Talk:xłp̓x̣ʷłtłpłłskʷc̓

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The following information passed a request for deletion.

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.

xłp̓x̣ʷłtłpłłskʷc̓[edit]

This is a polysynthetic language, and this is a phrase that behaves as a single word, but is not idiomatic within the language (like 999 in German, above). —CodeCat 04:19, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

So I still say keep.​—msh210℠ (talk) 05:51, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No. delete -- Liliana • 07:14, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per our current WT:CFI. (Aside from which, what are the parts you suppose it decomposes into?) - -sche (discuss) 08:44, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
For what it's worth, I've managed to find a reference that gives the etymology of the term. - -sche (discuss) 18:21, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Move to RFV. Ƿidsiþ 08:59, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It's already cited according to the CFI Bella Coola is subject to ("one use or mention"). - -sche (discuss) 09:43, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
We do seem to be taking a step away from all words in all languages to all attestable utterances without spaces in all languages. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:12, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No, we're taking a step toward including all words in all languages, just without an anglocentric (or Indo-Eurocentric) definition of word. —Angr 16:34, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I second that notion. A dictionary is for the elucidation of people who wish to know the meaning, etymology, or other lexically significant aspects of words. As a routine English speaker, I would have no clue where to begin or end with a thing like this, and looking it up as is would be my only chance of learning anything about it. bd2412 T 01:11, 7 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep in the absence of any indication what the parts are this is supposedly the sum of. —Angr 14:53, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Now that -sche has found out what the parts are, I still say keep, as all I see is a single root with multiple affixes. It's no different from antidisestablishmentarianism or, for that matter, forewords. —Angr 10:29, 6 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Now that you mention it, this is especially comprable to "Angesprochenen", isn't it? In "die Abwesenheit des Angesprochenen", that last word is composed of initial capitalisation : substantivisation marker + an- (“to”) + ge- (perfect marker) + sprechen + vowel change : sprochen + -en (possessive/genitive marker). (Or, if one prefers, it's initial capitalisation : substantivisation marker + angesprochen (“spoken to”), which is an- (“to”) + gesprochen (“spoken”), which is ge- (perfect marker) + sprechen + vowel change, + -en (possessive/genitive marker), but then "xłp̓x̣ʷłtłpłłs" is xłp̓x̣ʷłtłpłł (“to have had in one's possession a bunchberry plant”) + -s (possessive marker), where the first element is xłp̓x̣ʷłtłp (“to have in one's possession a bunchberry plant”) + -łł (pluperfect marker), where the first element is xł- (“have, possess”) + p̓x̣ʷłtłp (“bunchberry plant”) (which is p̓x̣ʷłt, p̓xołt (“bunchberry”) + -łp (“tree, plant”)).) And would anyone dream of not having "Angesprochener" or "Deutscher"? - -sche (discuss) 18:02, 6 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        • This is quite convincing. I suspect that part of the problem with the word in question is that the orthography makes it look so exceptionally alien (it cannot be helpful in trying to revive the language in schools, either), but it does indeed seem to be comparable to German examples. The definition also makes it look very sentence-like, but why doesn't it mean "ex-owner of a bunchberry-plant" (which feels much more like a single lexical unit)? Finally, Given the limited attestation of this language, I doubt that people are going to go away and add endless Bella Coola entries - and I'm not sure it would be a bad thing if they did. User:Furius 21:12, 6 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
          • It does contain a pluperfect marker and a verb prefix, so that implies that it acts as a finite verb, not as a noun. As far as I can tell, anything that has a finite verb in it is a phrase. So it's not saying "person who used to have a bunchberry plant" but more literally "this person had owned a bunchberry plant before"; it is a statement of fact. —CodeCat 21:21, 6 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
          • I'm sorry if my comment implied the Bella Coola term to be a noun; I was only comparing it to a word with similar complexity, not a word with a similar POS. - -sche (discuss) 23:54, 6 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
            • I wouldn't even call it a phrase. I'd call it a verb. If Bella Coola is anything like other North American languages I've read about, the "he" part of the gloss is just there for the convenience of English speakers; there's nothing in the verb itself corresponding to a subject pronoun (rather like Latin amat (“he loves”)) and if you want to say "The fisher had had in his possession a bunchberry plant" it would be cipsx xłp̓x̣ʷłtłpłłskʷc̓ with a completely separate word for the subject, and no change in the verb. —Angr 22:32, 6 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
              • I agree with Angr's analysis that "there's nothing in the verb itself corresponding to a subject pronoun (rather like Latin amat (“he loves”))". AFAICT, Bella Coola is like Abenaki and, as Angr says, lots of other North American languages, in that regard. xłp̓x̣ʷłtłpłłskʷc̓ would seem to be an inflected form (like amat is of amo), though (presumably of xłp̓x̣ʷłtłp...though ironically, I don't think any citation can be found of that term, except the citations of this specific inflected form). - -sche (discuss) 23:54, 6 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
                • In my experience, pronominal affixes are among the most common things one finds on verbs in American Indian languages. In Cahuilla, they're absolutely required, though third-person singular ones are usually null- so it often looks like there isn't one. There are subject, object and one other class whose use escapes me at the moment (not all on the same verb), and independant subjects and objects are optional. Not only that, but there are pronominal possessor prefixes for most nouns. A sentence like "your father is hitting me" consists of only a verb and a noun with three different pronominal prefixes between them. "He is hitting me" is one word. I have yet to get to it yet in the grammars I've been studying, but there are apparently lots and lots of verb affixes that specify different modes or types of actions or states, to the point that the distinction between inflection and derivation gets seriously fuzzy. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:03, 7 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        • @-sche (or anyone else), what's the kʷc̓ bit on the end? Is that the part that indicates person? -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 21:52, 6 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
          • I don't know. Some references include it, some don't. It could a technically meaningful suffix that nevertheless doesn't add enough meaning to merit mention in the glosses of the references that include it, a correct but meaningless suffix (those are not unheard of), or even an error (the authorities who have it are normally reliable, but errors, too, are not unheard of). - -sche (discuss) 23:54, 6 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep, but change to an "inflected form of" entry for the root, and add entries for the affixes in it that aren't inflectional in the traditional sense. We really need to come up with a way to accurately represent the morphology of polysynthetic languages, since they can potentially have affixes that fill the role of pronouns, prepositions, adverbs, auxiliary verbs and a wide variety of particles. An "inflection" table covering all these would be huge to the point of uselessness. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:20, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. The notion that we should include "all words in all languages" is grounded in an anglophone notion of what a "word" is. This notion is a bit fuzzy and imperfect even for English, but if we want to include languages like Bella Coola — and we should — then we really need to take a step back and consider what a dictionary is actually for. Because this obviously is not it. I promise you that “xłp̓x̣ʷłtłpłłskʷc̓” is not an entry in any Bella Coola speaker's mental lexicon, and that an entry for it will not help anyone understand Bella Coola dialogue on YouTube. —RuakhTALK 05:47, 6 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Ambivalent. On the one hand, I heartily agree with Ruakh here: this term is neither idiomatic, nor something that folks would generally be expected to look for -- except for the fact that it's listed in a number of places as a famous example of a word (or what have you) consisting of entirely obstruents. As such, people might actually come looking for this, and it would behoove us to keep the entry. That said, I'd certainly support moving it to an appendix if that would be a better place for it. And I would certainly support the creation of entries for the various lexical parts of this term. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 06:08, 6 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I can't reasonably say keep/delete without knowing the language, but if this language writes entire complex sentences without spaces, then I would not expect a dictionary to list sentences, only words. Equinox ◑ 01:21, 7 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Native North American languages often have more expressive verbs than English has, such as this word and such as the Abenaki word n'môwalokabena (“we all perform required labour", "we all work together”) (inflected form of (deprecated template usage) môwalokamuk), but words are definitely still distinguished from sentences. As Angr supposes above, if you wanted to indicate who had had in his possession a bunchberry plant, you would use a separate word in Bella Coola, and if you wanted to say "my brother and my father and I work together" in Abenaki, you would say n'môwalokabena nijia ta n'mitôgwes, just as to say "the absence of the one addressed", you would use multiple words ("die Abwesenheit des Angesprochenen") in German. - -sche (discuss) 02:36, 7 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per Angr/-sche/Chuck. Eiríkr's point is quite valid as well, although I'm not always sure that a multilingual dictionary should cater to everone's needs, simply because that would be impossible even within reasonable bounds. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 02:10, 7 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Kept. User: PalkiaX50 talk to meh 01:35, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]


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