User talk:Ish ishwar

hi.
this is a place where you can leave a message for me.

please use this link to leave me a new message     (most recent on top)

note to self: write something on mirative, Non-configurational language, Category talk:Indigenous languages of the Americas#Terrence Kaufman's "geolinguistic regions"

Category:Native American mythology

Hi Ish. Please see teh Category talk:Native American mythology name-change gauntlet I just threw down...smae name issue resolved elsewhere like Indian Wars vs Wars of the indigenous peoples of North America, but this one's still a bugbear; presumably the proposed new cat could contain the Native American mythology cat, though; that might be simpler than a name change across so many articles that would need to be recatted....Skookum1 (talk) 17:43, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Also Category:Native American legendary creatures has the same problem...Skookum1 (talk) 17:45, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Linguist List is attempting to contact user:Ishwar

Hello Ishwar, The Linguist List is working on an NSF-funded project that acts as a clearinghouse for geolinguistic data. We have made use of some of the media that you have released under open licenses. We would like to credit you as much as you prefer. Please contact brandon (at) org.lingusitlits (please spellcheck and verify) if you would like to discuss this further. Thanks, Brandon

Vietnamese

I don't want to butt heads with you at Vietnamese phonology and it seems like we're subtly undoing some things the other has done. The most striking example is that you use "orthographic X" to refer to phones while I prefer to use the IPA. It seems like most of the article uses IPA and I'm not a big fan of using orthography when talking about phonology unless necessary. Though I'm more understanding when it comes to Vietnamese vowels, we don't need to do that with consonants--maybe sometimes using both as in "syllable-final ch" ({[c])--since the IPA transcription of the consonants is less at variance than with the vowels.

Other stuff seems minor such as "the analysis of syllable-final...has had different analyses" vs "the phenomenon of syllable-final...has had different analyses" (I would think that the analysis itself wouldn't have analyses). I also noticed that you seem to be representing orthographic a as /a/ which is fine, but be sure that Wikipedia is consistent. The table near the end still has orthographic a as ɐː. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 06:30, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

hi.

i have some concerns with the way it's wording now. Mostly because i added to the general language article but then cut & pasted to the phono page. I think I want to reword it a bit. I'm not so anti-orthography as you because the orthography does indicate the phonological contrasts (although if you choose the velar allophone analysis then the orthography represents it in a complicated way). Many Vietnamese (and also other Vietic languages) articles use orthography to represent surface or abstract phonetic/phonological segments. So, it's very common to do so in the literature (just browse through the Mon-Khmer Studies journal and have a look — it's fun & online, that's what I'm wasting my time doing these past few weeks...).

I dont like phenomenon but it needs to reworded.

I want to redo the table. And maybe add more info to it (a grad student is doing some perceptual research at University of Pennsylvania). – ishwar  (speak) 03:14, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the orthography does a pretty good job of indicating phonological contrasts and, with the palatal stops even an aspect of phonetic representation, but IPA works pretty well too. Orthography makes more sense when there is considerable enough (a subjective measure, I know) dialectal variation or scholarly disagreement to make it so that the IPA would be as neutral as we'd like. For the phonetics of the palatal stops we have neither, correct?

Hmmm, how about "There have been several analyses for syllable-final..."?

I changed a few instances of [ɐ] to [a] since that seems to be the way the article is representing itself now. Of course, we can change this later. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 07:43, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, there's no reason to omit the orthographic representation or the IPA transcription: so use both. Just to list points in favor of retaining the orthogo-graphs:

• analyses change, but the orthography doesnt
• used in Viet ling literature (in English & Vietnamese)
• connects different dialects: anh = [aɪŋ̟] in Hanoi #1 (= /aɲ/ or /ɛŋ/ or /ajŋ/); = [æŋ̟] Hanoi #2 (= /aɲ/)
• helps language learners (wikipedia friendly? it's a non-specialist site after all)

"There have been several analyses for syllable-final..." is fine, I'd prefer: "There have been several analyses for the phonological contrasts represented by syllable-final orthographic ch and nh." Why dont you scrap it & rewrite it? (I'm on a Kiowa-Tanoan kick right now, so I wont be messing with the Viet phono page for a while — but dont hold me to that...).

Yes, ɐ is a stupid symbol (shame on the IPA). I used it because some of the literature does use this symbol. But others dont. But, eventually, when the table in the notes is redone, the ɐ should be retained when that symbol is used by a source. (Incidentally, there is a little problem of interpreting Thompson's phonetic description of ă and a because he says slightly different things in two different articles. But, that remains to be added to the article.) – ishwar  (speak) 17:02, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Nahuatl getting into position for FA-drive

I have been working intensively on the Nahuatl article for the past few days - I am intent on taking it to FA status within the next few months. In that regard I'd appreciate all and any copyediting, peerreviwing, additions and suggestions to the article from knowledgeable and careful editors such as yourself. Thanks beforehand. ·Maunus· ·ƛ· 15:35, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Vietnamese grammar

I think this section is sufficiently long to have its own article. I think we should split this section, similar to what you've done with Vietnamese phonology, and just leave a summary in the main article. Thanks for your work. DHN (talk) 19:56, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

hi.

ok, splitting. – ishwar  (speak) 03:57, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

rongorongo

Hi Ish,

I was wondering if you could keep a long-term eye on rongorongo. Not for any active work necessarily, more for protection when I'm not around. It's finally starting to become a credible article, but there are a few people who occasionally insist in making it incoherent. There's a teacher who's made a "semantic" interpretation, which seems to be nonsense even in French and Spanish, with the additional problem that her student (?) who adds the stuff doesn't know enough English to write comprehensibly. The main person working on it now has published in the field, which raises concerns of bias (see the talk page if you want about some of my concerns and his replies), but it's shaping up pretty well, and it's not like he's claiming to have cracked the code or anything.

Ah, Dinah Washington. Haven't listened to her for a while! kwami (talk) 06:48, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm hardly qualified to evaluate this article. I havent read anything about it.

But, ok. Seems like Guy is getting tired of editing this page. – ishwar  (speak) 21:41, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

It's more a matter of protecting against passionate POV edits, which are easily recognizable by the fact that they are completely incoherent. If you don't feel comfortable with that, I undenstand, and I'll be keeping an eye on it for the time being. It just seems that every time I leave wikipedia, I come back to find that article garbled again. kwami (talk) 22:11, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

ok. – ishwar  (speak) 23:30, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

tám = few?

I've never seen that used in Vietnamese. Tám always means "eight". Which of your sources use that example? DHN (talk) 02:55, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi.

You are right. That is my transposition error. I should use a ruler when I look for examples.

As always, thank you for fixing my typos and updating the material. Who knows when I would have noticed these things?

– ishwar  (speak) 03:03, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Falsetto

An article that you have been involved in editing, Falsetto, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Falsetto. Thank you. BJBot (talk) 05:00, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Algic

Hello, I'm not an expert in Algic languages, but why has Paul Proulx's name been omitted? Is he considered an outsider in the field of Algic studies? If so, why? --Pet'usek ^{[petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom]} 12:45, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi. No reason, I guess. It just seems like the article is not very developed. – ishwar  (speak) 14:31, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Kurów

Could you please write an article about Kurów on Klallam language here ( http://kurow-wiki.openhosting.pl/wiki/clm:Kurow ) – just a few sentences based on http://kurow-wiki.openhosting.pl/wiki/en:Kurow ? Only 3-5 sentences enough. Please.

PS. Article about Kurów is already on 242 languages and dialects. If your village/town/city isn't yet on PL Wikipedia, I can do article about it. Pietras1988 (talk) 08:58, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Vietnamese nouns

Hi, thanks for your updates to the Vietnamese language article. I have some suggestions on how to improve the "Noun and Noun Phrases" section:

• Use a different name than "Nam", such as Mai (a female name) to reduce confusion, because "Nam" also means "male" and thus "nam sinh viên" can mean "male student".
• Isn't "cao" (tall) an adjective? Why not use a word that is indisputably a verb such as "đi" (go), "chạy" (run), or "nhảy" (jump)?

Thanks! Keep up the good work. DHN (talk) 17:20, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Hi.

nam is a different word from Nam so the example still works. But, if you think it confuses anyone, you can replace the subject Nam with another noun.

Words like cao, khôn (clever) are often considered stative or adjectival verbs since they can act as predicators just like other non-stative verbs like bay (fly), nói (speak). This clearly sets them apart from other words like Mai, Nam, bò (cow), which cant act as predicators by themselves.

But you are right that some authors have used the label "adjective" to refer to words like cao, khôn. I dont like this analysis because the term adjective is usually defined as words that can function attributively but not predicatively. An attributive function means modifying a noun and attributing some state/quality to it. Thus, we can see a difference between English, which has words that fit this definition of adjective, and Vietnamese & Lakhota, which dont. The absence or rarity of adjectives is fairly common across languages.

We could redefine the term adjective to mean one thing in languages like English and a different thing in languages like Vietnamese or we could define our word classes according to semantics. The problem with the first approach is that it is confusing to use the same term to mean different things (although obviously some authors do this). The problem with the semantically based definition is that semantic criteria are generally not very reliable in defining word classes which are better defined according to syntactic (where it occurs in the sentence) and/or morphological (what kind of suffixes, etc. can added to it) criteria. Using morpho-syntactic criteria for defining word classes is the most common approach in modern grammatical analyses (as opposed to "traditional" grammars) and is the one taught in introductory linguistics textbooks. A third reason for not using the term adjective for Vietnamese is pedagogical: if an English speaker naively equates cao with the English adjective tall, then an ungrammatical Vietnamese construction (like Mai là cao) will result.

Anyway, that's why I would prefer to call them verbs (following Nguyễn Đình-Hoà's 1997 grammar as opposed to less scholarly stuff like Tuan Duc Vuong & John Moore's Colloquial Vietnamese). But, of course, I wouldnt suggest that we shouldnt mention that these words are sometimes called adjective because they obviously are and this difference in terminology may be confusing to some people. – ishwar  (speak) 22:18, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

-ase

Please explain why you keep changing it to a redirect to enzyme, this spoiling the uniformity of the pages named after organic chemistry terminology suffixes. Anthony Appleyard 23:06, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Because this is not an encyclopedia topic, but rather wiktionary material on an English suffix. I followed the recommendation of an editor-voter on the previous deletion request to make -ase a redirect. All the organic chemistry terminology suffixes are not encyclopedia topics and should be moved to the wiktionary project. If it's desired that they be grouped together, then you can do so with an appropriate category on each suffixes wiktionary page. This grouping together to elements in a language that are related to particular topical domain is a common feature of many dictionaries: the linking of elements is known as semantic domains or thematic domain and dictionaries that organized by only semantic domains are called topical dictionaries. This is common in many dictionaries with a pedagogical focus. The connecting of words or other elements is a property of dictionaries not encyclopedias. – ishwar  (speak) 19:22, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Zuni

First, vowel length does not always translate to spelling. The vowel length in this case is accentuated and denoted by a mark for a glottal stop. I converse with Zuni nearly everyday and I ask them these things. They spell it 'A shiwi'.

As far as "referring to one of the unpublished dissertations on Zuni grammar? Which one are you talking about?" How I am supposed to know? I'm not the one using the spelling, so where was it used? That is the question. Authoritative publications spell it as the Zuni have used it, thus the incorrect spelling gives different references.

As for ""more definitive and authoritative" than Newman's grammar is needed", Newman was an authority. He wrote the Zuni dictionary. Is there a source more authoritative on this point than him? That should clarify the point of your misunderstanding. Was it spelled with the double 'a' in a single publication, or are there many? I do not remember finding the spelling in any source, including Newman. Does Tedlock spell it this way?, and if he does, does it reflect some suppositions in his work that one may perceive as references to possible origins of the Zuni language. Thanks. Amerindianarts 01:11, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

I think the point I was trying to make is that there is a common textual spelling of the word, especially in English conveyance, and to spell it with a double 'a' is an endorsement of a particular method, and is not very Wiki, unless it is Wikified by sourcing. Thanks again. 74.142.55.239 01:37, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Hi.

Vowel length is not always represented in the spelling? So, is the representation of vowel length predictable (i.e., can we identify when vowel length is indicated and when it is not)? Can you cite a source for current orthographic practices (like a textbook or other pedagogical material — either published or not)?

What exactly is the relationship between the glottal stop and vowel?

The long vowel in the aa(w)- prefix is indicated in all of Newman's work. So, we should indicate the vowel as long in a discussion of the Zuni language. If Zuni orthography does not indicate long vowels, we should note this but not at the expense of a description of Zuni sound structures. My misunderstanding is of your comments (which were contradictory). Long vowels are indicated with a length mark by Newman and with letter doubling by Tedlock. It doesnt really matter which is used to indicate vowel length, we just need to use something. I choose Tedlock's spelling because it is more recent and presumably more similar to current Zuni writing practices (which may, of course, be an incorrect assumption). I dont understand your comment about Tedlock's use of letter doubling to indicate vowel length as being related to anything about language origin. However a Zuni word may be transliterated into English (with loss of vowel length) is not really relevant to a description of Zuni. We wouldnt, for example, want to write the Chiricahua word Chʼúúkʼanén in a description of the Chiricahua language as it is sometimes spelled in English as Chokonen since that English spelling does not accurately represent features of the Chiricahua sound systems (e.g., it does not indicate tone, vowel length, glottalized consonants and has the wrong vowels). – ishwar  (speak) 21:37, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

-phil-

You deleted the article -phil- out of process. I restored it. Whle I admit the rule be bold applies to admins as well, please don't do unilateral decisions about long-existing articles. There is no real hurry: it is not vandalism or joke or something else which may hurt repiutation of wikipedia. `'Míkka>t 22:32, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I dont think I mentioned vandalism or joke or reputation, so I'm not sure what you mean.

The -phil- is obviously a list of words with the phil element within them. This is not an encyclopedia topic. It seems more appropriate to the wiktionary project. This information has already been moved to wiktionary, so there is no need for this page. – ishwar  (speak) 19:26, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Please stop that

Entries that already exist on Wiktionary don't need to be transwiki'ed. --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 21:10, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

please start that

some of those entries contain information that wiktionary lacks. Since (apparently) transwikiing is not the way to move lacking information between wikiprojects, I have copied the wikipedia page contents onto the discussion pages of corresponding or related wiktionary page entries. The extraction of any content suitable for wiktionary, I leave to wiktionary editors. – ishwar  (speak) 22:07, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Indigenous languages of the Americas

Why are the languages in the lists numbered? Aren't they just in alphabetical order? Or are the numbers somehow significant? Rmhermen 06:29, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

1. Hi. No significance at all, just easy to see how many total. You can replace # with *. – ishwar  (speak) 16:40, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Navajo Orthography

I wanted to ask whether you know if Navajo has or hasn't a letter <Ń ń> and if it does, what its phonetic value is. Some sources about Navajo mention this letter and others don't. The current article on Navajo language doesn't include any third nasal in its phoneme inventory. ·Maunus· ·ƛ· 07:51, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I'll respond there. – ishwar  (speak) 01:20, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

AAVE references

Thank you for your recent addition of references. They're all good: since the existing list of references contains at least one item that's utter garbage, they raised the average level. However, I reverted your edit, thus undoing most of your good work (not all, as it's still in the history). Here's why.

I didn't like doing this, as you're a linguist, and that article needs real linguists as opposed to underinformed people who are horribly certain of their misunderstandings about language. I hope that you take my reversion in the non-jerk spirit in which it was intended, and indeed that you contribute more to that article, which needs all the informed help it can get. -- Hoary, who is writing this while balancing on his right thigh a copy of Lyons's Definiteness (for an WP-unrelated purpose), 07:06, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Ok. I dont really see a point to making so many different lists of reference materials. In my view, you can simply have a biblio and then refer to which sources support which statements. Further reading sections are useful, but if it's just a list of material then it will probably overlap with the other (reference) list of materials. Wikipedia:Citing sources doesnt really make it clear why you need two lists. What I would do is have a biblio of all materials, then refer to all materials referenced in the article text. And if you want a further reading section, it would really be most helpful to tell readers why they would ever want to further-read any of that stuff (i.e., further reading wouldnt be a just, but rather a list annotated with summaries of the list items and/or why they are important). Anyway, I think those materials are important and if the reader is serious about learning this topic they will take a look at them or, at the least, be aware of them. Hopefully, editors of this article will take a look at them as well.

As for working on the article myself, I think I have other interests that are stronger (e.g., there's not even an article on American Indian English). I added those refs to the article because I was expanding the bibliography in American English, which is not much more representative of the expanse of research (even if no one consulted these for writing that article). I was moved to do this because a talk page comment asked about Latino English which is not mentioned in that article and because I like bibliographies. – ishwar  (speak) 01:20, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Zuni

Just wanna say that you're doing a good job with Zuni language. Keep it up. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 06:00, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

thanks for checking my transliteration from Americanist to IPA. glad you enjoy. peace – ishwar  (speak) 17:37, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Non-free use disputed for Image:Apache wickiup.jpg

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Mandan

Mandan has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here.--Jayron32|talk|contribs 06:08, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

hi.

i only contributed to the language and synonymy sections, so i cant answer any questions about the other information. and i dont own any books about the Mandan or Plains people. – ishwar  (speak) 05:59, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Apache

Hi - FYI, another user has requested a "good article" review of the Apache article. The reviewer is one of the new "frantic footnoters" and wants references and in line citations before he will continue the review. Although I am obviously not a fan of the rating system and mentality, I will try and come up with some references for the material I originally entered. If you have time, it would be helpful if you would do the same. Thanks. WBardwin 20:05, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

hi. Well, i guess it doesnt matter now. Yes, they sometimes go overboard with with footnoting. There are many references at the bottom of the article & I believe that I've added all of the references that I consulted. Maybe the footnoters should indicate where they want footnotes? peace – ishwar  (speak) 19:34, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Replaceable fair use Image:Navajo blanket.jpg

Replaceable fair use

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North America

Please see the map at North America.

North America includes all of the Americas north of the South American continent -- basically everything north of and including Panama. To refer to the "Southwestern Cultural Region" may be the practice found in much of the literature, but it is very US-centric in that the area is actually to the Northeast of much of North America, including Mexico. Certainly, you won't find this terminology used in Spanish without the qualifier of "United States", or perhaps it will be referred to even as the "Northeastern" cultural area. --Node 09:25, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Please see the literature.

North America may be defined by different arbitrary conventions in different contexts. In Indian contexts, North America is defined as what is above Mesoamerica. I have no reason to assume that the Spanish literature will not reflect this terminology. (you dont have to speculate, just read some of the literature written in Spanish.) The terminology is standard (see, for example, The Handbook of North American Indians). peace – ishwar  (speak) 18:52, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

blacklisted

Hi. The co.nr domain is an URL redirection/URL shortener domain and can be used to bypass Wikipedia's spam filters. As a matter of standard procedure, such sites are routinely blacklisted.

You've got a number of links to http://www.freewebs.com/apache-texts that use the co.nr redirect instead the actual address. I've come across them on other wikipedias as I clean-up co.nr links prior to blacklisting. (Once blacklisted, you can't save edits to a page with one a blacklisted link).

Normally, I leave user pages alone, but since I knew the alternate address at freewebs.com, I went ahead and made the change for you. The links still point to the same material, just not via co.nr.

I did this for your convenience, however if you feel this was inappropriate, please let me know and I will revert my edits (it should be another several days before the blacklisting goes into effect). --A. B. ^(talk) 18:57, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

PS -- I appreciate all your linguistics work on Wikipedia. I could spend days reading linguistics articles here -- they're one of Wikipedia's strongest features.

Hi.

Ok, I dont that is on my user page anymore. I was just experimenting with that. Thanks for the information.

I'm glad you enjoy reading whatever I typed up. I probably should have been doing other things when I did all of that. – ishwar  (speak) 18:11, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Image:VoQS.png

Thanks for uploading Image:VoQS.png. I notice the 'image' page specifies that the image is being used under fair use, but its use in Wikipedia articles fails our first fair use criterion in that it illustrates a subject for which a freely licensed image could reasonably be found or created that provides substantially the same information. If you believe this image is not replaceable, please:

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hi.

Well, ok. It is possible to create something based on their chart instead of just reproducing it. I thought it would be ok since it is not something that is readily available online (unlike their main chart and the extIPA). Using a scanned copy of it shows exactly what the authors intended, and that was my intention. I guess I dont exactly agree that it isnt appropriate fair-use, but it is possible to make a derivation of it so I cant really disagree with your justification for deletion. Thanks. – ishwar  (speak) 18:01, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

A bit more: If I were to reproduce the chart, I would need to rearrange the organization of it, wouldnt I? I'm not sure if I can find all of the symbols. Some of the symbols are from Cyrillic, but the denasalized voice uses a tilde with a slash through it, I dont think I can just type in a normal font. Do you know? – ishwar  (speak) 18:08, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

The tilde with the slash through it is available as a Combining Diacritical Mark at U+034A (its formal name is COMBINING NOT TILDE ABOVE). Some fonts that have it include Charis SIL, Code2000, Doulos SIL, Gentium, Junicode, and Tahoma (but not Arial Unicode MS, strangely enough). —Angr 19:22, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

References for IPA

Hi again Ish. International Phonetic Alphabet is currently up for FAC, but the section International Phonetic Alphabet#Other phonetic notation has no inline citations. Looking through the history, I see that you've added many of the references to the articles about IPA and APA—would you be able to point us in the direction of some resources we can cite, or, could you perhaps cite some relevant texts? I realize that you're busy, so any help you can get in edgewise would be really appreciated. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 23:46, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Hi. Most of that is really off-topic, dont you think? I'll move it to Phonetic transcription where it should, if it's not there already. What should remain is (1) VoQS, (2) canIPA, (3) ASCII transliterations. – ishwar  (speak) 15:49, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale

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done – ishwar  (speak) 15:44, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Dené-Caucasian languages

Hi Ish I have recently stumbled on the Dené-Caucasian languages article which seems to have been maintained by a few editors with out connection to the rest of wikipedia or mainstrea historical linguistics. I have tried to explain them that there is a viewpoint that doesn't accept this hypothesis as validly proven, and that the article could be conformed to NPOV by adding that viewpoint as well as those who accept the hypothesis. The article is also a mess in its formatting and referencing. I hoped that someone like you would come over and look at the page, and comment as well so they don't think I'm a lone mad editor who still hasn't seen the light of the Dené-Caucasian Superfamily.·Maunus· ·ƛ· 08:17, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi. Yes, I agree. I'll add this to my list of things to check out. Thanks. – ishwar  (speak) 15:42, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

wscla 12

Are you going to WSCLA 12? --Ling.Nut 19:43, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

hi. no. but, i'm going to: LSA Institute 2007. – ishwar  (speak) 19:00, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

San Carlos

Dagotʼéé ish ishwar, I am curious as to your source for the name "Sengaa" for San Carlos. Bray's Western Apache-English dictionary gives "Sangada", and that corresponds with what I have heard. Iinagodzin atʼéé :-) -Node 15:14, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

the source is:

* de Reuse, Willem J. (2006). A practical grammar of the San Carlos Apache language. LINCOM Studies in Native American Linguistics 51. LINCOM. ISBN 3-89586-861-2.

this is the way the San Carlos generally say it. The Sangada may be a White Mountain form. The Bray dictionary has errors as it was not written by linguists. But, it should be approximately that if that's what you hear. Anyway, since most San Carlos speakers actually live in San Carlos, I'd use their word for it if you choose a single form to represent Western Apache. – ishwar  (speak) 22:20, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Dagot'ee, I agree, although the preface says that all placenames were supplied by Dr. Basso. I was also wondering if you have any other native names for other Arizona (or other American) places whose articles don't already have them besides Mohave, which I have and am planning to add to certain articles. --Node 04:41, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Requesting help for Mayan languages

We are currently nominating Mayan languages for featured article status and we can use help both to suggest improvements and to actually introduce them in the article. Maybe you would be so kind as to read the article and maybe change the things that you find criticizable or alternatively just comment at the Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Mayan languages·Maunus· ·ƛ· 17:43, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi. Ok, I'll have a look. It seems to be one of the better language pages.

At a quick glance, I notice that there is much less "anthropological" type information (e.g. speech styles, ethnography of communication, speech community attitudes). I see that some of this is promised here: Mesoamerican literature#Oral Literatures. A lot of good Wikipedia language articles lack this (including my own contributions to Wikipedia). For readers not interested in grammatical structure, this may be what they are most interested in. What about bilingualism? Any statistics on the endangered languages? – ishwar  (speak) 19:20, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I think that the anthropological stuff is better suited for pages on single languages (although I admit that it lacks for most language artivcles as well)- simply because it is difficult to characterize anthropology of language for an entire langauge family. I think the stratus of the endangered languages which aren't that many (mostly Lacandón and Itza') is covered in the overview section which tries to give the most current population figures for all the languages including endangered status and number of monolingual speakers where information is available. I do think that currently this article is the best one on wikipedia about a language family - although it can stillbecome much better. I have been thinking mysrelf that it needs a section on the history of classification and scholarship. Your comments, additions and corrections are greatly appreciated.·Maunus· ·ƛ· 19:27, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Alaska Native languages

Hey, thanks for your corrections to language infoboxes. I'm working pretty intensively on Alaska Native stuff right now, & created Category:Indigenous languages of Alaska yesterday (a geographic rather linguistic category), & have been working to make sure that each of the languages has at least a stub article with a language infobox, doing some cleanup along the way. But, I'm not a linguist, so your corrections are welcomed, as you seem to know quite a bit more about linguistics than I do. --Yksin 17:14, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi. That's good as there isnt much written about those peoples, unfortunately. I'm glad someone is doing this instead writing about TV show characters.

I removed those subfamilies because they are mostly geographic groupings and not true genetic subfamilies. However, if you read somewhere where comparative research seems to suggest a genetic subgrouping, then go ahead and note it.

peace – ishwar  (speak) 19:08, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh, there's plenty written about those peoples, it's just not in Wikipedia! The entire state of Alaska is a big mess in terms of how it's represented here, actually... I've just carved out Alaska Natives as my small little slice (!!!!) of what I'll do to improve it. Thanks again. --Yksin 19:25, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, there is a good amount, but none of it is here. thanks – ishwar  (speak) 19:34, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

reference for word list?

Hiya Ish,

Thanks again for the maps! :-)

Do you have a reference for a source from which I could get a wordlist of a manageable number of common words in all (or at least, several) Algonquian langs? Thanks in advance, --Ling.Nut 04:42, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

(Not ishwar, but responding anyway!) Well, there's always this. Is there something specific you're looking for? I have a few PDFs related to Algonquian historical linguistics that have some comparative word lists and such I could send to you if you need. --Miskwito 07:14, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

There is a proto-Algonquian (or -Algic) dictionary, i believe. I'll have to look that up. However, having never seen it, i dont know whats in it. Besides, that i could only give you references for (sub-)family surveys that appear in Mithun's (1999) book. If you already have that, then i'll save my typing. If not, then i'll add them to the Algic page. I dont know much about this family, so if you want more i'll have to refer you to a specialist (like look at the SSILA directory). You also may look for comparative work (e.g. Bloomfield's stuff) and search through JSTOR's IJAL archive (you probably know all this). There is some newsletter or published conference proceedings that is devoted Algonquian research. Maybe someone has an unpublished database?

A thank you to Miskwito for the mention of PDFs (i dont have any myself). About www.native-languages.org, i dont how accurate that site is. I would go to published stuff by linguists if available. – ishwar  (speak) 04:27, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi again

I've noticed you've been busy working on the Navajo language page. I've been too busy myself with other things to have a close look yet, but just wanted to say it's good to see! --RJCraig 21:30, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi. Yes, and when I should be doing something else in "real" life. If you find in anything wrong or unclear, just fix it. peace – ishwar  (speak) 21:45, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Camsá article

Just found your stub on Camsá. I added one very useful reference to it (the only collection of primary texts with morphemic glosses and translations that I know of). Do you have any plans to expand the article any time soon? If not, I may take a stab at it using McDowell's grammatical description of the language, but I don't know anything about the language first hand, so if you do happen to know anything more, I don't want to take it on... --Fenevad 00:00, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi. I have no plans to expand & do not have any materials on this Camsá. I just made the page to show that the language exists. Please go ahead and take it on. I'll be looking forward to it. Thank you – ishwar  (speak) 22:01, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Image:Algonquian langs.png

Hiya, I like this map very much. Is it too much to ask to kinda show which languages were in which area? Ulterior motive: I would like to know which Algonquian langs were westernmost... thanks!! --Ling.Nut 02:57, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that would be ideal. And eventually, I will do this if no one does it before me. However, it is time-consuming so I dont know when it will be done. Plus, knowing my biases I would probably want to start with the Northwest. In the meantime, I can email you a scanned section of my sources (which are much better anyway) if you want. – ishwar  (speak) 06:11, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

That would be excellent. But take your time; please do it only at your convenience. I'm just considering writing a little semester paper about Algonquian langs. Thanks! --Ling.Nut 15:01, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Style guidelines for sound pages

Hello, Ish. Recently CyborgTosser and I discussed and came up with proposed style guidelines for all the individual consonant and vowel pages wherein the Occurrence section would have a table rather than a bulleted list. You can see the discussion here. So far nobody else has commented on the proposed guidelines and I believe it's safer to get a solid consensus before undergoing the work to change so many pages. If you could comment on what has been proposed, even if it's a simple yay or nay, this would help us out quite a bit. Thank you very much. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 06:36, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi. Ok. Give me some time to read as there is a lot written there. peace – ishwar  (speak) 02:14, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Tones in Kiowa-Tanoan

Sorry for removing Kiowa-Tanoan from the list of tonal languages nbone of my sources mentioned anything about Tone for any of the languages of that family (Campbell, some IJAL articles some of which have reconstructions of ProtoKT phonology) and neither did the rather well developed article on Kiowa language. I defer to your sources and knowledge about the topic (especially since reliable information about tone is hard to come by even in languages that are better attested than KT and often altogether left out). but maybe it was an idea to put apart about tonality into the section on the Kiowa phonemic system? Maunus 22:00, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

No problem. I assumed that they were all tonal since I knew that Kiowa was tonal, but since you removed them from the article I tried to look them up. As far as I can tell, all Tanoan languages are tonal, except for Southern Tewa (which I cant confirm if its really tonal since the phonology work appears to be mostly an unpublished dissertation — it's probably tonal guessing from J.P. Harrington's comments on the Ysleta de Sur dialect) and Piros (which is basically unattested anyway and may not even be Tanoan).

About the tones: Kiowa has two level tones, high & low, with a falling tone, which if I remember correctly is a sequence of H+L (according to Watkins, but dont quote me until I check again). I dont remember about whether Kiowa has stress. I think that most (if not all) Tanoan languages have 3 level tones: high, mid, low. They also are reported to have 3 stress levels (primary, secondary, unstressed), which are realized at least partly as vowel length effects. In some languages (e.g. Taos), stress interacts with tone. I didnt read closely enough to learn the details of stress or the interaction. I have IJAL Tanoan papers in PDF form if you would me to email you some (they all seem to be in a structuralist framework). I havent read anything about tonal reconstruction (and dont even know if anyone has written on this).

I think I put some of that in the Kiowa article, but I never got to tone or any morpho-syntax. I find the inverse number very interesting and may eventually add a section on number marking. – ishwar  (speak) 22:26, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I have acces to the IJAL papers myself - so no need for mailing them, but thanks for the offer. If you find some articles particularly useful you can just give me the references. Inverse nmber really is very interesting and deserves elaboration.Maunus 11:50, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Okanagan language stub made

Hi. I seem to recall you're around the BC indigenous language pages quite a bit, although I can't remember if you're a Salishanist; I blind-copied template-style another language page to create the Okanagan language article and am hoping somebody qualified will come by and flesh it out; it was created as a result of needing to create at least a series of stubs for Okanagan people and the governments of Okanagan Nation Alliance, as there's a growing group of BC indigenous peoples' categories but there was nothing on the Okanagan people at all; and of course Okanagan goes to the region/valley of that name so it couldn't be that for a category name (which is Category:Syilx, thanks to TheMightyQuill). They were a big blank spot in Wiki coverage of BC First Nations, so I went ahead and zipped 'em together as obviously needed; I also went through a spate of tribal council and band government stubs for the Island Kwakwaka'wakw and Nuu-chah-nulth, although haven't tried to figure out the Salish on the southeast island yet; but all Nlaka'pamux, Secwepemc and Nlaka'pamux bands and TCs now have stubs (got started because of creating Ulkatcho First Nation because of Carey Price's Mom being the chief...). Most of those already have language articles, but there's still a few wholes here and there up north; I also have created a basic Ktunaxa article for its tc, the Kootenay Kinbasket Tribal Council, as Ktunaxa as it stands is a redirect to the band in Bonners Ferry ID (Kutenai (tribe)); the Ktunaxa link should be its own ethno article, for all the Ktunaxa (the Bonners Ferry band and the Elmo MT one are both part of the KKTC, however; in other words there's a series of articles needed there....and the Ktunaxa language article needs to be spun off separately....as on a lot of different languages....I should build myself a list as it's hard to remember where and which...

Anyway not meaning to go on, but just a heads-up about the Okanagan language stub in case you know anybody who can write it, if you can't. In general I think the BC language articles could use, as you may have heard me say before, more "lay" content and less technical content. Some have moved in that direction - easily accessible for non-linguistics scholars, full of examples and stories and key words and concepts and so on, instead of IPA tables and abstruse morphological analyses...but content is content; if you know of a Salishanist in Wikidom who'd be interested in the article's emergence, please let them know. I titled it Okanagan language rather than Syilx'tsn (which is a redirect) as this is an English language Wikipedia, and while native-language names are increasingly common in BC English, that's not the case in the outside world; could be either way as some language pages are titled in the original language, others in English (St'at'imcets vs. Thompson language, for instance...). Skookum1 09:13, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Endangered Languages

Hello Ish, long time! I see that Ling.Nut already told you about the new WikiProject Endangered Languages when he was in the process of starting it up. It has been created now, at WP:ENLANG, and I thought you might be interested in becoming a member. Feel free to decline, I understand that you're busy in real life.

All the best, — mark ✎ 10:32, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

English orthography

I changed the //double slashes// back to |pipes| since the latter is the standard IPA method of showing morphological representation. I also changed /e/ and /o/ back to diphthongs, mostly because the page discusses both American and British English and I think that doing so will make things a little clearer and simpler since they are analysed phonemically as diphthongs in RP. I'll fight harder for the first one than the second one. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 20:36, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi. I'd prefer not fighting about anything. Are the pipes standard for the IPA? Please point me where the IPA handbook says this (I assume in the introductory text). If that's true, I didnt know that. And it would be too bad because the double slashes (or double pipes), which I have encountered more often in phonological writings, seems to a better symbol to me (partly because it's iconic, partly looks more distinctive).

Whether [eɪ] is phonemically a diphthong depends on what phonological analysis you are following. It's often phonetically a diphthong, but the offglide is predictable. In some generative analyses, the offglides are inserted by phonological rule. My bias is toward an analysis of this type. As far as following a standard, some write /e/ while other write /eɪ/. There's a note to this affect on the talk page of that article. peace – ishwar  (speak) 20:53, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I didn't notice the talk page discussion. I agree with the analysis (although my dictionary sources both use <eɪ>); really, as long both American and British should be analyized the same way--and right now RP is shown as either /e(ɪ)/ or /eɪ/-- it should be fine and if youi prefer /e/ then I can simply change the RP examples. As for the pipes, well I seem to have spoken overzealously. I actually don't know if it's standard or not. I assumed as such because of the notation adopted on various phonology/morphology books as well as Wikipedia pages (phoneme, morphophonology, phonetic transcription, etc). If it's not standard IPA, it still seems to be de facto Wikipedia convention for morphemic representation. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 01:41, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, take a look in the handbook — that should tell you. I doubt that the IPA has anything on deep underlying representations/morphophonemes because the implicit theories behind the creation of the IPA didnt consider morphophonemic alternations a part of phonemics. Also, since the IPA already uses | for prosodic (intonational) phrases, I wouldnt expect it to use the same symbol for MP forms.

I dont think that there is a standard notation for MPs. For fun, I searched through Language for this: 3 authors used //...//, 3 authors (in 5 articles) used |...|, 2 authors used {...}, 1 author used ||...||. Looking through some grammars/dissertations at my house, Geoffrey Kimball's Koasati grammar uses //...//, Timothy Montler's Saanich phonology/morphology uses ||...|| as does Stephen Tyler's Koya sketch and Mary Foster's Tarascan sketch (both of these are University of California publications, so maybe this is the preference of those editors). The first edition of Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics (the best linguistics encylopedia) uses {...} in its entries on morphology and morphophonemics. Many authors in Language also simply used italics (but I didnt count).

Whatever is used in Wikipedia can be changed. I would prefer //..// over |...| because in some fonts the lowercase letter l looks very similar to |, which may be confusing to people who are reading about the concept of morphophonemics contrasted with phonemics. ||...|| may be a bad choice because the IPA also uses || for prosodic phrases as well. {...} may not be preferred because it is also used to represent morphemes (e.g. {plural} or {past}). – ishwar  (speak) 21:41, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I added a note about making this a standard: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Phonetics#notational standard for morphophonemic/deep URs – ishwar  (speak) 22:36, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

GA

I didn't read your summary thoroughly enough. I see that you were talking about allomorphy, which is somewhat different than allophony. Let me know if you want me to find a source for my analysis. I recall a phonologist who transcribed English phonemically with just one symbol for [ə] and [ʌ]. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 09:45, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

The allomorphy is phonologically conditioned.

If you can find a source for this analysis, i'll be happy to take a look at it. Following Chomsky & Halle (1968), many people have a -tense, unstressed V → [ə] rule. Restricting [ə] to be a variant of only /ʌ/ is unsatisfactory as it doesnt account for the predicable variations in related words. Nor does it account for the variation in some words, e.g. reveal [rɪˈvil~rəˈvil].

Incidentally, because vowel reduction involves stress, the situation is complicated. C&H posit rules that make lax Vs tense & tense Vs lax. So, you can find lax Vs in unstressed syllables that dont reduce. (read pp. 110-126).

peace – ishwar  (speak) 06:42, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

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Article in need of cleanup - please assist if you can

Endangered languages of South America

Hi,

I noticed your name in the hist of Culina language and other pages, and also User:Mark Dingemanse mentioned your name to me.

I'm trying to put together a table of Endangered languages of South America, which I eventually hope to move into the main namespace. It's actually a part of a larger plan; a WikiProject on endangered languages (which may or may not also covered language revitalization efforts; everything is very preliminary).

If you have the time and the inclination, I would deeply welcome any contributions you might make.

Thanks --Ling.Nut 22:28, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi.

Unfortunately, I know little about South America and dont really read much detailed literature on any of those languages. What I have is basically general works on the area, namely Campbell's American Indian Languages, Adelaar's The languages of the Andes, and two chapters by Terrence Kaufman (1990, 1994). I dont know if you have these.

Adelaar has a lot of useful information on number of speakers and endangered status. Campbell applies two labels in his language lists: moribund (fewer than 10 speakers), obsolescent (fewer than 100 speakers). Campbell gets his information from Kaufman's 1994 chapter, the 11th ed. of the Ethnologue, and other various articles. But, these are just number of speakers and not evaluations of their endangerment status.

I was focusing on just creating language family articles for the time being, as most still dont have articles.

Are making a bibliography of sources?

– ishwar  (speak) 20:13, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi again!

Bibliographies.. lists.. articles.. anything.. everything.. any region:

WikiProject Endangered Languages - Brief proposal and discussion of scope: ::User:Ling.Nut#Current_Projects

Skeletal project page: see top of page for links to lists of endangered languages that I have been working on:

• WikiProject endangered languages (and language revitalization)

--Ling.Nut 21:09, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Bimzalazim

I've replied on my talk page, and there's a small discussion here. --ZimZalaBim (talk) 16:50, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

ok. i'll reply at the two other places. – ishwar  (speak) 18:06, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Merger

I feel that the article Spirit Mountain Casino (Oregon) should be merged with Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon as their is very little information pertaining to the casino and therefore, I do not feel that it is substantial enough to stand alone. T. White 09:15, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Image:Langs N.Amer.png

Love the map. One niggling point: #17 needs a line pointing to its area. Rmhermen 13:14, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. It's not finished yet, but i got tired of playing with it.

I didnt put lines where I thought the numbers clearly were connected to a language. But, perhaps I should be consistent. It wont be much work to do that.

if you have any other comments/criticism, I would welcome them. – ishwar  (speak) 20:03, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

could you check a couple of pages for me

Hi could you check a couple of pages for me. I did sort of a major rewrite of The Navajo Long Walk. I would like your opinion and for you to put the Navajo words in the right font. I also spent some time with Navajo Wars. Notice you probably made some major contributions to those pages.

Back in 1970s I lived and volunteered for a school at Coyote Canyon (Brimhall) and in my spare time researched US Army Navajo Scouts. Decided to pull out my BA thesis then 10 or 12 books.--70.109.180.142 22:43, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

ok, but i wont have time to do this anytime soon. – ishwar  (speak) 20:00, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Ergative-absolutive language

I really appreciate your adding a syntactic-ergativity example to Ergative-absolutive language. I was wondering if maybe you could add information on other forms of coreferential coordination besides A/S and S/O? Like, English obviously supports S/S and A/A coordination, and it supports O/O coreferential coordination in a limited way (though it's much less natural than A/A or A/S or S/S coordination, unless there's A/A coreferential coordination as well, producing something like "I_i cooked ____j and ____i ate it_j"); I'm assuming Dyirbal supports S/S and O/O coordination, but does it support A/A coreferential coordination? Also, Dyirbal says Dyirbal is always syntactically ergative, even in sentences that are morphologically accusative; does this mean that sometimes the foo_i isn't in the right morphological case for the ____i? (I don't know how much information on Dyirbal you have access to, but this line of thought never occurred to me, and I'm fascinated by it.) Ruakh 02:09, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

hi.

The syntactic section looked lonely, so I felt obliged to write something. I dont think that other types of coordination should necessarily be in article since they arent relevant to ergativity. But, I guess that you are thinking of improving an article on coordination, no? At any rate, I'll need more time to answer about this. In the meantime, try to find out about syntactic "gapping" (which seems to be what you are interested in).

I dont have a grammar of Dyirbal, so I dont know if I can look this stuff up very easily. I believe that Dyirbal has ergative morphology on noun phrases, but nominative-accusative clitic pronouns that attach to an auxiliary that occurs in second (Wackernagel's) position (before the verb). Do you have a copy of Dixon's 1979 article in Language? I can email a PDF to you if you want it. It has some information on Dyirbal (Dixon also wrote, by the way, a good grammar of Dyirbal, which is what we would need to learn more about Dyirbal).

peace – ishwar  (speak) 19:47, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't think huge numbers of examples are necessary, but I think a brief paragraph along the lines of "In English (SVO word order), A or S can be co-referential with a deleted A or S, and O can sometimes be co-referential with a deleted O, but neither A nor S can be co-referential with a deleted O, nor vice versa. By contrast, in Dyirbal (OSV word order), [whatever the case is]" would not be out of order, if only to provide some context for the comparison.

And I'd be very grateful if you'd send me that article, thanks! (My e-mail address is ran [DOT] arigur [AT] gmail [DOT] com.)

Ruakh 20:29, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Is "Kalahin" a Tahltan name/word?

Hi. I've been building a List of Chinook Jargon placenames and wrastling with the wide range of variant spellings possible. I checked with a Tlingit scholar (User:James Crippen) and he says for sure it's not Tlingit, but it might be Tahltan. If it's not Tahltan it's probably Chinook Jargon, i.e. from kullaghan, meaning a fence, boundary or fenced enclosure; it happens to be a border peak (or not quite on the border, but close enough).Skookum1 02:09, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi. I'm sorry, but I dont know Chinook Jargon or Tahltan and I dont have a dictionary of these (& my library doesnt either). Perhaps you could email William Bright about this (http://www.ncidc.org/bright/). He has been working on indigenous American placenames for a while now. He published a book on United States placenames in 2004, although this doesnt help you with Canada. Otherwise, you could email a query to SSILA (http://www.ssila.org/). Let me know if you find this out. peace – ishwar  (speak) 04:26, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, Bill Bright just passed away, so he cannot be asked – ishwar  (speak) 17:06, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Glottal fricative

Hi again. Although you maybe are tired of this, you may also be interested. Peter Ladefoged had a comment in Journal of the International Phonetic Association (1990, Vol.2, No.2, pp.24-25) where he argued (following the recent IPA revision) that [h] should be removed from the main consonant chart because it makes [h] appear as a glottal fricative, which he calls a "misnomer". He also disagrees that it should be considered a glottal approximate because it is not glottal but rather is placeless (i.e., unspecified). He recommended that the symbol be called simply "voiceless approximant" and be placed under the "Other symbols" box.

However, see also J. C. Catford's disagreement (pp. 25-26) where he thinks they should stay on the chart for reasons "more phonological and practical than strictly phonetic". He does agree with Ladefoged's phonetic description but notes that /h/ functions as a fricative in certain languages.

Anyway, just some more info & perhaps to convince you a little better that it is ok to classify Lillooet /h/ as an approximant (glide) based on phonological criteria. peace – ishwar  (speak) 19:23, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for the info. My first impression of the consonant chart was that it was an attempt to say that the Lillooet /h/ was somehow different phonetically from English /h/ especially since /z/ and /z’/ were classified as approximants. Maybe English /h/ should be classified as an approximant since, as with /j/ and /w/, it doesn't appear word-finally. :) AEuSoes1 21:55, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

hi. Yeah, I would guess that Lillooet [h] & English [h] is basically the same. Their /z/'s differ a little. English /h/ could be called an approximant. It often is specified phonologically with the distinctive feature [-consonantal] (along with vowels & glides) opposing it to other consonants which are [+cons]. But, you often have to figure out 2 things: what it is phonetically and what it is phonologically.

Some analyses of English treat diphthongs as sequences of V+j and V+w — so, here, English /h/ is the only segment that cant occur syllable-finally (except for varieties which also dont have syllable-final /ʒ/). But, /j/ & /w/ could also be treated as identical to /i/ & /u/ that just occur in different positions in the syllable structure. Just depends on your analysis. One reason to not group /h/ with /j/ & /w/ is that English has onset clusters of C+j and C+w (as well as C+l, C+r, which are also glides), but no C+h clusters. – ishwar  (speak) 16:41, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

"promiscuous" number marking

What does this mean? JWB (talk · contribs)

i guess youre talking about Tlingit, Haida, Aleut?

This refers to a grammatical marker that may indicates number on two or more nouns within a phrase. So, Tlingit has a proclitic has= that can attach to a verb indicating that either the subject or the object or both the subject & object is plural (but only if the subject or object is animate). Alaskan Haida has a verbal suffix -ʔu which can pluralize any animate noun within a clause. Here are examples of Haida:

ʔlá•   hal   qíŋgan

"She saw him"

(ʔlá• "3rd.pers.pron", hal "3rd.pers.pron", qíŋ-gan "see-past")

ʔlá•   hal   qíŋʔugan

"She saw them" or "They saw him" or "They saw them"

(ʔlá• "3rd.pers.pron", hal "3rd.pers.pron", qíŋ- "see", -ʔu "pl", -gan "past")

ƛuwá•y   ʔlá•ŋa•   ł   qíŋgan

"I saw his boat"

(ƛuwá•y "boat", ʔlá•ŋ "3rd.pers.pron (attrib)", ł "1st.pers.pron", qíŋgan "saw")

ƛuwá•y   ʔlá•ŋa•   ł   qíŋʔugan

"I saw their boat"

(ƛuwá•y "boat", ʔlá•ŋ "3rd.pers.pron (attrib)", ł "1st.pers.pron", qíŋʔugan "saw.pl")

The suffix appears in sentences #2 & #4 and are underlined. Interesting, isnt it? The article on this is

• Leer, Jeff. (1991). Evidence for a Northern Northwest Coast language area: Promiscuous number marking and periphrastic possessive constructions in Haida, Eyak, and Aleut. International Journal of American Linguistics, 57 (2), 158-193.

peace – ishwar  (speak) 19:03, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Vietnamese alphabet name change

Hi, there is a vote on changing the name of Vietnamese alphabet to "quốc ngữ". As someone who've contributed to the article, you might want to participate in the vote. DHN 01:05, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for the invitation.

I dont have much of an opinion on these things. I find either acceptable. I think "quốc ngữ" is commonly encountered in specialist literature. Maybe you can check out what other encyclopedias do and follow them. Since Vietnamese does have more than one writing system, like Japanese, it is useful to refer to quốc ngữ with a specific name. However, since quốc ngữ is the only Latin based writing system, there is no ambiguity. I dont think that having the article name based on the Vietnamese word is unusual or unexpected.

Either way, a redirect solves all problems, doesnt it? (My real opinion is that there are many other things that need to be written, so thats what I would do.) peace – ishwar  (speak) 05:20, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Saanich (linguistics) vs "Saanich language"

Hi; me again; just saw you're the one who created the Saanich (linguistics) article. The main stlye I've seen across the board via the Indigenous people's WikiProject appears to be Saanich language, which currently is a redirect to Saanich (linguistics), as created by you; in cases where there's a specific language name, like St'at'imcets, there's no "language" appended to the title, so maybe Sencotem should be the core article, and both the others should be redirets - ????Skookum1 19:16, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

hi. I think it's preferable to call it Saanich language. It was there originally, but someone moved — presumably because Saanich is a sub-variety of Northern Straits Salish continuum. I dont know if using Sencotem is all that common in English, Timothy Montler (who wrote his dissertation on Saanich) always calls it Saanich. I dont know what members of the community call it, but I would guess that they also call it Saanich. – ishwar  (speak) 05:09, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Okanagan language and Colville language needed

You're on a Wikibreak so this may not be the best place to ask, but I know you're a Salishan language specialist/interestee; I think it was on Northern Straits Salish or Saanich where I noticed this, or else the Tillamook page....anyway, I'm not a linguist (other than in a polyglot, un-academic sort of way) and know better than to wade into technical materials, where I've already trodden on toes (Bill Poser's, for example) by trying too hard....so anyway, for a while now there's been a big hole in the Salishan languages area, namely the Okanagan language and the Colville language; and lately someone has expanded the Sinixt ethno article, implying the need for a Sinixt language article. As it is there's no article for Okanagan people yet either, but this is one of the largest groups in the BC Interior where Secwepmec, St'at'imcets and Nlaka'pamux are already in Wiki. With Colville, from what I can see on the Reservation/Agency page, it sounds like a creolized Salishan interlingua that's evolved since the reservation brought different groups together (including Sinixt and Okanogans and ??); but I wouldn't dare say that on a main page without knowing. In the case of Okanagan the history articles on that area (Okanagan's history section, and Okanagan Trail, which I recently started)) need some ethno-linguistic background; I can maybe come up with a stub on Okanagan people based on some books I have around here, but I wouldn't dare start Okanagan language. If you're too busy, can you refer this on to another Salishanist?Skookum1 17:17, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

hi. well, give me a few weeks & I'll look into this. To get you started, here are some links:

• http://www.umt.edu/ling/resources/reading1.htm (a few Okanagan-Colville lessons with sound)
• http://www.neh.gov/GRANTS/guidelines/delsamples/colville.pdf (Anthony Mattina's Okanagan-Colville grant proposal from NSF website)

I'm not a Salish specialist, but I love these languages & 've taken short classes on Lillooet syntax & intro Klallam. I believe that Okanagan(-Colville) has been around long before the creation of reservations. Okanagan and Colville are really the same language. Okanagan is the language proper while Colville is a regional variety (i.e. a "dialect", that dangerous word...). There are about 5 or 6 or 7 Okanagan varieties. I dont think that Okanagan refers to true variety, rather there is a North Okanagan variety & a South Okanagan variety. Going from the name, maybe these are more closely related to each other than they are to the other varieties, but you never know (because linguists sometimes inherit names created by non-linguists). I can ask an Interior Salishanist about this (however, this language isnt the lang they work on). I dont know where that creole idea comes from — I'm skeptical, but, of course, I'm not a Salishanist myself.

Mattina is the one who works on this language: (http://www.umt.edu/ling/faculty/amattina.htm)

peace – ishwar  (speak) 05:02, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

---

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removing depreciated derogatory term

I live in Alaska, and have been talking with different Deg Hit'an people, and the general consensus is to NOT have the word listed as an alternative name, but only that when that name is specifically searched, then they would have the user informed of the peoples' desire not to use it. It's like saying we should write (also known by the derogatory name Nigger) on the page for African American. Please do not revert my edits again without good cause. -Quickmythril (talk) 21:21, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Let me also note that when the tribe became a Native Corporation, they had to pick an official name. Ken Chase chose Ingalik in sort of a sarcastic way, just to piss off the elders, which it did. It took some time and work, but they got the official name changed. Unfortunately, its use it still widespread, but is slowly being eradicated. Please understand this is an issue the Deg Hit'an feel strongly about. Really would you want to be called "the people of lice".

Hi. But, you cant just remove the name and pretend like it is not commonly used to refer to this ethnic group in scholarly published material (like encyclopedias, handbooks, and other reference works). Some looking for information on this group may very well use this term in a search query or someone looking through the language articles may be puzzled as to why this language is not mentioned in article (since they dont know that Ingalik = Deg Hit'an). What should be done rather than removing the name is to keep the term and note its offensive nature in the relevant articles (emphasizing how strongly the tribe feels about it). The difference between nigger and Ingalik is that nigger is not used to refer to black people in scholarly published material. The only function of nigger as used by non-blacks is to insult — it doesnt have any scholarly use. – ishwar  (speak) 23:45, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I understand that it has a use in published materials. I am simply trying to get that to stop from happening further. I have created the article Ingalik which explains a bit about the term, and gives enough information that the reader can navigate to the proper article. I have also redirected the three alternative Athabascan dialect names i removed to Ingalik in case someone does search them. I tried to make a compromise of our edits, noting the usage but removing it as an official alternate name. More feedback is welcomed. Thanks. -Quickmythril (talk) 08:16, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Sorry for butting in but I also noticed your attempt at eradicating the term Ingalik from wikipedia. You should read guideline on naming conflicts which very specifically states that "Wikipedia should describe nor prescribe". In other words wikipedia is not the place to change what nomenclature is acceptable - here we simply describe which nomenclature is used. However the naming policy states that there are two criteria for naming one is standard English usage and the other is selfidentification. If you want to change the nomenclature you should do so by showing that "Deg Hit'an" is becoming the more accepted English usage AND that it is the preferred selfidentifying term of the ethnic group. Notice that currently the article on the Eskimo peoples is called exactly that "Eskimo", although that is also deprecated as a selfidentifier by the people themselves, and although it also comes from an earlier derogative used by another ethnic group (the Algonkin). ·Maunus· ·ƛ· 08:47, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

I dont mind "butting in". Perhaps, a strict interpretation of Wikipedia:Naming conflict would led to having the primary articles under Ingalik because that is probably the most common name. But, there is precedent for using Deg Hit'an on the Alaska Native Language Center site and elsewhere.

Quickmythril, I also dont have any problem with social change. However, the fact that this name is commonly used would put Wikipedia at odds with other encyclopedias if we simply omit the name from our pages (e.g. Athabascan languages). Another reason for listing as many names as possible for American peoples is because of the problem of synonymy. Many groups have been known by several different names and sometimes the same name was used to refer to different peoples. All of this makes interpreting historical documents problemmatic (if not impossible). So, it is beneficial to researchers to have information on all the names used to refer an ethnic group. And we find these issues with the Deg Hit'an and neighboring peoples (e.g. the name Ingalik was used to refer to the non-Deg Hit'an Holikachuk as well).

What I suggest is keeping the term but with a disclaimer as to its pejorative status. I think that it will have the same effect (discouraging usage of the name) but without loss of information. Other people do similar things when commonly used names are insulting. – ishwar  (speak) 22:05, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Navajo example

Hello, I'm busy translating parts of the Navajo language article for the French Wikipedia, begun but left unfinished by another contributor, and I'm stuck with the following example :

a si- stative prefix in position 7 as in shishʼaah "I'm in the act of placing a SRO" in dah shishʼaah "I'm in the act of placing a SRO up" (dah "up")

for I'm not sure to understand what a SRO is supposed to mean. Most probably it is the Solid Roundish Object that is referred to later in the article, but the abbreviation also has separate references in English (previously unknown to me, I must say). May you confirm that "Solid Roundish Object" is the intended meaning ? Thanks in advance, Bertrand Bellet (talk) 21:30, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

hello.

Yes, that is right: SRO = solid roundish object. So, shishʼaah = "I'm in the act of placing a solid roundish object (like a wallet, a book, a hat, a rock, a balloon, a ring, a cake, etc.) in position". In other words "I'm putting/setting a solid roundish object [in some location]". The dah indicates that the location is above the surface of the ground. So, dah shishʼaah = "I'm putting/setting a solid roundish object [in some] elevated [location]". – ishwar  (speak) 22:20, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks ! Bertrand Bellet (talk) 22:23, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

No problem. I forgot to mention that I dont know any of those other SRO abbreviations on wikipedia either! – ishwar  (speak) 22:26, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

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textbooks

Hi, I noticed on your front page you have a link to a list of textbooks you recommend for phonetics...I've always been interested in language (in fact I've been working on some wikipedia resources, like these: commons:User:Robbiemuffin#English Grammar Graphics). Well, from what I've read I am actually most interested in linguistic typology. Can you suggest a good introductory textbook with a bias towards that? Thank you :) — robbiemuffin ^{page talk} 22:58, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

hi.

i guess youre looking at syntactic or morphological typology? If "yes", i can recommend a few:

• Comrie, Bernard. (1981). Language universals and linguistic typology: Syntax and morphology (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [theres a later edition]
• Mallinson, Graham; & Blake, Barry J. (1981). Language typology: Cross-linguistic studies in syntax. Amsterdam: North-Holland Pub. Co. [this is unfortunately outofprint]

There is also this, which i havent looked at but i'm sure it's good:

• Croft, William. (1990). Typology and universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

As for reference works, i suggest looking at this 3-book set and classic 4-book set:

• Shopen, Timothy. (1985). Language typology and syntactic description (Vols. 1-3). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [i think theres a 2nd edition but i havent seen it ; the volumes are "Clause structure", "Complex constructions", & "Grammatical categories and the lexicon"]
• Greenberg, Joseph H.; Ferguson, Charles A.; & Moravcsik, Edith A. (1978). Universals of human language (Vols. 1-4). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. [the volumes are "Method & theory", "Phonology", "Word structure", and "Syntax"]

See also www.linguistic-typology.org/SYLLAB.HTM for 3 syllabuses (or syllabi, if you prefer). The article "Givenness, contrastiveness, definiteness, subjects, topics, and points of view" mentioned on that page is a particularly important paper. The Comrie 1981 and Mallinson & Blake 1981 books assume a linguistics student audience which has already taken courses in general linguistics and syntax. I dont know your background, but if you need an intro to syntax which is more typological in nature, then I suggest:

• Van Valin, Robert D. (2001). An introduction to syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Another cool book with lots of info:

• Payne, Thomas E. (1997). Describing morphosyntax: A guide for field linguists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Finally you could just see what type of structures occur in North American languages (seeing as you are from North America). North America is so diverse linguisticly that you could teach a typology class only using data from that continent. This book has lots of data:

• Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Is this what you wanted to know? – ishwar  (speak) 05:29, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Many of these have reviews available from JSTOR. If you dont have access I can email some of them to you. – ishwar  (speak) 05:34, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

That's a hella write up I don't deserve, thank you. I was kinda hoping I could get by with the encyclopedic entries here for general background information.

As far as North American, yes that is right, I am still on this side of the pond :) but the only exposure I have had to native american language was an otherwise nice Mayan who consistantly called me "boy". :) Thanks again — robbiemuffin ^{page talk} 14:32, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, the article on linguistic typology doesnt have much there, so I think that you really would need to read a book for a proper introduction. For example, it doesnt talk about topics in the typology of phonologies. Some topics that you can start with are:

• learning about word order (including the ordering of Subj, Verb, & Obj and the ordering of head & dependents)
• learning about ergativity
• learning about head-marking vs dependent-marking
• learning about the syntactic properties of Subjects and Objects (nothing here on wikipedia about this really)
• learning about the most common phonological sounds
• learning about implications (for example, if a language has ejective consonants, it is expected to have non-ejective consonants & we would never expect a language to have only ejective consonants and no non-ejectives)

But, it really depends on what you are interested in. For example, if you wanted to see what type of grammatical number systems were found, you could just read a book on that.

I mention the American langs because in a typical intro to typology the student is necessarily exposed to a large variety of langs. There are only a limited number of linguistic structures found in Europe so one needs to look at minority languages from elsewhere (that you may never have heard of before). North America has lots of interesting stuff (some of it hardly found on other continents).

I've written a short (and incomplete) bit on the various types of reduplication patterns, which you may find interesting: Reduplication: Form.

Anway, have fun! – ishwar  (speak) 20:04, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Heterorganic affricates

I was always under the impression that affricates were always homorganic. What do McDonough & Ladefoged 1993 and Hoijer & Opler 1938 say? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:42, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

McD & L say that they are affricates, which McDonough repeats in her 2003 book on the Navajo sound system. Hoijer doesnt call them affricates but he has written that they are similar. He usually calls it "velar frication" or something like that. H & O 1938 is online: etext.virginia.edu/apache/HoiOrt1.jpg (the whole book is online although it's not scanned but rather converted to text [with lots of typos, I must add!]). That's phonetics.   

Phonologically, it has to be an affricate if you consider Navajo stems to have CV(:)(C) syllable structure. Otherwise, /tx/ would be the only complex onset in the language, which is not a very elegant analysis. Even if it was a cluster phonetically, one may still want to treat them as a single unit (you see arguments about this in African languages with things like /ps/). (But. Theres an issue with a /x/ that can be added to many words to create negative expression, such as between excrement vs shit. Some call this just an emphatic pronunciation (like English vowel lengthening: a looooong time), but one person has called it an infix — treating it more like a phoneme and thus a cluster. What are you gonna do about this? Anyway, I havent written about this on the Nav phono page yet..)

Also there is never a contrast between a /tx/ cluster and a /tx/ affricate. Virtually the only place where clusters appear is at the stem (the rightmost segment is the stem-initial consonant), and there is never a combination of stop + stem-initial /x/.

Affricates are almost always homorganic. Heterorganic ones are rare. Is this the answer you are looking for? – ishwar  (speak) 05:40, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

The answer I was looking for was one where I'm right and you're wrong. I'll see if I can't find sources talking more about Heterorganic affricates. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:32, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

German /pf/ is not homorganic (it starts off bilabio-dental, but then the lower lip retracts slightly), but is considered an affricate. kwami (talk) 20:06, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Oh but it's close enough. It uses the same articulators. [tʃ] is arguably not homorganic for certain speakers either. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 04:39, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Hadza [tʎ] is considered an affricate by Ladefoged, as is Wari’ [tʙ]. In both cases, there are no other consonant clusters, except for conventional affricates and prenasalized stops in the case of Hadza, which might make analysis easier. kwami (talk) 07:07, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, if you find something about affricates being only homorganic, then let me know. I learn new things everyday.

But, this brings up an interesting point about defining affricates. They may often be defined according to phonological criteria instead of any consideration of their phonetics.

[tʙ] is so weird and rare (it's only 2 langs, right?), so what can anyone say about it? It's almost like they made it up for fun. It might be stretching to call it a phonetic affricate since it's closure > trill which differs from closure > frication/fricationless continuant. What kind of difference could there be between [tʙ] affricate and [tʙ] sequence? – ishwar  (speak) 00:03, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Wari' has no C clustres, and has no [ʙ]. If this were a cluster of independent consonants, it would have to be /tr/ or /tp/, which would also be really weird. The argument for it being a single segment, therefore, is stronger than the agument for j and ch being segments in English.

I have seen affricates defined as homorganic. However, I don't know if that's official, or only a guideline so that students don't mistake English /ks/ for an affricate. kwami (talk) 01:19, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I know I've removed "affricate" /ks/ from a number of articles with the summary "affricates are homorganic." If there are heterorganic affricates possible, then I was being a jerk. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 18:25, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

The main definition of 'affricate' I've seen is a contour segment that shifts between plosive and fricative, though sometimes a trilled fricative. The key is segment. That may not be any easier to define than whether a language has diphthongs or vowel sequences. Being homorganic helps decide the issue, because clusters are seldom constrained to be homorganic. kwami (talk) 20:47, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Is there a definitive text on affricates? SOWL maybe? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 03:25, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, SOWL has very little: only a page of text in the chapter on Stops, plus charts of Mandarin & Chipewyan affrics and mention of affrics in inventories covered elsewhere, or covered under laterals etc. (Chipewyan's neat for its dental affrics.) The first two paragraphs cover the topic in general, and I can reproduce them here:

In almost every case, as a stop is released the articulators will pass briefly through a position in which the constriction is narrow enough that it will cause turbulence in the air at the constriction site. This transitory friction is usually considered a part of the release burst of the stop. Affricates are stops in which the release of the constriction is modified in such a way as to produce a more prolonged period of frication after the release. As with many of the types of sounds we have discussed, the class of affricates has no sharp boundaries. Affricates are an intermediate category between simple stops an d a sequence of a stop and a fricative. It is not always easy to say how much frication should be regarded as an automatic property of a release; some places of articulation seem to be often accompanied by considerable frication (see chapter 2). At the other extreme, a combination of a stop and a fricative that both happen to have the same place of articulation do not necessarily form an affricate. Phonological considerations mush play a part in any decision as to whether a stop and a following homorganic fricative is to be regarded as an affricate which is a single unit, or as two segments (or two timing slots), forming a sequence of a stop and a fricative.

   Affricate releases may involve only a slight widening of the articulatory constriction of the stop, so that stop and fricative components have identical place of articulation. Some affricates, however, involve asmall forward or backward adjustment of the active articulator position. [Gives example of German /pf/.]

— SOWL, p 90

Moosehide

I was just wondering why it redirects to Hän language. I came across it, in Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation, as a place name. Cheers. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 16:37, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Hi. The southern band of the Han was relocated to Dawson and Moosehide (Village). And Ferdinand Schitter called them Moosehide Indians in 1910. Thus, the redirect. Obviously, the article on Han people (and language) is rather lacking in detail.... – ishwar  (speak) 18:59, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Here's a page with some info: www.dawnone.com/moose.html. – ishwar  (speak) 19:01, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Google link: maps.google.com/maps?client=safari&rls=en&q=moosehide%2C%20yukon&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&um=1&sa=N&tab=wl

Thanks. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 20:19, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Na-Dene Spelling Conventions

Hello! Please, join our discussion on the spelling of "Na-Dene" on the Na-Dene languages talk page. Thank you! --Pet'usek ^{[petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom]} 11:01, 9 August 2008 (UTC)