Wikidata talk:WikiProject Linguistics

Project's main page

I've been editing items about the IPA sounds (which is why I had also been wondering about starting WikiProject Linguistics). Right now the page is focused on a single area, so maybe it would be better to have long lists of items on a subpage about a specific task, so that the main page can be more of an overview (I've added a participants list, but we could also have lists of relevant properties, links to proposed properties, etc). What do you think? - Nikki (talk) 03:40, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

I had originally been thinking of doing typology, and probably doing IPA next, though we can certainly have multiple things going at once. I'll make the subpage now. Popcorndude (talk) 14:17, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

list moved, properties added, would you mind adding info about any other areas? Popcorndude (talk) 14:28, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

property idea

I was considering proposing a few properties to more cleanly describe IPA. Example:

labialized voiceless velar fricative (Q19774933)

"place of articulation" => velar consonant (Q19408) or soft palate (Q1056395) (probably the former)

"manner of articulation" => fricative consonant (Q31427)

"phonetic modifiers" => labialized consonant (Q19773274), voiceless consonant (Q19773264)

(alternatively, maybe have voiceless consonants be unmarked and mark voiced ones with voice (Q494510))

Thoughts? Would this be good or should we just stick with the present subclass system? Popcorndude (talk) 15:15, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Nice! I'd go with standard "secondary articulation" instead of "phonetic modifiers" (never heard of this terminology". --SynConlanger (talk) 20:10, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

If there is a standard term for it, that should probably be used in place of my made up terms. 😊 Popcorndude (talk) 20:35, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Hi Popcorndude! Yes, the standard term is secondary articulation (see, for instance, Ladefoged, Peter and Ian Maddison. 1996. The sounds of the world's languages. Oxford: Blackwell. 354–368). --SynConlanger (talk) 20:47, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Languages labels

Should the labels for languages contain the word "language" or should they be the name of the language only? I'd do name only, with "language" in the description (plus the name of the language, or not?). --SynConlanger (talk) 20:25, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

I agree, move "language" to description. Popcorndude (talk) 20:35, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Should we use the description "language" or "human language" for all languages? Some already have indications of phylogenetic grouping, but I think it is risky and I'd move that info to statements. I'm for something like "human language" or "natural language". --SynConlanger (talk) 10:19, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

I would say have something like the situation with Swedish (Q9027), Label: Swedish, Description: North Germanic language, Aliases: Swedish language, sv

Yes, the language family should probably be stored in statements, but why not have it in both places? Popcorndude (talk) 12:01, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Actually, I wasn't thinking about homonyms! So stating the language family is necessary. My concern is just for unclear classifications, a situation that is more widespread than thought. We could state only the highest family level (like "indoeuropean", "afro-asiatic", "austronesian" and so on) and leave lower sub-groupings for statements. This way we could include diverging classifications with no major problems, also giving sources. I'm quite confident that homonymies don't exist within one language family, so that should't be a problem. See Aho: refers both to a Niger-Congo and an Austro-Asiatic language. --SynConlanger (talk) 12:41, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Missing properties list

One of the list is about languages: Top missing properties by number of sitelinks/P1412 (languages spoken, written or signed) or native language (P103).

With most of the contemporaries sorted out, it has become the question about which Wikidata item to use for this or that language at the time of .. --- Jura 16:02, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Wikimania 2016

Only this week left for comments: Wikidata:Wikimania 2016 (Thank you for translating this message). --Tobias1984 (talk) 12:02, 25 November 2015 (UTC)