User talk:Matve

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[edit] Category additions

Hello. I'm puzzled by this edit of yours. Why add Category:Linguists to James D. McCawley when (i) he's already in Category:American linguists and (ii) Category:Linguists subsumes Category:American linguists?

(If you'd like to reply, please do so here rather than on my talk page. Thanks.) -- Hoary 13:37, August 5, 2005 (UTC)

Hi - I understand that Linguists subsumes American Linguists, but there were already many items in the Linguists category, and this discrepancy between the metacategory and the national subcategories looked very messy. I'm not sure what a good solution would be here, because I think a 'master list' of linguists would be very useful, yet I wouldn't want to get rid of the national categories either. Any ideas? -- Matve 13:41, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
Actually I think the national categories are a bit silly. McCawley was a linguist; his nationality or nation of residence is really not an issue when I read his works. (It's convenient for me that he wrote in English; I suppose "Anglophone linguists" would make more sense.) Still, "American linguists" has been created, is used, and is subsumed under "Linguists"; thus one should either (a) move to dump "American linguists" or (b) accept that it's subsumed under "Linguists" and that he was (or anyway became) American and thus remove his direct entry in "Linguists". I know there's a policy statement about this somewhere, but I'm sleepy and connected expensively via modem right now so I'm not going to look it up. -- Hoary 13:57, August 5, 2005 (UTC)
Well, to some extent I agree. Also, since McCawley was actually born in Scotland, he could potentially be in one or two other subcategories as well, so it could get very confusing! Matve 14:04, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

I can see you have moved some or all linguists into the main cat. I think this is not good. Don’t put people in the main category when there are sub-categories. This is the whole purpose of subcategories. Now it may not be a big deal with linguists right now, but one day there are going to be 10.000 pages with linguists and then its quite another matter. Imagine dumping all actors into one main cat. You get the picture. There is actually a policy about this on wiki. Now I too sometimes have difficulties in placing x person in a specified country cat. He may be born in x country but did his thing in y country, and thus are more known in y country. Sometimes I just place them in both. There are also such cats as German emigrants, German-Americans, Danish-Americans etc that sometime are excellent for just this case. Either way I consequently remove main cats from pages where there exist sub-cats, when I happened to come by. Take care. Twthmoses 16:06, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree. But I think you should have done something about it before, given that there was already a large number of people in Linguists when I started on it. Also, a more polite and less patronising tone would be appreciated. Remember that I have also added many linguists to the national categories from the Linguists category. Matve 09:12, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
I'm not talking down to you, could not be further from my thinking. I actually surprised that you could think that out of my text?
Anyway, I got no problem with people placing pages in the main cat (whatever cat), it usually goes like that when a new article is written and it is just fine with me. Someone, someday will then pickup that page and put it into a sub cat (or create a subcat for it). However re-adding main cats to pages that already is in a sub cat (unless the sub cat is wrong), is not the correct way., I think.
This is actually what led me to this page. I just happened to have removed a main cat from a person in a sub cat, and just saw it was re-added. I was curious to why. Then I saw this discussion, asking exactly the same thing as me. Why add a main cat to a person in a sub cat? This is why I’m writing on this page. Take care Twthmoses 16:15, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
That's fine - I take your point. Sorry for any misunderstandings. Matve 08:00, 10 August 2005 (UTC)


Hello, I'm just curious what you want to do with Kai Donner and Otto Donner? You removed them from Category:Linguists, but didn't add them to either a national linguist category or one indicating their linguistic fields of study? If you are working on these categories, I would also like to ask you how you think one should distinguish area of study from nationality in category names. To me, saying somebody is a "Greek linguist" gives the impression that the person is working with the Greek language, not that s/he is Greek by nationality. And I think both these things should have categories. --up+land 12:57, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

I found no justification in the article or outside it for the claim that they were linguists, if a linguist is someone who studies language scientifically (which is the commonly accepted definition in the field). I don't think we can put just anybody with an interest in language or languages in this category. I have, however, tended to leave in people who have produced a dictionary or grammar.
Second, a 'Greek linguist' suggests nothing to me other than 'linguist from Greece'. I work on Russian, among other languages, but to call myself a 'Russian linguist' would seem absurd. Possibly 'Ancient Greek linguist' would be better in this particular case, though, given that modern Greece and Ancient Greece are quite different countries.
I do agree with you that a separate set of categories for linguists working on a particular language is justified, though. Matve 13:51, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
I agree the articles should have justified the categories (I am not really the author, as the text was broken out from elsewhere), but you might have asked on the talkpage instead of just removing the category. I am restoring it in both cases, with proper justification in the article text. up+land 14:35, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
Apologies for my rather rash removal of the category. It's just that there are so many misconceptions of what a linguist is that you could take forever asking people to justify themselves. Matve 14:43, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Hi Matve. Did you come to any conclusions on this? I also feel that adding the linguists already categorized in national subcats is not the right thing to do. To remedy this, I've improved the navigation between the national subcats and the main cat and added explanatory text to the main cat page. I've also started adding other classifications to cross-cut the national axis, like Category:Historical linguists and Category:Sociolinguists. See Category talk:Linguists for my ideas on making these classifications usable. Mike Dillon 17:46, September 3, 2005 (UTC)

P.S. there is a "master list" of linguists at List of linguists and another at Modern linguists. I'm not exactly clear on why both exist, but there is at least something there. Mike Dillon 17:50, September 3, 2005 (UTC)
I like your idea of adding extra categories, although I can imagine that in many cases a linguist might appear in quite a few of those categories. Do you think that might be a problem? Actually, I haven't read your bit on Category talk:Linguists yet, so I'll do that tomorrow and come back here... Best - Matve 23:23, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

IMHO, the <nationality> linguist are completely irrelevant. Linguists move about a lot, as do other academics. It is more relevant what they research or teach. However, I'm a computational linguist myself, also being interested in historical linguistics, descriptive linguistics and field methods, typology and universals, phonetics and phonology. See the problem? One linguist = one category is W.R.O.N.G. As I've said elsewhere, having the national categories at all is a direct hindrance to browsing for a prticular linguist (to check if there is an article already), since you now either have to guess at what country some linguist sorts under or resort to guessing just what variant of the name has been included in wikipedia (full name? intials? a mix of both?) or hope that yahoo or google has a fresh enough database... Besides, what if two countries claim the same linguist, or any academic for that matter. Was Einstein German? American? French? European? Jewish? How about all the Russian composers that fled to the US? Russian or American? These cats are begging for edit wars. Finally, if it is necessary to include a thesis on each category-page to define which pages are eligible, that category is a failure. It would be a "proper" ontology, not a folksonomy and don't get me started on ontologies... --Kaleissin 22:16:48, 2005-09-03 (UTC)

I see no reason to remove the nationality categories, especially if cross-cutting categories are added, as Mike Dillon has suggested above. Like it or not, nationality is a handy way of categorising people, and I don't think dilemmas of the sort you mention are insurmountable. Was Einstein German, American, French, European or Jewish? Well, what's wrong with putting him in all of those categories? And as for composers, their national origin (and in some cases adopted nationality) is crucial to an understanding of their music, so I would certainly want to keep those. I would also add that if you are searching for a linguist and you are not quite sure of the name form, it would be just as time-consuming to browse through a large number of pages on a complete listing as it would to check the national categories which seem most likely to house the relevant linguist. Matve 23:23, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
As Matve said, there is no reason not to put them in all relevant subcategories. I think this addresses Kaleissin's concern about one category per linguist, which I haven't seen anyone advocating (it's simply the de facto state of affairs). If you don't want to go through the subcategories, that's what the comprehensive list pages like List of linguists are for. I agree that the nationality categories are not always the best axis of classification, but it is sometimes what people want. However, there is no reason to have only one axis of subcategories; that's why many other categories have added "by field" and other "by X" classification axes of topical relevance. In the case of linguists, I have proposed (and partially started) axes by field and language of study by adding Category:Sociolinguists and Category:Historical linguists. Category:Computation linguists and others could easily be added to help those looking specifically computational linguists; all it takes are people who are willing to build out the categories. I have not started to add "linguists by language of study", but there is already Category:Linguists of Yiddish in this vein. Mike Dillon 00:08, September 4, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Bibliography edit

Why did you remove the ISBNs from Bernard Comrie? The books are still in print and it's a real timesaver not to have to find the ISBNs oneself when feeling rich and about to hit the online bookstores... --Kaleissin 21:30:29, 2005-09-03 (UTC)

Cos I'm a bastard. :) Well, no, I think I was in a 'hatchet job' mood and thought they didn't look very pretty in the references section. Sorry if I caused offence. Matve 23:23, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
I would recommend a format like I used on Ronald Langacker. I'm not well versed in bibliography styles, but I have seen this style used elsewhere and it clearly presents all the relevant info in a nicely partitioned format (because of the periods). I do think, though, that listing all the printings and reprintings is a little much. I would suggest listing only the edition/printing used as a reference, or the latest printed version if it is only there for the sake of the bibliography. If that is not the first edition, the edition number should be listed. If it is a reprinting, that should be noted to, e.g. "2nd edition, reprinted 1992". Mike Dillon 00:34, September 4, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Poul Ruders

What was your reason for de-bracketing The Handmaid's Tale in the Ruders article? Some of us have been working on the Opera Corpus and intend to create stubs or entries for composers and operas that appear in red there. To that end, I amended composer articles such as that for Ruders to include works listed in the Corpus, so that a link will automatically appear when the stub/article is created. As I've seen this particular opera and have the recording, it was quite high on the To Do list in my head. --GuillaumeTell 22:27, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Apologies. I removed it because Tycho hadn't been bracketed. Matve 23:44, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
Apology accepted, but do you think that Tycho should have been bracketed?. Also, if I may say so, it's worth checking "What links here" before de-bracketing. (And feel free to create/upgrade any of the Corpus stuff that you're interested in, or, indeed, to add composers and/or operas to the Corpus.) Hope this makes sense. --GuillaumeTell 01:20, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
Re Tycho, I have no idea. Thanks for the tips. Matve 22:42, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Adam Boulton place of birth ambiguous

I see you've recently added a place of birth for Adam Boulton.

The place you mentioned is "Reading" with a link to a page of that name.

Unfortunately, that is a disambiguation page, which ordinarily would not be linked.

I would normally disambiguate links to "Reading", but in this case I can't work out the correct disambiguation.

Can you provide further information (or alternatively disambiguate the link yourself)?

If you have any questions, feel free to ask at User talk:Duckbill.

Thanks, Duckbill 17:06, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Notice board

Hi, I just thought you might be interested in Wikipedia:Baltic States notice board. We are missing some Estonian contributors :) Renata 02:04, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dance capitalization

I noticed that you listed yourself as a linguist. There is currently a dispute at the Lindy Hop article the Dance WikiProject about the capitalization of dances that could use the expertise of a linguist. If you think you might be able to help, we would certainly appreciate your comments. Thanks! --Cswrye 05:18, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Invite

Hello! I thought you may be interested in joining WikiProject England. We work on creating, expanding and making general changes to England related articles. If you would be interested in joining feel free to visit the Project Page!. Thank You.
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