Talk:γεν-

RFD discussion: July 2017–August 2020
Originally tagged for speedy deletion, but I don't think it qualifies, so I'm bringing it here. We do have entries for roots in other attested languages, notably CAT:Sanskrit roots, but for most languages we don't list roots, and for Ancient Greek this is the only one (so far, at least). At the moment I'm somewhat undecided as I see arguments both for (it would be convenient to have a place to gather all the terms derived from this root, like, , , , , , ) and against (this form is more of an abstract concept than a genuinely occurring form of the language), so I'm hoping for an active discussion that will help me make up my own mind. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 23:48, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
 * I created this entry, but I think this and other roots (Arabic, Hebrew, Sanskrit) should probably be moved to appendices. They are theoretical concepts, particularly so for Arabic and Hebrew roots, and can't meet the criterion of attestation. ('s comments in a discussion about Arabic patterns is what convinced me of this. If patterns should go in appendices, roots should too, because the two are interconnected.)
 * Having a list of roots and their allomorphs (here, γεν-, γον-, γιγν-, γειν-) might help users to identify the origins of words. I don't know what form this should take: a single page with many or all roots, individual pages (subpages of something like ). And I'm not sure how or if it would be linked to entries in the main namespace. But I think it would be useful in some form. — Eru·tuon 04:53, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Putting roots in Appendix space does seem like a good idea. How would we name Appendix pages for roots? Now that reconstructions have their own namespace, we could names like Appendix:Ancient Greek/γεν-, Appendix:Sanskrit/जन् for roots, and link to them using √ (the square root symbol) as a prefix, the same way we already use * for reconstructions. Thus grc would link to Appendix:Ancient Greek/γεν-, and sa would link to Appendix:Sanskrit/जन्, etc. Alternatively, the pages could be named Appendix:Ancient Greek/Roots/γεν-, Appendix:Sanskrit/Roots/जन्, etc. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 10:21, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
 * I like the idea of using a character to link to the root appendix, but the root symbol is difficult to type, and would discourage people from linking to roots. (Asterisks, by contrast, are on my keyboard, at least.) It would be good to use either the root symbol or an easier-to-type alternative that Module:links can display as a root symbol, preferably something that doesn't otherwise occur in page titles.
 * I guess I would prefer  as the prefix. It's a little more clear about what its subpages should contain than   (whose subpages could be anything, including all the existing appendices with the prefix Ancient Greek). If we used , I'm not sure what we could put on the page Appendix:Ancient Greek, so it would be an empty page and a redlink on each root page. Appendix:Ancient Greek roots, on the other hand, could contain general information on roots: for instance, how ablaut and other sound changes affect the form of roots. — Eru·tuon 18:07, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Why should roots go in appendices but not affixes? They're tied together. Also, we'd have to fix almost every PIE link across Wiktionary. Oppose. —CodeCat 18:15, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
 * No, PIE roots could stay in the Reconstruction namespace. If you oppose moving roots to the Appendix namespace, why did you propose deleting ? Why should Ancient Greek not have root entries at all? — Eru·tuon 20:02, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Are roots well defined for Ancient Greek? There's a tradition of treating Sanskrit and PIE roots, but not for Greek. —CodeCat 20:04, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Not that I know of, but it's pretty easy to extract this root at least. — Eru·tuon 20:07, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
 * It is unobvious that we want to have Ancient Greek roots in mainspace. They are quite unlike prefixes, IMHO. Roots seem to require much more analysis/speculation than prefixes, that is to say, they are much less raw-observational than the kinds of entries that we keep in the mainspace. Category:Ancient Greek roots currently has γεν- as the sole entry. On the other hand, we could keep even hypothetical entities in the mainspace as long as they carry the proper badge of warning; we could have done that with reconstructions as well, where the reconstruction entries could have started with an asterisk. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:08, 27 August 2017 (UTC)


 * This is possibly a good idea, but it doesn't belong in the mainspace. Move to Appendix:Ancient Greek root/γεν- or something like that. --Barytonesis (talk) 15:01, 19 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Move to Appendix namespace, I think. Whatever be the outcome of this discussion, having a place where all words sharing a root can be gathered would be valuable. The current form of the entry under discussion here is very barebones and oddly linked to specifically gignomai, whereas obviously far more words than just gignomai share this root. (Possibly moving to Appendix namespace may not be a bad idea for Sanskrit and the Semitic languages either, but I'm not sure). — Mnemosientje (t · c) 10:05, 27 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Moved, per the above discussion. I went with Appendix:Ancient Greek roots as the base pagename, putting this at Appendix:Ancient Greek roots/γεν-, to match Appendix:Ancient Greek correlatives, Appendix:Ancient Greek enclitics, Appendix:Ancient Greek numerals, etc, and per Erutuon's points above. Someone may want to make linking to roots from m and l simpler as suggested above. - -sche (discuss) 20:07, 2 August 2020 (UTC)