Thread:User talk:Rua/Hellenic daughters/reply (2)

The page for the Proto-Indo-European word gives three different forms corresponding to three different stages of Proto-Indo-European. Obviously only one of them can be the page title, so the fact that the page title is what it is does not mean that that is the Wiktionary consensus form of the word.

It makes no sense to ban piped links, but even if it did, the link does not go to another form. The link is to the Wiktionary page for the reconstructed forms *dʰwégh₂-tr̥, *dʰúgh₂tēr and *dʰugh₂tḗr, which happens to be located at https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/dʰugh₂tḗr because it has to be located somewhere, and this is as good a choice as any as it is the last PIE form that existed before most branches split off. According to that page, opinions differ as to whether *dʰúgh₂tēr or dʰugh₂tḗr is the form the Hellenic forms descend from. In order to maintain a neutral point of view in the Hellenic articles, I propose to just write *dʰugh₂tēr, which covers both *dʰúgh₂tēr or *dʰugh₂tḗr without giving precedence to either. The form *dʰugh₂tēr isn't a different form from *dʰugh₂tḗr, just the same form unspecified for accent.

The consensus Wiktionary needs to reflect is that of the sources, and they differ on the accentuation of this form at the time when Hellenic split off from Proto-Indo-European. On the individual Hellenic pages, we should give *dʰugh₂tēr, unspecified as to accent, since that is the consensus pre-Hellenic-split form and there is no scientific consensus on the placement of the accent. We have no basis for electing one accent placement over the other, so the only neutral alternativeto my suggestion would be to give both *dʰúgh₂tēr and *dʰugh₂tḗr. Everyone agrees that *dʰugh₂tḗr is the parent form of all non-Anatolian and non-Hellenic Indo-European languages, but there is actual scientific disagreement, which we need to reflect, as to whether this form is also ancestral to Anatolian and Hellenic.