Talk:-innen

RFD discussion: April 2018–August 2020

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

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-innen

German and Dutch. SoP; -in (feminine suffix) + -en (plural suffix). The double < n > is to keep the < i > checked. Can be explained in the usage sections of -in. – Gormflaith (talk) 18:30, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

• Keep. SOP applies to multiword phrases, not polymorphemic words and affixes. Otherwise we'd have to delete English boys and English walked and all sorts of things as being SOP ([[boy]]+[[-s]], [[walk]]+[[-ed]], etc.). —Mahāgaja (formerly Angr) · talk 18:40, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
  • @Mahagaja: But boys and walked both are free morpheme + bound morpheme. -innen is just two bound morphemes, which I don't think deserves an entry. -in isn't a stem; you can't add morphemes to it. In forming the word Schülerinnen, I believe it's: Schule + -er → Schüler + -in → Schülerin + -en = Schülerinnen. By the -innen logic, should we have an entry for -erinnen too? I feel like that's going a bit overboard. And there's not a clear precedent with this: we have -esses and -rices, but not -ers, -ettes, -ees, -ings, -oids, etc. – Gormflaith (talk) 19:20, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
    • I see your point, but we do also have -schaften and -ungen, not to mention 874 entries for suffix inflections in Latin. Rather than decide these on a case-by-case basis, we need to develop some sort of general policy either allowing or disallowing inflected forms of bound affixes. —Mahāgaja (formerly Angr) · talk 20:19, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
      • I agree; I didn't know there was 1000+ suffix forms here. I'm going to be bold and say that I think they all should be deleted and confined to declension tables... though you can't really decline a suffix. I might create a vote for this. Even if it doesn't pass I think there should still be a policy about this. – Gormflaith (talk) 20:39, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
        • @Gormflaith: Do you still intend to do this? I'd support it. I think you should take it up to the Beer Parlour first though. --Per utramque cavernam 21:29, 13 May 2018 (UTC)
          • @Per utramque cavernam: Kind of, but I'm not confident in making a proposal that would affect tons of languages I don't know anything about. I'll start a BP discussion tomorrow when I have a bit more time so I can get more input. – Gormflaith (talk) 00:45, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

Can't remember which entry now, but there was a discussion at one point about suffix entries having plurals (!) e.g. ism, plural isms: this is sth that struck me as silly because you don't pluralise until you have formed a complete word, i.e. you don't morphologically do true + -isms but rather (true + -ism) + -s. If that applies here (I only know a couple of words of German) then delete. Equinox ◑ 19:34, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

@Equinox: Yep, exactly. Even the entry for Schülerinnen says "plural of Schülerin" not, like, "plural of Schüler, but now they're girls". – Gormflaith (talk) 19:56, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Devil's advocate: what if there is some strange plurality that comes from the suffix, e.g. loaned -ium may become -ia? Does that change things? Equinox ◑ 01:39, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

I was thinking about that too. I actually like how it is now: no plural on -ium (but useful notes about it in the defs) and "Used in forming plurals of nouns in -ium and -ion." at -ia. It specifies that the nouns are being pluralized rather than the affix. However, for all the actual Latin suffix forms, I'm not sure. Looking at the word patrium: I think it's best analyzed as an inflection of patrius, rather than pater + -ium, right? But what about metallāria? Should it be analyzed as metallum +‎ -āria, or an inflection of metallārius? I don't know... Gormflaith (talk) 03:36, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

Delete per Gormflaith and Equinox. --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 20:00, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm on the fence, leaning weakly towards keep because of the added n. I note that the verb-forming suffix -ieren was deleted on de.Wikt on these grounds: that it's "really" -ier(-) + -en. - -sche (discuss) 03:22, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

I don't know if I agree with the -ieren deletion. -ier isn't really a morpheme in German. (I think). – Gormflaith (talk) 03:47, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I'm not sure I agree with that either. We shouldn't take parlieren (parlier + -en) as evidence of a suffix -ieren, but that doesn't mean that the suffix doesn't exist; otherwise how do you explain buchstabieren, halbieren, etc.? --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 10:59, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

@-sche, Gormflaith What do you think of this? --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 11:06, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

I've tweaked it to note that -ier(en) is the/a traditional rendering of e.g. -ire, -iare and other non-homographic suffixes. -ier is a morpheme in German, btw: besides being a noun-forming suffix, it was argued by one of de.Wikt's resident professional linguists (against some of the standard dictionaries!) that -ier is the true verb-forming suffix, visible in e.g. imperatives, to which the infinitive suffix -en is added to form the infinitive. (Which is a plausible-enough analysis, though I think it was unhelpful that it was then used to delete all trace of -ieren as a verb-forming suffix, because dictionaries normally lemmatize the infinitive for German, and it's odd for de.Wikt to instead lemmatize -ier here.) - -sche (discuss) 14:04, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Since Gormflaith reads German, she might be interested: de:Wiktionary:Löschkandidaten/Archiv_2012/2#-ieren_(erl.,_verschoben) --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 14:10, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

@-sche, Per utramque cavernam The rebracketing explanation is what I interpreted this as. parlier as the verb stem borrowed from French, plus the native -en verb forming suffix. Like how we say "the alcohol" (I once read an absolutely ridiculous pop linguistics article about how we should not use "the" with alcohol, alchemy, etc). And then rebracketing to get -ieren for halbieren, buchstabieren, usw. But the argument over at de.wikt is interesting. To me -ieren looks good it right now (thanks for the edits). But I'm not a morphology expert. (Also: our entry at -en is "A suffix of all verbs in their infinitive form.", which would exclude -ieren form being an infinitive suffix). – Gormflaith (talk) 14:37, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Keep: We do already say "plural -innen". Usage note at -in would be the last place to look for orthography hints, when the meaning is already clear. Or if the page can' t be found.

I'd also argue that this may be parsed as a suffix by some speakers. The doubt about a slippery sloap to -erinnen is interesting but not entirely convincing, because Zugführerinnen is not formed from' 'Zugfuhre, nor Zugfahrt. While it could instead be derived from the root verb plus agent suffix, I'm not even convinced -innen was -in + -en. Rather -in might be -innen / -en. That's probably inconclusive or perhaps outright wrong.

Nevertheless I am trying to make the case that -innen is attached to male plural forms, so the singular + in would be a backformation.

On a related note: -en as adjectival suffix (sense 3, e.g. golden), makes me think that the plural suffix was derived therefrom.

So, -en was perhaps more often applied to female terms because women were often objectified (materialistic, pun intended). This -en was MHG -in!

Now, the ety for -in mentions -inne next to -in, but that doesn't have an entry. That's the most important point. If -inne was a suffix, -innen surely is from plain -in + -en. The ety for that -en is not really informative either. Could someone clarify?

Would you rather delete if uncertain or keep and improve? I dislike incorrectness as much as anyone else, but this one wouldn't really hurt to keep.

By the way, could such a development compare to Beamtin, for a perhaps similar development? Beamtinnen should be virtually non existent, whereas Beamtenin seems (to me, slowly loosing focus) seems more natural. The point however is that die Beamte very impersonal, derived from a property. 109.41.0.199 05:20, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

• Keep. Having entries for inflected forms of lemmata is uncontested common practice in Wiktionary, I don't understand why we have this discussion. Korn [kʰũːɘ̃n] (talk) 13:28, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

  It's not uncontested for suffixes. --Per utramque cavernam 13:37, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

Oh, I see. I am not contesting it, however, so I'm standing behind my Keep. Korn [kʰũːɘ̃n] (talk) 10:11, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

• Keep: I see no harm in keeping inflections of suffixes as long as they make sense. It is not sum of parts in WT:CFI#Idiomaticity parlance since it does not arise from separate components; and furthermore, it is a combination of a derivational suffix with inflectional suffix. Above, Mahagaja shows a long-standing practice of including inflections of suffixes: Category:Latin suffix forms. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:43, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

• Keep. On a balance, I think it's more useful to have this, especially to explain the added -n-. I note that de.Wikt has an entry for it, despite their relative scepticism of 'inflected suffixes' which I note above. Incidentally, it can house an etymology section noting that it goes back through Middle High German (vriundinnen) and possibly Old High German (friuntinnen). - -sche (discuss) 16:10, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
• Weak delete I notice that some people justify having the entry on the grounds that the added n may be unexpected. I think it needs to be realised that having an entry for a form and merely listing it as a form on the lemma page are two different things. Inflection tables and headword lines do not have to generate links to the forms they list; they can show forms without a link. I am 100% in favour of listing all possible inflections on affix entries. It's valuable information, because it tells you how to inflect a word that is formed with that affix and can sometimes also tell affixes apart if their lemmas coincide. However, I see less of a need to have actual entries for all of these inflections. The basic principle is to provide entries for things that someone might encounter in a text. Neither affix lemmas nor affix inflections are encountered in texts under normal circumstances, so that counts against including them. Entries for affixes are invaluable for the purposes of understanding word derivation and etymology, but the same can't be said for their inflections. The only pressing reason to have entries is so that they can have pronunciations, but I'm not sure of this because what you always end up pronouncing is a full-formed word that includes the affix, and the pronunciation of the affix may be different in the full word than it is in isolation. —Rua (mew) 20:03, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Kept (there is, at a minimum, no consensus for deletion), and this kind of thing is common, so it would be better for a decision to be made about such entries generally, anyway, rather than case-by-case for hundreds or thousands of cases. - -sche (discuss) 08:21, 2 August 2020 (UTC)