Category talk:Azerbaijani terms by suffix

RFC discussion: October 2018

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for cleanup (permalink).

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.

---

Category:Azerbaijani words by suffix

Azerbaijani has vowel harmony, so each suffix can have multiple allomorphs. The practice for various languages, including the closely related Turkish, is to choose one of the allomorphs as the main lemma, and use that in the names of affix categories. So the categories for these allomorphs should be combined, as they are for Turkish. —Rua (mew) 11:16, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

Agree. For series of suffixes with 4 variants, I propose the one with i, that is, -iş should represent -ış, -uş and -üş as well. For series of 2 suffixes, I propose the one with ə, that is -lə should represent -la as well. Allahverdi Verdizade (talk) 12:40, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

Why not add a note at the top of each category of words explaining that these words' suffix has such and such allomorphs? --ARBN19 (talk) 14:12, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

Ya rəbbim, he's talking!!! Allahverdi Verdizade (talk) 14:38, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

Surely someone who knows even the basics of Azerbaijani knows that anyway? We don't have such notices for other languages with vowel harmony, such as Turkish, Hungarian or Finnish. However, there is a link to the suffix at the top of the category, and any information regarding allomorphy should be described there. —Rua (mew) 15:00, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

@Rua, Allahverdi Verdizade: Hopefully what I say will be useful... I think we all agree here that -iş and, for example, -uş are allomorphs with regard to their ability to form verbal nouns from verbs. But why do you want to say that a word suffixed with -uş should be categorized as having been suffixed with -iş (at least as is)? I think it shouldn't have been done for the languages you mention.

Read for yourselves Miriam Webster's definition of an allomorph:

“one of a set of forms that a morpheme may take in different contexts

// the -s of cats, the -en of oxen, and the zero suffix of sheep are allomorphs of the English plural morpheme”[1].

Then, why isn't oxen categorized among the "Category:English words suffixed with -s"??...

--ARBN19 (talk) 16:50, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

That definition is simply wrong, shame on Merriam Webster for including it. I would consider it allomorphy if the form that should be used can be predicted based on some property of the word. An actual case of allomorphy is the variation between -s and -es in the plurals of English nouns, and in verb forms. This example is predictable: it's based on the final sound of the word. The example that Merriam Webster gives is not predictable, so I would not call that allomorphy. —Rua (mew) 17:04, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

> with regard to their ability to form verbal nouns from verbs

...and verbs from verbs. By the way, why do you think these two functions of the morpheme have different etymologies?

@Rua, Allahverdi Verdizade: I don't know if they have different etymologies. But "As early as 1912"[2], the suffix with the second function was compared to a Mongolian suffix by Ramstedt; I could write about it in the second etmological section when the page is unblocked, maybe something along the lines of: "Was compared as early as 1912 with a Mongolian suffix by Ramstedt[3]".

> But why do you want to say that a word suffixed with -uş should be categorized as having been suffixed with -iş (at least as is)? I think it shouldn't have been done for the languages you mention.

I think you should ask yourself why we even bother categorizing words by morphological properties in first place. Well, the answer is, if someone would like to have a look at all instances of words suffixed by a certain morpheme, it is much more useful to see exactly that, all instances of this morpheme, not only instances of this morpheme in a certain phonological environment, which is completely predictable. When it comes to English -en plurals, they are exceptions, fossilized remains of an older system, so it could be pretty interesting for someone to find out, what are the other words like this, and how many are they? I can't imagine why anyone would have interest of only inspecting -uş or -üş prefixed words, and if they want, they can easily do so by CTRL+F:ing the common category. Allahverdi Verdizade (talk) 17:17, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

If I were writing a poem, and looking for an Azerbaijani word which I knew ended with a certain suffix, but unfortunately this suffix happened to have plenty of allomorphs for the same function, the derivatives of which having been crammed into the same category on the Wiktionary, the said category now containing a total of so many words suffixed with these allomorphs, shouldn't I lose my time reading all the words ending with a suffix I wasn't looking for in order to find the word I needed? --ARBN19 (talk) 19:37, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

That would be a very interesting way of writing poetry, indeed. Allahverdi Verdizade (talk) 20:51, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

We have Wiktionary:Rhymes for that purpose. Please add Azerbaijani to it, the more the better! —Rua (mew) 22:07, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

@Rua The cleanup is more or less complete. Now, there are a lot of empty categories. Maybe your could delete them. Allahverdi Verdizade (talk) 19:28, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

I've deleted all the empty categories. —Rua (mew) 19:31, 25 October 2018 (UTC)