Talk:небо

Ukrainian plural

I omitted небеса because they are treated as a separate lemma [1], and not merely as a plural form. This is probably because it is no longer used as a plural form at all in the vernacular, but only in poetry and literature as a stylistically marked form. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 14:30, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Not according to [2]. It may be exclusive to poetry and that kind of stuff, but it's still the plural. --WikiTiki89 14:36, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Those dictionaries are a bit dated. The point is that it is not perceived as a plural form by the speakers, and that it forms a separate plurale tantum lemma with a limited usage. Just because it was a morphologically regular plural thousand of years ago it doesn't mean that it is justified to treat it as such today. You're misleading readers. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 15:07, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

I would hardly consider 1924-33 to be a thousand years ago. --WikiTiki89 15:12, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

It was not a productive inflectional class then. And even your link say ч. употребл. редко. Today it's probably ч. употребл. ніколи. It is not a regular plural form. Many plurale tantum words are relics of old plural or dual forms. Just because the singular as well has remained attested, and I wouldn't be surprised generalized into plural form неба, it doesn't mean that it is justified to conflate the two. They now function as separate words. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 15:19, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Whether it is productive and whether it is regarded as a plural are two separate questions. If it was regarded as a plural in 1924-33, then there are still people alive today who regard it as a plural. --WikiTiki89 15:27, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

If the dictionaries published in the last few decades lemmatize them separately, so should we. Their choice of lemmas is based on experience and fieldwork, not on assumptions. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 15:33, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

So far you've only shown me one dictionary that does so. Also, as you probably know, Wiktionary is not in the habit imitating other dictionaries. --WikiTiki89 15:44, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

I've checked other more recent dictionaries and they do so as well. Even in the worst case, you have a single source almost a century old, and the existing reference that supports separate treatment is from 1980s. The burden of evidence is upon you not me. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 17:37, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Burden of proof is a legal term and it is a logical fallacy to use anywhere else. In court there can only be one decision so one side gets the burden of proof and if they fail to prove it they lose. In science there is no burden of proof and we must accept all possibilities that have not been disproved. In this case, that is not as much of a problem as you seem to think. All we have to do to have it both ways, is create a separate entry for небеса́ (nebesá) and put usage notes on both pages explaining the situation. --WikiTiki89 17:51, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Logical fallacies deal with semantics of language usage, not with register or applicability of terms. Specifically, burden of proof can have non-legal meanings, in particular figurative, just as most of the words denoting abstract notions. Just because a word or idiom has a precisely defined legal usage, it doesn't mean that it can't have other semantic values as well. Words are not "owned" by anyone.

This is not science. We do not have theories and hypotheses to validate. We describe reality as it is independent of us using a single criteria - attestation. Since spoken language does not have any attestation that is easily reachable (e.g. a database of recorded and transcribed-for-search human speech in non-artificial environment; perhaps when NSA database leaks one day?), we have to rely on other dictionaries to make that kind of value judgement. And the evidence so far presented is in favor of небеса being a separate lemma, confined to a specific register (poetry), detached from небо in the minds of speakers, and the two do not form a single paradigm. If it's not usually uncountable but always uncountable from today's perspective, then it's best to move it to a separate entry. That the two used to form a single paradigm a long time ago can of course be explained in usage notes. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 18:09, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

You are assuming that небеса is "detached from небо in the minds of speakers". But your dictionary does not say that. All it does is list the words in separate entries, providing no explanation. It is just as likely that they meant by this that its use as a plural is archaic as it is that they meant it is non-existent. --WikiTiki89 18:22, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

That assumption is implicit in separate lemmatization. If they were considered a part of the same paradigm, they would've been grouped together. But they are not - plural has different usage register, and it's a separate lemma. It's a not a synchronically formed plural, but a different word which a plural meaning. I.e. a plurale tantum. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 19:27, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

ABBYY Lingvo x5 (2011) does not lemmatize небо and небеса separately, see. --Vahag (talk) 16:21, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

But can't you see it lists небеса in the definition line of небо, not as a plural form but as a synonym? Online version has a separate plurale tantum lemma form as well [3]. Those inflection tables are algorithm-generated and mean nothing. Some dumb programmer assigned a suppletive stem in the plural, that's all. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 17:37, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Ivan, you seem to have a very strong opinion on this but небеса is a plural form. Usage and additional senses are irrelevant. Sky, skies, heaven, heavens are interchangeable but these singulars and plural. Usage note could explain the situation. Russian сын has two plurals - сыновья́, сыны́. The latter form is poetic but it's still plural. The usage of небеса in Russian and Ukrainian is similar if not identical. (iPad edit, awkward to add links). --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 20:25, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm not denying that небеса means a plural form of небо. But if it is not recognized by such by native speakers, then it should be lemmatized separately as plurale tantum, as other dictionaries do. I don't really have strong opinion about this, I just like to sort issues thoroughly. сыновья, сыны is a different thing - the word is normally countable, it simply has double forms in plural (The same as Serbo-Croatian - sȉnovi/sȋni). --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 20:34, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

The form "небеса" is not only grammatical plural but let me assure you, it's also perceived (recognised) as such. If we were to refer to multiple instances of "sky" in a non-poetical sense, e.g. "skies of different planets" (not sure if it's a good example), we would use "небеса́ ра́зных плане́т" (ru) / "небеса́ рі́зних плане́т" (uk). BTW, to me, English "skies", "heavens" usually mean the same as singular "sky" (usually uncountable) but expressed more poetically. It's worth mentioning, of course, that "небеса" can just mean "heaven". Also, "телеса́ " (irregular plural of "те́ло") can mean "a frame, a (singular) body of a fat person". -еса is not a suffix to form plurals. "небеса" had a singular form. From a prayer in OCS but used in Russian: "о́тче наш, и́же еси́ на небеси́..." --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 21:21, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

-еса is not a plural suffix because it is part of the stem of небо that disappears in only in the nominative/accusative/vocative as can be seen in the declensions at OCS нєбо (nebo) and Proto-Slavic *nebo, but how the plural originated is irrelevant to whether speakers of Ukrainian regard it as a plural or not. Clearly we don't have enough evidence for either side, and until we do we must accommodate for both cases. --WikiTiki89 21:43, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

I think this revision of небеса covers both cases. I didn't know (or rather didn't think, since I knew about "на небеси́") that "небес-" was part of lemma, thanks. I agree that etymology is irrelevant in this case, plural forms can be suppletive. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 23:15, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

I think Anatoli is right, most people do aware that небеса is plural of небо. Though this form is dying out, and in his example of "skies of different planets", I would rather say in singular "небо рі́зних плане́т" - in analogy to "blood of different (species of) animals" though there is plural of blood, which is steel used in some expressions. Alexdubr (talk) 12:43, 4 December 2013 (UTC)