing of the kind. The antagonism and disdain towards Maunus here is puzzling, and unedifying.

For reasons known only unto themselves Dale appears unwilling to engage in a collegial discussion, or even debate, preferring instead to chide Maunus at every turn for some overblown or non-existent transgression. By way of contrast, Maunus has responded to any substantive issues, howsoever rudely put, by attending to the content and with some grace given the circumstances. Dale's protestations of being 'brushed aside' and ignored fall somewhat flat when you read these talkpages. Maunus has made a sterling effort to get along and explain where and why he disagrees, or to say when he does agree. But your (Dale's) hyperbolic dismissals are really making that an impossible task. Any 'reason' and 'education' there might be in Dale's arguments is obscured by the carping tone they are couched in.

If Maunus is now taking a breather from this for his sanity and to recover perspective, would it be too much to hope that Dale would consider doing the same? Give it a chance for some other independent, previously uninvolved reviewer to look it over, and see if they see the same flaws in it that you claim to do.

Unless there's some change immediate of attitude around here, the chances of further constructive improvements are slight—GA or no GA.--cjllw ʘ TALK 17:01, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

WP:SYNTH

I have changed Dale Chock's version of the phonological inventory because it is synthesis of several sepaate sources and therefor WP:OR and because it is also wrong. There is no discussion or disagreement about the existnece of ejectives or aspirates in Otomi - it is quite simply a difference of analysis. There is no historical doubt that the consonants in question were historically clusters of stop + aspirate or stop plus glottal stop - the question is whether to analyse them as single phonemes in the modern languages or as clusters - different scholars analyse them differently which is why my original wording made no attempt to describe the full consonant inventory of all Otomi. Furthermore your discussion is not at all encyclopedic but reads like an discussion thorugh which to arrive at new knowledge - I suggest you publish it in a paper. ·Maunus·ƛ· 13:46, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

How does one "synthesize" diametrically opposed positions? The divergent positions I reported certainly fit that description. Reporting multiple positions (to the best of your ability to find out about them) is an obligation for Wikipedia editors, but Maunus ·ƛ needed help with it. Discussing multiple views and positions is not a synthesis.

But the above complaint about my editing doesn't just misconstrue Wikipedia guidelines. It also falsely denies the existence of divergent positions among linguistic researchers. It states "there is no historical doubt" as to the historical consonant inventory of Otomi — yet he didn't say so in the article. And, he will find no support in the sources cited by previous editors — I've read them. That's not his only falsehood about the literature: he writes, "the question is whether to analyze [the consonants in question] [in this way or that way]". To paraphrase, for the modern language the issue is how to analyze a certain subset of the speech sounds. So he is portraying that there are also no disagreements the phonetics of modern Otomi, which is false (see the citations I have previously added to the article). Of course, everything I say here refers to PUBLISHED statements.

A comment about editing Wikipedia. In a language or linguistics article there are issues that a linguist would ask about. However, there are some such points that the professional literature on Otomi has failed to address, and what I did in response is to cite published information and to draw attention to things that any academically sophisticated article on a language ought to draw attention to. After all, Wikipedia advocates high academic quality in its academic articles, and Wikipedia aspires to appeal to professionals as well as laypersons. It is not "original research" to seek out and present other people's original research.

Orientation for lay readers. Beware: in trying to catch on to what this disagreement between Wikipedia editors is about, you could quickly get confused about about how phonological theory is organized, specifically, between two levels. There is a level of description and a level of analysis. The level of description involves describing what actually gets uttered, including the inventory of speech sounds (and of their combinations). This is the phonetic and phonemic "surface" of a language's phonology. The level of analysis involves determining a system that "underlies" the "surface" set of speech sounds. A crucial theoretical point is that there can be a sort of "mismatch" between the surface inventory and the "underlying inventory". Dale Chock (talk) 23:21, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Postscript 19 Sept 2009. Here's a famous exemplification from English of the above mentioned difference in levels of analysis, between "surface" phoneme inventory and "underlying" phoneme inventory. English has a phoneme /ʒ/, spelled 'zh' in "phonetic spelling" and used in the transliteration of Russian words such as muzhik. This is the sound spelled 'si' in 'vision' and 's' in 'usual'. This is a single phone and it is indisputably one of the phonemes of English. But in fact, except for French loanwords like garage, virtually every occurrence of /ʒ/ in English is associated with a present day /d/ phoneme or a /z/ phoneme in a verb stem to which -ion or -ure has been added (e.g., divide + -ion > division, seize + -ure > seizure), or else it is associated with an etymological /z/ phoneme in nonverbs, with the historical sequences -su (usual = usu- + -al, treasure) and -si (Asia, ambrosia, Magnesia). You could argue, at least for the sake of illustrating a point of theory, that the sound structure of the English language has a "basic" level where there is no /ʒ/ ('zh'). (In fact, English spelling gets by without a distinctive spelling for this phoneme.) But, you could not leave out /ʒ/ in listing the surface phonemes — and listing the surface phoneme inventory is elementary linguistic practice. It is not linguistic practice to skip listing the phonemes of a modern dialect in favor of listing the phonemes of its reconstructed ancestor.

Maunus wrote: "different scholars analyse them differently which is why my original wording made no attempt to describe the full consonant inventory of all Otomi". That is just the opposite of the correct course of action: when experts disagree, balanced coverage means you report that that is the case, and perhaps give specifics. To call that a violation of a Wikipedia policy against synthesis is a polemical trick. And the part about "all Otomi" is another misconception ("all Otomi" presumably means "every dialect of Otomi") because in fact this disagreement among experts on the phonetic facts exists even with regard to the same dialect, the Mezquital dialect. Dale Chock (talk) 00:54, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Proto-Otomi

Perhaps someone could start an article on Proto-Otomi? I can't, because I've just started studying Otomi. Gringo300 (talk) 17:06, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

That doesn't mean you can't. After all, one of the main contributors to this article has started or edited so many articles on Mesoamerican indigenous languages, do you really suppose anyone could be proficient in that many languages? What you must be careful of is not to let high enthusiasm be a substitute for high quality. They should be companions. That said, I hate to discourage you, but at this time (in history), an article on Proto-Otomi would be a permanent stub given the level of research. UNLESS you were to "pad" it — and that would not be nice, now don't you agree? Take this very article. Somebody inserted the published speculation (in conformity with the letter of Wikipedia policies) that Otomi "might have been one of several" languages spoken in a magnificent city in Precolumbian Mexico. Scrutinize that: "might have been"; "one of several". This is called "inflating your resumé". [personal remark removed - by cjllw] Dale Chock (talk) 21:17, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Disappointingly, another tasteless personal dig set forth. What do you hope to achieve with these, is there some gallery that you imagine you are playing to? That last crack was beyond the pale, while the remainder of Dale's response above is much less an answer to the question posed than it is an exercise in disparaging someone else.

Civility is a policy not something that we should have to negotiate for. A retraction would be entirely appropriate, or at the very least an acknowledgement over the concerns of others. Every other editor you have interacted with on this talk page has asked you to cease with the putdowns and tone down the adversarial approach. Is that not indicative of something? Can it be that hard to exercise some restraint and consideration for the behavioural norms expected around here, if an apology itself is beyond you. Please -- enough is enough; it's passed the point & no further cautions needed before DR, blocks or other sanctions are explored.

Mesoamericanist scholarship has considered and debated the linguistic and ethnic composition of Teotihuacan for over a century. It has been a high-profile question with significant coverage in the (multi-)disciplinary literature, addressed at some stage by every significant figure in Teo studies and sources. Just because it's unresolved, maybe unresolvable, doesn't stop it from being an issue of noteworthy historical and research interest. A few of these proposals (incl. contemporary ones) involve some level of (ancestral) Otomi presence at Teo. Including mention in this article is entirely warranted, even a commonplace for works treating the language's history.--cjllw ʘ TALK 16:02, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

__Please direct your attention to the article edit summaries that accompany the fourth of the following five revisions.

22:28, 29 August 2009

00:34, 30 August 2009

20:59, 1 September 2009

01:44, 7 September 2009

01:50, 7 September 2009

The edit summary to the fourth revision is a personal attack on me, one you did not scold here on the Talk page. You're claiming to defend civility! Maybe you communicated with this editor through another channel, but not here. Before I move on, let me note that this editor did see the error in his article edit and reverted himself six minutes later (that is the fifth revision). But there was no apology. But, I didn't begrudge him that and I wouldn't even have been pleased to get one. Next, please note that a few days later, when an editor blanked the article, and you yourself reinstated it, at that incident, too, you did not take them to task here. Maybe then you communicated with this editor through another channel, but not here. Thirdly, I am alert to the fact that you and some other editors of Otomi language have coedited many other articles in this same Wikiproject. For these three reasons, I question the appropriateness of you in the future using your administrator's power against me on articles in this project.

__Now to address my post that you object so strongly to. The people who have criticized me regarding this article simply lost sight of the fact that this is not just any article, this is an article with active nominations for excellence awards! Sterner commentary was in order. Moving on, the post you are objecting to was me replying to a comment from a registered editor who has not previously intervened on this article, or at least not in months or years. Judging from the strangeness of his suggestion, and from his user page, I concluded that he is an irrational thinker and I noticed that he never before intervened on this Talk page. Therefore, the timing of his intervention is highly coincidental. Amazing coincidences are possible of course, statistically. But I wondered whether it was a coincidence. After all, for nearly a month this article has been edited almost exclusively by just four people, including you and me. To be truthful, given the User page, I wondered whether it wasn't a phony user account. So, the reason for me responding as I did is: I thought I was being addressed in a sneaky, convoluted manner by either one of you other three or a sympathizer. I must admit, it had not yet occurred to me look at his talk page, which would have revealed to me that his user account is years old. (But his timing is still an amazing coincidence after I check his user talk page, because in the last two years there are almost no entries on languages and the Americas, despite how much his user portal page does dwell on those subjects.) Feelings are running high, and in that regard, let me direct your attention back to the five revisions above. Notice that the defamatory edit summary on Sept 7th was made a week after I had corrected an obvious error (and corrected it twice) which my edit summary had nicely summarized. A week — plenty of time for that editor to see the correctness of my edit, as they did see minutes later. So, feelings are running high, and I misinterpreted the amazing coincidence of the nutty intervention.

The last part of the post you are objecting to, it relates to the amazingly fervent desire to nominate an unchecked, unstable article for FA and GA. This article was nominated for FA and GA before other knowledgeable people had time to study the references, before the main contributor himself had read half of them! Nominated when major rewrites were happening every few days. I have been frankly indignant over this. If this is not a flouting of the FA and GA criteria, then it is reckless judgement. It degrades FA's and GA's. When you behave that way, observers will wonder what the motive is. Dale Chock (talk) 17:40, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Comment: I arrived at this article, per request to copyedit, at around 21:00 on August 24th. As a result of difficulty loading the page only some small edits were completed with the intention of swinging by later, and at the time I made an error in grammar. Looking at the edit history I see that Dale Chock was changing my edits as soon as they appeared. Later that night I received a note on my user page pointing out the error with the assertion that as a result of such an error (subject/verb agreement) I must be a non-native English speaker, as though non-native English speakers are somewhat less than acceptable. This is the total of my involvement. I've only run across Maunus, (whom you might as well name) once before in a very different project. Cjllw is unknown to me, as are you. I have not become a WP:Sockpuppet to post on this user page as you've suggested above. In general I find your comments rather unfriendly. A nice note on my userpage, to the effect that you'd like to copyedit and would I step aside would have sufficed. I see you read the comment on my talkpage asking for copyediting elsewhere and that you have finished that job. A note explaining that you'd take over would have been nice. There are 3 million articles on Wikipedia and plenty of cleanup is required so I can easily move to another area. However, insulting an editor as you have, seems counterproductive and frankly is extremely puzzling. In my view, the content dispute here is more academic in nature and more suited to the arena of academic peer review than here, but that's none of my business. Only wanted to protest the accusation of sockpuppetry, and to delineate the extent of my involvement. Thanks. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 21:41, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I am happy to assure Truthkeeper88 that they were not the target of the sockpuppetry concerns. The post that offended me is dated many days after Truthkeeper88's participation, 14 Sept (it's the post at the head of this major section). Truthkeeper88 has a second misunderstanding: they (he/she) overlooked where I wrote that I realized the user was not a sockpuppet. So again, none of the dissatisfactions discussed in this section pertain to Truthkeeper88. I will put a notice of this clarification at their talk page. Dale Chock (talk) 00:52, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

CJLLW raised a point about a piece of historical information that might warrant inclusion, the advanced civilization at the city of Teotihuacan. There is some confusion here. This bit of information is still in the article. In my sharply worded comment, I was keeping things brief, so the remark about Teotihuacan was meant to be representative of a larger amount of material. We have to consider the article versions of mid-August, not ones two weeks later and four weeks later. There were many paragraphs on the history of Otomi cities and principalities. This would be fine in a book, but the scope of an encyclopedia article is supposed to be narrower. Now that we have the Internet, we can write an Otomi language article and link to an Otomi history article or an Otomi people article. If one examines the language Good Article, Mongolian language, one will see that there are only two mentions of political history there (they are in fragments of two sentences). That does not count two paragraphs on the history of Mongolian script, which are directly on topic. Dale Chock (talk) 01:10, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

To clarify, I'm not so reckless that I would try to block anyone myself in the middle of a debate I'd been involved in, outside of incontrovertible vandalism, which is not the case here. My post was worded differently, saying what really should be obvious anyway. We've all been around long enough not to require repeated reminders and hints about conduct, and if we're unable to work it out ourselves then escalation to some form of dispute resolution process seems inevitable and could be launched without further ado.

That said, I appreciate the candour in Dale's explanation above and the acknowledgement that feelings have been "running high" all round. Unfortunately, when the atmosphere remains heated for as long as this one has, misunderstandings like the two above come all too naturally. When suspicions abound and everyone's on the defensive, we're all less and less likely to presume good intentions and more likely to respond in kind.

I think we can all safely assume that G. is an independent person, not affiliated with or operated by anyone else of us here. I recall G.'s prior contribs/comments from quite some time ago now at other Mexico-related articles, and have had no reason to think them anything other than well- and innocently intended. Apart from that, I've had no other interactions, & ditto I readily presume for Maunus.

At first I too was somewhat perplexed by the apparently contradictory phrasing, but in the end decided that it meant nothing more than "it'd be good if there was an article written on proto-otomi, but since have only just begun finding out abt the language, [G.] won't be able to help much." In my response to Dale's rejoinder, I was reacting to what I saw as an unprovoked and needless sideswipe. But if Dale had thought, mistakenly as it's turned out, that G.'s opening remark was some concealed poke at their expense, then that may cast the response in a different light. I can willingly accept the explanation given (although in future please, no more personalising matters in those terms).

To be sure, the flow of vexed comments has not all been one-way, & Dale has received a couple of curt replies. Whether or not we can agree these were in due proportion to the provocation and frustration felt, is (IMO) secondary to working out some way to defuse the situation. Couple of times now there have been moves to extend the olive branch. Can we not now move on, for the both article's and the editors' sakes, and take it up?

While I'm dismayed that it got to the point where a valuable and long-standing contributor like Maunus has taken leave off from editing for a while, by the same token it would be unsatisfactory to see Dale prevented or discouraged from editing either. Dale clearly has ample ability and nous to make diligent and reasoned edits, and I see no reason why they can't be treated in kind, so long as the same regard is extended to Maunus.

How about, drawing a line under it all and we undertake to make no further references or comments about any editor's scholarship, integrity, or motivations? Only concentrate on content, and the article's development. Where disagreements arise on content or philosophy keep it civil and non-personal, else step away for a bit. Can that be done, do you think?--cjllw ʘ TALK 16:17, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Progress reports, mid-September 2009 rewrite.

Plan from today

When I save this new section, I'm going to move to inside of it the section I just created on replacing the article section title, "Sociolinguistics".

Maybe it would be a good idea to move most of the grammar to the stub, Otomi grammar. I'm unsure. The remaining article would be shorter than the grammar article.

I hope to at least triple the syntax section about ten days from now. Palancar 2008 (put in the bibliography before my time) will probably be the main source, and Lastra 1998 will be important, and maybe Bartholomew 1973 will be too. Hess 1968 probably not.

The language's morphological typology: fusional? agglutinative? other?

I already objected to "agglutinative" maybe a couple of weeks ago, but in a low key way, citing a tutorial. It's time to correct it. It was a large contradiction for the article to strongly say how a single verb proclitic codes four categories, while calling the language agglutinative. Moreover, by the reasoning in support of "agglutinative", English and Spanish are also so: de-institut-ion-al-iz-ing.

Explanation for interested posterity. The agglutinative ideal has two parts: the linguistic forms are invariant (except for purely phonological reasons), and there is a one to one correspondence between forms and meanings. (P.H. Mathews. 1991. Morphology. 2d ed. Cambridge Univ Press. p. 170) A language that merits being called agglutinative is one that violates the ideal only mildly. A language like Otomi where a single syllable expresses four morphosyntactic categories (like person, tense, aspect, mood) is already deviating a lot from the requirement of one to one correspondence. But there's more: many Otomi verbs have two or three stem alternants to express different tenses, which violates the requirement of a "reasonably invariant stem" (B. Comrie. 1989. Language universals and linguistic typology. 2d ed. U. Chicago Press. Chap. 2) The preterit tense can even be marked three ways in a few verbs: by the proclitic, by change of stem consonant, and by tone change. Such distributed marking is the opposite of agglutination, even if there were no fusion. (The tutorial I cited noted that "fusion" is a cover term, hence liable to cause confusion. Also, as just hinted, a language can be both non-"fusional" and nonagglutinative, although this doesn't pertain to Otomi.) The paper title, "Wallis. 1964. Mezquital Otomi verb fusion" is very suggestive. This paper was already in the bibliography. Dale Chock (talk) 06:30, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Renaming of "Sociolinguistics" to "Otomi as an endangered language"

P.S. I created this subsection under an hour ago as a major section, now I've moved it under Progress reports. Dale Chock (talk) 06:34, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

The two paragraphs dealt with the prevalence of speaking of Otomi and with government policies. "Sociolinguistics" studies the correlation of linguistic variables to sociological (usually demographic) variables; specific elements of the language structure, not whether people speak the language. For example, the classic study by Labov of 'r' less pronunciation in New York City, correlated with socioeconomic class. I know of no sociolinguistic research into Otomi. Dale Chock (talk) 05:48, 18 September 2009 (UTC)