User talk:Tjo3ya/Archive 1

Pseudogapping

Hi Tj03ya, and thanks for the great article on pseudogapping! Your contributions to linguistics on Wikipedia are very much appreciated. Have you considered joining WikiProject Linguistics? It is a space for collaboration on all aspects of linguistics on Wikipedia, so if you have time it might be worth having a look around. Also, I saw that you were developing an article on this user talk page. I wanted to say that if you want, you can put any draft articles on user subpages to make the editing easier to keep track of, and to avoid people commenting on your talk page over the end of it. For example, if you wanted to develop an article on a topic called "NewGrammarTheory", you could work on it at User:Tjo3ya/NewGrammarTheory, and then when it is ready you can just move it into the main article space using the "move" function at the top of the page. This has the advantage that it keeps all of the page history together in one place, which I gather Wikipedia administrators are quite keen on. :) I see that you have already been around Wikipedia for a while, but if you have any questions, please feel free to ask, and I will do my best to help. — Mr. Stradivarius ^♫ 05:28, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

The Linguistic Barnstar

		The Linguistic Barnstar
		I hereby award you the Linguistic Barnstar for your excellent and prolific work in the area of syntax. Your contributions are a great boon to Wikipedia, and long may they continue. — Mr. Stradivarius ♫ 12:48, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Hello Stradivarius, Thanks for your supportive comments and the acknowledgement here. I have looked at the Wiki linguistics link you provided. I may indeed join the project. Best, --Tjo3ya (talk) 21:21, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Auxiliary Verbs

Hi Tjo3ya,

I've checked out some of the changes you've been making to Auxiliary Verbs and have quite a few concerns. Primarily I am concerned that many of the views expressed are not in line with mainstream ideas within the fields of linguistics and grammar. In particular, the recent section on "light verbs" is alarming. Simply put, there is no such thing as a light verb. I see the main light verb article has only a single source. May I ask if this is original research or something from a specific genre or set of authors you're a fan of?Drew.ward (talk) 12:46, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Hi Drew,

I will be in the library today and will source the article on light verbs. You have the Google, though! Google "light verb". --Tjo3ya (talk) 14:17, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

BE as perfecting auxiliary

Hey man,

Check the talk page for aux verbs. I commented on an apparently very old discussion about BE as a perfecting auxiliary (as with German) in English. I remembered you'd been doing some editing within the context of both aux's and BE so thought you might want to chime in.Drew.ward (talk) 17:36, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Removing AfD template

Welcome to Wikipedia. Please do not remove Articles for deletion notices from articles, or remove other people's comments in Articles for deletion debates, as you did with Light verb. Otherwise, it may be difficult to create consensus. If you oppose the deletion of an article, please comment at the respective page instead. This is an automated message from a bot about this edit, where you removed the deletion template from an article before the deletion discussion was complete. If this message is in error, please report it. Snotbot  t • c »  03:08, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Do-support

Hello, Tjo3ya, and thank you for your edits to Do-support. While I appreciate your attempts to improve the page and make it more accessible to non-specialists, I feel like you've thrown several babies out with the proverbial bath water. First and foremost, the lead section currently does not summarize the article's content nor give a concise overview, as required by WP:LEAD. The page also feels to me like it puts too much emphasis on the examples and explanatory notes. Although I know your intent is to make the page clearer to non-linguists, I feel like you've made it look too much like a linguists' problem set, perhaps actually making it less clear and less accessible.

Unfortunately, I'm starting final exams here, and after that I will be away for several weeks, so I'm not really able to help much in the revisions for the time being. I did want to register these concerns and wish you best of luck, though. Happy editing, Cnilep (talk) 01:59, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

WikiProject Linguistics discussion

Hi there Tjo3ya. This is just to let you know that there is a new discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Linguistics#Possible WP:COI/WP:UNDUE? which appears to be about you. Could you comment over there so we can work out what's going on? Best regards — Mr. Stradivarius ^{(have a chat)} 13:38, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Kafka

Hey, thanks for this cool tree .

Any chance you could create one for the corresponding German sentence? Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Traumen erwachte fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheuren Ungeziefer verwandelt. They would make for a nice comparison in the Kafka article. Best regards, ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 17:36, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Hi Maunus,

I can easily produce a tree of that sentence, but there is a problem: it's too long. The tree won't fit in the drawing program nor in one horizontal section of a Wikipedia article. If you can reduce its length (using ... perhaps) by about 1/3 (i.e. 33% shorter), I will gladly produce the DG tree. Best, --Tjo3ya (talk) 20:46, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

What if you just take the corresponding part from fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheuren Ungeziefer verwandelt.?·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 21:01, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

I was able to get the whole thing in. We were using a different drawing program when we produced the tree above. The program I am using now is Paint, which doesn't seem to work quite as well. Concerning the actual hierarchy in the tree, there are a couple of points that one can challenge, the main one being the status of the middlefield. One could, namely, make a case for attaching sich to fand instead of to verwandelt. The issue takes one into the theory of discontinuities. If you are interested you can read about it here, where you will find lots of examples from both English and German. Best, --Tjo3ya (talk) 23:21, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Upon second examination, the tree I just produced is simply inaccurate. The expressions sich should be a dependent of fand, not of verwandelt.

I have just read the part of the Kafka article that discusses the differences across English and German syntax. If you would like the trees in the same format so that they can be compared easily, let me know. I can redraw both trees (English and German), so that both are complete and follow the same drawing format. But you can see how much space the full trees take up. In this regard, I need to know exactly what the trees should show (e.g. complete or not). --Tjo3ya (talk) 23:49, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it would be best if they are comparable - they might even be in a single image file with the German above the English, it is probably fine only to have the main clause from "he discovered/fand er sich" - it'll make it easier to compare, the full sentence gets too confusing I woild say. Thanks!·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 18:03, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Kafka again

Hi Maunus,

Here's the picture:

I hope that works. Let me know. --Tjo3ya (talk) 18:56, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

That's really nice! Did you decide against seeing vervandelt as dependent on "sich"?·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 19:07, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

The confusion was due to the predicative status in seinem Bett and zu einem ungeheuren Ungeziefer verwandelt. These constituents are dependents of fand, not of verwandelt, and they serve as predications over sich. This fact is due, I believe, to the special subcategorization traits of finden. We see the same thing in English, e.g. She found him under the bed. In this example, under the bed is a dependent of found, but it is a predication over the object him. In cases where such predicative expressions are absent, the structure would be more left branching, e.g. Er hat das gestern gesagt. In this example, das and gestern can be dependents of gesagt. We know this to be the case because the whole VP can be fronted, e.g. Das gestern gesagt hat Gregor (schon). --Tjo3ya (talk) 19:21, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Do-support and the three-revert rule

Hello Tjo3ya. You and Drew.ward appear to be engaged in an edit war on the article Do-support. I understand your frustration with editing this and other language-related articles, but there is a bright-line rule called the "three revert rule" or 3RR which says that if you revert an article three or more times within twenty-four hours you will be temporarily blocked from editing. In order to deal with an editor who repeatedly reverts an article without discussion, you should report the behavior to one of the Wikipedia:Noticeboards such as Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents.

I am leaving a similar message on Drew.ward's user talk page. Cnilep (talk) 06:36, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Cnilep,

You must certainly be aware of how Drew operates. His behavior is well documented on a number of talk pages. Did you look at the additions I made? I added three or four sentences to the introduction in the interest of providing a better overview of what is in the article. You yourself suggested that the introduction should be improved (see your note above). Your move to undo those sentences is delivering a victory to Drew. Your decision is now encouraging his counterproductive behavior.

Please consider restoring those sentences. I will now send a request to the noticeboards that the sentences should be restored and that the article should then be locked. --Tjo3ya (talk) 07:28, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

OK, Victor has stepped in to revamp the intro of the article. There is therefore no longer a reason to restore my sentences. Let's see if Drew now leaves Victor's intro intact. --Tjo3ya (talk) 08:46, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

I am aware of Drew.ward's editing style. That notwithstanding, three reverts in 24 hours can get you blocked, even if you have the best of intentions. Cnilep (talk) 03:08, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

If Drew is blocked with me, I am now in favor of that option. I think we should both be blocked for awhile. We will both have the opportunity to cool down. I don't know who has the power to do this, but I am now comfortable with that possibility. --Tjo3ya (talk) 07:11, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Notice of Edit warring noticeboard discussion

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion involving you at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring regarding a possible violation of Wikipedia's policy on edit warring. Thank you. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 13:56, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

(= xxx)

I've noticed that you have a proclivity for adding definitions after words in the form (=xxxx) (e.g. verb chain (=catena)), I find that graphically disrupts the reading flow, and that it is not usually a helpful form of defining or explaining words anyway since it basically just provides a synonym. Also I am still not convinced that "catena" is a generally used term for some of the phenomena you describe as such - it strikes me as a theory dependent term. We should strive to be as theory neutral as possible in wikipedia articles and always be explicit about theoretical frameworks when we use theory specific vocabulary. That's my opinion which you may choose to consider when you edit, or not. Best. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 14:02, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Hi Maunus,

Thanks for the feedback. The catena is a relatively new addition to linguistics, so yes, I understand your word of caution concerning how I have been employing it in Wikipedia articles. The advantage of the catena, though, is that it allows one to make a quick orientational statement about the nature of many syntactic phenomena, and the accompanying DG trees that show the catenae provide a helpful point of departure for those who are beginning to build an understanding of the phenomenon at hand.

One can actually define the catena in a manner that is valid for constituency grammars:

Catena

A word or a combination of words the projections of which are continuous in the vertical dimension.

The catena is, however, really not so insightful if your working with constituency-based structures. It is not insightful because the extra nodes that constituency necessitates obscures the presence of the catenae. --Tjo3ya (talk) 17:25, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

September 2012

You have been blocked from editing for a period of 24 hours for edit warring, as you did at Do-support. Once the block has expired, you are welcome to make useful contributions. If you think there are good reasons why you should be unblocked, you may appeal this block by adding below this notice the text {{unblock|reason=Your reason here ~~~~}}, but you should read the guide to appealing blocks first.

During a dispute, you should first try to discuss controversial changes and seek consensus. If that proves unsuccessful, you are encouraged to seek dispute resolution, and in some cases it may be appropriate to request page protection. Bbb23 (talk) 20:51, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Do-support wording tweak

Hi Tim,

If you get a chance today could you take a look at the proposed revision to the do-support article here on Victor's user page? There is a discussion above but I think the changes should be obvious without it. There are no intended changes in sourced theory or meaning but rather slight changes in wording used so as to stress the supporting role auxiliary DO plays in these situations described by do-support, with the only area having substantial change being the section on emphasis which has been adjusted to account for emphasis which does not emphasize DO. Along those lines do you also feel that within such a discussion that examples of non-DO emphasis (as given above in the discussion with Victor) need to be explicitly included for clarity?

As Victor points out, you have done a fairly sizable rewrite of the article since I'd posted these proposed changes and thus I wanted to solicit your opinion on them before applying similar wording to your version. (I'm also trying to not waste time and efforts on either of our parts as I know at I need to spend less time on Wikipedia ling this week and more time on my ling job!)Drew.ward (talk) 14:58, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Sources for Emphatic Mood

I thought I'd put these here so as not to clutter up Victor's talk page too much but per your request:

• Mulvey, Dan. E-Z Grammar. 2nd ed. Barrons. 2009.

(p. 47) "Emphatic Mood: The verb emphasizes or stresses the action in the emphatic mood. It uses the present stem and the past tense of "do": Mathew did try to catch a fish but went home after he fell into the water. ("Did" puts emphasis on the verb "try." This mood use only the present and the past -- non of the perfect tenses.)"

(p. 52) this page is part of a long list of conjugations for various combos of tense, aspect, voice, mood, etc. While he seems to restrict emphatic mood to past tense in the main entry, in this table he lists the full gamut of forms -- available via google books preview)

• Haag, Marcia & Willis, Henry. Choctaw Language and Culture: Chahta Anumpa, Volume 2. University of Oklahoma Press. 2007.

(p. 85) "Emphatic mood markers: Choctaw also uses markers to indicate emphasis: we have learned "oke 'is indeed', and -shke 'does indeed'. We also have a negatice form of -shke, kashke, which is not easily translated but means something like 'does not'∞."

∞I've boldfaced the two parts above to draw attention to the authors' use of emphatic mood then together with emphasis. I think they are also trying to intentionally pointing out the use of emphasis in English as equivalent expression of this mood because all English translations given in single quote marks are in regular type except for the final one that I've marked for this note, which is presented in italics. See the direct link via google books here.

• Palmer, Frank Robert. Semantics. Cambridge University Press. 1981.

(p. 152) ""Emphatic: 'indicates that the speaker knows the sentence to be true: if a sentence that ends with the Emphatic mood is false, the speaker is considered a liar'." (he's actually quoting Matthews 1965: 99-101 -- a discussion of Hidatsa here)

• Beard, Robert. Lexeme-Morpheme Base Morphology: A General Theory of Inflection and Word Formation. SUNY Press. 1995.

(p. 126) -- in a table of "Cardinal Verbal Categories" Beard splits modality and mood with emphatic listed under modalilty along with "Potential, Desiderative, Obligative, Assertice, Hortatory, Monitory, Contingent, Necessitative, Dubitative". He reserves mood for only "Indicative, Imperative, Subjunctive, Optative". I've seen other sources present various splits of mood and modality based on a range of reasons from considering modality to be semantic while mood is syntactic; considering modality a sort of 'super category' with mood limited to the grammatical expression of the same ideas; to the two described as equivalent names for the same thing (Palmer in the introduction to Mood & Modality). I've also seen it argued that only a few 'moods' exist and that all the others are "something else". I've never however seen anyone else divide things up quite as Beard has in this table. (link)

• Huddleston, Rodney. English Grammar: An Outline. Cambridge University Press. 1988.

(pp. 45-46) -- in the section in which Huddleston discusses what he calls "Operators" which seem to be a limited set of auxiliaries, he uses both the terms emphasis and emphatic but never mood. I'm honestly not quite sure what he's talking about in this section and it seems incorrect to me, but he is definitely referring to emphasis of certain elements (whether that's semantic or actual emphasis, I can't tell). (link)

[Pardon the interruption. Huddleston defines "mood" as the "grammaticalization of modality" (a semantic category), which he denies for English: in his analysis, modalities are a function of the clause, not of the verb, since English does not have grammatical forms of the verb whose primary functions are indications of modality. His classification of verbs does indeed work with a more limited definition of "auxiliary verb", and he reads may, can, must as catenative verbs. Drmies (talk) 19:39, 18 September 2012 (UTC)]

Drmies, Your message here does indeed come from out of the blue. May I ask where and how you acquired your knowledge of Huddleston's work to be in a position to comment with such certainty? Do you happen to have a copy of Huddleston's grammar somewhere close by? Your knowledge may be beneficial to our current efforts. --Tjo3ya (talk) 22:38, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, I looked through the list here and Huddleston caught my eye since I know his work a little. I do have his English Grammar: An Outline, which I found to be a not-so useful book for my purposes; it certainly is a non-traditional grammar--the definition of "auxiliary" is found in a footnote. But I have used the textbook he did for Cambridge--let me look for it--[here it is, A Student's Introduction to English Grammar, with Geoffey Pullum. That's my go-to textbook for Advanced English Grammar. I had to run off this afternoon so I wasn't able to look for emphatic mood; I doubt that it would have much to say on the topic since, as I indicated above, it's not a grammatical matter for him. But I'm kind of enjoying watching this here: I think you all know much more about this high-falutin' formal stuff than I, and I'm looking through these edits and articles to learn a thing or two. What I find funny is that every time I look at a grammar book it's like I have to learn new terminology: no two are really the same. Anyway, don't you have enough material here to cover the topic? I'll be glad to check my shelves to see if there's anything there--I do have a big fat encyclopedia/dictionary, whose highly authoritative name has escaped me right now. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 02:48, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

• Morley, George David. Explorations in Functional Syntax: A New Framework for Lexicogrammatical Analysis. Equinox Publishing. 2004.

Drmies, Yes, the terminology of various grammars is all over the place, and so are the opinions behind the various grammars. My take is that the variation bears witness to the weakness of the field in general. And to get even a bit personal about it, I think much of the confusion arose due to the overinfluence of the Chomskyan schools, which introduced a lot of new terminology that was/is inconsistent with what traditional grammar had passed down through the generations before Chomsky. If you are interested in examples here, I could easily list a few.

If you see where you can meaningfully chime in again, please do so. --Tjo3ya (talk) 19:00, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

(p. 185) The author describes underlined Do go in his example "Do go away!" as "do emphatic mood marker"

Those are all from a google books search so are easily available. A straight web search yields quite a bit but most of what's not just usage guidance doesn't cite any references and the ones that do are all over the place between use of emphasis and emphatic and emphatic mood throughout and seem to call the same examples different things throughout or different examples the same thing and vice versa. Scholarly searches yield quite a bit more including results for "emphatic mood" emphasis "vocal stress" but for some reason my network login into JSTOR and other databases isn't working right now so I can't get more specific.

Is this what you were wanting?Drew.ward (talk) 23:38, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that is what is needed. But it is also good to have spent some time with a couple such sources. One wants to have had them in one's hand and thought about what their saying or trying to say. I have never viewed do as a mood marker, but I suppose it can be construed that way. And as you point out, the terminology is all over the place in this area. My only additional suggestion is that a one or two of these sources be worked into the paragraph in a meaningful way. For me, that would mean that I have located them in a library or on line and read a few pages of surrounding so that I know that I am accurately citing them. --Tjo3ya (talk) 03:11, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

I see there are actually a couple of books that pop up on googlebooks dealing specifically with auxiliary do that were published back in the 50's. I'm going to attempt an interlibrary loan to see if they're worth anything as nothing from them seems available online although a few papers in JSTOR and WILEY draw on data from them. Could be a decent source.

I actually did get to read through the ones listed above but none of these are truly "great" sources in my view for the entire topic. My goal in looking through them was to mainly see if they used the term "emphatic mood" and if so whether they applied it as a means of conveying emphasis and further how they then referenced auxiliary do in this sense. Aside from the usual issue of no one ever having fully bothered to create a decent consensus on mood as a category and within that a standardized naming scheme for moods, the biggest problem I have with most of these sources is that they seem to assume that non-do expressions of emphatic mood via emphasis of other elements is understood, yet none of them actually include such a statement asserting such. Mulvey refers to such expression in addition to do via auxiliaries in general with examples of emphatic 'will', 'be' and a few others, all established by providing vocal emphasis to those elements. Beard lists emphatic mood along with a slew of other functions conveyed via auxiliary verbs in general, but doesn't preclude the emphatic (nor any of the other things he's listed) from non-auxiliary expression. Huddleston seems to infer the use of emphasis in conveying emphatic mood by referring to examples that include neither do nor other auxiliaries, but since he doesn't actually explicitly mark his examples for whatever he is referring to them doing (I suppose he thinks his observations are obvious in each), there's no concrete way of knowing precisely what he is pointing to. Google turns up thousands of grammars, ESL primers, and language learning websites that all discuss the use of do in conveying the emphatic mood but again just seem to assume the reader knows that emphasis is the means while (when needed) do is the vehicle. Their wording seems to again point to some presupposed awareness that stressing the desired element is how you convey the emphatic, usually showing examples with non-verbal elements and then other auxiliaries emphasized before stating that do-support comes into play when no other auxiliary is present. They also provide zero sources so are worth little more than reference value.Drew.ward (talk) 06:26, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Group Structures as Auxiliaries

While surveying a few grammar books for another project I ran across this excerpt discussing auxiliary verbs and remembered we had discussed whether sources counted multi-unit structures as auxiliaries or not:

"The following words are commonly used as auxiliaries: have, has, had, am, is, are, was, were, be, been, do, does, did, will, shall, can, may, must, would, could, should, might. Word groups like am going to, is about to, ought to, used to, had better, and have to may function as auxiliary verbs."

Harbrace College Handbook. 8th Ed. 1977. HBJ. Page 4

This text (and every other grammar guide I have that I know of) clearly treats multi-unit structures that act as a single functional unit as being just as much an "auxiliary" as they do single words. This source goes on to provide examples ending with "Ruth is going to try. [Compare "Ruth will try"]," making their intent to show equivalent treatment of single and multi-unit auxiliaries.Drew.ward (talk) 16:27, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Hi Drew, OK, you've got a concrete source here with a page number. Your standpoint may be getting stronger. However, notice the wording "may function as" in the passage. The wording may function as is not the same as is. In fact, I think the passage actually supports the stance I represent, which is that catenae such as am going to consist of three words and hence cannot be viewed as auxiliary verbs, although they clearly function similar to auxiliary verbs. Note that I would never dispute that the catenae you are pointing to provide functional meaning similar to what auxiliary verbs alone provide. --Tjo3ya (talk) 16:43, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

To do :-)

Hi. If you have some time, please go over Anaphora (linguistics) and improve that as well. Thanks, Tijfo098 (talk) 00:28, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Hi Tijfo098, I agree that the anaphora article needs a good working over. I may attempt to redo it at some point, but right now I've got too much other stuff going on.--Tjo3ya (talk) 01:04, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

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Sourcing

Is it not somewhat inconsistent to remove my additions (which seem to be basically common knowledge) on the grounds of lack of sources, when you yourself keep adding all this dubious syntactical analysis without giving sources? Victor Yus (talk) 07:39, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Victor, your additions are not always common knowledge. You put an example of there-clefting in a section on subject-verb inversion. That's debatable. You seemed to not recognize there-clefting. You also put an example in the section for locative inversion that might be better placed in the section for directive inversion.

Examine the articles I have worked on. Take a look at the histories. You will see that I have put much effort into sourcing the articles. Certainly more needs to be done, and I intend to do more. But in this regard, if you can point me to where you have added citations to the articles you have worked on, that might help reduce my concern.

You question my work on syntax, but I'm not sure that you are qualified to critique my contributions in the area. You did not seem to know that all branching is rightward in GB/MP. You suggested a potential analysis of VPs that to my knowledge, no theory assumes. You admitted yourself that your understanding of the DP-hypothesis is weak. --Tjo3ya (talk) 08:18, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Sure, you know more about some of this stuff than I do, but that's no excuse for including your own original research in the articles (if that's what you're doing). In fact much of what both of us have been adding is uncited - but that's no problem as long as it's right (sources for basic English grammatical constructions must exist in many places, it's not necessarily the best use of our time trying to dig them up). But when you start making claims about some construction "posing problems" for some theory, that's clearly controversial, so it's the sort of thing I would expect to be sourced explicitly. Victor Yus (talk) 09:02, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Victor, Part of what I am doing is providing desperately needed content to the articles on syntax. Before I started my efforts, there were literally almost no trees in the articles. Trees, however, are a very basic tool used by most syntacticians to convey information about syntactic structure.

I will now add a footnote to the article sourcing the basic distinction between phrase structure grammars, which say finite VP exists as a constituent, and dependency grammars, which say it does not. --Tjo3ya (talk) 09:22, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

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Important reference on dependency grammar

First of all, thank you so much for the amazing linguistic work you have contributed to Wikipedia. I won't take much of your time (I hope). On the article for Dependency grammar, you made mention of Medieval Iberian linguist Ibn Maḍāʾ here. For me personally, it is not clear which one of the two references would cover this; the first or the second?

If you look at the biographical article for Ibn Maḍāʾ, specifically the article's edit history, you can probably guess that I'm a fan. If you have the time, could you point me to where I could find further information on his work regarding dependency grammar? I recently ordered one of his few surviving works (in Arabic) but it hasn't arrived in the mail yet. Any help would be much appreciated. MezzoMezzo (talk) 10:06, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi Mezzo,

I took the reference to Mada from a colleague of mine. He had mentioned Mada in something he wrote. He said he read about Mada and DG here:

http://books.google.fr/books?id=4WZP48cNnyoC&pg=PA140&lpg=PA140&dq=Ibn+mada+%22refutation+of+the+grammarians%22&source=bl&ots=f1FnoaCiw4&sig=qyR5UYZ_TLjNIAX1UXBXSytBmQo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=RVoyUID5HsenhAfdjYHYDg&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=Ibn%20mada%20%22refutation%20of%20the%20grammarians%22&f=false

I myself have not looked at this book, but I trust my colleague in the area. I have no idea how much is said about Mada and DG in the book, but I would be interested to find out. If you investigate the matter, please let me know what you find. I think it would be worth expanding the section to include more information about Mada and other early sources of ideas that have now led to a modern full blown theory of syntax and grammar. --Tjo3ya (talk) 15:22, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Dr. Osbourne,

The issues of dependency grammar within the Arabic language are discussed early on in the book, while there is a chapter dedicated to Ibn Mada' work on simplifying grammar which comes much later. I think that in order to understand the context of Mada's work and his contribution to theories in dependency grammar, the whole book must be read. With that in mind, I have ordered a copy from Amazon. I am only just now learning about the subject.

I'm a native English speaker with an Arab wife who teaches high level grammar to native Arabic speakers in the Middle East, so this is relevant to my job and to the topic which is of the utmost personal interest. I will try to prep myself on the subject before the book arrives; in that since, you have provided an indispensible service through the work you have put into the Dependency grammar article over the past few years. A service not only for me, but for the study of language in general.

In the meantime, could I steal another favor from you? I believe that this link might be relevant, but for some reason it is censored in the Middle Eastern country in which I live. If you have the time, could you take a look at it?

Thanks again for what you've provided the English-speaking world here on Wikipedia. I hope that I can replicate that gift for the Arabic-speaking world, one trainee at a time. MezzoMezzo (talk) 04:17, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi Mezzo, Your interest in DG is very gratifying. I can probably help in more ways than one. The link you gave is a bibliographic reference, which I paste here:

Book Title: Studies in the history of Arabic grammar II : proceedings of the 2nd symposium on the history of Arabic grammar, Nijmegen, 27 April-1 May 1987 / edited by Kees Versteegh and Michael G. Carter. Added Author: Versteegh, C.H.M. Carter, M.G. Publisher: Amsterdam ; Philadelphia : Benjamins, 1990. Philadelphia Pages: x, 319 p. ISBN: 902724543 Notes: (c) 1990 John Benjamins B.V.Includes indexesIndex of technical terms (p.311-319) in Arabic Bibliographic Note: Includes bibliographical references and indexes. Contents: De ce qui "ne se dit pas" dans le livre de Sibawayhi: la notion de tamtil / Georgine Ayoub -- 'Irab and Bina' from linguistic reality to grammatical theory / Ramzi Baalbaki -- The Basrian grammarian 'Abu 'Umar al-Garmi: his position between Sibawayhi and Mubarrad -- Ibn Farigun's chapter on Arabic grammar in his compendium of the sciences / Hans-Hinrich Biesterfeldt -- Guillaume Postel (1510-1581) und die terminologie der arabischen nationalgrammatik / Hartmut Bobzin -- Qadi, qadi, qad: whichis the odd man out? / Michael Carter -- The phonetical theory of Mubarrad / Janusz Danecki -- On Farras linguistic methods in his work Ma'ani l-Qur'an / Kinga Devenyi -- Grammatologie de l'Arabe I: les sens du mot harf ou le labyrinthe d'une evidence / Joseph Dichy -- Arabic corpus linguistcs in past and present / Everhard Ditters -- Le patrimoine linguistique Arabe ancient: problemes de relecture / Boujemaa el-Akhdar -- Verbe, copule, nom derive (fi'l, kalima, ism mustaqq) dans les commentaires Arabes deu Peri Hermeneias d'Aristote (avec un texte enedit d'Ibn Rusd) / Abdelali Elamrani-Jamal -- The a fortiori argument in fiqh, nahw and kalam / Rosalind Gwynne -- Remarques sur les editions du Kitab de Sibawayhi et leur base manuscrite / enevieve Humbert -- Elements pragmatiques dans la theorie grammaticale Arabe post-classique / Pierre Larcher -- Indian influence on early Arab phonetics - or coincidence? / Vivien Law -- La notion d'actes d elangage dans la pensee linguistique Arabe ancienne / Ahmad Moutaouakil -- Grammatical studies in early Muslim Egypt / Ahmed Mokhtar Omar -- Themes in the development of Arabic grammatical theory / jonathan Owens -- The philosophizing Farra': an interpretation of an obscure saying attributed to the grammarian Ta'lab / Rafael Talmon -- Freedom of the speaker? The term ittisa' and related notions in Arabic grammar / Kees Versteegh -- Ibn Mada' al-Qurtubi's Kitab ar-Radd 'ala n-Nuhat: an historical misnomer / Ronald Wolfe. Descriptors: Language Grammar --History Series: vv.56 Location: Oriental Inst., Oxford. OIL PJ6021 HIS.2

I offer my help and guidance in any and all things having to do with DG. I can share any/all of my published and to be published papers with you, including those that are formulated at a more introductory level. I can answer questions. I also have many contacts. I recall there were one or two Arabic speakers at the (first) DG conference in Barcelona in 2011. I'm sure I can track down their names and contact information if you would like to get in touch with them. I myself am interested in what you learn about DG and the history of grammar in Arabic.

Concerning your intent to put information about DG into Arabic Wikipedia, I assure you that doing so will be a very rewarding experience. You can easily track the number of visits to the articles you create/edit. Furthermore, judging by the statistics for the articles I have created/edited, there is growing interest in DG. As a medium, Wikipedia is simply a far more efficient source for basic information than anything else out there. Send me an email if you like. My email address is on my Userpage. --Tjo3ya (talk) 16:20, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Dr. Osbourne,

Your generosity is much appreciated. And you hit the nail on the head about Wikipedia - providing free education on these subjects is both gratifying and enlightening for those who are interested. I will send you an email with some details of what it is I'm trying to do. MezzoMezzo (talk) 09:59, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi Mezzo, I look forward to you email. --Tjo3ya (talk) 22:10, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Arabic grammar

I've been buried in my thesis lately, but I have taken the time to read up on Ibn Mada's book (which I received) and Arabic grammar in general. One interesting point to note is that according to Kees Versteegh, Arabic linguistics in general resembles dependency grammar. While not all terms are congruent and comparisons are difficult, the comparison has been made more than once. Ibn Mada's suggestions were quite radical in that case, especially his comments that grammarians intentionally made grammar education more difficult than it had to be with Government (linguistics). Shawqi Daif, who reintroduced Ibn Mada's work in the 1950s, used that as a plea to simplify language education in Egypt. I'm thinking about perhaps doing some translations. Ibn Mada's book was translated in the 1980s but I can't find it anywhere, plus I like his book so I might translate it in full and put it up for free download on the Net. I don't know if that would be of historical interest to you or not. Also, Abu Hayyan of Grenada also seemed to take Ibn Mada's ideas to heart and most of the Arabs of Spain followed that thinking, as opposed to Arab grammarians elsewhere who didn't. I'll let you know what I find as I keep digging. MezzoMezzo (talk) 07:48, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi Mezzo,

Good to hear from you. Your interest and work with Mada's book are intriguing. Please share with me whatever you write or translate about Mada and/or DG. I have some questions:

1. How long is Mada's book?

2. What do you know about Kees Versteegh? Who is he? What is his interest in Arabic linguistics and DG?

3. Who is/was Shawqi Daif?

4. What do you mean when you mention "government". I of course have an idea about what government is, but I find that the term is thrown around rather loosely.

I hope your thesis work is going well. I look forward to corresponding with you more (when you have more time to focus on Mada and DG). Let me mention again the upcoming DG conference.

http://ufal.mff.cuni.cz/project/depling13/

Your interest and work with the theory of grammar can be promoted greatly by being well connected to a research community. I also have a couple of questions of a more personal nature. For instance, are you currently working in Saudi Arabia? Send me another email, and I will elaborate. --Tjo3ya (talk) 21:38, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

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cut-&-paste moves (Adjectival phrase)

Hi,

Please don't move articles by deleting & recreating in another location. You can request that a page be moved if you can't move it yourself. In this case, you should probably also request that the recent page history be merged, so that there's a record of your edits once the move is done. — kwami (talk) 22:51, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

OK, what do I need to do now to correct the situation? --Tjo3ya (talk) 01:16, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Discontinuity (linguistics)

Hi! Sorry about that on Discontinuity (linguistics); I should have clarified my tagging. What I was suggesting by the inline citations is that the notes and references needed to be more integrated, so that the inline citations link directly to the references. So for instance citation 7 would be to the reference for Chomsky, rather than a note for the reference. There are also a number of paragraphs that don't have any notes or references, which would benefit from the addition of such (if only so that readers know where such information could be further found).

Probably the best way for me to demonstrate my idea of referencing is with an article I created, which is Richard Pink. It's a relatively short article, but I think the referencing exemplifies my approach.

If you have any further issues, or would like me to expand, clarify, or assist on anything in any way, just hit me up on my talk page. — Sasuke Sarutobi (talk) 22:53, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Hello Sasuke,

Your citation practice looks good. No dispute there. But I don't think that convention would work for the articles I have been working on. The links you build into the references do not exist for the most part for what I am working on. Of course I could be looking up the ISBN numbers for the books I cite, but when those numbers are included, it starts to feel like advertising to me.

The convention I have been using follows a different practice. It lists the source in a note and then directly below the notes it gives the literature list. This practice allows one to read the notes all at once at the same time that one has the literature list in front of one's eyes. One can see which source is saying exactly what. A good example can be found here: predicate. Concerning the article you tagged, I need to update the convention I use so that it matches the example just given (in the article "predicate"). --Tjo3ya (talk) 23:27, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi there,

I'm writing to thank-you for your contribution the the Determiner Phrase site. Do you have critics/insight as to how we can improve our page?

~~Cortnaynicole89~~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cortnaynicole89 (talk • contribs) 05:35, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I have much to comment about. I think we will have to work out some major compromise about the eventual form of the article. I will comment on the talk page. That is where a discussion about the article should occur. --Tjo3ya (talk) 05:40, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Responding

Hi, the people you see editing this page a lot are students at UBC doing a project for Linguistics 300. Everyone was put into groups and then we were all given a subject about syntax. Please tell us what we are doing wrong before undoing our edits, because we are having a confusing enough time trying to make this all cohesive and make sure it has information that maybe our professor is looking for. We are not really sure what we should be putting, we weren't given much direction in terms of content. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jocelyndw (talk • contribs) 07:53, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

And is each of the groups supposed to be editing an article on syntax in Wikipedia? If this is the case, please let your instructor know that the projects are probably often not promoting the content in Wikipedia. Some of the information you guys have added to the article on determiner phrases seems OK, but other parts of your additions are either redundant, inconsistent, or just plain wrong. To be frank, it would be difficult for me to see how much of the content you have added can be maintained in its current form.

Here's what I can do. I can leave the article as is, as you guys have edited it, and allow you to edit it further. I can turn a blind eye. Once your semester is over, I will then go in and redo the article entirely. It hardly seems feasible to try to help guide you guys through the process of producing a good article, since you are probably simply not yet capable of producing a coherent account of such a complex theoretical issue.

But for me to agree to this plan, I need your instructor's email address. I intend to write a message stating that having students try to produce a coherent article on such a complex issue is problematic. I am interested in reducing the likelihood of seeing this happen again in future.

If I don't receive a response from (one of) you on this, I am going to go ahead and undo your work. --Tjo3ya (talk) 08:18, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Hey Tjo3ya, stop behaving badly. You don't own the page, and reverting constructive edits to make a point is wrong. No one needs permission from you to edit pages. Civility and freedom of anyone to edit are two of the Five Pillars or Wikipedia. If there are specific issues with content, then raise them. Undergraduate students are perfectly capable of writing Wikipedia articles, even on complex subjects. FWIW, I agree that there should be more discussion of the NP as NP analysis. So what I did was point this out to the editors, and give them a relevant paper to read. Please try a more cooperative approach. Francis Bond (talk) 09:27, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Francis, I respectfully disagree. But note that I've agreed to point out problems with the article. I'll do so tomorrow. Note as well that had I not reverted a couple of their edits, my guess is they never would have responded to my comments and requests. If you have a problem with my points, please post on the talk page for the article. That is where this discussion should be taking place. --Tjo3ya (talk) 09:34, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

This is the right page to discuss your behaviour. I added a note to one of their user ages a few days ago, and they responded to that, before all this happened. So you don't need to disrupt wikipedia to make a point: your guess is, as it turns out, incorrect. In any case, good to see you engaging them now, so end of story as far as I'm concerned. Francis Bond (talk) 00:52, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Ling/ellipsis edits, thanks!, and some suggestions

Hi Tjo3ya! First, thanks for all the work you've done on the linguistics articles, including especially the ones related to ellipsis, which needed a lot of work (and which I was never going to get around to doing, sadly). Nice to have references and examples properly in their place! Although I doubt I'll be able to spend much time editing here, I do try to tweak things when I get a chance in the interest of clarity and coverage.

I'm pretty happy with the new version of Answer ellipsis, which comes closer to reflecting the major approaches (while articulating the difficulties). I do think that a number of these articles could use a going-over to try to summarize the opinio communis as much as possible, and to give illustrative data. (Though it's easy to end up writing in the style of a linguistics handbook, which isn't in the interests of the lay readership here, but is an occupational hazard for us academics, of course.) I'd like to add somewhere that the most common term is "fragment answer", which is what most of the lit uses, I think (even Stainton, who doesn't support an ellipsis analysis to most fragments). "Answer ellipsis", as far as I can tell, isn't widespread in the lit.

Speaking of which--I like that you've tried to give a flavor of what is intended in many ellipsis examples, by adding subscripted text that conveys something like what the nonelliptical equivalent would be. But I have to suggest that some other typographical convention be used: in the technical lit on ellipsis, as you know, either such material is struckthrough, or it's enclosed in angled brackets, or it's omitted in example sentences entirely (especially where the content is precisely at issue). Subscripts, as far as I know, aren't a widespread convention, and we should probably stick to those already in wide use. (In fact, the smaller font is used in much of the lit to indicate deaccenting, not ellipsis; see for example Danny Fox's work.) I think for an encyclopedia, I'd stick to the regular English orthography and not represent any purported missing material at all (this also sidesteps the difficulty of deciding what that material should be!).

I also notice that you've added a lot of references to your own work and to analyses using the catena, which is fine of course. But there is a question of undue weight. While I think an argument could be made that the catena is a great innovation and helps solve some problems in the theory of ellipsis, Wikipedia isn't the place to make those arguments: there's even an argument that the catena-based analyses have such a tiny footprint in the lit on ellipsis that, by the guidelines of undue weight, they shouldn't even be mentioned. I myself wouldn't make that argument, but I can see its ability to be persuasive. On the other hand, there is a huge literature that uses syntactic identity, semantic identity, mixes of the two, with or without constitutent structures, etc., and I don't think it's a reasonable goal to have a Wikipedia article try to adjudicate among them. We all have our own opinions, but I think it's best to try to steer clear of evaluative statements, and the kind of things we'd write in an article (e.g., the use of "satisfactory account" here).

Thanks again for your contributions; it's great to see someone with some technical expertise adding content and cleaning things up. I'd just encourage you to try to be a little more neutral and less of an advocate for your theories here: that's what the journals are for! :-) Mundart (talk) 14:22, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Hi Mundart. Thanks for your comments. I understand your points, and I will contemplate them going forward. Concerning the small font, I used the one convention that I was aware of. If the strikethrough convention were available, I would have preferred to use it. Concerning citing my own works, I would not have invested the time and effort into Wikipedia, had I not been able to cite my own stuff. That said, I am not at all opposed to others working on the same articles. I'm in favor of citing more works. Doing so would reduce the undue weight given to my stuff. But here's the kicker, I'm one of the few who seem willing to invest time and effort into Wikipedia articles on syntax. This is surprising, considering the number of people reading Wikipedia. I cannot understand why more linguists are not interested in the content of linguistics articles in Wikipedia.

Now on to content concerning the article on answer ellipsis. Perhaps the article should be renamed "answer fragments". I have also heard that designation many times. You indicate that you would support renaming it. What I find particularly interesting about your contribution is the argument based on movement. The examples you have provided are not so convincing. Observe:

Does Susan have a crush on Bill?

??No, Fred. (Compare: ...but Fred Susan does have a crush on.)

The answer fragment is not very good in my view, although I'm not so sure about my acceptability judgment. If the embedding is deeper, I think acceptability is further reduced:

Do you think we believe Susan has a crush on Bill?

*No, Fred. (Compare: ...but Fred you do think we believe Susan has a crush on, right?)

If my acceptability judgments are accurate, then the example you provide in the article is poorly chosen. Such data do not support the movement-first-ellipsis-second approach. Do you disagree? --Tjo3ya (talk) 15:12, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

I also wish more people like you would spend time working to improve the quality of the linguistics pages, and I can't answer for why more people don't do it. I myself tried a few times, but was daunted at the scale of the project (most articles to my eye in 2009 needed a complete re-write from the ground up, including proper sourcing etc), and of course like most people, I have a full time job that already requires that I write a lot, and where I'm always behind on projects...! But I know Andrew Carnie involved himself for a while; I don't know why he stopped, but I suspect it had to do with a lot of unhelpful counter editing and other nonsense from the early days. But you're right of course that it's a worthy project, and always becoming more so, as a point of reference for students and others interested in the topics. Naturally the really top-notch overview articles are in the handbooks etc, but these aren't easily accessible to everyone, and, more important, aren't written for the Wikipedia audience. (And writing well in a generalist tone is hard work!)

With respect to subscripts: could you point me to a reference that uses this convention? I'm unfamiliar with it. And because it has to be explained at each occurrence, I'm sure the average reader is going to be puzzled, if I was.

As for the locality/movement effects, they're documented in the literature (Morgan 1973, Merchant 2004, some others since), including in a recent experimental paper ([1], though that doesn't do islands per se). I wouldn't want to try to re-run the experiments or re-litigate the data--that's a matter for the journals, not Wikipedia; we have to confine ourselves to reporting on what the lit says. (Disagreeing with published data is pure original research--perfect for a journal article, but out of bounds here.) But if you're interested, take a look at Howard Lasnik's work: he had a couple of papers on locality effects, pointing out that locality was stricter than mere island sensitivity; also, compare Reinhart 1991 (the nonquantificational QR paper), who had a similar point (this paper uses movement as well--like Pesetsky 1981, and perhaps Lobeck 1995, as well as others--but can't be characterized as "movement-first-ellipsis-second": it/they put the movement in the antecedent clause, and leave the "elided" clause completely without internal structure). All right, now I'm writing like a reviewer for a journal, far from plausible things to put in a Wikipedia article... Mundart (talk) 19:43, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your further comments, Mundart. You are obviously very knowledgable about the theory of syntax. I've read Merchant 2004, but I have not spent time with the other articles you mention. In general though, there are many approaches that address ellipsis by assuming that deletion follows movement, although the exact terminology used is going to vary. Merchant's works are perhaps the most prominent example of this. Sag did it with his QR in a sense. Johnson is doing it for gapping. In fact, I think the basic idea (movement first, ellipsis second) is the dominant way to approach ellipsis at present.

Concerning the smaller font I use in the articles to show ellipsis, please reread what I wrote above. I used that convention because the strikethrough convention, which is what I would prefer to use, is (to my knowledge) not available in Wikipedia.

Now concerning the locality effects, your point is of course correct: sourced content is what counts in Wikipedia. But let's put that aside. I'm asking you from one linguist to another, do you find this argument in terms of movement and locality effects convincing? What's your view? -- this is a talk page here; we can express our views directly.

I'm asking you as a linguist whether you agree with the following acceptability judgments:

Does Susan have a crush on Bill?

??No, Fred. (Compare: ...but Fred Susan does have a crush on.)

Do you think we believe Susan has a crush on Bill?

*No, Fred. (Compare: ...but Fred you do think we believe Susan has a crush on, right?)

If my judgments are accurate, then the example sentences you added to the article do not deliver an plausible argument in favor of movement-first-ellipsis-second. Right?

Dependency grammar articles

Hey, I notice you're very much into this aspect of linguistics and you've contributed significantly to lots of pertinent articles. Have you considered taking any of them to GAN or FAC? Looking at the main Dependency grammar page, I don't see why GAN wouldn't be realistic with some added citations and maybe a slightly more accessible writing style. Just a suggestion. Tezero (talk) 04:05, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

What are GAN and FAC?--Tjo3ya (talk) 04:23, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Good article nominations and Featured article candidates. If an article covers the basic bases of quality (everything's cited, it's reasonably well-written, sources are reliable enough and formatted correctly or at least consistently, etc.), it can be ranked as a good article. This admittedly doesn't have much use in and of itself, except for good topics and your own brag lists (and when people are browsing the list of all good articles, however often that happens), but it's a cogent stepping stone to FAC, which has stricter criteria but on the other side of which articles emerge as featured articles, allowing them to appear on the main page. I've had two articles on the main page (admittedly, neither on linguistics - both were video games with lackluster esteem). Any of this ring a bell? Tezero (talk) 06:44, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the informantive response. That is something for me to ponder.--Tjo3ya (talk) 07:37, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Head (linguistics)

Hey Tjo3ya, may I ask why you reverted my edits on Head (linguistics)? I am referring to the changing of several whiches to thats, which I did only in the name of grammar (see here). Dylanvt (talk) 21:16, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

"that" is indeed better. My mistake (again). Sorry. --Tjo3ya (talk) 23:53, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	Great work, Mr. Osborne. Thank u for ur sharing. Lzhan2 (talk) 07:21, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Head-directionality parameter

Hello Tjo3ya, hope you are well. I just saw the note you left at the above page. It is good that the new additions are getting some eyes from an experienced editor and linguist. I don't challenge your critique, primarily because I am no linguist myself. I agree that different theories/schools of thought represented in published literature should be given even footing and coverage in the article. However, I did want to critique this: We again have a situation where one particular linguist (RM Dechaine) has engaged squads of undergraduates to promote one particular approach to syntax. That assumes bad faith on the part of the professor. I strongly feel that the professor undertook this assignment in good faith. I just wanted to leave a note with you, not to discourage you from critiquing the work, but asking that you avoid language that could inflame or demotivate. Best regards, The Interior (Talk) 21:33, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Original Barnstar

First off, I want to say thanks for your great academic contribution. I look forward to seeing soon your work published by a good company (routledge, springer, oxford, cambridge, degruyter, etc.). Now, I also want to encourage you to go on editing some more entries, and complete those pending (e.g. Predicate-argument structures (under construction)). Once again thank you! Hope to hear news from you soon! Regards. Backinstadiums (talk) 07:02, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

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Respecting and living with Wikipedia's username policy

Hi Tjo3ya,

Again, I thank you for your hard work on linguistics pages, and acknowledge that work. Please acknowledge that Wikipedia is an open source, freely editable generalist encyclopedia whose policies allow editors, even long-time, expert ones, to choose anonymity, and please respect that choice. Badgering me or accusing me of being "bold" (which is supposed to be a virtue here, in any case) by hiding behind the perfectly acceptable Wikipedian choice of an anonymous username violates the spirit of congenial collaboration that makes Wikipedia what it is. My edits to various pages, most recently to sluicing, are entirely professional, and I fail to see how it's possible not to recognize that, and the spirit in which they are made. Thanks again, Mundart (talk) 17:54, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Mundart, You are obviously a knowledgable linguist, but we are not negotiating on equal ground. You know my identity, whereas I do not know yours. Please send me an email ((Redacted)), revealing your identity to me. I will keep you anonymous in Wikipedia. You will receive immediate respect from my side and my willingness to compromise will increase. As things now stand, I dislike what you are doing (hiding behind anonymity)and feel much less inclined to negotiate. --Tjo3ya (talk) 02:22, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Accusative verbs

I wonder if you could have a look at the article Accusative verb, which I have expanded (but not added any citations to) and the Talk page. I merely took the definition that was there already and clarified it with examples. But when looking for citations I began to doubt if this term 'accusative verb' is in fact one in general use. Certainly Google ngrams shows that it is only rarely used compared with 'unaccusative verb'. Perhaps you could give an opinion. Kanjuzi (talk) 14:13, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

Request to review Syntactic Structures

Hello, I have been working on the article on and off for a long time now. I would be happy if you took a look and gave feedback. Thanks in advance. Zaheen (talk) 17:29, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

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The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

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The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

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Constituency tests and disambiguation

Syntactic ambiguity characterizes sentences which can be interpreted in different ways depending solely on how one perceives syntactic connections between words and arranges them into phrases. Possible interpretations of the sentence They killed the man with a gun are:

'The man was shot.'

'The man who was killed had a gun with him.'

The ambiguity of this sentence results from two possible arrangements into constituents:

They killed [the man] [with a gun].

They killed [the man with a gun].

In the first sentence, with a gun is an independent constituent with instrumental meaning. In the second sentence, it is embedded in the noun phrase the man with a gun and is modifying the noun man. The autonomy of the unit with a gun in the first interpretation can be tested by the answer ellipsis test:

How did they kill the man? - With a gun.

However, the same test can be used to prove that the man with a gun in the second sentence should be treated as a unit:

Who(m) did they kill? - The man with a gun.

The ability of constituency tests to disambiguate certain sentences in this manner bears witness to their utility. Most if not all syntacticians employ constituency tests in some form or another to arrive at the structures that they assign to sentences.

Competing theories

Alternate theoretical approaches to syntax make different assumptions regarding what is considered a constituent. In mainstream phrase structure grammar (and its derivatives), individual words are constituents in and of themselves as well as being parts of other constituents, whereas in dependency grammar, certain core words in each phrase are not a constituent by themselves, but only members of a phrasal constituent. The following trees show the same sentence in two different theoretical representations, with a phrase structure representation on the left and a dependency grammar representation on the right. In both trees, a constituent is understood to be the entire tree or any labelled subtree (a node plus all the nodes dominated by that node); note that words like killed and with, for instance, form subtrees (and are considered constituents) in the phrase structure representation but not in the dependency structure representation.

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Coordination Page

Hi Tjo3ya, we saw that you requested more information as to who we are and why we are contributing to the Coordination page. Please feel free to get in touch with our professor at http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/User:RM_Dechaine — Preceding unsigned comment added by Linguistics300 (talk • contribs) 19:59, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Hi Tjo3ya, we understand that you value the accuracy and credibility of posts being made to Wikipedia pages. This is also important to us as the goal of this project is to provide positive contributions to our assigned Wikipedia article. However, please do not delete all our work. We welcome all constructive criticism and we especially value the feedback of a linguistics professor, but it is very difficult for us to even complete our project if edits are deleted. We would very much like to work with you to improve the Coordination page. Linguistics300 (talk) 03:42, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Hi Tjo3ya, we understand your point of being clear, but instead of deleting the whole section, is it possible if you can leave a message on my user page, about what you think can improve in our description? And since I am covering coordination in Japanese, I feel the need to include Japanese characters, since in Japanese same pronunciation can yield different meanings, including Japanese characters is a must for a better and clearer explanation, therefore I will still include Japanese characters in the next edit, is that okay with you? Ianyuen98 (talk) 07:49, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

A page you started (Universal Dependencies) has been reviewed!

Thanks for creating Universal Dependencies.

I have just reviewed the page, as a part of our page curation process and note that:

You probably shouldn't include a verbatim quote in the lead

To reply, leave a comment here and prepend it with {{Re|Rosguill}}. And, don't forget to sign your reply with ~~~~ .

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_signed, Rosguill ^talk 22:21, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

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Possible COI / Advocacy on catenas

Hello, I'm writing because of a possible Conflict of Interest / Advocacy issue surrounding your edits to the page on catenas. As of now, you have authored around 89.4% of that page, and the bulk of the references there is to your work.

References to the concept of the catena may also be problematic. For instance, on Extraposition#Theoretical_analyses, it is now written: "The words in red in the dependency tree qualify as a concrete unit of syntax; they form a catena." However, it is not clear whether this is a generally accepted statement, given that most of the references on the catena page are to your work.

In short, would it be possible to make the content on the catena page more diverse, and clarify to what extent statements there are generally accepted (in what subtheory specifically)? In general, a safest way to interpret the Wikipedia guidelines would be not to write about your own work: once it is common enough, others will write about it; if not, there is apparently no need. Not writing about your own work avoids issues of undue weight. I would welcome any comments on your part. Thanks for your time. Kaĉjo (talk) 18:00, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Hello Kaĉjo, I was not aware of a potential problem here. Yes, most of the sources listed are my own. I can point out, though, that many of the sources listed are good journals that conduct blind peer-review, or they are handbooks that seek contributions from prominent people in the relevant fields...so there are numerous reviewers and editors that in some sense think the catena concept is a valuable contribution to linguistics. There is also a book with a prominent publisher in linguistics that backs up the content. Certainly I am the most qualified person to write about this, but if there is concern I can think of a couple of things I could do. I could ask one or more of my collaborators to come in to contribute in such a manner that the percentage of contributions from me is reduced. I could reduce the number of sources listed that have me as (first) author. I could shorten the length of the article so it seems less central to Wikipedia content. What do you recommend?--Tjo3ya (talk) 01:06, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your quick reply. I think the same applies here as to making/contributing to a Wikipedia page for yourself. You are the most knowledgeable, but you're still not supposed to do that. The fact that the work has been reviewed and published does not indicate that there is any kind of general acceptance of the concepts/theories. Hence my suggestion to as a rule avoid writing about yourself/your own work and wait for others to do that. To be on the safe side my common sense tells me to cut significantly in the number of references to the catena page but leaving the page itself intact (there does not seem to be much point in cutting there). But I am not all that familiar with Wikipedia's guidelines, so we can also take this up with someone else first. Kaĉjo (talk) 07:23, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Hello Kaĉjo, Who are you? You lack a user page that would allow me to get a sense of who is making the recommendation. Anonymity makes the timid bold. Another point I think you want to consider concerns that if the guideline you point to is interpreted strictly, the obvious way around it is for people in my position to task their graduate students with doing the Wikipedia work, or worse yet, their undergraduate students. Some of that to the detriment of the content has certainly been occurring in Wikipedia in linguistics and syntax in general. --Tjo3ya (talk) 04:39, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

That question is neither relevant nor appropriate. -- Clearly there are obvious ways around plenty of things in this world. The question is: can you (general 'you') be a responsible user? Kaĉjo (talk) 08:03, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Kaĉjo, What is clear to me here is that you flagged the article because the majority of sources are authored by me. Obviously that is something for me to think about, since it may in fact reduce the credibility of the content of the article. I will therefore likely reduce the number of those sources. What is also clear to me is that your status here is not so credible because you choose to stay anonymous. A warning flag has now gone up concerning your motivation in this scenario.--Tjo3ya (talk) 08:19, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Notice of neutral point of view noticeboard discussion

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is Catena (linguistics).The discussion is about the topic Catena (linguistics). Thank you. --Kaĉjo (talk) 08:33, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Unacceptable behaviour

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Hello, I am writing because of what may be Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines#Behavior_that_is_unacceptable. In particular, that page says "Do not ask for another's personal details", but you have requested my identity and that of others. Could you please stop this, or explain how it conforms to Wikipedia guidelines? Kaĉjo (talk) 08:52, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Kaĉjo My concern comes from the absence of information on your user page. There is nothing there. I am wondering, for instance, what your background knowledge is about issues in linguistics and syntax. I think any user who is contributing content is going to be more inclined to react positively to a recommendation coming from someone who is knowledgeable about the field at hand. --Tjo3ya (talk) 09:06, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

From Wikipedia:Respect_privacy: "there is no means to check that a wikipedia user is who they say they are". The same goes for one's background knowledge. Regardless of that, I don't see how your concern validates the direct violation of the guideline I linked to by asking "Who are you?"? Kaĉjo (talk) 09:14, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Kaĉjo, The suspicion works like this: I have been contributing here in Wikipedia for years, adding major content to dozens of articles on syntax. My work here has been conducted in an entirely transparent manner, as my user page demonstrates. The article on the catena unit has been present for about seven years. I then get an unexpected message that there may be a problem with the content because I have put my name in the reference list too often. I originally react without checking to see who is commenting. But then I check, and I notice there is absolutely nothing there in the user page of the person who is recommending changes. Under those circumstances, it is natural for a suspicion to arise about the motivations behind that person's comments. Concerning the specific Wikipedia guidelines, I confess I am not versed in the specifics of what is sanctioned and what not in communicating with other users. I prefer to focus on content issues that have to do with my field of expertise. --Tjo3ya (talk) 09:33, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Now that you have been made aware of those guidelines, do you plan to change your behaviour? Do you intend to apologize? I begin to find this interaction rather unpleasant and I hope we can resolve this issue so that we can focus on the possible COI issue. Also note that similar questions of undue weight have been raised before, at least on User_talk:Tjo3ya#(=_xxx) and User_talk:Tjo3ya#Ling/ellipsis_edits,_thanks!,_and_some_suggestions, so I really fail to see what my own credentials have to do with the matter. But, as said before, this is a moot point anyway given that you are not supposed to ask for them. Kaĉjo (talk) 09:46, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Kaĉjo, Hmmmm. --Tjo3ya (talk) 10:01, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Can you clarify? If you need time to think about it, that's fine with me. If this is your final response, perhaps we should get a third opinion or other way of dispute resolution. Let me know what you think. Kaĉjo (talk) 14:46, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Kaĉjo, I continue to be concerned about your motivation. You showed up here out of the blue, and with a singular purpose. Let's see what others have to say. --Tjo3ya (talk) 15:59, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

I notice there is absolutely nothing there in the user page of the person who is recommending changes. Under those circumstances, it is natural for a suspicion to arise about the motivations behind that person's comments. Not in the slightest!

You have no grounds to ask for someone else's identity.

What is also clear to me is that your status here is not so credible because you choose to stay anonymous. A warning flag has now gone up concerning your motivation in this scenario. (from the linked page) These are baseless WP:ASPERSIONS, and are not permitted on Wikipedia.

You know my identity, whereas I do not know yours. Please send me an email ((Redacted)), revealing your identity to me. I will keep you anonymous in Wikipedia. You will receive immediate respect from my side and my willingness to compromise will increase. As things now stand, I dislike what you are doing (hiding behind anonymity)and feel much less inclined to negotiate. This is simply not how Wikipedia works, in the slightest. Please see WP:5P3, particularly anyone can edit. We do not deal in credentials, and all editors are on equal footing.

If you cite yourself, see Wikipedia:Attribution#Citing_yourself. It can appear as Wikipedia:Self_promotion.

Also please see WP:EXPERT: Expert editors can be very valuable contributors to Wikipedia, but they sometimes have a difficult time realizing that Wikipedia is a different environment from scholarly and scientific publishing. The mission of Wikipedia is to provide articles that summarize accepted knowledge regarding their subjects, working in a community of editors who can be anonymous if they wish. (emphasis mine) Leijurv (talk) 18:16, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Liejurv, Understood. Is there a problem when a user appears out of the blue and attacks a single page, no record at all from that user? I suspect that what is going on here may be connected to disagreements that are occurring in another forum away from Wikipedia. This suspicion could be dispelled if Kaĉjo has a record in Wikipedia that reaches back to before his or her appearance here on my page.--Tjo3ya (talk) 18:37, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

I see sporadic edits here going back a few years. Are you implying this is a WP:SPA? I wouldn't agree, if so. I suspect that what is going on here may be connected to disagreements that are occurring in another forum away from Wikipedia. Do you have any reason to believe this, other than that they are calling out conflicts of interest where they see it, in a manner you don't like? Because if you're just throwing around that accusation simply because they are anonymous, that, again, is an example of casting WP:ASPERSIONS. Wikipedia editors can be anonymous. This suspicion could be dispelled if Kaĉjo has a record in Wikipedia that reaches back to before his or her appearance here on my page. Yes, it's good to look at someone's edit history on the wiki. See here.

I also took a look back through your contributions: Talk:Constituent_(linguistics) You are students of linguistics, perhaps with only a few months, or perhaps just a year or two, of linguistics studies under your belt. You are anonymous; you are not self-identifying by establishing user pages, but rather you use aliases (i.e. Syntactician1, Syntactician2, etc.). Your edits therefore are easy to discount. Again, we do not care about the level of experience, age, student status, or any other real life attribute of our editors. No one owes you their identity. We only care about the quality of their contribution. Some months ago, I edited a page for quite some time alongside someone who turned out to be 12 years old, and I had no idea until a month or two later. It didn't, and doesn't, matter. At the same time, your criticisms of students being assigned to add arbitrary content to pages is legitimate, because that criticizes their behavior, not their credentials.

If I may make a bit of a reach: if you have this much of a problem with registered accounts with no claimed real life identity, I wonder what you might make of Wikipedia:IPs_are_human_too#Common_misconceptions... Please remember to WP:AGF. Leijurv (talk) 18:49, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

You do not have the right to ask for another user's personal information. You being open with who you are is fine, but it doesn't mean you can ask that of another user. The only thing that would be suitable, were if it was a WP:PAID or WP:COI issue. If there are issues with particular edits then those are the issues that need to be brought up, not their identity. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:58, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Responding to Liejurv and Lee Vlenski, I have read your points and I understand. I will adjust my communications to match the Wikipedia guidelines in these areas. Concerning Kaĉjo's editing history, the edits he or she has made match the profile of the person I am thinking of. That person is likely versed in computational linguistics. He or she is extremely active in the Linguistics Stack Exchange. Note that attempts to communicate directly via email are based on his or her statements that he or she would do just that. I could be wrong about this, though. In any case, I understand the Wikipedia guidelines and I will adjust immediately.

Please do not post the personal information of other editors without explicit permission. That may be considered WP:OUTING. (Repeatedly asking for such information is covered under the same policy) Kaĉjo, I see you posted this to 3O, which is a great place to get a third opinion, but this seems to be more of a conduct dispute than a content dispute, which means it may be better resolved at WP:AN or WP:ANI, since they're the people who actually can do anything about it. If someone has posted your personal information without your permission and you would like it removed before you make a thread at a noticeboard and attract lots of attention, please see Wikipedia:Requests for oversight, who can suppress personal information so that not even admins can see it. Alpha3031 (t • c) 03:27, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Liejurv, Lee Vilenski, and Alpha3031 for having a look and providing guidance. Tjo3ya, if you must know, I have done some computational linguistics, but am not active on the Linguistics Stack Exchange at all. I think we can close the discussion here now and continue discussing the actual content. Kaĉjo (talk) 07:39, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for taking this on board Tjo3y. I should also mention that users do not have to have expertise in any area to edit in that area. If you believe they have a PAID connection, or a conflict of interest in a particular article, that is fine to question, but not that they may or may not be an expert in a field. I'll close this topic for now, but please do not do this in future. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 09:05, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.