Wiktionary:Votes/2018-03/Adding labels to PIE entries

Voting on: Adding a disclaimer to all Proto-Indo-European pages without Anatolian descendents that states that this is a Proto-Nuclear-Indo-European reconstruction, and add a label in all inflectional tables stating the same thing.

Rationale: There is a general consensus that Anatolian left early, and that many features of traditional reconstructions are really post-PIE innovations. This means that only etymons that are attested in both branches are reconstructible for PIE. As a result, we reconstruct PIE at different stages without knowing it, which makes our reconstructions subject to anachronisms. The morphology described in wiktionary is suitable for PNIE, but not for PIE. This solution allows us give an accurate description of PIE's lexicon and morphology diachronically, without having to remake the infrastructure we have for PIE.

Schedule:

• Vote starts: 00:00, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
• Vote ends: 23:59, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
• Vote created: Tom 144 (𒄩𒇻𒅗𒀸) 22:30, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Discussion:

• Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2018/February#Anachronisms within PIE
• Wiktionary talk:Votes/2018-03/Adding labels to PIE entries

1. Support Tom 144 (𒄩𒇻𒅗𒀸) 00:06, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
2. Support, I think. --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 09:53, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
3. Support, I think, although perhaps not under the name "Proto-Nuclear-Indo-European". Dghmonwiskos (talk) 18:11, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

1. Oppose: I oppose labels, but would support collapsed Proto-Indo-Anatolian inflection tables next to PIE tables. --Victar (talk) 02:10, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
2. Oppose since in this vote and the linked-to discussion there seems to be little agreement (or even interest) from many major PIE editors in this (User:Florian Blaschke even makes a case against it). Also, "Proto-Nuclear-Indo-European" is exceedingly rarely referred to, especially relative to how often "Proto-Indo-European" is referred to, which makes me concerned about how widely accepted the concept could possibly be when even a raw Google web search, when I page through to the end of the results, gets less than 30 hits(!). - -sche (discuss) 06:27, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
3. Oppose -sche covers it--the apparent rarity of the use of the Proto-Nuclear-Indo-European seems to belie a lack of acceptance or agreement, so it seems that it would be imprudent to move in that direction at this time. There's potential here in the future, I think, but not yet. --SanctMinimalicen (talk) 16:42, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
4. Oppose per my argument above and the fact that current introductions like Fortson (2009), an excellent overview of the communis opinio, do not make use of "Proto-Nuclear-Indo-European" at all and do not even support the concept. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:34, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

   I haven't had enough spare time lately, but I'll try to respond this with the following quote by Ringe:

   "Note the implications of this phylogeny for the reconstruction of the PIE verb. The Cowgill–Rix verb is a reasonable reconstruction of the system for Proto-West IE, and can even account for most of the Proto-North IE system; it is only for ‘PIE proper’ that it is clearly inadequate." –Ringe, Donald (2006) From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic (A Linguistic History of English; 1)‎, Oxford: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 6

   "Whether this system can be reconstructed for earlier stages of the proto- language (especially PIE proper) is highly doubtful" –Ringe, Donald (2006) From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic (A Linguistic History of English; 1)‎, Oxford: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 34

   He's basically telling us that he is not reconstructing "PIE proper", but what he calls "West-IE" (i.e. IE languages excluding Anatolian and Tocharian). Yet our inflectional tables are based solely on his work, ignoring the fact that he regards his own reconstruction as inadequate for PIE. I left quotes supporting the view in the discussion linked above. --Tom 144 (𒄩𒇻𒅗𒀸) 00:46, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

   Concerning your argument. I think that what I cannot understand about it is how can you distinguish between a dialectal continuum that is still mutually intelligible and innovations spread through it to all their speakers, from a single unified language. To me, in every language there will be variation, but unless this distinctions do not spread to all their speakers, you cannot call them a different language. Since this different innovations wouldn't have enough relevance to affect the dialectal development. That is why I don't really understand your point. You hold that there was some kind of divergent post-Anatolian split PIE, that cannot be called one single language, but still evolved like if it were one for some time before splitting definitely. Or that is what I caught at least. I do not see how such a claim contradicts the existence of PNIE. --Tom 144 (𒄩𒇻𒅗𒀸) 01:26, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

   "PIE proper" is a highly contested concept, and there is not much in the way of a proposed reconstruction because there is too much disagreement about what it should be like. I'm generally sceptical of attempts to reconstruct a "PIE proper" sharply distinct from the traditional PIE reconstruction when there is no solid evidence for such sweeping changes. (In phonology, there are good arguments for an implosive variant on the glottal model, and for dropping the palatal row, but these changes would affect any kind of PIE reconstruction, regardless of whether they include Anatolian and Tocharian or not.) Per Melchert, the only certain major difference from traditional PIE would be the lack of a grammaticalised feminine gender, but even branches like Greek, especially in its oldest forms, show evidence pointing in that direction, which supports my model where Anatolian was an outlier but not coordinate to the rest of PIE.

   Reconstructed languages by their nature do not show regional variation; they are essentially dialects, not "languages" in the common "dialect cluster" sense. It makes no sense to imagine Proto-Indo-European as a "language" comparable to German, Arabic or Chinese with their countless highly divergent dialects; a single reconstruction could never cover this kind of diversity. For this reason it makes no sense to think of Indo-European as a single language after the first major dialectal differences appeared. Compare the situation in Slavic, which still developed "like a single language" (according to your phrasing and the phrasing in w:Proto-Slavic#Introduction), known as Common Slavic, as late as the Old Church Slavonic period (1000 AD at least), but was certainly not Proto-Slavic anymore. Analogously, we may say that after Anatolian had lost contact with the rest, there was Common Indo-European, not Proto-Indo-European. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 05:03, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

5. Oppose per -sche. —Mahāgaja (formerly Angr) · talk 06:49, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
6. Oppose but might support adding the label Indo-Hittite or Indo-Anatolian to Anatolian entries. My reasoning is pragmatic; people generally think of "nuclear" PIE as PIE proper. It's semantic and a bit hair-splitting, but I think Indo-Hittite labelling would be less confusing. Finsternish (talk) 15:43, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

   (also, insert modified Richard Stallman copypasta here) Finsternish (talk) 15:46, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

7. Oppose per all above me. —Aryaman^{A (मुझसे बात करें • योगदान)} 22:46, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

1. Abstain -Xbony2 (talk) 16:17, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
2. Abstain: I haven't got a clue about this, but I don't want to see any more PIE rubbish in entries. DonnanZ (talk) 15:47, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
3. Abstain I don’t know enough to make an informed decision. — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 02:04, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
4. Abstain I don't feel like getting into the subject, especially given the apparently failing vote. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:39, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

Failed: 3 support, 4 abstain, 7 oppose. PseudoSkull (talk) 03:03, 10 April 2018 (UTC)