Talk:Weise's law

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Cielquiparle talk 05:27, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

(

• Comment or view
• Article history

)

• ... that Weise's law was first proposed as a solution to an imbalance between Ancient Greek and Sanskrit cognates? Source: "If we examine the Indian [Sanskrit] words beginning with guttural + r or l and compare them with their Greek reflexes, we will notice that all those which have retained the guttural in Indian intact show guttural + ρ, whereas Greek guttural + λ only occurs regularly when the palatal sibilants [ś], j, h appear in Indian. The absence of exceptions in this rule automatically prohibits the assumption that coincidence prevailed here. Of course, this excludes cases where r (or l) is not immediately after the guttural, but there is a vowel in between, although the rule stated above often applies here too." Source, in German, center of page beginning with "Wenn wir nämlich die..."
  • Reviewed:
  • Comment: This is my first DYK nomination; please let me know if there is anything amiss.

Created by ThaesOfereode (talk). Self-nominated at 03:16, 20 February 2024 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Weise's law; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.

• For a first nomination, this is remarkable well polished! The article is new enough, certainly long enough, is well-written and presentable, and has a breadth of reliable sources used throughout. No QPQ required. The hook is a bit properly cited and is in the article, but it is a bit dense and vague. I'm not a linguist, and knowing what an imbalance between cognates means is beyond me, even after reading the article. Please let me know if this is not correct, but would the following Alternate hook be accurate:

• ALT1: ... that Weise's law was proposed as a way to explain differences between the Ancient Greek and Sanskrit languages?

• Thank you for a great article; please drop me a ping when you respond to the small hook concern! Fritzmann (message me) 12:58, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
  • Thank you for the kind words; I'm glad my hard work has paid off! Regarding your concern, I agree that the term "imbalance" is problematic for the hook. I like your rewrite, but instead of the final word "languages", I think it would be more accurate to use either "cognates" (ideal) or "etymologies". If you believe those are still to technical, I could suggest either linking "cognates", like either:

• ALT2: ... that Weise's law was first proposed as a way to explain differences between Ancient Greek and Sanskrit cognates?

• ALT3: ... that Weise's law was first proposed as a way to explain why cognates differ unexpectedly in Ancient Greek and Sanskrit?

• • or simply rewriting the hook as:

• ALT4: ... that Weise's law was first proposed to explain differences in Ancient Greek and Sanskrit words with the same origin?

• • Let me know what you think. I think ALT3 is the strongest, but at the end of the day, all of these express the same ultimate idea; I think any of these proposed options would work just fine. Ping: User:Fritzmann2002 // ThaesOfereode (talk) 15:22, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

• • My personal preference is for ALT4, but I fully agree that any of them are runnable. I will leave it to the promoter to take their choice of three very good options. Congratulations, and I hope to see you back at DYK soon! Fritzmann (message me) 16:03, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

To Prep 6

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Weise's law/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: ThaesOfereode (talk · contribs) 18:15, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

Reviewer: UndercoverClassicist (talk · contribs) 10:38, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Taking a look. I've done very little in the way of phonology since undergrad a long time ago, but can at least comment on clarity, prose and so forth. Initial comments below. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 10:38, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Hi @UndercoverClassicist: First, thanks for taking the time to do the GA. I've taken a cursory look at your GAR and I've begun fixing some of the minor ones. I hope to get to the others tonight or tomorrow. Either way, I will ping you when I think they have been adequately addressed. ThaesOfereode (talk) 11:23, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

General matters

• The article needs to be accessible, per the GA criteria, to a suitably broad audience. Here, that means people without a background in linguistics, and who can only read the Latin alphabet. There are a few things throughout that would benefit from some more attention on this front -- some examples:
  • The article frequently uses linguistic changes as chronological markers, such as it is believed that the change must have occurred prior to the centum-satem division: these should have dates supplied. If there's debate as to when these things happened, say so, perhaps in a footnote, but try to give the reader some broad sense of when we're talking about. Our own article on the "split" says that most linguists no longer treat it as an event at all, though I'd need to do some reading before I can really take a view on that.
  • It would be helpful to set out in rough terms the relationships between IE languages: a "family tree" as an illustration would be useful. In particular, it would help to clarify the distinction between a centum and a satem language, and why this is so important.
  • As far as possible, technical sections should be written in terms which non-specialists can understand: this might include glossing some key terms, adding footnotes, or writing the sentence in simpler but vaguer terms first. See for instance:
    • the law commonly affects zero-grade stems which often receive epenthetic vowels in daughter languages
    • Because the palatovelar sounds underwent assibilation in the satem languages while the plain velars did not, the merging of palatovelars with plain velars explains why these words have plain velar reflexes in words that share a common Indo-European root containing a palatovelar

Smaller nit-picks

• centum–satem divide and similar use an endash, not a hyphen.
• Text in non-English languages should be in language templates, and italicised if in the Latin alphabet.
• Quotations (Despite having "been largely forgotten by the scholarly world" need their author and a bit of context given in the body text.
• Glosses (մերձ merj, "near, close to" use single quotes, not double.
• The navbox for IE sound laws gives (I think) thirteen different sound laws: why do we single out the boukólos rule for the "See also"?

Image review

• None present: under the GA criteria, it is preferred for articles to be illustrated if possible. As above, I think an IE family tree (perhaps with some dates) and perhaps separately an chart of centum vs. satem languages would be extremely useful additions. Are there any images of Weise himself or his publications you could use? If feeling particularly creative, a visualisation of the sound change in action would be excellent.

Source review

To follow, once the above is sorted.