Category talk:English locatives
The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for moves, mergers and splits (permalink).
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This seems more appropriate, given that the category only contains adverbs. I can't think of anything that might belong here that is not an adverb. —CodeCat 23:18, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
- To move this to some called "adverbs" makes a stronger statement than some grammarians would make. A word like home need not be treated as an adverb. Furthermore prepositional phrases can be locatives but it does some violence to their function to call them adverbs. DCDuring TALK 00:14, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
- As a further illustration an expression like where the sun don't shine a clause that is obviously a locative, as are where angels fear to tread (a clause, from, but not an alt form of the proverb), every which way (a noun phrase), and where it's at (clause). If the membership criteria are not explicitly, clearly, and reviewably specified in such a way as to exclude these, the change seems simply wrong. DCDuring TALK 19:46, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
- I don't see why they would need to be excluded. They are location adverbs to me. —CodeCat 20:24, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
- You have confused semantic function and word class. DCDuring TALK 23:12, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
- Why is it necessary to distinguish them? —CodeCat 01:21, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
- Only to be nice to users by avoiding needless confusion and redundancy. In English almost any word can assume almost any function in at least some cases, often attestably so. It is not that Adverb is all that well-defined a word class in English to begin with. We use it because we need to provide hooks from our content to what users may remember from their schooling. DCDuring TALK 04:23, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
- Why is it necessary to distinguish them? —CodeCat 01:21, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
- You have confused semantic function and word class. DCDuring TALK 23:12, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
- I don't see why they would need to be excluded. They are location adverbs to me. —CodeCat 20:24, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
- As a further illustration an expression like where the sun don't shine a clause that is obviously a locative, as are where angels fear to tread (a clause, from, but not an alt form of the proverb), every which way (a noun phrase), and where it's at (clause). If the membership criteria are not explicitly, clearly, and reviewably specified in such a way as to exclude these, the change seems simply wrong. DCDuring TALK 19:46, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
- Oppose: Nominator has not made the case for the move IMO, at least not to my satisfaction. Purplebackpack89 22:33, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
- Archiving without moving, as stale and lacking consensus. - -sche (discuss) 01:48, 14 May 2017 (UTC)
I decided not to add words suffixed with -ward or -side, though I think virtually any could count as locatives in certain situations. Folks often use these in very localized ways I think, like you could say "I need to call Bill, where is he? Oh he's Stacy-ward, call him there" meaning "he's on his way to Stacy's house". Anyone have thoughts on that?GaylordFancypants (talk)