Category talk:Comparative adjectives by language
Latest comment: 1 month ago by ExcarnateSojourner in topic RFM discussion: January 2019–August 2024
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"comparative adjectives" > "adjective comparative forms"
Apparently there was a recent vote to remove the ambiguity of comparative and superlative categories. What I don't understand is why the name "comparative adjectives" was chosen, which suggests a lemma category, yet it's now being subcategorised under non-lemmas. Lemma subcategories are named "xxx POSs", as can be seen in Module:category tree/poscatboiler/data/lemmas. Non-lemma subcategories are named "POS xxx forms", visible in Module:category tree/poscatboiler/data/non-lemma forms. Therefore, the obvious place for comparative forms of adjectives is the "adjective comparative forms" category we used to have. The new name, although voted on, stands out as an exception among all of our existing categories and is inconsistent. It should therefore either be renamed back to reflect its non-lemma status, or it should be moved back under its original lemma parent category. —Rua (mew) 23:57, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
@Surjection, Erutuon —Rua (mew) 00:09, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
- The vote was here: Wiktionary:Votes/2018-07/Restructure comparative and superlative categories. — Eru·tuon 00:13, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
- Participles are not lemmas yet they are called "(language) participles", so it's not as if the comparatives/superlatives would exactly be exceptions of some kind. They even have their own "participle forms" categories! The former also applies to gerunds. — surjection ⟨
?⟩ 09:13, 11 January 2019 (UTC)- And to make it clear, "adjective/adverb comparative/superlative forms" categories are to be made obsolete as a direct result of the vote. — surjection ⟨
?⟩ 09:16, 11 January 2019 (UTC)- Yes, and that should be undone, because as I said, the name "comparative adjectives" suggests that they are lemmas because of our existing naming scheme. Participles are non-lemmas by virtue of being participles, but adjectives are lemmas, so "comparative adjectives" are also lemmas. Are you implicitly proposing to rename all non-lemma categories to this new scheme, e.g. "dual adjectives", "plural nouns", "possessive nouns", "feminine adjectives"? If the vote is upheld then I will propose this change to make things consistent again. —Rua (mew) 12:00, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
- I certainly would not assume "comparative adjectives" refer to lemmas in any way as much as "participles" don't. If we go back to "adjective comparative forms", what do you suggest for the name of the category with inflected forms of such? And don't just say "put them in 'Adjective forms'", because that at the very least isn't consistent as I stated below. In the old system, there was no consistency at all - inflected forms of comparatives and superlatives went to either the same category as them or Adjective forms without any sort of rule. — surjection ⟨
?⟩ 12:17, 11 January 2019 (UTC)- I would not even categorise inflected forms of comparatives in a special way. They are just adjective forms. I don't even think comparatives should be categorised separately at all, there is no obvious need to do so. The example of possessive forms is perhaps the best parallel, since they have inflection tables of their own in Northern Sami and many other languages. Do you propose renaming them to "possessive nouns" so that there can be a separate "possessive noun forms" category? —Rua (mew) 12:28, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
- If you feel comparatives too don't need a special category, I'm personally fine with bunching all of them under "adjective forms", but that will too need wider consensus to implement. When it comes to those possessive nouns, I would argue comparatives and superlatives are closer to participles than to those possessive forms, which is why I believe they're not a good parallel and should be considered separately. — surjection ⟨
?⟩ 12:40, 11 January 2019 (UTC)- Why? —Rua (mew) 12:46, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
- Many participle forms develop into adjectives of their own right and some comparative/superlatives too have developed into their own forms. Possessive forms by comparison basically never have, showing that they are fundamentally different in some way. — surjection ⟨
?⟩ 12:49, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
- Many participle forms develop into adjectives of their own right and some comparative/superlatives too have developed into their own forms. Possessive forms by comparison basically never have, showing that they are fundamentally different in some way. — surjection ⟨
- Why? —Rua (mew) 12:46, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
- If you feel comparatives too don't need a special category, I'm personally fine with bunching all of them under "adjective forms", but that will too need wider consensus to implement. When it comes to those possessive nouns, I would argue comparatives and superlatives are closer to participles than to those possessive forms, which is why I believe they're not a good parallel and should be considered separately. — surjection ⟨
- I would not even categorise inflected forms of comparatives in a special way. They are just adjective forms. I don't even think comparatives should be categorised separately at all, there is no obvious need to do so. The example of possessive forms is perhaps the best parallel, since they have inflection tables of their own in Northern Sami and many other languages. Do you propose renaming them to "possessive nouns" so that there can be a separate "possessive noun forms" category? —Rua (mew) 12:28, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
- I certainly would not assume "comparative adjectives" refer to lemmas in any way as much as "participles" don't. If we go back to "adjective comparative forms", what do you suggest for the name of the category with inflected forms of such? And don't just say "put them in 'Adjective forms'", because that at the very least isn't consistent as I stated below. In the old system, there was no consistency at all - inflected forms of comparatives and superlatives went to either the same category as them or Adjective forms without any sort of rule. — surjection ⟨
- Yes, and that should be undone, because as I said, the name "comparative adjectives" suggests that they are lemmas because of our existing naming scheme. Participles are non-lemmas by virtue of being participles, but adjectives are lemmas, so "comparative adjectives" are also lemmas. Are you implicitly proposing to rename all non-lemma categories to this new scheme, e.g. "dual adjectives", "plural nouns", "possessive nouns", "feminine adjectives"? If the vote is upheld then I will propose this change to make things consistent again. —Rua (mew) 12:00, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
- And to make it clear, "adjective/adverb comparative/superlative forms" categories are to be made obsolete as a direct result of the vote. — surjection ⟨
- In fact, unlike this new system which has parallels, I'm fairly sure the old system of having "adjective comparative forms" but then the forms of comparatives under "adjective forms" is more of an exception. — surjection ⟨
?⟩ 09:32, 11 January 2019 (UTC)- Not really. We don't have separate non-lemma categories for everything in Module:category tree/poscatboiler/data/lemmas and in fact we don't need to. Under the old system, all comparative forms could be categorised under "adjective comparative forms", so that includes all case forms of comparatives. There was never any need to separately categorise forms of comparatives. In fact I'm generally opposed to subcategorising non-lemmas, so that's why I moved everything in Dutch to just "adjective forms". We don't need a subcategory for every possible type of non-lemma form. However, if we do have them, then they should be named consistently. —Rua (mew) 12:00, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
- We don't have separate non-lemma categories for the reason that many of them are simply not inflectable on and upon themselves. Again, participles have separate categories for the main participle and inflected forms of such - why should this not apply to comparative and superlative adjectives? — surjection ⟨
?⟩ 12:17, 11 January 2019 (UTC)- What I get out of your argument is that you think "POS xxx forms" should become "xxx POSs" when the form has its own inflections. But then what about cases like English, where comparatives don't have their own forms and are simply adjective forms? Or cases like Dutch or Swedish, where there are multiple superlative forms but their inflections are shown on the lemma? How is an editor supposed to know what the name of the category for any particular adjective form is, when some of them are named differently from others? —Rua (mew) 12:28, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
- That is indeed my argument for comparatives and superlatives due to their so far horridly inconsistent handling. In the case of English and all other languages, they will only have "comparative adjectives", no "comparative adjective forms", much like English would have "participles" that too aren't lemmas but would not have "participle forms". In cases like Dutch, Swedish and such where comparative/superlative forms are more numerous, those need to be handled on a language by language basis, ideally to choose one of the forms as the most lemma-esque (such as which form dictionaries primarily use to describe the comparative/superlative of an adjective), and if not one can be decided, it is more of a tricky situation (possibly all into "comparative/superlative adjective forms"?). Editors in turn can rely on other existing entries and eventually remember these entries much like the existing ones are, or use language-specific headword templates. Yes, the new system is by no means perfect, but I would argue it is miles better than what we had before. — surjection ⟨
?⟩ 12:38, 11 January 2019 (UTC)- But again, how is an editor of these languages supposed to know that, while adjective forms normally go in "adjective xxx forms", it is somehow different for comparative and superlative forms? You still haven't answered this. Your argument is based on sublemma-ness, but this differs per language, not all languages treat comparatives and superlatives as sublemmas. The categorisation should allow for both treatments depending on the needs of the individual language, not force a particular treatment on all languages. The fact that you think it makes sense for Finnish doesn't mean it makes sense for English. Now we have Category:English comparative adjectives for an adjective form, but Category:English noun plural forms for a noun form. How is that consistent? —Rua (mew) 12:45, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
- I did already answer that question - read the latter part of my previous response. Many a time has an editor checked an existing entry to see how something is formatted, and I doubt there would be a single editor that has never done that. Many of the languages with comparatives and superlatives set up have language-specific headword templates, and many of those too have ACCEL which can too give the correct headword category autom- oh wait, it can't anymore since someone removed that capability. — surjection ⟨
?⟩ 12:49, 11 January 2019 (UTC)- You have not answered the question. An editor cannot, based on the rule that non-lemma categories are named "adjective xxx forms", guess the correct name of the category for comparative forms, whereas they could before. Instead, there is now a single exception that comparatives are named "comparative adjectives". Where are all the other "xxx POSs" categories for non-lemmas? Again, are you proposing that all non-lemmas be renamed to match this new scheme? If not, what justifies this single exception? —Rua (mew) 12:54, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
- I did already answer that question - read the latter part of my previous response. Many a time has an editor checked an existing entry to see how something is formatted, and I doubt there would be a single editor that has never done that. Many of the languages with comparatives and superlatives set up have language-specific headword templates, and many of those too have ACCEL which can too give the correct headword category autom- oh wait, it can't anymore since someone removed that capability. — surjection ⟨
- But again, how is an editor of these languages supposed to know that, while adjective forms normally go in "adjective xxx forms", it is somehow different for comparative and superlative forms? You still haven't answered this. Your argument is based on sublemma-ness, but this differs per language, not all languages treat comparatives and superlatives as sublemmas. The categorisation should allow for both treatments depending on the needs of the individual language, not force a particular treatment on all languages. The fact that you think it makes sense for Finnish doesn't mean it makes sense for English. Now we have Category:English comparative adjectives for an adjective form, but Category:English noun plural forms for a noun form. How is that consistent? —Rua (mew) 12:45, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
- That is indeed my argument for comparatives and superlatives due to their so far horridly inconsistent handling. In the case of English and all other languages, they will only have "comparative adjectives", no "comparative adjective forms", much like English would have "participles" that too aren't lemmas but would not have "participle forms". In cases like Dutch, Swedish and such where comparative/superlative forms are more numerous, those need to be handled on a language by language basis, ideally to choose one of the forms as the most lemma-esque (such as which form dictionaries primarily use to describe the comparative/superlative of an adjective), and if not one can be decided, it is more of a tricky situation (possibly all into "comparative/superlative adjective forms"?). Editors in turn can rely on other existing entries and eventually remember these entries much like the existing ones are, or use language-specific headword templates. Yes, the new system is by no means perfect, but I would argue it is miles better than what we had before. — surjection ⟨
- What I get out of your argument is that you think "POS xxx forms" should become "xxx POSs" when the form has its own inflections. But then what about cases like English, where comparatives don't have their own forms and are simply adjective forms? Or cases like Dutch or Swedish, where there are multiple superlative forms but their inflections are shown on the lemma? How is an editor supposed to know what the name of the category for any particular adjective form is, when some of them are named differently from others? —Rua (mew) 12:28, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
- We don't have separate non-lemma categories for the reason that many of them are simply not inflectable on and upon themselves. Again, participles have separate categories for the main participle and inflected forms of such - why should this not apply to comparative and superlative adjectives? — surjection ⟨
- Not really. We don't have separate non-lemma categories for everything in Module:category tree/poscatboiler/data/lemmas and in fact we don't need to. Under the old system, all comparative forms could be categorised under "adjective comparative forms", so that includes all case forms of comparatives. There was never any need to separately categorise forms of comparatives. In fact I'm generally opposed to subcategorising non-lemmas, so that's why I moved everything in Dutch to just "adjective forms". We don't need a subcategory for every possible type of non-lemma form. However, if we do have them, then they should be named consistently. —Rua (mew) 12:00, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
Which question exactly have I not answered? The question was "how would an editor of these languages know the correct name for the categories?", which I have now answered not less than twice in my two previous responses. Instead, what it seems you are arguing is that the new scheme creates inconsistency in terms of the category names for non-lemma forms. Indeed, if other derivations are shown to be just like participles or comparative/superlatives, I'm happy to agree to move them under a similar scheme as well, but the possessive forms you brought up above are not an example of such. — surjection ⟨?⟩ 12:58, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
Since it seems that this is the new norm for naming categories, I have proposed to rename all existing categories to match the new naming scheme at WT:BP. —Rua (mew) 13:16, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
- @Rua Given the edits you have made to the templates and modules are still in place, are you willing to revert those yourself or are you asserting that you are overriding the consensus established by the vote? — surjection ⟨
?⟩ 21:10, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
- Since it has been five years with no further input, I'm closing this as no consensus. — excarnateSojourner (ta·co) 05:04, 23 August 2024 (UTC)