Talk:Conlang/Appendix/Glossary

Displaced definitions
I've pulled some definitions that didn't seem to belong at the Beginner level. They should eventually appear in some form at a higher level, so in the meantime I'm stashing them here.

Conlanging:
 * ✅ --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 18:47, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Anadewism :The phenomenon of discovering that a weird, supposedly original feature in your conlang already exists in some natural language. Coined in recognition that natural languages regularly turn out to be even more bizarre than what conlangers can devise.  Acronym for (sic) Another Natlang Already Dunnit Except Worse.

Linguistics:
 * ✅ --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 18:47, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Agent :One of the thematic roles: The participant of a situation that carries out an action.
 * Morpheme :A word-part that has a meaning of its own.
 * Patient :One of the thematic roles: The participant of a situation upon whom an action is carried out.
 * Subject :One of the thematic roles: Only participant of an intransitive clause.

Pi zero (talk) 13:27, 5 September 2008 (UTC) – 21:40, 11 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Why exactly do we need to have separate glossaries per level? Beginners won't look up the advanced words anyway, so what does it matter that they happen to be on the same page? I can't help thinking I've said this before, but I propose that we merge the glossaries into a single page listed as an appendix (since the others don't exist yet, it's less a case of merge and more a case of move). Ingolemo (talk) 18:15, 5 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Now that you mention it, I've been uncomfortable with this facet of the book structure for some time.
 * Simply looking up a term isn't the only function to be had here. A while back I split this page into two lists, with the idea that each of them could be made short enough to read through in its entirety.  The lengths of the lists have crept upward a bit, but the sublist of linguistics terms could be broken up into smaller thematic sublists (probably into three).  Each sublist is a sort of summary of some particular aspect of the subject.  To toss out an idea (I'll have to mull this over for a while myself):
 * Perhaps we could have a single page, with a hierarchy of shortish lists. Conceivably, particular pages of the book might have links at the bottom to appropriate particular lists (which might or might not somehow integrate with the navlist device).  Since all the lists are on one page, a simple string search on that page could be used to look up any particular term without having to know which particular list it's in; and once found, the term would be surrounded by related terms, enhancing the usefulness of the lookup.
 * An appendix does seem the most likely place to put such a page. Pi zero (talk) 20:36, 5 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I can see what you're getting at here, but I'm worried that a hierarchy might undermine its purpose as a glossary. I don't like that particular idea much, mostly because relying on your browser's search functionality to find entries won't be very obvious to some people. The denser the word descriptions are the less useful the find function will become (because it will search the description as well as the wordlist). And the function won't always translate into other mediums. But if you can come up with something that lessens the need for a more traditional glossary without being quite as boring to read, I'm in favour of that. ;)
 * Whatever happens, it seems clear to me that we don't need three different pages. So for now, if we move Beginner/Glossary to Appendix/Glossary and remove the other two, then you can have a think about where you want to go with regards to the content. Ingolemo (talk) 18:16, 6 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Putting it another way, relying on readers' technical sophistication isn't a good idea. Point taken.


 * Re making this an appendix, note that after five years the other two glossary pages still didn't even exist. --Pi zero (talk) 20:32, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

The whole has been merged into one list and the above entries sorted in, with all entries generated a standard-formatting template allowing identification of conlanging terms versus linguistics terms and up to four book-internal wikilinks per entry. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 18:47, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Link of possible interest
I'm stashing this here for possible later reference.
 * langmaker category:Conlanging terms, archive.org, May 22, 2008.

--Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 21:04, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Entry redesign

 * This item has been completed. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 15:06, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Some rethinking is in order. At this writing, the current entry structure orchestrated by /Glossary/entry consists of some text followed, in parentheses, a subject tag and optionally various links (in-book, in-project, in-sisterhood, or external). That suffices for most entries. However, for complex entries with multiple numbered definitions, it's a bit awkward because, first, there can only be one orchestrated parenthesized note, and second, to make even that work out requires somewhat fussy formatting of the text, like this:
 * 1. First definition.
 * 2. Second definition.
 * 3. Third definition.

&amp;nbsp; Abstractly, it seems, an entry should consist of a header followed by one or more definitions; and it would be technically adequate, but perhaps ergonomically undesirable, to just have two separate templates for those two needs. However, the way the calls get set up on the glossary page should be considered carefully.
 * If the entries continue to be directly deposited on the glossary page, it's especially desirable that a simple entry be generated by a single template call, as is now done. How to handle compound entries is then the question.
 * One might consider having each entry on a separate subpage, with a link at each entry for editing that particular entry. This has two motives:
 * It's awkward to edit an entry, because with so many entries in each section it's hard to find the entry within the text. One might blame ethis on the inadequate edit-interface design, which fails to provide a non-WYSIWYG way to enter editing at the markup location corresponding to a point in the layout; but the practical problem is to find a solution that's robust against shortfalls in the Foundation's design decision-making.  If each entry is on a separate page, one could provide a link at each entry that would edit jteust that one entry, at the cost of making it hard to make blanket changes to many entries.
 * There would be no problem having two separate templates, one for an entry header and one for a definition; because the two separate templates only become confusing when multiple entries are all lumped together on a single page where it becomes hard to tell where each entry starts and stops.

It would seem desirable to provide dialog-based semi-automated assistants, while minimizing the difficulty of unassisted maintenance. In particular, an assistant might be used to check for consistency between the actual subpages and the markup on the glossary page, and offer to make likely adjustments. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 16:32, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Possible template names: /Glossary/head, /Glossary/def. Seems preferable to keep the namespace relatively flat by putting the entries directly under the glossary page.  It would then make sense to provide meta-information on each page specifying which section of the glossary it belongs in; a natural arrangement would seem to be, specify it as a parameter to the head template, but then there's the problem of how to make it available to an assistant without making it visible on an entry.  It also makes sense that each entry page would be able to deduce its own name, but the clunky wiki-platform design makes all these things hard to do by the most obvious means. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 19:07, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
 * It would (of course) also want a subcategory for the entries, to not flood the book category itself. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 20:09, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
 * And yet, all that said, I'm reminded of why I haven't already done something of the sort: each time I've encountered a multi-definition term, there has turned out to be a way of getting by with the current, simple interface, and the simplicity has been an advantage. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 03:40, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Tried splitting the template, and found it felt unnatural because one ends up playing tricks to manipulate where the parenthesized notes show up. Should feel more natural and be easier to control if the parenthesized note is simply make a separate template, and the definitions themselves are done directly rather than going through a template at all.  So replacing def by note.--Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 13:04, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * On consideration, distributing the entries into separate pages would simply make it difficult-or-impossible to make large, distributed changes. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 15:03, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Pending terms

 * coda : the closing consonant of a syllable, /n/ in Korean an Japanese and also in Toki Pona Jansegers (discuss • contribs) 12:46, 21 September 2018 (UTC)
 * ✅. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 05:01, 31 January 2019 (UTC)


 * ejective • nonconfigurational (may want to distinguish from free word order, similar to distinction between morpheme and affix) • phonaesthetics, cellar door • cranberry morpheme • ergativity • accusativity • absolutive, absolutive case • accusative, accusative case • nominative, nominative case • nominative-accusative, nominativity, accusativity • tripartite • polypersonal agreement • corpus • James Cooke Brown • polysynthesis • incorporation • intransitive • transitive • ditransitive • alignment • semiotics • Ferdinand de Saussure , arbitrariness of the sign • Noam Chomsky • universal grammar • Joseph Greenberg • subject means more than one thing , transitive can apply to a clause as well as to a verb • clause • dependent clause • predicate • theme, recipient • direct object • indirect object • prepositional object • phrase-structure • thematic role/thematic relation/theta role • non-finite • discourse • Quenya , Sindarin , The Hobbit , The Lord of the Rings , A Secret Vice • David Salo • phonaestheme (, w) • Gottfried Liebniz, Characteristica Universalis, Arika Okrent, In the Land of Invented Languages • John Wilkins • Sally Caves • Claudio Gnoli, W. John Weilgart, Geoff Eddy, Giuseppe Peano, James Cooke Brown, George Orwell, Otto Jesperson, Edward Powell Foster, Rex May, Sonja Lang, Mark Rosenfelder, Rick Harrison, Johann Martin Schleyer, Jan van Steenbergen • Broca's area • Wernicke's area • trigger language • David Bell • diglossia • emoticon • vowel • vocal tract • manner of articulation • place of articulation • sonority hierarchy • glyph • height • backness • rounding • nasal • nasalized • oral • pharynx • larynx • laryngeal cavity • sonorant • obstruent • vocal cords • voicing • labialization • phonemic • velum • epiglottis • radical • pharyngeal • epiglottals • primary articulation • secondary articulation • doubly articulated • assimilation • phone • laryngeal • fricative • phoneme • hard palate • uvula • approximant • plosive • glide(s) • liquid(s) • rhotic • synchronic (linguistics) • diachronic (linguistics) • progressive assimilation • regressive assimilation • allophone • Proto-Indo-European • uvular • velar • palatal • Hittite • nucleus • central • lateral • phonotactics • Dionysius Thrax • alveolar • trill • phonological • phonetic • R-colored • dorsal • coronal • retroflex • syllable • front • back • lingual • click • apical • laminal • tap • diphthong • articulator • subapical • domed • postalveolar • grooved • rime • onset • coda • pulmonic • glottis • glottalic • Damin • sublaminal • sibilant • strident • glottalized • affricate • pharyngealize(d) • palatalize • velarize • Khoisan • fricative vowel • creaky voice • sound change • syllabic consonant • Daniel Everett • SIL International • recursion • Thauliralau • pronoun • dative case • genitive case • locative case • inessive case • instrumental case • ablative case • lative case • adposition • suppletion • Finnish • partitive case • vowel harmony • SCA • tengwar • script • alphabet • abjad • abugida • syllabary • hieroglyphs • ideogram • written language • rongorongo • boustrophedon • diacritic • telicity • aspect • pictogram • calligraphy • Mayan hieroglyphs • Cretan hieroglyphs • Anatolian hieroglyphs • Egyptian hieroglyphs • Cirth • runes • futhorc • futhark • ogham • Elder Futhark • cuneiform • hieratic • Egyptian demotic • Burmese • Rosetta Stone • oligosynthetic • oligoisolating • natural semantic metalanguage • intervocalic • lenition • spirant • spirantization • debuccalization • word-and-paradigm morphology • Valyrian • Pakuni • Victoria Fromkin • disfix • Optimality Theory • morphome • Sanskrit • assibilation • centum language • satem language • head • exocentric • headless • head-initial • ablaut • mutation • apophony • simulfix • duplifix • reduplication

--Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 17:03, 5 March 2017 – 17:43, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
 * branching • head-marking • dependent-marking • constituency grammar • dependency grammar • polysemy