Talk:as in
Latest comment: 3 years ago by Kent Dominic in topic This is the breakroom, and as in, I need one
This is the breakroom, and as in, I need one
[edit]This is the breakroom, and as in, I need one Nip/Tuck, S04E04, 00:54
Regarding as in, is there some kind of ellipsis? If so, what's the material that's dropped out? --Backinstadiums (talk) 22:53, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
- It is just ungrammatical (but the intended sense is "I need a break"). Equinox ◑ 22:57, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
- Delete "and" to make it grammatical. --Kent Dominic (talk) 19:24, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
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There is but one sense supposed to be idiomatic ("inclusion-worthy"): "(idiomatic, conjunctive) In the sense of." Usage example: "bow," as in the weapon, not the front of a ship
To me it seems like as ("Considered to be, in relation to something else; in the relation (specified)") + in ("a member of"). DCDuring (talk) 02:19, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
- Delete sense #2 unless it's appropriately re-labeled under something other than adverb. --Kent Dominic (talk) 10:44, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
- Keep both senses (sense 2 is appropriately
{{&lit}}, but both senses are prepositions, not adverbs. —Mahāgaja · talk 16:46, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
- @Mahagaja: Maybe I should change my vote after reading your comment. Maybe you should change your vote after reading my comments here. In relevant , part: "Rather than defining sense #2 (which , if done for every collocation, would go on endlessly) I think a usage note about it would be better than simply deleting it. That’s what I plan to do if the deletion goes forward, since sense #2 is definitely encountered a regular basis in the vernaculars worldwide."
- For sense 2, “like” is not a synonym. You cannot change “a change in attitude of any portion of the earth's surface whether temporary or undulatory (as in some earthquakes) or permanent (as in areas of block faulting)”[1] into “a change in attitude of any portion of the earth's surface whether temporary or undulatory (like some earthquakes) or permanent (like areas of block faulting)”. And, of course, the combination of as followed by in can occur in many other ways (such as in “such as in areas that ...”, in which “such as” belongs together, as well as in “as well as in areas where ...”, in which “as well as” belongs together). --Lambiam 22:38, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
- @Lambiam: Maybe you can't. Other do. "Like" (i.e. as; as though, as if, etc.) has been used as a conjunction, albeit regularly proscribed, since Hector was a lad. (See Webster Dictionary: "like" and Webster Thesaurus: "like".) Sadly, both "like" and "as in" are also used synonymously for "such as," e.g. "Do you think I'm funny? Do I make you laugh, as in, a clown?" Consider how synonymous meanings (i.e. semantics) often have disparate punctuation re. syntax. --Kent Dominic (talk) 00:27, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
- Keep. Imetsia (talk) 23:54, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
- Keep — Dentonius 18:41, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
- Keep the "In the sense of" sense as idiomatic enough, and, as a consequence, keep the &lit sense. Delete "like" as a synonym of the latter (certainly not universal for &lit uses). Not sure about the PoS of the first sense. The supposed synonyms, i.e. and namely, are both listed as adverbs. Mihia (talk) 20:13, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
- Bear in mind that "as in" landed here under RFD consideration after I alerted @DCDuring about the labeling discrepancy between "as in" as an adverb versus a phrasal preposition (used adjectivally as parenthetically applied to "bow"" and "Sweden" in the examples for sense #1 and sense #2, respectively). In my own lexicon, two separate instances of "as in" are labeled as phrasal prepositions:
- In both instances, "like" or "i.e." can be substituted for "as in" with no semantic change in meaning. Obviously, the syntax differs: in example #1, like could be construed as a conjunction and would require a comma. (Same goes for substituting i.e.). In example #2, "like" could be deemed a conjunction or an interjection but in either case would also require a comma.
- Let's keep this mantra in mind: "synonym" ≠ "exactly equal in semantic meaning, linguistic form, and punctuation" but rather "virtually equal." (If you really want to hear me rant, ask about my peeve with all of the verbs that are labeled here and elsewhere as "transitive" but offer "intransitive" synonyms - and vice versa - as well as mismatched examples. I acknowledge the practicality of the status quo, but a bit more caution would obviate the discrepancies.) With all that said, I'd appreciate your further thoughts re. why you think the synonyms for "as in" need remedy. Cheers. --Kent Dominic (talk) 02:25, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
- The substitution of like for as in happens to work in the example of "In Sweden, as in most countries ..." because of the initial In. You can substitute like for just as: "In Sweden, like in most countries, ...". You can now delete the second in, although this suggests somewhat of a rebracketing, from "In Sweden (like in most countries) ..." to a syntactically debatable "In (Sweden, like most countries) ...". Consider the transformation of "For the Swedes, as for most Europeans, ..." to "For the Swedes, like most Europeans, ...". Is like also a synonym of as for, as of, as to, ...? --Lambiam 07:08, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
- @Lambiam: Thanks for the comment. Didn't see it until after my reply to Mihia. Please see below as the same applies to your observations. Cheers. --Kent Dominic (talk) 23:01, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
- What Lambiam says. If you substitute "like" for "as in" in the "Sweden" sentence, the resulting meaning is coincidentally roughly the same, but this is not because "like" itself really means "as in". In arbitrary other &lit cases, such as "it is as much in the mind as in the body", just to pull out a random example, "like" cannot be substituted at all. Mihia (talk) 11:16, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
- @Mihia: I'm with you on all that. Just wanted to point out that the "as in" > "like" nexus is valid while the "like" > "as" versus "as in" nexus is a matter of contextual style and semantic intent. For clarity, one might say, "In Sweden, as is true in (or for/concerning/regarding etc.) most countries..." Who knows what the original example was supposed to mean? Beats me. But now the discussion has turned far from my original contention, namely, that the Adverb label for as in is troublesome. I mean, "bow" (adverb) the weapon, not the front of a ship" or "In Sweden, (adverb) most countries, ..."? Wiktionary, please spare me. --Kent Dominic (talk) 22:56, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
- I agree that in the various
{{&lit}}senses, as in is an accidental juxtaposition of a conjunction and a preposition without a fixed meaning, and not an adverb, in the same way that a bit can be an adverb (“a bit too large“), but is not an adverb in the phrase “to put a bit in a horse’s mouth”. For the first sense, “‘free’ as in ‘free beer’”, I cannot figure out what POS this is. I am inclined to think this is short for “the same sense of ‘free’ as used in ‘free beer’”. --Lambiam 00:11, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
- I agree that in the various
- @Mihia: I'm with you on all that. Just wanted to point out that the "as in" > "like" nexus is valid while the "like" > "as" versus "as in" nexus is a matter of contextual style and semantic intent. For clarity, one might say, "In Sweden, as is true in (or for/concerning/regarding etc.) most countries..." Who knows what the original example was supposed to mean? Beats me. But now the discussion has turned far from my original contention, namely, that the Adverb label for as in is troublesome. I mean, "bow" (adverb) the weapon, not the front of a ship" or "In Sweden, (adverb) most countries, ..."? Wiktionary, please spare me. --Kent Dominic (talk) 22:56, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
- The substitution of like for as in happens to work in the example of "In Sweden, as in most countries ..." because of the initial In. You can substitute like for just as: "In Sweden, like in most countries, ...". You can now delete the second in, although this suggests somewhat of a rebracketing, from "In Sweden (like in most countries) ..." to a syntactically debatable "In (Sweden, like most countries) ...". Consider the transformation of "For the Swedes, as for most Europeans, ..." to "For the Swedes, like most Europeans, ...". Is like also a synonym of as for, as of, as to, ...? --Lambiam 07:08, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
- Let's keep this mantra in mind: "synonym" ≠ "exactly equal in semantic meaning, linguistic form, and punctuation" but rather "virtually equal." (If you really want to hear me rant, ask about my peeve with all of the verbs that are labeled here and elsewhere as "transitive" but offer "intransitive" synonyms - and vice versa - as well as mismatched examples. I acknowledge the practicality of the status quo, but a bit more caution would obviate the discrepancies.) With all that said, I'd appreciate your further thoughts re. why you think the synonyms for "as in" need remedy. Cheers. --Kent Dominic (talk) 02:25, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
- @Lambiam: From the get go, I've maintained that using a traditional POS is an inadequate tack to take regarding the label for any entry that comprises more than one word. @DCDuring fundamentally disagrees, which landed "as in" here for discussion. If I had my way regarding the first "as in" sense, it would look like this:
Prepositional phrase as: adverb + in: preposition (not comparable) 1. Namely regarding; specifically concerning. "Bow," as in the weapon, not the front of a ship Synonyms: i.e.; in other words; meaning (present participle) Usage note * Used parenthetically. * "Like" (conjunction or interjection) may be used synonymously without change in semantic meaning albeit with change in syntax, e.g. "Bow - like, the weapon, not the front of a ship."
- The current entry's example mistakenly (due to an encoding error?) omitted the comma after "bow," which threw off the entire correlation with the definition given.
- To anyone who's still listening: There's nothing "conjunctive" about this particular sense of "as in" except by extension, as described in the above Usage note.
- There. I've shouted my peace. --Kent Dominic (talk) 15:05, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
- Regarding part-of-speech assignment, we are currently constrained by WT:POS, which can function somewhat as a straitjacket, but without such constraint, we’d see an uncontrollable growth of inventive non-standard categories. Perhaps we could do with an escape category, monicker to be decided but comparable in function with the taxonomic incertae sedis. But any addition will require a vote. --Lambiam 15:53, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
- @Lambiam:
- Lambiam: Regarding part-of-speech assignment, we are currently constrained by WT:POS, which can function somewhat as a straitjacket.
- Kent: Don't I know it. (*Sigh.*) Do a spot-check on some of my contributions on the various Talk pages here and you'll see a mostly-one-sided despair in the discussion between @DCDuring and me. And, for precision's sake, WT:POS ≠ lexical category. POS is an antiquated (albeit marginally useful) set within lexical category. I.e. Prepositional phrase is a lexical category, not a POS; Preposition is a (traditional) POS within the set of lexical category. Quote me on this: No phrase, including hyphenated compounds from the same lexical category (e.g. "ticky-tacky") should rightfully be labeled under any traditional POS. It instead belongs under a lexical category comprised of a term that entails two words, at minimum. In my own lexicon, three words is the max. (Not an arbitrary max, I might add, without elaborating here.) So, "as in" falls into two
POSlexical categories as I indicated in the text boxes above. That's in the ideal world. I know, I know - this is Wiktionary. - Lambiam: But without such constraint, we’d see an uncontrollable growth of inventive non-standard categories.
- Kent: The Catch-22 favors WT:POS on that point despite all my weeping and wailing and kvetching. Incidentally, I credit the WT:POS inclusion of "Prepositional phrase" and exclusion "Idiom," but I can't fathom the exclusion of "Phrasal preposition" and inclusion of "Phrase."
- Lambiam: Perhaps we could do with an escape category, monicker to be decided but comparable in function with the taxonomic incertae sedis.
- Kent: That's a scary thought. I'd rather continue my weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth over the antiquated "9-sizes fits-all" approach toward labeling (i.e. as inadequate to phrases) than open up the linguistic
can of wormsPandora's box you suggest. On that score, my complaints here are nothing compared to my rants on the Talk pages re. articles that ridiculously try to explain the inexplicable anomalies and contradictions relating to traditional concepts like relative pronoun or modernsitic terminology like relativizer. (See "Relativer: A Linguistic Fable" for an unbridled rant). - Lambiam: But any addition will require a vote.
- Kent: Here's my dilemma: Do I owe it to target Wiktionary users to argue for for consensus on my own copyrighted definitions for 30 lexical categories (most are familiar; some are neologisms) and 600 sub-categories while throwing my yet-unpublished work into the public domain, or do I let myself squirm at the idea of target readers who encounter - to pick a random example - a "talk out of one's ass" phrase labeled here as a Verb when it should minimally be labeled a Verb phrase and ideally labeled as an Intransitive verb phrase? For now, I'm content to squirm. We'll see what happens after I publish later this year, if all goes well. --Kent Dominic (talk) 02:19, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
- @Lambiam:
- The "missing" comma was not an error. It's reflective of how the construction is typically punctuated by most speakers. "bow" as in the weapon is also a better reflection of the prosody of the phrase when spoken aloud, compared to "bow", as in the weapon. (A speaker might pause after "bow", but only if the idea of disambiguating came to them as an afterthought.) Colin M (talk) 21:11, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
- @ Colin M:
- Colin M: The "missing" comma was not an error. It's reflective of how the construction is typically punctuated by most speakers.
- Kent: Where are those speakers? I have some spare commas at hand. I’m willing to share.
- Colin M: "Bow" as in the weapon is also a better reflection of the prosody of the phrase when spoken aloud, compared to "bow", as in the weapon.
- Kent: Click on the link to the audio version of Wiktionary and upload your assertion there. While you’re at it, try explaining how “The bow which you sold me yesterday was defective” entails, sans comma, a non-restrictive relative clause.
- Colin M: (A speaker
mightpause after "bow,” but only if the idea of disambiguating came to them as an afterthought.) - Kent: (I won’t lecture you on punctuation. It suffices that prosody is irrelevant to punctuation, but not vice versa. And I won’t mention how an affinity (if not, minimal accuracy) regarding the latter helps to inform the former.) --Kent Dominic (talk) 02:31, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
- Try searching Google Books for "free as in" (and sort by most recent), or "gay as in", and observe how authors punctuate it. I'm going to decline your request to upload audio, because it sounds like a lot of hassle and it seems very unlikely that it would change your mind. Your question about the the bow which you sold me yesterday example seems to me like a non sequitur - perhaps you can elaborate on how you think it relates to as in? As for your last point, it's strange to me to think that relevance would not be a symmetric relation. Colin M (talk) 02:59, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
- I won't lecture you on correct comma usage, and it's too late to offer freelance editing services to the Free Software Foundation. Re. the other things: (1) "The bow, which you sold me yesterday, was defective" makes sense when correctly punctuated. (2) "A bow, as in the weapon, not the front of a ship" makes sense when correctly punctuated. The former example contains a parenthetical clause; the latter has a parenthetical phrase used adjectivally. And, BTW, there is no audio version of Wiktionary. I made the corresponding comment tongue-in-cheek. --Kent Dominic (talk) 00:20, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
- Try searching Google Books for "free as in" (and sort by most recent), or "gay as in", and observe how authors punctuate it. I'm going to decline your request to upload audio, because it sounds like a lot of hassle and it seems very unlikely that it would change your mind. Your question about the the bow which you sold me yesterday example seems to me like a non sequitur - perhaps you can elaborate on how you think it relates to as in? As for your last point, it's strange to me to think that relevance would not be a symmetric relation. Colin M (talk) 02:59, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
- @ Colin M:
- Regarding part-of-speech assignment, we are currently constrained by WT:POS, which can function somewhat as a straitjacket, but without such constraint, we’d see an uncontrollable growth of inventive non-standard categories. Perhaps we could do with an escape category, monicker to be decided but comparable in function with the taxonomic incertae sedis. But any addition will require a vote. --Lambiam 15:53, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
- Keep, Keep, a thousand times Keep. I just added some quotes, and I think you'll find they can't be explained by the proposed SoP interpretation. As in spend the nights side by side. = [in relation to] [a member of] spend the nights side by side? It also produces a backwards interpretation applied to the other example, a mummy (as in King Tut) – a mummy is not an example of King Tut. Though, funnily enough, the inverted version would also be felicitous: King Tut (as in the mummy). It's neat that the construction can introduce something above (a parent category, "mummies"), below (an example, "King Tut"), or to the side (a metonym, "mummy as in bandages"). Another point in its favour is that it has a very distinctive prosody that sets it apart from vanilla In Sweden, as in most countries uses. Finally, though it's far from a determinative factor, I will note that OED has an entry for as in. Colin M (talk) 00:19, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
- Keep sense 1, abstain on sense 2; if someone can think of a better way to explain the use covered by the &lit, that is to be welcomed.
←₰-→Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk) 08:21, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
- I think there is not just one &lit use -- the words "as" and "in" can be put together "non-idiomatically" with different results, depending on context. Presently we have an example of one of these. Mihia (talk) 15:19, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
- @Lingo Bingo Dingo: Try this:
Phrasal preposition as: conjunction + in: preposition (not comparable) 1. like it is true regarding, concerning, or within. "In Sweden, as in other countries, ... Synonyms: like Usage note * Used parenthetically. * This sense of "as in" is a pleonasm wherein "in" may be omitted without change in semantic meaning albeit with change in syntax from phrasal conjunction to a mere conjunction, e.g. "In Sweden, as (or like) other countries... *In any case, "as in" is used adverbially.
- It seems the majority of contributors here haven't fully considered how a prepositional phrase differs from a phrasal preposition (as lexical categories relating to phrases) differs from an adverb (relating to POS) for labeling purposes versus usage. Unlike @Robbie SWE, count me as (the) one who cares. As such, I hardly rely on ANY dictionary as bearing demonstrably consistent expertise. No disrespect to lexicographers. Historically speaking, their job is to catalog speech, not to linguistically analyze and assess its components. I give Wiktionary credit for trying to transcend that but, as far as lexical categories for the labeling of phrases goes, this place is still in its infancy. --Kent Dominic (talk) 16:00, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
- IMO there is no reason why, for our purposes, multi-word phrases should not be labelled just as the PoS that they behave as. It is, after all, essentially arbitrary whether, for example, a noun or verb is written as two words or one. There could be a one-word synonym of a two-word noun or verb phrase, or vice versa. "prepositional phrase" is different because a "prepositional phrase" is actually not (the way we use it) grammatically a preposition. Mihia (talk) 01:29, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
- @Mihia: In reply, see the discussion here. (Skip to the "red flag" part.) For a good laugh, also look at my Multi-word expression comments in the thread thereafter. Seriously, though, it seems to me that you - like Wiktionary in general as far as MWEs go - are conflating POS and usage. With the exception of multi-word interjections, no MWE constitutes a POS. There's no "Christmas tree" Noun; no "give up the ghost" Verb. There's no flipped my ex-brother-in-law Vinnie from Manhattan the bird Verb despite what Wiktionary asserts to the contrary. Labeling it instead as a Verb phrase alerts everyone (in my circles, anyway) to the set, immutable, idiomatic structure. Thankfully, the "flip the bird" page here gave the corresponding alerts via the headword line and as a Usage note. If not, some bumblebutt would try a substitution like, "He summersaulted me the bird" or "He flipped me the chicken." If you're unfamiliar with how the "verb phrase" and "noun phrase" (inter alia) lexical categories differ from POS, you might try reading those corresponding articles at Wikipedia. Also, don't bother trying to search on "lexical category," which redirects to POS. Instead go to Syntactic category. --Kent Dominic (talk) 03:14, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
- IMO there is no reason why, for our purposes, multi-word phrases should not be labelled just as the PoS that they behave as. It is, after all, essentially arbitrary whether, for example, a noun or verb is written as two words or one. There could be a one-word synonym of a two-word noun or verb phrase, or vice versa. "prepositional phrase" is different because a "prepositional phrase" is actually not (the way we use it) grammatically a preposition. Mihia (talk) 01:29, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
- It seems the majority of contributors here haven't fully considered how a prepositional phrase differs from a phrasal preposition (as lexical categories relating to phrases) differs from an adverb (relating to POS) for labeling purposes versus usage. Unlike @Robbie SWE, count me as (the) one who cares. As such, I hardly rely on ANY dictionary as bearing demonstrably consistent expertise. No disrespect to lexicographers. Historically speaking, their job is to catalog speech, not to linguistically analyze and assess its components. I give Wiktionary credit for trying to transcend that but, as far as lexical categories for the labeling of phrases goes, this place is still in its infancy. --Kent Dominic (talk) 16:00, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
- @Mihia: P.S. Call me slow, but it's only just now occurred to me: Wiktionary is trying to shoehorn Dependency Grammar POS wholesale atop real-world phrase structures. The two concepts just don't jive, at least not the way Wiktionary is attempting it. That's why we've got folks here trying to put the same dependency shade of lipstick on the "as in" and "inasmuch as" and "give me a break" structural hogs. I look at it from a Grammatical set theory perspective, which is more along the lines of phrase structures, but further broken down into its paradigmatic POS dependencies. E.g. "Give me a break" is NOT a Verb; it's a fully-formed sentence albeit with "you" (either singular or plural) as a null subject + a verb phrase comprised of "give" (transitive verb) + "me" (transitive object, traditionally called an indirect object) + "a break" (noun phrase) = a transitive object complement (traditionally called a direct object ) comprised of "a" (determiner) + "break" (noun). Is Wiktionary ready for those unfamiliar lexical categories, shown here in red? I'm not holding my breath. --Kent Dominic (talk) 04:01, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
- I can't really see Wiktionary moving away from the traditional PoS categories any time soon. On the point about phrases, it can seem a bit strange to see multi-word phrases, that may themselves be composed of multiple PoS, labelled as just e.g. "noun" or "verb", and I found it that way too at first, but logically it has come to make sense, to me anyway, by looking at the phrase meaning overall. If "Christmastree" was written as one word, then it would be a noun. The fact that happens to be written as two words doesn't logically change that. "Give me a break" would or could be a sentence, but our definition is for "(to) give someone a break". "(to) give a break" is logically as much a "verb" as, say, "(to) relieve", in the sense that the two things mean exactly the same (enough for these purposes). The awkwardness with the lemma is what to do with the generic object "someone", or whether or how to mention it, and presently I don't believe that we are consistent with this, or fully logical in all cases. Mihia (talk) 11:12, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
- @Mihia: Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying the WT:POS makes no sense; I’m saying it’s convoluted sense that is pretty much arbitrary both fundamentally and in practice. E.g. “by the way” gets a proper Prepositional phrase label (i.e. as a lexical category, not a POS). It’s rightly labeled neither as an Interjection nor as an Adverb despite how the phrase is used interjectionally and adverbially. I’d be mortified if “by the way” were labeled as a Noun. By contrast, “not in the slightest” is labeled as an Adverb. Makes sense? Well, let’s put semantic, syntactic, and overall linguistic check boxes next to that phrase to see how it shakes out. The Mr. Intrepid Student in me asks, “where’s the adverb in ‘not in the least’? Shouldn’t it be an adjective, because of ‘least’? Plus, I’ve only heard it used as an interjection. And, wait – how the heck can the adjective, ‘least,’ follow the preposition, ‘in’? Is it a case of nominalization? It's a noun phrase under Phrase Structure Grammar, right?” No, Mihia, you won’t find me seeking a consensus to accordingly change the label here, or to rabidly edit the Wiktionary entries that entail a misguided consensus that prefers usage primacy to syntactic accuracy re. labeling MWEs. @DCDuring has disabused me of any notion that Wiktionary might move toward becoming a one-stop-shop for users – like the average students in my English classes – who truly do ask the types of linguistic questions posed above (i.e. in their bona fide interest in learning the language and in their attempts to catch out an ill-prepared instructor). I've chastised DCDuring often enough for condescendingly underestimating the knowledge and interest that ordinary students express on these matters, so I won't delve into that here and now. Instead, I’m content to occasionally kill time on rants like these, and to waste the time of anyone who’s caught reading them. --Kent Dominic (talk) 21:25, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
- A way to understand why it makes sense to label not in the slightest as an adverb (given the Wiktionary convention of not having different PoS labels for multi-words) is again to envisage a single word, maybe even a made-up one, let's say "notremotely" because I can't right now think of a real one, that means the same. I think it was before my time, so someone may correct me, but my understanding from somewhere is that at least part of the reason for "prepositional phrase" is because of the constant issue otherwise of whether these are adjectival, adverbial, or both, and the potential necessity of duplication if one PoS isn't used to cover all. The present state of the specific entry by the way may be debatable in certain respects and/or need some attention, I think. Mihia (talk) 22:34, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
- @Mihia: Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying the WT:POS makes no sense; I’m saying it’s convoluted sense that is pretty much arbitrary both fundamentally and in practice. E.g. “by the way” gets a proper Prepositional phrase label (i.e. as a lexical category, not a POS). It’s rightly labeled neither as an Interjection nor as an Adverb despite how the phrase is used interjectionally and adverbially. I’d be mortified if “by the way” were labeled as a Noun. By contrast, “not in the slightest” is labeled as an Adverb. Makes sense? Well, let’s put semantic, syntactic, and overall linguistic check boxes next to that phrase to see how it shakes out. The Mr. Intrepid Student in me asks, “where’s the adverb in ‘not in the least’? Shouldn’t it be an adjective, because of ‘least’? Plus, I’ve only heard it used as an interjection. And, wait – how the heck can the adjective, ‘least,’ follow the preposition, ‘in’? Is it a case of nominalization? It's a noun phrase under Phrase Structure Grammar, right?” No, Mihia, you won’t find me seeking a consensus to accordingly change the label here, or to rabidly edit the Wiktionary entries that entail a misguided consensus that prefers usage primacy to syntactic accuracy re. labeling MWEs. @DCDuring has disabused me of any notion that Wiktionary might move toward becoming a one-stop-shop for users – like the average students in my English classes – who truly do ask the types of linguistic questions posed above (i.e. in their bona fide interest in learning the language and in their attempts to catch out an ill-prepared instructor). I've chastised DCDuring often enough for condescendingly underestimating the knowledge and interest that ordinary students express on these matters, so I won't delve into that here and now. Instead, I’m content to occasionally kill time on rants like these, and to waste the time of anyone who’s caught reading them. --Kent Dominic (talk) 21:25, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
- I can't really see Wiktionary moving away from the traditional PoS categories any time soon. On the point about phrases, it can seem a bit strange to see multi-word phrases, that may themselves be composed of multiple PoS, labelled as just e.g. "noun" or "verb", and I found it that way too at first, but logically it has come to make sense, to me anyway, by looking at the phrase meaning overall. If "Christmastree" was written as one word, then it would be a noun. The fact that happens to be written as two words doesn't logically change that. "Give me a break" would or could be a sentence, but our definition is for "(to) give someone a break". "(to) give a break" is logically as much a "verb" as, say, "(to) relieve", in the sense that the two things mean exactly the same (enough for these purposes). The awkwardness with the lemma is what to do with the generic object "someone", or whether or how to mention it, and presently I don't believe that we are consistent with this, or fully logical in all cases. Mihia (talk) 11:12, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
- @Mihia: P.S. Call me slow, but it's only just now occurred to me: Wiktionary is trying to shoehorn Dependency Grammar POS wholesale atop real-world phrase structures. The two concepts just don't jive, at least not the way Wiktionary is attempting it. That's why we've got folks here trying to put the same dependency shade of lipstick on the "as in" and "inasmuch as" and "give me a break" structural hogs. I look at it from a Grammatical set theory perspective, which is more along the lines of phrase structures, but further broken down into its paradigmatic POS dependencies. E.g. "Give me a break" is NOT a Verb; it's a fully-formed sentence albeit with "you" (either singular or plural) as a null subject + a verb phrase comprised of "give" (transitive verb) + "me" (transitive object, traditionally called an indirect object) + "a break" (noun phrase) = a transitive object complement (traditionally called a direct object ) comprised of "a" (determiner) + "break" (noun). Is Wiktionary ready for those unfamiliar lexical categories, shown here in red? I'm not holding my breath. --Kent Dominic (talk) 04:01, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
- No OneLook reference apart from Wiktionary has this. I don't see how these words together are even a constituent. DCDuring (talk) 17:44, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
- I agree that grammatically they may not be, hence the difficulty of assigning a PoS. OTOH, I think that the common use such as in the example given, "'bow' as in the weapon, not the front of a ship", is hard to understand from the parts, and can really count as idiomatic. Mihia (talk) 18:27, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
- @Mihia: The problem is entirely due to the polysemy of the component words. The entry for in is very long. The definitions of as are a bit abstract. I usually consider such a situation as warranting some additional usage examples, which also serve to attract a search as for "as in". These high-use collocations of function words are definitely problematic. DCDuring (talk) 23:33, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
- @DCDuring:Something I've failed to say up to now: In my own lexicon, each mention among any of the 500,000 words or phrases has a screen tip with (a) the relevant lexical category and (b) a customized definition that links to the exact sense given within the glossary's 20,000 entries. I.e., even if you click on a word like "the," it's linked to the contextually relevant one among the nine senses defined. No one has to look up anything. The encoding effort has been monumental, but not counterproductive, since I'm the only one doing the work. I can't imagine the nightmare of trying to initiate something similar here, given the exponentially larger corpus and God knows how many contributors, not to mention cross-purposes, differing opinions, dead links, human error, etc. --Kent Dominic (talk) 05:52, 4 March 2021 (UTC)
- @Mihia: The problem is entirely due to the polysemy of the component words. The entry for in is very long. The definitions of as are a bit abstract. I usually consider such a situation as warranting some additional usage examples, which also serve to attract a search as for "as in". These high-use collocations of function words are definitely problematic. DCDuring (talk) 23:33, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
- I don't think that's disqualifying. We already have a whole category for those: Category:English non-constituents. (Though, incidentally, I disagree about it not being a constituent. I'm thinking it's best understood as a preposition with metalinguistic function. But it's a tricky case for sure.) Colin M (talk) 18:49, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
- @Colin M: I created Category:English non-constituents to allow us to have some snowclones in principal namespace, instead of consigning them to appendices etc, which eventually fall into neglect. DCDuring (talk) 23:20, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
- I agree that grammatically they may not be, hence the difficulty of assigning a PoS. OTOH, I think that the common use such as in the example given, "'bow' as in the weapon, not the front of a ship", is hard to understand from the parts, and can really count as idiomatic. Mihia (talk) 18:27, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
- Abstain on both senses. It's neither here nor there for me on this one. --Robbie SWE (talk) 18:53, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
- (*Ahem*) So far, the consensus seems to be "keep."
Kept per unsigned commenter. DAVilla 09:02, 24 June 2021 (UTC)