Talk:Seljuk

RFD discussion: October 2021–September 2022

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

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Seljuk

This concerns solely the listing of this and the subsequent terms under the PoS "Adjective". These various spellings are IMO not adjectives, but merely attributive uses of the noun or the proper noun. Also listing:

Saljuq

Saljūq

Seljuq

Seljuck

 --Lambiam 20:19, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

@Lambiam: There's also Saljuqid and Saljūqid with adjective senses. Fytcha (talk) 20:41, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

In case this RfD passes, is there a way to preserve the translation box? At least the German entry (that I've added, for disclosure) is legitimate and not a homoglyph of any of the other senses. Could we move it to Saljuqian? Fytcha (talk) 20:43, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

I have left Saljuqid and several other forms alone because they are (IMO) true adjectives. The best spot for a table of adjectival translations is probably Seljukid, the more common English form in modern scholarship. Saljuqian is very rare.  --Lambiam 21:25, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

IP was probably following copious examples. For some reason Kazakh and Uzbek and Mamluk are definitely adjectives (the latter unacknowledged on Wiktionary but clearly after Arabic grammar), and even for Turk we have an adjective section. In this case I do not find it necessary to think there are attributive uses of the proper noun but conversion of the noun to an adjective, without being much aware that the proper noun is the original. It is likely that grammar follows Arabic and particularly Turkic where adjectives and nouns are freely interchangeable. So it is not off and not wrong that IP thought so, such xenisms do follow non-English grammar, so your English-grammar based argument of “attributive use” is bare unimpressive. Fay Freak (talk) 14:07, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Is there a basis for invoking the concept of xenism? If these words are truly xenisms, perhaps they should not be listed under the L2 of English. Why is Seljuk any more an adjective than Yorkshire?  --Lambiam 15:38, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

@Lambiam: We include a lot which is well reckoned xenistic. I spoke in comparison to the viewpoint of “normal dictionaries” which forgo to include such terms as on the very periphery of the language. Anyhow it would be overly essentialist to argue the syntactic category of the terms only after such classification, as the point stands that various contingents of a language attach by various degrees to the rules of other languages, before it behoved any lexicographer to pigeonhole them, as being a part of a language but not another, however the users of these words of occasion had perceptions of their syntactic category already. This is the ratio by which foreign grammar can prevail over native analogy. Fay Freak (talk) 01:49, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

If I fathom the portent of your verbiage, an unstated premise in the underlying implicit syllogism is that the Ottoman donors attached an adjectival category to their term سلجوق, a supposition for which I discern no supporting evidence.  --Lambiam 08:44, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

This is probably more of an RFV question, but: keep Seljuk; I can find plenty of citations where things "became Seljuk" (not "became Seljuk vassals", just "became Seljuk" like "became British" or "became destitute") or were "more Seljuk than Byzantine/Ottoman", etc. The translations would also seem to support keeping it, as would the WT:LEMMINGs: Merriam-Webster, Lexico, Dictionary.com, Collins etc all have it as an adjective as well as a noun. - -sche (discuss) 22:16, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

In the absence of any further input in months, kept Seljuk in the absence of consensus to delete (and in the presence of adjectival cites!). RFV the others, which are probably harder to find adjectival attestation of, if you like... - -sche (discuss) 18:50, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

• RFD-kept: no consensus for deletion discernible after very long time. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:25, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

Etym

We provide a source for derivation of the Ottoman Turkish name from Arabic from "corruption" of an early Turkish form

{{der|en|ar|سَلْجُوق|tr=Saljūq}}, a corruption of {{der|en|trk-ogz-pro|tr=*Sälčük}}.<ref>{{cite-book|title=Histoire des campagnes de Gengis Khan|page=399|year=1951|language=fr|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FKgrAAAAMAAJ}}</ref>

but there are several problems.

A) Regardless of what the guy says, it's more likely it came via the similar Persian form or from both together.

B) Per Wiki, there seem to be numerous contested and uncertain derivations of the name in more recent works. Among other things, both Arabic and Persian having the same 'corrupt' initial vowel and third consonant has been taken as evidence by others that they were accurate transcriptions of the sound of the name at the time and the later Turkic shift to Selçuk ("sellchuck") was the 'corruption'.

C) Not saying they're right and our guy isn't more authoritative but, if so, the Wiki article should be cleaned up to reflect that. It's hard to access our source at Google Books (I just get a snippet view) but it also seems that this is a toss-off aside on the author's part and not something that was very carefully worked out and established definitively.

 — LlywelynII 03:18, 29 February 2024 (UTC)