User talk:DCDuring/2012 QIII
2012 Q III
[edit]Reminder
[edit]This seems like a good time to remind you not to revert people's edits because you don't understand them. This is not in reference to anything in particular, just presumably it will happen again if nobody reminds you. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:59, 1 July 2012 (UTC)
- I take this in the spirit in which it seems to be offered. I usually try to avoid following the quick-on-the-draw practices modeled so often by some here. For example, I research etymological derivations, such as those of the terms included in Category:English words suffixed with -grapher, just to mention a current case. To support my research, I try to keep browser tabs open to Online Etymological Dictionary, OneLook, COCA, BNC, Robert, Century, and Perseus, as well as Google books etc. Do you have any other recommendations for research sources? I hate to waste people's time by making unsubstantiatable edits of any kind or arbitrary deletions, even if substantiable. DCDuring TALK 17:11, 1 July 2012 (UTC)
I apologize for thë that got stuck in there. My Keyboard Layout is customised to have applying Diacritics on the ‘{’ Key as well as ‘}’, so my clumsy Fingers must have hit the right Brace when I was not holding the Shift‐key down. I just wanted to assure you that that was an Accident. --Æ&Œ (talk) 12:08, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
- Not an issue. I routinely do cleanups of format problems that AutoFormat finds. A very large percentage of my edits are mistaken in some way. Often I catch them, but sometimes I don't. DCDuring TALK 12:59, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
Your edit added some excess whitespace; see e.g. -athlon#English, and its extra space between the inflection line and the sense line. (This is a big part of why I think <onlyinclude> is preferable.) —RuakhTALK 19:59, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks for letting me know, especially the specifics. I had screwed up similarly before, but didn't get specifics. I don't get the logic of when spaces are OK and considered helpful for readability in templates and when they are destructive. Believe me, I'd much rather that someone who knew what he was doing would clean this stuff up, but that's not going to happen. Frankly, the responsible template writers should not spend their time on one-at-a-time changes rather than fixing up the messes where there skills can significantly speed or finesse the job.
- BTW, I have inserted
{{documentation subpage}}
on all the "/doc" pages that showed up on the 7/1/2012 run of uncategorized templates. Only about half were on doc pages that I had myself created ;-\}. We might want a similar template with a less intrusive header. DCDuring TALK 20:50, 2 July 2012 (UTC)- Re: "I don't get the logic of when spaces are OK and considered helpful for readability in templates and when they are destructive": That's because the details of when whitespace is or is not significant are incredibly complicated, and no one human could ever keep track of all of them! (This is one of the reasons that it can be useful to test a change before making it.) —RuakhTALK 23:23, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
- I see. But some folks know this kind of thing better than others.
- For my current, narrow purposes, extra space that appears on the documentation page and is transcluded onto the main template page is wikitext (low risk). Similarly with talk page stuff.
- On the main template page, is my best bet to simply tack <noinclude>{{documentation}}</noinclude> onto the end of the last line and make sure I've backspaced away any stray spaces or newlines?
- Trying to eliminate excessive space in entries gives me some idea of the effects, so I usually try to follow the delete-stray-spaces-at-the-end discipline. DCDuring TALK 23:35, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
- I think your best bet is to use <onlyinclude>. It's intuitive, it works, I've never once seen it cause a problem. (Well, sometimes it causes other editors to make mistakes because they don't know what it is, but the best solution to that is to use it more, so people get more familiar with it!) —RuakhTALK 00:21, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
- Well, you don't have to tell me the same thing five times to get me to do it. Just three or four. DCDuring TALK 00:48, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
- I think your best bet is to use <onlyinclude>. It's intuitive, it works, I've never once seen it cause a problem. (Well, sometimes it causes other editors to make mistakes because they don't know what it is, but the best solution to that is to use it more, so people get more familiar with it!) —RuakhTALK 00:21, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
- Re: "I don't get the logic of when spaces are OK and considered helpful for readability in templates and when they are destructive": That's because the details of when whitespace is or is not significant are incredibly complicated, and no one human could ever keep track of all of them! (This is one of the reasons that it can be useful to test a change before making it.) —RuakhTALK 23:23, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
"in alt"
[edit]Hi, is [[alt]] in the two meanings for which you've provided citations for the phrase "in alt" really an abbreviation? It doesn't seem like it to me. —Angr 07:43, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
- I don't know. Last night, I didn't find mention of it anywhere except as an abbreviation. The OED might help. I'm not familiar with it and haven't studied it for long. I am fairly sure that the excitement sense is an extension of the musical sense. The musical sense can, I think, occur outside of "in alt", though often only in tables. But I think I have seen "to alt G" or "to G alt", for example. Collins and RHU have information. RHU has an etymology. See “in alt”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.. They still don't have the extended meaning.
- I never liked abbreviation as a PoS header. The entry for [[alt#English]] is ridiculously disorganized. Alt in the internet sense and in the senses in question seem to have become words in their own rights, with two separate etymologies. I don't mind having simple lists of terms whose etymology and meaning are identical, but many abbreviations have gone beyond that. DCDuring TALK 15:46, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
- To me, abbreviations are things that are generally not pronounced the way they're spelled, unless they're initialisms. So [[etc.]] and Mr. are abbreviations because they're pronounced [[et cetera]] and [[Mister]], while abbreviations like [[e.g.]] and [[i.e.]] have become initialisms because they're pronounced "ee-jee" and "eye-ee". So while I'm sure "alt" can be an abbreviation for the musical voice alto, if it's being pronounced [ɔlt] (which I'm certain it is in these examples), it's not really an abbreviation. Another thing making me think this meaning of "alt" is different from alto is that "in alt" means "in the octave above the treble staff", which is quite high, but the alto voice is (despite its etymology) rather low, the lowest of the female voices. The alto range is in the bottom two-thirds of the treble staff and maybe about half an octave below it. So it seems unlikely that "in alt" (whether literally or figuratively) is really directly related to "alto". —Angr 16:23, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
- My idiolect used to have it that abbreviations were things that in writing had to have periods. I suppose that if it were actually diachronically or synchronically from either alto#English or directly from Latin altum a linguist would call it clipping. But RHU has it as being from Old Occitan or Occitan alt or (deprecated template usage) alt. DCDuring TALK 16:38, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
- Yeah, having periods is an important feature of abbreviations for me too, but since Brits usually write things like "Mr" and "Mrs" without periods, I figured they're not a necessary condition of abbreviationhood. —Angr 17:25, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
- My idiolect used to have it that abbreviations were things that in writing had to have periods. I suppose that if it were actually diachronically or synchronically from either alto#English or directly from Latin altum a linguist would call it clipping. But RHU has it as being from Old Occitan or Occitan alt or (deprecated template usage) alt. DCDuring TALK 16:38, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
- To me, abbreviations are things that are generally not pronounced the way they're spelled, unless they're initialisms. So [[etc.]] and Mr. are abbreviations because they're pronounced [[et cetera]] and [[Mister]], while abbreviations like [[e.g.]] and [[i.e.]] have become initialisms because they're pronounced "ee-jee" and "eye-ee". So while I'm sure "alt" can be an abbreviation for the musical voice alto, if it's being pronounced [ɔlt] (which I'm certain it is in these examples), it's not really an abbreviation. Another thing making me think this meaning of "alt" is different from alto is that "in alt" means "in the octave above the treble staff", which is quite high, but the alto voice is (despite its etymology) rather low, the lowest of the female voices. The alto range is in the bottom two-thirds of the treble staff and maybe about half an octave below it. So it seems unlikely that "in alt" (whether literally or figuratively) is really directly related to "alto". —Angr 16:23, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
I was going through some terms that I had looked at earlier and I noticed that after I had added abbozzo as a new entry and tagged it as the alt form, you changed it to the dominanat form and abozzo to the alt form. I am curious why, as all of my dictionaries state the opposite. Granted, my dictionaries are not from this century, so I understand if things have changed, or if my sources are incorrect. I just wanted to be sure that it was not you that had made a mistake. Thanks in advance Speednat (talk) 19:26, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
- I wish I'd recorded my evidence. I recall doing some basic online research but don't recall exactly what. What I would usually to is:
- check “abbozzo”, in OneLook Dictionary Search. and “abozzo”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
- search Google books ("English pages") for '"abbozzo" -"abozzo" -di' and '-"abbozzo" "abozzo" -di'. (The '-di' is intended to reduce the number of hits that are use in English texts of Italian book and article titles containing the words.)
- If the two approaches go the same way I stop, otherwise I try to be more specific in my searches or try Google's newspaper archives and Google Scholar. I doubt that Groups would be much help for this.
- When I duplicated this now, I reached the same conclusion, but you should satisfy yourself. OneLook includes Webster 1913 & 1828 and Century (c 1913), which I take as adequate indication of 19th century terms for a first look. (Wordnik on OneLook is the way to see Webster 1913 and Century quickly.) I'm not sure that COCA/COHA and BNC have much value for this kind of term, but they might. It would be nice to be able to run Google nGrams but these terms are too rare. DCDuring TALK 19:44, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
- Doing some preliminary numbers, it is like 7 to 1 in favor of abbozzo. Why, then does my dictionary show the opposite. Is it mistaken? or does it use a different system of importance? I thought they also looked at instances of use. Speednat (talk) 20:49, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
- One possibility is managerial or editorial error. But older dictionaries they did not have had access to corpora that we can take for granted. Murray's OED relied on files of slips of paper. Imagine the space taken up by a billion pieces of paper and the manpower required to keep it organized. Well, they didn't have the space or manpower, so they used smaller corpora.
- Some users of the term used and use the Italian spelling instead of whatever English dictionary writers thought or think appropriate. The first dictionary writers may have been simply using the spelling they found in the 'better' works they read, which may have been in error. It would be interesting to know what the standard spelling was in Italian in the 17th and 18th centuries. Perhaps the early English users of the term were simply copying standard Italian spelling, just as more modern ones have later.
- And all, but especially older, dictionaries copy the mistakes of others when they try to save time and money. That is why we have the potential to be better than any older print dictionary. DCDuring TALK 21:18, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
- Doing some preliminary numbers, it is like 7 to 1 in favor of abbozzo. Why, then does my dictionary show the opposite. Is it mistaken? or does it use a different system of importance? I thought they also looked at instances of use. Speednat (talk) 20:49, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
redundant newlines in templates
[edit]I've removed two of them recently [1], [2]. They break the entry layout when such templates are used in running text, which {{PIE}}
and {{gbooks}}
are. I've noticed that both were a result of your adding {{documentation}}
template recently, so perhaps you should check other edits of yours. Cheers --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 16:39, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks for reminding me. I haven't cleaned up all of them yet, obviously, especially the ones from early in this effort. I've been trying to categorize the many uncategorized templates (at least those not widely transcluded), both to make them more accessible and to vacate Special:Uncategorizedtemplates to make it more useful as a cleanup category. (It had more than 5,000 pages, so many didn't even show up.) If you can categorize those uncategorized templates you are knowledgeable about (or others), you can reduce the number of mistaken or imprecise categorizations I will inevitably make. DCDuring TALK 17:22, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
Footnotes and other issues
[edit]I noticed you have corrected a few of my pages. Please let me know what I need to fix or improve upon. I see that Wikt. doesn't use the footnotes the way I was. I have always used the Footnotes section if the Ref. section had some non-inline ref. already there. That way it would look neater. ie. Numbered bullets and regular bullets all together. I do have a question on Abies. Why would that not be considered a borrowed item? I was under the impression that the item was "borrowed" if it was the same word with the same meaning. Thanks for your help Speednat (talk) 05:30, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
- I clean-up what the format bot finds according to our formatting rules WT:ELE, standard practice, and my taste (in principle, when it does not conflict with the previous). Let me divide things up by the level of "authority". "Footnotes" is not a standard header. We have a cleanup list for that. That is what brought it to my attention. I did a minimal change for that. If you can improve on it, please do, but we have a limited number of valid headers.
- Is there some other way of achieving more uniformity of appearance? I suppose, for example, we could put any references that contained external links under External Links, though that would not be in accord with standard practice. Or the bullets and indentation could be hard-formatted to match (eventually, perhaps the reference templates could be so formatted. You could see if this could be done and bring up the improvement as a proposal at WT:BP (necessary IMO to get a change in widely transcluded formatting templates or to get our technological adepts to put some time into a new one.
- The changes to Abies are a blend of standard practice and my preferences.
- "Borrowing" is a universal phenomenon for incorporation of FL words into a language, so that it is largely redundant to "From". In particular, taxons in translingual sections are borrowed in a predictable, even boring, pattern. The use of Borrowing could be readily justified in cases where there is no transformation of the word. I would view conversion to mixed upper-lower case as a transformation, more so a transliteration from Ancient Greek to Latin, and more yet an alteration of inflection. I am not sure that this is the standard view or that we have a consensus view at all.
- I dislike the use of usage context labels like "botany" because they neglect the use of taxonomic plant names in other disciplines, such as pharmacology, mycology, entomology, ecology, soil science, horticulture, agriculture, etc.
- HTH. DCDuring TALK 11:30, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
Empty documentation
[edit]Why are you creating empty documentation pages? That seems to go against the whole idea of {{documentation}}
... —CodeCat 23:45, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
- It goes against a part of the idea. The main idea as I understand it is transclusion of template documentation and categorization from the documentation subpage so that documentation edits and categorization changes do not add to the transclusion queue. The logic of what I have inelegantly done is to exploit the transclusion idea to allow template categorization decisions for fairly widely transcluded templates to be wrong without bad consequences for the transclusion queue.
- The idea is to make exactly one change to the main template page, inserting "<noinclude>{{documentation}}</noinclude>" or a functional equivalent. Then all subsequent changes made on the documentation page need have no effect on the transclusion queue. The null documentation contains a header template (which categorizes the documentation subpage, thereby keeping it out of the uncategorized pages list), categorizes the main template to the best of my ability, and hard categorizes the template as having no documentation.
- I hope that makes sense. I have checked my understanding of this with Ruakh a few times to try to get it into my thick skull. I have been doing it for a while and the bad consequences have been limited to my occasionally leaving in an extra carriage return and not being aware that uncategorized template documentation pages (/doc) themselves go into the list of uncategorized template pages. I hope there is not some problem which blows up later. DCDuring TALK 00:09, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
- But editing a page that is transcluded by another will also trigger an update on the second page. So if you edit a documentation page it will still trigger an update on the template. —CodeCat 00:14, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
- The "<noinclude>...</noinclude>" surrounding
{{documentation}}
is supposed to prevent that, as I understand it. I don't know whether a change to{{documentation}}
itself might trigger something massive, but I think{{documentation}}
is only called when the template page is viewed, so that changes to what it in turn calls don't otherwise matter. Please feel free to get others to opine on my understanding of this and on the consequences of the changes I have made and intend to continue making, though not a fast pace. I have been specifically trying to avoid making any changes at all to the most widely transcluded uncategorized templates. DCDuring TALK 00:28, 14 July 2012 (UTC)- It would be nice to have actual experts who can explain this, right now we're all just guessing. A bit like Ancient Greek science, where thinking was all they thought necessary to understand the world. :) —CodeCat 00:34, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
- Included in Wiktionary:Grease_pit_archive/2012/March#How_to_code_selective_application_of_.3Conlyinclude.3E.3F are some comments by Ruakh on the operation of noinclude and related tags. See also some discussion between me and him on this subject, either on this page or on his talk page. If he's wrong, I'm screwed. DCDuring TALK 01:03, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
- We should probably ask the MediaWiki developers how it works... —CodeCat 01:27, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
- If you're using my comments there, then I need to correct something. In that discussion, I wrote "In fact, I believe that when you modify parts of a template page that are inside <noinclude> or outside <onlyinclude>, that the software is smart enough not to add transcluding pages to the job queue, since those changes don't affect the template itself. (I'm not sure about that, though.)" I now believe that that is not the case. (I'm still not sure . . . though come to think of it, I have a thought about how I can test it . . .) —RuakhTALK 02:01, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
- The "<noinclude>...</noinclude>" surrounding
- But editing a page that is transcluded by another will also trigger an update on the second page. So if you edit a documentation page it will still trigger an update on the template. —CodeCat 00:14, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
- Re: "if you edit a documentation page it will still trigger an update on the template": That's true, but who cares? The only reason it's a problem to edit a widely-transcluded template is that it triggers updates on all the pages that transclude it. Those pages don't transclude the template's documentation page. (The update-triggering is not recursive in this way. Updates are only triggered when you edit a transcluded template. That does include indirectly-transcluded templates — modifying
{{Xyzy}}
would affect any entry that uses{{term}}
without sc= — but does not include templates that are merely transcluded on template-pages of transcluded templates.) —RuakhTALK 01:46, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
- Re: "if you edit a documentation page it will still trigger an update on the template": That's true, but who cares? The only reason it's a problem to edit a widely-transcluded template is that it triggers updates on all the pages that transclude it. Those pages don't transclude the template's documentation page. (The update-triggering is not recursive in this way. Updates are only triggered when you edit a transcluded template. That does include indirectly-transcluded templates — modifying
As you've discovered, there are a lot of nitty-gritty details when it comes to template behavior. I've started User:Ruakh/Help:Templates; and, since this is something you were asking about, I decided to start with the subject of whitespace. I welcome comments, improvements, etc. (from you, or anyone else reading this). —RuakhTALK 21:21, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
- I have made a good number of mistakes in this are. I'll take a look. DCDuring TALK 21:52, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
Comparative online dictionary study
[edit]Have you seen this yet? I just noticed this scholarly paper on enwikt, dewikt, and ruwikt which you might be interested in, especially in terms of comparisons to other online dictionaries. Cheers! --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 20:28, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks. I have read one study not too long ago, perhaps a dissertation from Darmstadt? This looks much better. The conclusions are much sharper. I will check this one out more carefully. An outsider's views are always interesting and sometimes more credible than those of insiders. DCDuring TALK 20:46, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
- Note that this can't be fully called an "outsider" perspective. For example, the authors cite a 2010 paper by a certain Krizhanovsky, who I believe to be none other than Andrew Krizhanovsky, who made the Wiktionary Android apps and is quite active over at ruwikt.--Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 20:53, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
Headword lines
[edit]I think it may be better to leave them as it is for now until there has been some more discussion on the matter. —CodeCat 21:02, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
- There was no discussion when the previous practice was changed. Too late, anyway. DCDuring TALK 21:04, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
- I'd really like to be able to get a decent count of English lemmas without having to introduce all kinds of correction factors based on time-consuming statistical studies and without requiring error-prone dump processing. DCDuring TALK 21:06, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
I don't agree with your edit here. If it were a plural, then "going to beddy-byes" would mean going to more than one bed, which it doesn't. Equinox ◑ 22:00, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
- I had my doubts. It is probably both a plural and an alternative form. As you can tell, I am on a rampage because of the vast number of bogus categorizations of plurals as nouns. In addition there are some debatable ones. On this one and possibly a few more, I may be wrong. DCDuring TALK 22:04, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
- I don't think it's a plural at all. A very hasty search for "a beddy-bye" on Google Books just found two non-standard singular forms (meaning "a yawn" and "a bedtime story"), but nothing obvious meaning "a bed". Equinox ◑ 22:06, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
- P.S. Speaking of childish expressions, wangtooth made me laugh. Sounds painful. Equinox ◑ 22:07, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
- There are some good funnies hidden among the antiquarianisms and ligature spellings. I added some usexes at beddy-byes. Is that the full extent of usage, do you think? DCDuring TALK 22:10, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
- Just going by G.Books again, "their beddy-byes" is only found for "their bed / bedtime" and not (IMO) as a plural. But I don't mind; just didn't want to see the legit non-plural entry disappear. Equinox ◑ 22:14, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
- I don't see many instances of "his/her beddie-byes", which I would expect for a plurale-tantum noun. Can "beddie-byes" mean bed clothes, PJs or sheets? DCDuring TALK 22:21, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
- I haven't often heard it with a pronoun. One goes "to beddy-byes", or it is time "for beddy-byes", rather than his or hers. In other words it's a sort of fanciful diminutive of bed (go to bed, time for bed). Equinox ◑ 22:23, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
- OK, I put in a PP usex. Plenty of hits for the PP. DCDuring TALK 23:29, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
- I haven't often heard it with a pronoun. One goes "to beddy-byes", or it is time "for beddy-byes", rather than his or hers. In other words it's a sort of fanciful diminutive of bed (go to bed, time for bed). Equinox ◑ 22:23, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
- I don't see many instances of "his/her beddie-byes", which I would expect for a plurale-tantum noun. Can "beddie-byes" mean bed clothes, PJs or sheets? DCDuring TALK 22:21, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
- Just going by G.Books again, "their beddy-byes" is only found for "their bed / bedtime" and not (IMO) as a plural. But I don't mind; just didn't want to see the legit non-plural entry disappear. Equinox ◑ 22:14, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
- There are some good funnies hidden among the antiquarianisms and ligature spellings. I added some usexes at beddy-byes. Is that the full extent of usage, do you think? DCDuring TALK 22:10, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
- P.S. Speaking of childish expressions, wangtooth made me laugh. Sounds painful. Equinox ◑ 22:07, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
- I don't think it's a plural at all. A very hasty search for "a beddy-bye" on Google Books just found two non-standard singular forms (meaning "a yawn" and "a bedtime story"), but nothing obvious meaning "a bed". Equinox ◑ 22:06, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
This one word is used in place of just about every preposition English has, it would seem. I was wondering if you'd be interested to try to split this more fully by sense, given the existing definitions. Should (deprecated template usage) in and (deprecated template usage) on be given different senses, or are they similar enough concepts? Is it worth making as many senses as possible? Are the senses as currently given clear enough?
I know you don't know Tok Pisin, but it's an English-based creole, so it retains a very English way of looking at the world, grammatically speaking. If you want word-by-word translations of the cites in the entry to help, I can do that too. I just want somebody generally good at this to give the entry a critical look. Thanks so much --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 23:24, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
- Flattery will get you everywhere. Function words are hard. I'll take a look. DCDuring TALK 23:49, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
- Short phrases sound stilted. I find them amusing. Thanks --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 23:52, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
- I assume long is from English along in most senses, not the duration sense where it might be from English long#Adverb. Are there really only the seven prepositions we have? Long seems to cover every basic spatial preposition there is in English except "inside". Is it also used for time? It seems not. It must be used with spatial adverbs sometimes. As I think of this, I think I would take a look at case grammar. There are lists of cases that linguists have found are reflected in inflections in some languages. Excluding cases like nominative, accusative, and vocative, those lists are close to a universal list of generic prepositional senses. See w:List of grammatical cases. I recommend this because it is more refined than English glosses using polysemic prepositions. A Tok Pisin preposition may translate all the senses of all the prepositions we would use in translating or just some. DCDuring TALK 00:54, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
- To clarify: "inside" as an adjective is (deprecated template usage) insait in Tok Pisin, but as a preposition, it's insait long. I just fixed that. I'm still not sure if (deprecated template usage) insait long is SOP or not. What do you think?
It is used for time, actually, and not just spacially. The last cite at long is temporal (it uses the word (deprecated template usage) taim).
Pacific creoles are notorious for using only a few prepositions. Long, (deprecated template usage) bilong, and (deprecated template usage) olsem cover most needs; (deprecated template usage) bipo and (deprecated template usage) bihain cover the rest of the temporal needs.
Should I really list case senses? Dative, ablative, accusative, objective, apudessive, locative, prepositional, inessive (with insait), superessive, delative... honestly, most cases on the list fit the bill. --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 02:47, 25 July 2012 (UTC)- No. I'm suggesting only that you make sure that you really understand how each of those cases is expressed by means of prepositions, preposition-adverb expressions, and any other means Tok Pisin uses. Then you can select the English translations that are the best match. I always worry about being misled by my own preconceived notions about things - and words.
- Also, you should consider using
{{n-g}}
for "non-gloss" or "functional" definitions of what are, after all, function words. Such definitions are worded as Used to indicate (a wide variety of/all spatial relationships) and Used in combination with adverbs to (specify certain spatial and temporal relationships). But I'm sure you can do better than that. If the glosses satisfy you, mazel tov. If not, the functional definitions may bail you out. DCDuring TALK 03:50, 25 July 2012 (UTC)- I usually don't use n-g for words that can actually be directly translated. I can, of course, combine the two approaches, which is what I will do after I write this comment. You seem rather downcast about the whole deal, so I hope I'm not being a total idiot/ass and not realizing it. --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 04:09, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
- I was a little disappointed in myself for not getting a better handle on the specific easy passages. Mi no ken helpim yupela mo. DCDuring TALK 10:09, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
- Tok Pisin gets a lot harder if you want to have a real conversation; passive voice constructions, for example, can be grammatically complex. As for your sentence, (deprecated template usage) yupela is plural; the correct word would have been a bare yu. More subtly, you were missing the untranslatable particle i. So it should have been: Mi i no ken helpim yu mo. If you feel like learning what is arguably the easiest foreign language for English speakers, I would love to have another person as a crazy as I am around here! --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 16:35, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
- You have that without my even learning Tok Pisin. DCDuring TALK 16:36, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
- Exactly. --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 16:39, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
- You have that without my even learning Tok Pisin. DCDuring TALK 16:36, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
- Tok Pisin gets a lot harder if you want to have a real conversation; passive voice constructions, for example, can be grammatically complex. As for your sentence, (deprecated template usage) yupela is plural; the correct word would have been a bare yu. More subtly, you were missing the untranslatable particle i. So it should have been: Mi i no ken helpim yu mo. If you feel like learning what is arguably the easiest foreign language for English speakers, I would love to have another person as a crazy as I am around here! --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 16:35, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
- I was a little disappointed in myself for not getting a better handle on the specific easy passages. Mi no ken helpim yupela mo. DCDuring TALK 10:09, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
- I usually don't use n-g for words that can actually be directly translated. I can, of course, combine the two approaches, which is what I will do after I write this comment. You seem rather downcast about the whole deal, so I hope I'm not being a total idiot/ass and not realizing it. --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 04:09, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
- To clarify: "inside" as an adjective is (deprecated template usage) insait in Tok Pisin, but as a preposition, it's insait long. I just fixed that. I'm still not sure if (deprecated template usage) insait long is SOP or not. What do you think?
- I assume long is from English along in most senses, not the duration sense where it might be from English long#Adverb. Are there really only the seven prepositions we have? Long seems to cover every basic spatial preposition there is in English except "inside". Is it also used for time? It seems not. It must be used with spatial adverbs sometimes. As I think of this, I think I would take a look at case grammar. There are lists of cases that linguists have found are reflected in inflections in some languages. Excluding cases like nominative, accusative, and vocative, those lists are close to a universal list of generic prepositional senses. See w:List of grammatical cases. I recommend this because it is more refined than English glosses using polysemic prepositions. A Tok Pisin preposition may translate all the senses of all the prepositions we would use in translating or just some. DCDuring TALK 00:54, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
- Short phrases sound stilted. I find them amusing. Thanks --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 23:52, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
Minor, unrelated note: not everything in the template namespace is a template. Please do not treat template subpages as if they need documentation, especially without reading their talkpages to find out why they exist. Thanks --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 05:56, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
- Anything that is uncategorized should be as long as it threatens to take up permanent residence on maintenance pages. Maintenance pages are shared resources like public parks. Leaving pages there is like appropriating park land for oneself.
- For any template that risks being widely transcluded, the categorization is best not on the template page itself. If there is absolutely no danger whatsoever of the page being widely transcluded, then categorization on the template page is adequate. I am not in a position to assess the risk of widespread transclusion nor the need for some kind of documentation. Would "This page supports XXXX. See documentation at XXXX" be too hard? Perhaps a template for insertion in the subpage to support both categorization and pointing to real documentation would suffix. DCDuring TALK 13:08, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
- Well, that would be rather annoying when the entire point of a subpage is to be clean (i.e., no documentation, etc in the way). --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 14:53, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
- Lots of things that are good for the project as a whole are annoying for individual contributors, eg, WT:ELE, WT:CFI etc. DCDuring TALK 16:28, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
- I don't mind you categorising it, just you documenting it. --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 17:46, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
- Not my department any more. DCDuring TALK 18:18, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
- I don't mind you categorising it, just you documenting it. --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 17:46, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
- Lots of things that are good for the project as a whole are annoying for individual contributors, eg, WT:ELE, WT:CFI etc. DCDuring TALK 16:28, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
- Well, that would be rather annoying when the entire point of a subpage is to be clean (i.e., no documentation, etc in the way). --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 14:53, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
It seems that the definition you are requesting for drug deal is the SOP meaning, or perhaps two SOP meanings. To the extent that any of these involve political deals, one could as easily refer to a "tax deal" or an "immigration deal", or any other subject over which a deal could be struck. As for legal sales of medical drugs, I don't think anything lifts that out of being SOP. bd2412 T 16:29, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
- I can't tell what is or is not SoP anymore, just as as I cannot tell what is or is not a phrasal verb. We have (deprecated template usage) drug I would have thought that was exactly the sense involved. In the case of some of the citations we do not really have the right sense of drug afaict. So, is the rule that if we have the sense, we include it and if we don't have it, we exclude and call it SoP? Whimsy and popularity is all that I see in our decision making, not even moderated by humility, skepticism, objectivity, of use of facts or even citations in argument. DCDuring TALK 18:37, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
- If I told you I saw two people engaging in a drug deal in broad daylight, not ten yards from a police officer, you would likely think that was pretty brazen of them, because the phrase normally implies something that is both illegal and clandestine. If I were to then tell you it was a purchase of aspirin at a drugstore, you would understand that I was making a joke by using the literal, SOP sense of the phrase to imply an idiomatic sense. bd2412 T 20:00, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
diff, really? Where is this used? Not come across it, but there are a lot of things I've not come across. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:46, 20 August 2012 (UTC)
See Robert, ie, Modern French. I was just pursuing what Ruakh had said. Apparently incipit and finit were used to mark the beginning and ending of manuscript works, probably carrying over from scrolls or just economizing on writing materials. They are correct Latin third person present indicate forms. Being used in the same way, apparently, explicit may be formed in imitation, as if from *explicio. DCDuring TALK 19:47, 20 August 2012 (UTC)
See also Century quote from Enc. Brit. (at explicit2). DCDuring TALK 20:00, 20 August 2012 (UTC)
I noticed your edit concerning the pronunciation of abaisse. I never liked separating the pronunciation like I had, but it seemed to be the way that it was being done. I like what you have done; however would it not be better to precede the pronunciation with the "sense" template. I am going to try that, take a look and let me know if you don't like it. Thanks Speednat (talk) 23:07, 20 August 2012 (UTC)
- I missed where you used the template "a", and thought you just typed in the qualifier. So I merely moved it to the front of the line. Speednat (talk) 23:11, 20 August 2012 (UTC)
Another template where you added a line-break . . . (fixed now). —RuakhTALK 15:24, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks for letting me know. I thought I had caught them all. I'll check my contributions in template space from that time. DCDuring TALK 15:28, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
Deletion
[edit]Can I have you delete a couple of entries that I created in error and have since created the correct entries.
- abbetdin -> Abbetdin is the correct
- abbethdin -> Abbethdin is correct
- abatvent -> abat-vent is correct
thanks Speednat (talk) 18:41, 26 August 2012 (UTC)
- Sure. The generic approach is it use
{{speedy}}
. You could insert a comment to explain why. Also, couldn't you have moved the entry? DCDuring TALK 18:48, 26 August 2012 (UTC) Done
Sorry, I didn't know about speedy or about moving. I will look both up thanks.Speednat (talk) 22:23, 26 August 2012 (UTC)
- This is how most people learn, so nothing to apologize about. "Move" should appear as a tab at the top of your page, if it is available to you. DCDuring TALK 22:36, 26 August 2012 (UTC)
- It is not available. Speednat (talk) 23:17, 26 August 2012 (UTC)
- To the right of "history" there's a star that adds things to your watchlist, and to the right of it there should be a down arrow, and if you hover over it, you should see "move". But even if you move a page, we'd usually like to delete the redirects, for various reasons, so it can be useful to tag the redirects with
{{speedy}}
or{{delete}}
. - -sche (discuss) 23:27, 26 August 2012 (UTC)- Nope not there, not in IE or FF. Speednat (talk) 23:47, 26 August 2012 (UTC)
- To the right of "history" there's a star that adds things to your watchlist, and to the right of it there should be a down arrow, and if you hover over it, you should see "move". But even if you move a page, we'd usually like to delete the redirects, for various reasons, so it can be useful to tag the redirects with
- Very odd-- When I click on a link, for that split second before the page disappears and the new page loads, the arrow shows up. I changed my skin to monobook, and now it shows up with a tab. Speednat (talk) 23:56, 26 August 2012 (UTC)