English Wikipedia @ Freddythechick:Articles for deletion/English conjugation tables

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. -- Cirt (talk) 03:25, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

English conjugation tables

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Why the page should be deleted

English conjugation tables is unreferenced Original Research, contains a very large number of mistakes, and contains no valid content that is not in the article English verbs. Duoduoduo (talk) 16:40, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Detailed reasons to delete

The article is chock full of absurdities, so much so that it would certainly be impossible to salvage (and if it were salvaged, it would simply replicate the article English verbs).

The nonsense starts with the title itself: English conjugation tables. Almost the entire article consists of verbal constructions that are not conjugations (conjugations being morphological verb changes as in blow /blows / blew / blown / blowing).

The section on the verb "to have (got)" is bizarre. It mixes the "must" meaning with the present/past perfect usage, the latter of which never uses "got".

Section on Moods: I may be and I would be are not moods, since they are not inflectional. Probably some traditional English grammars call would be the conditional mood, but I doubt that any call may be a mood -- it's one type of modality, just like all the constructions that use modal auxiliaries.

The "non-finite moods" infinitive, gerund, and [past] participle are not normally called moods.

What the article calls tenses are actually tense-aspect constructions.

The number and person section is not even about verbs.

The conjugation tables have a thou column, even though thou does not occur in Modern English.

It says that, e.g., He hath been being played is an English construction, although actually such a construction never appears in the language.

The active conjugation tables actually say things like I might go is the simple past of I may go. That morphological relationship is of historical interest, but does not reflect the actual language as it currently exists -- the past of may go is may have gone when may means possibly; when may means have permission to, it has no past form. And anyway, may go and might go are not simple forms as asserted, as they contain two words.

No one is going to learn the subjunctive from the table of subjunctives, which doesn't have examples of usage.

There are unexlainable omissions. The were to go form, for example, is missing from the subjunctive table. Two tense-aspect combinations are missing: I would play [sometime later than that time in the past] (future of the past); and I used to play (past tense, habitual aspect).

The imperative section is full of absurdities. It actually says let me go is first person imperative -- actually it is second person. Etc., etc., throughout the section. And for example it actually says have gone is present perfect second person plural imperative!

The imperative section even gets the first person plural present wrong -- the form in Let us go is almost never used, except in stock phrases like let us pray. Let's go is correct, even in formal English.

The section on the auxiliary to do is all messed up. The auxiliary is do, not to do, and it has no infinitive, gerund, or participles. All the examples in the table (except for the intensive present indicative) are wrong for a section on the auxiliary -- e.g., am doing, will do, etc. have nothing to do with the auxiliary.

Ditto on the "auxiliary" let: everything in this section is wrong -- e.g., I let, I have let, etc., have nothing to do with the alleged auxiliary role of let.

The section on the modal auxiliary must says that the past tense of must is must!

Having a table that simply gives the past of will as would is confusing to a learner, without context.

In the passive section, the article says, for example, that might be played is the simple past passive. Actually it's not simple, containing three words, and it is not past (instead expressing doubtful possibility about the present or future).

Duoduoduo (talk) 17:16, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Keep—it may be unreferenced, but I'm not totally convinced that English grammar is original research (although I guess it could be argued that someone made it up...) and there are plenty of learned works which could be used as sources. ╟─Treasury Tag►high seas─╢ 17:38, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

English grammar is not original research -- the numerous false assertions in this article are original research, and you won't be able to find any learned works to use as sources for those assertions. Duoduoduo (talk) 17:57, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Delete. This page presents a fundamentally misguided approach to English grammar and is practically useless. My (expert) view on its problems is here: Talk:English_conjugation_tables#Comment. That's what I said four years ago; my opinion hasn't changed. The page also omits to treat the important time-of-the-day distinction in the domain of prospective tense categories, which personally offends me. Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:43, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Delete. It could be fixed (and renamed), but I don't see the point. — kwami (talk) 18:01, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Delete. The article title alone is a problem, as English is almost entirely analytic with verbs, and verbs hardly conjugate at all. The article is completely unreferenced and the bits which aren't complete original research seem to be mostly based on the 19th century grammar school approach, which was basically making analogies between English and Latin grammar. This approach is definitely regarded as fringe today because it's so full of holes. For example, the claim that there's such a thing as a "future tense" in English is crazy. The Latin scholars named the "will" construction the "future tense" (also randomly deciding you have to use "shall" for the first person), whereas in reality we can also use "going to" and both present tenses to talk about the future. This type of system is great for learners of Latin, not so good for learners of English. - filelake shoe 18:41, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Erm. Totally agreed with Filelakeshoe about what's going on here. This is very much a 19th century model of English, which is why at least some of the demonstrably wrong things are that way. Some of these very peculiar forms are attested in literature, if rarely. There are are least a couple uses of "hath been being verbed"[1][2] and the truly bizarre "let us have been verbing" imperative form gets a mention in an 18th century French-language English grammar book.[3] I suspect there was a point in time when the material presented here was, if not considered correct, at least much closer. That time isn't now though, so the question becomes what we should do with it. Right now, it's put forth as a sort of fork of English verbs, and that's a non-starter. I'd like to think at least some of this could be useful, somewhere, but if not, it probably needs scuttled. Serpent's Choice (talk) 18:57, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
Do let me have been being played! - moreover do let this article have been being deleted. This is not how the English language works, and many of the terms listed simply don't exist in modern English. I did laugh... Anthem of joy (talk) 20:34, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions. —Cnilep (talk) 21:18, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Delete this bizarre article per the above arguments. Iblardi (talk) 22:26, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
Delete - I agree with the other arguments. The article is unnecessary and incorrect in many places. Material is covered by English verbs and English grammar. Count Truthstein (talk) 13:04, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
Delete - especially per nom and Count Truthstein; some of the more obscure rules are also found in other articles, including cognate object and demonstrative. Bearian (talk) 19:14, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
Delete - There are mistakes and lots of them. The material has nothing that is really worthy of being in an encyclopaedia; perhaps this is something for wiktionary. --Île flottante (talk) 18:30, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Keep - It is absurd to call the English Conjugation pages unreferenced Original Research. It is no more original research than all the technical information found on tens of thousands of Wiki pages, including especially linguistics and computer languages. This page needs to be improved, but not deleted. I have helped a lot of foreign speakers with their English, and have referred them to this page and used it to explain grammar to them. Overall the vast majority of this page is very instructive. The criticisms made here are good starting points for improving it. It is not an impossible task. bruvensky (talk) 18:51, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Comment. "Absurd" to call it original research? Big swaths of this article are original, and wrong. For one example among many, consider the following line from a table of imperatives in the article, with columns by person and number:

|simple present||let me play||play||play||let him/her/it play||let us play||play||let them play

I challenge you to find a source that says that these are imperative forms in the first, second, and third persons singular and plural. You won't. Likewise for all the numerous mistakes listed above -- you won't find them anywhere else but here, because they are original and wrong. If you wish to refute the original research claim, you need to find references that substantiate the various things I've labeled at the top of this page as wrong in the article, rather than making a vague blanket statement that the article is not original. Duoduoduo (talk) 20:27, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.