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Latest comment: 15 years ago by Jackofclubs in topic maternal uncle

The following information passed a request for deletion.

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.


maternal uncle

[edit]

Sum of parts: useful only as a place to hang translations. (Unlike some editors, I'm not thoroughly opposed to having such a place in cases like this where a lot of languages make this distinction; but if we're going to do that, the entry should be structured so as to make that clear, and it should only include the translations that rightfully hang there. A lot of the translations we currently list are either catch-all words for "uncle", or equally-SOP translations.) —RuakhTALK 12:54, 27 April 2008 (UTC)Reply

Is it really sum of parts? A genealogically naive user might assume it means "mother's uncle." -- Visviva 13:02, 27 April 2008 (UTC)Reply
Or a matronly uncle. —Stephen 13:24, 27 April 2008 (UTC)Reply
Keep. Not sum of parts. No combination of maternal or uncle will define the term without ambiguity.--Dmol 14:16, 27 April 2008 (UTC)Reply
Necessary, and desirable, in English. Translations which are SOP should have their component words wikilinked separately. Widsith 20:46, 27 April 2008 (UTC)Reply

So, question: would y'all argue that since (deprecated template usage) maternal brother isn't already taken as a genealogical term, it might indeed indicate a mother's brother, or to a motherly brother? It's true that (deprecated template usage) maternal has multiple senses, but I believe that (deprecated template usage) maternal <relative> has only one, and various examples of this fact are all SOP. —RuakhTALK 03:57, 29 April 2008 (UTC)Reply

No, I would say that "maternal brother" can only mean a brother who is quite motherly. At any rate, it is pretty confusing to interpret it any other way. More to the point, it is an almost non-existant phrase, whereas maternal uncle is a very common collocation, and furthermore is idiomatic in the sense that this is the most natural way to express the concept in English. Widsith 05:41, 29 April 2008 (UTC)Reply
Well, all the b.g.c. hits I can find for "maternal brother" use it to mean "brother with whom ego shares a mother" only... however, a web search for "maternal brother"+"mother's brother" turns up a number of sites which appear to treat these phrases as synonymous. (For example, on a professor's course-notes website, "He notes in European stories the maternal brother is good and the father's brother is evil." [1]) This does seem to indicate that "maternal" can be polysemous even when applied to relatives, at least when the author is not paying strict attention. Personally, if I encountered "maternal brother" out of context, I wouldn't be sure which way to interpret it, if only because the notion of distinguishing siblings by shared parent is rather foreign to me. -- Visviva 06:00, 29 April 2008 (UTC)Reply
Oh yeah, good point. You could obviously have a maternal brother and a step-brother. Widsith 06:31, 29 April 2008 (UTC)Reply
So if I may paraphrase: there's a strong tendency to interpret (deprecated template usage) maternal uncle as "uncle on one's mother's side", just as there's a strong tendency toward that interpretation of (deprecated template usage) maternal <relative> in all other cases. (Is that fair to say?) That doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement of the term's non-SOP-ness. —RuakhTALK 21:17, 29 April 2008 (UTC)Reply
Weak delete. --Bequw¢τ 23:15, 29 April 2008 (UTC)Reply
Keep. IMO reasonable doubt exists as to compositionality, and the value of this and related terms as translation-hangers adds some weight in favor of keeping. -- Visviva 14:49, 12 May 2008 (UTC)Reply
Keep. Not sum of parts. very useful for translations and linguistic analysis. --Diligent 05:04, 29 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Keep as a family term. Interestingly, a maternal uncle can have special status in some placs, see s:On the function of the maternal uncle in Torres Straits. --Jackofclubs 16:07, 28 May 2009 (UTC)Reply

Kept per consensus. --Jackofclubs 12:19, 9 June 2009 (UTC)Reply