User:MuDavid/sw-conj

After the discussion on the Swahili verb conjugation template in the beer parlour, I thought I’d write down some thoughts.

We need to show information, not forms. The great majority of the forms are perfectly regular. Therefore, we should focus on the irregularities. These are the following:
 * some verbs can take object infixes, some don’t (our own page on Swahili verbs states, “The object concord only appears for transitive verbs”; according to our tables, is transitive?);
 * some verbs (,, according to this book) must take object infixes and these must be in classes 1 or 2 (our table currently shows a gazillion forms without object infixes or with object infixes in other classes; it’s tough to find any correct form in the table at , for example);
 * whether the infinitive prefix / is kept (it is not kept with object infixes for example, which our table shows incorrectly);
 * whether the prefix becomes  (our table currently does that incorrectly and only shows it for the object: it’s, not *mone) or  (as in the subjunctive of , which is muwe and not *mwe as currently shown);
 * the combination of subject and tense infix in the and  tenses (the first has irregularities all over: ki- + -a- become cha- etc.; the second only in the first person singular);
 * Arabic verbs don’t change their endings (many of their derived forms do);
 * some verbs have irregular imperatives;
 * , its locatives ( and the like, for which I think we should have separate pages), and are irregular all over;
 * often takes locative subjects, which I think should therefore be shown explicitly even if regular.

Tables
For more examples, see here.

Issues to be resolved

 * Should we limit the forms in the table to those with expected animacy? (For example, should we conjugate “to read” in inanimate classes? “to snow” in first person? Apparently we do do the last.)
 * Which forms should get soft-redirect pages?
 * How to link from the tables? (I made a proposal; hope people like it.)
 * Cleanup the code:
 * Why are the tables always so wide?
 * Is it possible to reduce number of table templates? (I currently need six.)
 * Can the links to Appendix:Swahili noun classes be generated somehow (for ease of maintenance in case the appendix page gets modified and the like)?

Discussion?
pinging, anybody else? Any comments? feedback? issues? errors? If so, please tell me before I start implementing the new version for reals. MuDavid 栘𩿠 (talk) 02:55, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Assuming that the average user can piece together the forms they need from the pieces we give, this is much better than the current template and certainly better than the template that existed before that. Thank you for all this hard work. — Soap — 07:10, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the kind words. As for piecing things together, a user who can figure out which tense to use, which subject class to use, whether to use object concord, and whether to use a relative or not will probably not need the tables anymore. ☺ MuDavid 栘𩿠 (talk) 01:44, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
 * , thank you for cleaning up this table and sorry for taking so long to get back. The presentation is much nicer. One concern I have is that, for search engine purposes, I think as many conjugated forms as possible should be present on the page, even if hidden behind multiple collapsing blocks. For people who do not know Swahili grammar, I think a lot of the traffic comes from people searching / Googling for a conjugated form and they may not know how to isolate the root verb. Although it would be impractical to have unique pages for every conjugated form, I think it is a fair goal to say that all valid forms that could be used in text should be textually present in Wiktionary in some way or another. What do you think about this? --Habst (talk) 23:53, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Given that Swahili is agglutinating, “as many conjugated forms as possible” is just way too much. We don’t even try that for any other of the many agglutinating languages we cover here at Wiktionary. My overhaul was driven by complaints that the previous version was way to heavy, see for example this beer parlour discussion. And the previous version wasn’t even anywhere near complete. MuDavid 栘𩿠 (talk) 02:45, 26 April 2023 (UTC)