Talk:maternal uncle

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maternal uncle

Latest comment: 15 years ago15 comments8 people in discussion

Sum of parts: useful only as a place to hang translations. (Unlike some editors, I'm not thoroughly opposed to having such a place in cases like this where a lot of languages make this distinction; but if we're going to do that, the entry should be structured so as to make that clear, and it should only include the translations that rightfully hang there. A lot of the translations we currently list are either catch-all words for "uncle", or equally-SOP translations.) —RuakhTALK 12:54, 27 April 2008 (UTC)Reply

Is it really sum of parts? A genealogically naive user might assume it means "mother's uncle." -- Visviva 13:02, 27 April 2008 (UTC)Reply
Or a matronly uncle. —Stephen 13:24, 27 April 2008 (UTC)Reply
Keep. Not sum of parts. No combination of maternal or uncle will define the term without ambiguity.--Dmol 14:16, 27 April 2008 (UTC)Reply
Necessary, and desirable, in English. Translations which are SOP should have their component words wikilinked separately. Widsith 20:46, 27 April 2008 (UTC)Reply

So, question: would y'all argue that since (deprecated template usage) maternal brother isn't already taken as a genealogical term, it might indeed indicate a mother's brother, or to a motherly brother? It's true that (deprecated template usage) maternal has multiple senses, but I believe that (deprecated template usage) maternal <relative> has only one, and various examples of this fact are all SOP. —RuakhTALK 03:57, 29 April 2008 (UTC)Reply

No, I would say that "maternal brother" can only mean a brother who is quite motherly. At any rate, it is pretty confusing to interpret it any other way. More to the point, it is an almost non-existant phrase, whereas maternal uncle is a very common collocation, and furthermore is idiomatic in the sense that this is the most natural way to express the concept in English. Widsith 05:41, 29 April 2008 (UTC)Reply
Well, all the b.g.c. hits I can find for "maternal brother" use it to mean "brother with whom ego shares a mother" only... however, a web search for "maternal brother"+"mother's brother" turns up a number of sites which appear to treat these phrases as synonymous. (For example, on a professor's course-notes website, "He notes in European stories the maternal brother is good and the father's brother is evil." ) This does seem to indicate that "maternal" can be polysemous even when applied to relatives, at least when the author is not paying strict attention. Personally, if I encountered "maternal brother" out of context, I wouldn't be sure which way to interpret it, if only because the notion of distinguishing siblings by shared parent is rather foreign to me. -- Visviva 06:00, 29 April 2008 (UTC)Reply
Oh yeah, good point. You could obviously have a maternal brother and a step-brother. Widsith 06:31, 29 April 2008 (UTC)Reply
So if I may paraphrase: there's a strong tendency to interpret (deprecated template usage) maternal uncle as "uncle on one's mother's side", just as there's a strong tendency toward that interpretation of (deprecated template usage) maternal <relative> in all other cases. (Is that fair to say?) That doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement of the term's non-SOP-ness. —RuakhTALK 21:17, 29 April 2008 (UTC)Reply
Weak delete. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 23:15, 29 April 2008 (UTC)Reply
Keep. IMO reasonable doubt exists as to compositionality, and the value of this and related terms as translation-hangers adds some weight in favor of keeping. -- Visviva 14:49, 12 May 2008 (UTC)Reply
Keep. Not sum of parts. very useful for translations and linguistic analysis. --Diligent 05:04, 29 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Keep as a family term. Interestingly, a maternal uncle can have special status in some placs, see s:On the function of the maternal uncle in Torres Straits. --Jackofclubs 16:07, 28 May 2009 (UTC)Reply

Kept per consensus. --Jackofclubs 12:19, 9 June 2009 (UTC)Reply

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