Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Weak position (grammar)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus. Deizio talk 11:18, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Weak position (grammar)

OR/neologism and a minor topic that should be covered elsewhere, e.g. in Grammaticalization —The preceding unsigned comment was added by CapnPrep (talk • contribs) 2006-10-12 05:13:25 (UTC)

• Delete as OR. The article actually asserts that it is "intended as an initial interpretation of 'weak position'," and I can't easily find any online references that use the term in precisely the same sense as the article. --Hyperbole 05:49, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
  • The text that you are talking about is simply an inexperienced editor's substitute for using the {{expert}} tag. This article grew out of a dangling hyperlink in analytic language that was added in this edit by VKokielov (talk • contribs) and appears to have been good faith attempt by a non-expert to recolour a redlink. Uncle G 12:02, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete -- I was just starting back then. The term itself comes from a Bulgarian book, "Istorija na bylgarskija ezik", by a certain Kiril Mirchev -- whenever pronouns come after nouns, he writes that they're in "weak position". Whether the link was needed is another question. --VKokielov 14:00, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
• Weak delete. "Weak position" is used in several contexts in grammar and linguistics. This is not the most common historical one: more frequent is the use of weak position to describe unstressed syllables. In classical prosody, "weak position" is where a short vowel that is usually grammatically long, usually because of preceding a consonant cluster containing a liquid, is realized as short for metrical purposes because it is unstressed. FWIW, the loss of case marking in Romance has more to do with phonemic erosion than it does with "weakness" arising from following a preposition. Whether the prepositions caused this erosion, or their use is its result, is a chicken-and-egg argument. - Smerdis of Tlön 14:09, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

• I went a head and added a description of weak syllables in Greek prosody. - Smerdis of Tlön 14:51, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

• (I started this AfD in the first place, so I guess I've already voted) Yes, the phrase "weak position" must come up all over the place in grammar and linguistics, and also in sports and economics and architecture and psychology… But is it a recognized, technical term in any of these fields, or does it just mean, well, "weak position"? If it has the status of a standard term in poetry, this can just be noted in the Meter (poetry) article, and not in a separate article, and certainly not one called "Weak position (grammar)"! And if we make a disambiguation page for all the possible uses of "weak position" then I think we'll also need to create large object (disambiguation), dark area (disambiguation), bad idea (disambiguation), etc. etc. etc. (Please do not click on any of those.)

• Hey, we already have Bad Thing. <grin> I'm not sure that weak positions in Greek prosody merit a separate article either, for that matter, and agree that it is only under the broadest sense that it counts as "grammar" or even phonology. It's my curse to see many things that come up here as a challenge. - Smerdis of Tlön 16:22, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

It seems like anceps might be a more established term for these "weak" syllables in Greek and Latin poetry? CapnPrep 15:08, 13 October 2006 (UTC) [Er, actually, no. Never mind. CapnPrep 13:05, 19 October 2006 (UTC)]

• Keep, please. I have just rewritten the article to make it clear that there are (at least) three distinct, well attested uses of "weak position" in phonology, prosody, and grammar. (I am expert in none of these fields, and the OP's usage of "weak position" might not be all that common for all I know, but the others are bog-standard in their scholarly niches.) Hopefully the article is now useful to bewildered first-year classics students, among others. Michael K. Edwards 12:33, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

OK, you can keep the page but I still think the original stuff about syntactic weak position should be deleted. And so the entire article can be given over to the metrical stuff, and then the article name definitely needs changing, to Weak position (poetry) (or just Weak position, I suppose). CapnPrep 12:41, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

If you mean the vulgar Latin bit, I may agree, although it would be nice to have an expert opinion. The German usage is for real, and I suspect there are others. As to the move, who's to say there isn't a technical meaning of "weak position" in, say, go?  :-) Cheers, Michael K. Edwards 13:37, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

I hadn't noticed the addition of German, and the external link is very good, but the established term in this case is "weak" and not "weak position" (cf. "weak declension", "weak ending", "weak form", "weak article/adjective/noun"), and it is already treated (or should be) in articles like Declension and German articles. And there are already disambiguation pages for strength and weakness where pointers to this information could be added. So I still don't see any reason to keep a page called "Weak position (grammar)". CapnPrep 13:07, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

• Keep per Michael K. Edwards's rewrite. (I added the refs tag at the end, which was missing.) AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 13:08, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.