Reconstruction talk:Proto-Slavic/ablo

RFDO discussion: July–November 2014
Huh? --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 04:17, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, I looked up the references, and it is there in both. Both seem to give the definition of apple the fruit, though, so I changed that. The reconstruction itself seems to hold some water, but I am less confident about the declension; hard-o stem declension looks more believable. — Keφr 05:32, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * OK, thanks. I've seen a reference now as well. Still seems strange. Does Old Polish "jabło" seem valid to you? Are speakers of other daughter languages available for comments? Pinging, , . --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 05:45, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * It seems somewhat plausible. If someone used it in my presence, I would perceive it as an odd back-formed augmentative of, by discarding the diminutive suffix , and inflected analogously to or . And there are some words suffixed with  which suggest that  might as well be derivative of some other word: , , , though there are also , , ,  with no obvious base word. — Keφr 06:27, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Vasmer describes Russian as derived from Proto-Slavic  and  from, listing other Slavic languages as well. Is  the link between the two or rather, the origin of both? The sources at  sort of contradict Vasmer.--Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 06:44, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

I even managed to find some citations for. Quite hard to find among misscans of inflections of or, but it is there. The last one is for the "apple tree" sense. The kind of seem like nonce back-formations, but still. — Keφr 07:28, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * 1863, Encyklopedyja powszechna, page 812
 * Wreszcie: apporty zimowe (Pomme d'Oporto), wielkie, portugalskie jabła. Ananasówki zimowe (Pomme d'Ananas). Bursztówki zimowe płaskie i podlugowate (Barstorfer). Fioletówki zimowe (Pomme violette d'hiver).
 * 1936, Bolesław Leśmian, "Jadwiga"
 * Pyskiem własił się i włudził w piersi wonne, jak dwa jabła / Aż Jadwiga stęknęła, aż Jadwiga osłabła.
 * 1954, Maria Dąbrowska, "Trzecia jesień", Dzień dzisiejszy, Czytelnik, page 132
 * Już co ten profesor ma na tej działce owoców, to tam się gałęzie urywają pod temi gruchami, temi jabłami.
 * Thank you. I have withdrawn the rfd. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 09:23, 4 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Just saying, the existence of Polish is not enough by itself to confirm . --WikiTiki89 19:51, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * True. Especially that I am not even convinced that it has been established. The word seems to be so incredibly rare that the citations above look rather like independent nonce re-coinages rather than uses of a word established in the lexicon. — Keφr 20:23, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Unstruck because I am failing to find attestations of any of the other supposed descendants, outside of etymological dictionaries. This is becoming really suspicious. — Keφr 11:27, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * My reasons for removing my own RFD was not only the existence of but existence of working references. The accuracy of the information, of course, can be disputed but I have nothing to add on the topic. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 11:35, 5 July 2014 (UTC)


 * FYI, I posted the results of my search for Czech *jablo at Talk:jablo. I have found no attesting quotations; I only found dictionaries listing jablo or gablo, which is its obsolete orthography. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:48, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * The problem with the references is that they could be asily wrong. Trubačóv seems to rely on dictionaries rather than actually attested quotations. In http://essja.narod.ru/pg/01/f040-041.htm, Trubačóv mentions Czech *jablo with "Kott" in brackets, presumably František Kott, a dictionary maker; if Kott is wrong, and if the sources used for the other languages are wrong as well, then the whole reconstruction is wrong. I think that if we won't be able to attest the putative forms derived from *ablo, the reconstruction should be deleted. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:07, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Even if the reconstruction is "wrong", obsolete or not very plausible, it should be kept with an appropriate comment because it's listed in etymological dictionaries. We are not seeking the One True Reconstruction, but describing what others (trained scholars) do. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 12:31, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I disagree that we should keep items of which we have good reason to believe are wrong. Whether the source is trained, eminent or whatnot has little bearing in true science. We should go in the opposite direction: if a source turns out to repeatedly contain errors, we should treat it with increasing suspition. (As an aside, I think that, in general, all etymological sources should be treated with a considerable degree of suspicion.) --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:41, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * There is no "truth" in protolanguage reconstructions, it's all guesswork and acceptance is based on consensus which is not written anywhere but is to be inferred by scanning the available literature. It is not science and reconstructions cannot be proved or disproved. The purpose of WMF projects (apart from the failed Wikiversity) is to collect and describe existing human knowledge and not to discover or promote the Truth. We have reconstructions invented by Wiktionarians (User:CodeCat) based on a single supposed reflex so I see no reason why multiply-backed ones should be challenged. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 14:05, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * One can approach reconstructions with a scientific mindset, even if they are uncertain. A reconstruction inferred from terms that are not even attested in use is a good candidate for deletion as implausible. A reconstruction can be supported, even if not "proved" to have existed in the exact form; a reconstruction whose support is poor can be deleted as unsupported and unsubstantiated. In a similar vein, out attestation process for definitions cannot prove that a would-be word was never used, but we delete the would-be word for the lack of substantiation anyway. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:24, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Old Czech, Old Polish as well as dialects are under LDL category which means that merely a headword in a dictionary compiled long ago by a lexicographer on fieldwork suffices. Outdated and dubious etymologies and reconstructions are important and should stay because they are interesting, mentioned in dictionaries and legitimate field of research. All of the reliable etymologies have been solved a century ago, and today only speculative ones remain. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 18:23, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * You make it sound like the mere fact that someone with professional credentials has posited a reconstruction forces us to regurgitate it in our space. We do need to be critical and not just automatically perpetuate known mistakes.
 * Still, when I brought this up in the Etymology Scriptorum, my main concern was the implausibility of the Descendents section, not the existence of the entry itself. It looks plausible to me at the very least as a constituent of the compound form that is reconstructable as the source for reflexes throughout the Slavic languages. The absence of the suffix in the cognates makes it hard to rule out the possibility that it existed at some point in Proto-Slavic before being displaced by its suffixed form. Chuck Entz (talk) 20:32, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * All we know is that the form with the -k- suffix was innovated at some point in the time span between Slavic split off from Proto-Balto-Slavic, and the end of the Common Slavic period. Thus, the older k-less form must have existed during some part of that period as well. But I don't know for how long it remained in use during that time, nor whether it merits a Proto-Slavic entry (which is usually mid-late Common Slavic). 20:37, 5 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Croatian entries are from some reason (I can only assume which) removed repeatedly by user Ivan Štambuk, also because of this I am experiencing attacks from him. Stop inventing word or you will be blocked. and If I catch you again inventing words I will kick you out. What is this? What kind of behavior this is? All because of some stupid word *ablo. I wish I never put the word in the first place. Une nymphe (talk) 11:21, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I removed them because you made them up, and you admitted it yourself on my talk page. (Da, u srpskohrvatskom ona ne postoji). You're a sockpuppet of User:Slavić who under that account similarly fabricated dozens of other words, in a similar vein (what the word would've looked like if it existed). --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 11:34, 6 July 2014 (UTC)


 * @Ivan, re reconstructions, here's something to consider: on the basis of various Algonquian languages' words for the item, and using sound correspondences which are well-established, the influential linguist of Algonquian Leonard Bloomfield reconstructed an Algonquian term for whiskey: . Should we have an entry for it? In this case, we know for a fact the reconstruction is bogus, because (as later scholars criticizing Bloomfield's reconstruction of this particular term have pointed out) whiskey wasn't introduced to North America until the Europeans arrived, thousands of years after Proto-Algonquian ceased to exist. The first Algonquian language(s) to be introduced to the drink just happened to refer to it with a compound meaning "fire-water", and later Algonquian languages, and Siouan languages, and even European languages, calqued that term. - -sche (discuss) 02:11, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

I think the proper closure here should be no consensus. Since this reconstruction appears in the literature, I think it is reasonable to keep it, even if we do not endorse it (which we are still free to state in any way we please). Pending further discussion, this entry will be kept. — Keφr 18:54, 29 November 2014 (UTC)