Talk:Linguistics/Archive 1

Article Checklist for "Linguistics/Archive 1"

Workgroup category or categories	Linguistics Workgroup [Categories OK]
Article status	Developed article: complete or nearly so
Underlinked article?	No
Basic cleanup done?	Yes
Checklist last edited by	John Stephenson 01:41, 10 March 2007 (CST)

To learn how to fill out this checklist, please see CZ:The Article Checklist.

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Linguistics

Current talk page

Archive 1

Suggestions for editing this page

Hi, all. I'm one of the authors of the Linguistics Workgroup.

Some suggestions:

• Join the workgroup if you haven't already. At the moment we have no registered editors (I'm applying) and only six registered authors. To do this put Category:Linguistics Authors|Yourlastastname, Yourfirstname in [ ] at the bottom of your user page (or the equivalent editor tag if you are an editor).
• Citizendium's first 'editor approved' page is Biology. Take a look and compare it to the Wikipedia version [1]. The CZ one is much easier to read: it doesn't get bogged down in technicalities, nor prioritise less-than-useful information (such as the origin of the word 'biology').
• I think we should prioritise this page before moving on to others, except where your area of expertise focuses on another article. By default, let's try to work on this one.
• The page should focus simply on what linguistics is, without going into details of e.g. the history of the field (that can be put on the History of linguistics page). So it should focus on identifying the core topics - syntax, phonology, morphology, (linguistic) semantics, language acquisition, and the difference between theoretical and applied. This should be fairly concise.

I'm planning to manually refresh the page with the latest Wikipedia version (which I've also been editing, but developing the view that it's a lost cause), then make the page 'live' before editing it.

Good luck!

John Stephenson 21:23, 15 December 2006 (CST)

Comparative or historical-comparative linguistics

Should Comparative linguistics get a bullet in the list of fields of linguistics? It's there but in an odd place.Pat Palmer 23:42, 4 April 2007 (CDT)

Along the same lines, the Language page mentions (and points to a non-existent article on) historical-comparative linguistics--is one of these a subgroup of the other? if not perhaps their representation on the lists in the linguistics page could be evened up...I'm not sure. The organization of the lists seems a bit haphazard.Pat Palmer 00:06, 5 April 2007 (CDT)

Comparative linguistics is supposed to be a subfield of historical linguistics, effectively, although it's disputable. All these subfields are confusing, though, as there's no much vying for attention. John Stephenson 04:21, 7 April 2007 (CDT)

Sanskrit, and the first linguists

I have removed this for now as I'm not sure it's really true (what do you think?):

In the early 19th century, the existence of Sanskrit became known to European scholars. By comparing it to languages such as Latin, Greek and Germanic languages, they became aware of the historical evolution of languages and tried to establish its laws. They were the first persons to consider themselves as linguist.

John Stephenson 05:02, 13 April 2007 (CDT)

Well, I suspect that to some extent that was true if we consider that there was increasing awareness of Sanskrit and other Asian languages, but these languages had been studied by some scholars for generations by then, hadn't they? Inevitably, British colonisation of India would be a factor, I am sure. In any case, I wouldn't want to include such a claim without citing specific sources to support it.

At what exact point previous philological and etymological studies turned into "historical evolution" approaches isn't entirely clear to me, but it certainly must have been connected to the growing overall awareness of evolution as a concept that would eventually express itself in biology with Darwin & Wallace's Natural Selection. When does historical change become "evolution"? I think it is when we can identify and explain how and why changes occur (i.e. have theories), rather than just document historical change.

Richard J. Senghas 05:41, 13 April 2007 (CDT)