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Wiktionary:Votes/2019-10/Application of idiomaticity rules to hyphenated compounds

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Application of idiomaticity rules to hyphenated compounds

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Voting on: Clarifying the application of CFI idiomaticity rules to hyphenated compounds.

Please vote separately on Option 1 and Option 2 in the respective sections below. Please vote on either or both. In the presumably unlikely event that both options pass, neither will be automatically implemented.

Schedule:

Discussion:

Option 1

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Insert the following words into the "Idiomaticity" section of the CFI:

Idiomaticity rules apply to hyphenated compounds in the same way as to spaced phrases. For example, wine-lover, green-haired, harsh-sounding and ex-teacher are all excluded as they mean no more than the sum of their parts, while green-fingered and good-looking are included as idiomatic.

Support

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  1. Support ←₰-→ Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk) 07:54, 7 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support  --Lambiam 07:46, 8 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Support Stelio (talk) 10:26, 8 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Support. Canonicalization (talk) 13:17, 9 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Support Equinox ◑ 00:57, 10 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Support — SGconlaw (talk) 08:43, 11 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Support. - TheDaveRoss 14:28, 21 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Support Pppery (talk) 16:41, 23 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Support. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 17:18, 27 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose

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  1. Weakly Oppose- too strict a standard to document the natural state of the English language in a dictionary? Geographyinitiative (talk) 01:32, 8 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Oppose At the very least, wording about how WT:COALMINE applies to hyphenated phrases too should be added to the proposal. However, I think that hyphenation, at least in English orthography, can often show that collocations have came to be perceived as unitary phrases to a sufficient degree that their inclusion is justified. Of course, this doesn't stop ad-hoc hyphenations from slipping in, but this may be able to be handled (e.g. by having higher attestation requirements for hyphenated phrases) and doesn't necessarily justify reducing hyphenated collocations from being reduced to the same status as unhyphenated ones. --Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 10:50, 9 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Not a full rebuttal of your point, but a remark: the OED stopped distinguishing hyphens versus spaces in compound terms some years ago, IIRC. If there was consistent usage once, there isn't now. Equinox ◑ 00:59, 10 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Oppose. DonnanZ (talk) 10:14, 2 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Abstain

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  1. Abstain for now as proposer. Good examples, including any noun-noun examples, of what you think might be lost by implementing this are welcomed from opposers. Mihia (talk) 00:16, 8 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Abstain FYI Some words have hyphens even they are not compounds nor idiomatic such as สุไหงโก-ลก and น้ำเป-ล่า, these are for reading aid. --Octahedron80 (talk) 09:38, 11 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The issue of whether this proposal applies in the same way to all languages is one that did actually occur to me, but specifically mentioning "English or English-like languages" seemed to me to be too obtrusive in a section that seems throughout to assume an English-like concept of words, word separation, and orthography generally. General clarification of the way in which various CFI rules should or should not apply to non-English-like languages seems to me to be a separate exercise. Mihia (talk) 00:22, 12 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It would've gone a long way to exclude hyphens when they're solely used as reading aids. In Finnish for example, if the former component of a compound word ends in a vowel and the latter component begins with that same vowel, a hyphen is placed between them (like linja + auto > linja-auto). — surjection ⟨?⟩ 10:02, 12 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Is your point that linja-auto would be excluded by the proposed wording, but it should not be excluded? Mihia (talk) 23:36, 12 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I doubt linja-auto itself would be, but some other compounds that would pass without a hyphen (if they just had different sounds) might. The question of whether such compounds should be actually included willy-nilly just because they're one word is still an open matter, though. I've personally created those that I've either found in dictionaries, or are fairly common and at least somewhat opaque in meaning. — surjection ⟨?⟩ 06:38, 13 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
If thought necessary, we can, if this option passes, add a disclaimer to the wording indicating that it is presently intended to apply to English and to languages that use hyphens in an English-like way, and that other languages are TBA. My slight concern about this, as I intimated, is that it seems to imply that the rest of the CFI is fully robust for all languages, whereas I think if we really picked apart the CFI against all known languages we would find a number of anomalies and lacunae. Mihia (talk) 14:14, 13 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
CFI is actually more consistent for languages other than English than one would think at first. — surjection ⟨?⟩ 20:34, 19 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Getting slightly off-topic, but a significant omission, for example, is information about how idiomaticity rules apply to languages that do not use spaces. The opening sentence of the section reads:
An expression is idiomatic if its full meaning cannot be easily derived from the meaning of its separate components. Non-idiomatic expressions are called sum-of-parts (SOP).
"expression" is unhelpfully left undefined, but the only sensible way to interpret this text seems to be that "expressions" are made up of two or more separate words, and that "components" are individual words, not parts of words. Otherwise single (English) words would be subject to deletion as sum-of-parts. However, in languages that do not use spaces (e.g. Japanese) it is not necessarily clear what is and is not a "single word". Any kanji concatenation, however much sum-of-parts, may be perceived as a "single word", and yet it would clearly be undesirable (impossible) for us to include every such concatenation.
Also, there is no mention of languages which do use spaces, but which allow arbitrary SOP spaceless concatenations of words to arbitrary length. Mihia (talk) 18:46, 21 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Option 2

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Insert the following words into the "Idiomaticity" section of the CFI:

Hyphenated compounds are not subject to idiomaticity rules, and are included even if they mean no more than the sum of their parts. For example, wine-lover, green-haired, harsh-sounding and ex-teacher are all eligible for inclusion.

Support

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  1. Support. DonnanZ (talk) 10:15, 2 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose

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  1. Oppose, quite strongly. ←₰-→ Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk) 07:54, 7 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Oppose, although with the understanding that this entire vote would only concern English or languages where the hyphenation in compounds works similarly, which isn't the case for all languages. — surjection ⟨?⟩ 09:59, 7 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Oppose. Canonicalization (talk) 12:56, 7 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Oppose. Mihia (talk) 00:12, 8 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Oppose. Imagine what Wonderfool would do with this. Equinox ◑ 00:46, 8 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Oppose.  --Lambiam 07:48, 8 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Oppose Stelio (talk) 10:26, 8 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Oppose with the proviso mentioned above by surjection. (For instance, in Scottish Gaelic "sgian-arain" is a breadknife but "sgian arain" would mean a knife made out of bread; "taigh beag" is simply an SOP meaning "little house", but "taigh-beag" means "water closet" &c&c.) -- Droigheann (talk) 09:22, 10 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Oppose --Octahedron80 (talk) 09:28, 11 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Oppose — SGconlaw (talk) 17:08, 12 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  11. Oppose. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 17:19, 12 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  12. Oppose. - TheDaveRoss 14:27, 21 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  13. Oppose Pppery (talk) 16:42, 23 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Abstain

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Decision

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Option 1 passes 9–3–2 (75% support), and WT:CFI edited accordingly. Option 2 fails 1–13–0. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 01:25, 12 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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