Talk:Oto-Manguean languages

message: I've been copyediting the article and I can't figure out the intended meaning of the following: "in Chatino in which the last syllable of polysyllables have stress tone is also only distinguished on the last syllable". Does it mean the stress tone is only distinguished in the last syllable? In that case, I'd change it to something like "in Chatino in which the last syllable of polysyllables has a stress tone which is only distinguished on the last syllable". I'm not familiar with the topic so if I've changed the meaning of anything, just tell me. Graham87 06:11, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You did well. Thanks for caring. Maunus 09:06, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question 

message: I made a change to the article and wanted to explain why.  Previously the article said: "Many other systems have only three tones registers. Some allow level tones and contour tones (for example Tlapanec) and others only contour tones (for example Texmelucan Zapotec)."  However, the image included that explains the Texmelucan Zapotec system shows that it does have a level tone (tone 3).  So I have changed the wording to: "Many other systems have only three tones levels, such as Tlapanec and Texmelucan Zapotec."  Moreover I changed "register" to "level" because I believe it is more appropriate here.
Also, no reference is included for where the data on Texmelucan came from.  I could look around for a source if need be.  Blillehaugen (talk) 19:00, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the corrections. The Source fortexmelucan zapotec and tone systems in general is Suárez 1983.·Maunus· ·ƛ· 20:11, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Great, thanks! Blillehaugen (talk) 21:05, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tone System 

message: With only 350 words said to be held in common, this group might be largely or entirely phoney.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.154.0.236 (talk) 13:21, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: In fact 350 established cognates are a quite high number for a well established language family - note also that Kaufman's critique is not that the group may be invalid but that too few reconstructions have been made - not that it would be difficult to make them. No linguists I know of are sceptical of this language family.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 13:28, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: In the Semitic group, cognates have been established for about 18,000 words, out of about 20,000. This is with strict sound and semantic laws. The Dravidian group also has the same large number of cognates.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.154.0.236 (talk) 13:38, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, but for many well established families, that do not include the worlds most spoken languages, the number of reconstructed cognates is considerably less than that. That does not mean that the grouping is likely to be invalid, but that little work has been done. Which is Kaufman's point. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 13:45, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  350 

message: I just realized that major sources such as Lyle Campbell and The Ethnologue both use the spelling without the hyphen, whereas the hyphenated spelling originally was mostly used by Maurice Swadesh and Joseph Greenberg. The non-hyphenated spelling is also still in the lead at google ngrams, though the hyphenated spelling has been steadily increasding since the millenium (perhaps this article cleated in 2005 contributed to that development). Should we move the article to the non-hyphenated spelling? (This question was suggested to me by the linguist Michael Swanton who specializes in the languages of the family)User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 00:19, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Naming: Otomanguean or Oto-Manguean?

message: An ip editor keeps inserting text to the effect that Otomanguean is not a generally accepted family, but without accompanying with citations - only vaguely suggesting that Cecil H Brown doubts it. All major authorities on Native American historical linguistics who have published on the issue, (including Lyle Campbell, Terrence Kaufman, Mauricio Mixco, William Poser) accept Otomanguean as a valid family and have done so since Suarez solid demonstration of Tlapanec's relation to the rest of the languages. Brown has not published anything substantial throwing the unity of Otomanguean into doubt, and refers to it as a family in his most recent publications (and he is not generally known as conservative in accepting family relations, in contrast to Campbell, Poser etc). So dont reinsert this without some very strong sources suggesting that the family is not well accepted.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 20:58, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Doubt about status

message: I, Cecil H. Brown, have inserted the referred text that keeps getting deleted. I have probably not followed the protocol of Wikipedia changes and for this I apologize. In any case, the immediately above paragraph is not at all an accurate summary of that text. I do not assert that Otomanguean is not a generally accepted family, only that its status as a true language family has yet to be documented using the strict comparative methods of historical linguistics (I could cite books and articles in which this method is unambiguously explained). It is true that Campbell, Kaufman, and Poser accept Otomanguean as a family, but in the current article (without my text) there are no citations at all of works in which the comparative method is used in its standard, appropriate, and systematic manner to compile sound correspondences holding across languages of the proposed family. In addition, other than the Suarez article mentioned above which is limited in scope, compelling evidence is not forthcoming for the relationship based on shared grammatical features. In short, in the current Otomanguean wiki article there are NO CITATIONS of books or published papers in which the actual detailed comparative evidence for the Otomanguean family derived through the standard method of historical linguistics is described. This is not surprising since no such articles and books exist (other than the short paper by Suarez dealing with grammar). At the very least, this short-coming should be mentioned in the wiki article. That is what I attempted to do, but to no avail.
72.216.2.47 (talk) 15:53, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Dr. Brown, you need to publish your doubts somewhere else before we can insert them into the wikipedia page. Otomanguean is accepted by all major authorities and by all specialists in Otomanguean languages. There has not to my knowledge been published a single paper throwing doubt on its status. Wikipedia cannot insert claims that are not already a part of the literature. There are lots of well accepted language families in the world for which there has not yet been published thorough detailed comparative evidence. If Otomanguean should be described as a "proposed" family only, then there would hardly been any established families in the Americas. Furthermore there are published comparisons on the otomanguean level such as those by Josserand and Hopkins, and unpublished ones by Kaufman that circulate among the scholars. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 16:13, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for pointing out that article by Callaghan and Miller, it is however from before Suarez demonstration of the relation between Tlapanec and the rest of the family, and it has not been echoed by the general literature. It is true Kaufman's unpublished papers do not work for wikipedia, in the same way your doubts do not work, because we follow only the published authoritative accounts and none of them are even a little bit shaky on whether to accept Otomanguean. As for what quality of evidence you would personally find convincing I can't really guess, but Hopkins, Josserand, Campbell, Kaufman, Justeson, Wichmann, and everyone who works on Otomanguean languages considers it a demonstrated family, and assumes it as a given in their publications. It is not as with Penutian or other families that have been considered dubious and have generated a large amount of critical literature as well as new evidence. Otomanguean is just assumed to have been demonstrated - perhaps unjustifiedly so but that is really not something Wikipedia can report. Suarez and Kaufman's arguments have clearly convinced the large majority of experts who refer to them in their publications, I have not seen any similar mentions of your rebuttalls. It is quite simple, if the literature does not express doubt about Otomanguean or suggest that the lack of a thorough reconstruction is a problem for its validity, then wikipedia also does not. You are a well respected researcher and it should be easy for you to get your critique of Otomanguean published in a journal. Once you do that then of course we will mention it. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 17:00, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the best source would be Kaufman and Justeson's article in Ancient Mesoamerica where they point out that much reconstruction work is needed for Otomanguean and that the number of cognates and reconstructions is much lower than it should be. This is in fact already included in the article. You actually have my email, as we have been in contact professionally before. I will send you an email later today.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 01:18, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Doubt about status

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The Wikipedia article Language acquisition contains the sentence "One such challenge is to explain how children acquire complex vowels in Otomanguean and other language" where "Otomanguean" redirects to the current article. However, if I search for "complex vowels" in the current article, I don't find anything. It would be good to either add a section on "complex vowels" to address the reference, or else update the reference in Language acquisition to be more clear. Thisisnotatest (talk) 00:30, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: This is probably mainly a reference to the fact that Otomanguean languages are tonal languages, see . Otherwise, their vowel systems are not necessarily all that complex, but they can be, see . --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:32, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Complex vowels