User talk:Mark Dingemanse/Archive9

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[edit] Military history of Sudan

Since the Collaboration of the Week folks are known for preferring Military Histories of countries, I nominated Military history of Sudan. It has been six days since then, and I have only received one more vote. Unless I get one more vote supporting this nomination, it will be closed tomorrow. Please add your support at WP:COTW/Military history of Sudan. Also see WP:COTW/Languages of Sudan. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-7 14:56

Thanks for the notice, Brian. Though I'm really not the one to help out on Military history of Sudan I'll surely look into Languages of Sudan. — mark ✎ 15:10, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] re: User:Zondor/Naming conventions

promoted to guideline -- Zondor 09:14, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] re: Thank you!

And thanks for the compliment. Because I often feel the same way about your contributions, that means much more to me than you might suspect. -- llywrch 00:19, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Côte d'Ivoire —> Ivory Coast

Hey, Mark! Don't know if you noticed, but Côte d'Ivoire is currently up for move to Ivory Coast. As this has potential implications for lots of Africa articles, I thought I'd bring it to your attention. The discussion is at Talk:Côte d'Ivoire#Requested move. —BrianSmithson 22:58, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Noted, voted. We've been through this before, and I'm all for Côte d'Ivoire. — mark ✎ 09:28, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Conspiracy theory redux

"This is the song that never ends, it just goes on and on my friends..." See [1]. Jayjg ^(talk) 20:54, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Oh boy, here we go again. I'll see about voting there; actually I hope it doesn't have to come to a vote. Thanks for notifying. — mark ✎ 22:11, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Map of languages in Africa

Hey Mark! Great job with the maps. I have posted some suggestion for changes to the Africa map on Talk:African languages. Cheers. --Big Adamsky 20:47, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Big Adamsky, because I'm trying to centralize the discussion, I have copied these comments to commons:Image talk:African language families.png and responded there. — mark ✎ 10:40, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments on the map; I have moved them to here and replied there in order to keep talk centralized. On a sidenote, judging from your contributions, you might like Wikiproject Countering Systemic Bias. Regards, — mark ✎ 11:17, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Looks like the right club for me, I'll join soon. I am also interested in learning more about how I can submit map images. I feel I have great deal to contribute in the area of maps (particularly thematic maps), but I still lack the means to create and submit my works. Any tips? (I'll copy this to your talk page) --Big Adamsky 11:52, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Hello again Mark. I have posted a couple of more suggestions on the commons page concerning Indo-European-speaking zones in (and around) the continent. Just wanted to let you know here on your talk page in case you hadn't noticed my posting. --Big Adamsky 15:57, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up; I don't check out Commons as much as Wikipedia. I have noted your suggestions and will use them in the next update. Thanks for your thoughts! — mark ✎ 17:09, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Xed Evidence

I don't know what the issue is but I think all are automatically displayed in UTC, I'll look into it though and I'll try to fix them as soon as I can if it's something on my end. Thanks for letting me know though. Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 22:14, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Apparently time when actually viewing the diffs changes depending on the offset you set in preferences, I've reverted all my changes to the Xed evidence page until I can get a chance to get back on and figure this out, if all else fails I'll redo it all with a 0 offset and mark them all as the time UTC. Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 22:25, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

I have now timestamped my evidence with offset 0. — mark ✎ 23:01, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Tifinagh - NL

Beste Mark Dingemanse, ik heb op je Nederlanstalige overlegpagina een vraag geplaatst over recente wijzigingen in nl:Tifinagh. Xyboi 04:54, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Language

Hi Mark! Thanks for working through some of the language articles and changing over the name. It doesn't all have to be done at once: the old style will keep on working. It'll just make any future colour changes a bit difficult to understand: e.g. an article might say familycolor=pink and the colour turns out to be blue! I'm just about to upload a new array, {{language/genetic}}. This means that, if the definition of fam1 is identical to familycolor, fam1 need not be specified. I think I've ironed out most of the wrinkles, but it might be best to try a preview of the infobox without fam1 just to see if it is working properly. I hope you're enjoying the new style! --Gareth Hughes 15:48, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Replying there. — mark ✎ 15:52, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] ablaut, apophony, & IE

hi. i am wondering if you can give your opinion at Talk:Ablaut. There is a difference of opinion between me and 2 other editors.

User:Doric Loon claims that the term ablaut refers to primarily only Indo-European langs and that the term apophony refers to base alternation generallly including non-IE langs.

I claim that ablaut is a more general term that refers to alternation in any language (not solely IE langs) and is therefore synonymous with apophony (for the most part).

Doric Loon wants Ablaut to redirect to Indo-European ablaut. I think it would make more sense to redirect to Apophony (but perhaps Ablaut should be a separate article?).

Doric Loon is unhappy that I moved the information in Indo-European ablaut from its original location at Ablaut (which is now a redirect). User:teb728 agrees with Doric Loon & disagrees with me.

Thank you. – ishwar  (speak) 15:31, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

I have replied at Talk:Ablaut. For the record, Ablaut is of course the most general term, and it is used also widely outside of IE linguistics. — mark ✎ 17:50, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Swahili noun classes

Hi Mark,

Just responding to a comment you made while editing the Swahili article.

As for class 9 being the default class for loans, Contini-Morava points out it's the default class for native words as well. For example, answered his hello would have hello as class 9 (‘Hodi’ yake). It's a short step from there to using class 9 for nonce borrowings, and for many of them to get stuck there. Perhaps it's the default 'other' class for native words because it doesn't have a prefix.

When you said that the classes of borrowings are determined by morphology rather than semantics, that seems to be only partially correct. A lot of Arabic borrowings have had noun class prefixes added to them, to assimilate them into the semantically appropriate class. For example, m-jeledi (whip) and m-fereji (irrigation ditch), in the miti class with other long things; m-furia (coat) in the same class, with other body coverings; ki-bahaluli (fool) and ki-fefe (weakling), in the kitu class with other 'defective' human beings; ki-baba with other units of measure; u-patu (gong; Hindi patu) and u-kurasa (paper) in class 11/14 with other flat or dish-shaped things; u-raibu (betel leaf chew) in the same class, with other chewy or gunky things; u-sufi and m-sufi (kapok fiber & kapok tree) in 11/14 with other fibers and in 3 with other trees, etc.

Perhaps the initial consonant of borrowings dictates the noun class of the word only in so far as it's semantically compatible with the words already in that class? kwami 21:51, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Interesting subject. My initial thought, on coming across your expansion of Swahili language, was that optimism about the activitity of these semantic nets isn't really warranted, if only because there are examples where form dictates class assignment (a possibility which Contini-Morava notes herself, too — e.g. "some are loanwords that had ki- as initial syllable, and so may have been placed in this class for phonological reasons," [2]). An example would be kioski (7/8). Furthermore, the fact that the great majority of loans is heaped up in 9/10 (including many words that would fit into Contini-Morava's semantic categories for other classes, e.g. liki 'leek', kitibegi 'kitbag') isn't exactly semantic. Significantly, your examples concern only the (much older) Arabic stratum; this might indicate that back then, the system was 'more active' than in modern times. This means at least that the semantic net is defective nowadays. That is what I meant when I said in my edit summary: "adding 'largely', e.g. most loanwords for some reason come in class 9/10, but some come in other classes because of their morphologics, not their semantics".

Generally, I am very sympathetic towards cognitive linguistics, but on reading papers like this one by Contini-Morava, I sometimes feel that the focus is too much on constructing beautiful networks without asking the question as to their exact theoretical status. In this case, the question to be asked is: is there something cognitively real about these semantic relations? My take on Swahili would be that there isn't, not anymore, and that the exceptions described above are symptoms of this fact. I am not saying that it isn't possible to say interesting things about the semantics of the class system in Swahili; there is, and Contini-Morava does a fine job in describing some of the possible semantic nets that can be constructed. Her enterprise, however, makes me wonder how much of this is really about uncovering underlying (active, cognitively real) semantic motivations; it is susceptible to the kind of criticism Keysar and Bly (1999) pass on the analysis of idioms, which according to Lakoff 'reflect conceptual structure' but according to them merely do so a posteriori. As they say, some idioms are "expressions that are transparent but not motivated by systematic conceptual mapping" (1999:1572) and that these "are transparent only because people already know the meaning and are able to construct a 'story' to make sense of them" (ibid.). (There is more to it, but this is already becoming quite a long essay.) I think this might apply to the noun class system of Swahili also: it makes sense, in a limited way, but that in itself doesn't warrant the claim that this reflects an underlying active semantic network. It might just be only diachronically relevant, just like the fact that certain body part terms are often recruited as spatial adpositions doesn't mean that speakers actively construe space by means of online extension of body part terms (rather, this reflects a common grammaticization path, and for good reason).

There is another reason why I think it isn't profitable to suggest that the noun classes function as active semantic networks: competence. As I take it, claiming that the semantic nets are not just diachronically relevant, but have cognitive reality among other things entails that they play an active role in, for example, determining agreement throughout the sentence. I think this would place too great a burden on semantics; my position is that for a large part, class assignment simply has to learned by the speakers, just like gender in Germanic languages.

• Contini-Morava, Ellen [n.d.] Noun Classification in Swahili.
• Keysar, B. & Bly, B.M 1999. 'Swimming against the current: Do idioms reflect conceptual structure?', Journal of Pragmatics, 31, 1559-1578.

— mark ✎ 18:06, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

All good points, and I wasn't taking issue with your rewording. Certainly the system is completely lexicalized (although I expect that class reassignment still takes place), and a large influx of loanwords tends to break down things like this. I imagine that when class assignment is made, it is done by associating the new word with specific similar existing words rather than with the whole class, so that for the most part the nets only exist diachronically (except for a few particularly active portions of some of them). And of course any attempt to reconstruct motivations for historical processes is suspect. All of these are valid concerns that should be raised in a more complete article, but given the brevity of the Swahili article, my intention was more along the lines of supplying readers with a mnemonic for learning a system that at first sight is chaos. kwami 20:38, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Agumba

Hi - this new article came out of a request on the new Wikipedia:Articles for creation page. Not sure how close this is to your area of expertise, but maybe you'd like to take a quick look to see if you see anything egregiously bad about it? It's well outside what I usually write about, and my quick literature search left me a little confused by the shifting names used for peoples. CDC (talk) 18:24, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

It's not exactly my area of expertise either, but the article looks good, generally. I have one question though: is it true, as the sentence implies, that foreign anthropologists worked among the Agumba, calling them Dorobo? If so, they must have been around still less than 130 years ago.

By the way, you recently added Distefano 1990 to the References section of Dorobo. I moved it to 'further reading', because I didn't consult it in writing the article; but if you think it's a good reference for the Dorobo article, it could probably be moved back. Strangely enough, I didn't make the connection between that action and your question about Agumba. — mark ✎ 17:48, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Africa Award

Hey, Mark. Would you take a look at User:BrianSmithson/Africa Award and give me your feedback on the talk page? I'm trying to come up with an award that users can present to editors who do good work on Africa-related articles. For the image, I wanted something iconic but not exploitative. So no "bush taxi award" or "pygmy award", etc. Any suggestions? I plan to post something on the regional notification board, too. Thanks! —BrianSmithson 20:03, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Mark Dingemanse is presented this Africa Award for his work on African linguistics, particularly his creation of beautiful maps and illustrations. Presented by BrianSmithson from the Africa-related regional notice board

Take one! You've earned it! — BrianSmithson 13:00, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Wow! Thank you, Brian! It is a great honour. — mark ✎ 13:04, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, then, let me warmly second yours as well. Not two weeks ago I had a friend from the Peace Corps e-mail me for West African language resources, and I was happy to be able to point her to your articles; though they'll never be able to find you to thank you, I have a feeling international aid workers will be referring to your entries here for years to come. Keep up the good work! --Dvyost 16:48, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

PS You may have already seen me post Brian about this, but if you haven't, you should read the article you get when you type my full name into here. For the record, I'm not that one. =)

[edit] Yoruba Wikipedia

nl:Overleg gebruiker:Mark Dingemanse#Yoruba Wikipedia. Belgian man 20:28, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] BB69

In Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/BB69, you say:

Block this user for disruption. No well-meaning editors should be wasting their time on sorry things like this.

How is this done? I spend too much of my time dealing with crank POV pushers, notably Thrax and Deucalionite. Thanks! --Macrakis 18:14, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, I've had my share of disruptive users too; see for example Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Roylee. It has since become more clear to me that such users should be shown the door as soon as possible, as they tend to drain the resources of valuable editors. As for how it is done, I am not sure. I am too decent to block someone I have been in dispute with myself, but I think I would support any admin who blocked Roylee. The BB69 case strikes me as similar in some respects (viz. willfully citing unreliable sources, or sources that on close reading do not really support claims made).

Leaving the problem to others can work sometimes, too. In any case, never let them drive you away; rather, turn your attention to things more worthy if you're tired of dealing with crackpots. — mark ✎ 17:34, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Kanembu

Hey Mark,

Jotted out a quick entry for the Kanembu of Chad today, but was at a loss to describe how their language is related to Kanuri language. No doubt you've got seventy better things to do, but if you could glance at Kanuri language and Kanembu at Ethnologue, a word or two at the Kanembu article would be much appreciated. Thanks! --Dvyost 20:15, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] A Christmas Barnstar

Its you and TreveX. You are special.

I could go on and on, but I will leave it to this gesture to tell you how important you have been to Africa on wikipedia.Ezeu 04:17, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your high praise. — mark ✎ 08:30, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] DYK

Did you know? has been updated. A fact from the article Arsène Roux, which you recently created, has been featured in that section on the Main Page. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

--Gurubrahma 06:58, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Yoruba vowel diagram

No worries. ;o) That's about all the fruit of an attempt I made a few months ago to expand the article roughly to where it is now; I lost heart when I realised I could count the books on the subject I could find in my entire city on my thumbs. You want to talk about systemic bias... ～J.K. 21:44, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

You're quite right; my city library only has two books, both about a dubious blend of New Age thought and Yoruba mythology. I'm just lucky to have access to a particularly fine university library... — mark ✎ 08:18, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, I should have been clearer: I'm not talking about city libraries here (which are generally a waste of time for anything but the most popular, generalist linguistics). My city has three university libraries (two good, one excellent), one state-funded research library, and there I only found two useful books. BTW, have a refreshing wikibreak. ～J.K. 06:17, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Everyking

In general, yes, I'd be happy to. In the specific case of Everyking, as he is inevitably stalking me onto every talk page he can find and trying as hard as he can to come inches from violating the letter of his parole while violating the spirit as much as possible, in all honesty, no, probably I can't - or, at least, doing so will have no noticable effect. Phil Sandifer 15:29, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for responding; I see where you're coming from. I have tried to remedy the issue by adding section headings above such exchanges, hope that's OK to you. — mark ✎ 15:34, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Ecclesiastes

That link to wikisource:Bible,_English,_King_James,_Ecclesiastes#Chapter_1 that you've been putting into some of your afd comments is broken; it was apparently moved to wikisource:Bible, King James, Ecclesiastes and the redirect deleted. Thought you should know. —Cryptic (talk) 20:20, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

I noticed that after ten votes or so, after that I replaced it with a link to the World English version. Thanks anyway! — mark ✎ 18:39, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Nzema

It was good to see the interesting remarks you added to this page so quickly. I started this to give more background in about AMO. Harrypotter 15:40, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, I came across it because you added a link at Akan languages, and then I thought: why not expand it a bit? — mark ✎ 18:39, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Qala'un Mosque

Hi, would you care to explain on Talk:Qala'un Mosque why you removed it from the GA list? Thanks, — mark ✎ 16:04, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I just noticed that Template:delistedGA was on Talk:Qala'un Mosque (it had been added by User:Nae'blis who forgot to remove it from the list. CG 17:39, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Ah, I'll ask him, then. I saw him adding the template and I assumed that he did that after you delisted it, but apparently it was the other way round. Thanks! — mark ✎ 18:15, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Actually Cedar-Guardian is incorrect. My placement of {{delistedGA}} [3] at 2005-12-30 10:49:28 was a response to his removal of it from the list [4] at 2005-12-30 04:01:25. I don't know the reasons he chose to do so; presumably it was not up to the standards they have in place at Wikipedia:Good articles. I was merely doing housekeeping. -- nae'blis _(talk) 18:45, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Interesting. Anyway, since none of you gives a reason for delisting it, I've relisted it. — mark ✎ 18:50, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm really sorry for the misunderstanding. I checked the dates and your right, but it's strange, I remember to have deleted it because of the template. I must have some kind of memory loss. Again, I'm sorry. CG 16:47, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Hey, no sweat. I'm sort of neutral on the whole GA project anyway, but I didn't want the articles listed and the articles templated to get out of sync. The article seems a little short to be on the GA list, but mosques aren't my forté. I've been accused of having memory loss myself lately...maybe the download into Wikipedia is working a little too well... -- nae'blis _(talk) 00:13, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Afro-Asiatic.png

Kudos to you for your efforts on the map. May I be presumptious in suggesting the inclusion of Malta? It'd be cool to see the sole Semitic-speaking European country represented on the map. Al-Andalus 18:18, 30 December 2005 (UTC).

You know, this issue was raised before, and the problem is that I don't think Malta is big enough for the grid; the maps in this series mainly serve to present a quick overview of the distribution of the phylum. In the future, I might be pressed to create some more detailed maps however. — mark ✎ 18:38, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] My Request for Adminship

Hey man, thanks a lot for voting in my RfA, I got it! :) If you need anything, just give me a shout. - FrancisTyers 00:53, 6 January 2006 (UTC)