User talk:Erutuon/Voiceless alveolar stop

Problems

Everything listed on here except for [t] is not a voiceless alveolar stop. There is a separate article for voiceless dental stop, so including it here is redundant. Perhaps the article title needs to be changed, but the infobox, etc. clearly states that this is only [t]. Perhaps this is a larger discussion than just how you can put ancient Greek into the examples. And speaking of Greek, it's ridiculous to have a "hypothesized" distinction when there is an actual distinction found in Armenian. That's been the problem with your argument all along--you think that a hypothesis is as good as actual facts. There is absolutely, positively no reason to include ancient Greek in this article when there are dozens of living languages with the very same phonemic distinctions that have have been hypothesized for ancient Greek. "Linguistic reconstruction" is nothing more than a vanity project. That label can cover anything from the guesses about ancient Greek to the guesses about Nostratic. The fundamental question that you ignore is "So what?" So linguists reconstruct extinct and unattested sound systems that happen to look like modern, attested languages. So what? Does that surprise you? It doesn't surprise me at all. So including "linguistic reconstruction" tells us absolutely nothing whatsoever. --Taivo (talk) 01:36, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I should have clarified that this article is intended as the outline of an exhaustive list. Thus, it is an outline designed to organize all details of articulatory variations, allophony, phonemic distinctions, sound changes, and linguistic reconstruction relating to the voiceless alveolar stop. I am not including Ancient Greek because it is more illustrative than Armenian, but because this is an exhaustive list, and anyway, Armenian and other languages with aspiration are also included. Whether linguistic reconstructions "tell us anything" is irrelevant to an exhaustive list.

It is true that the voiceless dental stop should not be included here, technically; it is included because it is mentioned in the current article on the Voiceless alveolar stop. However, all the other variations on the voiceless alveolar stop belong here: the palatalized voiceless alveolar stop, the labialized voiceless alveolar stop, the geminated voiceless alveolar stop. There are no articles on these variations, so they are naturally included in articles and lists relating to the voiceless alveolar stop. It is possible that Ancient Greek should not be included here, since the precise place of articulation of the reconstructed coronals is not agreed upon; they may be dental, alveolar, postalveolar, laminal, apical.

It is also true that I have included Ancient Greek here, and not, say, Proto-Germanic, Old English, Old Norse, and whatever else. That is simply because I am particularly interested in Ancient Greek, and because this list is only an outline. These other reconstructed phonological systems should be included eventually, if this outline is followed.

Theoretically Nostratic could be included, but from what little I know of it, it's a much less widely accepted hypothesis than the hypothesis regarding Ancient Greek and therefore less worth including. As to your sarcasm about being surprised, of course I'm not surprised either. I'm not an utter idiot, despite that I am obviously much dumber than you, and I am aware, as you are, that linguistic reconstructions typically have similarities to living languages.

I am aware of the distinction between articulatory features, phonological features, and the hypothetical features of reconstructed phonological systems. This distinction must be correctly represented, but as of yet this list is only an outline. — Eru·tuon 04:49, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "vanity project". My idea of an exhaustive list was conceived due to my desire to mention Ancient Greek; however, I think it has value apart from that, as a way of describing the intersection of phonetics with phonology and historical linguistics, a topic that isn't covered thoroughly enough on Wikipedia, and thoroughly cataloguing the phonetics and phonology of both living and dead languages (the second perhaps an impossible task, but not utterly ridiculous). I'm not sure why the question of phonetics of dead languages should be specifically avoided in phone articles. As phonology and distinctive features interact conceptually with the topic of articulatory phonetics, so also do historical linguistics and linguistic reconstruction. — Eru·tuon 06:51, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

It's one thing to reconstruct phonemic structure. That can be reconstructed with as much certainty as modern phonemic structure can be reconstructed. In essence it's the same thing. But phonetics is an entirely different matter and can never be certain. When there are ample modern languages to illustrate every phone, using hypothetical ancient phones is entirely unnecessary and implies that the knowledge we have of ancient phones is on a par with what we know of modern phones. These articles are not about the languages, but about the phones. Therefore only modern languages should be used because there is certainty, not hypotheses. If you want to write an article on ancient Greek phonetics, then that is the place for hypotheses. --Taivo (talk) 09:56, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

I've contributed to a recent rehaul and reference-addition to Ancient Greek phonology; not sure if you've failed to notice that, or what. Look, stop making me punch through a brick wall and work on this with me. The phone articles currently give huge lists of phonemes in language. What the heck is the purpose of this? Why include any examples? If they're to show readers how to pronounce the phone, why do we include examples from Adyghe, Abkhaz, Kashubian, Kazakh, Toda, and other languages that most English Wikipedia readers don't speak? Or do some readers speak them? What is the purpose of these examples? We could discard all the examples and just leave the [ta.a.ta] soundfile and people would know how to pronounce the phone. — Eru·tuon 10:49, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

It's not about "how to pronounce a phone", although that is certainly a part of the function. And it's not about an exhaustive list of languages that have [t] as a phone (although I know that there are editors who want to push that angle). It's about a representative list of languages where we actually find [t] and how it operates within systems of sounds. Including hypotheses of ancient languages is pointless because there is no proof. You cannot prove that ancient Greek had alveolar stops any more than you can prove that ancient Greek had dental stops. That's the point. I am insisting on actual facts of language, not hypotheses. And if you've improved the article on Ancient Greek phonology, great. I'm not that interested in ancient Greek (although I have studied it in the past), so I haven't seen it. But that's the place for your hypotheses, not here where we can illustrate everything there is to illustrate about [t] with actual facts in living languages. --Taivo (talk) 14:26, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

They're not "my hypotheses", but the hypotheses of the sources that I've read. I'm not a scholar in Ancient Greek, but, I guess you would say, an amateur. Your calling it "my hypotheses" is quite flattering, since it suggests you think I have academic credentials in this area, but regrettably I must deny that is the case. I have interest in the question of what precisely the phonetics and phonology of Ancient Greek are, but this is personal interest, not in any way connected to personal academic work or conspiracy theory generation.

My desire to include Ancient Greek is in order to correctly describe the degree to which linguistic reconstruction corresponds or does not correspond to phonological and phonetic theory regarding modern languages. This is a question that I'm sure some readers will be interested in. There are readers who are studying ancient languages and come to Wikipedia to learn more about their pronunciation. I'm one of them.

Not saying anything about the certainty or uncertainty of phonetic and phonological details in linguistic reconstructions is problematic, since it will leave some readers wondering to what degree articles like Latin spelling and pronunciation and Ancient Greek phonology represent phonological and phonetic detail, which is unsatisfactory. Giving the impression, on the one hand, that when these articles mention the phonemes [t] and [tʰ], that their phonetic realization is equally as certain as phonetics of a living language, would be misleading; however, it would be similarly misleading to give the impression that the use of the phonetic symbol is in no way analogous to its use in living languages. Misleading readers through omission, in both cases, is suboptimal. This is why I want to mention dead languages in some way — not to suggest that their pronunciation is more certain than it is, but to quantify or qualify the degree of certainty so as not to mislead readers.

If you don't buy this explanation, or choose to retain the conspiracy theory that I am peddling personal hypotheses, you are free to do so, although it seems to go against the principle of good faith. I realize my user page gives the impression that I am peddling personal theories, but I am not; I understand the policies of Wikipedia regarding reliable scientific sources, and my additions to Wikipedia have been based on reliable sources, not on my own ideas, to the best of my knowledge. If I have unintentionally inserted original research anywhere, I would be glad to have my error pointed out and remove it. — Eru·tuon 20:52, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

At no point have I claimed that these phonetic hypotheses are yours and yours alone--that is your misreading of my comments. I have assumed that you have a minimal amount of knowledge about the field and not a lot more (based on the inaccurate and confusing way that you have phrased some of your comments). I am not ignorant of this field and I know that it is the work of others. But when readers come to these articles on phones they are not interested in guesswork, but in actual physical data. Ancient Greek offers no physical data that will elucidate the question of these phones. Indeed, this very example that you have written here is misleading since scholars don't even know for sure whether the coronal plosives in Greek were dental or alveolar. There is simply nothing for Ancient Greek to offer here. You do, however, have a point about discussing the work which historical linguists do in reconstructing sound systems. But that belongs in other articles, not these articles on actual, demonstrable phones with living languages to illustrate every variant and every systematic usage. --Taivo (talk) 01:50, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Okay. It's true Ancient Greek coronal stops don't belong here, given that their place of articulation is uncertain. However, we'll have to agree to disagree on the question of whether linguistic reconstruction should be mentioned in phone articles. I won't try to insert it anytime soon, since there are unresolved theoretical problems. However, if phone articles are expanded with more phonological information, it may be possible to do it.

I'm disappointed that you don't have the imagination to see the helpfulness to readers of mentioning linguistic reconstruction in phone articles, or to suggest ways it could be done clearly and accurately, without glossing over theoretical issues, but that's not your job, I suppose: your job is to ruthlessly shoot down ideas that are theoretically problematic or undeveloped. Your lack of imagination is frustrating on a personal level, but I suppose it is beneficial to Wikipedia as far as reliable sourcing and scientific accuracy is concerned.

In the meantime, I would appreciate any help on the non-linguistic reconstruction–related areas of my proposal. If you are entirely uninterested, hopefully others will offer help. — Eru·tuon 02:21, 16 February 2015 (UTC)