User talk:DCDuring/2010 QII

You've added cooking with gas to category:English non-constituents. Is that right? It's a verb phrase, like have a ball, but in the present progressive. Or am I missing something?​—msh210℠ 15:17, 14 April 2010 (UTC)Reply

I think it is never a constituent: it always needs a form of be and only exists in progressive forms (not just present, BTW, eg, at least past and future: "was", "will be", however rarely). Unlike most -ing forms this does not retain its idiomatic sense when used as a noun. That explains why this merits a qualification not applicable in the same way to other -ing forms, though it would be applicable to all progressive forms of all English verbs.

I was just about ready to concede the point and had to reconstruct, not remember my reasoning. Perhaps this should be on its talk page, however the conversation is resolved. I don't know that the "non-constituent" category has ever gotten any discussion. Perhaps this is worth WT:TR. DCDuring TALK 15:34, 14 April 2010 (UTC)Reply

Ah, I see; thanks. Yeah, sure, moving it to the talkpage sounds good. I don't see why to TR it.​—msh210℠ 16:02, 14 April 2010 (UTC)Reply

Could you weigh in please at WT:RFD#no_nevermind? Thanks.​—msh210℠ 17:02, 22 April 2010 (UTC)Reply

Well, I am a little overweight. DCDuring TALK 17:53, 22 April 2010 (UTC)Reply

 :-)  Thanks.​—msh210℠ 19:50, 22 April 2010 (UTC)Reply

The landing page etymology is not redundant. It carries essential etymological information.

1. That 1996 is the earliest known attestation. Do you think that a reader of the an older version should have inferred that we consider this term new in 2007?
2. That this term is formed by compounding English landing + page, rather than, e.g., calqued from another language, abbreviated from landing web page, etc. Do you think that a reader looking at an older version of silver wedding should have assumed that the term was an English compound rather than a calque?

There are ten thousand entries where inferring that our earliest given citation is the earliest known is wrong, and ten thousand where inferring that the headword links are etymological is wrong. Neither of these things positively states nor even vaguely implies these etymological facts. Pretending that they do will reinforce these assumptions by editors and lead to misleading more readers. —Michael Z. 2010-04-27 16:48 z

You can waste as much time, space, and goodwill as you would like on these things, but the meaning of (deprecated template usage) redundant and the fact of redundancy in this case remains. DCDuring TALK 16:58, 27 April 2010 (UTC)Reply

I don't want your ill will, so I'll indulge in less discussion. But I don't believe that an entry gives the reader an earliest attested date when it doesn't, nor that headword links show that compounds are compounds and simultaneously that calques, borrowings, or elliptical abbreviations are not. The reader is not served when implicit information is identical to its opposite or to nothing at all, so this could come up again in editing. Regards. —Michael Z. 2010-04-27 23:32 z

You might be right on the substance, but I have an intense dislike of using space on landing pages. I think that monolingual dictionary users are often looking for a quick answer (usually a definition. We often fail to make them believe that they will get their answer quickly. Actually, I haven't looked at our success relative to other dictionary sites. Maybe we are doing better than we were against MWOnline.

I was beginning to feel quite cranky. Thanks for heeding my warning about my mood. Sorry to have gotten cranky. DCDuring TALK 23:46, 27 April 2010 (UTC)Reply

Cheers. Maybe it's a problem of presentation rather than substance. —Michael Z. 2010-04-28 04:16 z

I'm here to comment on something else (see next section), but saw this and couldn't resist butting in to agree with Michael. Of course, some of our etymologies allegedly of compounds/prefixeds/suffixeds are wrong (they're actually calqued/derived).​—msh210℠ 17:06, 27 April 2010 (UTC)Reply

I too, feel compelled to chime in here. To begin with, many of our multiple word entries have etymologies which are simply sum of parts. However, as Mzajac and msh210 rightly note, there are other complications, such as calques and the like. I think that, in most cases, people are simply guessing (accurately guessing, most of the time, I suspect) that a word's etymology is simply the sum of its parts. In these cases, I think it is somewhat redundant, and just a little dangerous, to put {{compound|first word|second word}} as an etymology. However, in cases where we have any other relevant information, such as the year of coinage or anything else, like we do in this case, then a separate etymology section is certainly warranted. DCDuring, as you know, I share your concern with wasted above the fold space. Whatever Mzajac might say about how most internet users are accustomed to scrolling (information which I believe, by the way), I think that we nonetheless should strive to give our users the most relevant information at a glance. Even if they'll get to it anyway, it's a poorly designed site where a viewer has to go looking for the information they want; it should simply be there, in plain sight. However, we don't want to sacrifice information content for usability. We want both. Instead of slashing worthwhile content, we should be focusing on how we can organize all that info in an intuitive and manageable way. As it turns out, I'm working on something along these lines that I'm pretty excited about (it's not about etymologies, actually but example quotations). Ultimately, I think that the whole Mediawiki engine, while nice for an ecyclopedia, is horrid for a dictionary, and will have to be rebuilt in time. In any case, for the time-being, we have to work with what we've got. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 00:03, 28 April 2010 (UTC)Reply

Sounds intriguing – have anything to show?

I'm not concerned about the fold per se, but I wouldn't doubt that the definition is what most visitors are interested in. I'd have no problem with moving the etymology section down or making it collapsed by default.

I've thought for a long time that Wiktionary should have modes that allow a reader to customize the display for their needs, or persistent collapsing for all the sections. We are a synchronic dictionary, a historical dictionary, an etymological dictionary, a hundred translation dictionaries, etc, etc. But it's not ideal that we're all of these things at once and all the time. —Michael Z. 2010-04-28 04:16 z

Ok, try adding 'importScript('User:Atelaes/InlineBox.js');' to your monobook.js, then take a look at User:Atelaes/Sandbox. I am the furthest thing from an expert programmer, and so it might simply cause your computer to insult your mother......but it worked for me, finally. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 14:46, 28 April 2010 (UTC)Reply

Will try it. This kind of thing would, in principle, accommodate registered users. Thus our default layout could be more finely tuned to unregistered users, who may find lengthy material appearing before the inflection line, definitions, and translations distracting or discouraging. Having some actual facts about the behavior of unregistered users would be quite helpful in reducing controversy about presentation to them. DCDuring TALK 15:10, 28 April 2010 (UTC)Reply

Mayhaps you should re-write some of the feedback questions to get information that you want to appear at . Conrad.Irwin 15:14, 28 April 2010 (UTC)Reply

Your particular expertise is needed further....​—msh210℠ 17:06, 27 April 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thanks.​—msh210℠ 17:33, 27 April 2010 (UTC)Reply

How would one show that a definition is nonstandard? --NE2 13:37, 1 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

Authorities, perhaps. Like Garner's Modern American Usage (2009). But they devote themselves to grammar errors, neologisms, changes in parts of speech. Garner grades usage in terms of where is stands in terms of adoption into standard written English, not whether it is legitimate among some users. Language authorities do not talk much about extensions of meaning or metaphorical use of a word, such as this case. Clearly, the fans of highways have glorified their interest by appropriating an official-sounding word to makes what many consider a mundane matter into something more. It reminds me of the orders and titles in fraternal orders, such as the Elks and Masons. The navy fans might see this as the trivialization of the term to the detriment of the glorification of their hobby and of the military and of military service. But they are unlikely to succeed in preventing use by others. I don't think there is any way to prevent someone else from using a word they way they want, short of force of law. The French pass laws preventing loanwords (at least those of recent vintage) from being used in governmental and legal documents. And still French speakers use the words in speech and in less regulated writing. DCDuring TALK 15:23, 1 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

I'm not sure that really answers the question (which is admittedly semi-rhetorical, as one can't always prove a negative). The issue here is not simply the application of an existing term, but the confusion caused by misapplication. If the term were applied directly, it would mean that the road is closed to traffic and given "back to nature". In fact, I can give several citations of highway agencies using this meaning. But this is a different meaning, one that has limited usage, and has come into the "real world" (newspaper articles and the like) mainly through postmortem study of Route 66. Note the confusion in some of the uses on Citations:decommission, particularly Bryson 2006, where it's assumed that the federal government controls U.S. Highway designations and that they are tied to maintenance. In reality, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials coordinates the numbers, and the only change in many places was the replacement of a US 99 shield with a state highway shield, with no difference in maintenance responsibility. --NE2 04:29, 2 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

We don't deal exclusively in official definitions. If there is attestable usage that is not in actual accord with an attestable official definition, in principle both should be recorded without a value judgment as to correctness. An official definition merits a context tag. We have some exemplars of regulatory definitions, eg ground beef.

As to possible importance of designation: Difference in funding for maintenance and improvements, even if not in who performs the work in the field. Difference in who gets political credit for the funding. DCDuring TALK 18:18, 3 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

Actually there was no difference in funding. The U.S. Highway network is orthogonal to the federal aid network; changing the type of route had no effect on funding. --NE2 03:13, 4 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

Before I fix the entries you asked me to fix, I must ask: are we using ===Number=== or ===Cardinal number=== or ===Cardinal numeral=== for entries like disèt? --Rising Sun talk? contributions 16:52, 3 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

I don't know. I would model my entry of the corresponding English, French, German, Spanish, or Italian entries because they have had the most attention. DCDuring TALK 18:08, 3 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

Hmm. These have adjective, number, numeral, cardinal number, cardinal numeral as headings. I'll put the cleanup job on hold --Soleil levant 18:13, 3 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

There was been much virtual ink spilled on this. I have barely read the discussions. I would rely on WT:ELE which encourages some headers and allows/tolerates some or all of the others.

I think we have more consistency in the conventional parts of speech, at least in English. Those parts of speech may not conform to the latest in grammatical thinking, but they seem adequate for our users, especially as supplemented by additional grammatical categories. DCDuring TALK 18:33, 3 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

As long as there is consistency within each given language, then we at least make some kind of progress. (English, by contrast, is a total mess using at least five different headers for the cardinals alone). My preference is for Numeral, of course, but my least favorite option is to include "Cardinal" as part of the POS header. I don't like the idea of "Cardinal number" or "Cardinal numeral" as a POS header, and prefer that the "cardinal" aspect be covered by a definition line use of {{cardinal}}, the same way we now are marking different groups of adverbs. --EncycloPetey 20:15, 3 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

When you say it is not uncountable, do you mean you would expect "That was a lemming logic" rather than "That was lemming logic"? Equinox ◑ 17:06, 8 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

I see. I guess I was wrong. Please allow me the honor of reverting myself. I wonder if I've made such errors before. DCDuring TALK 17:13, 8 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

It struck me just now that a "comma test" could be a good rule of thumb for these: compare "a free BASIC compiler" and "a free, basic compiler". Equinox ◑ 11:22, 16 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

Yes. I think it is a fairly general PoS test. The use (not mention) of a word in a serious of other words of known PoS appears in many modern (post-transformational grammar) grammar books. The generic test is apparently called the "coordination test". It is a sufficient condition. But less common words, especially, may not appear at all in our corpora in such constructions. Worse, punctuation is not searchable at Google, though it is at COCA and the other BYU corpora. I sometimes do Google searches for "and ADJ" and "or ADJ", which only works if the word is the last in the series. DCDuring TALK 12:02, 16 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

Is there a reason why you're putting audio pronunciations on the same line as transcriptions ? Nothing I've seen has noted this as acceptable/advised/recommented/or even mentioned it.

Standard form has always been for them to be on a separate line (although indentation or lack of is far from consistent). I really don't think it's a good idea to put them on one line either as the pronunciation transcription lines vary immensly in length and so there is no standard place they will appear on the page (bad imho). Also as they are very different content from the transcriptions, it's more likely people will miss them.

For all these reasons I've reverted your edit, but do feel free to discuss if you disagree with me. Thryduulf (talk) 18:12, 20 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

I do disagree, as I find it extravagantly wasteful. But I don't want to flap gums on the subject more than I already have. There are so many such extravagances. DCDuring TALK 18:16, 20 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

I don't think you're going to get any noticeable reduction in screenspace from pronunciation sections until they become collapsable (I know this was discussed a couple of years ago, I think to vague disagreement, but I don't fully remember). Thryduulf (talk) 18:27, 20 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

Exactly. I await acceptance or rejection or Atelaes's innovation, now limited to quotes. Perhaps it will be extended to other L3 headings. Even hidden the layout seems wasteful. DCDuring TALK 18:32, 20 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

Actually, I've got something for pronunciation in the works as well. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 22:09, 20 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

That looks good, but it AFAICT it addresses horizontal clutter, not vertical space extravagance. We could probably stand some economy in terms of which regional pronunciations were displayed. (Eg, I recently saw a page with 3 Irish English pronunciations.) Default hiding of all phonetic-alphabet pronunciations with customizable display for all registered users or all JS-enabled users who opt in (by machine) would be swell. IMO the sole pronunciation features that ought to be visible by default at audio and homophones (which provides a way for users to resolve confusions they may have in find the right entry). DCDuring TALK 23:54, 20 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

Yes, it does only address horizontal clutter, but doing so is an enabling step to reducing vertical clutter. Another important step would be deciding on a more concise format. If you were to create a mockup, with some examples from pages with lots of pronunciation info, what they look like now, and what you think they should look like at first glance, that would help speed the process up. You could just include dummy show hide buttons, if you were thinking about hideable content. It doesn't have to actually work, just give something folks can discuss. Ultimately, I would like to get us to the point where the user only sees the definitions, and subsequently has the option to drill for more information, should they desire it. Conrad actually has a thing which does so, but such a change is, I think, a bit too radical for the community to accept all at once. Henceforth, I have decided to approach that ultimate goal with baby steps. It is a slow and tedious process, but I think it is the only feasible one, and the goal is worth the work involved. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 01:31, 21 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

If either of you use Chrome, it's worth installing or just looking at the screenshot for how someone with a good eye for design lays out our entries. It may be worth writing some javascript to hack away at the appearance of that play button so that we can fit it on one line comfortably (maybe even copy him and have no ugly indication that it is playing, it just "plays" when you click the button). Conrad.Irwin 01:50, 21 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

An excellent idea (reformatting the button). That is a very clean and intelligible layout. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 01:53, 21 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

Almost all on-line dictionaries have more focus on definitions than we do; have more consistency of appearance across entries; and have more consistently good definitions. There task is easier than ours because of their monolingual focus. We have our strengths but need to narrow the gap in each of these areas, without losing the advantage of our multilingual capabilities and openness to users. The work that you guys are doing is outstanding. An incremental approach is almost certainly the only way to proceed that is consistent with the community. Your example is enough to make me want to revisit the idea of systematic incremental definition-quality improvement. DCDuring TALK 02:33, 21 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

FYI, two good candidates for experimenting on Pronunciation section format are (deprecated template usage) corps and (deprecated template usage) hello. Both are English words with lots of information there, and both have various problems that rarely show up (in English), but which appear in spades on those two pages. The entry for (deprecated template usage) bread is more typical, and another good candidtae. --EncycloPetey 03:36, 21 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

You seem to have created a heading with the number using acceleration, do you have any ideas how that might have happened? Conrad.Irwin 00:06, 24 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

No idea, but I had noticed and corrected it once before in the last 2 days. I haven't been using it much for the last month or more. Possibly just these two instances. There may be a technical glitch. I use windows XP, FF 3.6.3 with Java SE 6 U7. DCDuring TALK 00:14, 24 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

Hrm, ok... I just don't even know how it can get the number - it doesn't look at the table of contents at all. I'll keep an eye out for it again. Conrad.Irwin 00:21, 24 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

Ah. You have "auto number headings" turned on in Special:Preferences. I'll fix WT:EDIT, sorry for the noise. Conrad.Irwin 00:23, 24 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

No problem here. I'm still trying to get my two machines to behave. I've been tweaking this machine's preferences and sometimes revisiting my user preferences. DCDuring TALK 00:40, 24 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

Are these really dictionary material? Ironically you don't include FM Global, the name used on Wikipedia. ---> Tooironic 08:08, 26 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

I don't know. DCDuring TALK 15:13, 29 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

Allowing Eclecticology to cast a late vote would be contrary to our conventions in every other vote. Moreover, since the voting page is protected, only admins are allowed to vote, which I presume you would consider to be an undemocratic restriction.  — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 13:20, 29 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

I didn't include him in any vote totals and I don't expect him to be. The fact that he was late is clearly indicated by the header I added. DCDuring TALK 15:12, 29 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

In fairness, Conrad.Irwin (rightly) reverted me when I modified the vote after it had finished. Therefore, I'm on the side of Ivan here. If it was wrong for me, it's wrong for everyone else. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:16, 29 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

I don't know about the case you mention. DCDuring TALK 15:37, 29 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

Martin refers to this reversion.  — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 15:40, 29 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

• I think what DCD was fair enough. If the point of a vote is to canvass opinion, then allowing latecomers to voice their own seems fair, without obviously letting it affect the count. Ƿidsiþ 15:42, 29 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

IMO put it on the talk page, not the main vote page. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:43, 29 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

• I agree with DCD and Widsith: no harm letting the late-coming vote in the vote page itself, provided it is clearly marked as coming late. --Dan Polansky 16:38, 29 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

  So other editors should be allowed to do the same thing? We'll have to unprotect the vote page. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:40, 29 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

The vote is over... if they want to express opinions there's the vote talk page, BP... there's no reason to allow late votes when the vote is over. The talk page does exist for a reason. — opiaterein — 16:47, 29 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

Just as an observation: we do allow late votes when it comes to user rights stuff. For the longest time we couldn't get 25 votes cast in time for CU and 'crat votes no matter how hard we tried. Also late supports are pretty common when someone would have supported a sysop vote but did not see it in time. Not saying this is a good or bad thing, but it is a common thing on en.wikt. - DaveRoss 16:59, 29 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

Is it? If you'd have it 'it was' I'd have agreed, I've noticed some admins voting late, realizing it and reverting themselves. Conrad's edit summary whilst reverting me was 'undo edits after the decision was made - let's be honest about the state the vote was in at the time...'. 'Nuff said. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:52, 29 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

I believe you misunderstand the purpose of these pages. They are not catalogs of missing entries; there are many such lists already in existence. They are pages intended to request entries that one personally needs. You also have neglected to notice the first sentence: "Think twice before adding long lists of words as they may be ignored." --EncycloPetey 23:40, 31 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

• I find there are actually no entries here that I personally need in any language as there are many dictionaries that provide me with credible modern definitions. I am interested in filling in various gaps, but I am at a loss for how to fill in the gaps myself in this particular area in light of the insuperable difficulties that you have warned about. Others who were seeking to help seem to be in the same position. I was hoping at least to get some models, references, etc. Perhaps someone else less familiar with the Pengo lists will take an interest in these things. DCDuring TALK 01:44, 1 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

  I've tended to overlook the Pengo lists for the time being. There are just so many basic words in Classical Latin that have inadequate entries, and even more that still lack entries. Granted, there are some mainstream Classical words that turn up in species epithets as well, but most epithets are vanishingly rare in their use and/or transparent in their meaning if one knows the suffix that was added (e.g. yokohamensis). So, I've tended to drop in on Pengo's lists only occasionally, and then to tackle only the most common epithets on the list. --EncycloPetey 03:11, 1 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

The ones I pulled are all the redlinks from the first page of Pengo. From looking at them, they seem to fall into a small number of basic types from my PoV: classical (palustris), geographic (celebensis), personal (walkeri), New Latin compounds (sacchiflorus ?), New Latin derivations from Greek (erithacus), mysteries to me (nanmu). Almost all are inflected forms.

If this somewhat Borgesian classification is not wholly unsatisfactory, I would like models of ideal entries for each. I could think of no one better than you to point me to such. If you cannot, can someone else? If neither, I can perhaps bootstrap the process by finding the best exemplars of each of these that I can or blunder through making one myself. The advantage from your PoV to having these entries is that there will be fewer redlinks that tempt users to create Translingual entries, which seem to excite needless controversy. DCDuring TALK 11:27, 1 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Unfortunately, a classification such as yours does not consider part of speech or inflection pattern. Some epithets are adjectives, some are nouns, some are proper nouns, and some are participles. Nor does it consider the complexities of the etymology section (which is going to be a key section for any words that don't exist in Classical Latin). I generally have to research each one of these epithets individually, using several major dictionaries, published Renaissance maps in Latin (for the geography), and several other resources as well. In some cases, a participle is attestable, but the root verb is not, or the particular participle may be post-Classical. In some situations, a "noun" is actually a substantive use of an adjective. In some cases, the epithet is constructed incorrectly according to the rules of Latin; with botanical names this necessitates a "correction" under the ICBN, and that information ought to be noted. So, I can't offer a general solution or set of solutions, much as I'd like to. --EncycloPetey 05:33, 2 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

• Could you direct me to any satisfactory entries of any of these types or, indeed, of any New Latin species epithets? DCDuring TALK 10:00, 2 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Any particular reason for this? I do seem to have been mistaken about WT:QUOTE -- I can't find it the relevant instructions in any revision of the page -- but putting the two parts of the date at opposite ends of the citation line seems odd. IMO the effect is not so good, see e.g. frankenword. -- Visviva 22:18, 1 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

All I recollect is that the change messed up something that I was looking at shortly after the change, but that you weren't around. Ah yes, the problem was with the issue= parameter not working as I thought it had. It seems to work only with the vol= parameter. The "maximum rock and roll" cite at transgender doesn't have a volume. DCDuring TALK 03:32, 2 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Your weighing in on this would be much appreciated.​—msh210℠ 16:54, 2 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

There is a lot of redundancy. Matters of degree are not usually inherent in different senses of verbs or nouns. They are conveyed by stress, typography, and adjuncts.

There are also missing senses. I am not well-rested enough to face this now. Perhaps tomorrow. DCDuring TALK 18:43, 2 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Hi there, thank you for cleaning up some of my Greenlandic contributions. I wasn't sure exactly how to categorise them as they weren't verbs exactly. So should I categorise everything as "Greenlandic verb forms" in the future? Apart from the infinitives/third person singular indicative. It's such a hard language to include in wiktionary because most of it is made up of affixes so often you'll have one or two word sentences. Should I make an affix category? But then how do you list them? For example the affix -aluar- (meaning 'though'), would I list it as aluar or -aluar- seeing as it doesn't stand as a word in its own right... I'm just generally confused. I don't want to make a mess of it! Thanks for your help. Jakeybean 11:07, 5 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Sadly, I know nothing of Native American languages. Your terms appeared on a list of uncategorized terms. My changes put the entries into the appropriate language category. It is more likely to get attention from someone knowledgeable there. I am not at all certain about the right "part of speech", but it is adequate for initial placement in the absence of some other categories which Greenlandic contributors have agreed upon. Is there a form of the verb that is usually considered the "lemma" (dictionary form) in reference works for Greenlandic? That form should have {{infl|kal|verb}} in the inflection line. ("kl" is OK for "kal", I think)

From what you say it seems as if Greenlandic is an "w:Agglutinative language. So is Hungarian. Those interested in Hungarian have addressed the issue of affixes vs prepositions, I think. See WT:AHU and Category:User hu. You might also hunt down users who are knowledgeable about languages related to Greenlandic. DCDuring TALK 12:12, 5 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Yeah the "lemma" is the third person singular indicative form. It gets more complex when you come to adjectives though, as adjectives don't exist as a separate concept. Adjectives are verbs also, if that makes sense. They're written in dictionaries as, for example, "is good" or "is hungry". So for the meantime I'm reluctant to include adjectives in wiktionary. I could either include the stem of the word and define it as an adjective, but include usage notes as to the nature of how they're used in context, or include the infinitive still categorising them as adjectives but providing example sentences for clarification. Though it's still not really a sufficient solution, but it will suffice until a decision can be made. And you're correct in saying it's agglutinative; it makes my brain explode a little bit. Jakeybean 12:37, 5 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Please consider the additional piece of evidence which I've added to the RfD discussion. bd2412 T 19:11, 5 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

I hope you find the citations I have added for trash drawer to be sufficient. There are, of course, a trivial number of references to a trash drawer having the same meaning as a junk drawer. We could include this as an alternate sense (rare, possibly archaic). There also appears to be a sense specific to jewelers for a sort of drawer with a net or cloth in it, into which small pieces can be swept without getting lost. bd2412 T 19:23, 6 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

• 1866, The Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 188‎, p. 160:

  The jeweler's apron slides out below the trash drawer. This is a shallow drawer with a canvas bottom. You pull it out when working with small parts...

Here is an example of a citation for this use. bd2412 T 19:25, 6 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, I knew what I meant but I made a hash of it. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:56, 6 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

I'm glad I didn't miss your point. There are some things that I don't try to do when I am tired. Also, it's a wiki, automatically getting other eyes involved on matters of interest. It's supposed to attract revision. DCDuring TALK 12:01, 6 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

I would love your input at "Proposal for (toned) pinyin words" at BP. So far I've gotten very little response. Thanks. ---> Tooironic 08:50, 8 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

I know absolutely nothing about the subject. DCDuring 09:50, 8 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

All I require is someone to write a policy for it so that we can vote on it. All the relevant details are there. ---> Tooironic 13:45, 8 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

But I don't understand the first thing about it. You are asking for me to either learn a subject or risk embarrassing myself. If you want, I can review a draft you prepare. DCDuring 13:56, 8 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

You wrote: "The British idiomatic usage be meant to (“to be obliged to”) does not belong at this entry." I'd say it's more lke "to be supposed to" ("you're cheating — you're only meant to move three squares on each turn!"; "he was meant to be here half an hour ago, but he's always late"). I suppose our sense at (deprecated template usage) mean ("to intend; to plan on doing") covers this, but I wonder whether we should have more. To me it's such an "atom" as to be almost like (deprecated template usage) used to, and we do in fact have an entry for (deprecated template usage) supposed to. Equinox ◑ 21:36, 9 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

+1 —Ruakh_TALK 21:43, 9 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Though IMHO our current ] doesn't adequately cover uses like “I meant it as a complement” or “I meant for it to be a surprise”, where the sense is “to intend”, but not “to plan on doing”. (I'm not sure if this means we need a new definition, or just improve the existing one.) —Ruakh_TALK 21:51, 9 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Depends on whether you take the ";" between sub-senses to mean "or" or "and", really. Equinox ◑ 22:02, 9 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

I take it to mean "or", but when the first part is as vague/ambiguous/polysemous/something as "to intend" is, I also take the second part as tending to clarify what we mean by the first. —Ruakh_TALK 02:43, 10 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

You (Equinox) would know the actual definition-in-use better than me. Longmans DCE 1987 had it as a BritE run-in entry at "mean" using almost exactly your words. It is certainly not used in that sense in the US, which gives us sufficient reason to include it, IMO. The very least we could do as a good monolingual dictionary is keep track of regional differences in usage, which this looks to be. OTOH, I never had much trouble decoding it when I heard it, but I would probably have to be in ex-Commonwealth countries for at least a month before I would use it and maybe longer before I stopped using it in (subtly ?) wrong ways. It clearly comes from the "intend" sense of "mean" but seems to have picked up the sense of politely expressed (ie, not obligatory sounding) obligation, just like "supposed to".

Lately I have become less militant on SoP because there is almost always some halfway valid rationale for inclusion (usually sense or usage restriction).

I find improving definitions (especially for highly polysemic basic words) to be quite exhausting. I was wondering whether we should have a procedure for bringing such entries up to a high standard and then inviting a mass effort to translate the approved (and probably reworded and redivided) senses. I fear that some goodly amount of translation effort is being squandered on low-quality and even erroneous English definitions. I suppose that it would be necessary to pick some not-so-good, but not obviously bad entry and see whether such special efforts were warranted. I am loath to experiment with live entries because of the whining that can ensue if definitions are repartitioned. Only by doing a few of these would I feel capable of tackling some kind of definition style manual page. DCDuring TALK 22:12, 9 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

I reviewed Talk:supposed to. I can see that there was an overwhelming 2 (RS, EP) to 1 (DCD) keep for it, Ruakh seemingly not voting. DCDuring TALK 22:22, 9 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the note. I had seen that taking the fall was a redlink, so I didn't think to check for take the fall. I'm much more familiar with Wikipedia than here, so I didn't know how phrases were normally worded; I expected that the phrase would be found in the "taking" form. Curious, would it be appropriate to create "taking the fall" as a redirect for "take the fall"? I see at Wiktionary:Redirections that redirects aren't typically created except for capitalisation; however, "taking the fall" is neither an error nor a likely term in some language other than English. Nyttend 05:21, 18 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

For one-word entries we try to use templates such as {{en-verb}} (en is ISO-639 code for English) to facilitate the creation of and linking to inflected forms. Some of us don't like to use such a template for longer idiomatic expressions like take the fall. See rain cats and dogs for the long resulting inflection lines. We rely on the ability of users to find the "lemma" forms in which the main entry information is kept. Your expectation that the "-ing form" would be an entry or at least a redirect shows the weakness of my preferred approach. What do you think? DCDuring TALK 11:19, 18 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Not sure if you saw my response. (Please continue discussion there if anywhere. Thanks.)​—msh210℠ (talk) 20:15, 24 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Hello. I saw the edit to Etymology_2. I could only find one citation for belufian (Emerson) and one for bilufian (Peabody) for Old English, both of which look dubious. All of the sources I use do not have it. The form you have listed: bilufien is actually a Middle English form Leasnam 20:35, 24 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thanks. I defer to you (and Widsith) in this arena. Probably either my sources were wrong or I misread them. DCDuring TALK 21:58, 24 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Please take a close look at WT:ELE. Reference headers belong at the end of the language section, before the categories and interwiki links. DCDuring TALK 19:00, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up, DCDuring. I'll try to be more careful in future. But I'm a little confused. WT:ELE gives contradictory advice for the References heading. First (A very simple example), as a third-level heading at the very end. Then (Additional headings), as a fourth-level heading after translations and before external links (i.e. separate references for each part of speech). Eroica 16:15, 25 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

The logic (such as it is) is that the references section should appear at near the bottom of the highest level for which it has scope. That would be either an entire language section, an etymology, or a part of speech. When the scope is not apparent (It rarely is.), I put the reference at the bottom of the language section.

Almost everything at Wiktionary has evolved rather than been designed so the logic often has to be inferred. DCDuring TALK 16:56, 25 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

I didn't knew it is possible to creat a citations-page without a main-entry. Can you please check my edit at Citations:yahen? Is the conception of my edit basically correct? regards --WissensDürster 09:01, 26 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Note the minor changes. They still need an English translation and should be in date order. It is useful to know whether the word is still used today. Are there recent uses? DCDuring TALK 09:29, 26 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

It says to be an archaic word. But how to note this fact? The "quote-book"-template provides no space for a translation ... --WissensDürster 11:14, 30 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for asking. I will make the "archaic" change (which you can inspect) rather than explain it. There are two approaches I can think of for achieving the formatting of the translation of a citation. The easier is to simply insert the translation after {{quote-book}} (or its sister templates) with some wiki numbering/indentation.formatting markers, probably "#*::<translation>". The other would involve using <br>, which would require some experimentation to achieve the right result. HTH. DCDuring TALK 14:14, 30 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Oops. The entry isn't there yet. You should use {{archaic|lang=de}} to show archaic after the "#" on each definition line. DCDuring TALK 14:18, 30 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

I took a run at the easier of the two translations. I experimented and can't make the more experimental approach work. (Note in the translation: great hall.) DCDuring TALK 14:34, 30 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

I did two things: 1) Added the Portuguese translations for each meaning 2) Deleted translations that refer to non-existant meanings, because people delete superfluous meanings but forget to eliminate their translations. I don't see how that's a controversial edit at all.... Missionary 09:10, 27 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

I think the main issue is the removal of so many translations. If the definition has been removed, I wonder if it might be more prudent to put the translations in a ttbc (translations to be checked) section, instead of removing them entirely. It's entirely possible that the definition has been altered, and the translations are still valid, or something else entirely. In any case, it's a lot of potentially good content to just remove in one go. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 09:30, 27 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Okay. I will try to do that. Thank you. Missionary 09:47, 27 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thanks Atelaes. HTH, Missionary. Go, be careful, and correctify. DCDuring TALK 11:03, 27 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Some time ago you wrote, "Though we do have determiners, we don't have predeterminers as a PoS category." Some grammars to take predeterminers to be a distinct category, but I think it's better to analyze predeterminer modifier as a function. There are no words that are exclusively predeterminers, and adverbs and determiners seem to make up the bulk of them. There should, however, be entries for the relevant words showing their predeterminer use.--Brett 10:52, 28 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

I have created numerous grammatical categories to supplement our basic PoSs. They are usually categories within PoS categories. See Category:English adverbs, for which I relied on CGEL. Do Quirk, Biber, or many textbook authors use "predeterminer" in their works? I am not happy with presenting something solely based on CGEL's treatment without reliable indication that such treatment has swept the field. DCDuring TALK 11:07, 28 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Quirk et al 1985 and Sinclair 1990 (Collins Cobuild Eng Gr), both have a predeterminer category. Those are the only two I know of. Traditionally, of course, there is no predeterminer POS.--Brett 12:03, 28 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

It just occurred to me that you might think CGEL takes predeterminer to be a category. It doesn't. It's short for predeterminer modifier, a function.--Brett 12:20, 28 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

How would you suggest we show predeterminer use in an entry? I think we would benefit from the category. DCDuring TALK 14:13, 28 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

I'd just exemplify it, since the meaning is typically already covered. For example with rather, it would fall under sense 5. We could then add an example like That's rather more than last time. Here's what the Cambridge dict thinks are predeterminers (it's messy, but...). And here's LDOCE's list (again, needs parsing).--Brett 14:31, 28 June 2010 (UTC)Reply