Talk:Proto-Siouan language
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 | A fact from Proto-Siouan language appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 24 July 2025 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
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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 SonOfYoutubers talk 02:49, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
( )
- ... that some evidence for when Proto-Siouan was spoken comes from the archeological record of a gourd?
- ALT1: ... that while most Siouan languages are spoken in the Great Plains, their reconstructed ancestor was probably spoken in the Ohio River Valley? Source: "The overlap of linguistic, anthropological, and historical data together support the idea that the majority of all Siouan-Catawban peoples resided in or around the Ohio River Valley by the seventeenth century, only to join numerous other tribes in flight before the aggression of the Haudenosaunee." (Kasak, p. 11)
- ALT2: ... that the reconstructed ancestral language of the Siouan languages had two sounds which linguists call "funny w" and "funny r"? Source: "A few comments regarding the reconstructed Proto-Siouan phonemes are in order. First, the symbols /W/ and /R/ are reconstructed consonantal sounds which are probably similar to /w/ and /r/ but which show different reflexes in the modern Siouan languages. In the literature sometimes these are referred to as 'funny w' and 'funny r' [...]"
- ALT3: ... that in the Proto-Siouan language, the fricatives of certain words could be swapped out with others to express a change in intensity? Source: "Lakota provides robust examples of this sound symbolic gradation, especially in its stative verb stems and many root concepts. This is illustrated in the stem sets in (3), where we see that either the semantic scale or the intensity of a concept shifts as the fricative sound(s) in the stem or root are moved from front to back places of articulation in the vocal tract. [...] Matthews (1970), discussing the status and phonology of Proto-Siouan continuants, states that this type of sound symbolism is abundant in the vocabulary of Siouan languages, and while it is not a productive process now in many of the languages (except perhaps in the Dakotan sub-branch of MVS), the fact that so many share this type of sound symbolism is evidence of an ancient origin." (p. 1469)
- Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Florence Nightingale (1915 film)
Converted from a redirect by ThaesOfereode (talk).
Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 22 past nominations.
ThaesOfereode (talk) 01:29, 22 June 2025 (UTC).
- Nice article! I think that main hook and ALT2 are good and interesting, ALT3 is interesting but a bit too technical, and ALT1 tells me nothing (I'm not a linguist, and I don't know how surprising it should be).
Artem.G (talk) 14:32, 24 June 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks for the review, Artem! ALT1 is not terribly surprising if you're a linguist (Proto-Indo-European was probably from the Pontic Steppe region), but I thought it might be surprising to a layperson. ThaesOfereode (talk) 19:18, 24 June 2025 (UTC)
| General: Article is new enough and long enough |
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| Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems |
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| Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation |
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| QPQ: Done. |
Artem.G (talk) 14:32, 24 June 2025 (UTC)Nominator: ThaesOfereode (talk · contribs) 01:42, 22 June 2025 (UTC)
GA review
- This review is transcluded from Talk:Proto-Siouan language/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Reviewer: ZKevinTheCat (talk · contribs) 01:05, 5 July 2025 (UTC)
Interesting topic. Beginning the review.
— ZKevinTheCat
- Excellent. Looking forward to your comments. ThaesOfereode (talk) 01:39, 5 July 2025 (UTC)
- @ZKevinTheCat: Responses below. Thanks for your patience on this one. ThaesOfereode (talk) 12:38, 9 July 2025 (UTC)
Suggestions and notes:
- In the first paragraph of the lead it is mentioned that
their origins along the American Eastern Seaboard are supported by toponymic and onomastic data
, although this is not really mentioned anywhere in the rest of the article. Sure, it does mention that there are possibly some people groups from the atlantic and toponyms along the coast that are siouan, but these are reconciled with the Ohio River Valley hypothesis. The lead is inconsistent, basically. You could replace the sentence in the lead withtheir origins along the Eastern United States is supported by toponymic and onomastic data
, which would be more correct.
- Yep, I actually caught this one before I saw your comment and changed "origins" to "presence", which I think works here. ThaesOfereode (talk) 12:38, 9 July 2025 (UTC)
- I would suggest deleting or expanding upon
Several other terms for plants have helped linguists reconstruct other divisions within the greater Siouan family.
It is very vague and is out of place compared to the rest of the article.
- I've expanded a bit here. Hopefully this hits the mark for you. ThaesOfereode (talk) 12:38, 9 July 2025 (UTC)
- I would consolidate the external relationships section a bit. That info would be better in the article for the whole family instead of the proto-language. It's not exactly off topic, but would be more appropriate in the former article in my opinion. You could move that part to the Siouan languages article and summarize it in this one. If you do this you should change the Further template link to Siouan languages rather than Yuchi. The page for Yuchi actually doesn't have much about its classification, so that would be a better target.
- Totally right about the hatnote; I've removed it entirely. A minor pushback on the rest: I think this is the summed up version; anyone sprucing up the Siouan languages page or the Yuchi page would probably need more than two paragraphs each to express the relationship. But I don't think you can discuss the larger phylogenetic relationship without also discussing the relationship to the proto-language, nor discuss the proto-language without discussing possible links to other languages unless it doesn't give due weight or is a fringe theory. Macro-Siouan also has quite a bit of literature since it's been around so long. The purpose of this section is to telegraph to the reader possible ur-proto-languages. Yuchi's relationship is more widely accepted than Macro-Siouan's so I think it's best to keep them separated. ThaesOfereode (talk) 12:38, 9 July 2025 (UTC)
- Also in the external relationships section, I would delete
they were built on shakey data and small sets of comparanda
. The wording comes off as a bit loaded and out of place for an encylopedia article. This would also be a good way to consolidate this section.
- I'm going to push back again here: I don't think this is "loaded" or "out of place". The reader should know why these larger family constructions are not widely accepted. I don't think it's fair for us to express that these relationships are not widely accepted and then not answer the obvious question raised by stating it: "why?" These analyses are also by people who are now long dead (1856, 1871, the 1920s, etc.) and whose reputations are not sullied by having gotten something wrong. I don't think it's much different than discussing pseudoscientific alternatives to evolution on a page about evolution. ThaesOfereode (talk) 12:38, 9 July 2025 (UTC)
The Ohio Valley Siouan languages, comprising the attested Ofo and Biloxi languages...
Tutelo is also an Ohio Valley Siouan language (at least according to Glottolog)
- Good catch. Munro only says that Biloxi and Ofo had a different alignment so I've rephrased. ThaesOfereode (talk) 12:38, 9 July 2025 (UTC)
- You should explain what Missouri-Valley Siouan includes
- Good call; done. ThaesOfereode (talk) 12:38, 9 July 2025 (UTC)
Spot check:
[2] - good
[15] - good
[28] - good
[43] - good
[82] - good
Everything else looks alright. Your sources are all high-quality and from my spot check, accurate. Everything is organized and illustrated appropriately. Good work here.
— ZKevinTheCat
- Glad to see the spot check is clean on all counts. ThaesOfereode (talk) 12:38, 9 July 2025 (UTC)