Category talk:Esperanto terms suffixed with -a

Category:Esperanto words suffixed with -o
These are really just part-of-speech endings, so these categories don't seem terribly useful. "Esperanto words suffixed with -i" is really synonymous with Category:Esperanto verbs. 14:13, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
 * These are there as a result of the automatic categorization of . Is there any way to suppress the category? --Yair rand (talk) 14:24, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Don't use . They're not suffixes. -- Liliana • 14:29, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
 * They're not? Why is that? And what should be used instead? --Yair rand (talk) 15:27, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Indeed, if an adjective is formed by replacing the final -o of a noun with an -a, why not categorize it as such? All of Category:English words suffixed with -ize are going to be verbs, so what? How is that a reason for its deletion? Mglovesfun (talk) 19:29, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
 * The difference is, not all English verbs are suffixed with -ize, while all Esperanto verbs are suffixed with -i. I agree with the first part of Liliana's statement ("Don't use ") but not with the second part. They are suffixes, but that doesn't mean we have to use in their etymology sections. —Angr 20:38, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
 * There is . Mglovesfun (talk) 11:37, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * We've had this kind of debate about Category:English words suffixed with -s. It's obvious we don't want each and every English plural to end up in here, and it should be the same for other languages as well. -- Liliana • 20:49, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
 * There was also Category:German words suffixed with -en, although there are also words with -en that are not verbs. In Esperanto, all (polysyllabic) words ending in -i are verbs, and all verbs end in -i, so they are one and the same set of words. 20:54, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I would argue that not all Esperanto verbs are stem + suffix, is borrowed from Latin  for example. Mglovesfun (talk) 07:51, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
 * But it's still formed by with the stem pens- + the suffix -i. 19:17, 16 August 2013 (UTC)
 * The way to test this concept is to look for Category:Esperanto words suffixed with -as, since that's probably a more widely-attested form than the infinitive. Notice the redlink. These words aren't suffixed with -i, they're converted to verbs, and -i just happens to be the suffix on the lemma. I suppose the lemma's suffix could be used as a stand-in for the whole set of conjugation suffixes in the same way the lemma itself is used as a stand-in for the whole conjugation, but I would argue against it. Having it categorized this way strongly implies that -i is a derivational suffix- something that would be followed by inflectional suffixes, rather than an inflectional suffix itself. We should have some way to indicate verbalization, nominalization, etc. in etymologies, without kluging something up with a framework designed for something else. What do we do in cases where there's no inflectional ending on the lemma- use a "words suffixed with -∅" category? Chuck Entz (talk) 21:45, 16 August 2013 (UTC)
 * That problem happens in Dutch and German as well, and English too. All three of them, like Esperanto, can derive verbs without changing the stem of the word. Only the inflectional endings are changed from those of one PoS to those of another. In Dutch and German, the lemma form of verbs ends in while the lemma forms of other parts of speech have no ending. That can give the impression that  is being suffixed when a verb is created, but that isn't the case because this ending isn't intrinsically part of the verb; only of the infinitive. The same is true of many Esperanto derivations as well.  21:51, 16 August 2013 (UTC)
 * And then there's the matter of things like ablaut, umlaut, etc. that have no discrete surface morpheme to point to, e.g. with fall vs. fell and sit vs. set. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:06, 16 August 2013 (UTC)
 * How about "Esperanto verbs derived from (PoS) stems" ? 22:11, 16 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I think it would be better to have "LANGNAME POS-PLURAL derived from POS-PLURAL". Perhaps we could have a template like etyl that would take from-POS to-POS and lang as parameters, and produce something like "from the POS-SINGULAR " followed by the from-word. I'm not sure what we should do where the source is both a different language and a different POS, or where we don't know the exact source POS, though. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:41, 16 August 2013 (UTC)
 * If we are going to add foreign etymologies to it, then we effectively end up with a template that combines and, along with PoS names. I'm not against that as such, but we have to be aware of this implication.  22:44, 16 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, I'm aware of the implications, which is why I hesitated to lump the other-language case in with the rest. As for term, I was envisioning a template like etyl, which adds the correct category, but is independent from the term itself and produces a string of text derived from the parameters that goes in front of the term template- sort of like a POS-based counterpart to the language-name based etyl. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:15, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

I am unable to assess the consensus here. Is there an agreement to delete? — Keφr 09:02, 9 November 2014 (UTC)


 * RFDO kept: no consensus to delete. Not a single boldfaced delete, except the implied one by the nominator. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:39, 14 December 2014 (UTC)