Talk:νεκραγωγέω

RFD discussion: January 2018–December 2020

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for deletion (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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νεκραγωγέω

This word, “to lead the dead”, seems to have only been used once, and in the participial form νεκραγωγοῦντα (nekragōgoûnta), yet it has inflection tables for six tenses and entries for many inflected forms. Unless this word is used more often than a search of Greek Wikisource and the Perseus website indicate, I propose deleting all the inflection entries and moving the entry to νεκραγωγοῦντα (nekragōgoûnta). I see no point in having inflection tables and entries for unattested forms.

Pinging @GianWiki, who created the lemma and entries for its non-lemma forms. — Eru·tuon 02:05, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

I don't have a strong opinion on unattested form entries, but I find the inflection tables OK. As soon as the lemma exists, the inflected forms are defined unless there are forms that cannot be used. Even if nobody ever used in writing the ablative singular form of pöytä (“table”) > pöydättä (“without a table”) I can use it any time I wish and will be understood by other Finnish speakers.--Hekaheka (talk) 22:16, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

Not sure if I should be posting here or in WT:RFM, because I'm proposing the deletion of inflected-form entries, but the moving of the lemma. — Eru·tuon 02:07, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

If only the participle is attested, then everything should be deleted except the lemma form of the participle, which is νεκραγωγέων (nekragōgéōn). The attested form νεκραγωγοῦντα (nekragōgoûnta) is an inflected form of that. —Mahāgaja (formerly Angr) · talk 09:40, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Aren't participles considered non-lemma? What I'd do is keep not only the (non-lemma) entry for the participle (i.e. νεκραγωγέων), but also keep the (lemma) entry for the actual verb it belongs to (νεκραγωγέω, which is also listed in L&S), but delete all form-of (non-lemma) entries except the one attested form (νεκραγωγοῦντα). That at least is how I've been handling scarcely-attested Gothic verbs, which not uncommonly are attested only as a single participle form. (Probably will want a note on the lemma page anyway that it's only attested once) — Mnemosientje (t · c) 16:53, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

@Mnemosientje: Participles are categorized as non-lemma forms, but Ancient Greek participles do also have their own inflected forms, so perhaps they should also be categorized as lemmas. It's a confusing case: they are a form of a verb, but they have their own inflected forms. There is currently at least one participle that doesn't have a corresponding verb entry: βιβάς (bibás). LSJ's practice of having the entry at a first-person singular present indicative even if it's unattested may not be appropriate for Wiktionary. (It's worse in the case of other verbs that don't have any present forms.) — Eru·tuon 00:08, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Gothic participles similarly have their own inflected forms, hence why I made the analogy. LSJ's practice is how I've been doing Gothic verbs and their participles all this time, tbh -- the lemma forms (due to the regularity of the morphology) are really predictable even on the basis of a single attested inflected participle form and pretty much every other dictionary seems to work that way. — Mnemosientje (t · c) 00:33, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Participles are sort of a hybrid. They're the lemma form of their own inflected forms, but at the same time they're inflected forms of the verb they're from. In a case like this, where the participle is the only form of the verb that occurs, we could probably get away with calling it an adjective rather than a participle. —Mahāgaja (formerly Angr) · talk 10:11, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

True. However, our categorization system (as encoded in templates), which puts participles (at least for the languages I actively edit in) in the non-lemma category, does complicate that a bit: this suggests that technically for Wiktionary purposes they aren't in fact the lemma form of their own inflected forms. (Whether or not this system is optimal is another matter admittedly.) Imo then, if we want to be consistent in how we categorize these things across languages, we should keep the current verb entry (as long as the verb lemma can be deduced with some certainty from the morphology of the inflected form). Perhaps we might include a usage note to the verb entry clarifying that its inclusion is based only on this single attestation. — Mnemosientje (t · c) 05:21, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

For the record, my vote here is keep for now: unless there is some meta-discussion on this, perhaps to bring Ancient Greek in line with Modern Greek (where currently participles are listed as lemmas, confusingly: I don't know any other language that does this on Wiktionary), the precedent would suggest it is to be kept, and as a bonus we get to follow the precedent set by other dictionaries as well instead of having to reinvent the wheel here. — Mnemosientje (t · c) 12:24, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

{{look}}

So far we have, in short:

• User:Mahagaja and User:Erutuon voting to delete (arguing the rest of the verb paradigm shouldn't be supposed based on a participle form only and that the lemma should be at the base participle, not the verb theoretically underlying the participle);
• User:Mnemosientje voting to keep (arguing that participle forms have usually been seen as attestations for the underlying verb that at least in theory can be supposed to exist and that it's not a bad idea to follow existing dictionary practice).

That's not a lot of input. Does anyone else have opinions on this, so it may be resolved? — Mnemosientje (t · c) 12:18, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Keep. HeliosX (talk) 17:31, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

RFD kept as no consensus. — Mnemosientje (t · c) 17:30, 23 December 2020 (UTC)