Talk:home
Preposition vs adverb[change]
In a sentence like we headed right home, it is clear that home is a preposition, not an adverb. First, there is no prototypical adverb like directly that could replace right home, but there are many preposition phrases that could. Second, right doesn't modify adverbs in standard English, but it does modify prepositions. There are more arguments (see Otto Jespersen's The philosophy of grammar or Huddleston & Pullum's Cambridge grammar of the English language), but this should be sufficient.--Brett (talk) 10:48, 29 October 2019 (UTC)
- CGEL uses grammar terminology not in common use in the English language. It's esoteric jargon used by linguists. It's very far from Simple English. Please do not use it in the Simple English Wikipedia. In ordinary English grammar terminology, "home" is not a preposition—regardless of arguments made by linguists. —BenKovitz (talk) 11:27, 29 October 2019 (UTC)
- I understand your feeling, but simple =/= traditional. It's a simpler system when you put things in categories such that the members of the categories behave consistently. Home behaves like a preposition, and not like an adverb.--Brett (talk) 14:45, 29 October 2019 (UTC)
- CGEL may be a simpler system, but are you equivocating on "simple"? On the Simple English Wikimedia sites, we use the simplest, most familiar, everyday vocabulary. We don't use technical jargon unknown to most speakers of English. In this case, "preposition" has a common, everyday meaning, which does not include "home", as well as a jargon meaning known by very few people who have not studied linguistics, which does include "home". Sometimes jargon is simpler in a deep way than common terminology. We still avoid it on Simple English sites. —BenKovitz (talk) 17:49, 29 October 2019 (UTC)
- There's no argument to be made that preposition is jargon. We're disagreeing about the meaning of preposition, not whether or not it's jargon, so let's put that aside.
- Next, your argument moves to the idea that on Simple English Wikimedia sites "we use the simplest, most familiar, everyday vocabulary", which I would agree is an aspiration for Simple English Wiktionary. But that's not the same as "the most familiar, everyday meaning for words," nor should it be. And of course, the Simple English Wikipedia does not attempt to do so. It says, for instance, "animals are eukaryotic organisms with many cells." That's not the everyday meaning of animal, but it's correct. We could argue about whether the word eukaryotic should be there or not, but the general meaning should be perserved. The Simple English Wikipedia includes NPs, AdjPs, PPs, and VPs, under its entry for phrase, but those are specialized jargon, and not part of the common meaning of phrase. Nevertheless, it's useful and important to mention them. Of nuts, The Simple English Wikipedia says, helpfully, that "the peanut, coconut, almond, macadamia, pistachio, pecan, walnut and cashew are not true nuts," even though the everyday meaning of nut includes most if not all of those. I could go on, multiplying examples, but I think it should be clear that the goal is to inform users about our best understanding of the world, not simply to recapitulate tradition and folklore.--Brett (talk) 20:23, 29 October 2019 (UTC)
- CGEL may be a simpler system, but are you equivocating on "simple"? On the Simple English Wikimedia sites, we use the simplest, most familiar, everyday vocabulary. We don't use technical jargon unknown to most speakers of English. In this case, "preposition" has a common, everyday meaning, which does not include "home", as well as a jargon meaning known by very few people who have not studied linguistics, which does include "home". Sometimes jargon is simpler in a deep way than common terminology. We still avoid it on Simple English sites. —BenKovitz (talk) 17:49, 29 October 2019 (UTC)
- I understand your feeling, but simple =/= traditional. It's a simpler system when you put things in categories such that the members of the categories behave consistently. Home behaves like a preposition, and not like an adverb.--Brett (talk) 14:45, 29 October 2019 (UTC)