Talk:Diaphoneme

Theoretical and stylistic problems with the current state of the article

The article blends in Bickerton and Bailey's research without out discussion to justify doing so, assuming that it's relevant to the topic. That is, that their interest in dialectal variation somehow shares concepts with the work of Jones and Weinreich.

The article is not written like an encyclopedia article, but like a survey of research appropriate to a professional journal.

The article departs from WP:NPOV. Editor AEsos is obsessed with writing about diaphonemes and diasystems. He will not accept that they are relic terms in today's linguistics.

Aesos persists in an academically inappropriate citation practice pretending to cite original sources through other researchers which cite them. He apparently either thinks (1) the original researchers deserve the mention (2) the original researcher lends more authority. The practice is crappy. "Wells, citing Weinreich". Although it OK to stop there (to acknowledge that Wells got an idea from Weinreich), it is unsavory to actually provide a footnote and bibliographic entry for Weinreich, unless you consulted Weinreich. But in that case, it would be no use citing Wells. I have nicely advised AEsos three or five times that this is not have scholarship is done. Dale Chock (talk) 01:02, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Welcome back, Dale. Since the above post is simply-restating what you've already stated, I've restored the relevant discussion from the archive. Feel free to continue the discussions from two months ago by responding to the three posts above that warrant response (dates [23:11, 9 March 2012; 16:54, 8 March 2012; and 17:52, 8 March 2012] marked in green for your convenience). — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 11:53, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

It's been two weeks and Dale has not furthered the discussion. His activity elsewhere prompts me to believe that he is not interested in elaborating on how this article violates WP:NPOV. So far, Dale has expressed the view that the article violates NPOV because it goes into great detail over an outdated concept and, he says, it misrepresents the context of scholarship used. I quote:

• "The very premise of the article is a violation of WP:NPOV. (Wells rejects the diaphonemic approach, although with exceeding tact. He introduces the concept only to immediately declare it problematic and covertly abandon it. AEsos, with his long quotations from that same section, seems not to have noticed.)"
• "Usually, points are made after being stripped of historical and theoretical context."

Since the article already covers criticism of the concept at length, Dale's critique of misrepresentation made little sense to me. So I asked for clarification/elaboration:

• "If the article doesn't make it clear enough in the criticism section that Wells rejected the approach, that seems like a fairly easy fix."
• "Can you cite some examples of [misrepresenting context of scholarship] and show how the theoretical context may be important?"

While Dale continued to comment, the issue of neutrality has not gone further as Dale has more-or-less repeated these points without actually responding to my rebuttals, even saying strange things like, "Editor AEsos is obsessed with writing about diaphonemes and diasystems. He will not accept that they are relic terms in today's linguistics."

This last quote, in fact, is the driving point that Dale most recently wished to express above in regards to article neutrality. I believe that it is a gross misunderstanding of Wikipedia policy to believe that WP:NPOV is violated when a topic is presented as interesting and relevant or when other editors believe it is so. To butcher a quote: Diaphonemes are interesting, and if you don't agree you can go somewhere else. If no one disagrees and Dale remains silent, I'll be removing the NPOV tag soon. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 02:23, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Castilian Spanish

It's strange that someone reverts an edition while stating that it is no doubt true. We have an issue here of slavish copy of a source which must obviously be wrong (I can't access the text), as the author apparently thinks that in all of the territory of Castile (historical region) there is no s-aspiration, something that is well-known to be false. We could put something like the northern Iberian dialects that the author calls "Castilian Spanish" at most. Or else, delete the whole thing, as the source proves to be unreliable. Jotamar (talk) 13:28, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Our article Castilian Spanish says there are multiple meanings for the term. It's my understanding that "Castilian Spanish" can be used to mean Standard European Spanish, which is likely what the author in question meant. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 19:21, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Well, in fact Standard European Spanish is almost as ambiguous as Castilian Spanish. I see it's of no use discussing this with you. Jotamar (talk) 15:34, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

My edit summary was with the understanding that you were attempting to expand the referents from just the standard dialect to those of northern Spain. I see now that you were attempting to restrict the referent, as you see "Castilian Spanish" being the group of Spanish varieties spoken in Castile.

Since the example is used to illustrate how two phonetically divergent varieties can be analyzed as having the same underlying structure, I don't feel like the point is undermined if the example is a bit oversimplistic. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 23:27, 17 May 2012 (UTC)