Category talk:Borneo-Philippines languages

Deletion debate

The following information passed a request for deletion.

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Category:Borneo-Philippines languages

See Wiktionary:Requests_for_moves,_mergers_and_splits#Category:Borneo-Philippines_languages. It's badly named and not a proper linguistic family. - -sche (discuss) 20:34, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

What's our alternative? -- Liliana • 21:50, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Renaming it Category:Borneo-Philippine languages? Actually, the two names seem about as common on Google, though "Borneo-Philippine languages" is attested in Google Books where "Borneo-Philippines languages" isn't. But if it's a paraphyletic grouping, would we prefer to drop it and use only the next proper group, Malayo-Polynesian? - -sche (discuss) 21:57, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

That would reinstate the huge mess that was there until I cleaned it all up. -- Liliana • 22:05, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Judging by w:Malayo-Polynesian languages, the Sama-Bajaw and Philippines groups could be split off into Sulu-Philippines, with the rest of the Borneo-Philippines subcategories spitting off into Bornean. Of course, it's not quite that simple: Sulu-Philippines is a basal offshoot within Malayo-Polynesian, with Indo-Melanesian including the rest, and Bornean is likewise a basal offshoot within Indo-Melanesian, with Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian including the rest:

1. Malayo-Polynesian
   1. Sulu-Philippines
      1. Sama-Bajaw
      2. Philippines
   2. Indo-Melanesian
      1. Bornean
      2. Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian

Chuck Entz (talk) 05:41, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm sceptical about that classification, having been achieved mainly through mass vocabulary comparison, a method which has been long deprecated in linguistics due to producing inaccurate results (due to borrowing or other reasons). -- Liliana • 23:16, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Good point. All the advances in the life sciences from DNA sequencing and cladistic analysis of genomes make one wish for the same in linguistics, but genes don't normally get passed between unrelated groups of organisms like vocabulary, etc. are borrowed between language groups (though it's been known to happen). It's like glottochronology: I guess people will always want to believe they can use mathematics to see through time like xrays see through the human body. I do think mass comparison and glottochronology have some use for forming hypotheses to test by other methodologies, though. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:03, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

OK, I withdraw the RFD. - -sche (discuss) 02:22, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

Family

Please change the family code to (pqw) {{cog|pqw}}. Amir Hamzah 2008 (talk) 07:47, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Not done. Western MP is no longer considered a valid clade. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 17:51, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

RFM discussion: July 2011–June 2012

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for moves, mergers and splits.

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:Borneo-Philippines languages

Might be grammatically badly worded, especially if you consider its subcategory. -- Prince Kassad 22:02, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

I would prefer deleting it outright. I don't think it's even a proper language family, and Wikipedia mentions that it's really a paraphyletic grouping similar to 'Q-Celtic'. —CodeCat 22:07, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

I've listed it at RFDO. - -sche (discuss) 20:33, 27 June 2012 (UTC)