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Impossible sounds

I would like to propose/ask-if-a-good-idea that a stub article on sounds that are impossible to articulate.
Firstly, I should premíse that I am not a linguist, hence my asking. The reason why I am asking this is that I believe there would be several scifi/fantasy pages that would benefit from a link to a more technical article on the subject as there is this cliché where a name is said to be unpronounceable to humans (e.g. Cthulhu or Spock's surname) in order to make it alien. I could not find a page on universal phonotactics or similar, but I may be missing it or a similar one. Is there much research on the topic? It'd be a dream to have a long page including computer alterations of what the sounds are, but these things take time, so a well linked stub I think would be equally as valuable. Just an idea. Thanks --Squidonius (talk) 01:53, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Some impossible sounds are shown in the table in International Phonetic Alphabet § Consonants. The cells colored gray mark impossible sounds: for instance, the cell in the row sibilant fricative and the column bilabial is gray, because a bilabial sibilant fricative is impossible.
As far as alien languages are concerned, whether sounds are unpronounceable by humans depends on the alien's physiology and its difference from human physiology. If their vocal tract were sufficiently different, there could be sounds unpronounceable in human physiology. For a more real-life example, the singing of birds is, in some cases, unpronounceable by humans. In theory, the sounds birds make could be classified like the phones of human languages, with an Avian Phonetic Alphabet, but I doubt this is done.
Since the physiology of Spock appears to be rather human-like, I personally doubt the notion that his surname is unpronounceable. For that to be true (within the constructed world of Star Trek), he would have to have differences in, say, his throat, tongue, mouth, or nose that allowed him to produce sounds in ways humans cannot. Perhaps this is true, but I haven't heard of any such differences in my incomplete watching of the series.
Others may be able to tell us if there's enough literature on unpronounceable sounds to warrant a separate article. — Eru·tuon 02:08, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
Shame. It's a common sci-fi cliché, so it was worth checking! It's a lazy cliché, especially given that Klingon is much more flavoursome. The shaded parts on the IPA make sense as they are technical contradictions, so I was thinking something slightly different. I just realised it would mean very little in the first place if there were subtle anatomical differences because the sounds would sound like others, akin to the case of non-aspired consonants in Mandarin being heard as voiced consonants to Westerners —I don't know what you call that phenomenon. Plus, a lot of sounds not heard in common languages sound funny, like clicks and the bilabial trill (a raspberry), which could mean that the hapless alien sounds funny and not exotic. Parenthetically, just playing around, I can make a (rounded only) vowel beyond open (dentist's open wide Ahh) and a very retroflex sound with the tongue curled back to the uvular (sounds like χ), what are these on the IPA chart? Anyway, thanks, you've made me realise that the cliché is ever more lame that I first though! --Squidonius (talk) 22:33, 22 March 2015 (UTC)
"I can make a (rounded only) vowel beyond open (dentist's open wide Ahh)" - you can't. [a, ɶ, ɑ, ɒ] are by definition the most open vowels possible, i.e. pronounced with the lowest possible vertical position of the tongue. What you're describing is a fully open vowel made with jaw as open as physically possible. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 22:41, 22 March 2015 (UTC)
I'm not sure what the concept of mishearing the Mandarin unaspirated stops and affricates /p t ts tɕ tʂ k/ as voiced /b d dz dʒ g/ is called. There ought to be a term for it, but I haven't encountered one. Anglicization describes a more general topic of modifying words to fit English norms, and Loanword § Changes in pronunciation when loaned describes the phenomenon of changing the phonetic makeup of loanwords to fit the target language, but doesn't give a term for the process. If I made up a term on the spot, I'd call it "phonological adaptation", but others may know if there is a term actually used by linguists.
There are no dedicated symbols for the sounds you describe, which we can call "super-retroflex" consonants and "super-open" vowels. However, they could in theory be transcribed using the standard IPA diacritics. The super-retroflex would be represented using the symbol for a retroflex consonant with a retraction diacritic (a minus sign) added, ⟨ʈ̠⟩, and a super-open vowel using a symbol for an open vowel symbol with a lowering diacritic (a little T-shape) added, ⟨a̞⟩, but as far as I know nobody ever does that, because these sounds do not occur in any natural language. We know of languages that contrast retroflex and alveolar consonants, but not retroflex and super-retroflex; similarly, near-open and open vowels are contrasted, but not open and super-open (if there's such a thing). — Eru·tuon 23:02, 22 March 2015 (UTC)
The phenomenon of mishearing Mandarin unaspirated stops as voiced is a form of "diaphonic identification" that is caused when similar sounds in one language are assumed to be identical to the sounds of another language. I suspect that this particular example is confined to Germanic-speaking westerners, as the "voiced" stops of English and German are often unvoiced and unaspirated anyway. Fortis and lenis has a little bit on that as well. — Ƶ§œš¹ [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 23:44, 22 March 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, that is very informative —on the topic of diaphonic borrowing and fiction, it is curious that Klingon and Dothraki have the same effect, i.e. sound harsh, but the latter is a easy while the former is painful to learn, which is (partially) wasted by the fact that /q/ /q͡χ/ /t͡ɬ/ sound like /k/, /x/ and /kl/ to an English speaker. Anyway, I found the page Alien language, it's a bit of an unsorted mess (laundry list), but partially overlaps with my original question although it does not deal with phonology, but it is still a start (in fact Mister Mxyzptlk, Cthulhu and friends could be linked there anyway). --Squidonius (talk) 02:58, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Article about cover symbols

I created the article Cover symbols used in linguistics, mainly because I couldn't really find this information anywhere else on Wikipedia. It's not really a very good article currently, and I was hoping that it could receive some more attention from other editors. Maybe it could be merged into another article altogether if a better place for this information can be found. I hope it's helpful anyway. CodeCat (talk) 17:34, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Updated LSA Citation Template

I noticed that Template:Cite_LSA hadn't been updated since 2012 and didn't actually work, so I made it work. Feel free to use it, contribute to it, or suggest changes. Wugapodes (talk) 00:01, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks!·maunus · snunɐɯ· 00:05, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

A page that needs attention

Hello. West Frisian phonology has a few issues:

  • Sipma (1913) may not be the most reliable source.
  • As far as I understand his book, Sipma doesn't discuss phonemes at all. This seems to be especially problematic in case of diphthongs.
  • Because of that, the "Diphthong" section is empty.
  • The section "Length reduction methods" is completely unsourced.
  • I think that /x, l/ are not always [x, ɫ], and that [χ, l] are also possible realizations. We need a source for that.
  • Sipma's statement that uvular /r/ in WF is considered a speech impediment may not be true anymore. Nowadays, /r/ in the Netherlands and Belgium is extremely variable.
  • There seem to be some discrepancies between the sources (the ones listed in the article), which makes me unable to fix the article. As you can imagine, it pisses me off. Peter238 (talk) 16:32, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Free Images of Electromagnetic articulography or help with fair use rational?

Hi everyone. I'm planning on creating Electromagnetic articulography soon and would like some images to accompany the article since it's not easy to understand how it works if you've never seen it before, and especially for non-linguists. I don't have any images of it that I've made and could publish. There are tons online that I could probably use under WP:Fair Use but I'm still not 100% how to effectively do that. If anyone would be willing to upload a copyleft image or help out with fair use rational, I'd be really appreciative. Wugapodes (talk) 04:18, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

#lingwiki editathons May, July, October 2015; January 2016

As I mentioned a few months ago, I'm organizing a series of editathons to encourage linguists to improve linguistics-related articles on Wikipedia (you guys are all great, there just aren't enough of you!). Here are some updated dates, if anyone wants to use them as an excuse to get some editing done, follow along on #lingwiki, or even organize a local meetup or satellite editathon (feel free to get in touch if you want editathon-organizing tips):

May 2015 - Editathon at Canadian Linguistics Association (CLA) annual meeting in Ottawa

July 2015 - 4 weekly editathons (Wednesday afternoons) at the month-long LSA summer institute in Chicago

October 2015 - Editathon at NWAV (Toronto) - main North American sociolinguistics conference & Editathon at NELS (Montreal) - large regional north-east theoretical linguistics conference

January 2016 - Editathon at LSA annual meeting in Washington DC

Also, if anyone has any particular pages or topics that you've noticed need attention but don't have time for/don't match your expertise, feel free to let me know and I'll try to find someone for them! At the moment, I'm directing people to the massive list of linguistics stubs, to biographies of linguists (especially female linguists, linguists of colour, and other under-represented groups), and to articles about under-documented languages, but I'm happy to take more specific suggestions as well.

You can see lists of articles edited in previous editathons here and here. I'm also currently applying for a grant from Wikimedia to support these events, which you can see/comment on here. --Gretchenmcc (talk) 00:57, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

By-language categorization

Two new discussions that I've started on this topic:

--Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 18:18, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Requested move on Chinese language

It has been proposed to move Chinese language to Chinese languages. Consider participating on this page move. Thank you. OccultZone (Talk • Contributions • Log) 09:57, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

New Romanization of Korean

A new editor has been adding parameters for New Romanization of Korean to a plethora of infoboxes and transliterations in this scheme to several articles. Though I can't profess to know much at all about the romanization of the Korean language, this scheme appears to be entirely non-notable; to me, it looks like somebody's pet project - very much a time-consuming one, at that. Would a kind linguist talk to this editor? Alakzi (talk) 02:20, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

You don't need to be a linguist to talk to the editor. The only notifications the contributor has gotten have characterized their edits as vandalism, which they clearly aren't. Let's assume good faith here. I've directed them to this talk page with an invitation toward discussion. — Ƶ§œš¹ [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 05:35, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
New Romanization of Korean looks completely unsourced. I request that a competent editor check all of the four sources (which do not seem to refer to the actual topic of the article), and see if that article is an instance of OR. If it is, we obviously need to delete it. Note that this editor is also not very nice toward other users - see Talk:New Romanization of Korean. Peter238 (talk) 10:27, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
I've just reported him on the Korean Wikipedia, but don't know how to do the same on the Japanese Wikipedia. If you know how to do that, the article to report is ja:正形表記法. Peter238 (talk) 11:01, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Accidental gap "already pegagogy, can't osmose"

I don't know what the heading means, but it relates to this edit and the one immediately prior to it. It looks to me like either a non-standard use of "idiom", or at least a failure to explain (what the editor thinks is) the relationship between language families and accidental gaps. See also Idiom (language structure), which was created by User:Quercus solaris. Cnilep (talk) 04:22, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Seriously, guys, we have talk pages for a reason. Use them. — Ƶ§œš¹ [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 04:36, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
I apologize for dropping that comment here without sufficient explanation. I am not particularly active in editing Wikipedia these days, but noticed the dispute. Both the addition to Accidental gap and the page Idiom (language structure) seem problematic to me (at least, I don't understand them), but I probably will not have the time to follow up on them. Therefore, I wonder if any participants in this WikiProject would care to look them over. Aeusoes1 – and, for that matter, any other user – need not spend time on the matter unless they are interested. Cnilep (talk) 06:10, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

DYK for Embodied bilingual language

Embodied bilingual language is a genuine WP:Orphan that is in Queue 2 at WP:DYK. It needs some links to it. The hook might also be improved. Wikipedia talk:did you know#An orphaned article.... There is some urgency. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 20:43, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Merge discussion

FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Talk:Proper noun#Merge?, a proposal to merge into Proper noun any salvageable content from the Proper name (philosophy) stub. Proper name redirects to Proper noun, and there's also discussion about reversing the direction of that redirect, so that all our material on proper naming is at Proper name.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:21, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Language recognition

Editors can visit http://greatlanguagegame.com to test their ability to distinguish languages.
—Wavelength (talk) 19:40, 14 June 2015 (UTC) and 16:26, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

New Wikipedia Library Donations

Hello all, I wanted to let you know of two recent donations we just opened up at the Wikipedia Library: WP:Taylor & Francis and WP:Cairn. We also have many older partnerships with accounts available. Please sign up for the accounts if you think you can use them. Cheers, Nikkimaria (talk) 23:22, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Case theory

It currently links to grammatical case, but thematic relation and theta role are different articles, so I don't see how case theory shouldn't get its own. I'm planning to write a book on G/B theory in Wikibooks, so if nobody disagrees, after I finish it there, I'll copy it here and wikify it. Kayau (talk · contribs) 01:50, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

IPA for German

There's a guy that insists on multiple symbols in one cell on Help:IPA for German. I consider that an overkill. Please join our discussion. Peter238 (talk) 15:33, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Palato-alveolar → postalveolar

Hello. Our current usage of the term 'palato-alveolar' is clearly at odds with the current IPA terminology.

The symbols ⟨ʃ, ʒ, t͡ʃ, d͡ʒ⟩ represent postalveolar (so not palatalized by definition, therefore not necessarily palato-alveolar) sounds in the official IPA - see [1] and Handbook of the IPA.

As far as I remember, you can see the term 'palato-alveolar' on older official IPA charts.

Therefore, it seems that we need to change the names of the following articles:

We should also add a note that sometimes they are called 'palato-alveolar', because they tend to be somewhat palatalized (but not as much as alveolo-palatals.)

I also propose moving 'laminal retroflexes' to the corresponding articles about postalveolar consonants, with a note which says that they are not palatalized. Conversely, we'd add a note which says 'palato-alveolar' to e.g. English or Spanish. The palatalized variant should be transcribed with ⟨ʲ⟩. Peter238 (talk) 13:42, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

I mostly endorse this, but transcribing "somewhat palatalized postalveolars" as e.g. /ʃʲ/ sounds like a bad idea to me, since over at Alveolo-palatal consonant we mention an analysis as these two being equivalent. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 13:28, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
The reason for that is the source used there (SOWL) treats [ʃ] as palatalized by definition, but also says that calling the Chinese flat postalveolar sibilant [ʂ] 'retroflex' is inappropriate. On page 154, they list the following possibilities:
-Flat postalveolar (retroflex)
-Domed postalveolar (palato-alveolar)
-Palatalized postalveolar (alveolo-palatal).
I have no problem with separate pages for the alveolo-palatals, as they have separate symbols in the IPA. Peter238 (talk) 13:58, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
@Kwamikagami, Aeusoes1, JorisvS, Maunus, CodeCat, and Wugapodes: what do you think? Peter238 (talk) 21:28, 22 June 2015 (UTC)
Yes, "postalveolar" is a bad idea because there are many postalveolar fricatives besides [ʃ] and [ʒ]: there's also [ʂ], [ʐ], [s̠], [z̠]. See postalveolar consonant. — kwami (talk) 23:49, 22 June 2015 (UTC)
Which makes it best to have the titles with "postalveolar" in them as disambiguation pages. As long as the different articulations are made clear, I don't have strong ideas about how the information should be organized. --JorisvS (talk) 09:15, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

There's an OR problem with calling [ʃ, ʒ, t͡ʃ, d͡ʒ] 'palato-alveolar':

  • As I already said, the current official IPA terminology tells us nothing about the amount (or presence) of palatalization in these sounds. Alan Cruttenden in the latest Gimson's Pronunciation of English (2014:236) says "In the latest versions of the chart of the International Phonetic Association, the fricatives [ʃ, ʒ] and hence by implication the affricates [t͡ʃ, d͡ʒ] are labelled 'post-alveolar'. In this book the former label 'palato-alveolar' is retained as more closely indicating the palatalised alveolar articulation of these sounds."
  • Therefore, e.g. Luxembourgish /ʃ, ʒ, t͡ʃ, d͡ʒ/ can't be called 'palato-alveolar'. Both Gilles & Trouvain (2013) and Trouvain & Gilles (2009) (see Luxembourgish phonology#Bibliography) call these 'postalveolar', and say nothing about them being palatalized. The fact that these are not palato-alveolar but plain postalveolar (what I call fake retroflex) is confirmed by these recordings: [2] [3] [4] [5] [6].
  • In my opinion, the best solution would be having retracted alveolars, flat postalveolars, palato-alveolars, alveolo-palatals and true retroflexes on one page (yes, they are all postalveolar, as kwami said), as on this example page.
  • Sounds transcribed [ʃ, ʒ, t͡ʃ, d͡ʒ] should by default go to the 'flat postalveolar' section, unless reliable sources use the term "palato-alveolar" and/or mention some palatalization. Peter238 (talk) 15:42, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Argentine, not Argentinian

Hello linguists and linguistic buffs. I have nominated this essay, which argues that "Argentine" is the "correct" adjective for people and things from Argentina, for deletion here. Alakzi (talk) 11:46, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Glosses: Single quotes or double quotes?

Currently, the official policy on quotation marks is to use double quotation marks, alluding to multiple exceptions but listing only one (the names of plant cultivars). It is my understanding that linguistic practice is to use single quotation marks for simple gloss translations. A lot of linguistics articles utilize single quotes in this way, but this doesn't seem to be codified anywhere at Wikipedia as an exception. Should we deprecate the use of single quotes for glosses, acknowledge either form as appropriate, or explicitly list glosses as another exception? — Ƶ§œš¹ [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 23:18, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

List it as an exception. Single quotes for glosses in linguistic literature as a whole is almost universal. --Taivo (talk) 00:53, 17 August 2015 (UTC)
Agree --SynConlanger (talk) 19:53, 17 August 2015 (UTC)
Agree, be bold and add it as an exception. Though we may want a few examples to point to in case it gets challenged (though they shouldn't be hard to find). Wugapodes (talk) 04:06, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
 Done[7]. — Ƶ§œš¹ [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 06:41, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Copyright Violation Detection - EranBot Project

A new copy-paste detection bot is now in general use on English Wikipedia. Come check it out at the EranBot reporting page. This bot utilizes the Turnitin software (ithenticate), unlike User:CorenSearchBot that relies on a web search API from Yahoo. It checks individual edits rather than just new articles. Please take 15 seconds to visit the EranBot reporting page and check a few of the flagged concerns. Comments welcome regarding potential improvements. These likely copyright violations can be searched by WikiProject categories. Use "control-f" to jump to your area of interest (if such a copyvio is present).--Lucas559 (talk) 15:54, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata WikiProject

I have just created WikiProject Linguistics on Wikidata, currently aimed at improving typology coverage, if anyone's interested. (incidentally, I've also created it if you're not interested Ü) Popcorndude (talk) 01:33, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm not 100% sure I even know what Wikidata is...how does one help/contribute? Wugapodes (talk) 01:44, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
here's the introduction
and the item for Gramatical Gender
It holds the interwiki links and is a repository of structured data (like Wikipedia, but machines can read it too).
Eventually it will be possible to use it to make basic info available and consistent across all projects.
Now that I've recited the Chant of Wikidatan Awesomeness, let me just say that our coverage in many areas is rather abysmal (linguistics, for instance). Popcorndude (talk) 02:27, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Template:Government and Binding Theory

I'm proposing this template because it kinda annoys me that there's no template linking to all the important concepts in GB theory. What do you think? Kayau (talk · contribs) 04:05, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

PIE lexicon issues

I've raised on the talk page of Indo-European vocabulary the issue that the article probably needs heavy overhaul (from being a list of etymological data to a treatise of the comparative lexicology of the IE languages), but before doing anything too bold, I'd like a few further opinions.

— A new article Proto-Indo-European Lexicon (PIE Lexicon) has also appeared, detailing however rather a particular research project (and the article is indeed started by its main researcher), currently orphaned and lacking secondary sources. Possibly not sufficiently notable for a separate article; at minimum needs heavy copyediting re: neutrality and overlap with other PIE-related articles. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 12:08, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Sinitic languages, Varieties of Chinese, Chinese languages, Spoken Chinese, and other titles

Your discussion is welcomed at Talk: Varieties of Chinese. Thanks. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 14:31, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Italian dialects as varieties of Italian

See discussion. --SynConlanger (talk) 08:12, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Proofreading

I agree that the item is extremely extensive but fail to see how it could possibly be shortened.

However, I few points need proofreading:

- The item about Indonesian seems to have been written by a different person who does not master English perfectly. It needs to be corrected.

- The item about Tolkien's High Elvish is missing one right bracket.

- Note 45 is missing one right bracket.

- Note 59 is somewhat unclear.Berit L (talk) 12:48, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

I don't understand what you're asking for. Peter238 (talk) 15:44, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
What article on Wikipedia are you talking about, Berit L? -- WeijiBaikeBianji (Watch my talk, How I edit) 19:04, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
Berit, you may want to direct your comments at Talk:T-V distinction, where discussion on that article's content is more appropriate. — Ƶ§œš¹ [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 20:17, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata Project Linguistics

Your discussion is welcome at the Wikidata Project for linguistics here: Wikidata:Wikidata:WikiProject Linguistics. --SynConlanger (talk) 12:10, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X pilot testing

Hello WikiProject Linguistics!

Based on the recommendation of Snow Rise, I am happy to announce that WikiProject X has selected this project as part of a round of pilot testing.

The goal of WikiProject X is to improve the WikiProject experience through research, design, and experimentation. On that basis, we've prepared a new WikiProject design template based around modules. These modules include features you are already familiar with, such as article alerts, but also new features such as automated work lists, a feed of discussions taking place on the 5,848 talk pages tagged by WikiProject Linguistics, and a new member profile system. To see what this new setup looks like, you can browse the first round of pilot tests: WikiProject Cannabis, WikiProject Evolutionary biology, WikiProject Ghana, WikiProject Hampshire, WikiProject Women's Health.

If there is consensus among the participants of this WikiProject, I will proceed with implementing this interface based on the current contents of Wikipedia:WikiProject Linguistics. Please let me know if you have any questions or requests. Harej (talk) 23:44, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Agree --SynConlanger (talk) 11:39, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
Agree Peter238 (talk) 12:01, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Help with IPA

Copied from WP:Help desk
I recently created several (25-30) ogg files of me pronouncing place names near me (Kentucky) that have somewhat unusual or unexpected pronunciations. I would like some help from an editor familiar with IPA to add those pronunciations to relevant articles. I don't readily see a place to ask about this. Could someone point me in the right direction or would someone here be willing to help? Acdixon (talk · contribs) 14:45, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

@Acdixon: Hi! Even if I think this is standard practice in Wikipedia, I'm afraid writing IPA without citing a source would constitute an original research. --SynConlanger (talk) 09:28, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
According to policy it within the permissible degree of OR to transcribe a soundrecording into IPA. Similarly to making uncontroversial calculations, based on sourced numbers. The only problem here is that we dont know if the pronunciation in the soundfiles is in fact considered correct. So it is a question of whether the recordings shouldbe in the articles or not. This should probably be based on talkpage consensus in each case. But if the recordings can go there, then the transcriptions can as well.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 14:07, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
Well, WP:TRANSCRIPTION is about making (orthographic) transcripts, which all editors are capable of doing; it's not about identyifying the individual sounds of speech, which requires some training. Alakzi (talk) 14:18, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for your comments. That is interesting about having to cite a source for pronunciation. Although I can understand the reasoning, this policy seems somewhat limiting in that it is unlikely that this (in my opinion) useful information will ever be added to the encyclopedia. Most of these places are too small to have many reliable sources written about them, much less have their pronunciations commented upon. As you can imagine, my observations are based on local knowledge. So readers without local knowledge are unlikely to know that, despite their similar spellings, Anton and Onton are pronounced far differently; that Versailles is pronounced like it is spelled, not how the French say it; and don't even get me started on how we pronounce Gamaliel. Wonder how the Spoken Wikipedia deals with this.
Anyway, presently, the sound files are on Commons, not in the articles themselves. I did upload them with the description "Pronunciation of [whatever place], Kentucky". Should they be deleted from Commons as original research? Acdixon (talk · contribs) 14:31, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
Should they be deleted from Commons as original research? Certainly not; it's not OR to pronounce local place names in your native language. See also commons:COM:NPOV. Alakzi (talk) 14:47, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
The problem is that there is no way to verify that what you have pronounced is what you claim it to be without it occurring in a reliable source. Yes, this is an encyclopedia, so it's important that all information be verifiable through reliable sources. Your say-so is neither verification nor a reliable source. You may love your mom, pay your taxes, and go to church on Sunday, but we can't verify that, so your word that "This is the way they pronounce these words" is not reliable per Wikipedia standards. --Taivo (talk) 16:41, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
Hence, I said, "[a]lthough I can understand the reasoning". As a contributor to 37 featured articles, I know the importance of reliable sourcing. I just thought it might spur some discussion about other means of verifying pronunciations or something. Or maybe I'm just whining. And for the record, I do in fact love my mom, pay my taxes, and go to church on Sunday (and Wednesday). Guess you'll just have to take my word for it. :) Acdixon (talk · contribs) 17:41, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
There's all sorts of OR on Commons. I don't think WP:OR even applies there -- a lot of the stuff is obviously fraudulent, but there's no pressure to take it down. (They're only concerned with copyright infringement.) So there should be no problem leaving your recordings there.
We have had occasional problems with fake or at least unrepresentative pronunciations, but that's uncommon, and generally we've taken people's word for how their city is pronounced. Yes, that's OR, but the end result is probably as reliable as a dictionary, which very often get such things wrong. Also, when we do find print sources, they are often so incompetently done that it's next to impossible to tell which pronunciation they're trying to indicate. In such cases a local sound recording is better than a published source, esp. if the speaker is available to explain the accent ("that's the NURSE vowel" etc.). I do think we need local input. Yes, there will be errors, but copying things out of a dictionary produces errors and the whole point of Wikipedia is that someone else from those communities can correct those errors. I'd be happy to work with you on this. — kwami (talk) 18:15, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
@Kwamikagami: I think I expected something more like this when I first posted this. I don't know that this is material that is "likely to be challenged", and if it is, we can delete it or look for a proper source. If it were the pronunciation of Louisville or pecan – two words that inspire some genuine debate around these parts – I wouldn't wade into something like this.
What got me to thinking about it in the first place was when someone asked me about the pronunciation of Jereboam O. Beauchamp, a biography I worked on. I assumed – what with the subject being dead for almost 200 years and all – it was the French pronunciation but later learned, through a print source, that it was much different. That lead me to my biographies of John Rowan and James Garrard, who both have somewhat unusually pronounced last names, and the reason I know this is because of the counties named for them that are still pronounced that way today. If your offer isn't determined to be a violation of WP:CONSENSUS, considering the objection above, I'd appreciate your help. Acdixon (talk · contribs) 19:17, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
Was going to address that very point when I got in an edit conflict with you (tried to save after you'd saved something else). I agree with Maunus's point on consensus here: If we have other people chime in on the talk page and say, yeah, I grew up there, and that's how I say it too, I think we're fine. If we don't get any independent input, then it's a bit trickier, but people establish reputations for reliability here and so could you. I suppose if people doubt you, they could call up the town hall and ask -- I've done that, actually, for towns with unusual names, and for the English pronunciations of indigenous mythological figures. So it is possible to verify even if there's no published source. — kwami (talk) 19:22, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
Hadn't even thought about "call up and ask" as a method for verification, but I like it. I'm going to give this discussion a bit to continue developing if others want to contribute, but if no objections emerge, I'll link you to the relevant ogg files by early next week, at the latest. Ping me if I don't. Thanks again. Acdixon (talk · contribs) 19:47, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

I'm sorry but transcribing in IPA is not contemplated by WP:TRANSCRIPTION. To me, transcribing in IPA is original research. --SynConlanger (talk) 20:00, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

But translation is not? Do you realize how much interpretation is required to translate, especially when the languages are associated with cultures that have little common ground? If picking one of several possible translations of a word, or especially a phrase, based on one's personal preference is not OR, I can't see how identifying the NURSE vowel in a word is OR. Anyway, the guideline says "transcribing spoken words from audio or video sources", and that is exactly what we're talking about here. Even just transcribing into English orthography can be tricky, as often people will disagree as to what is said. (Consider the arguments over song lyrics.) If you want to make an exception for phonetic transcription, so that e.g. it's forbidden to say "sounds like X" or "rhymes with Y", then we would need consensus on the guideline talk page. — kwami (talk) 20:42, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
Please, see discussion at Wikipedia talk:No original research#Transcribing. --SynConlanger (talk) 16:05, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Should we merge Stød with Danish phonology?

Please join the discussion. Peter238 (talk) 22:43, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Subcategories of Category: Linguists

There are an awful lot of linguists categorized directly in Category:Linguists, although there are a number of subcats of linguists by nationality, etc. There's some discussion of the issue on the category's Talk page, but it's all from 2005! Can we reconsider the question in light of the current policies in WP: CATEGORY? -- Thnidu (talk) 20:37, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

I would suggest an RFC as there are most certainly people with an extensive knowledge of categorization there that can give feedback or ideas. I don't know much about categorization policies, but I think having articles in Category:Linguists is probably overly broad and something that should be fixed. I'll take a look at the policy later and try and come up with ideas and comments. Wugapodes (talk) 22:42, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Help request: False cognate

Article False cognate is in poor shape, few reliable sources, hundreds of examples were added to an exhaustive list with no sources at all (I've deleted them after 10 months passed with a cit tag and only one source was added for one example out of the bunch), and few editors are following any guidelines at all. I think they're either coming from or using the article as a forum or study aid. Any help would be appreciated. --IronMaidenRocks (talk) 07:54, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Request for peer review at Black American Sign Language

I'm trying to get Black American Sign Language up to FA quality and am seeking input at this peer review. I'd really appreciate it if some editors would take the time to review the page. Wugapodes (talk) 18:05, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

I scanned through. Heavy reliance on the first source was noted. Presentation looks good, not a lot of information on what signage looks like in that language. 'White signers' seems problematic, lends undue weight to the idea that black Americans speak BASL and white Americans speak ASL. The capitalization of 'Black' or 'White' is also problematic, it's use is without precedent when referring to a skin color over an ethnic group ("White American" is okay, "White people" is not). Back to my first point, people of all races in the United States speak ASL, not just white people. Calling ASL users 'White speakers' or BASL users as 'Black speakers' can be construed as racist. Ethnicity has no bearing on one's ability or intention to speak a language. --IronMaidenRocks (talk) 08:06, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Hyperforeignism

A user has come through and removed words they found to be "NPOV" from this article, while glad-handedly ignoring that the point of these instances of hyperforeignization or hyperforeignisms is that they are being mispronounced. If this weren't the case there would be no phenomenon and thus no article. I am not advocating prescriptivist rules here, but it is an objective reality that when an English speaker pronounces an Italian word like a French one, that is a mispronunciation. Would anyone here be able to cruise over and weigh in? JesseRafe (talk) 19:20, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

I agree with the user's edits. We are not in the business of making judgments on how words are borrowed into English any more than should we characterize a particular dialect's features as mistakes or mispronunciations of Standard English. The phenomenon can be objectively discussed without prescriptivist language, which the user in question is demonstrating by removing it. — Ƶ§œš¹ [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 23:19, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
I don't follow, and what you are saying is inconsistent with the edits the other user made. Is the example of an English borrowing of a French word but pronouncing it like an Italian one not an example of hyperforeignization? If not, why not delete the page? If it is an example, then by necessity it must be said that the term is French and ought be pronounced X but is instead pronounced Y under the phonotactics of the language which it doesn't originate from. This is the crux of the whole matter, the sine qua non. The user, different than your explanation, thinks this is a matter of whether or not English speakers pronounce the 's' in Paris, which is so beyond off-base I can't even fathom it. Please take another review? JesseRafe (talk) 13:48, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
I know that you don't claim to be a prescriptivist, but your wording here is loaded with prescriptivist assumptions. When you say that, by virtue of being an example of a hyperforeignism, the example must be described as a mispronunciation, you miss the opportunity to share the same information without endorsing the perspective of a prescriptivist with your language. Thus, instead of saying "the term is French and ought be pronounced X but is instead pronounced Y.." the better way to word this would be that the term, coming from French, would suggest a pronunciation of X. Instead, it is pronounced Y, suggesting an origin from Italian.
Do you see the difference? I have changed "ought" to "is" and thereby removed prescriptivist (and therefore inherently POV) language while retaining the same information.
Let me make it explicit: When a word is borrowed from another language in a certain way, it is not "wrong" and it is not a "mispronunciation." Those are prescriptivist judgments. If you disagree with this and believe that words should be borrowed in a certain way, then you are not espousing an objective belief. Rather, you are taking on the subjective beliefs of prescriptivists. That is your right as a human being, but in order to reflect a neutral point of view, we cannot endorse these judgments in article space. — Ƶ§œš¹ [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 17:34, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
I'm sorry, you do make a good middle ground in the end of your first paragraph, but the rest is largely BS. As User:Septegram said, "To pronounce "pronunciation" as though it were spelled "slorg" is objectively incorrect, for example". Grover Cleveland took the non-prescriptivist angle too far and thus the article is nonsense. It must be said that a certain word is pronounced in the wrong manner for this to even be a subject, without it it does not exist. If you remove the fact that speakers are pronouncing words of a language according to the phonology of a different (also foreign) language or the perceived (and incorrect) phonotactics of the right language, then all the descriptions herein make no sense. This article is for the regular reader, not someone who already knows what it's about. I am not a prescriptivist, but you do not have to be to say that "slorg" is wrong, that's an objective truth. Please weigh in the Talk Page. I will incorporate your "oughts" into the restored version of the page. But when you say things like "When a word is borrowed from another language in a certain way, it is not "wrong" and it is not a "mispronunciation." Those are prescriptivist judgments." you are demonstrating that you simply do not understand the phenomenon. Again, this is not about mispronunciations, but about hyperforeignizations. JesseRafe (talk) 18:12, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
I don't have to agree with you to understand the phenomenon. Discussing hyperforeignisms is possible at Wikipedia, even with a descriptivist lens. If you doubt it, you should look at some of the linguistic sources that discuss it. — Ƶ§œš¹ [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 18:55, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
Fully agreed with Aeusoes1 on this, word for word (and I commend their ability to disagree with such carefully explanatory civility that is formally collegial without being smarmy; I wish I could do that so well. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  05:43, 21 October 2015 (UTC)
  • I agree with Aeusoes1. Hyperforeignisms are not inherently incorrect (though a speech community my decide to consider them to be so), they are just different. In some cases they come to be considered more "correct" than the original non foreignized pronunciation. The article by the way is almost entirely unsourced and seems not to ditinsguish loan adaptation from hyperforeignisms. Most of the examples do not seem hyperforeignisms to me.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 13:06, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Altaic and infoboxes

I know that Altaic has been debated "vigorously" here before (and after running into plenty of flaming on various talk pages about it, I generally avoid the topic). I really have no opinion on the matter, linguistically (my focus in that field is much more narrow, I don't care much about attempts to classify the ultimate language families). However, despite by desire to avoid reopening wounds, I cannot help but point out that we have a problem here, from an encyclopedic perspective: Our infoboxes on the alleged Altaic subfamilies do not agree with their articles' text. There are two ways to resolve this:

  1. If the Altaic hypothesis is considered a fringe idea, debunked, or wildly speculative, it needs to be identified as such more clearly, in all the affected articles, per WP:FRINGE and WP:UNDUE, and should no appear the lead in these articles.
  2. If it is not actually fringe, but is a major albeit minority-held theory, then it needs to be properly addressed in the infobox, pretty much exactly the way I did it here [which was reverted on the basis that WP:LING has discussed Altaic before and failed to come to consensus about it]. In such a case, declaration in the infobox of the proposed Altaic subfamilies as instead root families of the worlds' languages, if this is not the actual scientific consensus among linguists, is a serious WP:POV problem and misleading to readers.

I don't care at all which the correct answer is, I only know that the present contradictory situation is not viable. It has to be clarified and normalized in one direction or the other, or we do not have proper agreement between infoboxes and their articles, which is confusing to the average reader and editor, and will only continue to generate strife between linguistics editors.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  05:11, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

The consensus was at WT:LANG, actually. This ties in with debates about hinting at any controversy in the info box. — kwami (talk) 19:29, 21 October 2015 (UTC)
Why is there even a separate project WikiProject Languages? That's rather like having a WikiProject Zoology and a WikiProject Animals. Anyway, I've notified WT:LANG of the discussion here. As for the original matter: the purpose of infoboxes is to be informative, not to hide information, including central controversies.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  03:53, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Merge discussions

FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussions elsewhere.

Proposal to merge two articles at new title, Language extinction: Please see Talk:Language death#Proposed merger with Extinct language.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  03:49, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Proposal to move glottophagy material mostly out of Language death (and certainly out of its lead) and integrate it into the lead at Language death and expand upon it there: Please see Talk:Language shift#Glottophagy.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  04:27, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

AfC submission

See Draft:Oworo Language. Best, FoCuS contribs; talk to me! 22:09, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

NOR noticeboard: Is it OK for pronunciation symbols to be Original Research?

I have brought up once again this old and contentious issue. Please see Wikipedia:No_original research/Noticeboard#Is it OK for pronunciation symbols to be Original Research? --mach 🙈🙉🙊 11:01, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Revitalization of Portal:Linguistics

I'm attempting to revitalize the previously inactive linguistics portal and community help would be incredibly helpful in restarting and maintaining the page. You can get involved most easily by nominating content to appear on the portal page. If you want to help maintain it let me know and I can give you a crash course in how updating the portal works. And as always, if you think you can improve the portal, be bold and do it! Wugapodes (talk) 22:25, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Why is every article on phonetics on Wikipedia written to confuse?

Once more frustrated, I added this to the page on 'roundness' (via 'rhotic' and 'scwha', amongst others) but I see ether is a proper place for it to be posted, so here it is. Sorry if this appears to be a full-frontal assault on your area of interest, but please understand that I, and many others, would like to peer behind the veils and better understand how our languages change through space, time and society. Here goes, perhaps with a modest edit:

Whenever I encounter an article referencing pronunciation on Wikipedia I end up on an endlessly recursive quest trying to understand the arcane explanations and descriptions, that are always defined in terms I do not understand which in turn are explained in the same obscure fashion. No-where, it seems, on the whole of Wikipedia is an accessible explanation of the basic principles and framework for understanding linguistics, phonetics and pronunciation that does not assume prior familiarity with the intimate details of the subject.

I don't struggle as much to understand articles on such abstractions as relativity, mathematics, art, music or even theology. It seems there are those who use language and those who study it, and the former must be kept from understanding why and how they say what they say so that the latter can study them.

In this article - roundness - I need to understand labialisation, front vowels, back vowels and how to determine the height of a vowel, just to understand the first introductory paragraph. And this is one of the less opaque articles on phonetics.

Quite simply, in my view linguistic articles on Wikipedia are consistently the most poorly explained; they are written as if for a phonetic textbook, not an encyclopaedia.

PLEASE! Can someone who does understand all this gibberish (and to me it is gibberish until I can find explanations that use plain English rather than being self-referential) tackle this and other pages with a linguistic bent and ensure that each one defines its core material in a way that doesn't need further research to understand it. Stub Mandrel (talk) 23:43, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Supplementary

By way of evidence let me quote verbatim the introductory paragraph on Open-mid front rounded vowel:

The open-mid front rounded vowel, or low-mid front rounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. Acoustically it is an open-mid front-central rounded vowel.[1] The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨œ⟩. The symbol œ is a lowercase ligature of the letters o and e. Note that ⟨ɶ⟩, a small caps version of the ⟨Œ⟩ ligature, is used for a distinct vowel sound: the open front rounded vowel.
The IPA prefers terms "close" and "open" for vowels, and the name of the article follows this. However, a large number of linguists, perhaps a majority, prefer the terms "high" and "low".

Would it not help if the introduction actually explained what 'open', 'mid', 'fronted' or 'rounded' mean in the context of a vowel? I'll allow you to assume the reader knows what a vowel is, although I'm beginning to doubt that I do. Thankfully at least there is a brief recording that reveals it is the sound made by a teddy bear growler - rather at odds with a Cockney 'bird'. Stub Mandrel (talk) 23:57, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Following with this example: if you scroll down to the section #Features, you'll find links to the articles on vowel height, open-mid vowel, vowel backness, front vowel, and roundedness, which ought to answer your questions. Do they not? (Many of them could probably be improved.)
I agree though that the introductory paragraph for these types of articles is a bit dense. There's however no simple way to make them immediately accessible. I suspect that the problem might be rather in our habit of referring readers, via such as templates as Template:IPAlink, to the pages on bottom-level specifics rather than to introductory articles like Help:IPA.
Alternately, let's look at roundedness which you explicitly seem to find inadequate:
  • In phonetics, vowel roundedness refers to the amount of rounding in the lips during the articulation of a vowel.
    • Here we have the basic definition. In case you find "rounding" overly technical (though I imagine it should not?), there are illustrations down the page, and the third paragraph also elaborates on this.
  • It is labialization of a vowel.
    • This is not part of the definition, and you do not need to already know what "labialization" is; this simply relates the concepts "labialization" and "rounding" to each other. (I.e. they're the same thing, except former refers to consonants, the latter to vowels.)
  • When pronouncing a rounded vowel, the lips form a circular opening, whereas unrounded vowels (also called spread vowels) are pronounced with the lips relaxed.
    • Further exposition. Should be plain as day as long as you know what "lips" are?
  • In most languages, front vowels tend to be unrounded, whereas back vowels tend to be rounded.
    • Also not an actual part of the definition. If you want to know which particular vowels are rounded, further down the article we have examples listed and a large list of "See also" links to articles on rounded vowels. (I agree that examples could be listed sooner, though.)
  • But some languages, (…)
    • This gets into analysis of different systems of rounded vowels in the world's languages and might well be better split as a separate paragraph.
Does this address your confusion? If so, what updates would you propose? --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 00:21, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
Thank you for taking my litany in the constructive spirit intended; looking at it now it appears rather tetchy. It's easier to articulate my difficulties with some specifics.
  • When pronouncing a rounded vowel, the lips form a circular opening, whereas unrounded vowels (also called spread vowels) are pronounced with the lips relaxed.
This is actually a reasonable start, but it would help if it then said what effect rounding the lips has on a vowel sound. I can get several different effects by saying 'oo' and pursing my lips in different ways, but it appears the make the tone a bit harsher - adding odd harmonics - as well as raising the pitch?
  • It is labialization of a vowel.
    • This is not part of the definition,
Then perhaps it doesn't belong in an introductory paragraph; a better wording might be 'It is analagous to the labialization of consonants.'
Here's an example of good exposition in the article:
The "throaty" sound of English /ɒ/ is instead accomplished with sulcalization, a furrowing of the back of the tongue also found in non-rhotic /ɜː/ (Lass 1984:124).
A sound is explained in a non-technical way, and a technical term is followed by brief explanation.
My suggested re-write of the first paragraph. I'm sure it is far from perfect due to my poor understanding of the subject. Slightly more wordy but it explains what rounding actually does (modifies the basic sound) and defines several terms very briefly (I accept that once front and high vowels are dfined, back and low vowels need no elucidation). Finally what appeared to be a random reference to Alekano has its significance explained:
In phonetics, vowel roundedness refers to the amount of rounding in the lips during the articulation of a vowel. The lips modify the produced by the oral cavity, analogous to the labialization of a consonant. When pronouncing a rounded vowel, the lips form a circular opening, whereas unrounded vowels (also called spread vowels) are pronounced with the lips relaxed. In most languages, front vowels (made with the tongue forwards) tend to be unrounded, whereas back vowels tend to be rounded. Some languages, such as French and German, distinguish rounded and unrounded front vowels of the same height (vertical position of the tongue), whereas Vietnamese distinguishes rounded and unrounded back vowels of the same height. The Papuan language Alekano is exceptional in only having unrounded vowels.Stub Mandrel (talk) 18:01, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Invitation

Hello. Right now we're talking with Mach on Help talk:IPA for Alemannic German#Notation for length/fortis–lenis about the way(s) of transcribing the fortis-lenis distinction on the newly created Help:IPA for Alemannic German, the symbols for Swabian German, and even deleting the guide (which, IMO, is an exaggeration). If anyone is interested, feel free to join our discussion and offer your input. Peter238 (talk) 20:42, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Unicode: Adopt a Character

At this time, Unicode has a campaign in which donors can adopt characters.

—Wavelength (talk) 21:25, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

English-language accents in film

I created English-language accents in film sometime ago as a draft and just put it in the mainspace. It consolidates various commentary about different kinds of English-language accents in film. It's not my cleanest work, but I do not see myself continuing it. (I started this because there was a big debate a while ago about having an article about the worst accents in film, and this was my alternative approach.) Feel free to improve on it. Thanks, Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 16:02, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia Visiting Scholars at USF

Of potential interest to members of this WikiProject, the University of San Francisco's Department of Rhetoric and Language is looking to sponsor a Wikipedia Visiting Scholar to improve Wikipedia articles on relevant subjects. This is a great way to get access to university library databases and other resources while making an impact in areas you may already contribute to. For more information, including an overview of library resources, see the USF Visiting Scholars page. Thanks. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 01:24, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Social justice warrior - move discussion

Notifying this WikiProject talk page as article is relevant to the topic

There is a move discussion ongoing related to this WikiProject.

  1. Article = Social justice warrior
  2. Move discussion at Talk:Social_justice_warrior#Requested_move_6_April_2016.

Feel free to comment however you wish.

Thank you,

— Cirt (talk) 02:35, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

PIE root: spam?

Not sure whether this is spam: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Proto-Indo-European_root&diff=701408530&oldid=692872357. Could someone have al look? Tx, ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 10:52, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Maybe not strictly spam, but probably shouldn't be there in any case — it's neither a relevant external link nor a reliable source. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 21:05, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Proposal of a WikiProject Translation studies

Good evening to everybody. I have just proposed a WikiProject Translation studies in order to cover an interdiscipline in its own right. Anybody willing to support it? Please sign here. Best regards, --Fadesga (talk) 00:20, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

WikiProject English Language

It's rather shocking that this project is missing, though its absence explains why we have so few articles about our language (most of the linguistic material on English is buried as sections, when we're lucky, in general linguistics articles), and why so much of what we do have is riddled with Victorian prescriptivist PoV-pushing and original research. Properly sourced, neutral, linguistically descriptive, detailed, encyclopedic coverage of the language is one of en.wp's most obvious topical gaps. The scope is general, including everything from the Great English Vowel Shift to Quotation marks in English to English as a global language, and various missing articles like major styles of English writing.

I've drafted the wikiproject outline at User:SMcCandlish/WikiProject English Language, including some "Goals" and "Scope" points. Please "pre-sign" as a participant so that it already has a number of supporters (7+ would be nice) when I take it to Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals in the next day or so. I've not yet created a to-do list for it or other resources (mainly so I don't have to move them later after the proposal goes through).

As far as I can determine, this project is missing because several times in the past, various camps of prescriptivists have tried to create something called "WikiProject English" to PoV-push their version of "correct" English on Wikipedia, and had it deleted at WP:MFD. This proposal would be the diametric opposite of such WP:FRINGE / WP:SOAPBOX campaigning.

It will not be limited to strictly linguistic information, but include history of the language and its use, socio-political aspects of English, and "style" matters like typography, in addition to more traditional linguistic fare like English syntax, phonological change, etc.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  23:52, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

I would join such a project.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 01:00, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Bad link on computational semantics page

I didn't see where else to post this. Wikipedia help said to click the talk link on the page to report a problem, but there was no way to do that on this page's talk, so I followed the linguistics portal to here.

Anyway page "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_semantics" has a bad link with text "Minimal Recursion Semantics. An introduction" in the Further Reading section. The URL it references, "http://www.lingo.stanford.edu/sag/papers/copestake.pdf" shows a "Server not found" error when I click it.

Thanks for fixing this. I would really like to read that PDF. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.246.215.5 (talk) 20:21, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm not getting any hits on "copestake" at linguistics.stanford.edu. - Dank (push to talk) 20:43, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
Google Scholar yields [this link] from Springer. --Mark viking (talk) 17:26, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

help for the uninitiated

I've posted a plea for improving the accessibility of some of the articles to the English reader at Secundative language. I recognize that some linguistic topics, like some mathematical topics, intrinsically require a considerable level of background, and cannot be made clear in ant article to those who lack the background. However, the articles I mention there look like they could be explained in common English. I find it helps to have more than one English example, to give the reader a chance of inducing the meaning--this is much more difficult from a single example. (And when there is no English equivalent, perhaps the examples should be given in whatever languages are likely to be familiar to at least some of our readers.) DGG ( talk ) 20:36, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Inconsistent classification of Tai Yo language

Tai Yo language says alternate names are Tai Do, Tai Mene, and Tai Nyaw, all of which redirect to Tai Yo. That's fine, but:

  • The Tai Yo article lists it as a Southwestern Tai language under Chiang Saen languages
  • The Southwestern Tai languages article also lists it (as "Nyaw") as a Southwestern Tai language but grouped with Lao-Phutai, not Chiang Saen
  • Even more confusingly, the Northern Tai languages article prominantly lists it (as "Tai Mene") as Northern Tai! (this guy, on pg 12, seems to agree)

I know the internal classification of the Tai languages still isn't completely worked out, but Southwestern and Northern differ sufficiently that there should be agreement on whether a language is Southwestern (closer to Thai/Lao) or Northern (closer to Saek and Zhuang). I haven't been able to find any references other than the book above which cites Chamberlain. Does anybody else have access to a definitive reference so we can sort out our articles? If not, are there any suggestions regarding how we should fix the inconsistencies in our articles?--William Thweatt TalkContribs 10:08, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

IPA assistance

I would appreciate someone's IPA-fu to answer a question at Village Pump Misc. The link is here. Thanks, Oiyarbepsy (talk) 04:15, 20 February 2016 (UTC)


On the subject of a recent edit on the Minimalist Program article

Hi all. I made what I feel is a rather bold edit on the article for the Minimalist Program. It's bold in the sense that as an undergraduate ling student, I feel somewhat unworthy of making judgement calls on the content of a program that I have not worked at the professional level in. Thus, I created a rather long Talk page (here) entry pertaining to the edit, and I think it deserves some attention from the community. This Talk discussion specifically pertains to the representation of critiques of the Minimalist Program and, even more specifically, the content removed was an long-standing unreferenced and general claim about the programmatic vs. theoretical nature of the MP.

It's worth noting that this page (Wikipedia's article on the Minimalist Program, being as important at it is, could use significant attention by expert contributors in many other areas. I see much room for content expansion, as the scope of the article seems to be lacking ambition.

– Mczuba (talk) 07:07, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

I've been embarking on a project to include more external links to linguistic resources, especially from major recognized sources like AILLA and other archives in OLAC. Mostly I've been going to the pages for researchers or languages and updating them somewhere to include a link to these archives. Hope you'll join me in sharing more of these fantastic, underutilized resources with the world. TheLeaper (talk) 18:53, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Declension

Contributors may want to have a look at Declension, which I have just tagged as being within the scope of this project. It presents two decent examples – Latin and Sanskrit – but is mostly dedicated to a hypothetical discussion "If English were a language with declension". It also needs more references and better organization. Cnilep (talk) 04:16, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

I just created Template talk:IPAc-fr/doc, with two sections about two problems. I encountered them with respect to French, but at least one of them may be of much broader scope than French. But since that talk page didn't even exist before, I'm afraid those issues will not be seen or addressed, so I'm posting excerpts from those sections here as well:


Where's the closing bracket?
The page says:
To change the delimiters (for example, if several instances of the template need to be strung together because of the limit on the number of parameters):
*{{IPAc-fr|[-|r|é|p|y|b|l|i|q|-|f|r|an|ç|ai|z}} produces [ʁepyblik fʁɑ̃sɛz ⬅
What happened to the closing bracket, and how do you get it in? I tried to change the ending from |z to |z], |z|], and |z|-], but they all said "[unsupported input]", with a link to Help:IPA for French, which doesn't say a thing about delimiters.
I suspect, further, that this problem exists with other Template talk:IPAc-LANGUAGE/doc files.


Where's the conversion chart? What "natural spelling"?
The page says:
This template is used to produce a phonetic or phonemic representation (using the IPA system) of French words or sounds, using natural spelling to avoid the need to search for the correct phonetic symbols. The result is wikilinked to Help:IPA for French. Optionally, an audio file can also be specified.
Where's the conversion chart for the "natural spelling"? It sure isn't on this page or at Help:IPA for French. How does a user know to use ⟨U⟩ for /ɥ/ — that's not "natural" for French — or ⟨ain⟩ for /ɛ̃/?

The absence of a conversion chart may also be responsible for the error in the French example in the documentation for {{IPA/doc}}.


Please {{Ping}} me to discuss. --Thnidu (talk) 18:37, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Inclusion of previous names in lead sections of transgender/non-binary biographies (RfC notice)

FYI
 – Pointing to discussion this project may be interested in

There's currently a discussion about whether transgender and non-binary people should have their former names included in the lead section of an article. Effectively the discussion is whether anyone with a changed name as well as transgender and non-binary people be treated the same, or differently in lead sections of biography articles. See the WP:BIRTHNAME for the MOS guideline.

For the discussion please see here. -NottNott|talk 10:33, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

Teaching sign language to non-humans

I would appreciate any comments at Talk:Sign language#The lead: teaching sign language to non-humans. Thanks. Sundayclose (talk) 19:12, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Varieties of English in England

Hello,

there are articles on varieties of English in England covering both one dialectal variety or dialectal varieties as well as a mixture of standard English and dialectal English. An example of this is Estuary English article.
Hence I think, such articles should be split. Kind regards, Sarcelles (talk) 09:19, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Pardon, I have entered Estuary English erroneously, above is the case with Geordie, however.Sarcelles (talk) 13:18, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

I have found the following cases of coverage of dialect and mixture of dialect and standard English in the same article, too:


Kind regards, Sarcelles (talk) 12:45, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

Those articles should be split.Sarcelles (talk) 09:24, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

Looking for feedback on a tool on Visual Editor to add open license text from other sources

Hi all

I'm designing a tool for Visual Editor to make it easy for people to add open license text from other sources, there are a huge number of open license sources compatible with Wikipedia including around 9000 journals. I can see a very large opportunity to easily create a high volume of good quality articles quickly. I have done a small project with open license text from UNESCO as a proof of concept, any thoughts, feedback or endorsements (on the Meta page) would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

--John Cummings (talk) 14:52, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Notification of RFC for Korean MOS in regard to romanization

Should we use McCune-Reischauer or Revised for topics relating to pre-1945 Korea? Those inclined, please contribute here. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:24, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Seeking feedback on a guide for students who edit linguistics articles for a higher education classroom

Hi everyone! The Wiki Education Foundation is creating a guide to help linguistics students in US and Canadian universities and colleges. I'd love to gather any feedback this community is willing to offer toward this project. You can find the draft here. We're looking to print these for the next academic year, so feedback by August 2 would be appreciated. Thanks! --Eryk (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:26, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

That's great, Eryk; it should be a big help. One thing that occurs to me right away (I only skimmed the article) is that some guidance on abbreviations would be useful. I don't think Wikipedia has standard abbreviations for things like glossing, but a pointer to MOS:ABBREV or similar advice (i.e., avoid abbreviations that are not common outside the field) might be good. You do mention jargon, but I think abbreviations might warrant an explicit mention. Cnilep (talk) 02:31, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

Discussion about portal image

Hello everyone! I just want to bring your attention to a discussion I started at Template talk:Portal#Linguistics portal image regarding changing the icon used for the linguistics portal in Module:Portal. As it's barely possible (if at all) to make out what the current image is at the small size used by {{Portal}} and {{Portal bar}}, I'm suggesting that it be replaced by Globe of letters.svg (unless anyone has a better idea). Please note that this would not necessarily require a change of the WikiProject logo. Cheers, Graham (talk) 01:18, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Dorso-palatal

The redirects Dorso-palatal and Dorso palatal currently point to Dorsal consonant. But have been nominated for retargetting to Palatal consonant at RfD. You are invited to comment in the discussion at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2016 July 30#Dorso-palatal. Thryduulf (talk) 22:59, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Fictional "linguists"

The category for "fictional linguists" (ref'd below) is largely populated by what can be termed "fictional polyglots" and "fictional language interpreters" rather than fictional characters who scientifically study language. The appropriate usage of the term "linguist" today, I would argue, largely refers to individuals who study the nature of language from a scientific perspective. Within the category of 26 pages, there are 5 pages/characters who are linguists by this definition. The rest are polyglots.

As a linguist who gets asked "how many languages do I speak?" by laymen on a weekly basis (to which I answer 1, and then: "I study language"), this is a vexing issue for me! Bit of a sore spot, I suppose. It seems that the public want to define "linguist" as someone who can speak many languages (this is the classical definition after all), but since the birth of "linguistics" as a field, academics want to treat the definition as a "language scientist". Am I being overly prescriptivistic in suggesting a correction to the category? As a sociolinguist, the irony of the issue is not lost on me! Perhaps it's best to leave it be haha

(Also, if any other wiki-linguists can think of some other fictional linguists, by all means bolster the category's ranks!)

--ThePhantasos (talk) 17:17, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

Syntactic structures

Is there any reason that none of our articles on theoretical syntax use images of bare phrase structure, instead favouring outdated models not seen since Ross's dissertation in 1967? →Σσς. (Sigma) 00:17, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

@Σ: I'm not involved with syntax articles here and I'm only replying because no-one else has in a month. If bare phrase structure refers to the variety of trees used in the Minimalist Program then there are good reasons why they aren't used here. For one, MP (or GB for that matter) is just one among many syntactic theories and its present-day popularity on US campuses is something worth reckoning with, but it's definitely far from the claim to universality of e.g. IPA in phonetic transcription. The syntactic trees we see on wikipedia are easier to understand by the general reader, more readily comprehensible by people coming from different frameworks, and much less open to the criticism (levied at Chomskyan theories) of conflating in a single level of syntactic representation entities and processes that operate at separate levels and that most other theories describe using separate vocabularies (for example, c- and f-structure of LFG, or the constituent trees and operator projection in RRG). Uanfala (talk) 09:07, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for the response. I'm aware that bare phrase structure isn't the only way to parse, but as far as I've seen, even in papers written by European syntacticians, it is the most commonly-used way to model syntax. And yes, in the wild I've come across a few alternatives to minimalism: HPSG, some form of CxG, and also as LFG as you've mentioned (but not RRG) (there may be more but if so, I've never seen them), I've only seen exactly one paper that used it for each theory out of all the papers I've read, ever. MP/X-bar/generative grammar in general is simply the most widely accepted modern academic paradigm for approaching theoretical syntax. Finally, I am not convinced that using "bad" parses is doing more service than disservice for the reasons you state, could you elaborate? I can't come up with any examples off the top of my head that don't incorporate information for that. →Σσς. (Sigma) 06:56, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
True, there are many minimalists in Europe as well. As for the syntax papers I read, they tend to come from a typological or descriptive perspective and there minimalism is exceedingly rare. I almost have not background in any variety of Chomskyan syntax, so I'm not sure what you exactly mean by the parses being "bad". Uanfala (talk) 10:20, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
Well, to illustrate, see small clause#Structural analysis. I can't attest to the dependency grammars, but for the phrase structure grammars, I've found a paper depicting a flat structure (the ref, Syntactic relations: A critical survey, is not locally available and Google Books does not show all of the relevant material; this was from "Against small clauses" (Williams 1983)) but it's based on reasons regarding GB that aren't relevant in any modern syntactic theory I'm aware of. →Σσς. (Sigma) 07:36, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
I'm not entirely sure I'm able to follow. Are flat trees for small clauses examples of bad parses? Uanfala (talk) 10:41, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Yes, that's right. File:Wikitree15a.png, as well. As far as I'm aware, the only time where people depict a node with three children and are still taken seriously is for coordination.

I'm curious what syntactic model you're most familiar with. You say you don't have any familiarity with anything Chomsky; I've never heard of anyone involved with linguistics who hasn't at least heard of him in passing. (Then again, I haven't heard anyone involved with linguistics who didn't use Chomsky's theories, but that may be an accident of history.) →Σσς. (Sigma) 08:11, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Nodes with more than two children are pretty commonplace. The article section you linked to in your previous comment already lists theories that use them, and to that I can add they're ubiquitous in RRG and not rare in LFG (in the latter they're motivated by analysis of so-called non-configurational languages, like Warlpiri). As for me, I have some background in RRG and LFG, and I used to have some passing acquaintance with GB, but nowadays my readings are almost entirely in a typological or descriptive vein, and they usually eschew formalism and are close (in spirit, if not always in form) to Dixon's Basic Linguistic Theory).
Now, about syntactic trees. If you would like to draw bare phrase structure trees, you're welcome to! Certainly the articles on topics related to the MP could do with more illustrations. As for other syntax articles, replacing existing trees won't probably be a good idea most of the time, but adding separate sections dealing with the minimalist analysis (together with minimalist trees) will of course be good. Uanfala (talk) 10:14, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

You're right; I was referring to the X-bar/MP paradigm when I said that nodes couldn't have three children.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say that your readings usually "eschew formalism". When I say that the papers I read all use something Chomsky, I don't mean that they all include illustrations of trees in minimalist form. I mean that when papers such as this (page 4, gloss 1), I've always interpreted them to be a sort of shorthand for one. These are certainly the most common way to "annotate" a phrase that I've seen, in nearly every paper. Maybe I've just been seeing what I want to see but I've never considered any other way to read such a thing.

But if those indeed are annotations based in X-bar or MP, then I think there might be a WP:FALSEBALANCE if we included every theory together.

→Σσς. (Sigma) 02:08, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

I'm having a look at the gloss and apart from use of the CP label (which to me smacks of generativism), I think the bracketing is pretty theory-neutral. Anyone with any constituency-based formalism in mind could use it to imagine the tree of the theory of their choice. I'm having a look at WP:FALSEBALANCE which seems to contrast scholarly to fringe views, and not one scholarly view to another. Now, if we want to base the trees squarely within a certain formal framework (and I don't think this is generally a good idea), then the choice of framework will be based on what we see in the sources on the given topic: some topics will only have been treated within GB or MP, most will have been analysed within several theories and we'll ideally want to represent them all with due weight, and there'll many that haven't been approached within the Chomskyan framework. Uanfala (talk) 11:14, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Sorry for the late reply. Anyway, I'm not trying to suggest that "alternate", for lack of better words, theories of syntax belong alongside Holocaust denial. I meant to draw attention to the boxed quote by BBC: 'false balance', [means] that viewers might perceive an issue to be more controversial than it actually is [...] [we] must clearly communicate the degree of credibility that the view carries. I don't doubt that things such as ellipsis or small clauses have non-X-bar-or-MP analyses published, but (I reiterate that I can only attest to what I've seen) they're so few, both in absolute numbers and proportionally to X-bar/MP; these other theories don't seem to see much active use or have much influence in linguistic discourse. Off the top of my head, the clearest way to avoid inflating their importance by depicting them "on equal footing" with X-bar/MP is to only depict pictures of X-bar/MP parses alone. I'm hesitant to do that, though.

I think there might be another way. You mentioned that (minus the use of CP) the bracketed phrases seem fairly neutral to you. What if we move away from showing parses beyond the most introductory illustrations, and use brackets for everything more detailed? →Σσς. (Sigma) 05:21, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Using only brackets is an interesting idea, but the structures deliniated by brackets are isomorphic to trees, aren't they? Besides, I'd be very hesitant to impose a single representation style across the board.

As for the alternative theories, I think there's a way of representing them all with WP:DUE weight, and they way to do that is to have the coverage of each theory be proportional to its prominence. And – sorry if this is a point I'm repeating – the proportion will vary between topics. Uanfala (talk) 17:08, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Yes, that's true. Maybe only brackets isn't the best solution.

I think you're right in that the separate theories should be covered proportionally to their prominence, but one of the problems I have in imagining covering each theory is that I've only ever been familiar with one. So in my mind's eye, it makes no sense to have, for example, the article on sluicing only covering Chomskyan linguistics with a section near the bottom containing three paragraphs about sluicing as analysed by other paradigms. So could you illustrate what you propose with an example? →Σσς. (Sigma) 02:57, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

@Uanfala: I don't want to come off as pushing for a solely GB/MP depiction; I have nothing against other theories being depicted. In fact, I'd like nothing better than to depict them. But how much, and in what way?

I think syntax is a specific instance of the general question of how to present alternative academically legitimate theories alongside a much more dominant theory while not giving the appearance that they all have equal sway in the discipline. In the end, I think we should do something about the bad parses, but I just don't know what. →Σσς. (Sigma) 03:31, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

I don't have a one-size-fits-all solution, and I think the way different theories are covered will vary across articles and it will depend on the amount of coverage the topic has received within the various theories, the background of the particular editors working on that article, and the specific consensus that develops. Again, I don't think we should aim for a recipe to impose across the board, sometimes it would be better to relegate different theories' approaches to different sections, at other times it would make more sense to treat them alongside or to assume a more theory-neutral perspective. Uanfala (talk) 06:48, 2 August 2016 (UTC)
  • I think in general we have an overrepresentation of constituency grammar relative to more mainstream approaches due to one editor being an expert in this paradigm. I think what we should do in general is do what basic college textbooks and other introdoctury texts on a given topic do instead of using our own favorite syntactic theories. I think this will often mean that basic x-bar syntax will be the default, and sometimes Basic Lingiustic Theory as used by Dixon and the typologists. In the end the best sources for a given article will make the decision for us.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 07:26, 2 August 2016 (UTC)
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