Talk:Linguistics/Archive 6

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Beating the dead unnatural horse

Alinovic, this issue has been discussed several times before (read the archives). The consensus is that "Linguistics is the scientific study of natural language". Your "improvement" removed the two most important descriptive words in the sentence ("scientific" and "natural") and removed all the references. That's no improvement. I suspect that you might just be the most recent sock puppet of Suppriya. (Taivo (talk) 16:48, 12 January 2010 (UTC))

I concur. THis issue was discussed at extreme length earlier and consensus was achieved. There is no need for us to revisit it again and again and again and again and again. Comhreir (talk) 17:34, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I also agree on both counts. Everything I've seen, including, for example, Alinovic's list of contributions, suggests to me that Alinovic is Supriyya. garik (talk) 17:48, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree - editing pattern alone should be alone to enforce a sockpuppet block.·Maunus·ƛ· 20:23, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure about Alinovic=Supriyya, unless Supriyya has gained some acting talent. Supriyya, from what I can remember, was a real pain, but more intelligent than Alinovic appears to be. No offense, but some of the sections above (especially "can we have a section on neologisms") are not impressive. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 01:20, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

nd I thought you guys were just playing along… I mean come on! What are the chances somebody else out there is pushing the same POV on this page while editing BDSM, Feminism, and compalning about the Hindi-English translation of a Bollywood film title? ~(Ex-lurker)

@Rjanag, have a look at her blog. She's just been complaining about the hitlers on the linguistics page and the evil censorship of this article... The timing seems pretty coincidental to me...Comhreir (talk) 15:29, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

link plz?·Maunus·ƛ· 16:02, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

here (that blog got sold off later by the Google machine.) garik (talk) 17:39, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

ROFLMAO! (~Supriya) 122.173.228.157 (talk) 12:26, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

I think the plan should be to tweek the article to a more descriptive form of linguistics since linguistics is the core descriptive science of language. I think we should describe every analytical thread of the subject's history and theory. @Maunus It's ok if you agree about natural language but cannot change it now because of lack of consensus. We can change it eventually. what is ROFLMAO? Alinovic (talk) 14:45, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

No we can't unless consensus changes which does not seem likely to happen.·Maunus·ƛ· 15:42, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Let's consent then? Alinovic (talk) 16:10, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

The first paragraph is too long

It hurts my eyes to read it; I'm sure the lay reader's will too. Alinovic (talk) 15:51, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

It is not. See WP:LEAD and WP:SIZE for explanations why.·Maunus·ƛ· 17:39, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

It's not too long. Increase the font size on your computer if it hurts your eyes to read. (Taivo (talk) 17:42, 18 January 2010 (UTC))

Ban User:Alinovic from editing this article

I think it's time to consider banning Alinovic (see Wikipedia:Banning policy for details). He has a habit of suggesting various changes at the talk page, but going ahead and making them anyway (sometimes repeatedly) even when everyone has opposed them at talk:

• paragraph splitting: [1][2]
• removal of descriptors "natural" and/or "scientific": [3][4][5]

These five diffs are all within the past month and a half, and all were immediately reverted afterwards.

Personally I find Alinovic's participation at the talk page to be unhelpful as well, but there's probably no reason to restrict him from the talk page (especially if he loses the privilege to edit the article, then we might as well allow him to use the talk page for fairness' sake). But I do think he should not be allowed to edit the article directly any more; he does not seem to understand discussion and consensus, and in fact I don't think a single one of his edits has ever lasted (the only edits other than what I posted above are these, also reverted). Should we have some sort of vote or something? rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 16:26, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

My main concern about Alinovic is that s/he doesn't understand what the word "consensus" means. His conspiratorial comment to Maunus about "we can add it later" seems to be more game-playing than understanding that consensus means he can never change it to his version. Fortunately, Maunus understands consensus and cut Alinovic's musings off. One of his edit summaries also mentioned that his version version could stay since there's "no consensus". What? There is a strong consensus and Alinovic had been told that when he tried to change it the first time. It's one thing for a new editor to be bold and then be told that consensus is against his or her edit. We forgive that all the time. But when an editor has been reverted, then told that he is editing against consensus, and then continues to edit against consensus.... That's the problem with Alinovic. I'm neutral about a ban from this article, but his editing is certainly disruptive, even though s/he is civil about it. (Taivo (talk) 17:37, 18 January 2010 (UTC))

I agree—sheer CLUElessness can be just as disruptive as intentional malice. For comparison, someone was just recently banned from the Reference Desks for similar good-faithed lack of WP:competence: see WT:RD#Incomprehensible posts on the Language Desk. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 17:48, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Don't you think a checkuser is in order? I couldn't imagine that Alinovic isn't Supriyya, although this beast is wacking instead of quacking. Some of her comments just don't make sense unless you read them as irony or puerile attempts at misdirection. Seriously, why would she try to bring Angr back into the discussion or post a bio claiming that she is getting a degree in Neologisms. And then Supriyya posts "ROFLMAO" and Alinovic asks what that means? And how do you suggest it is that Alinovic has read enough of the archives to know who Angr is but not Supriya? I mean… come on! Allformweek (talk) 19:34, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Hm. I know I said above that I didn't think they were the same person, but now I have some doubts. A couple days ago Alinovic accidentally edited her userpage from her IP, which geolocates to New Delhi just as IPs known to be used by Supriya ([6][7][8]) do. That might be enough to just block Alinovic right now. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 20:00, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Hmm. I'm not an expert on IPs, but if Alinovic claims to be on Sri Lanka, but his/her IP is from New Delhi? That's several hundred miles between where his/her IP is and where s/he claims to be located. (Taivo (talk) 20:19, 18 January 2010 (UTC))

Of course Alinovic is Supriyya! I've been reading this page since years and Alinovic's comments since weeks. I always knew it. How could the experienced admins on Wikipedia not guess? But if we ban, won't she come up with a new sock puppet? MotherFatherChild (talk) 14:55, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Not sure, ma'am. I kind of assumed they were humoring her, since she was so obvious. Allformweek (talk) 16:44, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Just to be safe, I've filed a request for checkuser at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Supriyya. If Alinovic is confirmed to be Supriyya, we can block her without further discussion. If not, the proposal to ban him/her is still relevant (s/he is a disruptive editor whether or not s/he is Supriyya). rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 17:27, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Alinovic has been blocked as a sockpuppet, but I am not convinced by the evidence, and I think doubt should benefit the accused. In this case Alinovic seems to have been indefinitely blocked solely based on the duck principle - with hardly a chance to argue his/her own case. I think a better result would be to topicban alinovic from Linguistics and its talkpage. ·Maunus·ƛ· 13:48, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree. I have little doubt that Alinovic isn't a Supriya sock, but that's not the same as no doubt, and we haven't succeeded in finding anything beyond circumstantial evidence. garik (talk) 14:34, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I requested a checkuser a couple weeks ago and they declined, without giving a decent reason (User:Tim Song said that he wouldn't do it because the Supriyya account hasn't edited in a long time, even though I was actually asking him to check Alinovic against Supriyya IPs that had edited within the month; then User:Nathan seemed to suggest that a CU would be possible, but then he disappeared). User:MuZemike then blocked Alinovic over what was essentially a misreading of a diff: see User talk:MuZemike/Archive 4#User:Alinovic. I didn't object much more because I do believe the project doesn't lose anything if Alinovic is blocked and so I didn't want to make a big deal about it, but I agree with all of you that the block was a bit out of process (although an honest mistake), especially when there was ample reason to do a checkuser and no one bothered to do it. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 16:58, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

My reply to Rjanag's message on my talkpage, "User Alinovic", and all your messages on "Talk Linguistics"

If Supriyya is impostering me and falsely projecting herself as me by hacking into my account, you can certainly block her. I have no objection. But so far no-one has edited from my account as per what I can see. She seems likely to do so from her past behaviour on Wikipedia. So I'd like ID protection too. Where can I get it enforced? I know both Angr and Supriyya from the archives. I did not contact Supriyya because her userpage is blocked and she can't edit. So I only contacted Angr. She's also too disruptive to be discussed here. I live in New Delhi now though I've been born and brought up and studied linguistics all in Sri Lanka. Alinovic (talk) 16:14, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

So is it confirmed that Alinovic is Supriyya? I am a genius, man! I knew it from day one and thought you guys were all playing along. The ROFLMAO message did it perhaps. Now that the crazy people are gone, let's discuss serious changes for the article. (MotherFatherChild (talk) 09:16, 27 January 2010 (UTC)) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Serival (talk • contribs)

OH. MY. GOD. Allformweek (talk) 09:35, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

What happened? MotherFatherChild (talk) 13:37, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Oldest Languages On main page

This is probably inappropriate because it's not about the linguistics page, but about something that appeared on the main page. But I felt this was the best place to present it for discussion first. On the main page in the "in the news section" one finds the phrase The extinction of Aka-Bo language, one of the world's oldest languages, is announced.

The passing of Aka-Bo is indeed very sad and news worthy. But "one of the world's oldest languages" is a bit of a stretch or shows some kind of bizarre idea that ignores language change. Any thoughts on this? Comhreir (talk) 05:49, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Agree completely this is nonsense and makes wikipedia seem like a substandard newsprovider. The statement about "oldest" has to be removed, it is simply embarrassing.·Maunus·ƛ· 06:13, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Removed.·Maunus·ƛ· 07:08, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I read the BBC article about Bo and it is a piece of crap. The speaker who died (according to the biography on the principal investigator's web site on Andamanese languages) didn't speak Bo, but spoke Jeru. Tribally, she was the last of the Bo, but her language was Great Andamanese (primarily based on Jeru) with some Bo components. The deceased lady claimed herself to speak Jeru. The BBC article is garbage and very badly researched and written (typical for reporting of linguistics by non-linguists). The whole news item needs to be removed. It has actually led to a bunch of pseudo-editing on the Aka-Bo language and Andamanese languages pages. (It even affected the Aka-Kora language page.)) The semi-vandalism is still continuing at Aka-Bo and Andamanese. (Taivo (talk) 07:23, 5 February 2010 (UTC))

Minor correction needed

"Although linguistics is narrowly defined as the scientific approach to the study of language, language a number of other intellectual disciplines are relevant to it and influence its study." should be corrected to remove the redundant "a language." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jo3sampl (talk • contribs) 23:05, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Nothing in this world, Jo3sampl, is redundant. It's a grammatical error. And grammatical errors and typing mistakes are created by destiny so that they can be removed and cleaned. And because without them, this deep sense of spiritual satisfaction that we linguist-editors have the pleasure to experience, would not exist. ''FellowScientist'' (talk) 17:13, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

New York Times Articles

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Irrelevant and unconstructive discussion. rʨanaɢ (talk) 19:10, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

It seems like Supriya has managed to get the story about what's happening into the press.

See this

And this

How did she manage it? <snip> She must have pulled some strings somewhere.

Can we write to the New York Times company to get the articles removed by popular consensus? This might be quite dangerous. ''FellowScientist'' (talk) 14:39, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

There is nothing at all unusual about these articles. News articles pointing out legitimate shortcomings of Wikipedia are common and have been for years. Furthermore, in my quick skim of those articles, I saw absolutely nothing about the conflicts at this page; it's all about gender imbalances, which is not something I recall Supriyya having a problem with.

Furthermore, since all of Wikipedia is open and available to the public, it's not like anything on-wiki can be "leaked" anyway. Any journalist could read all the discussions on this page him/herself. And Wikipedia can't exercise control over what newspapers say about Wikipedia.

I don't know why you are still talking about trying to "catch" Supriyya when we have made it so clear to you (User talk:Fellowscientist#Outing and elsewhere on this talk page) that that is inappropriate behavior; it needs to stop, though. rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:51, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but what if they stop us from keeping this article neutral to the fact that it is structuralist? Next before you know it, they'll do a story on post structural linguistics and it being deleted on Wikipedia! Just because this is a soft warning we shouldn't take it lightly. They really may do a story on that deleted article, esp since Supriya was involved in it. Let's nip it in the bud. Why don't one of you write an informed email to NYT and ask them to stop doing this series? I mean, we should explain our point, WHY we censored that article, and that'll put an end to the whole game. What do you think? ''FellowScientist'' (talk) 16:33, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Stop. It is not relevant. Drop it.·Maunus·ƛ· 16:46, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

World map fail

I'm crazy or the map of the language distribution is completely wrong? In Brazil people do not speak the same language that people in Argentina, neither in Spain and France or Sweden and USA !!! Maybe I did not understand the map (upper right) but it is called "major world language groups" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.250.5.248 (talk) 07:50, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Well, I don't suppose you are actually crazy, but the map is not wrong - it seems that you do not know what is meant by a language group. All the countries you mention speak an Indo-European language. --Pfold (talk) 08:09, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, now I get it. It may be a good idea to put a symbology to explain the colors, maybe I'll learn why there are two in Australia (aborigines live across the country), and about that small green dot between Argentina and Chile. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.250.5.247 (talk) 02:32, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

The colors attempt to depict the language group with the largest number of speakers in an area. In wide areas of Australia English-speakers are few in number and concentrated in small communities, while aboriginal groups may roam over large areas. The green area between Argentina and Chile that you refer to represents the area in which the majority of inhabitants are Mapuche. -- Donald Albury 23:51, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

I had been puzzled by this map earlier. Thanks for the explanation. I just reviewed the map and checked the Wikimedia Commons description page. I don't see how a naive user has a chance to interpret the map correctly. May I suggest that Donald Albury's explanation be added as a caption or linked file? I have no experience with WMCommons or images in WP, so I'm hoping for help, but I will try to do it myself eventually. Thanks -- Jo3sampl (talk) 00:14, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

That map is not part of this article, it's part of the {{Linguistics}} navigational template which is put at the top of all linguistics-related articles. Furthermore, it's not meant to be content; it's a decoration. Therefore, it would not be appropriate to add a caption, although I can update the tooltip (the text that appears when you hover your mouse over the image for a moment). I already updated the image description page on Wikipedia Commons so it contains a link to the map's legend. rʨanaɢ (talk) 00:22, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks very much. -- Jo3sampl (talk) 01:11, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Suggestion: Language Birth and Death

I would like to ask a pertinent question. Why are linguists so hooked up with language death rather than with language birth?

Shouldn't we be concentrating on new languages that are being born rather than old languages that are dying? Won't that help us more positively to maintain multilingualism in the world?

Every language has a deep structure that is multilingual. We don't need to impose multilingualism if our thinking is diverse.

I know of some books on language birth and I'd like to write about them. The authors are from places as diverse as Taiwan, Mauritius, and Schenzen. But my editing on the article is repeatedly being deleted. Is there a technical problem on Wikipedia or was I sleep-editing?

Either way, can we please incorporate these things into the article? Thanks. ElbowingYouOut (talk) 18:49, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Who says linguists aren't concerned with language birth? There are many linguists interested in creole languages as a way of studying how languages are born, and linguists studying how particular aspects of language come about (e.g. tonogenesis).

The reason your earlier edits to the article were removed are explained at User_talk:Rjanag#Rhetoric. rʨanaɢ (talk) 19:01, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

(I forgot to add the usual: "Hi Supriyya!". rʨanaɢ (talk) 19:03, 11 September 2011 (UTC))

I still don't understand what you're saying completely. I mean what - can we just add a section on creole then? I'm fine with that. ElbowingYouOut (talk) 15:13, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Your edits about creole and English are incorrect. There is no "the beginning stage of language" - creolization is one way a very particular way through which a language can come into existence, and even in those cases creolization is normally preceded by a pidgin stage. English is not a creole or a pidgin, but there are of course English based creoles and pidgins in the world, although I am uncertain why you would go into detail about those here.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 15:56, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

I haven't read into your discussions further, but I must point out that there are serious discussions regarding the possible status of English as a creole—see the Middle English creolization hypothesis. —Bill Price (nyb) 19:26, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

There is serious discussion about a lot of things. That is not what Elbowingyouout was mentioning - in his edit he stated the hypothesis as if it were fact.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 19:36, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Hello, hello. What does Taivo mean by English was never a creole? You mean the present state of English as it is today just popped out of nowhere, Maunus? Then in that case we must also prove that no historical linguistics is being done with English as a model, since English obviously has no history. And sure, my statement was unsourced, but it can always be left open to references and sources at some later stage. Why remove the aspect completely? This entire discussion thread is a little cryptic, I must say. (I have no idea what that "Hello Supriyya" message by Rjanag meant, either, and I have no time for that. Please don't try to ward this off as me being some other user you don't like because you are unable to verbalise your article-related arguments properly.)

There is no "the beginning stage of language" - creolization is one way a very particular way through which a language can come into existence, and even in those cases creolization is normally preceded by a pidgin stage. - Maunus

Do you see the obvious contradiction in your own sentence?

I'd really be obliged if you could provide some sources to your claim that "English is not a creole". Of course English is not a creole, by the way. It's not at a creole stage in countries where English is the first language in the 21st Century, OBVIOUSLY. Grade-I information and logic. √ Check. But it was in the 13th century, like because, of history? And it is in third world and post-colonial countries because, like, again, it was introduced there later? Grade-II logic and information. √ Check.

And oh, just to state the even-more-obvious to be on the safe side: creole is not a language (like English or Spanish). Neither is it a CLASSIFICATION or a linguistic typology. Tcha. It is a development stage that every language goes through. Like human beings who go through childhood, then adolescence, then old age, and so on. You may say that human beings are not children, but then, you see... ElbowingYouOut (talk) 11:56, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

• Nonsense. That is not what the word "creole" means in the usage of any mainstream linguist. Present some actual linguistic sources arguing these claims and then we can talk.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 12:19, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Two thoughts: first, ElbowingYouOut's idea of what a creole is is utterly bizarre. Second, isn't is nice that Supriyya still takes time to visit us? garik (talk) 14:33, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

• Nonsense? Then why don't you elucidate the definition of what creole means to a mainstream linguist? And to a niche linguist too?

Garik, who's Supriyya? I'll be adding changes to the article in a while if I get no response. ElbowingYouOut (talk) 00:59, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

You have had plenty of responses. Anything you add that is not supported by sources determined by consensus to be relevant will of course be promptly removed.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 01:54, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Looks defensive

The very first line of the article has FOUR references. It looks defensive to have to try so hard to prove such a basic claim, like the discipline needs to prove its very fundamental existence. Whoever added it, please remove. ElbowingYouOut (talk) 15:30, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

It seems more silly to remove the references and add an unsourced definition. We have adopted the current definition, ith sources, after long discussions with some people who think that linguistics deals with programming languages or animal communication, because some linguists work with those. That is however incorrect as we have established, since the only reasons that lingusts may be interested in non-human languages is to better understand the nature of human languages. We can of course take the discussion again, but please don't assume that such deliberate decisions are not the result of discussion and deliberation among multiple specialist editors, because they are.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 15:54, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Percentage

What percentage of people on Earth are fluent at speaking 6 or more languages? Pass a Method talk 15:41, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

This talk page is for discussing improvements to the Linguistics article, not for other discussion (and your question is not really about linguistics). You will have more luck asking this question as the Language reference desk. rʨanaɢ (talk) 15:44, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

A treatise on generative linguistics

(an anon Ip inserted these treatise on Generative linguistics in the intrduction of this article. It seems to hav good material - but it needs to go somewhere else in the article. And it should be cleaned frm editorializing·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 00:34, 10 February 2012 (UTC)) Linguistic Competence defines the system of rules that governs an individual’s tacit understanding of what is acceptable and what is not in the language they speak. The concept, introduced by the linguist Noam Chomsky in 1965, was intended to address certain assumptions about language, especially in structuralist linguistics, where the idea of an unconscious system had been extensively elaborated and schematized. Competence can be regarded as a revision of the idea of the language system. The empirical and formal realization of competence would be performance, which thus corresponds to diverse structuralist notions of parole, utterance, event, process, etc. Chomsky argues that the unconscious system of linguistic relations, which Ferdinand de Saussure named langue, is often mistakenly associated with knowledge or ability (or know-how). Chomsky is concerned to establish a science that would study what he calls “the language faculty”, in analogy with other mental faculties like logic, which as a kind of intuitive reasoning power requires no accumulation of facts or skills in order to develop. Grammatical knowledge too seems to be present and fully functional in speakers fluent in any language. So competence in Chomsky’s sense implies neither an accumulated store of knowledge nor an ability or skill. He rejects Saussure’s langue as “merely a systematic inventory of items”, and instead returns to a rationalist model of underlying competence regarded as “a system of generative processes” (4). This has the advantage of explaining plausibly events of linguistic innovation in unpredictable situations, as well as pertinence of expression and understanding in particular contexts. This faculty seems to be absent in animals and (so far) in machines that can nonetheless be taught or programmed to use signs in imitative or predetermined ways.

A key source for Chomsky’s conception is Rene Descartes, whose concern with the creative powers of the mind leads him to regard human language as an instrument of thought. Chomsky also cites Wilhelm von Humboldt as a source for the conception of the generative nature of competence. Humboldt argues that use of language is based upon the demands that thinking imposes on language, and that this is where the general laws governing language originate. In order to understand the instrument or the faculty itself, however, it would not be necessary or even desirable to consider the creative abilities of great writers or the cultural wealth of nations; the linguist would, rather, attempt to abstract the generative rules, which remain unchanged from individual to individual. Competence, in Chomsky’s sense, is to be regarded as entirely independent of any considerations of performance, which might concern other disciplines, like pragmatics, psychology, medicine, or literary theory.

An individual’s competence is defined by the grammar, or set of rules, that is represented mentally and manifested by their understanding of acceptable usage in a given linguistic idiom. Grammatical competence thus defines an innate knowledge of rules rather than knowledge of items or relations. It is said to be innate because one apparently does not have to be trained to acquire it and it can be applied to an unlimited number of previously unheard examples. The two phrases I speak acceptable Chinese and I speak Chinese acceptably would be regarded as acceptable by any native English speaker, but I speak acceptably Chinese would probably not. Despite this, the more complex form, I speak quite acceptably Cantonese and some other Chinese dialects as well as Japanese, might be regarded as alright. Examples like these are thought to provide evidence of a deep structure of grammar, in other words, a linguistic competence.

A project in generative grammar has two distinct aims. First, it is a matter of analyzing the elements of a sentence or phrase into its distinct parts, thus revealing the so called deep structure of the sentence. Competence thus implies an unconscious knowledge of the rules for converting deep structure into surface structure. The procedures have been adopted by or incorporated into several approaches to text and discourse analysis. The relationship between surface structure and deep structure can be easily demonstrated, for instance, by examples of structural ambiguity, a key source of jokes, like Groucho Marx’s line from Animal Crackers: One morning I shot an elephant in my pyjamas; how he got into my pyjamas I’ll never know. The comic aspect of the punch line lies in its revealing the fact that the surface structure of the main sentence expresses two possible grammatical sentences: in my pyjamas I shot an elephant; and I shot an elephant who was wearing my pyjamas. The discrete unit in my pyjamas each time plays a different grammatical role in the deep structure of the sentence.

The second, more controversial, aim of generative grammar is to establish and produce descriptive models of the rules that compose the complete grammar. The rules must be finite yet must be capable of generating an infinite number of innovative sentences. This aspect of grammar is open to debate and misunderstanding partly because of the intuitive nature of an individual’s sense of what is and is not acceptable. Projects in generative grammar abound with examples of sentences that lie on the boundaries of what speakers might regard as acceptable, revealing fine degrees of unacceptability as well as acceptability. The point is not to establish what is right or wrong in any absolute sense. Rather it is to establish first that a speaker’s competence leads them to intuitive judgments concerning the relative acceptability of sentences; and then it is a matter of producing models of that competence. So the controversial aspect of generative grammar lies in its assertion of an innate cognitive faculty, from which issues the rules of grammatical structure and generation, and which thus describes the entire grammar of the language faculty, its syntax, which is manifested by an individual’s competence in their language. Despite the ideal implied by the notion of a complete grammar, Chomsky insists that any science of the language faculty must, like all science, be subject to interminable revision and refinement.

Diverse approaches in literary criticism and critical theory address both the productive potential and the problematic character of the notion of competence. Michel Riffaterre’s response in 1966 to the exhaustive structuralist reading of Baudelaire’s “Les Chats,” by Claude Levi-Strauss and Roman Jakobson, accuses them of building a “supertext”, based on the collation and classification of regularities, which no ordinary reader could have arrived at independently of structuralist resources. In a gesture that parallels Chomsky’s response to Saussure, Riffaterre constructs instead the theoretical fiction of the “superreader”, a notion designed to establish those moments in a literary text that invariably draw the attention of the reader because of their unpredictability in the face of normative grammatical restrictions. Such moments invariably “hold up” the reading process. The idea of the superreader is to be established independently of any consideration of external conditions on individual readers, the effects on understanding of continual evolution of the language, and changes in poetic or aesthetic conventions. In later work, Riffaterre builds a sophisticated stylistic method that, again, parallels generative, or transformational, grammar. He argues that a literary text can by analyzed for the way it has been generated from what he calls its matrix, a “kernel word” or “minimal sentence”. The matrix allows the generation of forms more complex than itself, creating two levels: the generator (corresponding to the minimal deep structure of the work); and the transform (corresponding to the increasingly complex surface structure).

Fascinating as the results of Riffaterre’s readings are, critics have discovered numerous problems with them. The texts he chooses for analysis, for instance, tend to be unpredictable in consistent ways, like Lauréamont’s Les Chants de Maldoror. So while his analyses of texts like this are revealing, critics have been skeptical about his claims for a science of the literary in general, because many texts commonly regarded as literary can be regarded as grammatically normative yet effective in other ways.

Jonathan Culler, in his Structuralist Poetics, moves away from the idea of the underlying competence of literary works, and considers instead the literary competence of readers. Culler argues that this literary competence, regarded as a kind of grammar of literature, is acquired in education institutions. In his later work, On Deconstruction, he develops the idea further, drawing on diverse critical responses to institutions, and questioning the foundations of a literary competence that surreptitiously promotes the doctrines and values of specific traditions.

Literary analysis has also been responsible for effective critical engagements with the implications of Chomsky’s concept of competence. Colin MacCabe’s essay on Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, “Competence and Performance: the Body and Language in Finnegans Wake,” takes issue with the biological grounds of Chomsky’s theoretical formulations, arguing that Finnegans Wake literally “dismembers” any normative conception of the relation between the body and language. MacCabe argues that more weight must be given to the institutional forms of education and entertainment in the formation of tacit competence as a source of political force. He insists that in order to build on Chomsky’s studies of competence a concept of discourse is required.

The concept of discourse would help bring Chomsky’s theoretical formulations closer to those of Michel Foucault, to whom he is often opposed. Foucault, for instance, in The Archeology of Knowledge adapts the notion of archive to account for those rules that govern what we know and what we can say, but which we cannot, for that reason, ever describe. These rules function not as part of an innate system, as Chomsky contends, but as a “system of accumulation, historicity, and disappearance” (Archaeology 130). The archive thus designates what Foucault calls the “historical a priori”, historical conditions independent of experience that nonetheless help to determine it. Several other theorists have comparable formulations, where the always apparently innate laws that conspire to form competences of certain kinds turn out to have been overdetermined by institutions or other systems of organization. In these cases there are not only linguistic and literary competences but also competences of love, of sexuality, of urban dwelling and so on. Jacques Lacan’s concept of the Other, as “the locus of the word”, functions just as Chomsky’s concept of the fluent speaker does, with the essential difference that Lacan’s Other is the locus also of the Symbolic and thus represents institutional normalization. A further celebrated intervention would be Roland Barthes’s formulation, in S/Z, of the codes that he argues govern the realist text. Barthes exposes a tacit understanding that disguises a highly sophisticated and multivalent matrix of assumptions and expectations.

It appears to be from here. garik (talk) 03:11, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Earliest known linguistics

I tried to find a citation for the previous comment but was not able to confirm it so I changed the tail sentence in the introductory paragraph from the former:

The earliest known linguistic activities date to Iron Age India (around the 8th century BC) with the analysis of Sanskrit.

To the oldest and most correct I could find:

The earliest known descriptive linguistics activities are said to have been Panini's Ashtadhyayi around 500 BCE with the analysis of Sanskrit. Theoretick (talk) 01:53, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Right, theoretick! 14.96.217.216 (talk) 18:22, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Schools of Study - SFL

Shouldn't there be a separate listing under schools of study for Systemic functional linguistics? It is mentioned and discussed in the section but I would think it would benefit from being listed alongside Generative Grammar and Cognitive Linguistics. Theoretick (talk) 02:16, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Please go ahead and add it! (I do think though that SFL is just one of many functional schools, just like there are many generative schools not all of which are described in their own sections) ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 02:38, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Nicely presented article

I must say that this article is very well-written and sounds very good now, simple and clear and comprehensive with a good number of sources to it. It is my first time editing on Wikipedia and I hope I could contribute something valuable to it through this article. I have made some minor/subtle structural changes to the article to tighten the language a bit. If any of you are interested in adding something further on functional linguistics, please feel welcome. It is not my subject formally as I specialise in morphology, but I would really like to see something more on functionalism included to the article as I believe it is an important aspect to the topic. MrsCaptcha (talk) 19:59, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I apologise. I see there is already a section on functionalism to the article that I didn't notice earlier. Perhaps that's just me growing dazed in my old age. What I would have meant is that it would be nice for it to be expanded. MrsCaptcha (talk) 20:03, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your additions. I had to undo them temporarily as there were some issues: in one place you changed "however" to "for example", which entirely changes the focus of what's being discussed; in another you accidentally broke a link by changing "philology" to "philolgy"; in another you added "Category:Interdisciplinary fields", which is a non-existent category; and in another place you bolded the terms "prescriptive" and "descriptive", which is generally not advised (you can see the Wikipedia Manual of Style for a more in-depth explanation of when certain types of formatting are used and when they're not). As for the rest of the edits, they didn't introduce any problems; but I also do not think they constituted a substantial improvement over the text that was already there, just a different style. Best, rʨanaɢ (talk) 20:17, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Hi Rjanag. Thankyou very much for the feedback on my edits. I totally appreciate your comments and empathise with what you say regarding the spelling and grammatical errors I mistakenly infused in the article due to my lack of writing experience and I apologise for the same. However I feel those errors can be corrected. It would be nice if we could keep the valid changes I made and correct the errors you pointed out as it would then benefit both our efforts. MrsCaptcha (talk) 08:38, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Regarding the "however" and "for instance/example" usage

I have no arguments to the change you make from "for instance" to "however" at the place where you corrected it, Rjanag. That's fine. I had, actually, initially thought you meant it for the phrase related to semiotics. "...A number of other disciplines apply to linguistics. Semiotics, for instance/example, is the study of signs and symbols..." It would not in this context be appropriate to say/use the term "however" as we are giving examples of other disciplines that are related to linguistics and not opposing that claim first made above. So I am adding back the "for example" in the semiotics-related line, but you can keep it as "however" in the other one related to the controversies of animal language. I changed it on your comment above, for semiotics, as a misunderstanding, then, I suppose. MrsCaptcha (talk) 17:15, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Disagreement over hyphen in "second(-)language acquisition"

(cross-posted...)
There is a dispute at Talk:Second-language acquisition#Hyphen in the title: second discussion over whether or not to include a hyphen in "second language acquisition". Feedback/input would be appreciated. Thanks, rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:49, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

There should be no hyphen in "second language acquisition" according to me. Logically, it may not be WRONG to put a hyphen, but I believe that a hyphen is most necessary only when there are two or more adjectives in a sentence that belong to a common idea, and the purpose of the hyphen is to organise the two for the reader. If the two adjectives belong to two different categories of ideas, it is not that necessary. Even if you call "second" an adjective, and "language" an adjective, they would be two adjectives that don't compete with each other. (And language is not even an adjective; 'linguistic' is.) Hyphens are also needed indispensably when you cannot express the use of a possessive comfortably within the complexities of the syntax of a sentence. Like Berlin-girl. It means Berlin's girl, or girl from Berlin, etc, but you want to make it compact in order to let the sentence flow. As far as I can see, no such situation exists in "second language acquisition". MrsCaptcha (talk) 20:56, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

MrsCaptcha, thanks for your input. In order to keep the discussion all in one place, it would be best to post this at Talk:Second-language acquisition#Hyphen in the title: second discussion (it's ok to copy and paste the same message there if you like). Best, rʨanaɢ (talk) 01:51, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Alright, rjanag. MrsCaptcha (talk) 13:53, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Cutting

I've cut some unsourced and largely redundant content. We basically had two history sections. Now we only have one. I agree with Mrs Captcha that the "main questions" should be expanded, but it should be based on sources. The two lines in the universality/diversity sections misrepresented the issue.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 14:45, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. I just added lines randomly to initiate expansion. That section is important. It needs to grow. MrsCaptcha (talk) 18:29, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I read the rest of the section on "language faculty" and it really wasn't up to scratch, based on a single non-notable reference, and with misrepresentations of what "linguists believe" and a confused definition of cognitive linguistics (which is just one approach among many alternatives to the Generativist approach).·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 22:23, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Terminology section

Note - I changed the title of this section from the text immediately below. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{(have a chat)} 18:59, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

/* Terminology for the discipline */ Isn't this title looking too long? I've cut it short to just /* Terminology*/.

...Naturally, because this article is about the discipline. So it has to be terminology for the discipline itself.

Feedback, anyone?

I think "for the discipline" should go, the way I've edited it.

MrsCaptcha (talk) 13:53, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I think the point of that was to indicate that the section was not about terminology used in the discipline (i.e., linguistics jargon), but about names for the discipline throughout history. This was a bit ambiguous, so I think you're right that it needed changed. "Terminology" by itself is still a bit ambiguous; I wonder if "Name" would be a better heading? Or "History"? rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:34, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

How about "Epistemology" then? It will be obvious that epistemology refers to the epistemology of the discipline since that's what the article is about. I think this fits. MrsCaptcha (talk) 18:28, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

If we do use "Epistemology", we will need to add more historical details about how the term "linguistics" came about. MrsCaptcha (talk) 18:30, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I think "Epistemology" would be a very poor choice. To me the word refers to a branch of philosophy, specifically the branch concerned with defining knowledge and its scope and limits. That has very little to do with names that have been used for the study of language. So using it as a title for that section would be even more confusing and misleading than the current title. I would suggest calling the section "Names for the discipline" or "Linguistics and philology" or something like that. garik (talk) 18:54, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps you are right garik. But epistemology is also used for mapping the history of terms and words other than its philosophical meaning of knowledge-theory. Please suggest something else. What do writers generally title the introduction of a topic where they get into the background of how the word came about? Like someone writing a book about translation goes back to explain that translation comes from the morpheme trans (travel, transport, etc)... MrsCaptcha (talk) 19:10, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

"Please suggest something else." I made two suggestions. To be honest, I don't have a big problem with "Terminology"; at least it's preferable to "Epistemology". I hope you don't mind, by the way: I also took the liberty of further indenting your response.garik (talk) 21:34, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Garik, "Epistemology" is not likely to help most readers. To be honest when I was in college I took multiple classes that came close to philosophy (like philosophy of language and symbolic logic) and have heard this term before, but I don't really know what it means. It's just alienating to readers. rʨanaɢ (talk) 22:16, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I think what Mrs. Captcha means is "etymology" or something like that. I'd suggest "Names for the field" or "Origins of the field" as alternatives. Allformweek (talk) 01:22, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Good point. I think that must be what was intended. Still, I don't think "Etymology" is right either. The etymological history of the word "linguistics" isn't especially interesting, and certainly isn't the main point of the section. I think "Names for the field" is good. garik (talk) 01:30, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, thank you for correcting me, Allformweek! I indeed meant etymology. I mixed it up with epistemology! I'm growing quite old indeed I'm afraid. Garik, what's wrong with etymology? I think it explains what this particular section is about, even if the section is a slightly unimportant and uninteresting, which I agree. Perhaps we can move the section down a little in the Index to re-structure its priority. But choose a good name for the section, prioritised or not. And Allformweek, yes, "History of Linguistics" isn't a bad name for the section, which could be expanded in line with the title thus. But "Names for the field" sounds... well, not really right and technically professional. MrsCaptcha (talk) 20:59, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Epistemology definitely doesn't work, and etymology isn't quite it either since we are not interested in the history of the word but in its different contemporary uses and the history of words used for the discipline that studies of langauge. I think "terminology" is preferable.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 22:20, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

I like "Name" best (to me "Terminology" still sounds like it's going to be about the terms used in the field, rather than those used to label the field), but I think it's not a big issue either way. rʨanaɢ (talk) 03:10, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm happy with "Name", but have a slight preference for "Names for the field", which I think is a little clearer. No one would be in any doubt, browsing the contents, what the section was about if we called it that. They might, however, be in slight doubt as to what a section "Name" was about. But I won't push hard for this. I didn't say, incidentally, that I thought the section itself was in any way unimportant and uninteresting, only that the etymological history of the word "linguistics" is relatively mundane as etymological histories go. It's also not what the section is about, and if we changed the section so that it was, I think it would become less interesting than it is now. garik (talk) 14:48, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Hey, how about the title "Introduction" for that section? That will keep it very wide and open to a number of introductory issues (including terminology, etc) about linguistics. MrsCaptcha (talk) 17:47, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

No. An introduction (also called a lead) is a specific part of an article (described here). It would be misleading to use it as a title for a different section. Nor do I see any reason to expand this section except to include further material relevant to its current topic, which is what the words linguist, linguistics and philology denote and have denoted in recent history. If you want to include something else, put it elsewhere. And what do you have against calling the section "Name" or "Names for the field"? garik (talk) 18:03, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

The phrase names for the discipline sounds a little odd while referring to the name of a discipline. I know I just used it myself! But still. "Name of a discipline" is still a better phrase in the middle of a sentence than titling a section as "Names for the discipline". It sounds like you're "calling something or someone names". At least it reminds me of that when you say it. Like, for instance, "I called my neighbour names the other day when he dropped salsa on my chimney"... I'm "using names for the discipline of linguistics". There's something inherently wrong with using this phrase here to refer to different words that represented linguistics as a field of study throughout history. Also, we must note, that when the discipline was called philology, the emphasis and content of the field had been vastly different from what it is today, as linguistics, and therefore philology is not just another name that the subject was called. Anyhow, we are going into the history of the way this subject has been referred to, so I do think we need to find something that explains that. I agree that "history of linguistics" as a title would be a little ambiguous considering that that section is not about the history of linguistics but about the history of the name linguistics, so let's brainstorm a bit more till that word that's playing on the tip of all our tongues finally pops out onto the screen. I also agree that terminology is not the right word either. MrsCaptcha (talk) 11:07, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Let's just call it "Linguistics and philology" and be done with it. garik (talk) 14:55, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

No, I don't think we should do that. The section is not about the comparative relationship between linguistics and philology but it is about the history of the word "linguistics". And even if it were the former, why would an article on linguistics start with that section? It sounds totally inappropriate. I don't see why we can't wait till we find the right word to title that section and replace "terminology" with it. MrsCaptcha (talk) 18:12, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Titling

The term linguistics

How does this title sound for that much-debated section we were discussing above? Let's call it "The term linguistics". MrsCaptcha (talk) 16:28, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm not so keen on that. The section is about the terms "philology" and "linguist" too. Here's a suggestion though: How about "Nomenclature"? That seems to me to tick all the necessary boxes. garik (talk)

Perfect. "Nomenclature" it is. I think we should call the section that. MrsCaptcha (talk) 13:35, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm glad you agree. But let's wait a day or two so other people can raise any objections before making the change. garik (talk) 13:43, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Sounds fine to me.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 14:38, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Sounds like no-one has any objections. Why don't we do the honors? MrsCaptcha (talk) 10:27, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Done. garik (talk) 14:23, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Evil Duck feels that the title "nomenclature" is not suitable with the content. 78.177.10.130 (talk) 16:05, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Evil duck's feelings are largely irrelevant in regards to wikipedia content, unless they take the form of a rational argument. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 16:45, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

His feelings are hardly irrelevant as he is the one who is going to read this article. 78.177.10.130 (talk) 18:02, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

I beg to differ, Evil Duck doesn't always read wikipedia - but when he does he reads about medical topics, not linguistics.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 18:55, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

I am afraid it would be underestimating him for his area of interests vary from sports and games to linguistics, philosophy of language and even prehistory. 78.177.35.103 (talk) 20:03, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Improvisations

Sources

As I said earlier, the article is in very good shape and looks potentially quite thorough in its coverage. But there are very few sources cited for many of the very valid statements and claims in this article. Even if some of the statements are clearly facts I think sources are important as they add to the resourcefulness of the article as well and give an interesting linkage to readers to follow up on, making the article feel more descriptive and in-depth. Let's work on these. MrsCaptcha (talk) 11:13, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Cognitive linguistics

The article there is in dire need of help. MrsCaptcha (talk) 13:16, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Definition of a linguist

Copied from my talk page (relevant diff here) garik (talk) 13:13, 4 September 2012 (UTC) :

Isn't that what lexicography is more or less about? Yes, sure, there are ambiguities. But people who work with their vocabulary (in connection with their lexicon) are often called linguists. MrsCaptcha (talk) 10:45, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

To add, we need a section for lexicography as a sub discipline, surely. It very much falls within the domain of generative grammar. MrsCaptcha (talk) 10:47, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

I accept that lexicographers can be called linguists (although I don't see why it falls within the domain of generative grammar especially). However, "those who possess an interest in collecting a large vocabulary of words, and a continuously expanding lexicon" is an odd way to put it. It makes it sound as if you're talking mainly about hobbyists. If you think people who like collecting words as a hobby should be mentioned, find a source. I think lexicographers are included in the current wording, since they study language. garik (talk) 13:13, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

To solve the problem, I think we can benefit the article by adding a line stating (in more articulate/appropriate words): that lexicography is also one of the things that some linguists may practice, and that the act of publishing dictionaries for languages is another application within the field. I believe that publishing houses recruit people with degrees in linguistics (and knowledge of the particular languages required) to edit dictionary volumes of different languages. Linguistics graduates are also hired to work on the lexicon of text messaging in mobile phone devices in the age of technology. All this falls into the purview of lexicography. I earlier added the reference to generative grammar (though I may be wrong and correct me nonetheless if I am) because I did read that generative grammar involves the theory of the lexicon. That the content in the lexicon is also 'generative', just like morphemes and phonemes are. MrsCaptcha (talk) 18:22, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Leexicography is generally considered a branch of linguistics, except under the Chomsky's generative definition of linguistics. Where linguistics graduates are hired is irrelevant. Generative grammar is based on a distinction between lexicon and syntax which defines the first as being outside of linguistics. People who are interested in vocabulary are not linguists unless they have a degree in linguistics or are professionally employed in a lingustic job, such as lexicography. Merely having a large vocabulary does not make you a linguist.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 18:41, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Indeed. I don't think there's a problem to be solved. The article already mentions the application of linguistic research to lexicography. garik (talk) 19:17, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

I agree, Manus, that having a large vocabulary does not make you a linguist, in fact far from it. But lexicography is not about the size of the vocabulary. It is generative too. Words in a vocabulary get multiplied as they go on. And generative grammar does not include only syntax; that's a misconception. It includes phonology, morphology and semantics and pragmatics too. MrsCaptcha (talk) 07:48, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

A linguist is not necessarily an academically trained expert on linguistics (as an academic specialisation) working in academia, or at a job where his expertise is valuable (though this condition may not be necessary). The older, more informal sense is, for example, preserved in the phrase "talented linguist", which is simply someone considered good at learning languages, irrespective of their education (as a side note, this strikes me as a good example where association with irrelevant might provoke, or, more figuratively speaking, spur the use of the deprecated word lexical formation irregardless ;-) ). See the article Patrick du Val for an example. While many academic linguists may frown on such usage, they tend to consider themselves descriptive and not prescriptive (just like Wikipedia), so they'll have to live with the practical ambiguity of the term (which, after all, enjoys no legal protection). To avoid confusion, you'll have to make do with such terms as academic linguist or trained linguist (although this could, literally interpreted, also refer to a translator or language teacher, for example), or perhaps linguistic scientist. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:37, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Sure. I think the article captures this, though. garik (talk) 22:04, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Sub-fields

Selected sub-fields?

The word "selected" is not needed. Just "sub-fields" maketh the point clear.

Descriptive linguistics and language documentation

Again, we are stating below, under the section "description and prescription" that it is assumed that linguistics is descriptive and that it is not prescriptive. Then to present "descriptive" as an approach to language study (by defining descriptive linguistics as a sub-field) as against an inherent reality, goes dither and clashes with what we are saying otherwise.

Edit

Therefore, let's remove the term "selected" and leave the title as just "Sub-fields" and let's also remove "descriptive linguistics" and leave it simply as "Language documentation". Language documentation is indeed a sub-field; there is no discipline such as "descriptive linguistics", since it is assumed that linguistics is descriptive by nature and it is not prescriptive. Under "Language documentation" we can explain that the act of documenting language is carried out by describing (and also analysing) languages. MrsCaptcha (talk) 15:39, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

I have no problem with these changes. You may also want to change the Main article link for the Language Documentation section. garik (talk) 16:08, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Fine, then. MrsCaptcha (talk) 17:33, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

How does one change the main article link? I tried to edit the article descriptive linguistics, but I don't see any edit button for the title of the page. I'm new still on Wiki and don't know all the commands; please guide me... MrsCaptcha (talk) 17:52, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't mean change the title of that article. I just meant that the section of the Linguistics article now entitled Language documentation should say at the top "Main article: Language documentation", not "Main article: Descriptive linguistics". I've made that change now. We should leave the articles themselves where they are. garik (talk) 15:18, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Re-structuring

Right, I understand that now, garik. There are some more ideas I had. Firstly, wouldn't "Stylistics" be a better section to include under "Sub-fields" rather than under "Non-linguistic factors"? Is style non-linguistic? Next, under "Fundamental questions", we need to include the issue of variation and universality indeed. The section was removed, but it is a fundamental question, and only 1 topic (about language as a mental faculty, etc) under that looks incomplete. Also the sub-title "Language as a mental faculty and as a communication system" is too long. Someone should be able look at the Index/Contents and get a gist of the entire thing, so maybe we can sharpen some phrases, make titles shorter. Similarly the sub-titles "Study of linguistic factors" and "Study of non-linguistic factors" can be cut-short to simply "Linguistic factors" and "Non-linguistic factors". It is pretty obvious that researchers/academics/students would 'study' these things, but it's not needed to be said per se. MrsCaptcha (talk) 13:48, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

If there aren't any objections, can I make the changes? Awaiting the community's response. MrsCaptcha (talk) 11:34, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

I feel "inter-disciplinary" sounds better than "non-linguistic". I have also moved stylistics to the structural factors for now, since stylistics has been described by previous edits as "a study of linguistic factors that place a discourse in context". We can also include it under sub-disciplines later once we expand its description a bit. MrsCaptcha (talk) 11:53, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Intro

I have re-structured the introductory line as it wasn't clear. Any thoughts? MrsCaptcha (talk) 16:11, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Linguistics outline

As a linguist, I very much dislike the separate of linguistics into "theoretical linguistics" and "descriptive linguistics". It reveals why the discipline is not in a very healthy state. This kind of article is very difficult to write, because generalizations are difficult to make when the field is itself so full of disagreement. 60.225.97.70 (talk) 19:54, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi! As a linguist, I am sure you have good sources that enable you to write a better text. Please, be bold and feel free to start editing! Lova Falk talk 09:56, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Paragraph

Through corpus linguistics, large chunks of text can be analysed for possible occurrences of certain linguistic features, and for stylistic patterns manifesting within a written or spoken discourse. These recurring linguistic features, which can be interpreted as a speech community's stylistic use of language, may be analysed through a method of describing language that is functional in approach.

I have re-worked this paragraph. It would be good if some of you could suggest ways to simplify its language further. If not, let's leave it this way as it is. (We should, though, I feel, increase the content related to corpus linguistics as we move further.) Edited by MrsCaptcha (talk) 18:07, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Linguistics Portal

There is a contradiction between our definition of the field in this article in the very first line with the definition on the Wikipedia Linguistics portal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Linguistics

Our definition says that linguistics is the scientific study of human language while the portal says it is the scientific study of language.

This ambiguity/clash needs to be resolved. Either we edit the portal definition or maintain here as just language rather than human. MrsCaptcha (talk) 23:40, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Longtime lurker here - I think this would probably be better asked at WT:LING. How about bringing it up there? — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 02:20, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Cognitive linguistics

The school of thought that cognitive linguists follow is functionalism. CL is parallel to historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and so on. It can be seen as simultaneous to psycholinguistics, perhaps. But to call CL a school of thought would be inaccurate. Just as psycholinguistics follows the formalistic school of thought, CL follows the functionalist one. And CL is practical work and not just a theory, so it can't merely be a "school of thought". This is just like how you can't call sociolinguistics a school of thought either: it's a proper sub-field. There are people who work as cognitive linguists and as historical linguists and as sociolinguists. But formalism and functionalism (and generativism) are only theories/approaches, so they are simply schools of thought. MrsCaptcha (talk) 14:57, 6 October 2013 (UTC) (copied from my talk page garik (talk) 15:09, 6 October 2013 (UTC))

You raise an interesting point. That said, I'm not sure that cognitive linguistics is really quite parallel to, say, historical linguistics. It seems to me that you could approach the study of language change from a cognitive-linguistic perspective. Or, to put it a better way, cognitive linguistics presupposes a particular school of thought, while historical linguistics doesn't. Cognitive linguistics, one might say, is the empirical wing of functionalism. But you're right that's it's not quite parallel to, say, generativisim. I also dispute your claim that psycholinguistics follows the formalistic school of thought. Psycholinguists vary more than that claim implies. garik (talk) 15:09, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Well, yes, I didn't mean that cognitive linguistics and historical linguistics and psycholinguistics were the same. I just meant they are equals as sub-fields. But the difference between a school of thought and sub-field is that a school of thought follows an approach/theory, whereas a sub-field is more than that, which HL, PL and CL, all are, whatever school/s they all pre-suppose (or remain neutral to). Edited by MrsCaptcha (talk) 15:14, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Cognitive linguistics is generally considered one of many theoretical approaches under the broader umbrella of functionalism. It is in no way a separate field like historical linguistics or psycholinguistics. The "work" that cognitive linguists do is the same as all other linguists do, they just do it within a different theoretical framework that prioritizes certain questions and methods for how to answer them. It is a theoretical direction, not a subfield.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 16:10, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

The word itself would sound ambiguous/strange if we are to call it a theory. "Cognitivism" would be a theoretical position, but "cognitive linguistics" is an area of linguistic work. "Cognitivism" seems like it almost is functionalism itself, from what I know, and like you say, "under the broader umbrella", but if we are to refer to "Cognitive Linguistics", it is an area of work, not a school of thought. MrsCaptcha (talk) 07:25, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

You are wrong. And I dont call it a theory but a theoreticl approach or a school of thought. There are many functionalist theoretical approaches thatare not cognitive linguistics, although it has been the most prominent functionl school in the US for awhile. Itr is not an area of work because the work that it does is the same all other theoretical schools in linguistics do: trry to understand grammar.20:12, 7 October 2013 (UTC)User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·

I think you are misunderstanding what I meant. However, I agree that cognitivism is an approach/theoretical position, just that cognitive linguistics is emerging as a sub-discipline further to the above approach. Cognitivism began with psychology in the 1950s, and was applied to linguistics through the creation of cognitive linguistics. Anyway, it doesn't mean that an approach cannot be a field and a field cannot be an approach; there are inter-lappings. Generativism is to generative grammar/linguistics what cognitivism is to cognitive grammar/linguistics and functionalism is to functional grammar/linguistics what formalism is to formal grammar/linguistics. We could simply agree to keep the reference alive under both sections (the school of thought one, and the sub-field one). --MrsCaptcha (talk) 08:34, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

I dont think it is emerging as such no, and I would like to see some kind of autoritative source that considers it a subfield. Generative linguistics is also not a subfield, nor is functional linguistics. And both are more prominent in the discipline than cogntive linguistics is (partly because cognitive linguistics is a kind of functional linguistics). User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 23:27, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Recent edit conflicts

Attention: @User:Maunus, @User:garik, and all other regulars out here.

"Schools of thought" versus "History of linguistic thought"

Does "linguistic thought" really mean thoughts on linguistics? Because "linguistic thought" could refer to a speaker's thoughts too. MrsCaptcha (talk) 03:26, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes it does, and it is used in that way very frequently.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 16:49, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

But linguistic is an adjective to the spoken/written language and not to the theoretical study of it. MrsCaptcha (talk) 08:09, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Early grammarians

Is "early grammarians" the right way to refer to the grammatical approach in linguistics? MrsCaptcha (talk) 03:26, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

There is no "grammatical approach" in linguistics. Early grammarians is the conventional way to refer to the kind of linguistics that was practiced in the before the establishment of the discipline of comparative philology.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 16:49, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

If that is the case then it deserves an independent section of its own and grammar should not be included with the other "schools of thought" or "approaches". Grammar is a section in itself, which will have sub-sections on morphology, syntax, phonology, and the rest of our bread and butter. MrsCaptcha (talk) 08:11, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Sections and headings

I think this titling of "Basic Concepts" with that meaningless paragraph below about fundamental questions is very arbitrary and redundant. What do we all think? Can we remove that title and directly plunge into each concept as a heading in itself? I think it will look nicer that way. Basic Concepts / Fundamental Questions / Fundamental Issues... all this sounds a bit amateur. I think each of those concepts listed needs to be expanded extensively because there is a lot of interesting material on each and just a paragraph on each concept is insufficient. Mrs. Captcha (talk) 19:41, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Moreover, we need independent headings on Chomsky, Pinker, Saussure, and so on, as well. Mrs. Captcha (talk) 19:42, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Pinker is a psychologist not a linguist, he is not a relevant figure for this article. I dont think it is useful to have headings on specific theorists, but only on the theoretical paradigms they are associated with.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 23:23, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

maunus: Okay, but he needs a mention, since he has a good deal of work related to the language instinct, etc. Or put him in the bibliography. I think Garik will agree too. Comment edited by MrsCaptcha (talk) 01:23, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

I disagree, for linguistics Pinker is a popularizer of other's work, not a significant researcher or theorist. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 22:41, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

What will I agree about? That Pinker should be mentioned here? I don't have a big problem with putting him in the bibliography (although I think a much more principled approach to the bibliography is needed in general), but I agree with Maunus that we shouldn't have headings on specific theorists, but should focus on the theoretical paradigms they work in. I'm afraid I'm pretty busy in real life at the moment to help develop those sections; if that ever lets up, I'll get more engaged in making this article good... garik (talk) 00:55, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

The article is in a stable and perfect condition now. Beverley can start recording it. There is no theorist section in it as garik, Maunus or Rjanag say. I've added Pinker to the bibliography. How do we submit it for it to be reviewed and featured? MrsCaptcha (talk) 22:17, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

The bibliography is for works cited in the text. This article is a light year away from being able to pass any kind of review process. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 00:04, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

"The bibliography is for works cited in the text." Yes, I see that's what we have here. For some reason I was under the impression it was a kind of Further Reading section. In any case, I agree that this article is nowhere near perfect. garik (talk) 00:22, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

"The bibliography is for works cited in the text." Then what is the difference between the reference list and the bibliography? MrsCaptcha (talk) 07:56, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

We are working on the bibliography. I suggest User:Garik and User:Maunus work on correcting the things that can be corrected immediately right now, before User:Beverlyhannah starts the recording on the 16th of October. As for making it perfect in the way that you idealise, that process can go on even later. It is perfect right now in it that it covers all the sub-fields. Please add a section on evolutionary linguistics (which Maunus deleted) under the "Areas of Research" section before the recording starts. --Comment edited by MrsCaptcha (talk) 07:49, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

It does not cover anywhere near all the main subfields (phonology, phonetics, syntax, morphology, pragmatics, semantics, contact linguistics, are conspicuously absent - all actual subfields that are much more important for understanding the field than many of the obscure subdisciplines that are included) and it gives undue weight to some minor novel approaches like evolutionary linguistics (which it described erroneously). Many sections have no references at all. And the organization of the article comes across as arbitrary and piecemeal and not in any way a full overview of the discipline of linguistics and its history.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 19:39, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

The word conspicuously does not reflect good faith here, User:Maunus. I would suggest you add those sections you refer to soon, or the "conspiracy", as you call it, will balloon, which nobody will be pleased about. --Comment injected later by MrsCaptcha (talk) 04:30, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

I dont think the word "conspicuous" means what you think it means. It has nothing to do with the word "conspiracy". User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 16:52, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

But the word conspiracy derives from the word conspicuous, even if the word conspicuous doesn't derive from conspiracy. MrsCaptcha (talk) 11:31, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

No it does not. Conspiracy comes from "conspire" from Latin conspirare conspicuous comes form the Latin word conspicere. It means "obvious" or "easily noticeable" and hence is the opposite of any suggestion of a conspiracy.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 14:44, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Opposites are called antonyms. They are bound to each other morphologically and semantically. That means that no two antonyms are completely disconnected from each other. You see? They always share certain traits with each other. (So when something is overtly obvious it is actually a result of it standing out, just the way it is when efforts are made to overtly hide it. Eg. If someone is trying too hard to clearly get others' attention on something (A), it means they are trying to hide something else (B). So the conspicuous effort on making A look obvious leads us to sniff a conspiracy that involves efforts to hide B. Why would I, in this case, make obvious, "conspicuous" efforts to remove references to the grammatical and other descriptive linguistics sub-disciplines you refer to unless I have an intention to "conspire" against whatever one may interpret me to be conspiring against? The fact is that I am being conspicuous about nothing and am conspiring against nothing, and in your allegation of the former, you have accused me of the latter.) MrsCaptcha (talk) 09:38, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Would you cut it out already. I have not made any allegations about you whatsoever, I have made a claim about the article. Which you based in a ridiculous etymological fallacy chose to interpret as an accusation of a conspiracy. Which is that it is not in a good shape and that some important sections are obviously missing, which means that it is in no way a candidate for a good article review. You are the one who has turned this entire discussion into personal blather. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 14:58, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Well I'll keep my mouth shut then. I thought I'd sort things out here but it looks like we've all grown tired this evening. You were making a claim about the article indeed, Maunus, but you were complaining about stuff without being specific about the errors that need to be changed, and not like you need permission to change 'em, so well, yeah, I don't know where this conversation was proceeding either. Hence I tried to make things clearer. It looks like nobody wanna believe an old woman. Anyway, my point was just that you should correct whatever is wrong with the article rather than tell us about it as I am old and some of my knowledge is a bit outdated on linguistics. As for the article's candidature for a review, any article can be reviewed; one doesn't need no candidature for it. If it's bad, it's bad, that's what the review'll say. What have we to lose with a bad assessment, not like we'd fail an exam o' anything and lose our houses out there, and I'm right o'er three cows! All I'd said was that we'd get-it-a-reviewed and we'd know where we stand, that's all that there was to my remarks indeed. Can we just proceed with the review? Please rate the article on a scale of 1 to 10, Wikipedia, I'm waiting for the review. Personally, I'd give it a nine at least, that's what I'd do. I'd say Wiki do the same. MrsCaptcha (talk) 16:16, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Like I said, add the stuff that's missing, but don't delete things as it will be tough to add it back later when someone adds sources to it. There are a lot more sources in the article (at least 20 more I think) than there were earlier. As for structures, there is one section that mentions those that you describe. It just needs to be expanded. Please go ahead and do so. If you have problems with things missing, please add them. There's no point complaining for the sake of complaining. MrsCaptcha (talk) 23:54, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

The section on "structures" cannot and should not cover the brad and butter disciplines of descriptive linguistics - they need their own separate sections. And yes, stuff that is wrong should be deleted. I am not complaining for the sake of complaining I am complainig for the sake of eventually improving the article which at this point will require an almost complete rewriting based on reliable sources, and an organization that is based on how the discipline is presented in textbooks.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 00:00, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Maunus: I agree that phonetics, phonology, morphology and syntax and semantics and pragmatics, besides the other topics you mentioned, need their own sections. I would be most happy if those can be created by someone, along with evolutionary linguistics, which was removed earlier. And yes, if something is wrong, it needs to be re-written. I just feel that these things need to actually be done rather than only posted on the talkpage, though there is no harm in discussing doubts here, if any. Because if an improvement edit is made, no consensus will go against it, so why not just make it then. It should be done before Beverly starts recording. MrsCaptcha (talk) 03:02, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

I am not going to do any largescale work on this article right now. I am doing linguistic fieldwork right now and have sporadic internet access and better things to do. I will limit myself to fixing or removing glaring errors.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 16:52, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Well, you are free to continue engaging with the fieldwork and the better things, but to deride the article and Wikipedia as a "poor" way of spending time is an unfair statement to make towards User:garik, User:Rjanag, Kwami, and Macrackis, who seem to have toiled on this article from Day 1, even if you have single-handedly improved it to its current state greatly with your crisp fixes and removal of glaring errors. I hope you can clarify that. MrsCaptcha (talk) 11:31, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't think anyone said this was a poor way of spending time. Maunus just says he has better things to do right now (as do I). I quite agree with him that linguistic fieldwork is more important than improving this article. garik (talk) 23:52, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Linguistic field work is as important as improving this article. Not more. Perhaps this is a differentiation between "theoretical linguistics" (through this article) and "descriptive linguistics" (through fieldwork) that we are talking about then, is it? That is a debate/question I'd like leave to Chomsky to decide instead, about which one's more important. Anyway, everyone has their own goals and desires. If some of us would prefer to be in the field describing languages while others on Wikipedia theorizing on this discipline I think each one to his own. "The better things to do" statement sounds a little exaggerated, just as "conspicuous" did. We have no problem with devoted descriptive linguists. We have a problem with theory being derided as redundant, the Internet and Wikipedia being derided as redundant, and the teaching of grammar being derided as redundant. I've done extensive "field work" too, but that doesn't mean I don't edit this article no more or think that's a better thing to do than this. Let's be tolerant of each other and understand our different roles in society. It wouldn't be fair to theorists like Garik, Rjanag, Macrackis and Kwami if practical describers like Maunus derided their tasks all the time. --MrsCaptcha (talk) 03:49, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Since you insist on making this personal I will be blunt Mrs. Captcha: there is ample evidence on this talkpage that your grasp of linguistic theory is extremely superficial. Your attempts now to make me look as an applied linguist with no interest in theory are ridiculous. Your work on this article has not improved it, and it is unlikely to do so untill you start using sources as a basis for what you write.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 14:58, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

I did not insist on anything Mr. Maunus and I accept that my grasp of linguistic theory is superficial and even a little blunt as you say. I already told you that I am growing old and that my knowledge is getting outdated. I have surrendered to all your criticisms yet you take objection of me. The good part of the article is all to your credit and you know it. I have not taken any credit to improve the article. I even left an encouraging note on your talk page hoping that will be good for the article and for our banter to end. Can we just call for a truce now and let this article rest a bit, poor thing. Leave it alone for a while, I say. I will add as many sources as I have to your edits of the article as you please. But let's continue with our field day outside the computer now. I request you. An old lady requests you this, young man. MrsCaptcha (talk) 03:46, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

What's more Maunus is that we were being symbolic and figurative in our conversation and nothing was personal. When I said "theorists like Garik, etc" and "practical describers like Maunus" what I was doing was using your names as similes and metaphors. How can you think I could have tried to stereotype you or Garik and the others. Why I even used Macrakis' name in there without knowing a thing about him! I don't know a thing about anyone on here! He's left one little message down there and displays no interest in theory. Yet I took his name as a theorist which shows that I was being figurative and semiotic and not personal! You on the other hand have made constructive theoretical edits to the article and know your theory! Any one who has no eyes can see that. Yet you think I'm silly enough to not be able to decipher things. It was all purely figurative communication, which was functional in order to sort out the tensions between theory and practice. It doesn't matter which one you belong to and whether you even belong to one. The point is to balance out the two so as to make the article and this world better. Theory and practice are formal and functional and hence should be intertwined into each other like lovers. Please stop getting defensive about everything and let's improve the article. MrsCaptcha (talk) 03:58, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Linguist

"Outside the field, the term is commonly used to refer to someone who speaks many languages fluently."

Really? It is a gross myth and misconception if it is used like that. Linguistics is not quantitative. We need to remove that line. MrsCaptcha (talk) 09:43, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

But this is simply a fact: English speakers tend to use the word "linguist" not to refer to someone who works in the field of linguistics, but to mean "polyglot", or just someone who works with language (including, say, a translator). You might not like it, but they do. garik (talk) 12:15, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

There may be many ways in which a word is assigned a wrong meaning. It may sound like I'm being pedantic, but I'm not. We can't list every conflicting definition of a word in the article. There are a lot of people who don't know what linguistics means but that doesn't mean that we list all interpretations of it here that someone might guess it to be. I think we should present the term in the broadest way possible that is accurate. MrsCaptcha (talk) 13:43, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Like many words, "linguist" has more than one meaning. The polyglot sense actually precedes the philologist sense (according to the OED), and is still in active use, e.g., a linguist in the US Army is not someone who studies languages, writes grammars, etc., but a translator. That said, I agree that there shouldn't be an extended discussion of alternative meanings; the existing dabnote is good enough. --Macrakis (talk) 17:14, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

That's interesting. I'd assumed that when people thought a linguist spoke a lot of languages, they were simply unfamiliar with the term. That's probably the case much of the time, but it's good to know it's not necessarily ignorance. — kwami (talk) 20:34, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't think it's surprising that people expect linguists (in the philologist sense) to speak multiple languages. Don't most linguistics graduate programs require students to have a good knowledge of at least two non-English languages, one of them "exotic"? --Macrakis (talk) 22:59, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Macrakis, no, they do not. Kwami, you were right: no such meaning has ever existed. It is a misconception; not an alternative meaning. There are never any alternative meanings. There are misconceptions, and there are accurate meanings. Dictionaries stand testimony to this. Linguistics is not a quantitative study of languages and it has nothing to do with knowing actual languages. It is a mathematical study and the knowledge of one or more languages is purely functional to a linguist or to a student of linguistics. You can apply linguistic theory to any language regardless of whether you can speak it or not. For that matter, there would be no rationale to this: researchers working on dying/tribal languages would never exist because they wouldn't 'know' the said language if what you said were true. That definition which you allude to a linguist has never existed. If such a meaning of the word preceded philology, then the word they used back then would have been polyglot itself. The word for someone who speaks a lot of languages is "polyglot"; the word for someone who researches on language (as opposed to languages) is "linguist". The term "linguist" was coined simultaneously to the birth of philology in the 18th century. I think we should stick to that rather than indulge in any further etymological investigations. MrsCaptcha (talk) 08:03, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

I must add here that students being expected to have a good knowledge of at least two non-English languages is something that is common with programs in comparative literature and not with programs in linguistics. It is in comparative literature that students are expected to take courses in the literature of more than one language so that they are able to make comparisons there. They are often expected to have knowledge of Latin and Greek here too, which is what I imagine you perhaps refer to when you say "exotic". This kind of research work is not at all part of a linguistics course. MrsCaptcha (talk) 11:18, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

This article is not called Linguist, but Linguistics, which never refers to multilingualism. Those who are not clear about the term linguist should either consult a separate article with that title or — preferably — look up the word in Wiktionary or some other dictionary. LiliCharlie 20:41, 19 October 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by LiliCharlie (talk • contribs)

LiliCharlie, "Linguist" redirects to this article. It is worth discussing somewhere in the article the various related terms including "philology" (which has meant different things in different times and places), "grammar" (ditto), "linguist" (ditto), etc. This does not need to be an extended discussion. As I said above, in the case of "linguist", perhaps a dab note is sufficient.

MrsCaptcha, Re "no such meaning has ever existed...there are never any alternative meanings", the OED documents the "polyglot" meaning quite clearly and dates it to before the "language scholar" meaning; and of course many words have multiple meanings.

MrsCaptcha, I was not referring to Comparative Literature programs, but to Linguistics programs. A quick survey of a half-dozen well known US graduate programs shows the following language requirements:

• MIT -- 1 + a course on the grammar of a Less Familiar Language
• Harvard -- 2 + a course on the structure of a non-IE language
• UCLA -- 1 + a field methods course on a Little-Studied Language
• Stanford -- 1 + in-depth knowledge of the structure of a foreign language
• UC Berkeley -- 1-2 languages
• Chicago -- 2 + a non-IE language

So most of these programs (5/6) require at least one foreign language plus some study of another. Most (4/6) also require that the 2nd or 3rd language be non-Indo-European, Less Familiar, or Little-Studied (excluding of course Latin and Greek, which are IE, familiar, and widely studied). I don't know what the stats are for linguistics programs in general, in the US or elsewhere. --Macrakis (talk) 21:01, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Here are some definitions of linguistics. Here is the definition of linguistics by the OED's American English dictionary. Here is the definition of linguistics by the OED's British English dictionary.

[noun] [singular]: "the scientific study of language and its structure, including the study of grammar, syntax, and phonetics. Specific branches of linguistics include sociolinguistics, dialectology, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, comparative linguistics, and structural linguistics."

Here are some definitions of polyglot. Here is the definition of polyglot by the OED's British English dictionary.

[adjective]: "knowing or using several languages": a polyglot career woman.

[noun]: "a person who knows and is able to use several languages": Slovenians, being surrounded by many countries, are mostly polyglots.

These are thus two separate words, Macrakis, polyglot and linguist. They have never been linked to each other, ever. If that were so, then "Slovenians would mostly be linguists", which sounds irrational even when you hear how it sounds.

Since linguist and linguistics are inter-connected words, a linguist deals with linguistics. That goes without saying. A linguist is therefore not a polyglot. Even the OED definition of linguist itself deals with its meaning as either someone who studies linguistics or someone who is skilled in "foreign" languages. However, that doesn't mean that a linguist knows "many" languages.

Macrakis, also please note that knowledge of those languages at UCLA and Harvard and wherenot is meant to serve a functional purpose to describe the universal properties of language. Outside the US, no department makes it part of its criteria to know specific languages though as a linguist you may benefit in your research if you can source features from more than one language. --MrsCaptcha (talk) 07:39, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

The original question was very simple: is the term "linguist" ambiguous enough in common use to the point that we need to disambiguate? Your own citation from the Oxford online-dictionary shows this, as do the citations I have provided to the OED and to the Army site. --Macrakis (talk) 14:33, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

There is no ambiguity. It is all crystal clear. MrsCaptcha (talk) 15:15, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

That it is "crystal clear" to you that "there is no ambiguity" is not a useful argument, when there are multiple reliable sources to the contrary, whether you like it or not. --Macrakis (talk) 02:45, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Spoken Wikipedia

I have been hoping to record this article for a while now, seeing as there is an open request for it. I, (a Master's student) and a few enthusiastic professors in the Linguistics department at Simon Fraser University have been arranging our schedules and the recording facilities in order to make this happen over the next few weeks. However, I just noticed a flurry of new activity on the talk page re: Cognitive Linguistics and Corpus Linguistics in the last few days, and as such, decided to post even though we have not officially started recording yet as I would prefer to record a fairly stable version of the article, if possible. I applaud you all for your contributions! We will start with the rest of the article and leave the Cognitive Linguistics and Corpus Linguistics sections for last. Beverlyhannah (talk) 06:12, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

It would be nice if you could wait for a few days till we complete and resolve the stuff on corpus and cognitive linguistics. There may not be merely separate sections for these, but these will be incorporated within different parts of the article as well. Maybe we can all work out a deadline for the convenience of this? Then we can make sure that by that date we maintain a stable version of the article, with all the improvisations added. MrsCaptcha (talk) 07:30, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

I'll throw out an arbitrary deadline: 20 October 2013. Please adjust as you see fit. I'll keep checking back every few days for majority consensus that the text is at a stable enough state for recording. BeverlyHannah 21:32, 9 October 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Beverlyhannah (talk • contribs)

Sure. If the article feels stable earlier than that, then one of us will post here. Otherwise, check back on the 20th. --MrsCaptcha (talk) 17:12, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Stable

I think it's more or less stable now; nobody seems to want to make any new changes to the article. There's nothing more to do on it. You should start the recording. I strongly suggest you get someone to do one final proof-reading before you start the recording. Don't forget to post the link to the audio clip here on the talkpage when you're through with it. All the best. --MrsCaptcha (talk) 01:39, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Thank you - I have indicated on the Spoken Wikipedia project page that recording has commenced. BeverlyHannah 20:14, 13 October 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Beverlyhannah (talk • contribs)

Did you record it, Beverly (contribs)? MrsCaptcha (talk) 17:43, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

No, I caught a cold last week, but I will make time tomorrow morning to record. BeverlyHannah (talk) 18:21, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Hope you're well now and all the best with the recording. MrsCaptcha (talk) 17:49, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Now the recording studio at my lab is having equipment issues...*sigh*, this project will have to go on the backburner until the end of the semester as deadlines are a callin' my name. BeverlyHannah (talk) 20:58, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

What about Jakobson ?

No mention on introduction?! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.54.216.27 (talk) 16:26, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

He has been referenced in the very first line of the second paragraph. The introductory section could certainly do with more on him and the Russian formalists. Feel free to write a paragraph on him and post it here on the talk page so we can all edit it and integrate it. MrsCaptcha (talk) 00:37, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Hindered areas

User:Kwamikagami says Chomsky hindered psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics. Can you explain a little more? MrsCaptcha (talk) 20:42, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

In the US at least, psychologists interested in language deferred to linguists, which for decades meant Chomsky, figuring that they must know what they're talking about. It took them a long time to realize that Chomskian linguistics was psychologically implausible, and that they had to start from scratch. Now that they're looking at language as they would any other function of the brain, his ideas have been largely discarded. He also had a detrimental effect on language documentation, dismissing it as "butterfly collecting", at a time when most US languages were becoming moribund, with the idea that all languages were underlyingly the same so all you needed to study was English. (Of course, as soon as you start looking at other languages you realize that Chomskian linguistics doesn't work.) — kwami (talk) 22:09, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

Thumbs up. So now Chomskyan linguistics is only a theory and it's not the default. But he has done some work related to psycho- and neuro-linguistics. Shouldn't we give him some credit for that? MrsCaptcha (talk) 06:15, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

It was only ever the default in the US and probably a few countries which took their lead from the US. AFAIK it never got much traction in Europe; I've found if you're American and talk to European linguists or anthropologists who are interested in your work, they're quite relieved when you tell them you don't follow Chomsky. I'm not sure he did much psycholinguistics – from what I've seen, there's Chomskyan linguistics, and then there's psycholinguistics, – but if he did, he should of course be given credit according to how well that work is received in the academic community beyond his own followers. — kwami (talk) 07:56, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

You're certainly right about the European trend. Chomsky and his work is not very popular in Europe and Britain from what I've seen as well though it is in the United States and in everything that is done there. But that's got to do more with theoretical trends rather than with his impact on psycholinguistics. I would think psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics are language-in-the-mind worlds in themselves, and that they are potentially influenced by many positions, including the American/Chomskyan position. While the cognitivists might view psycholinguistics as the study of language in its functional potential in the mind, I would believe the generativists see it as a formal, innate, and biological potential in the mind. But both the cognitivist and the generativist view contribute to psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics in the broadest sense possible. MrsCaptcha (talk) 14:38, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

"all languages were underlyingly the same so all you needed to study was English. (Of course, as soon as you start looking at other languages you realize that Chomskian linguistics doesn't work.) " Whoa! This is just flat out not true! David Pesetsky just published a book on Russian case, Norvin Richards has spent most of his career working on Walpiri and Lardil, Ken Hale wrote extensively on Navajo, Luigi Rizzi made huge contributions to generative syntax using Italian... the list goes on. In fact, Mayan and Bantu languages are really hot topics right now, and are being worked on by lots of MIT people.

Furthermore, Chomsky never said that all languages are exactly the same-- that's obviously not true. What he said was that there is an extensive common core, which you reveal by studying and comparing lots of languages. 128.135.96.69 (talk) 22:27, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

@128, it is true that Chomsky admits to language variation, but he still believes that the central/common 'core' of each language remains static. That is the problem that his detractors have. The relativists on the other hand go one step further to claim that the 'core' itself varies; that there is no core. So while Chomsky might be fine with using data from a zillion languages to hypothesize the core, it's not enough for those of us who believe that there is no core (or periphery) to even begin with. MrsCaptcha (talk) 13:27, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for that reply. I'm familiar with those types of criticisms and I have my doubts about the whole UG thing. I just think it's important to understand ideas if you're going to disagree with them. 128.135.96.215 (talk) 03:35, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

It would also help if the "core" were based on external evidence, rather than the linguist making up the evidence, which is pseudoscience. — kwami (talk) 20:58, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes. There is a lack of empiricism to Chomskyan linguistics which is certainly unscientific and murky. Neither are any of his ideas very original or anything because he has rehashed a lot of popular philosophy and marketed it into a mathematical formula that is now branded as UG. The point should be to hope to eventually combine this 'Chomskyan' technique with a behavioural/cognitive technique and an older philological/historical/comparativist/empiricist one, perhaps. MrsCaptcha (talk) 20:26, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Infinite number of sentences.

This is in response to the revocation of my edit and the reason given.

No *I* couldn't keep adding clauses to a sentence because I would die at some point. It seems absurd to me to allow infinitely long sentences as any non-deity could not possibly read, write or utter one, nor could it be contained in any medium :) No known being could ever communicate an infinite sentence to another, and it seems obvious that communication should be at the heart of any study of language. Is this not more at home in the domain of philosophy than in any branch of science, which insists on having characteristics that are verifiable by observation?

I am not a linguist (as I'm sure is obvious), so I will not attempt to force the issue. Also a quick search shows this to be a much larger issue than the contents of the wiki page. However couldn't that section of the page include some references to discussions about the validity of such a claim, to prevent any mathematically inclined readers from being appalled?

Klib.so (talk) 05:53, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

Klib so, it is hypothetical. Heartily (talk) 16:22, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

It does say theoretically - obviously no-one is going to utter an infinitely long sentence in practice. The point is that the grammar of any given natural language is structured in such a way that a sentence can have an arbitrary number of clauses. We don't have to hear a sentence of infinite length to know that sentences of infinite length are (theoretically) possible; we only have to demonstrate that the mechanism to generate such a sentence exists. The mechanism is observable and verifiable, so I can't see anything particularly unscientific about the claim. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 06:51, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

You can have an infinitely large set consisting solely of finite-length elements. For example, the set of all possible finite-length strings over a finite-sized alphabet is infinitely large (countably infinite, to be exact), even though no individual string in the set is itself infinitely long. This is a well-established result in mathematics and computer science. Sentences of infinite size are irrelevant, because it is the set of possible sentences that is infinite, not any individual sentence. In practice, of course, we will never record all of these sentences, but that's not the point here: the point is that the space of potential finitely-large sentences is infinitely large. Ludling (talk) 04:00, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Intro et al

We would appreciate some feedback on the recent changes that we hath made. The intro line we changed to "science of language" as linguistics not always necessarily be a study but also a work. The work that it is is that it is a research field, anthropologising and all, and that is also a change that we already hath made to the first line. Heartily (talk) 16:20, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

While I appreciate your coming to wikipedia and helping out, let me suggest you start with narrower articles closer to your fields of interest and expertise. It's not advisable to try to re-write the intro and other sections of a large, well-sourced and maintained article like this one. I'm going to restore the consensus version from before you started adding and subtracting. For such major changes, try to get some consensus here on the talk page first. Mundart (talk) 21:13, 21 August 2014 (UTC)