User talk:Msh210: difference between revisions

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Hi msh210,

I've been thinking we should have a category for adjectives like (deprecated template usage) חם (kham), (deprecated template usage) אפשר (efshár) (sp?), (deprecated template usage) קל (kal), etc. that frequently lead off sentences. ("Kham bakhútz." "Efshár mei-ha'ugá?" "Kal l'havín otó.") Does that seem like a good idea to you? If so, what do you think of the name Category:Hebrew impersonal adjectives?

Thanks in advance,
—Ruakh_TALK 21:15, 8 December 2008 (UTC)Reply

I assume you mean "that frequently start sentences" as a handy description, not as the criterion for inclusion in the category. (Can any adjective start a sentence, somehow? I suspect so.) What is the criterion, then? Cham (and kar) seems different to me from kal and efshar (and naim (google:נעים-לפגוש) and kashe), in that the latter are followed by l'- verbs and the former not. But maybe that's incorrect. (I've never heard efshar mehauga, but assume it's an elision of leechol, yes?) Why do you want to call them "impersonal": is that what they're usually called?—msh210℠ 21:26, 8 December 2008 (UTC)Reply

Re: handy description vs. criterion: Er, I kind of did mean it as the criterion. :-/   It's true that any adjective can start a sentence, though with most I can only think of sentences that would sound either poetic ("Khakhamim hem she-yod'im l'sameakh et nashoteihem") or ridiculous ("U-m'fugarim hem she-lo"). These adjectives are notable in that it's normal for them to start a present-tense clause, and in other clauses for them to be preceded only by a form of hayá. (Not counting adverbs and such.) Though, they can be preceded by l'- phrases — basically subjects in the dative case, if Hebrew had cases — as in "Lama l'Yosi mutar v'lo li?" I'll grant that I haven't given a very formal criterion, but to me these words seem to form a natural class; do they not to you? (N.B. most of them also have non-sentence-starting uses — "Ein mayim khamim" — just as in English many adjectives are also nouns, etc. But, not all: I can't think of any sentence using "efshar" as a normal adjective; in all cases I'd prefer "efshari" for that.)

Re: infinitivity vs. not: Maybe. google:"חם לגעת" does get some hits, though admittedly it's not the most natural phrase in the world. BTW, I'd "translate" "Efshár mei-ha'ugá?" as either "Efshár l'kabél mei-ha'ugá?" or "Efshár lakákhat mei-ha'ugá?", depending on the situation, but I suppose "Efshár le'ekhól mei-ha'ugá?" is basically the same.

Re: "impersonal": *shrug* They're always masculine singular, and they seem analogous to the impersonal constructions in English ("it's hot outside", "it's easy to understand it/him"), though of course not every such Hebrew expression translates to such an English one and vice versa ("I'm hot" = "kham li", "Can I have some?" = "Efshar?"; conversely, "It's raining" = "yored geshem"). I don't know what the usual name for them is.

—Ruakh_TALK 23:48, 8 December 2008 (UTC)Reply

Re "I haven't given a very formal criterion, but to me these words seem to form a natural class; do they not to you": Well, yes and no, for two reasons. (Well, yes, for the reasons you state, and no, for two reasons.) (1) The "infinitivity" (?) business. It seems like two classes, not one. Note, though, that you can say google:זה-לא-אפשר also (although I think "bilti efshari" is more common now). So maybe it's just one class. (2) It seems (contradicting what you said above) that every one of these adjectives can also be used in the normal adjective fashion (can you find one that's not?), which kinda dilutes the strength of the category. Perhaps call it "Hebrew adjectives that can be impersonal" or something.—msh210℠ 17:38, 9 December 2008 (UTC)Reply

I'd be down with two categories, if you can clarify them well enough that I can apply them accurately. Re: "'infinitivity' (?)": It's not a real word, if that's what you're �ing. Re: normal adjective use: Yeah, maybe. I mean, they are adjectives, and I'm not suggesting otherwise. Re: "Hebrew adjectives that can be impersonal": That seems a bit wordy, and it also risks bringing in non-grammatical senses of "impersonal" (mechanical/robotic; distant/standoffish); are you saying that "Hebrew impersonal adjectives" would be misleading? —Ruakh_TALK 20:29, 9 December 2008 (UTC)Reply

Somewhat misleading, yes. No?—msh210℠ 21:01, 9 December 2008 (UTC)Reply

Or maybe not; we seem to have several such categories with such names; e.g., English uncountable nouns and English abstract nouns (which latter include fireside).—msh210℠ 21:16, 11 December 2008 (UTC)Reply

Did we reach a conclusion here? I can't tell. —Ruakh_TALK 19:07, 31 December 2008 (UTC)Reply

There were a few issues we discussed:

1. What words get included? Criteria? — This seems to be the (somewhat subjective, but that's okay) criterion that it's usual for such words to start sentences (preceded by "to be" in past and future).
2. Are there two categories: things followed by "to" verbs and things not? — You think not, and, even if yes, we can always fine-tune later.
3. What to call the category. — I have no objection to you original suggestion, Hebrew impersonal adjectives, if that's what they're called in English and they have no English name in Hebrew. (By that latter I mean, of course, that Anglophone grammarians/linguists have no name for this type of Hebrew adjective.)

So we seem to be good to go. I assume, incidentally, that yesh and en will be in this category (even though they aren't preceded by "to be" in past and future but are instead replaced by it)?—msh210℠ 19:19, 31 December 2008 (UTC)Reply

So, we did decide to create at least one category?

1. Sounds good.
2. O.K.
3. I don't know if there's an English name for them, period, applied to either language. google:"impersonal adjective|adjectives" gets only 68 hits (257 raw), and most of them aren't in this sense (though some are). I'm suggesting this name because I don't have a better one; because these are adjectives; and because impersonal verb, impersonal expression, and impersonal construction are standard terms. (In a lot of languages, including at least English and French, you can't use an adjective like this on its own — you have to say something like "it is good/understood/obvious that […] " or "it is cold/hot/rainy in […] " or "it is easy/difficult/interesting to […] " — so it makes sense to view the construction or expression as a whole as impersonal. In Hebrew, you just say "tov/kamuvan/barur she […] " or "kar/kham/[n/a] b'- […] " or "kal/kashe/m'anyen l'- […] ", so it seems like the adjective itself is being used impersonally. And we're a dictionary, so it's more convenient for us to describe these as properties of individual words. (If this were standard category with a standard name — which it may well be, but if so I don't know it — then I don't think it would have occurred to me to ask anyone about it, I would have just created the category. I'd like your opinion because I'm not sure about this, it's just an idea I had. And I think it's a good idea, but maybe not, and anyway not all good ideas work out in practice.)

And I wasn't thinking that yesh and ein would be included, since they don't seem to be adjectives at all, but more like quasi-verbs. For example, they (especially ein) can function as copulas in formal Hebrew (as in Template:Hebr or Template:Hebr). Funnily enough, my Hebrew–English dictionaries all give yesh as an adverb, which I think they're using a catch-all POS, and my Hebrew dictionary seems to give it only as a noun, apparently on etymological grounds. (Speaking only of the grammatical/existential use here. Certainly it has lexical uses as a noun, as all dictionaries agree.)

—Ruakh_TALK 16:14, 1 January 2009 (UTC)Reply

Hm. I maintain that yesh and en are used the way adjectives are, and seem to be adjectives. But having thought about it some more, I suppose they're not adjectives of the sort we're discussing here. After all, yesh li sefer is like kasha li handasa=handasa kasha li: still an adjective, just not of the sort we're discussing. Or so it seems to me at the moment.

More importantly: I suggest that the fact that these adjectives are "impersonal" is perfect material for a usage note; perhaps draft a usage-note template that can be included in all these pages and that categorizes.—msh210℠ 19:59, 1 January 2009 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for all your advice. I've gone ahead and created Category:Hebrew impersonal adjectives. I haven't written the usage-note template yet — I've thought a bit about what it should say, but it's still kind of vague in my head — so right now the category is still empty. I know how you like to keep your talk-page clean, but I'd kind of like to keep this conversation around. Is it all right if I copy it to the category's talk-page? Thanks again. —Ruakh_TALK 00:46, 14 January 2009 (UTC)Reply

If you like, you certainly can, but it's unnecessary: I'll keep it as long as you like, and archive it thereafter. Nice explanation in the cat.—msh210℠ 15:48, 14 January 2009 (UTC)Reply

I thought you might be interested in Tom's recommendation at User talk:Positivesigner, "... assign Sign Writing pictographs for each [symbol in his sign jotting system]. The lookup would be visual enough to not even need to know English and it would be general enough to isolate a group of similar signs in a few steps. My code would not be seen except by the computer programs we use to create the slightly-inaccurate Sign Writing indicies. Once the entry is located, you can have it translated from a video to Sign Writing, PSE, and English."

I'm excited about the possibility of creating a useable index, as the current system still doesn't seem terribly easy to maintain or even to navigate. Your feedback is welcome. —Rod (A. Smith) 18:41, 13 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

Why use the current system for the index? If we're switching to ASLSJ, do so for the index, too. Or am I missing something? In any event, I think that since SignWriting (the real thing, not our version) will, I hope, be Unicode characters, we'll be switching over anyway, so any current system is temporary and need not be ideal; so we might as well leave it the way it is for now even if we do think ASLSJ is better.—msh210℠ 18:47, 13 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

No, I don't think a full conversion to ASLSJ (temporary or otherwise) is on the table, because it doesn't seem to solve any problems of the current transcription system. Tom's recommendation was to combine SignWriting symbols with ASLSJ just to organize (and automatically maintain) our sign language indices. I'm sketchy on the details, but presumably the reorganized index would make it easier for a reader to find the entry for a sign of unknown meaning. I told him to be bold with one or two of the existing Index:American Sign Language pages, so we can at least see how his vision might unfold.

Browsing around the Internet, I cannot find any new information on the integration of SignWriting into Unicode. The layout issues seem so much more complex than Unicode combining characters can accomodate, so I suspect it will be several years, at least. —Rod (A. Smith) 20:37, 13 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

I have a working solution for encoding Binary SignWriting to Unicode. Binary SignWriting uses sequential 16 bit codes to represent the spatial information needed for SignWriting. You can read about the plane 4 solution. You can view the Hello world. page. You can view the BSW JavaScript library (see function char2unicode). I'm currently rewriting the SignWriting Image Server to use Binary SignWriting rather than comma delimited data. It should be ready next week. -Steve 12:49, 08 May 2009 (UTC)Reply

SignWriting Image Server beta 5 has been released to view and download. Section 3 has the Binary SignWriting definition with ABNF for data and Regular Expressions for tokens. -Steve 19:35, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

This is a good idea, and I'd like more information about it. Do you basically distinguish between certain templates that you always put on the sense line and others that you always put on the inflection line, or is it more of a case-by-case basis thing? If a word has only one sense, do you always use the sense line, or are there still cases where you use the inflection line? (Etc.) Now that I think about it, I vaguely remember that you used the inflection line for {{no longer productive}}, and I think I reflexively moved those to the sense line when I "context"-template-ified them, but now I realize that that probably wasn't what you'd had in mind? —Ruakh_TALK 01:31, 28 June 2009 (UTC)Reply

To answer your last question first, right, I intended it for the inflection line. See Category:Context labels for a classification of the context labels into five types, of which topical, grammatical, regional, and usage are relevant to this discussion. Of those, I tend to put topical labels on the definition line, and grammatical labels according to the following rule: If they apply equally to all senses, then on the inflection line; otherwise, on the definition line. Regional and usage labels I haven't been consistent about: in theory I'd like to treat them as I do grammatical labels, but I think I've mostly been putting them on the definition line anyway.​—msh210℠ 16:54, 29 June 2009 (UTC)Reply

An example of the utility of inflection-line context tags is diff: I moved the rather lengthy tag to the inflection line in order to avoid repeating it twice.​—msh210℠ 21:30, 29 June 2009 (UTC)Reply

Hi msh210,

I just created an entry for wild-ass (to link from SWAG). I was in the process of adding all the standard defs when I noticed that you deleted it. Can you please undelete and let me finish the definition?--Apelbaum 23:14, 19 July 2009 (UTC)Reply

I deleted it because it was all very wrong. I'll restore it so you can fix it.​—msh210℠ 23:21, 19 July 2009 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the revert. What do you think about the current update?--Apelbaum 23:30, 19 July 2009 (UTC)Reply

Better, but still with errors. The pronunciation given is that of ass (I suppose). The definitions given, at least some of them, are those of wild ass (rather than wild-ass): I don't think wild-ass refers to an animal of any kind, nor, indeed, is a noun, though I could well be wrong. I don't see who ass and smart ass are terms derived from wild-ass. Etc.​—msh210℠ 23:34, 19 July 2009 (UTC)Reply

Do you think I should move this entry into the entry wild ass?--Apelbaum 23:58, 19 July 2009 (UTC)Reply

I think you should fix the problems I noted and keep it at whatever spelling the word has. Also, see WT:CFI, and the other links I left on your talkpage.​—msh210℠ 00:43, 20 July 2009 (UTC)Reply

You had some months ago said you had trouble with the interface there. I continue to find it incredibly useful, especially for grammatical questions. For three of the 4 English corpora (not the OED), it does lemma-form searches and apparently accepts tags of great grammatical sophistication in search. I hope you have registered and been able to get use out of it. It would be so wonderful to have total access to that corpus to generate usage examples automatically for every English headword (by PoS!).

Are you still having problems with it. DCDuring TALK 17:50, 20 July 2009 (UTC)Reply

For the first time in a while, I've tried using it again. I tried stop.[nn*] [card].[nn*] at the three BYU corpora of English (Time, COCA, BNC), and none turned up anything. I'm sure it must exist, though. is it that the corpora are too small, or am I searching wrong?​—msh210℠ 21:50, 3 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

That does seem to be a corpus size, bad luck problem. I would never recommend them for anything that can be adequately done in Google. The effective size of the Google corpora dwarfs these (COCA at "only" 400MM words is the biggest; Time only for trends over decades; BNC not very large, little spoken). It is the opportunity to tease out information about collocations and some grammatical questions that makes them special. They also have a lot of transcripts of radio and TV shows so there is some relatively uncontrived evidence of the spoken language. DCDuring TALK 22:26, 3 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

A collocation is precisely what I tried: with specific POSes, too, which Google doesn't do (directly at least). Stop card in Google brings up false positives, so I decided to try it with the POSes. Oh, well. I'll try again some other time with something else.​—msh210℠ 17:31, 4 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

I forgot to mention that COCA didn't have "stop card" in any PoSs. Sadly BYU no longer has the OED citations database. OED insisted that they pull it from public availability. DCDuring TALK 18:53, 4 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

A note: The way that you went about orphaning this template also removed the entries from their topical categories, which was probably not intended. --EncycloPetey 04:37, 13 August 2009 (UTC)Reply

You're absolutely correct: it did remove them, and that was not my intent. Given how I feel about those categories, though, I'm not going to reinstate membership in them to those entries unless someone complains.​—msh210℠ 19:02, 13 August 2009 (UTC)Reply

Someone complained. --Vahagn Petrosyan 19:31, 13 August 2009 (UTC)Reply

Fine: I've now added cat:Mammals to each entry I removed the context from. (If you check the RFDO link Vahagn posted here, you'll see I have yet to do the same for fruits.)​—msh210℠ 18:07, 30 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Aren’t inflected forms of English multi-word idioms meant to hard-redirect to the lemma? It was my understanding that we aren’t meant to give them full entries… Did this convention change somewhen or something? † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 00:17, 11 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

I'm unaware of such a convention. How is damn by association different from damn (the verb)? Note also that I made them form-of entries, not full entries in the usual sense.​—msh210℠ 17:11, 11 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

See [[Wiktionary:Redirections#Redirecting between different forms of idioms]]. —Ruakh_TALK 18:18, 11 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, Ruakh. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 18:23, 11 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

Yes, thanks, both of you. I won't continue that practice (unless/until I forget).​—msh210℠ 18:28, 11 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

Questions:

1. Is it worth having the redirects at all for the conjugation of the verb for most of these?
2. If we want them, why not get a bot to create them?
3. I don't think of phrasal verbs as idioms. Some of them seem to warrant showing the inflection of the verb. Would that violate policy? DCDuring TALK 19:13, 11 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

To answer your last question first, having a form-of entry for the inflected form seems (per discussion here) to violate policy. Having an inflection line does not, and I intend to continue adding them; see, e.g., [[give someone the slipper]], which I've just now created. As to the first question, I personally think we should have entries, or at least redirects, for these, yes, for those who will look them up. As to your second question, if they're to be redirects, then a bot can create them easily from the inflection-line links where those exist.​—msh210℠ 19:26, 11 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

I don't think your answer to the 3rd speaks to/speak to phrasal verbs (arguably not truly idioms). An entry like that one, with an irregular verb, and a short pronoun to boot, seemed worth the inflection and the entries, especially for the -ing an -ed forms. Such forms often seem to be thought of/think of as separate from the verb. Please forgive my going on/go on about this. Who is the right person to the bot that would be carrying out/carry out the creation of redirects? DCDuring TALK 19:53, 11 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

Sorry, I didn't fully follow that. You're saying that the policy page linked to above applies to speak to but not to give someone the slipper, which should indeed have separate pages for its inflected forms? But the policy page uses burning one's fingers as an example of what to redirect. As to a botmaster, I don't know. (For verbs like speak to, it should be bot-doable sans inflection line, too: For any English verb that's another verb plus one of a set list of short prepositions, inflect per the shorter verb.)​—msh210℠ 20:15, 11 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

There are two questions about phrasal verbs (not verb phrases):

1. Are they idioms and therefore covered by the policy mentioned? (I don't think they are.)
2. Whether or not covered, should there be a policy against their inflected forms appearing as entries?

Relatedly, why is not "to burn one's fingers" in the "policy" page?

And, it's more of a suggestion ("guideline") than a policy anyway. DCDuring TALK 20:35, 11 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

I agree with the answers given by msh210. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 19:35, 11 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

FWIW this policy has never been used much. I've seen loads of these entries and until now, I've never seen anyone question one. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:43, 11 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

Why exactly is {{arc}} supposed to be used everywhere except etymologies? Does this also apply to the other various dialects of Aramaic? If so, should the other templates also be deleted? --Yair rand 23:37, 12 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

Dunno; dunno; and, assuming the hypothesis, I guess so. But to clarify the first "dunno", that seems the way it's been done, by 334a and everyone else.​—msh210℠ 17:12, 13 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

I disagree. Is this policy? Where? Copying entire entries leads to redundancy and things getting out of date. Xonique 18:15, 2 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

It's not policy that I know of, and, yes, it leads to things' getting out of date (though that's not much of a concern in this particular case), but it saves users' clicks. See recent discussion on infer in the BP for example.​—msh210℠ 18:18, 2 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

IMO, for all obsolete, archaic, rare, and even just not so common words a common synonym, if it exists, would be the best possible definition, though qualification might be needed. But common words should not be defined with uncommon synonyms. DCDuring TALK 18:29, 2 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

That does make sense.​—msh210℠ 18:30, 2 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thank you for your comment! I agree: I have seen guides for mammals, reptiles etc. that follow the same system: general term like mouse or turtle is lower case, but a specific species (also breed?) is Capitalized.

I normally work more at nl.wikt and my native tongue, Dutch, has a regulated spelling (by an intergovtl body, the Taalunie). Our spelling specifically says lower case, but even Dutch bird books sometimes follow the Audubon principle... Jcwf 03:05, 6 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

Is there a reason that you created {{etyl:tmr}} instead of {{tmr}}? Do we not treat it as a separate language? --Bequw → τ 19:56, 7 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

Apparently not: I've seen others (including 334a) add tmr entries using "Aramaic" and template:arc, and I've followed their lead. I don't know of anyone who's added entries using "Jewish Babylonian Aramaic" or template:tmr (except maybe myself at some point).​—msh210℠ 16:21, 8 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

OK. I've noted it at Wiktionary talk:Language treatment#Aramaic. Maybe someone else will know. --Bequw → τ 18:35, 8 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

Hello msh210 -- I'm not entirely comfortable with this new template and the manner in which you have been inserting it in entries:

1. The usual practice is to place contextual information in italicized parentheses. You are deviating from that by adding "Used literally:" to the text of the definition itself.

2. You are replacing some literal senses which have explanatory value with "See (one or more entries)". I believe this reduces the convenience to the user, especially in cases where you refer the user to multiple terms. I think we should avoid the use of "See" in the definition of a sense.

Respectfully -- WikiPedant 21:04, 10 February 2010 (UTC)Reply