User talk:Stephen G. Brown

Underlining

May I ask you to do the same with the óther sections in the article? And also with Bulgarian lexis? Or at least to tell me how I can do it myself, I am not really a formatting genius... VMORO 15:35, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)~

Could I ask why you're adopting underlining? The Wikipedia standard when referring to a word rather than the thing it denotes is to use italics. Underlining looks ugly and could mislead people into thinking that it indicated a link - and even in the case of links, many users set their browser to suppress the underlining, for aesthetic reasons. Maybe the problem is that you think the "italic" version of Cyrillic looks too different from the upright version, but many other articles use it. rossb 10:41, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I've used underlining in this case because of the Cyrillic script. I've been reading and writing Cyrillic for longer than most people have been alive, so for me italicized Cyrillic presents no problem. However, italicized Cyrillic is difficult for anyone who is new or unaccustomed to it. We've already discussed this on Talk:Bulgarian_language, including possible solutions. Notice, for instance, how these Cyrillic letters appear in italics and other formats: вдигятопол, вдигятопол, вдигятопол, вдигятопол, вдигятопол.

We did the Bulgarian language page using italics at first, but the result was terrible ... and unreadible. You are welcome to do it a different way if you can think of a better one, but my opinion as a long-time professional typographer is that underlining is a vast improvement over italics in this case.

That other articles use Cyrillic italics does not strike me as a valid argument. Any article intended to be read by people who do not regularly use Cyrillic should not use Cyrillic italics, unless it's a discussion about Cyrillic italics. All those other articles should be changed.

As to users who set their browser to suppress underlining ... then they will simply see regular Cyrillic in contrast to the surrounding Roman text. It will be still much easier for them to read, and the appearance of the page will still be superior to one filled with a lot of Cyrillic italics.

The same holds true for words in any other language that uses some unusual letters. Italics tend to make them unreadable. For example, the Azerbaijani name for their own country: Azərbaycan Respublikası vs. Azərbaycan Respublikası ... italics kill the schwa. —Stephen 12:06, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I take your point about the unfamiliarity of italic Cyrillic. The m for T is pretty confusing, and on holiday in Ukraine last year I was quite puzzled as to what the backwards s might be. But I wonder why you rejected bold as an alternative? Certainly whenever I see underlining on a web page, I have an urge to click on it. More generally, since you're proposing something potentially affecting a number of articles, shouldn't this be discussed on Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)? By the way the italic schwa looks fine on my browswer (the much-maligned MSIE)rossb 13:19, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well, the second thing we tried on the Bulgarian page after rejecting italics was ... bold. It was certainly an improvement as far as legibility, but it was grotesque ... too ugly for words. As far as I can see, the choice is between underlining and a font change.

It won't hurt anything if you click on an underlined word, and the lack of action will be a good indication that it's not a link. People quickly learn not to click on RED links (because they don't go anywhere worthwhile), and they will figure out underlined words just as quickly.

You must have a really good font if you can see an italic schwa. The fonts that came with my Windows 2000 and Word 2000 don't have that letter, or any other unusual Roman italics.

I have never visited the Village Pump, but I agree that it should be discussed, so that something can be done about the other pages. One page in particular that I've noticed is the Common phrases in various languages ... all those italics make it illegible and unusable, besides the way it looks. Italics on a monitor are even worse than italics on paper, and even on paper they should be used with extreme discretion and vanishingly seldom. Underlining is a far better tool, both for legibility and for esthetic appearance.

—Stephen 16:52, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Killer language

Hello, Stephen. I'm hoping you can take a look at Killer language. That article was marked for cleanup in mid October, but it isn't showing on October's cleanup list. I'm not sure if it ever was listed. Google gives 1,090 hits for "killer language," so I assume it is a term that is in actual use. Is there useful material in that article? Should it be cleaned up or should it redirect elsewhere? Thank you. SWAdair | Talk 06:50, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I had not seen this article before. It's an interesting outlook, if a bit strained. It discusses a problem that is both real and very serious, but I don't see how this view (of ascribing the death of one language to the "actions" of another, rather than to the laws, policies and practices of governments and societies) could be useful or effective. To solve the problem of dying languages, attitudes and laws have to be changed, and blaming English seems pointless to me. And in recent years, attitudes have indeed been changing (I'm not sure why), and minority dialects and languages are suddenly becoming respectable.

I suppose we could keep the article around for a while, since it seems to be popular. I'll clean it up a bit. —Stephen 09:32, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Thank you. That article has been on my 2Bchecked list for a while. I'm just now getting around to working on the 2Bchecked list. Thank goodness you edit regularly -- it wasn't difficult to find you when I went looking for a linguist. Happy editing! SWAdair | Talk 09:44, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks

Hi Stephen,

I just wanted to quickly thank you for your attentiveness in the Azerbaijan entry not allowing vandal Rovoam to get along with his sneaky vandalism. He introduced his "traditional" vandalism in this edit ([1]) (just above the "Line 66"), which unfortunately went unnoticed by User:Picapica ([2]), but you fixed it promptly [3]). In the past Rovoam tried to introduce similar sneaky vandalisms in Azerbaijanis (e.g. [4]), Azeri (e.g. [5]) and many other Azerbaijan-related and even unrelated entries, such as Ottoman Empire (e.g. [6]) or Ottoman Turks (e.g. [7]).

This person has been literally terrorizing various Azerbaijan and Turkey-related entries in WP, adding sneaky and blatant vandalisms of anti-Azeri and anti-Turk character. I am grateful to you along with many other editors, who track down and neutralize all his spurious edits.--Tabib 13:35, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

• You’re welcome, Tabib. We’re experience similar problems with some of the Slavic pages, especially those concerning the languages and peoples of Bulgaria and former Yugoslavia. Where I’m from, such ethnic and cultural bigotry was dealt with and virtually eliminated decades ago, and today we find it difficult to believe that these attitudes are still rampant in large parts of the world. —Stephen 06:46, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Unicode fonts

There has been a lot of discussion about {{unicode fonts}} and the order in which the fonts should be listed. What happens is that the browser (usually IE) scans the list and uses the first font it finds which is currently installed. This is why the rarer fonts are listed first: if a user has installed one of these it will be used. If you front-load the list with the more common, less populated, fonts then those users who have installed the less common better-populated fonts do not gain the benefit.

The article you asked about, Bulgarian language, looks fine to me. I note with interest that it actually uses {{unicode}} for "(Ѣ, ѣ)" and "(Ѫ, ѫ)": how do those now look to you?

That must be because you have some of those unusual fonts installed. I inserted the {{Unicode}} template into the Bulgarian page precisely so I could see the letters. Since the fonts were switched around, all I see in the above four letters are big, blank boxes. —Stephen 7 July 2005 13:12 (UTC)

If you are working extensively in cyrillic, there might be benefit in co-opting {{cyrillic}} (which currently REDIRECTs to {{Cyrillic alphabet}} for some reason) to specify fonts which are rich in cyrillic characters (as with {{polytonic}} for greek): would that help? HTH HAND --Phil | Talk July 7, 2005 10:59 (UTC)

Hmm. Perhaps I will make a new template using the "Unicode fonts" font order before they got switched around. The problem will be finding all of the instances of {{Unicode}} that I have inserted. I think there are quite a few of them...it will take a long time to find and change them.

As I understand it, Windows (or whatever program it is that handles this) only considers the first couple of fonts in a list. Fonts deep in the list might as well be taken out, because they are ignored. If you don’t have a font that comes early in the list, then you get the default font, which I believe is usually Times New Roman. However it works, these lists do not work on my machine unless my fonts are at the head of the list...and I only have the standard Windows set. —Stephen 7 July 2005 13:12 (UTC)

I have Code2000 which appears fairly close to the front of the list: maybe this would help since it claims to have good coverage of Cyrillic. You could also try here. --Phil | Talk July 7, 2005 15:39 (UTC)

Messages

Per Amatulić's suggestion, I am no longer active on this wiki. Please leave any messages at nv:Choyoołʼįįhí bichʼįʼ yáshtiʼ:Stephen G. Brown. —Stephen (talk) 05:38, 1 8 J u n e 2 0 1 2 (UTC)

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(t) Josve05a (c) 21:37, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Cases: Final 'for'? (non-benefactive)

Dear Stephen, thank you for your substantial contribution to the Wikipedia pages on grammatical cases. Case (and prepositions) is a topic I've been enthusiastic about for almost twenty years.

I would be grateful if you could answer this question of mine, and perhaps supply an article in the Wikipedia: in sentences like "They're heading for Alpha", "This train is bound for Beta", "I'm looking/searching for Gamma", "Now for something completely different", for seems to express direction (?) or intention (?) (rather than destination, as to does). Could "for" correspond to the "final" case in other languages? The WP article states: "... used for marking final cause ("for a house"). Semitic languages had that case, but all of them lost it ..." Well, as I see it, 'cause' is the opposite of 'final', so the only possible interpretation would be something like 'for a good cause, specifically, for the house'. Quite implausible.

More generally ... is it my impression, or the case marked by/translatable with non-benefactive "for" actually passes mostly undetected in the literature, as if the label "final case" stood for something very unusual across languages (as unusual and peculiar as the sociative case, for example), so very different from 'direction/intention'?

Thank you for your time and trouble, and please keep up the good work. Viktor Laszlo (talk) 12:40, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

I think you’re talking about the causal-final case. It means "for the purpose of", "for the reason that", and it is also used for price to be paid for goods. In Hungarian, the causal-final case ending is -ért: elküldtem a boltba kenyérért (for bread, for the purpose of bread).

You might be correct that "heading for" and "is bound for" express direction. In Russian, this would be "в" + accusative (to Alpha, to Beta). In Spanish, it would be "a" + accusative (to Alpha, to Beta). In Portuguese, "para" + accusative (to Alpha, to Beta). But "looking/searching for" is a little different, and in Russian, Spanish, and Portuguese, the construction would be different from those used for "heading for" and "is bound for" (just the simple accusative, usually without a preposition).

"Now for something completely different" is again different from any of the other examples.

I do not see that any of these examples could be considered causal-final case. I don’t think that these examples in Hungarian would take the -ért ending. —Stephen (talk) 13:42, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Stephen, thank you for your prompt reply. My point is this. I don't consider myself a generativist at all, but I often act like one. I assume there is one grammar, and this is realized in different ways in different languages.

My interpretation of language is this: whether what surfaces is a preposition, a noun ending, or zero, I take semantics to be the same across languages, as a postulate. So I take for granted that the same semantic nuances can be expressed in Samoan as in Nivkh. I'm interested in the logico-semantic values of sentence constituents, irrespective of how they are realized in different languages. Call me mad, but I postulate that the sociative case in Without a dime, she wound up in her mother-in-law's house at Christmas with her kids does exist in every language, though it may surface in very different ways or not at all.

I like to think of my approaches as intrinsically practical. If I know in advance that "3 dollars" is not an accusative (just because in English and Italian it happens to surface with no preposition preceding it), perhaps I'll manage to spare myself a few pages of ramblings from an improvized grammarian that wonders why "3 dollars" can't easily be made the subject of the passivized version of It cost me 3 dollars. It was the question that was wrong. Syntacticians shouldn't judge from appearances.

In other words, preposition or no preposition, ending or no ending, linguists that talk about "morphosyntax" (instead of "syntax") refuse to believe that for the house is three words. True, for can occur at the end of a sentence... Still, I only see one word in for the house. Would you agree that endings are postpositions in Hungarian as they are in Japanese?

By transitivity, in an ideal world, "for the bread" (from your example) should be called "causal-final" in English. And English should be considered to have cases (like all other languages, for that matter).

Lots of prepositions take the accusative across languages especially when they express movement. In Italian, no accusative (on the surface?).

However, I can say "Vado alla stazione" (TO the station = my destination) vs. "Scusi, per la stazione?" (asking for directions)!

In conclusion, were you to consider for the station in English as one word with three morphs, how would you label it? directive case? propositive? anhelative? (not an attempt at being humorous -- just a way to make my point clearer).

Thank you. Viktor Laszlo (talk) 14:17, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Okay, I understand what you mean. Yes, the case endings in Turkic and Uralic languages appear to have come from earlier postpositions. I think it is not so clear where the Indo-European case endings came from. With analytical languages such as English that use prepositions or postpositions exclusively, and no noun cases, no one ever bothers with trying to classify the pre-/postpositions the way they do with case endings. It would be possible to do it, of course, but I’m not sure this method would be well received by grammarians and school teachers. The Athabaskan languages have myriad postpositions (I have never tried to count them all), and if each one were to be described the way we do case endings, Navajo would have a large number of cases. Besides these, Athabaskan languages also have a lot of postpositions that are only used as verb prefixes, and it would be tricky to described the Navajo verbs that contain postpositional prefixes in terms of noun cases. Languages such as Navajo, Yup’ik, and Ojibwe are exceedingly verb heavy, and there are few nouns. Their verbs are already complex, with numerous aspects (momentane, continuative, durative, conclusive, repetitive, semelfactive, diversative, reversative, seriative, conative, transitional, cursive) and modes (imperfective, perfective, usitative, iterative, progressive, future, optative), as well as three numbers and four persons (regularly, with another five persons possible when needed ... if you add the complexities of noun case to the postpositional prefixes, the verbs start to be terrifying. But yes, it would be possible to do it, I think. —Stephen (talk) 20:15, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Is this the appropriate "place" for a talk with so many questions? I tried sending you a private message through the WP but, evidently, this is the only way it works. And I'm lucky you replied in the first place. (Didn't happen elsewhere)

Please give me an example of a postposition that is only used as a verb prefix. I'm not at all familiar with North American languages, so I would need a sentence with glosses (or just the glosses and the translation, please), in a way as to at least enable me to understand your point. I no longer have access to university books (and I'm still alive, somehow), so all I can rely on is Google, I guess.

A postposition is supposed to occur exclusively after a noun or an adjective, isn't it? that's how it works in Japanese. If you say a particle only comes before a verb, wouldn't it be logical to conclude it's not a postp. but only a prefix?

Anyway, you've given me a ton of food for thought, I'm afraid I need a break. Viktor Laszlo (talk) 22:27, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Athabaskan postpositions usually include a pronoun, even if used after a noun, as in ił (with): shił (with me), nił (with you), bił (with him/her/it/them). The verbal postposition ba- (the "b" representing the 3rd-person pronoun, and the 1st-person form would be sha-) means "to" or "on" (on a temporary or loan basis): tʼááłáʼí béeso shaʼníʼaah ("lend me a dollar", or literally: one dollar [to me temporarily]-[it]-[you]-[cause a single roundish bulky object to move from hand to hand] (imperfective mode, singular subject); nihitóshjeeh bada’siitʼą́ ("we lent him our barrel", or literally: our-barrel [to him temporarily]-[plural subject]-[it]-[we]-[caused a single roundish bulky object to move from hand to hand] (perfective mode, plural subject). —Stephen (talk) 23:40, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi Stephen

Hi Stephen, I work for the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs and am trying to get the department involved in improving content about New Mexico on WIkipedia. I haven't found any active Wikipedians in NM. I am at a training workshop in Maryland about leading Wikipedia workshops and am looking at Navajo Wikipedia, where it looks like you are an admin. Do you live in the region? I'm just trying to see what kind of people and resources we could put together. Please let me know if you are around or have any ideas for me. Mimi.roberts (talk) 14:54, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

No, I live in Texas. The other admin, ‎Seb az86556, lives in Arizona. I know a number of Navajo who live in NM, but they are not Wikipedians to my knowledge. On Facebook, the Navajo language group has over 13,000 members, including a lot from NM, but I don’t encounter them much on Wikipedia. Native Innovation Inc., with Jay Manyreboots, has been developing the Diné keyboard app for iPhone, iPad, Android, etc., as well as a Diné Bizaad mobile dictonary iOS App. See video in Navajo language. I don’t know if any of this will be helpful to you.

We would love to have more and better content about Yootó Hahoodzo on Navajo Wikipedia. —Stephen (talk) 19:46, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Promethean KUNO tablets now come with the Diné Bizaad keyboard for 1:1 Classrooms. The cost is similar to that of an iPad. —Stephen (talk) 02:25, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

User:Pass a Method

And you moved User:Pass a Method's username and associated user pages to User:North Atlanticist Usonian, why? What at all makes you think that was appropriate to do? All it does it makes you look like Pass a Method, or connected to him in some way. Flyer22 (talk) 12:16, 3 December 2014 (UTC) I struck those two lines because I forgot that you are a WP:Administrator. My mind was temporarily under the impression that you are new, and blocked out my checking the earliest date of your account.

Anyway, I take it that you got a message from Pass a Method asking him to change his username? How was it appropriate for you to then do so, given that he is a problematic WP:Sockpuppet and otherwise problematic editor? Flyer22 (talk) 12:20, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Maybe WP:Administrator Adjwilley, who has significant experience with just how problematic Pass a Method is, can shed some light on how appropriate these name moves were. And, for the record, yes, these name moves just registered to me. If I noticed them before, they didn't really click in my head until now. Flyer22 (talk) 12:27, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

I got a request from Pass a Method on en.wiktionary asking for a username change. It was a routine request as far as I could tell. That was over two months ago. If I recall correctly, I checked his SUL info and it looked normal. Are you saying that his account has been flagged and restricted from having a username change? I have never heard of anything like that. Where do you post that kind of information when you want to bar a user from getting a namechange? —Stephen (talk) 13:07, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

WP:Edit conflict: Your moving his username came days after this matter; clearly, Pass a Method was watching, and thinks that documentation of his WP:Sockpuppeting should be less easy to locate. Your username moves made it so that his contributions do not show up as Pass a Method; so, for example, his contributions don't show up at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Pass a Method/Archive when clicking on the contributions link there for the Pass a Method account, except for the diff links. Whatever reason he gave to you for moving his username, such as a privacy reason, I'm certain that it was simply him trying to evade scrutiny once again. Bbb23, John Carter, DoRD, Ponyo, DeltaQuad and Mike V -- other WP:Administrators and/or WP:CheckUsers who are familiar with Pass a Method and/or looked into the Pass a Method WP:Sockpuppeting cases -- do you mind offering your opinions on this matter? And if the Pass a Method account had been indefinitely blocked at the time of these username moves, which it should have been, would these moves have been as likely to be made? Flyer22 (talk) 13:18, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

I don’t know anything about that matter you mentioned. I don’t know what you mean by my opinion on the matter. On Wiktionary, if we get a user who is using socks without permission, we block his account and all of the socks. If Pass a method’s account had been indefinitely blocked, I would have noticed that and refused his request. —Stephen (talk) 13:31, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

I haven't meant anything about your opinion on the matter until now; above, I was asking for others' opinions (which is why I linked their usernames). And by "until now," I mean that I agree with you on blocking those who have violated the WP:Sockpuppet policy. I pointed you to Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Pass a Method/Archive, which documents Pass a Method having violated that policy more than once. Given that, and that he'd activated Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts/WikiBreak Enforcer to enforce a self-imposed WP:Wikibreak until the year 2020, his account should have long been indefinitely blocked. And it frustrates me that it has not yet been indefinitely blocked. As seen in the Pass a Method WP:Sockpuppet archives, I asked that his account be indefinitely blocked. WP:Administrators thinking/stating that there is no need to indefinitely block him because of that self-imposed 2020 WP:Wikibreak is wholly insufficient, and this name change matter shows why. That stated, I did have his user page tagged as a WP:Sockpuppet before you made the username moves. Flyer22 (talk) 13:41, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

His account was blocked once for WP:Sockpuppeting, and that was by King of Hearts on April 10, 2014; since that time, his WP:Sockpuppet accounts have been blocked but not the master account (Pass a Method). That master account should be indefinitely blocked, not only so that Pass a Method no longer has any power over it, unless it's user page/talk page access, but also so that the account is logged as a WP:Sockpuppet master that should remain blocked...unless he successfully appeals via WP:Standard offer. Flyer22 (talk) 13:53, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Tagging his name as a WP:Sockpuppet did not appear in his SUL info, if I recall correctly. I don’t know how tagging his name is supposed to reach admins in other wikis. If this were Wiktionary, we would have blocked his account as soon as the sockpuppet offence was discovered. If he has taken a voluntary leave of absense for five years, his account should be blocked. In 2020, he can ask that it be unblocked, or he could open a new account. I don’t see how you can notify admins on other wikis about something like this unless you block the account. My suggestion is to block his account until 2020. —Stephen (talk) 13:58, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

I see that by "SUL info," you mean Wikipedia:Unified login (WP:SUL). So you are stating that you moved his username across Wikis because of SUL info? Or was his request specific about having a name change across Wikis? Did his Wikipedia block log show up in the SUL info? And if it did, you made the username moves because he was not indefinitely blocked? As for wiktionary.org, I see that he has been blocked a few times there as well. I'd rather that he be indefinitely blocked here at the English Wikipedia, but not before his account is moved back to the Pass a Method username here at the English Wikipedia. Flyer22 (talk) 14:20, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

I granted his request on the basis of his statement that: "I'm planning on creating a global account. Since i'm most active on wiktionary, my first step would be to do that here." I always check the SUL info for both the original name and the new name. Since this was over two months ago, I don’t remember anything specific about the SUL info, but I saw nother there that alarmed me. If you want the username change to be reversed, I can do that. —Stephen (talk) 14:29, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Looking again at his SUL info, I see that he has not made any edits on any wiki since this username change was made. All of his edits were made before the namechange. —Stephen (talk) 14:37, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

If that is the case, then there is a reasonable chance that this might have been some sort of attempt to game the system as per WP:GAME. I can understand how you might have done a global username change without going into a lot of possibly extraordinary research. But, under the circumstances you indicated above, I also have some questions why the request might have been made. Barring the (possible, but unlikely) death of that editor, or other form of incapacity in the short term, I cannot see any reason for the change to have been made other than questionable ones. Under the circumstances, I think that maybe, in the short term, changing the name back on this particular wiki might be reasonable, and also, maybe, filing some sort of request at the appropriate policy or guideline to discuss this matter and see what if any changes might be reasonable to avoid such circumstances in the future. John Carter (talk) 15:32, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

I don’t have any idea about his reasons for the change beyond what he stated. If I reverse the name change, it is a global change. I don’t know of a way to change it only on this one wiki, and if the account is ever to be used again, I think it would be confusing to have the account under different names on different wikis. So just to be clear, you are requesting that I reverse the name change now, is that right? I want to make sure we’re on the same page with this. —Stephen (talk) 15:50, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

If it would have to be a global name change, which I didn't know, I guess I probably wouldn't request a universal reversal of the name change, because the editor's user rights weren't apparently restricted on other WMF sites like this one and they would have a reasonable right to change their names on sites they are actively participating in. I can wish that were not the case, but wishing doesn't mean much in circumstances like this one. John Carter (talk) 16:04, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Then perhaps you could just monitor his activity in the SUL info from time to time. As I said, he has not been active on any wiki since Sept. 30, 2014, so it appears that he is keeping his word about taking an extended break. You can see at a glance if there is ever any new activity. —Stephen (talk) 16:25, 3 December 2014 (UTC)