Talk:Ø

RFD discussion: January–July 2021

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Null/zero affixes lemmatized at Ø

Every language has multiple constructions that can be analyzed as involving a zero suffix. Imagine an English entry like this:

1. A null morpheme, with several functions:
   1. marks the present tense of verbs except for the third person singular
   2. marks the singular number of nouns
   3. marks the plural number of certain nouns
   4. derives verbs from nouns and adjectives
   5. derives nouns from verbs and adjectives

Or a Middle Korean entry like this:

1. A null morpheme, with several functions:
   1. marks the past tense of dynamic verbs
   2. marks the realis mood of stative verbs
   3. derives verbal stems from certain nouns
   4. is optionally used suppletively for all case-marking particles

These are the purview of grammars, not dictionaries, and should be covered by usage note templates.--Karaeng Matoaya (talk) 16:16, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

Some other notes:

• This would be the only headword for which every (well-understood) language would eventually have a lemma.
• Whether a given construction includes such a morpheme or not would be analysis-dependent to a degree greater than virtually any other lemma.
• Proper etymology sections would be extremely difficult.
• It opens the possibility for other (and IMO also inappropriate) lemmas like [+NASAL] or something.—Karaeng Matoaya (talk) 16:31, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

The Navajo entry, at least, is in active use in etymologies: [1]. @Stephen G. Brown, Julien Daux —Suzukaze-c (talk) 02:58, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

If not deleted, this null-morpheme stuff should be moved to ∅. The symbol used in linguistics is not a letter (U+00D8) but the “empty-set symbol” used in mathematical set theory (U+2205).  --Lambiam 21:28, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Keep. It's useful, even lexical in some languages (where the word for "give" may just be the null morpheme), and not for others. I think the horror story where every language ends up with a section here is sufficiently ridiculous that it will never happen. I suppose a move to ∅ would be a good idea, though. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:39, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Keep. Imetsia (talk) 18:22, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

RFD-kept. Imetsia (talk) 18:22, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Alutor, Navajo, move to ∅ (empty set)

The entry for ∅ (empty set) contains the Hungarian null morpheme as well as Vietnamese empty symbol. While Ø (Latin letter) refers to the letter itself, as used in Danish, Faroese, Norwegian (missing) and Southern Sami. Since Alutor and Navajo is used in a null morpheme way, they should rather be moved over to ∅ (empty set) instead.

For Navajo specifically, it would require editing the symbol used on pages like sido, such as in "{{nv-prefixes|si|3s|Ø}}". This can easily be done through AutoWikiBrowser. Since the template itself is using a lookup feature (as part of Template:nv-prefix), Ø (Latin letter) can be made as an alias for ∅ (empty set), meaning existing articles doesn't even have to be edited.

For Alutor, the only pages linking to Ø (Latin letter) are т- and -ны

Liggliluff (talk) 10:00, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

@Liggliluff I have implemented the switch-over. It was a mistake for us to ever use Ø (the letter), to be honest: yes, it does get used this way from an encoding perspective, but no-one actually intends it as a letter - they still intend it as ∅, the empty set symbol. It would be like adding alternative forms to the Latin and Cyrillic letters that are visually identical. For the sake of good hygeine in entries (and predictability for bots etc), I've obliterated the use of the letter in wikicode for Navajo, even though it would've been quicker to do what you suggested. Theknightwho (talk) 23:37, 18 September 2022 (UTC)