User talk:Nicodene/Archive 2023

auctorico

Hi Nicodene, and happy New Year—I wonder if you can shed some light at the long-lasting RFV for auctorico. It's not clear to me what the relationship between the forms auctorico, auctoriço, and auctorizo is, and though I initially thought it might be purely orthographic based on the ç form, the descendants at auctorico do look like they imply /k/ for the second c. Based on the existence of German sources attesting the spelling there might be a distinction between auctorico as an orthographic variant of -izo and auctorico as a form separately derived from -ico. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 19:38, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Al-Muqanna and apologies for the delay.

The RFV on auctorico can, of course, be closed thanks to the FEW citation. That's despite the entry being titled with an asterisk, which simply means, in Von Wartburg's style, 'unattested in Classical or Late Latin'.

Judging by what you have said regarding spellings of the type ⟨auctoriço⟩, I would expect them to have been used later than the early medieval attestations for auctoricare. I'd be surprised if the latter survived long enough to be confused with the former. Nicodene (talk) 02:19, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

UDHR in early Romance?

Can you try to translate the UDHR in Proto-Romance, Proto-Italo-Western Romance, Proto-Western Romance, Proto-Gallo-Romance, Proto-Ibero-Romance, Proto-Italo-Romance, and Proto-Balkan Romance, by using only words that are reconstructed from their respective descendants? Kwékwlos (talk) 20:30, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

@Kwékwlos Seems a bit time-consuming to do all of them, but I'll try my hand at Proto-Gallo-Romance:

*/tót ɔ́ːmen nái̯sent líu̯ɾe ed eɡʷáːl en deɲtáːt ed en dɾéi̯ts sont dodáːt de raʣóːn e konoi̯sɛ́nʦa de ʤustétsa e déːβent tɾai̯táːɾ se kom fɾáːdɾe/

Nicodene (talk) 23:28, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

I notice a mistake: Latin et > PGR */ed/ on one but */e/ on several others. Kwékwlos (talk) 12:24, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

@Kwékwlos Intentional, one form being prevocalic, the other preconsonantal. I suppose one can still represent both phonemically as /ed/. Nicodene (talk) 12:36, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

Alright. Next is Proto-Italo-Western Romance. Kwékwlos (talk) 19:08, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

I'll humour you, as I find this interesting.

/tótᵗi ɔ́meni náscent líβri ed ekʷáli en deɲɲetáte ed en dᵉréktos sont dotáti de raʦʲóne ed konoscɛ́nʦʲa de justéʦʲa ed déβent traktáre se komo frátri/ Nicodene (talk) 19:31, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Why is t voiced in *ed, even though Italian does not show voicing of stops (except for some irregular cases)? Kwékwlos (talk) 20:58, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

@Kwékwlos Because of Italian ed. No Romance language (modern or otherwise) reflects a /t/ outcome, as far as I know. Perhaps there occurred an early analogy with ad, which is likewise found nearly always in 'liaison' contexts. Nicodene (talk) 21:06, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

And what about Proto-Ibero-Romance and Proto-Balkan Romance? Kwékwlos (talk) 19:49, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

@Nicodene So I am trying to understand Proto-Balkan Romance. What does its UDHR look like (with IPA and Romanian orthography)? Kwékwlos (talk) 22:30, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm not good with Balkan Romance, sorry. Not yet anyway. Nicodene (talk) 23:01, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

@Nicodene I've noticed you have done some work on Ibero-Romance. What would the PIbR UDHR look like (reconstructed from the Spanish and Portuguese UDHR)? Kwékwlos (talk) 15:53, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

/ˈtodos los ˈɔmnes ˈnast͡sen ˈliβres e eˈgwales en diniˈdade e en deˈrei̯tos/

/esˈtan doˈdatos de raˈt͡son e konsˈt͡sjɛnt͡sja de ʒusˈtit͡sa e ˈdeβen trai̯ˈtarse komo jerˈmanos/ Xenos melophilos (talk) 19:35, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Franco-Provencal -o

In a word such as vesâjo, final -o from -um is preserved. Is this really the case? Kwékwlos (talk) 11:27, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

@Kwékwlos Yes, it really is. Specifically, the final vowel is preserved when needed to support a consonant cluster (at the stage */βizádɡo/). Some other examples are given here (under 'Arpitan'). Nicodene (talk) 12:39, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Template:desctree

This template is designed to get all of its data from the entries linked to in its parameters, except for the name of the language and things like |bor= as applied to the first parameter. It used to be that putting a term without descendants in its numbered parameters would result in a big, fat module error. Given that the most common reason for such errors was people removing Descendants sections from entries that had no visible indication as to the presence of the entry where the actual error displayed, I got consensus to change that.

Now, instead of displaying a module error, it temporarily displays in the entry itself as if it were {{desc}}, and adds a maintenance category named after the language where the expected descendants section would be (I decided to do it that way because there's no point in alerting Proto-Indo-European editors about an issue relating to Franco-Provençal, even if the mechanics of Wikimedia categories dictate that the Proto-Indo-European entry is the one that shows up in the category).

It seems to me that this is the most civilized way to deal with such things. I've always said that a module error should only be used for emergencies- otherwise it's like triggering a fire alarm and evacuating the building because someone forgot to flush before leaving the restroom.

That said, the fact that the template doesn't halt everything and alert the armed forces when you do it doesn't make it right to abuse the template. Please don't put terms in the {{desctree}} positional parameters that don't have Descendants sections. Try to figure out other ways to make the display come out correct.

The obvious workaround would be to change the Alternative forms section so that only the alt forms you want to display in the ancestor's {{desctree}} use {{alter}} or {{alt}}, and to use {{l}}, etc., to link to the others ({{desctree}} only looks for the first 2 templates). If that seems too much like a kludge, we need to think about how the template should work, and make a proposal at the Beer parlour or the Grease pit so we can recruit a Lua editor to implement it (I know a lot about Lua in general, but not enough about the specifics to do more than elementary and extremely obvious emergency fixes).

Thanks! Chuck Entz (talk) 00:37, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Final -e loss

When did "-e" disappear in Romance? Kwékwlos (talk) 14:15, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Well, never in Italian. But I suppose you're asking about Western Romance.

It would seem to have disappeared, at the PWR stage, after /n l r/. This is the state of affairs that remains in Venetian for example (per A Linguistic History of Venice, p. 62). Portuguese attests an early /e/ loss in that environment as well, considering that intervocalic single Latin /n/ and /l/ regularly delete in that language, without a trace, but not in words like cabedal or coraçon (hence these had early final /e/ deletion, making the previous consonant no longer intervocalic).

This isn't the case for final -e after other consonants, necessarily. A look at the descendants of Latin rete, for example, shows it surviving after /t/ in Portuguese (+Galician etc.), Venetian, and Istriot.

Nicodene (talk) 14:31, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

The Glosas Emilianenses clearly shows preservation of -e after n and r. Kwékwlos (talk) 14:38, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't know if I would trust them as really reflecting phonetic writing. Final -e in infinitives is generally written for example but then you get <nafragarsan> = naufragare se habent. The preterite -avit alternates with -ot. Quomodo is written rather than como. Peccatos rather than *pecatos. -aria and -orio without indicating metathesis of /j/. The orthography is clearly heavily Latin-influenced, at a level well beyond what we see in later Old Spanish. Nicodene (talk) 14:52, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

User:Nightcore8365

Could you look through their edits and finish the cleanup I started? They've obviously been doing some research in some good references, but I don't know Old French enough to tell if their cluelessness extends beyond just Wiktionary formatting. I hope they can learn how to do decent Old French entries- we could use the help. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:42, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

We all have to start somewhere, I suppose. I've cleaned up the rest. Nicodene (talk) 01:27, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

They have created four more entries since then, which look as bad as the previous. I've given them a warning. Benwing2 (talk) 02:08, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

Cleaning up Latin etyma in Spanish entries

Based on the recent BP discussion, I wrote a script to clean up Latin etyma in Romance entries. It has some language-specific info, specifically on how to map language-specific suffixes like Spanish -dad to the corresponding Latin lemma and non-lemma etymon (in this case, -tās and -tātem). I can add support to the script fairly easily for the other languages I'm familiar with (Italian, Portuguese, Old Galician-Portuguese, French, Old French, Galician to some extent, Catalan to some extent, maybe some of the minority Iberian languages since they're pretty similar to other Iberian languages), but I'd probably need help for Romanian and maybe Venetian and Sicilian. It is running now for Spanish. It looks that it will change around 3,285 entries outputting about 375 warnings. It's partway through and I put the warnings generated so far here: User:Benwing2/clean-spanish-latin-etyma-warnings. Can you take a look? Some of them are false positives that can be ignored, but others represent real issues. BTW I notice you replaced {{inh+}} with From {{inh}} in at least one place, undoing a change by User:Sarilho1 (who is one of the primary Portuguese editors). Was there a reason for that? IMO the plus etym templates are especially important for Romance languages because they surface to the user whether a term is inherited or borrowed, which is often far from obvious for these languages. Benwing2 (talk) 05:07, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

@Benwing2 I can help with the other languages when the time comes. As for the errors, I'll take a crack at sorting them out now.

If one of my edits happened to remove inh+, it was probably because I regard that as the default for Romance < Latin etymologies. That is, I'll mark borrowing with bor+ but leave inheritance unmarked. That said, I have no problem with switching to inh+. It wouldn't hurt to be more explicit. Nicodene (talk) 06:41, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Sounds good, thank you. I have pasted in the remaining warnings into the same location at the bottom. Benwing2 (talk) 07:48, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

@Benwing2 I've finished running through the list. Nicodene (talk) 19:45, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Awesome, thanks! I am currently running the same script for French, and here are the French warnings: User:Benwing2/clean-french-latin-etyma-warnings. Note that the terms may appear to be in random order but it's just because they are sorted from right to left (which groups similar suffixes). Benwing2 (talk) 19:50, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

@Benwing2 I've looked through those as well now. Is Italian in the works? Nicodene (talk) 03:25, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

@Nicodene Thank you! I have already added support to my script for Portuguese and I'll be running it shortly; Italian will be next. Benwing2 (talk) 18:55, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

See User:Benwing2/clean-italian-latin-etyma-warnings, User:Benwing2/clean-portuguese-latin-etyma-warnings and User:Benwing2/clean-catalan-latin-etyma-warnings. The script is making changes for all three languages now (and should be done within at most an hour). Benwing2 (talk) 01:58, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

@Benwing2 Done with all three. Nicodene (talk) 19:43, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Awesome, thank you. It shouldn't be too hard to do Galician and other Western Romance languages. There are also over 100,000 Romanian entries, which I did a basic cleanup of. I don't know that much about Romanian but it might be an opportunity to learn; I suspect the suffixes aren't that different from Italian. Mostly I gather the differences are in noun/adjective inflection, where there's a separate genitive/dative case, a definiteness distinction and a neuter gender of sorts. Benwing2 (talk) 22:20, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Lemmatizing Vulgar Latin and reconstructed Latin entries

Hi. I notice you have been moving reconstructed Latin verbs from the first-person singular present indicative to the infinitive, and moving some nouns from the nominative to the accusative. I'm totally fine with the former practice and I think there was even a BP discussion about this, but I'm not so sure about the latter. IMO at least nouns in -us, -a and probably -is should stay at the nominative; not sure about nouns in -iō/-iōnem and such. I can see the argument that most Romance nouns are derived from the accusative, but some of course are not (e.g. uomo, moglie, sœur) and Old French and Old Occitan still had a nom/acc distinction. In general, having different forms lemmatized for reconstructed vs. non-reconstructed Latin complicates handling of Etymology sections, and there are of course gray areas (e.g. what about "Vulgar" terms that are attested e.g. in Appendix Probi)? It could also be argued that all these reconstructed terms are really Proto-Romance terms rather than Latin terms and belong under a Proto-Romance header. At the very least, I think we need a clear policy spelled out about which Latin terms are lemmatized where, including all the edge cases, so there won't be edit conflicts and it will be clear how to cite the terms in Etymology sections. Benwing2 (talk) 02:23, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

@Benwing2 I do regard reconstructions based on Romance data as (Proto-)Romance themselves, whatever our current labelling is. Old French and Old Occitan nouns are themselves lemmatized by the accusative, or 'oblique', so adapting this practice seemed consistent to me. (It is also the practice of the Dictionnaire Etymologique Roman.) In cases like *fetonem, I can't see that a Classical-style nominative like *feto actually ever existed- Romance rather suggests *fetonis, as indicated there. For Proto-Ibero-/Italo/Balkan Romance, no active nominative case can be reconstructed for nouns, so lemmatizing by the etymological accusative seemed inevitable. I've yet to ever come across a case where Romance inherited a nominative singular that isn't attested in Latin, but if one comes up, we can add mention it in the reconstruction notes. Nicodene (talk) 03:13, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

OK, well (a) I still think you should limit this practice to imparisyllabic third-declension nouns; (b) we still need a writeup on which forms are used to lemmatize nouns under which circumstances (you didn't address my concerns about edge cases). Are you willing to write this up and put it in WT:About Latin? Benwing2 (talk) 03:23, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

@Benwing2 The issue remains that e.g. Proto-Ibero-Romance can't be reconstructed with a general noun-case system.

By edge cases do you mean attested 'Vulgar Latin', e.g. coleo? I don't see any reason to treat such entries differently from normal Latin ones with regards to lemmatization. They were subject to traditional Latin rules with regards to case inflection in the context of the texts in which they are attested. E.g. coleo is attested, per the provided quote, in the ablative plural, a form which certainly was extinct from popular speech in eighth-century France.

I can do a write-up of my current approach, but it would simply amount to 'use the accusative singular, except for feminine nouns in /-a/, where it's not worth bothering' (because /-am/ and /-a/ merged very early on, and the Romance descendants equally reflect either). Nicodene (talk) 03:38, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

By attested I mean in things like Appendix Probi, Reichenau glosses, etc. I am fine with using nominative/first-person singular for these. As for using the accusative e.g. even for nouns in -us (where it unhappily erases the masc/neut distinction), this definitely needs discussion before you start moving a lot of terms. If you could, please create a BP discussion. As for there being no reconstructible nominative case in Ibero-Romance/Balkan Romance (I should add that categories like Category:Spanish terms inherited from Latin nominatives somewhat belie this), I don't see why this is an issue. Our reconstructions are somewhat artificial in any case in that e.g. we project the terms back to the 10-vowel Latin system distinguished by length when there clearly was no length in Proto-Romance; so I don't see why projecting a nominative case is problematic for nouns in -us and -is. Benwing2 (talk) 03:49, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

@Benwing2 Yes I'll make a BP discussion with a write-up of the various points and counter-points.

I don't regard the reconstructions as projecting back to a Classical Latin pronunciation. Even if the head word is spelled as *fētōnem, the provided pronunciation is actually /feˈdoːn/. (The spelling, in effect, is simply there in honour of the etymology fētus + -ō/-ōnem.) This is briefly mentioned under About Vulgar Latin#Spelling, but a more detailed write-up may help. Nicodene (talk) 04:02, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Merci

Merci pour les quelques mises en page que tu as faites à mes quelques entrées! - Waelsch (talk) 15:22, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

De rien. Merci d'avoir ajouté ces pluriels « vulgaires » intéressants. Nicodene (talk) 15:26, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Neapolitan Accents

Hi, I see you've been working in the Neapolitan section of Wiktionary, that's great! Always nice to have support for such a little-known language. However, I need to inform you that the relinking of «ammò» to «ammó» is incorrect. Italo-Dalmatian languages use the grave accent rather than the acute to indicate stress. Amò/Ammò is always seen with a grave accent (take Liberato's song «Me staje appennenn' amò» for example), and I have never seen it with an acute accent. So I'd like to kindly ask you to stop relinking it, as it will just create confusion. Thank you! SignorNic (talk) 19:05, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

@SignorNic That isn't true, to the best of my knowledge; cf. Italian perché. Googling "ammó, vien" brings up 34 results, admittedly not as many as "ammò, vien" (72) but by no means an insignificant number in comparison.

My main concern is that è/ò are supposed to stand for low-mid vowels, not high-mids, and so writing ⟨ammò⟩ is phonetically misleading and, I suspect, simply the result of influence from the orthography of standard Italian, where final /ˈɔ/ (and hence ⟨ò⟩) is quite common, and where final /ˈo/ (and hence ⟨ó⟩) is extremely rare.

I should note that in the context of Italian dialectology it is common practice to mark any stressed high-mid that one likes with an acute, and this certainly influenced my decision.

If it is the case that there exists a standard Neapolitan orthography that proscribes the usage of é/ó in words like cadé, then I would agree to follow it simply for the sake of convention. Nicodene (talk) 19:46, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Ah I see your point now. Sorry about the accent part (I have no idea how I could completely forget perché, one of the most basic words). The problem with Neapolitan is that there is not standard orthography, so many words are spelt differently. For example «piccerè» uses a closed vowel, but is almost always spelt with a grave. Even if it isn't correct, I'm not sure about listing it as an alternative form of «ammó», mainly because «ammò» is more common and that is what will be searched for. Perhaps we could indicate that «ammó» is a more phonetically correct way of spelling «ammò»? Because although «ammó» is more correct, the way native speakers normally spell it is with a grave. But I see your point now, thanks. SignorNic (talk) 19:56, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

@SignorNic Is there at least a traditional basis, for instance in 'Classical Neapolitan', for using è/ò for word-final é/ó? If it's just a non-official modern practice, based on an (incorrect) borrowing of standard Italian practice, I'd be reluctant to 'enshrine' it. Nicodene (talk) 20:32, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Neapolitan has no standard, it is a collection of various similar vernaculars. Native speakers very commonly spell final vowel stress with grave accents even if not phonetically correct, Neapolitan is not a phonetic language (ex. schwa endings). It has been the case for quite a while (ex. Renato Carosone's «Maruzzella»). What you are doing is trying to impose your own spelling reform on the language. It doesn't matter whether is fits prescriptivist rules for vowel marking, the native speakers of the language use grave accents to communicate what they are saying, «ammò/amò» is not another form of the "grammatically correct" «ammó», it is the spelling which Neapolitans use.

Also, about Googling, when I Google «Ammó, vien», I don't see anything relevant to your spelling of the word. Could you explain a bit more?

What I am trying to say is that linguists need to be descriptive when logging these language, languages are not the rules that are set by certain people for them, but rather how the actual speakers use the language.

Thank you. SignorNic (talk) 21:37, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

@SignorNic As of right now: "ammó, vien" gives 75 Neapolitan results, as far as I can see: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=%22ammo%CC%81%2C+vien%22

"Ammò, vien" - 97 results https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=%22ammo%CC%80%2C+vien%22

To achieve a decent sample size, I will search "[common verb]" + napoletano.

For "avé" we have 29300 results https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=%22ave%CC%81%22+napoletano

For "avè" we have 25100 results: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=%22ave%CC%80%22+napoletano

Let's try some other decently common verbs:

Gudé (1820); gudè (255)

Puté (7520); putè (4460)

Tené (19500); tenè (6730)

Vedé (30300), veré (51200); vedè (51300), verè (49900)

Vulé (3330); vulè (6750)

I see no grounds for the assertion that the acute accent is in any way un-Neapolitan. Nicodene (talk) 23:12, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Addó (25100); addò (22300)

Paré (67800); parè (47600)

Pecché (108000); pecchè (93600)

I should note that the Neapolitan Wikipedia very clearly recommends é/ó, and a quick glance at their paggena prencepale reveals the examples addó, sapé, and vedé. Nicodene (talk) 00:34, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm in no way asserting that the acute isn't Neapolitan, and it is certainly used, just that «ammò» is more common, and Neapolitan does not have a standard. What I'm saying is that there is not a "correct form" so it shouldn't be asserted that one form is grammatically correct while another is not. Neapolitan is not spelled phonetically, and the grave accent is more common. So it is unnecessary to say that it is an alternative form of the less common form. SignorNic (talk) 18:52, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Faced with two competing accent usages, only one of which is phonetically accurate, not to mention explicitly endorsed by the editors of the Neapolitan Wikipedia, not to mention actually more (!) common for most of the words that I've cited, I will favour the latter. I make no claims about grammatical correctness whatsoever. This is a matter of adopting an already existing convention for the purposes of lexicography. Nicodene (talk) 20:19, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

@SignorNic The ⟨-ò⟩ variants should and will be kept with a {{alternative spelling of}} of the ⟨-ó⟩ variant at which the information will be lemmatised, as illustrated by cadè. This seems an efficient compromise between linguistic and lexicographic standards and common colloquial usage. That addresses the "that is what will be searched for" problem. We're not trying to be prescriptive, but we must adopt our lemmatisation schemes, as any other dictionary in history has ever done (while of course also paying respect to actual usage, Nico). I'd like to clarify that nobody in the discussion is trying to claim Neapolitan is standardised, the mentioning of "standard Neapolitan" was only rhetorical (right?). Catonif (talk) 21:17, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

I was asking obliquely whether there exists a 'standard [Neapolitan orthography]', not a '[standard Neapolitan] orthography'. Even an as-of-yet unofficial one proposed by, say, a committee of writers and linguists would be useful as a point of reference. As-is I'd be happy to stick to the Neapolitan Wikipedia's regole della grafia quasi-standard del napoletano, which appear broadly to match those of up-to-date dictionaries such as the Schedario Napoletano or Modern Etymological Neapolitan-English Vocabulary, albeit with less diacritic usage. Nicodene (talk) 21:45, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Ok, so if I understood correctly we are choosing to lemmatize words using acute accents to reflect their pronunciation while linking other spellings? Will we note the grave forms as common colloquial forms or is there not a place for that/does it render the process of logging words as overcomplicated? Thank you. SignorNic (talk) 19:58, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

@SignorNic Yes, that's what we plan to do. Mentioning the ⟨-ò⟩ forms is rather straightforward. Compare the current ammó situation. I set col as a shortcut to be used in {{alt}} and {{alt form of|from=}} for any colloquial spelling (which I intend to also include cases like the colloquially unwritten /ə/). Catonif (talk) 11:00, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

That makes sense, thank you. SignorNic (talk) 19:11, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Neapolitan pronunciation

Hi, I've seen that you considered unnecessary my last edit in fuoco. I could agree that the proposed edit was messy, but I think that the way the pronunciation section is set is wrong. There are IPA phonetic pronunciations in [] but not a single phonemic transcription in //, and some of the variations in [] are not even phonetic realtizations of the same lemma. For example [fokə] without diphtong or umlaut can't be a phonetic variation of "fuoco". Hence my edit. I think the sections need some restyling and a more rational set up (Castelmezzo dialect? Why?). Regards, (Jamala (talk) 17:33, 9 August 2023 (UTC))

Hi @Jamala. I have written briefly about the matter on Wiktionary:About Neapolitan.

I quickly found that it is impossible to assign a single phonemic transcription for all 'Neapolitan' (in the broad sense) words which adequately accounts for all the dialects. In lieu of this, I have opted to simply list the Neapolitan (in the narrow sense) word as the lemma form, mentioning the forms in other dialects in simple IPA, given that the vast majority of said dialects do not have any traditional spelling system of their own.

I have even avoided providing phonemic transcription specific to the dialect of Naples because I'd rather not commit to inventing a specific phonemic scheme on my own, in the absence of a reliable academic source. Hence I have limited myself to providing phonetic transcriptions, relatively broad ones, taken from the AIS atlas, which I have cited under numerous Neapolitan entries.

If you have any thoughts on how best to handle all this, do please share. Nicodene (talk) 17:47, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

I should also note that I only ever include forms from dialects outside of Naples when I have an AIS map to cite that specifically provides said forms (always in IPA, never in plain spelling - and I'd rather avoid making up my own orthographies).

As for Castelmezzano, its dialect is one of few that has the 'Romanian'-type vocalism; see Lausberg area for that. Hence I often include that dialect's forms, when I have an AIS map to cite, as I find them interesting. Nicodene (talk) 17:51, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

I should also add that all of the listed forms on the entry fuoco do in fact show umlaut, more commonly called metaphony in Italian linguistics, given that the original Latin stressed vowel [ˈɔ] (low-mid) is raised everywhere in the 'Neapolitan' (broad sense) area. To find non-umlauted Romance forms, i.e. ones that still have [ˈɔ], one has to cross south into the Sicilian zone (including S. Calabria and S. Salento), per the cited AIS map. Nicodene (talk) 18:07, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for the complete answer. I'll answer in a complete way ASAP. By the way, there are important areas where metaphony may be absent, such as Eastern Abruzzo, (Pescara), Potenza, Gargano ['pɔrkə]). (Jamala (talk) 18:16, 9 August 2023 (UTC))

Ah, thank you for correcting me. I see that AIS map 1088 supports your observations for Bellante, Gargano, and Picerno. Interestingly, the plurals still seem to be affected by metaphony.

I have now read your user page and see that you are quite knowledgeable on the subject. I look forward to hearing your thoughts. Nicodene (talk) 18:30, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for having read my user page and for the interest. I'm almost completely agree on considering only written Neapolitan as "standard" for lemmas. But I think we must find a better set up for describing variations. In my view, Neapolitan has both phonemic and phonetic variations, just like American English and British English are not just phonetic variations but also phonemic (see palm). The same way, [fɔkə] without umlaut can't be considered a phonetic variations of fuoco with a diphtongized umlaut, but in my opinion it's a regional phonemic variation with its own subsequent phonetic variations. That's the same for [fokə] with non-diphtongized umlaut, a phonemic alternative with its own phonetic variations. To be precise, the true parallel phonemic lemmas are with ending vowel -o, so fuoco, fòco, fóco, that was the sense of my original edit. But I can 100% understand that's it's a complex way to depict the sitiation. Idk, maybe we can explicit only phonetic variations of the classical written lemma in Old Neapolitan. What do you think? (Jamala (talk) 18:53, 9 August 2023 (UTC))

@Jamala

I agree that it would be wrong to regard all non-Neapolitan forms as phonetic variants of the Neapolitan one. This was not my intention, but the way I have organized the pages does unfortunately give this impression.

I have just added 'regional cognates' as an experimental label under fuoco; perhaps that can be a solution?

It would not be terribly difficult to convert the broad phonetic transcriptions taken from AIS into basic phonemic ones, but there is a risk of error in doing so. Anything that one puts in a phonemic transcription must, by definition, be a distinctive/contrastive sound in the dialect in question, as opposed to a mere phonetic realization. And I simply do not know enough about the various regional dialects to be confident that anything I write between /slashes/ is truly distinctive in those dialects. Even for the dialect of Naples I am not sure of, for example, the phonemic status of final unstressed schwa, because in certain phonetic contexts the different etymological vowels can 'magically' reappear. I'm sure you know what I am referring to, and this is discussed in for example the Grammatica diacronica del napoletano, as cited on the page viecchio.

However, perhaps this approach has been excessively timid and we can, nevertheless, be brave and switch to using phonemic transcriptions, formulated to the best of our knowledge and abilities. I would still caution against trying to make a universal phonemic transcription for all the regions and dialects, as it will inevitably fail when faced with certain historic sound changes. For instance, some areas have a 'Sardinian'-type vocalism.

Ultimately this is why I decided to label all pronunciations on a regional basis, including that of Naples. Nicodene (talk) 20:12, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

I have attempted another possible organization on the page sciummo, with regional variants listed as alternative forms (but in IPA). Nicodene (talk) 22:05, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Hi Nicodene, have a look to my user page where I've written my view regarding phonemic and phonetic transcription. It's not a proposal of use in pages. Also have a look at this link: http://www.asciatopo.altervista.org/dialetti_tutto.html

(Jamala (talk) 06:01, 10 August 2023 (UTC))

@Jamala First of all, thank you for this detailed and useful source.

I'm not entirely convinced of the necessity of grouping 'compatible' regional pronunciations under one phonemic form, but I suppose I don't have any serious objection to this, so long as it is done with a great deal of care.

To that end, I would suggest /ˈu͡o/ for the diphthongal and post-diphthongal outcomes. The representation /ˈwo/ has the unfortunate effect of implying that stress on the end of the diphthong is 'canonical', while many dialects actually have it on the beginning, and monophthongized outcomes such as [uː] presumably reflect an earlier [ˈuə̯] or [ˈuo̯]. A representation like /ˈu͡o/ is more neutral with respect to stress, and it may well correspond to a real ancient ambiguity (not only in the Southern Italian context, but elsewhere in Romance as well).

There are further details to discuss, and I apologize in advance for the length of this comment.

• The AIS suggests that the pronunciation of fuoco in Naples is [ˈfwoːkə] (transcribed as fwọ̄́kə), and the website that you have linked is consistent with this, as it describes the Neapolitan pronunciation of nuovo as "nuóvë". I'm not sure how to reconcile these transcriptions with your ['fuəkɐ].

• 'Lemma' does not mean 'phonemically distinct form'; it merely means the orthographic form that is used for organizational purposes. The Neapolitan fuoco does have a written diphthong, yes, but this does not automatically disqualify it from serving as a lemma even for non-diphthongal dialects. It is still best, of course, to indicate in some way that the latter also exist, and it is true that our Wiktionary entries have mostly neglected them so far.

• I would prefer not to put no-longer-used Classical pronunciations among modern ones.

• Vowel length is not a contrastive feature in any of the dialetti alto-meridionali, if I'm not mistaken, and therefore none of the phonemic forms would have /ː/. Speaking of which, I've noticed that your phonetic transcriptions describe vowels within diphthongs as remaining short under stress. Do they not lengthen? The AIS seems to depicts this.

• Is ['faukə] (Peschici) an example of a non-metaphonized outcome? In that case, a similar [au] should be present in, for instance, the local derivative of Latin nŏvem. The website that you have linked seems to colour this area as a mixture of monotongatta and sabina (which is clear only when one magnifies the map to look closely).

• Correct me if I'm wrong, but syllabic isochrony appears to be a phenomenon with phonemic consequences, if it results in etymological /ɛ, ɔ/ merging into /e, o/ in stressed open syllables. Therefore, ['fo:kə] (Chieti) would have a phonemic /ˈo/, not /ˈɔ/.

Nicodene (talk) 18:15, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

I'll try to answer to all points:

• I'm ok with /ˈu͡o/ and presumably /ˈi͡e/ for the two metaphonetic diphtongs
• In the modern dialect of Naples is almost always [ˈuo̯]/[ˈuə̯], not [ˈwo]
• In my view, /ˈfu͡oko/ (metaphony+diphtong), /'fɔko/ (no metaphony) and /'foko/ (metaphony, no diphtong) are three different words/lemmas just like italian "domani"/"dimani"/"dimane". Three forms with different phonemes and each of them with a plethora of phonetic variations.
• I'm ok with not using classical pronunciation, I've included it in the example because the spelling used is classical (fuoco) and to highlight the difference between modern Naples dialect and older forms (like the ones in AIS)
• In Peschici dialect, /ɔː/ → [aw] and there is no metaphony for /ɔ/. So for example, [bbawnə] is used for "buono, buoni, buona, buone" indistinctly, "cuore" is [kawrə], "nove" is [nawə], "ruota" is [rawtə] and so on. But when the syllable is closed the vowel is not long and /ɔ/ → [ɔ ⁓ o], for example "occhio" is [ɔccə], "grosso, grossa, grossi, grosse" is [grɔssə], "cotto" is [kɔttə]. Moreover, due to isochrony, /oː/ merges with /ɔː/ in [aw], so "croce" is [krawʃə]. Metaphony seems to be present for /o/, "orso" is [ursə].
• I think Peschici situation may also explain why according to me vowel length is important also in phonemic
• Virutally yes, there is a merge, but if we follow a phonemic form, then the merge is phonetic, I'm not sure though.

Jamala (talk) 15:27, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Jamala. Lemmas can and often do contain multiple different phonemic forms, each with different phonetic realizations by region. The English pecan is a good example of this; even if we select, out of twelve phonemically different forms, the specific variant /ˈpiːkæn/, this represents quite different pronunciations in the UK (approximately [ˈpɪi̯kʰãn] where I live) and the US ([ˈpikʰẽə̯̃n]). The overall range of pronunciations for the lemma is actually much wider than those of the word for 'fire' across Neapolitan.

Judging by what you have said regarding Peschici, it appears that first the etymological vowels ó and ò merged in stressed open syllables (as in Chieti) and subsequently the merged /ˈo/ (phonetically [ˈoː]) underwent vowel breaking to [ˈaw].

To the best of my knowledge, this means we have four main categories:

• /ˈfu͡oko/ (diphthongal and post-diphthongal)
  • Naples, Force, etc.
• /'foko/ (Sabine metaphony)
  • Morcone, Avezzano, etc.
• /'foko/ (isochronic)
  • Chieti, Peschici
• /'fɔko/ (unaffected by any of these changes)
  • Maratea, Pescara, Potenza

This does mean what we have two categories with /'foko/, but I think it is useful and informative to distinguish the dialects which achieved this phonemic form via Sabine metaphony from those that achieved it via isochrony. Nicodene (talk) 17:12, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

Perfect! I appreciate the final conclusion as in the edit in fuoco. Do you think are we able to do this for all the main words? Or it could generate confusion? Jamala (talk) 06:04, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

@Jamala I think adding detailed information like this is excellent and would be happy to do so for other words as well. In theory I could try this myself by using the AIS together with Sciarretta's maps, but the result would be a bit amateurish I think. I'd prefer to have the input of someone who is knowledgeable about the dialects, such as yourself. I'm always happy to help by commenting on, refining, or organizing phonemic representations and such. Nicodene (talk) 09:33, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Ma tu tâ fidi a parrari 'n sicilianu?

Nun è a prima vota ca m'arritrovu a lèggiri currizziuna toi ncapu a pàggini di palori siciliani ca, â 'ccapata, doppu ca cci 'bbìi manu di ncapu tu, finisci ca sconzi soccu cosa 'rruvinànnula; macari ca si' cummintu di fari u beni. S' u discursu ti sona bonu e chiaru, m'aspettu na risposta manzinnò t' mmitu a tèniri ssi jituzza ntâ sacchetta. Saluti di genti ca u rispettu u porta. Hyblaeorum (talk) 21:21, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

@Hyblaeorum If you disagree with edits that I have made, then link them and describe what the specific problem is. Nicodene (talk) 21:56, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

They're several. The words to insert and edit are so many that one cannot go and change them every time. It's like a tidal shift moving the objects in the nearby.

The problem here is that the input terms are first created and then unnecessarily modified in pronunciation or morphology for unclear reasons. Knowledge should be based on the truthfulness and reliability of the data, so in the meantime, if you are unable to answer the question I asked you, I kindly ask you to intervene as little as possible on the Sicilian lemmas. There are tons of other languages in the world that you may know that need your voluntary interventions. My voluntary interventions require just as much time and patience in drafting the entries to be lexicographed and the time of a day is often not even enough to be able to do what one would actually like to do. In any case, I will use, as soon as possible, part of my time to point out any distortion of the Sicilian language that I have often read following your modifications. I write it, just to crown my speech here: the Sicilian language is neither Italian nor English. You have to speak it to know it. Na bona dumìnica. Hyblaeorum (talk) 12:49, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

@Hyblaeorum I am not actively editing now in any case, except to answer messages.

As for the edits that I made to pronunciation sections, they were to resolve an extremely pervasive problem. Nearly all of the pre-2022 Sicilian phonemic transcriptions had been added by individuals without an understanding of how phonemes work. Since I pointed out this problem in June of that year, the situation appears to have improved somewhat, to judge by the fact that out of the ten most recently updated Sicilian entries, eight have correctly done pronunciation sections. Still, hundreds of older entries remain to be fixed.

To fix errors such as the usage, in Sicilian phonemic transcriptions, of vowels other than /i ɛ a ɔ u/, vowel length markers, /ŋ/, etc. does not require being a native speaker of Sicilian. Nor does being one come with a native understanding of how phonemes work.

As for morphology, I have not modified the conjugations of any Sicilian verbs, nor the inflections of any adjectives and nouns, so it is not clear to me what you have in mind. Nicodene (talk) 14:15, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

apia#Latin and Reconstruction:Latin/happia

What should be done with these? -- Sokkjō 03:26, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Sokkjo. The cited DuCange entry references the statuta civitatis Astae. The surviving edition seems to date to 1379, though the existence of an older version dating back to 1211 can be deduced.[1]

Both dates are well beyond the point at which Medieval Latin and Romance are distinct languages, and so I would leave this entry as a borrowing from (Old) Piemontese. Nicodene (talk) 15:51, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

"terms inherited from Latin nominatives" again

Hello and Merry Christmas! I just encountered your addition of CAT:Catalan terms inherited from Latin nominatives to gespa. Awhile ago I said I would probably rename this to "terms potentially inherited from Latin nominatives" and when I encountered the following comment of yours, it made me want to resurrect this:

Accusative of the Latin word was caespitem; clearly not the etymon of gespa. The latter reflects, ultimately, the nominative caespes, remodelled per another declension class.

This immediately set off my bullshit meter, and indeed, it contradicts the etymology of the authoritative GDLC [1], which says:

Etimologia: del ll. caespes, -ĭtis ‘gleva herbada’, a través segurament d’una pronunciació descurada d’una altra forma dial. pirinenca, géspet, en el seu pl. géspe(t)s 1a font: c. 1880

Per Google Translate: "Etymology: from the ll. caespes, -ĭtis 'grassy field', probably through a careless pronunciation of another dial form. Pyrenean, grass, in its pl. géspe(t)s 1st source: c. 1880"

What this says essentially is that the plural géspets was pronounced "carelessly" as géspes, and from this a singular géspa was back-formed, since -es is the normal plural of nouns in -a. No need to assume an inheritance from the nominative.

I am sure this is not the only such questionable case. Since you clearly have a tendency to want to impute derivations from Latin nominatives when they may or may not actually exist, and since in any case it's often the case that inheritance from the nominative is only one of several suggested etymologies, I think the best course of action is to hedge the name of the category as I am proposing. That way you can continue to add the questionable etymologies and categories without us getting egg on our face. Benwing2 (talk) 04:28, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

@Benwing2 The GDLC’s proposal would struggle to account for the various Catalan and Gascon forms assembled in the FEW. If the Latin caespes is indeed their etymon, then a far more straightforward explanation for the variation -et ~ -e/Ø ~ -a would, in my view, be noun-class instability - that is, what you regard as ‘bullshit’. The phenomenon is commonplace enough; cf. pesta or tempesta. Incidentally it could also simply be a matter of phonetic erosion in an unstressed -et but we’d have to have comparable outcomes in another such word to accept this explanation.

Of course, considering the remaining oddity of the voiced initial segment, and possibly also the gender instability, it is not clear that the forms in question do in fact come from caespes. Note that the FEW entry is placed in the volume for ‘inconnus’ - words of uncertain origin - and the entry mentions possible blending with a pre-Roman word. If I had a computer with me I would investigate further.

In any case I supported the proposed hedging a year ago. Now I would rather delete the categories altogether as I haven’t the energy to continually defend their existence. Clearly you don’t like them, and I don’t care enough to bother. Nicodene (talk) 09:14, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

PS The existence of an Italian cespo, for which a derivation from caespes (> cespi :: cespo, or perhaps simply > *caespus) and not caespitem is undeniable, means that the label ‘bullshit’, its rudeness aside, is simply inaccurate. Nicodene (talk) 10:07, 26 December 2023 (UTC)