Category talk:Terms derived from Proto-Oceanic
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.
As we treat it, Oceanic is a term for a sub-sub-sub-sub-? group of the Austronesian languages. This includes many languages of Micronesia, New Guinea, and Fiji, as well as the Polynesian languages. It does NOT, however, include the languages of the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, or nearby areas. The narrowest grouping that contains those and Polynesian is Malayo-Polynesian. Somehow, someone got the idea that Oceanic or Oceanian was the name for what is really Malayo-Polynesian or Austronesian. I'm not sure if Embryomystic (talk • contribs) is that person, but that user is the one who put {{proto|Oceanic}} in every entry I've seen so far in this category or its subcategories. Perhaps he/she was just making sure they all had a {{proto}} template. Not that it matters now...
While I can't guarantee that there aren't a few late borrowings via other languages, It looks to me like the following categories should be pretty much empty:
Category:Chamorro terms derived from Proto-OceanicCategory:Hiligaynon terms derived from Proto-Oceanic*Category:Ilocano terms derived from Proto-Oceanic*Category:Indonesian terms derived from Proto-OceanicCategory:Malagasy terms derived from Proto-OceanicCategory:Tagalog terms derived from Proto-Oceanic*Category:Tetum terms derived from Proto-Oceanic
What's more, any entries in the following categories that say in the etymology: "From {{proto|Oceanic}}, compare " followed by words in any of the languages categorized above need to be corrected:
Category:'Are'are terms derived from Proto-Oceanic(empty, but valid)Category:Fijian terms derived from Proto-OceanicCategory:Gilbertese terms derived from Proto-OceanicCategory:Hawaiian terms derived from Proto-OceanicCategory:Kapingamarangi terms derived from Proto-OceanicCategory:Mangarevan terms derived from Proto-OceanicCategory:Maori terms derived from Proto-OceanicCategory:Muduapa terms derived from Proto-OceanicCategory:Rapa Nui terms derived from Proto-OceanicCategory:Rarotongan terms derived from Proto-OceanicCategory:Rotuman terms derived from Proto-OceanicCategory:Samoan terms derived from Proto-OceanicCategory:Tokelauan terms derived from Proto-OceanicCategory:Tongan terms derived from Proto-Oceanic
In other words, all entries in the subcategories of this category are potentially messed up, and will have to be checked.
For those of you that don't know Austronesian historical linguistics, the languages marked above with an * are guaranteed to have no subgroups of Malayo-Polynesian in common with the languages in the second list, so entries in the * categories that cite cognates in the languages categorized by the second list, as well as those entries in categories in the second list that cite cognates in the languages categorized by the * categories, can safely have {{proto|Oceanic}} changed to {{proto|Malayo-Polynesian}} without further research. Those of us who know how to look up the etymologies should concentrate on the rest.
Sorry for the volume and dry nature of this, but the problem arose from people not having details straight, so we'll need to make sure we do, in order to fix it. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:42, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
- Chuck is quite right. I've already cleaned up Hiligaynon and deleted the erroneous category. —Angr 22:18, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks! Chuck Entz (talk) 22:23, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
- Sounds like just the right job for me! I'll go through the Polynesian ones and replace Oceanic comparisons with links to my Proto-Polynesian pages. --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 02:32, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
- Rotuman is related closely to Fijian, but all the terms in this category are in fact derived from a Polynesian language, so I'm going to mark them as such. I'm still working through the rest, although I don't know enough to fix them all. --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 03:46, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks! Chuck Entz (talk) 22:23, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
Should we speedy delete the now empty categories? --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 16:43, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
- The categories in the first list involve languages not descended from Proto-Oceanic. Those might be populated by late borrowing, for instance if Tagalog borrowed an English term itself borrowed from a Polynesian language. It may very well have happened, but too rarely to maintain a category for it. We've been deleting those as we empty them.
- The second-list members are more problematic: a few cognate sets can be traced back to Proto-Oceanic, but no further. Those cognates are legitimate members of the categories in question, and I've indeed run into at least a couple such cases (one could also add Proto-Oceanic as an intermediate step in the etymology, but that seems more clutter than useful information). So it's a judgment call as to how likely the categories are to have members in the near future. I haven't been deleting them, but others might. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:49, 3 June 2012 (UTC)