Wiktionary talk:Votes/2018-07/Restructure comparative and superlative categories

Clarity

For clarity, I suggest two minor changes:

1. "Categories for comparative and superlative forms of adjectives and adverbs take two forms, ..." → "Currently, categories for comparative and superlative forms of adjectives and adverbs take two forms, ..."
2. "These shall be supplanted with a unified category tree." → "The proposal is to supplant these with a unified category tree."

Furthermore, if I understand the proposal correctly, the desired unification is to be achieved by renaming categories whose names fit either of the two patterns "language comparative-partofspeech forms" and "language partofspeech comparative forms" all to "language comparative partofspeech forms". And likewise for "superlative". No other changes needed. However, that is not spelled out. If that is indeed the intention, it ought to be be made explicit, if only for the sake of clarity. If it is not the intention, the actual intention should be clarified.  --Lambiam 20:42, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

Those two changes look good. As for the intention part, it is not exactly the intention (the purpose is to rename and unify those categories under "Category:language comparative part-of-speech" for the comparatives themselves and "Category:language comparative part-of-speech forms" for inflected forms of such. SURJECTION _{·talk·contr·log·} 20:54, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

An example, in case it helps: in Ancient Greek, the page for the masculine nominative singular form of the comparative or superlative adjective, which contains the declension table, would be in the category Category:Ancient Greek comparative adjectives, while all other inflected forms would be in Category:Ancient Greek comparative adjective forms. For example, the masculine nominative singular comparative μείζων (meízōn, “greater”) would be in Category:Ancient Greek comparative adjectives, while the masculine genitive μείζονος (meízonos), the masculine nominative plural μείζονες (meízones), the neuter nominative singular μεῖζον (meîzon), and so on would be placed in Category:Ancient Greek comparative adjective forms. — Eru·tuon 21:35, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

Superduperlative adverb forms

Re: "indeclinable words, such as adverbs, would simply have no category for inflected forms". We now have more than 50 categories for "language adverb comparative/superlative forms", from Category:Czech adverb comparative forms to Category:Westrobothnian adverb comparative forms.  --Lambiam 11:22, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

Those categories have comparatives of the adverbs, not inflected forms of such; the current category name is misleading (yet another reason why this change needs to be made). SURJECTION _{·talk·contr·log·} 13:37, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

Then I guess Dutch hele is the exception that proves the rule that adverbs are not inflected.  --Lambiam 20:37, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

If you can find a comparative or superlative of an adverb that can be inflected, by all means do. That, however, would only require me to add a "(in most cases)", and it would also justify the existence of a category for "LANGUAGE comparative adverb forms" (or respectively for superlatives). SURJECTION _{·talk·contr·log·} 20:43, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

Why is this topic called "superduperlative adverb forms"? Orrinpants (talk) 00:27, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Implementation

Assuming this does pass, the best way to implement is probably:

1. Modify the categories under poscatboiler data or wherever it is to match the new spec, keeping adjective comparative forms etc. there until we have gotten rid of those categories
   1. Moving "comparative adjectives" etc. under adjective forms
   2. Adding a new category entry for "comparative adjective forms" etc.
2. Move the entries:
   1. Category:English adjective comparative forms -> Category:English comparative adjectives (and respectively for all categories under Category:Adjective comparative forms by language).
   2. Category:English adjective superlative forms -> Category:English superlative adjectives (and respectively for all categories under Category:Adjective superlative forms by language).
   3. Category:English adverb comparative forms -> Category:English comparative adverbs (and respectively for all categories under Category:Adverb comparative forms by language).
   4. Category:English adverb superlative forms -> Category:English superlative adverbs (and respectively for all categories under Category:Adverb superlative forms by language).
   • (If the target categories already exist for some langauges, just merge the two)
   • The moving process will probably entail the following:
     1. Modifying Template:comparative of and Template:superlative of
     2. Editing the head template transclusions in all articles
3. Eliminating the old categories from poscatboiler data

Any suggestions welcome. Modifying the thousands of head transclusions is probably the most cumbersome part. SURJECTION _{·talk·contr·log·} 16:13, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

Clarification

I feel a clarification might be necessary, since the vote can no longer be edited, seeing it has already begun: the Category:LANGUAGE comparative adjective forms and Category:LANGUAGE superlative adjective forms need not exist for all languages, if the comparatives or superlatives cannot be inflected in those languages. SURJECTION _{·talk·contr·log·} 18:41, 14 July 2018 (UTC)