User talk:Brock

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Again, welcome! --EncycloPetey 03:21, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

IPA
When adding IPA pronunciations, please use the primary stress character ( ˈ ), not an apostrophe or single quote ( ' ). --EncycloPetey 03:21, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

WT:ELE
Please do not alter policy documents without first calling for a vote on the changes. This is stated at the top of policy pages, and we are sticklers about that. --EncycloPetey 23:05, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Be advised that at this point you have made nearly as many edits to whinge and insult than to improve Wiktionary. Add to that the fact that you have gone to the trouble to tell me you will not wish to apologize for editing a policy page, despite the warning notice at the top, and you are close to being blocked.  Wiktionary wants content contributors.  --EncycloPetey 23:23, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Obviously I did not see that warning. I have made two edits objecting to your tone. The second also objecting to your lack substantive engagement on the issue. Which you have naturally responded to with a reminder of your power as an admin. Brock 00:22, 6 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree that you might not have seen that warning. I would have assumed that was the case.  However, you chose to brazenly state your pride in having made the edit in spite of the warning.  You post above increases the number of whinge/insult edits you have made.  This after lecturing me on how Wiktionary works on your eighth day here.


 * The "law" example you are focussing on so intently discussed only vowel length, not quality. It notes that, since the only difference between mainstream RP and GenAm is the vowel length, and since vowel length is not phonemic in GenAm, the RP transcription including the vowel length is the only one that need be used.  This example does not treat differences in vowel quality that require use of a different IPA symbol. --EncycloPetey 00:32, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

No, the law example and the following paragraphs discuss phonemic distinctions. They don't mention the lack of phonemic length in American at all, but rather the lack of a distinction between [ɔː] and [ɔ] in either dialect. Similarly, neither dialect distinguishes [əʊ] from [oʊ]. Compare the various representations of /ɹ/ and /t/ in the phonetic transcriptions of free and better above to their uniform representation in the phonemic transcriptions below. On the discussion page someone wonders if a program to automatically convert between accents would be possible. Rod points out that if that were possible, the differences would only be phonetic, and there would be just one phonemic transcription. Brock 02:13, 6 July 2009 (UTC)


 * The section explicitly mentions that US pronunciations contain a short vowel. I think for the primary issue on contention here, the core sentence is "detailed sound qualities that are not important distinctions within English are ignored."  However, what makes a distinction "not important" is left rather vague.  On Wiktionary, we have considered the distinction between /əʊ/ and /oʊ/ and that between /ɒ/ and /ɑ/ to be important.  The primary reason that neither dialect makes a distinction between them is that each dialect uses one almost exclusively and lacks the other. --EncycloPetey 02:37, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

It makes no mention of vowel length in general. It mentions that length is not phonemic for [ɔ]. This is as true for RP as it is for GenAm. /ɔː/ or /ɔ/ would be equally valid transcription for this phoneme. /⼤/ would also be a legitimate way to transcribe it, just needlessly obfuscatory. The target pronunciation of /⼤/ is [ɔː] in RP and [ɔ] in GenAm. There is not a different phoneme that targets the shorter/longer version. Using one of the two phones and not the other is the effect of not making a distinction between them, not the cause. We identify both the American and British versions as belonging to the same phoneme /⼤/ not because they are similar in quality, but because they occur in the same words. In the context of contrasting phonemic and phonetic transcriptions, "not important distinctions" is not even a little bit vague. Important distinctions can distinguish two different words, unimportant ones cannot. This is the basis of phonemic theory and one of the tenets of phonological science. Brock 11:27, 6 July 2009 (UTC)


 * That's all very interesting, but it does not bear on the current issue except indirectly. Wiktionary IPA transcriptions are "broadly phonetic" on purpose, meaning that they are close to being phonemic but not strictly so, with "important differences" (as determined by the community and practice) used in rendering regional forms of phonemes.  This includes distinguishing /oʊ/ and /əʊ/. --EncycloPetey 23:25, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

accrue and accede
In each of these entries, you've marked the Latin root as if it were an English word form by the addition of an English prefix. The template should only be used when the term whose etymology section includes the template is a term that was directly formed by prefix addition. This is done because the template will otherwise incorrectly categorize the entry. If the suffix was added in a distant Latin root, then the English word was not formed by the addition of a prefix. --EncycloPetey 04:55, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Addendum: If you clean up etymology sections, please be advised that Latin verb roots are often a mess. In the early days, there was no decision about the lemma form of Latin verbs (it is now officially the first principal part), so many old etymologies include the present active infinitive form instead. Caladon and I have been converting the Latin entries to the correct lemma page, but the etymologies have yet to be corrected. This can be of great help if you can make that change whenever you are able. --EncycloPetey 04:59, 8 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Does it categorize the stems too? Categorizing the prefixes was my intention. After English borrowed hundreds of words containing ad, con, ex, in, etc. they became English prefixes available to speakers for creating new words and understanding existing ones. Whether the prefix was added by Romans, French, or English, they are still all the same prefix and it is useful to see them grouped together. If it were required that the affixation was done by an English-speaker, then none of the English words prefixed with xx- categories could ever be complete for borrowed affixes. Consider transfer (Latin) and transclusion (English). Or atheist (French), agnostic (Greek), and asexual (English). And the same for -ize, -ic, etc. Perhaps I should not have started with ad- though, as it is the least transparent or productive of the lot. I have found the modern coinages adrenal and adposition.


 * So if the source is not the lemma, I should append something like form of X? Brock 22:02, 8 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Err... they're not really the same prefix. Notice that the information you're adding is in the Etymology section, and the corresponding category placement reflects that.  These may be words beginning with a form of "ad-", but they are not prefixed English words.  Additionally, the preposition  is not a prefix in Latin; it is a preposition prepended to the word.  This is equivalent to English phrasal verbs, with the only exception being that it became normal in Latin to conjoin the preposition to the front of the verb.    When you use the  template, it adds a "-" in the text right after the element that is supposed to be a prefix and it links to the corresponding language section of that prefix.


 * So, when you add this template to the Latin components from which accrue descends, (a) you make the preposition a prefix, (b) create a link to the wrong entry page (ad-: instead of ad:), (c) link to the English section of that page (even though the linked components were supposed to be Latin, (d) categorize the page under a misleading etymology, since the components were assembled in Latin and not in English using an English prefix. These issues haven't always been carefully considered, especially in Wiktionaries oldest entries, and so you will find old entries that are incorrectly formatted.


 * In which case would the source not be the lemma? Unless you are working in Romance language verbs, or with words derived from participles, then the lemma should be the only form listed in the etymology.  The problem of the etymology using the present active infinitive is one created by dictionary publishers.  In dictionaries for modern Romance languages (e.g. Spanish), the lemma is the infinitive and the dictionary will use this as the headword form.  In Dictionaries of Latin (and Ancient Greek) the lemma is the first-person singular present active indicative (1st principal part).  Writers of English dictionaries have tended to use the infinitive as the default form in etymologies, even though it is not the specific form that the verb evolved from (and it wouldn't be possible to pinpoint a specific form as "the" source anyway).  The result is sometimes problematic, as you cannot look up a Latin verb in a dictionary under the infinitive.  We have chosen to follow a more helpful approach to the reader and use the 1st principal part of Latin verbs in etymologies.  This is an editorial decision, just as it is in printed English dictionaries to use the present active infinitive.  In both cases, the listed form stands in for the verb as a whole, and does not imply a specific form as the source.  Sometimes, this editorial choice has led to errors in print dictionaries, where the source verb does not have a present active infinitive form, so one is invented for the etymology.  Latin dictionaries sometimes make a similar silly choice when an impersonal verb (with only 3rd-person forms) has a 1st-person form invented as the headword form, even though no such form existed in Latin.  We on Wiktionary prefer to avoid inventing forms that never existed.  --EncycloPetey 05:26, 9 July 2009 (UTC)