Category talk:English comparative adjectives
Latest comment: 3 years ago by Surjection in topic RFC discussion: January 2019–February 2021
The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for cleanup (permalink).
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For some reason a lot of entries are here, categorised as full adjective lemmas, when in the past these have always been treated as non-lemma forms. Unless there is some plan to start giving them full lemma status, they should be moved to Category:English adjective forms. —Rua (mew) 23:18, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
- I also thought that these categories were going to be under adjective forms based on the vote and preceding discussion. Surjection probably just made a mistake while implementing the result of the vote in Module:category tree/poscatboiler/data/non-lemma forms. — Eru·tuon 23:28, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
- The vote seems to be mistaken then, because "comparative adjectives" is for lemmas, i.e. a specific subcategory of "adjectives". Non-lemmas should go in "adjective forms" and have a name that includes "forms" as they have always done. —Rua (mew) 23:37, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
- If you disagree with the result of the vote, please start a new vote to change policy back to what it was before. But at the moment, it is policy. — Eru·tuon 23:40, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
- I've put "comparative x" and such under the corresponding "x forms" category as the vote prescribed, correcting Surjection's mistake. This should also be reflected in Module:headword, but Rua has reverted me there so I'm just going to give up because I don't enjoy fighting with people online. — Eru·tuon 23:50, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
- The vote makes the category structure inconsistent. In all other cases, "xxx POSs" are lemma categories, while non-lemma categories are named "POS xxx forms". Just look at Module:headword/data and the category tree modules. —Rua (mew) 23:59, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
- That may be and it might be a nice convention to have syntax reflect category structure, but it needn't be an absolute rule. — Eru·tuon 00:24, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
- But then why should this be the only exception? —Rua (mew) 00:26, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
- You should read the discussion. I'm not feeling like formulating it logically, but some considerations: judging by practice people were confused which of the three types categories (comparative adjectives, comparative-adjective forms, and adjective comparative forms) to put the entries that did and did not list inflected forms (for Ancient Greek, masculine nominative singular of the comparative versus its other forms) in, "comparative adjectives" and "comparative adjective forms" sound more natural than "adjective comparative forms", and people involved in the discussion figured that comparatives should be categorized as non-lemmas, like participles and infinitives and gerunds, even in languages in which they have their own inflected forms. (I'm using "comparative" here even though the considerations also apply to superlatives and other things.) — Eru·tuon 00:48, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
- But then why should this be the only exception? —Rua (mew) 00:26, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
- That may be and it might be a nice convention to have syntax reflect category structure, but it needn't be an absolute rule. — Eru·tuon 00:24, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
- The vote makes the category structure inconsistent. In all other cases, "xxx POSs" are lemma categories, while non-lemma categories are named "POS xxx forms". Just look at Module:headword/data and the category tree modules. —Rua (mew) 23:59, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
- The vote seems to be mistaken then, because "comparative adjectives" is for lemmas, i.e. a specific subcategory of "adjectives". Non-lemmas should go in "adjective forms" and have a name that includes "forms" as they have always done. —Rua (mew) 23:37, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
- "For some reason a lot of entries are here, categorised as full adjective lemmas" This is actually not the case; comparative and superlative adjectives are still considered non-lemma forms. As to the category having the adjective lemma category as its parent, this could very well be a mistake in a way that the categories should be linked under adjective forms anyway - that is something I can fix. I would recommend reading the vote and exactly what it proposed over. Specifically, all comparative/superlative forms are now non-lemmas, unless they are derived from a non-existent adjective or have developed a meaning of their own of some kind, and the "comparative/superlative adjective forms" are for inflected forms of such. — surjection ⟨?⟩ 09:01, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
- I rechecked and "comparative/superlative adjectives" are indeed categorized under "adjective forms", so there's nothing wrong there. The existence of a separate "comparative/superlative adjective forms" for inflected forms of comparatives and superlatives is in turn influenced by participles too having a "participle forms" even though participles are not lemmata. — surjection ⟨?⟩ 09:06, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
- Participles are what's called a "sublemma", a non-lemma form that has further inflected forms. But we don't treat them this way for every language. Participles in many of the Romance languages are simply categorised as verb forms, despite having inflections. There are other kinds of sublemmas as well, such as Category:Northern Sami noun possessive forms. There has never been any kind of special naming scheme for sublemmas, they have always been treated as just non-lemmas and named as such. Are you proposing to change this? —Rua (mew) 12:04, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
- Exactly, and I proposed (in the vote) to handle comparative and superlative adjectives as such sublemmas as well. I'm not going to argue against the current system of sublemmas in that they are considered non-lemma forms but that they have their own form categories for inflected forms of such. As for the "participles in many of the Romance languages", that is a per-language thing and I agree that it is an argument that the handling of comparatives and superlatives should be handled separately. However, for this, participles do not say have feminine forms (to my knowledge) unlike superlatives that are essentially their own adjectives in terms of inflection. — surjection ⟨?⟩ 12:20, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
- Participles have four forms in the Romance languages: masculine singular, feminine singular, masculine plural and feminine plural. All four of those forms are currently categorised as "verb forms" in some languages. What about languages like English, Dutch or Swedish where comparatives and superlatives are not sublemmas? How should an editor categorise them then? —Rua (mew) 12:33, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
- How they are not "sublemmas" in those languages? The vote makes them so; the Dutch and Swedish ones are multiple different forms (which I talked about in more detail on the other talk page). — surjection ⟨?⟩ 12:40, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
- The current treatment of Dutch and Swedish adjectives is to have no sublemmas, and the vote did not say anything about forcing this to change. Instead, the vote is about changing the names of the categories to one that is inconsistent with all other non-lemma forms, sublemma or not. —Rua (mew) 12:50, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
- The vote did not change it, but languages must decide to use either "comparative adjectives" or "comparative adjective forms"; for languages where this is more ambiguous, all forms can be chosen to be placed in either category, but most likely there is a specific "most lemma" form that can be chosen. And again, the naming is most definitely not inconsistent "with all other forms" - I've mentioned participles several times and it seems I will have to keep mentioning them, too. — surjection ⟨?⟩ 12:53, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
- The current treatment of Dutch and Swedish adjectives is to have no sublemmas, and the vote did not say anything about forcing this to change. Instead, the vote is about changing the names of the categories to one that is inconsistent with all other non-lemma forms, sublemma or not. —Rua (mew) 12:50, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
- How they are not "sublemmas" in those languages? The vote makes them so; the Dutch and Swedish ones are multiple different forms (which I talked about in more detail on the other talk page). — surjection ⟨?⟩ 12:40, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
- Participles have four forms in the Romance languages: masculine singular, feminine singular, masculine plural and feminine plural. All four of those forms are currently categorised as "verb forms" in some languages. What about languages like English, Dutch or Swedish where comparatives and superlatives are not sublemmas? How should an editor categorise them then? —Rua (mew) 12:33, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
- Exactly, and I proposed (in the vote) to handle comparative and superlative adjectives as such sublemmas as well. I'm not going to argue against the current system of sublemmas in that they are considered non-lemma forms but that they have their own form categories for inflected forms of such. As for the "participles in many of the Romance languages", that is a per-language thing and I agree that it is an argument that the handling of comparatives and superlatives should be handled separately. However, for this, participles do not say have feminine forms (to my knowledge) unlike superlatives that are essentially their own adjectives in terms of inflection. — surjection ⟨?⟩ 12:20, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
- Participles are what's called a "sublemma", a non-lemma form that has further inflected forms. But we don't treat them this way for every language. Participles in many of the Romance languages are simply categorised as verb forms, despite having inflections. There are other kinds of sublemmas as well, such as Category:Northern Sami noun possessive forms. There has never been any kind of special naming scheme for sublemmas, they have always been treated as just non-lemmas and named as such. Are you proposing to change this? —Rua (mew) 12:04, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
- I rechecked and "comparative/superlative adjectives" are indeed categorized under "adjective forms", so there's nothing wrong there. The existence of a separate "comparative/superlative adjective forms" for inflected forms of comparatives and superlatives is in turn influenced by participles too having a "participle forms" even though participles are not lemmata. — surjection ⟨?⟩ 09:06, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
- Closed, since they are no longer categorized as lemmas and besides a lot of this is just arguing over the name (which was confirmed by a vote and is now implemented throughout en.wikt). — surjection ⟨??⟩ 18:52, 10 February 2021 (UTC)