Category talk:English proper adjectives
Latest comment: 9 years ago by Renard Migrant in topic RFC discussion: January 2015
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Mg and I discussed this on WT:ID, and he pointed out that this isn't a formal category (there's not formally any such thing as a 'proper adjective'). - -sche (discuss) 22:06, 26 April 2012 (UTC)
- I'm not even sure what it's supposed to mean. Is it an adjective that expresses a relationship to a single defined entity? Like English does to England? I think delete... —CodeCat 22:09, 26 April 2012 (UTC)
- Yes, but then we lose functionality. How else could we sort together entries like Hitlerian and Napoleonic? --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 00:41, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
- (And don't say eponyms, because that includes nouns too and is thus of a much greater scope. It doesn't fulfill the same purpose). --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 00:43, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
- There's always "eponymous adjectives" Chuck Entz (talk) 12:53, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
- That's pretty good.--Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 13:45, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
- No strong feelings, I'm not sure what a proper adjective is anyway, so categorizing them is gonna be hard if nobody can come up with a usable definition. So I lean towards delete. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:52, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
- That's pretty good.--Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 13:45, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
- There's always "eponymous adjectives" Chuck Entz (talk) 12:53, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
- Keep. Some dictionaries and books have the term: “proper adjective”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.; AHD; Merrian-Webster; google books:"proper adjective". Whatever the name of the category, I find having such a category useful or attractive; Category:English eponyms is too much of a mix of "Achillean" and "Aaron's rod" for my taste. On the choice of a name, google:"eponymous adjectives" (16,100 hits) appears way less common than google:"proper adjectives" (177,000 hits). Following the Google books sources found by searching for "proper adjectives", proper adjectives include (a) "Achilean", "Popperian", "Chomskian", and (b) "English", "Spanish", "Swedish", "Namibian". German examples include "Berliner". Further category members are "Martian" and "Jovian". It follows that a proper adjective is not the same as an eponymous adjective. The definition of a proper adjective is of the form "Of or relating to <proper name>", with variations. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:25, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
- So then what distinguishes "Of or relating to <proper noun>" from "Of or relating to <not a proper noun>" in any significant way? —CodeCat 19:30, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
- For one thing, capitalization marks proper adjectives off, in English anyway. Just like proper nouns are almost always capitalized, so are proper adjectives. For another thing, proper adjectives show specific suffixes, it seems; by having a glimpse at them as a group, you get a feel for how they are created in English (or another language). --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:54, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
- Capitalisation differs per language though. Dutch in particular has rather complex rules about the capitalisation (which don't make even the slightest sense to me), whereas for example Swedish and Spanish just spell such adjectives in lowercase. —CodeCat 19:59, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
- (after edit conflict) There's one more thing: the current categorization of "Addisonian" into Category:English eponyms may be wrong, if one believes the definitions of "eponym" found at “eponym”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.; see Merriam-Webster: eponym and AHD: eponym. It seems to me that all these adjectives should be removed from Category:English eponyms. These dictionaries have the genus of "name" rather than "word" in the definition of "eponym". This would require research into what linguists usually mean by "eponym" to be on the safe side, though.
- Capitalization varies per language, no doubt. It is the patterns of suffixing that are interesting in the first place, I think. --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:08, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
- But those, too, are language specific. It would seem a little inconsistent to call English#English a proper adjective, while engelsk#Swedish, its translation and cognate, is not. —CodeCat 20:36, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
- The suffix patterns are a few within each language, which is what makes them interesting, to me anyway. As regards calling the adjective "English" a proper adjective in English, while its Swedish analogue is called just an adjective, you've got the same inter-language inconsistency in names of languages: "English" is ranked as proper noun in English, while its Swedish analogue "engelska" is not ranked a proper noun. Not really a problem, if you ask me. --Dan Polansky (talk) 21:01, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
- Presumably you're judging that based on capitalisation. So what about German, where all nouns are capitalised and adjectives never are, so there is no way to tell 'properness' from the spelling? —CodeCat 21:38, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
- German does capitalize adjectives in 'sch derived from personal names (Grimm'sches Gesetz, Verner'sches Gesetz, etc.) as well as the uninflectable adjectives in -er derived from place names (Berliner Luft, Kölner Straßen). Adjectives are also capitalized when they form part of a proper noun (Atlantischer Ozean, Schwarzes Meer) or a species name (Australische Kasarka, Kleine Bambusratte). —Angr 21:57, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
- The adjectival properness is not told from the capitalization. It is told from the definition form of "Of or relating to <proper noun>", or the like. In Czech, proper adjectives are often not capitalized, as in "pražský" ("Praha"), "newyorský" ("New York"), "kansaský" ("Kansas"), "popperovský" ("Popper"), or "humovský" ("Hume"). --Dan Polansky (talk) 22:02, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
- Presumably you're judging that based on capitalisation. So what about German, where all nouns are capitalised and adjectives never are, so there is no way to tell 'properness' from the spelling? —CodeCat 21:38, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
- The suffix patterns are a few within each language, which is what makes them interesting, to me anyway. As regards calling the adjective "English" a proper adjective in English, while its Swedish analogue is called just an adjective, you've got the same inter-language inconsistency in names of languages: "English" is ranked as proper noun in English, while its Swedish analogue "engelska" is not ranked a proper noun. Not really a problem, if you ask me. --Dan Polansky (talk) 21:01, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
- But those, too, are language specific. It would seem a little inconsistent to call English#English a proper adjective, while engelsk#Swedish, its translation and cognate, is not. —CodeCat 20:36, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
- Capitalisation differs per language though. Dutch in particular has rather complex rules about the capitalisation (which don't make even the slightest sense to me), whereas for example Swedish and Spanish just spell such adjectives in lowercase. —CodeCat 19:59, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
- For one thing, capitalization marks proper adjectives off, in English anyway. Just like proper nouns are almost always capitalized, so are proper adjectives. For another thing, proper adjectives show specific suffixes, it seems; by having a glimpse at them as a group, you get a feel for how they are created in English (or another language). --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:54, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
- So then what distinguishes "Of or relating to <proper noun>" from "Of or relating to <not a proper noun>" in any significant way? —CodeCat 19:30, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
Kept for lack of consensus. --ElisaVan (talk) 16:08, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for cleanup (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.
Since there was no consensus to delete this category, would anyone like to help fill it up? "Proper adjective" is not a formally-defined part of speech, so you can potentially add any adjective you like; the category currently contains a small handful of the many adjectives derived from personal or place-names that we have entries for, so you could start by adding more of those. - -sche (discuss) 04:26, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
- We have a pretty unambiguous definition of proper adjective. Renard Migrant (talk) 17:54, 12 January 2015 (UTC)