Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 21:55, 30 April 2007

Template:SampleWikiProject

Other topics?

I think that phonologies and general languages are where Misplaced Pages is, at least now, doing alright. We need a group to concentrate on other areas of linguistics. Coverage, for instance, of Discourse analysis is very poor. jnothman 11:14, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Reflex in linguistics

Somebody on Talk:Reflex action asked for it, since I don't know anything (if the request is valid), I am echoing it here. Samohyl Jan 04:16, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

As cognate is to cousins or sisters, so reflex is to daughters or granddaughters. If a sound or form A in a daughter language is described as a reflex of sound or form B in a parent language, then A is the sound or form that B became. For example, English initial "h" is a reflex of PIE kʷ. Does that help? 207.245.124.66 15:39, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Theoretical linguistics

Would be great to get this project to cover theoretical linguistics too. A lot of the pages are in a right state. e.g. Language acquisition and principles and parameters - FrancisTyers 22:55, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

I would be interested in helping, although my knowledge is kind of stale (I completed my Ph.D. 30 years ago, but haven't worked in Linguistics since then). -- Dalbury 13:53, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Requested merge

I have requested that the new British language (Celtic) article be merged into the Welsh language article. Contribute at Talk:Welsh language.--Mais oui! 11:01, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Scottish, Manx, and Cornish are also "British" Celtic languages (you could probably even say that Irish is too, although that's politically touchy). I'm not sure what makes Welsh special among the non-Gaelic siblings. I guess this is supposed to be about the proto-language of Cornish, Welsh, and Breton, i.e. P-Celtic. Why should it be merged into Welsh and not Cornish or Breton? Mike Dillon 16:33, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Anthropology wikiproject?

I just made a proposal for an anthropology wikiproject on the "list of proposed wikiprojects" page. If you're interested, you can sign up at our entry and on the temporary project page. Thanks. Ungovernable Force 21:08, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Linguistics subtypes

I neglected to mention this earlier, but some time ago I proposed a number of possible sub-stub-types (as it were) of ling-stub, which is somewhat oversized. (Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals/2006/October#Linguistics subtypes) Having split out {{phonetics-stub}}, I'd find any domain-expert input on which to tackle next very welcome. Alai 04:18, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Project Directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council is currently in the process of developing a master directory of the existing WikiProjects to replace and update the existing Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Council/Directory. These WikiProjects are of vital importance in helping wikipedia achieve its goal of becoming truly encyclopedic. Please review the following pages:

• User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory,
• User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory 2,
• User:Badbilltucker/Philosophy and religion Directory,
• User:Badbilltucker/Sports Directory,
• User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory,
• User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory/United States, (note: This page will be retitled to more accurately reflect its contents)
• User:Badbilltucker/History and society directory, and
• User:Badbilltucker/Science directory

and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope to have the existing directory replaced by the updated and corrected version of the directory above by November 1. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 22:46, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry if you tried to update it before, and the corrections were gone. I have now moved the new draft in the old directory pages, so the links should work better. My apologies for any confusion this may have caused you. B2T2 14:45, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Misplaced Pages Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 16:50, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Request for assistance at Redundancy (language)

Can someone who actually understands it please de-linguageek this passage at the referenced article:

A common concept in linguistics is economy of storage; only unpredictable information is said to be stored in one's "mental grammar". The rest must be reconstructed by the speaker in conversation, or "on-line". Redundancy aids this process, increasing the odds of predictability by acting as a "noise" filter.

I have an undergraduate in linguistics and even I can't meaningfully parse that! Thanks in advance.  :-)

PS: If "economy of storage" is such a "common" concept, why does it have no article?

— SMcCandlish ツ 13:41, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I am not a linguist, but it appears to read easily enough: Because our brain has a limited capacity, we need to economize in what we store in memory and in the retrieving process. Therefore whatever appears predictable, we do not need to compare with what we have in our memory and analyze it; we only go and retrieve ('mental grammar') what is not readily understood from what we anticipated. Redundancy makes it easier to recognize something to be in line with what could be anticipated. Else we might more often think for a moment that we receive surprising information while such would not really be the case, causing us to already start the process only to find out it had not really been needed; such unuseful process is a 'noice', a hindrance, for these processes at occasions that actually require them. Redundancy avoids traffic jams; just how I read it, of course. This assumes a more readily available process centre for 'on-line', almost instantaneous, analysis of e.g. conjugation etc: "she say" would trigger the more profound process when hearing "say" (perhaps to realize that a loud (real) noise must have overstemmed a preceeding "What did", else we will ask to repeat); contrarily, the "says" of "she says" is spotted as predictable.
This allows us to let someone feeling compelled to tell an entire story to rattle on, without our paying much attention, but still we would spot an unexpected tweak: that novel information is the only thing interesting for us. Without this capacity we would have a headache by a continous effort of really listening and possibly, having become tired and blurred, even miss the one thing we should have paid attention to. — SomeHuman 15 Feb2007 23:41 - 16 Feb2007 00:14- (UTC)

Slave trade and nautical language theory of Creole Genesis on AfD

The article Slave trade and nautical language theory of Creole Genesis has been proposed for deletion. If you have an opinion in the matter, you might consider contributing to the discussion at Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Slave trade and nautical language theory of Creole Genesis.  --Lambiam 18:36, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages offer on Linguist List

• Linguist List Vote: To Wiki or Not to Wiki
• Offers grad student to work on linguistic articles in WP if their fund-raising collects $6000 in the next 48 hours
• Must use special "Misplaced Pages offer" donation page: http://linguistlist.org/donation/fund-drive2007/wikipedia/
• Calls Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Linguistics "...quite dormant and not really organized"; ; makes no mention of WP:ENLANG, WP:MESO or other WikiProjects actively involved in languages/linguistics articles.
• Ling.Nut 00:36, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

New WPTL tasks list

I've drafted a new WikiProject Theoretical Linguistics task list template: WPTL todo. Comments and suggestions would be greatly appreciated--please discuss at the WPTL talk page. Thanks! mitcho/芳貴 21:55, 30 April 2007 (UTC)