Talk:vuvuzela

Etymology

"From Zulu vuvuzela (“‘to make a vuvu noise’”). Directly translated vuvu-ing"

Does this mean vuvuzela is the present participle? It's hard to tell. Who wrote this? Mglovesfun (talk) 08:33, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

RFV

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Esperanto: "of or relating to vuvuzelas". Just because it could be theoretically said in Esperanto doesn't mean it is. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:07, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Also, if "vuvu" is itself a word (as implied by the etymology section) then should't there be an entry for it? SpinningSpark 18:38, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Which etymology, I'm not seeing it. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:51, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

The English etymology. Sorry if my comment was off-topic for this thread. SpinningSpark 16:54, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Adjectives derived from nouns are used the same way in Esperanto that noun-noun compounds are used in English. The usage example shows this: vuvuzela bruo is equivalent to the English vuvuzela noise. This suggests that this might be treated as little more than a 'combining form' of the word vuvuzelo, and as such, an inflected form rather than a lemma in its own right. Since we don't usually apply CFI to inflected forms of words, this might actually be outside the scope of an RFV. —CodeCat 17:14, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Um, since when do we not apply CFI to inflected forms? WT:CFI does that mention that handy exception. And what if the only cited form is the lemma? Or if only an inflected form exists? Should we create the lemma? Should it have an asterisk? Should it even be in the main namespace? --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:29, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Our practice so far has been to include unattested lemmas of attested inflected forms, sometimes with a note stating which forms of the lemma are actually attested. The assumption seems to be that the attestability of part of an inflectional paradigm implies the existence of all of the paradigm, provided of course that the type of paradigm can be extrapolated from the attested forms. This is very much the norm in other dictionaries as well, particularly those dealing with ancient languages. I also can't think of any time when someone submitted a non-lemma form for RFV. So if this is not de jure in CFI, it certainly seems to reflect de facto practice, and I would support a vote to modify CFI in this way. —CodeCat 17:46, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

I oppose inclusion of unattested forms other than the lemma. Including an unattested lemma that has attested forms is an altogether different thing: the lemma does not stand for itself but rather for the complete lexeme AKA set of inflected forms. Your claim that including unattested inflected forms is a "de facto practice" is an empirical claim; any evidence, such as RFV nominations that have been closed in align with the supposed actual practice? --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:20, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Our de facto practice is in the many bots that operate on Wiktionary, which create and have created many inflected forms in many languages which are probably not attested. The de facto practice is also in the presence of red and green links in headword lines and inflection tables that suggest (if not to us, then to users in general) that the entry should be created. If we don't want those entries to be created, then the links send a conflicting signal. So are you suggesting that we omit or unlink, say, the present participle from the headword line of an English verb, because it is not attested? There are probably plenty of English verbs that would meet that criterium. Do we really want to open ourselves up to that kind of trouble? Including having to rewrite all of our inflection templates and bots so that we can specify for each form whether or not it is attested? I certainly don't! I am quite happy with our current practice of being attestation-agnostic for inflected forms. —CodeCat 18:34, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

What are the languages for which unattested inflected forms have been bot-created? What are some of those unattested inflected forms? --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:14, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Coming back to "vuvuzela": is it an inflected form, in the first place? It looks like an adjective derived from a noun, as, in Czech, cs:adj:"stolní" derived from cs:noun:"stůl", where cs:adj:"stolní" is nowhere an inflected form of cs:noun:"stůl". --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:20, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

@Dan: Latin is a big one, due to SemperBlottoBot (talk • contribs). As an example, I'm having trouble finding cites for (deprecated template usage) occupatote (smudged manuscripts aside). A lot of unattested inflected forms are added by hand, though - Hans Friedrich Tamke has been doing that in Volapük, and Embryomystic in Irish. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:27, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't know what exactly you mean by inflected form. In theory, the root is vuvuzel- from which is formed the noun vuvuzel-o and adjective vuvuzel-a by standard modification of the root.

We probably have a number of unattested inflected forms for Esperanto. Given that the system is entirely regular, vuvuzeloj attests vuvuzelo and vuvuzelon as well. We could store just the root for Esperanto, but any system where we had just the attestable forms for Esperanto would bizarre and unhelpful. (As well as making it harder to attest Esperanto; I've used various standard inflected forms to attest the root where I couldn't have done the same with our sources with just one form.)--Prosfilaes (talk) 22:04, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

@Prosfilaes: What I mean by "inflected form": Inflection typically preserves part of speech, unlike derivation. In English, "does" is an inflected form of "do", and "cats" is an inflected form of "cat", whereas "adjectival" is not an inflected form of "adjective", "rescuer" is not an inflected form of "rescue", and "cleverness" is not an inflected form of "clever". Thus, regularity of formation is not a distinguishing mark of inflection.

Re: "I've used various standard inflected forms to attest the root ...": Attesting a lemma via its inflected forms is okay; the lemma stands for the entire set of inflected forms. As I have said above.

What I am saying is that while we have the English abactinal, we should have neither *"abactinality" nor *"abactinalness" regardless of the regularity of the formation, as these are unattested. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:45, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

I wouldn't generally request verification of words like piratically, though it may not be an inflected form of piratical. Esperante, vuvuzela ("vuvuzelic") or vuvuzele ("vuvuzelically") from vuvuzelo (vuvuzela) seem similarly regular and natural. However, vuvuzelic, while comprehensible and regularly formed, would not merit a new page unless you might actually encounter it somewhere. On the other hand, we will have an English definition for vuvuzela regardless, so listing its meaning in Esperanto doesn't actually bloat our namespace any. ~ Röbin Liönheart (talk) 03:43, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

This discussion isn't going anywhere in particular. Vuvuzela still needs three durably archived citations. All the talking in the world won't change that. Mglovesfun (talk) 08:59, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

RFV-failed. - -sche (discuss) 23:37, 14 October 2012 (UTC)