Category talk:Proto-Albanian lemmas

RFD discussion: December 2019–February 2020

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for deletion (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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Category:Proto-Albanian lemmas

Per above, @Kwékwlos went ahead and created several dozen Proto-Albanian entries, but, like with Armenian (@Vahagn Petrosyan), we don't reconstruct Proto-Albanian and other proto languages with a single descendant. As such, these should all be deleted. --{{victar|talk}} 01:23, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Keep. Proto-Albanian reconstructions that are properly sourced in scholarly works have their place. Gheg and Tosk are different enough that you can, indeed, make meaningful reconstructions. Unlike in most such cases, we don't have attested earlier languages to draw from. This creates an etymological vacuum that tends to suck in lame theories about Illyrian and Pre-Greek from the imaginations of rabid nationalists. Anything produced by competent scholars is better than that. Chuck Entz (talk) 07:43, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

@Chuck Entz: Like with Armenian, you can arbitrarily choose to reconstruct any stage of its development and call it a proto form, and that's exactly what's done. In any given work, you can have several stages reconstructed, so which one do you choose, and by which author, and why? Who's also to say which developmental changes came before any others? Gheg and Tosk are distinct, but the reconstructions we're referring to are intended to be much earlier, and the differences between Gheg and Tosk are only dialectal, like that of Kurdish and Lithuanian. No, Proto-Albanian is a bad idea all around, which is why we've wisely gone this long without creating such entries. --{{victar|talk}} 10:51, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

But would we keep the category? We have Category:Proto-Armenian language, which doesn't include any lemmas but does include a category of requested entries as well as a category for terms derived from Proto-Armenian. That strikes me as odd, because it means the only way we can reference Proto-Armenian in etymologies is along the lines of {{inh|hy|hyx-pro|-}}, which strikes me as counterintuitive. I say we should either accept Proto-Armenian as a full-fledged reconstructed language, with reconstructed lemmas, or reject it entirely and delete the code hyx-pro from our modules. And the same goes for Proto-Albanian: either we allow reconstructed lemmas, or we don't allow any mention of it at all. I really don't like the current situation for Proto-Armenian and I don't want it to spread to Proto-Albanian. —Mahāgaja · talk 19:05, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

@Mahagaja: I can see an argument for creating certain Proto-Albanian entries with ancient borrowings attached to them. I don't know if we need a full language code for that, or if Reconstruction:Albanian would suffice. --{{victar|talk}} 19:25, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Incidentally, the only reason Proto-Albanian has only one descendant language is because we've made the Wiktionary-internal decision to treat Albanian as a single language, even though it's associated with multiple ISO 639-3 codes. If we had decided differently, Proto-Albanian would have four descendants: Arbëresh (aae), Arvanitika (aat), Gheg (aln), and Tosk (als). —Mahāgaja · talk 19:14, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

@Mahagaja: Even so, the Proto-Albanian being reconstructed isn't in an ancestral form to the dialects, but a much earlier hypothetical one. If it was the former, you would have a proto language that is, in many cases, identical to its descendants. --{{victar|talk}} 19:25, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Why this belief in ISO 639 codes? They have been invented for other purposes than making dictionaries. And the four descendants are still too few, it’s not about the number, but whether there is enough primary material to meaningfully and usefully reconstruct a language. “Proto-Albanian” neither means any identifiable language nor does anyone need pages for this. There is no “etymological vacuum”, this is no argument to create the pages. It serves everyone well if there is just Albanian and Proto-Indo-European on Wiktionary – the reasonable man that is, we can’t avoid the lame theories anyway, especially by going down on their level. Delete. (And yes, I implied that certain scholarly works are on that level. Ominously enough those Albanian reconstructions are from the same people who reconstruct Altaic, randomly matched Proto-Afro-Asiatic and what not. There is great folly in academia too, and not everything fits a wiki.) Fay Freak (talk) 19:41, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

If you're discrediting Orel's Albanian work just because of his Afro-Asiatic work, I don't find that a solid argument to do so. It's very possible for an academic to be authoritive in one subject but controversial in another, e.g. Laurent Sagart being authoritative in Old Chinese reconstruction but controversial in regards to Austronesian. By that logic, the Baxter-Sagart Old Chinese reconstructions should not be trusted. mellohi! (僕の乖離) 18:04, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

Yes, as regards Afro-Asiatic, Orel himself also repeatedly noted that his work was only preliminary, to be taken as suggestions for further exploration and not as a proper reconstruction. Hence the subtitle of his dictionary is ‘Materials for a Reconstruction’. As long as it’s taken in that light (and not assumed to be anything more) there’s nothing sub-scholarly about it. — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 16:45, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

Delete for the reasons given above. --Vahag (talk) 20:11, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Keep. Proto-Albanian reconstructions like these (strictly speaking "pre-Latin Proto-Albanian", or vorlateinisches Uralbanisch as I have seen them called) also come from solid, wholly uncontroversial scholars like Demiraj, Schumacher, Matzinger and others. Sure enough, they do not reflect the most recent common ancestor of all Albanian dialects, but a more remote ancestor, definitely. Thanks to the mass of Latin loanwords (plus Greek, early Romance and Slavic loanwords) the developments from the beginning of the contact with Latin until the Gheg-Tosk split, and their relative chronology, are very well known. I recall reading an article that showed the development from the pre-Latin Proto-Albanian over the pre-Slavic Proto-Albanian and strictly Proto-Albanian (proper) stages to Old and Modern Albanian, not from the likes of Orel; this is solid scholarship. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:53, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

@Florian Blaschke This does not answer why it would be needed to have dedicated pages for Proto-Albanian forms. I have not spoken against listing such forms, as in any other dictionary – their creation as pages is what irks. Fay Freak (talk) 02:28, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

@Fay Freak: And why exactly does it irk you? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:16, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

@Florian Blaschke: Because I don't see why all the information contained in a Proto-Albanian entry wouldn't be contained in an Albanian entry instead, and because reconstructing a language from a single language with no other language in the family is without certainty. No comparative method. Fay Freak (talk) 22:16, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

@Fay Freak: As others have already explained to you, these arguments do not hold water. Dialect vs. language is an arbitrary distinction. We can reconstruct Proto-Sinitic even though Sinitic is often treated as a single language. Tosk and Gheg can be, and are sometimes, treated as two individual, if closely related, languages. Moreover, the comparative method also works on close-knit dialect groups. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:21, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

@Florian Blaschke: Nobody has explained, dialect vs. language is not an arbitrary distinction, and nobody has treated Sinitic as a single language. As I have already explained, it’s not about the number, but about the whole mass of material. So even if the Tyrsenian languages contains a handsome number of languages, there is not enough data for a dictionary of Proto-Tyrrhenian, even if one is already certain that there is a family. Tosk and Gheg is not enough. Also, if Tosk has one form and Gheg another, barring known sound changes, and even then not always, one can’t know which is the original. For this same reason one avoids to reconstruct Proto-Semitic. Either one has matches in all three consonants, then it is moot for stating the obvious, or one has only two consonants matching with perhaps some meaning difference, and then one does not know what the original is or whether there even was a common original. Fay Freak (talk) 23:17, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

@Fay Freak: Almost everything you say either makes no sense or is flat out wrong. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 23:53, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

@Florian Blaschke: Almost everything you say either makes no sense or is flat out wrong. Fay Freak (talk) 23:58, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Uh, what? This discussion is over. You're not only clueless about linguistics, you're not even intellectually qualified. Sod off. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:15, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Delete I don't see why all the information contained in a Proto-Albanian entry wouldn't be contained in an Albanian entry instead. I feel like there's this love for creating entries that goes beyond what's optimal information-wise. Crom daba (talk) 19:18, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

This is false because Proto-Albanian terms could be furnished with basic declension and conjugation tables based on Vladimir Orel's research and reconstructions of those. Perhaps one may even consider to add their pronunciations. HeliosX (talk) 16:10, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

Surely this logic can be applied to any language? ArbDardh (talk) 17:47, 9 December 2019 (UTC)ArbDardh

Not really, because when a protolanguage has multiple descendants, it wouldn't necessarily be clear which language's entry to put the etymological information under. —Mahāgaja · talk 19:15, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

No. Nobody searches for Proto-Albanian entries. Fay Freak (talk) 22:16, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Some indeed do. I am certainly one, and also know others who do appreciate the page. ArbDardh (talk) 23:15, 9 December 2019 (UTC)ArbDardh

How does it look like? You search Proto-Albanian to find an Albanian word? Sounds implausible. Fay Freak (talk) 23:20, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Yet we do so. ArbDardh (talk) 17:14, 10 December 2019 (UTC)ArbDardh

Makes no sense to me. That reminds me of that user who insisted on categorising every inflected form in Sanskrit, claiming it was useful - how, we don't know yet. Canonicalization (talk) 15:43, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

I support the possibility of searching through them. This is already an argument in favor of keeping those entries. HeliosX (talk) 16:10, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

(@Victar, Fay Freak, Mahagaja) Perhaps slightly off the topic, but can I still create new(, properly sourced) Proto-Albanian entries? ArbDardh (talk) 21:47, 27 December 2019 (UTC)ArbDardh

I don't quite reenact why you would need a permission to add new Proto-Albanian entries regardless of their basing on references in case that they are reasonable enough. HeliosX (talk) 16:10, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

Keep. The information that the discussion relies on is slightly deficient because Proto-Albanian did not yield only the terms of the Albanian dialects but also terms in the four distinct Eastern Romance languages and therefore may be called for more while it gathers those in its entries. Maybe Torvalu4, Kwékwlos and Etimo could also state their opinions here. HeliosX (talk) 16:10, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

According to the voting rules, at this prior discussion page a link should be provided to this vote, based on it. I would like to direct it as well at Mahāgaja, Torvalu4, Kwékwlos and Etimo. HeliosX (talk) 00:17, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

Keep for the reasons given above. Torvalu4 (talk) 14:46, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

@Torvalu4 Please note there is an actual vote underway here at Wiktionary:Votes/2019-12/Banning Proto-Albanian entries - if you want your vote to count formally, cast it there. — Mnemosientje (t · c) 15:04, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

@HeliosX: “The terms”? The bulk of such claims is overly conjectural, and one does not know if it is Dacian, Moesian, Thracian or other Paleo-Balkan languages, or later intruders like Avar, but all of these are more likely than “Proto-Albanian”. I don’t see why your etymon *strungā needs to be Proto-Albanian. It’s a dustbin category. Of course if it is vaguely defined as comprising the whole Balkan peninsula then it appears likely. But there isn’t just an opposition Romance ←→ Proto-Albanian. There was much more around. Fay Freak (talk) 20:39, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

This a case where we have a form without a language. There are languages with lacking known words and there are words we know that are of undetermined language. It’s like ΖΩΑΠΑΝ. Did you know about Category:Undetermined lemmas, @HeliosX? Fay Freak (talk) 21:11, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

• Closed. This has been sent to a vote, where there was no consensus to delete Proto-Albanian. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:14, 16 February 2020 (UTC)