Talk:Declension

message: "Declension class" redirects here.  IMHO, it shouldn't.  The discussion of declension in this article is almost entirely about declensions-as-paradigms, and says very little about declension classes.  In fact there doesn't seem to be a Wikipedia article on inflection classes (which could cover declension classes and paradigm classes, both of which could redirect there).  Shouldn't there be? Mcswell (talk) 21:59, 13 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Declension vs. Declension Classes

message: I found the section Basic declension theory  very easy to understand.  Good job User:Shabidoo who appears to be the major contributor.  JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 11:56, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: However, for  highly ungrammatical minds (such as mine), the examples given in the theory section made little impact.  I strongly suggest that a follow on set of real English examples be given;  -tee and -woo do not properly convey the usage of declension beyond an abstract hypothetical sense, at least to me.  Please, someone, provide a set of real English examples.  Best: HarryZilber (talk) 16:45, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: There is no declension in English. If one really wanted to insist, they could say there is a genitive inflection and a plural inflection, but this only makes grammar more complicated than it already is...and for no good reason .English simply doesn't have noun declension This table shows what declension in English might look like if nouns were declined. Check out a Polish declination table or Icelandic or Arabic one, and you'll discover what a joy (or nightmare depending on the person) such declension is. It is far far more complicated and irregular than this simple example.  --Shabidoo | Talk 01:39, 23 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: You guys should think about the ways a future English (or, in fact, an English-based creole language, which may already have done this) could develop case marking through grammaticalisation. For example, it might generalise he and him as markers of nominative and accusative respectively (dropping the h would be convenient, but make the examples less recognisable). A comitative and instrumental could be created by harnessing a noun such as bud(dy) or a verb like take or use into the function of a case marker. Or by using existing pronouns as (postponed) case markers, or even terms such as with him. A vocative is plausibly created by appending hey. Voilà, lots of new cases. Be more creative! This way, you could convey a more natural, intuitive feel than with the mostly arbitrary syllables employed right now. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:09, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

text: There's an additional possibility, namely mimicking the abbreviations you'll usually find in interlinear glosses: -nom, -ack, -ins, -com, -all, -vock, -lock. This would be another way that might help the reader remember the meanings of the endings more easily. (Of course, this would work better as an in-joke among linguists and conlangers, because they are already well familiar with the concepts and abbreviations ...) --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:11, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

text: No. It should not have been blanked unless there is a consensus on the issue. Shabidoo | Talk 18:27, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

text: I am going to remove the whole section. We can't wait indefinitely for the original author to come back and participate. If someone wants to rewrite it while following Wikipedia's guidelines, they can retrieve it from the history. The same is true if someone wants to put it unchanged on their own site. The only reason it's being removed is because it doesn't belong on Wikipedia. Danielklein (talk) 10:01, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I knew eventually one day someone would come and ruin it for all of us who have worked on it an readers who could finally make sense of an otherwise very confusing article. You mention a couple times that you'd hate to see it go and yet you apply two of the pillars with a questionable interpretation and are forgetting an extremely important rule in wikipedia: the implementation of the 5th pillar. Ignore all rules, the default use of the 5th pillar. When a broad and questionable application of other pillars (two of them in this case) gets in the way of reasonable content...ignore them. Removing it is a bad decision. Shabidoo | Talk 01:08, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

text: Nobody ever said it violated NPOV ; the argument was that it may violate NOR and <whatever the verifiability abbreviation is>. As  said, it was useful. Violating NOR and <I should just look it up> was maybe enough to remove it (it wasn't really original research since it was presumably derived from the content of the article, but it was certainly too complicated to fall under any exception such as "routine calculations"). However,  raises an important point citing Ignore all rules. Hppavilion1 (talk) 10:15, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Basic declension theory

message: In my opinion, the following three examples do not illustrate the point of using declension properly:
Mark-tee goes to work-ak by car-ash.
By car-ash Mark-tee goes to work-ak.
To work-ak Mark-tee goes by car-ash.
I believe that any English speaker would understand "By car Mark goes to work" as well as "To work Mark goes by car", as the prepositions give all the clues. However, "Car Mark goes work" and "Work Mark goes car" would not make much sense. This is where declension comes in:
Mark-tee goes work-ak car-ash.
Car-ash Mark-tee goes work-ak.
Work-ak Mark-tee goes car-ash.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ponor (talk • contribs) 12:09, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes...you are absolutely right. Good call --Shabidoo | Talk 01:40, 23 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  word order examples 

message: The article invents three examples to illustrate "cases exotic to Indo-European languages" however I feel that each one of these appropriately matches a case found Indo-European in at least one Indo-European language. Quote (emphasis is mine):
In the first example "anta-plate" seems to be similar to the locative case (although I admit it's more specific), in the second example "waif-car" is equivalent to the ablative case, and in the third example "yoo-John" is equivalent to the Vocative case. All three are found in Sanskrit which is an Indo-European language.
— Biocrite (talk) 08:18, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I've changes the three examples to cases rather different from indo-european ones. Let me know if they are sufficiently exotic. Shabidoo | Talk 19:14, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cases exotic to Indo-European languages 

message: I came on this article hoping it would use a word for the 'opposite' of 'declension' (or at least the 'alternative' to declension among the languages I know of). 
Being fluent in German and English, I am sensitive to the difference between the identification of case by inflection (in German) or word order (in English); however, I can refer to German as a language with 'declension' while I find myself forced to say English is a language with 'case indicated primarily through word order*' , which seems to be an unnecessarily long-winded way of saying it, considering there's such a concise word for the alternative.
*though there are inflections such as 'who/whom', 'he/him' etc, which I say are examples of 'English declension' Douglaswilliamsmith (talk) 10:46, 30 March 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: You can use the word undeclined to refer to a word (or language) that lacks any declensions. I would be a tad careful in applying that to English since English does have a little bit of inflection even in the nouns (e.g. man, men, man's, men's). What you are more getting at, though, is that English conveys syntactical meaning more by word order than by inflection. Seems like most sources I read use the phrase "word order" to refer to that idea. I have not seen a fancier term for this concept. -- MC  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.131.2.3 (talk) 15:31, 14 September 2017 (UTC)
replies: text:  Was poking around and found some terminology that might be useful. Languages are called synthetic if they make use of inflections and are called analytic if they rely on word order, helper words, or similar non-inflectional mechanisms. This does not explicitly distinguish noun versus verb inflection, of course. -- MC  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.131.2.3 (talk) 16:32, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

text: Probably the reason there's no real "antonym" (or even a converse property or whatever one might call it) is that declension is done to a word, not to a sentence. The usual action in modern English that corresponds to "declension" is merely "to put" (i.e. "put this word first", etc). It sounds too boring.  :) TooManyFingers (talk) 20:48, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Antonym for Declension? 

message: Ptolemaic Egypt, a nation that was born from the remnants of Alexander the Great's empire, and it was a Hellenistic/Greekified Kingdom of Egypt. It is there, more specifically in Alexandria, that Greek and Latin Grammar (and later generalized for other grammars) rules were explored and determined, and cases as a concept were born there. Shouldn't that be mentioned? LightningLighting (talk) 12:18, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cases were defined in the Hellenistic Kingdoms 

message: Some nouns, like phenomenon from Greek or cactus from Latin form their plurals as in the original languages, so phenomenon becomes phenomena and cactus becomes cacti, abiding by both languages' 2nd declension types. LightningLighting (talk) 12:39, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  English nouns that come from Latin and Greek 

message: Can someone add a link to declension in the Albanian language? It is an Indo-European language that prominently features declensions, and since it does not fit into any of the major branches (Germanic, Latin, Slavic etc), it is appropriate I think that it should be added to the list. The topic in covered in the article titled 'Albanian morphology'.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.189.94.9 (talk) 15:30, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Done! Ponor (talk) 16:01, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Declension in specific languages 

message: The two starting statements are said to have a different meaning (and they do) : "The dog chased a cat." / "A cat chased the dog."
However, by adding the declension suffixes, they now seem to have the SAME meaning: "The dogno chased a catac." = "A catac chased the dogno." [i.e., A catac is what the dogno chased.] To keep with the original different meaning comparison, it should be "A catno chased the dogac."
Also, the "or" with a different word structure seems out of place. -- 188.25.164.236 (talk) 16:47, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  The "English explanation" section seems wrong. 

message: "The singular they still uses plural verb forms, reflecting its origins."
Yes, and the same can be said for singular "you".
While this section does link to an article focused on the topic of singular they, the above comment is phrased in a way which gives the impression that this pronoun is unique in this regard.
In terms of historical precedent relating to singular subjects, "they" has a considerably stronger resume than "you", quite frankly. The section glossing over this feels like a fumble at best & biased omission at worst.
(user: Zephyrump, who is too tired to find his other device & comment from his account directly) 24.61.145.225 (talk) 09:21, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Incomplete & Misleading