Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Languages/Template

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[edit] Language Template ill-equipped for sign languages

In the info-box, the terms 'spoken in' and 'total speakers' are confusing when referring to sign languages (see Auslan for an example).

Also, the template's section on the sounds of a language could offer an alternative template for sign languages, eg Fingerspelling system, handshapes. I'm happy to help develop this. ntennis

Update: See Wikipedia:WikiProject Language Template (sign language). ntennis 11:49, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Common ancestral languages

Should languages like Old Norse or Vulgar Latin get templates, infobox and all, too? In the narrower definition of Old Norse as "West Scandinavian" (900-1300) it could be said to be a fairly well-defined seperate language. Any suggestions? Peter Isotalo 20:43, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] vowel section after consonant

Usually, in most of the literature that I read on individual languages (mostly descriptivist, often old structuralist stuff) has the the consonant section before the vowel. This is rather standard, although there are exceptions (e.g. Akamatsu's manual on Japanese phonetics). I am following this tendency. I suggest (gently) that this template follow suit. Or perhaps this is of no concern...? peace — ishwar  (SPEAK) 15:36, 2005 Apr 21 (UTC)

It's true that in most of what I've read, consonants precede vowels. Frankly, I don't really care either way whether consonants or vowels come first, but I suppose consonants first makes a little more sense, just because that's how most people do it. --Whimemsz 22:33, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Restructuring of "Sounds"

Since this section is intended to be a phonology in itself, I removed the "Phonology" section and pasted the text under the main section header. I also added sections on phonotactics and prosody, both of these aspects of phonetics being very much forgotten in most language articles. "Historical sound changes" seem to far more convenient to mention under "History" (preferably without it's own section), so I simply removed it.

Peter Isotalo July 4, 2005 03:29 (UTC)

[edit] Ethnologue disclaimer

I've added quite explicit advice to not use Ethnologue as a source. There has been several conflicts here concering Scanian (linguistics) and Norwegian language (ongoing actually) that are almost entirely due to SIL's inability to abide by consensus among other linguists and, in the case of Scanian, the speakers themselves. Please change the wording if you feel it is too harsh, but one thing needs to be made clear; Ethnologue is not a valid source of information in of itself at the present moment. There are too many factual errors and blatant POV (or just fringe theories).

Peter Isotalo 15:52, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Ethnologue is particularly bad on sign languages. I concur with the advice in this section. ntennis 00:58, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Assimilation etc

I'm not confident enough in my level of knowledge to edit the page. Should there be a sub-section which would cover assimilation, elision, epenthesis, etc. These don't fit within any of the current categories for sounds. Is "Phonological processes" the correct description, or is there another name for this branch of phonology? Gailtb 04:58, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

I would call them "phonological processes". In fact, that's what I did call them at Old English phonology. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 06:08, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Ok. I got brave and did it. Also swapped the order of vowels and consonants in agreement with the discussion above. Changed the main section title to "Sound system" since that seemed to include prosody etc better than "Sounds". Not sure whether "Phonology" would be a better alternative. Hope I'm not treading on anyone's feet! Gailtb 08:40, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

I have always used the section title "phonology" in the articles I've made, but then I'm a phonologist and so am perhaps biased. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 09:04, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
Did it! Gailtb 07:53, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
I really prefer "Sound system". Us wikilinguists might be more comfortable having the proper terms for headers, but I don't see why the use of simpler wording should be avoided. I'm cutting down on the amount of sections: "Tones" can be included in "Prosody", "Phonological processes" can be included in the main description and "Phonotactics" is very, very technical. I think it belongs in the phonology articles, not in the main articles. At least not as a separate section. It's the linguistic equivalent of filling articles on mathematics with tons of obscure equations.
Peter Isotalo 09:01, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
I don't see any reason why Wikipedia articles should be dumbed down. "Phonology" is the correct term, and anyone not knowing what it means can look it up. Tones should not be included in prosody. In tone languages, tones behave parallel to vowels and consonants, and some tone languages have stress in addition to tone. The prosody section should be for word stress, sentence stress, and intonation. More detailed phonological descriptions are best in separate articles, of course, but in some articles there's just not enough content to warrant separating the phonology section out into a separate article. --Angr (t·c) 09:15, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
It's just not a good idea to include words in actual section headers that require a lot of readers to look up the word. Calling it "Sound system" is not dumbing anything down, it's just giving the average reader a break. And prosody includes both stress, intonation as well as use of tones. There is no inherent problem in describing them all under the same header. Most importantly, any language article that has already started breaking it's phonology section down into sections like "Phonological processes" and "Phonotactics" is getting too technical or too large. The point is to encourage summaries that don't dominate the main article and at the same time keeping highly detailed phonology articles for those who want to know more. Just try showing some of the truly huge phonology sections to friends and acquintances who don't know much about phonetics. It's one of the most potent eye-glazers apart from math articles, even for people who are open-minded and curious.
Peter Isotalo 09:34, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

I've just revised it to a far briefer version, with a pointer to Wikipedia:WikiProject Phonology Template, which I've revised at the same time. Although as an ESOL teacher the language phonologies are my main use for Wikipedia, I agree with Peter that the level of detail is likely to be a turn-off for many readers. As regards the title, I guess it's a matter of how academic or "person-in-the-street" friendly we aim to be. Would a compromise like "Phonology (sound system)" be too unwieldy? Another reader-friendly suggestion would be "Pronunciation". That's what is normally used in my line of work to cover all of the topics in Phonology. It also more clearly includes the phonetic descriptions, which to my mind are a little peripheral to Phonology proper. Gailtb 20:55, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

I would say we should aim to be maximally academic, provided enough links are provided that the person in the street can find out what the technical terms mean. An encyclopedia's goal should be to educate, not to spoon-feed its readers monosyllabic sound bites. --Angr 21:11, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
In my experience, the view of way too many academics tends to be that everyone else should be maximally academic, no matter the context. It's something I find fairly arrogant. The aim of an encyclopedia, especially a wiki, is to be as accessible as possible to the broadest possible range of readers. You seem more concerned with placating the needs of the expert minority to use their favorite inkhorn terms instead of biting the bullet and accepting perfectly useful alternatives. (The job of vocabulary enhancement is that of dictionaries.) And why on earth should wikipedias focus on helping those who already know how to get the information elsewhere? That's just adding yet another systemic bias that favors the well-educated.
Peter Isotalo 14:51, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
That's what the links are for. If the reader doesn't know what phonology is, he can click phonology and find out. And an encyclopedia that's inaccurate or misleading simply because accuracy is considered "elitist" is useless (and you used to consider yourself elitist, too). I can't understand a word of Kramers-Kronig relation, a page I recently edited myself, but I would never suggest dumbing it down to the point where I could understand it, because then it would be useless as an encyclopedia article on the Kramers-Kronig relations. Angr/talk 15:03, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sign language template page; Cultural info

Hello friends :) I finally put up a sister template page for sign languages - Wikipedia:WikiProject Language Template (sign language). It would be nice if others have a look at it and see if it fits with the project guidelines, offer feedback etc.

Also, I've been wondering why this template page doesn't include any space for cultural information about the language? For example, literature in the language, or storytelling traditions. Many languages have been suppressed by attempts by a state to impose a national language; some are not used in schools. This kind of information is actually there on many pages, but the template page is really focussed on linguistics. Any thoughts?

Thirdly, I wonder if the name "template" for this page is confusing when the word "template" has a specific meaning on wikipedia. Maybe "Standard page guidelines" or something would be better? ntennis 12:07, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Phonology and grammar

Before, the template had separate sections for phonology, morphology, and syntax. Now Peter has grouped morphology and syntax together under "grammar". This seems wrong to me, as phonology is as much a part of grammar as morphology and syntax are. What do other people think? --Angr 12:21, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Could you please elaborate on that a bit more? I don't see the usefulness in grouping phonology under grammar. Is this a common academic standpoint?
Peter Isotalo 10:06, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
Well, the sources I looked up agree that "grammar" has a narrow meaning (morphology and (morpho)syntax) and a broad meaning (those plus phonology, semantics, and maybe pragmatics). I don't see any reason to impose the narrow definition of "grammar" on this template. --Angr 20:14, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm quite sure that people think of grammar in the more narrow way. At the very least I doubt anyone excepts to see phonology sorted under that category. If we weren't writing for an encyclopedia, I'd agree. In this context I think it will just serve to confuse.
Peter Isotalo 11:08, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
I'm not saying we should sort phonology under the header "Grammar"; I'm saying we should have three separate headers "Phonology", "Morphology", and "Syntax", and no header "Grammar" at all. Imposing either the broad or the narrow definition of "grammar" is POV, so it's better to just avoid using it. Angr/talk 11:48, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
It's so not a political/ideological issue, Angr. It's convenience and more detail for us linguistic aficionados vs reasonable expectations and summary style for the general readership. The former aren't the ones who really need these article in the first place.
Peter Isotalo 11:24, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
I don't see how it's easier for the general reader to be confronted with two headings "Phonology" and "Grammar" with "Grammar" divided into "Morphology" and "Syntax" than to be confronted with three headings "Phonology", "Morphology", and "Syntax". And I disagree with you on the last point: language aficionados are far more likely than non-aficionados to read articles about obscure languages like Nobiin or Lower Sorbian. Angr/talk 12:06, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
It's more difficult because both "morphology" and "syntax" are somewhat obscure terms to most people. If you actually explained their meaning without using the terms themselves, most people would say: "Oh, you mean grammar." And, yes, more lingonerds are likely to read about smaller or lesser known languages, but even if this is true (I think the sheer numbers of non-nerds evens the stats out) they are intended for all readers, not just the nerds. You're telling we have to abide to a putative semantic POV to placate the very people who won't have a problem with a slightly simplified article structure to begin with.
Peter Isotalo 13:53, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
No, I'm saying we should avoid the semantic POV problems by avoiding the ambiguous term "grammar" (which most nonlinguists interpret as prescriptive grammar anyway) altogether. Omitting to group syntax and morphology together as "grammar" is not the same thing as denying that definition. Angr/talk 14:09, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

One of the major drawbacks of the template is the vast disparity in the quality and quantity of he contents of language articles. On the whole, I don't like grammar as a section header as it is far too vague. However, in short and stubby article, this 'how it all works' section might be useful. There has to be some flexibility in our well desired uniformity. In some articles it makes sense to discuss the writing system alongside phonology, in others it doesn't. I do not see how morphology and syntax are that difficult, and I certainly do not want to see a dumbing down of Wikipedia. For a start, both terms should be wikilinked in the text (not the heading). In addition, when discussion language X, one could say "Morphology — The way in which words are formed in X, or the morphology of the language, is..." and "Syntax — X uses the Verb Object Subject structure to form sentences, the syntax of the language". As you can see, some early circumlocution produces a reduction of obfuscatory calamity. — Gareth Hughes 15:11, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How about an alphabet addition as here?

click Ksenon 00:41, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Addition of "Writing system" has been discussed on the template page. You need to go there to contribute to the discussion. "Alphabet" would be highly inappropriate - it would show a lack of topic knowledge. Gailtb 09:13, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

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