User talk:Doric Loon/PIE Roots project page

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This project page arose out of discussions at Talk:List of Indo-European roots. Please continue those discussions here. Feel free to edit the project page and sample articles - just because they are temporarily in my userspace does not mean they are my property. --Doric Loon 16:24, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

my comments would be,

  • roots are not "reconstructed words", they are the semantic core morphemes of words, reconstructed or not. For example, the (synchronic) root of loon is loon- (whence also loony), but the (syncronic) root of doric would be dor-, since -ic is a synchronically recognizeable adjective suffix.
  • don't do it on Wikipedia. Do it on Wiktionary. There is no rule saying that wiktionary articles cannot have extended discussions of etymology. Linking to grammar terms from wiktionary is no problem, just use w: in wikilinks.
  • The referencing is straightforward. Use a few abbreviations, say IEW and LIV. Everything added on top of IEW and LIV material needs full citation (author, year, and all). The internet is the haunt of too much etymological madness.
  • I would suggest keeping the homophonic roots on one page, in h2 sections. There is little point in numbering lemmas, like kel-1, kel-2 on a wiki.

dab (ᛏ) 17:02, 31 March 2006 (UTC)


I'm easy on the Wikipedia/Wiktionary choice. Your vote is clear. I take your other points. I say your offer of the bot on the other page - sounds great! --Doric Loon 17:33, 31 March 2006 (UTC)



The roots are reconstructed improperly. They should be listed as *h3reg- and *gwen-. Alas. --Glengordon01 20:25, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Glengordon, I've moved the above comment here because I think it is easier to discuss it here. I agree with you on the second one, but had difficulty with the raised w. This may be a problem, that we cannot get the symbols we want into the article titles, though I should have been able to get it into the text of the article alright. For the former, I think you would have to give a source for a claim like that - the form I cite is from Calvert Watkins. --Doric Loon 18 April 2006 (UTC)