User talk:Cnilep/Archive/11 September 2010

Mockumentary

I don't have any specific third-party citations at hand, but as filmed materials are their own source, this shouldn't in itself be an impediment to the validity of the edit as is. Possibly, though, we could make reference to the "Hell's Grannies" and "the Pirana Brothers" sketches and "the Cycling Tour" episode? Cheers. Catiline63 (talk) 19:30, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, these are useful as primary sources. Thanks for following up on this. Cnilep (talk) 20:12, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Passive voice

Nice. I guess we both read Language Log (which shouldn't surprise anyone). I made considerable changes myself, and I like to think I improved it a lot. However, I clearly left too much in the lead, and I can't say I was entirely satisfied with how I left it (it wasn't my day, I think, for elegant writing). I like what you've done with it. The only thing I wonder is whether we can change "The passive voice is a grammatical voice...". I think we should aim this at people who don't know what voice means. 22:43, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Obviously I have no objection to making the prose as accessible as possible, but I'm not sure what to call it if not "voice". SIL International's glossary says, "What is voice? Voice is a grammatical category that expresses the semantic functions attributed to the referents of a clause." That doesn't immediately express anything as clear as I would like. None of the intro texts I just consulted even define voice in the morphosyntactic sense. I suppose that "grammatical construction" is as good as anything. Cnilep (talk) 00:05, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

"Portmanteau" vs. "blend" - thanks for your comment

In my opinion, the problem is that we are not writing for a linguistically sophisticated audience here. Most of our readers, I think, find the term "portmanteau" clearer, and "blend" in the technical sense rather obscure. (I will admit that I am among those who fall in that category.) I'd prefer not to edit war on this one, but if somebody else reverts your change I'm highly unlikely to reverse them. --Orange Mike | Talk 14:35, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Expression

Expression is general, and there may be no 'formal definition' in linguistics, but an utterance is an expression, just as any sentence is also an expression. Note that an utterance is not always a 'sentence.' The point of making something substantive out of 'expression' is that its the most abstract and general term, and all language expressions point to it. The 'sentence' article defines a sentence as a kind of expression, and the 'language' article states clearly that language is used to form expressions. We sometimes find that over time article development over a number of areas leads us to a straightforward conceptualization. Regards, -Stevertigo (w | t | e) 18:06, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

I think I see your point. However, since this term is not used in this way in the field of linguistics, the scope of the article should probably not be described as "in linguistics". Cnilep (talk) 18:13, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Among the best definitions of language I've heard came from Chomsky, in which he mentioned the the phrase 'to form expressions.' Given that the term has a certain objective usage in this way, such that its the object of language itself (expressions which then communicate meaning), we can treat it like an object and thus reference its usage. If its not currently used this way in linguistics, its only because fields of research tend to be specialistic. I'll find some sources online, though I'm sure you have access to more. -Stevertigo (w | t | e) 18:19, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Article integration

Note that articles like code-switching and code-mixing (found on your userpage) are related. Being related, their ledes (WP:LEDE) need to 1) reference each other, to distinguish, disambiguate, and cross-reference the other, and 2) they should be unified under a topic box which covers that particular subfield - in this case maybe 'pidgins' would be the subfield. Regards, -Stevertigo (w | t | e) 18:19, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

BTW, I think the {{linguistics}} template is too general for the above articles. If a more specified template/topicbox on the subject is needed, it might be a good idea to make one. Would "{{pidgins}}" be suitable? -Stevertigo (w | t | e) 00:35, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

No, neither topic is closely related to pidgins, let alone a subtopic of the study of pidgins. As you can learn from the articles, code-switching relates to studies in sociolinguistics, syntax, phonology, conversation analysis, and communication studies. Code mixing relates to multiple areas of grammar (syntax, morphology, phonology, etc.), sociolinguistics, language acquisition, and psycholinguistics. Linguistics seems to be the appropriate template. Cnilep (talk) 13:25, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

So {{sociolinguistics}} will work for those articles, though that box need to be developed a bit. -Stevertigo (w | t | e) 03:20, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your attention to these issues. Perhaps your comments would be better directed to the talk page of one of the articles under discussion.

As I said above, in addition to sociolinguistics, code switching and code mixing are at issue in studies of syntax, phonology, psycholinguistics, etc. These are areas of linguistics outside the specific area of sociolinguistics. Other contributors to those pages may disagree, but in my opinion {{Linguistics}} is the appropriate template. Cnilep (talk) 14:40, 18 August 2010 (UTC)