Category talk:Proper noun forms by language

RFM discussion: August 2015
This is a bit like categorising countable noun forms separate from uncountable noun forms. Proper nouns are just nouns, so we should just put their forms in the common noun forms category. —CodeCat 20:37, 13 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Unlike countable vs uncountable nouns, we distinguish proper from common nouns on the level of POS (as reflected in the different L3 headers). As long as we maintain that distinction for the lemma forms, it makes sense to maintain it for the inflected forms. - -sche (discuss) 20:42, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
 * We also have categories for past participle forms in several major languages, but no ===Past participle=== header either. Also consider that "Proper nouns" are still a subcategory of "Nouns". We don't treat any other "header-level" part of speech like that in our categories. —CodeCat 20:51, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
 * There is a wee difference in that all Past participles are associated with a Verb lemma. Most Proper nouns are not associated with a Noun lemma. Not to mention that the PoS header for Past participles is largely attributable to the desired to remove the inflection tables from the already bulky Verb inflection tables.
 * The persistent jihad on all fronts against Proper nouns with such highly flawed rationales is tiresome. DCDuring TALK 21:04, 13 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Re "but no ===Past participle=== header": that supports my point. We do have ===Proper noun=== headers, distinguished from ===Noun=== headers; we have traditionally treated proper nouns and nouns as different parts of speech (like adjectives and adverbs). As long as we're distinguishing proper noun lemma forms from common noun lemma forms on the level of headers and categories, I don't think it makes sense to remove the distinct categorization of the inflected forms. Also, as DCDuring notes, "past participles" may be categorized as "verb forms" because they are inflected forms of verbs (the lemma entries are headered and categorized as verbs), which is different from the situation of proper noun forms. I am sympathetic to the idea that we should reduce the prominence of the distinction between proper nouns and common nouns / stop considering them different parts of speech (reducing the information to a note on the headword line, for instance), since all other dictionaries seem to not distinguish them, but until consensus is obtained to do that, I oppose efforts to do it piecemeal like this. - -sche (discuss) 21:21, 17 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Oppose merger. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 00:56, 17 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Support merger for what feels like the tenth time. The distinction between proper and common nouns is artificial, unnecessary, and nowhere satisfactorily defined. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:18, 17 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Provisional oppose merger; I basically agree with -sche. As for the distinction between proper and common nouns, for Arabic at least there are sometimes grammatical ways of diagnosing proper nouns: Morphologically indefinite proper nouns (i.e. proper nouns without al-) are still grammatically definite, whereas morphologically indefinite common nouns aren't. This same class often takes diptote marking regardless of the vowel template of the word, when in general common nouns have to belong to certain templates (e.g. CaCāCiC, CaCCān, CaCCāʾ) to be diptote. This is how, for example, we know that months in Arabic are proper nouns. Benwing (talk) 05:53, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Oppose per -sche: as long as we distinguish common nouns from proper nouns on the lemma level, we should also do it on the inflected form level. Furthermore, this venue is inappropriate, IMHO. For a discussion on the same subject for lemmas, se Votes/pl-2011-12/Merging_proper_nouns_into_nouns, which failed 6-8-2. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:57, 29 August 2015 (UTC)