Subject: [Ietf-languages] Language subtag registration form

From: Ben Scarborough <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2020 16:15:40 -0600

LANGUAGE SUBTAG REGISTRATION FORM
1. Name of requester: Ben Scarborough
2. E-mail address of requester: scarboroughben[at]gmail.com
3. Record Requested:

   Type: variant
   Subtag: arcaicam
   Description: Arcaicam Esperantom
   Prefix: eo
   Preferred-Value:
   Deprecated:
   Suppress-Script:
   Macrolanguage:
   Comments: "Archaic" Esperanto sociolect defined by Manuel Halvelik

4. Intended meaning of the subtag:
   Arcaicam Esperantom (Arkaika Esperanto) is a modern-made "archaic" register
   of Esperanto, meant to be the literary equivalent of lines or phrases in an
   old language such as Latin or Middle English embedded in what would otherwise
   be modern text. It features minor but nontrivial changes to vocabulary,
   grammar, and spelling. It is not meant as an overhaul of nor as a
   replacement for Esperanto.

5. Reference to published description
   of the language (book or article):
   Halvelik, Manuel. "Arkaika Esperanto: La verda pralingvo." 2010 edition.
   http://www.universala-esperanto.net/index_htm_files/Arkaika%20Esperanto.pdf

6. Any other relevant information:
   Because Arcaicam Esperantom uses different orthographic rules, the existing
   'hsistemo' and 'xsistemo' subtags would not have any relevant meaning in
   conjunction with the proposed 'arcaicam' subtag.

---

From: Sebastian Drude <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2020 20:36:28 -0300

Hi everyone,

this is the first time I reply directly to such a request, please 
forgive me if I do mistakes or do not know the correct procedures.

I agree with the proposal; it makes sense to me to have a subtag for 
this variety of Esperanto.

I only do not agree with the characterization as a "Sociolect" -- a 
variety of a language which is characteristic for a certain (social) 
group within the whole speaker community.  As the applicant explains, 
the same speakers/writers may use it in the same text, so this is 
(according to the upcoming ISO TC 21636) clearly some kind of 
*register*, not a sociolect.

Which brings us back to the question of how in the future the 8 
dimensions identified in ISO TC 21636 can be reflected/applied in the 
current frameworks, in particular BCP 47).  Are there members of this 
group who would like to participate with me in a working group that 
would work out proposals for that?

(Now I see that in point (4) of the proporal 'Arcaicam Esperantom' is 
also correctly identified as such, so the characterization as sociolect 
in (3) is probably a mistake or misunderstanding.)

Best wishes,

Sebastian

-- 

Museu P.E. Goeldi, CCH, Linguistica ▪ Av. Perimetral, 1901
Terra Firme, CEP: 66077-530 ▪ Belém do Pará – PA ▪ Brazil
[email-masked] ▪ +55 (91) 3217 6024 ▪ +55 (91) 983733319
Priv: Tv. Juvenal Cordeiro, 184, Apt 104 ▪ 66070-300 Belém

On 23/11/2020 19:15, Ben Scarborough wrote:
> _______________________________________________
> Ietf-languages mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages

---

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2020 16:59:01 -0700

This is IMHO an excellent proposal. The language variety seems adequately documented — there is also a Wikipedia page on it — and the form is just about perfect clerically. (The empty fields in Section 3 can be removed, but that is trivial.) The proposed subtag is sensible, non-generic, and syntactically legal.

About the only challenge I could see would be whether this is being requested to tag actual content in Arcaicam Esperantom, or just to document the variety. And we don't always ask that question.

--
Doug Ewell, CC, ALB | Thornton, CO, US | ewellic.org

-----Original Message-----
From: Ietf-languages <[email-masked]> On Behalf Of Ben Scarborough
Sent: Monday, November 23, 2020 15:16
To: [email-masked]
Subject: [Ietf-languages] Language subtag registration form

   Type: variant
   Subtag: arcaicam

---

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2020 17:21:00 -0700

I'd be willing to work with the ISO TC 21636 folks, as a specialist in encoding things rather than in languages or linguistics per se.

Keep in mind that in order to make 21636 work with BCP 47, it really has to be framed as an extension, and the allowable values for each of the eight dimensions may not be open-ended; they must be specified concretely somewhere. See https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5646#section-2.2.6 for more information about BCP 47 extensions. Changing the syntax of BCP 47 tags to add new subtag types is almost certainly a non-starter.

Regarding "sociolect," Ben may be open to changing that one instance of the word. Alternatively, it could be argued that users of Arcaicam Esperantom do indeed belong to a particular social group: that subset of Esperanto users who wish to explore a posited "early form."

From: Ietf-languages <[email-masked]> On Behalf Of Sebastian Drude
Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2020 16:36
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: [Ietf-languages] Language subtag registration form

Hi everyone,
this is the first time I reply directly to such a request, please forgive me if I do mistakes or do not know the correct procedures.
I agree with the proposal; it makes sense to me to have a subtag for this variety of Esperanto.
I only do not agree with the characterization as a "Sociolect" -- a variety of a language which is characteristic for a certain (social) group within the whole speaker community.  As the applicant explains, the same speakers/writers may use it in the same text, so this is (according to the upcoming ISO TC 21636) clearly some kind of register, not a sociolect.  
Which brings us back to the question of how in the future the 8 dimensions identified in ISO TC 21636 can be reflected/applied in the current frameworks, in particular BCP 47).  Are there members of this group who would like to participate with me in a working group that would work out proposals for that?
(Now I see that in point (4) of the proporal 'Arcaicam Esperantom' is also correctly identified as such, so the characterization as sociolect in (3) is probably a mistake or misunderstanding.)

---

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2020 19:42:57 -0500

On Tue, Nov 24, 2020 at 6:37 PM Sebastian Drude <[email-masked]> wrote:

> variety of a language which is characteristic for a certain (social) group
> within the whole speaker community.  As the applicant explains, the same
> speakers/writers may use it in the same text, so this is (according to the
> upcoming ISO TC 21636) clearly some kind of *register*, not a sociolect.
>

It might also be characterized as a chronolect.  Currently this committee
uses them only for specific orthographic reforms like DE-1901 for the
codified orthography of that year, but there is nothing preventing
something like "DE-cent16" for 16th century German from being registered.
(This would be incorrectly understood in Italian, where _Seicento_ means
1600-1699, but we can't have everything.)  In this case there is no actual
date, of course.

> Which brings us back to the question of how in the future the 8 dimensions
> identified in ISO TC 21636 can be reflected/applied in the current
> frameworks, in particular BCP 47).  Are there members of this group who
> would like to participate with me in a working group that would work out
> proposals for that?
>

Unfortunately, there is no information publicly available on these 8
dimensions that I can find.  Is there any description not behind the ISO
paywall, or can you prepare a short precis?  I would be interested if so.

---

From: Sebastian Drude <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2020 21:58:05 -0300

Thanks a lot, Doug.

I would be delighted to work together with you on this. Indeed, encoding 
expertise is what is needed.

And I agree that probably new subtag-types are not feasible, although 
they would be a cleaner solution.  I also guessed that an extension will 
be what we are aiming at.

I see two complicated things to solve: indeed, the values need to be 
made explicit and concrete, so a registry needs to be created, or 
existing registries need to be extended.  Still, some classes of values, 
in particular dialects, are potentially huge sets (which is also valid 
for the current setting).

The other interesting aspect is how to align the new extension with 8 
dimensions with the existing system of subtags.  If the 
8-dimension-system is fully implemented, certain expressions making use 
of the new extension would be synonymous with expressions within the 
current system.  This can be perceived as harmful, so that needs to be 
thought through carefully.

There is no rush at this point; we in ISO TC37/SC2/WG1 are not active at 
this point as the same actors are still focusing on ISO 639-4.  So we 
will only in a few months return to focus on ISO 21626.  On the other 
hand, TC 21636 is already sufficiently advanced to start thinking about 
how to consiliate/acomodate this framework with BCP 47.  If more people 
would join (I guess at least two each from ISO TC37 and from 
IETF-languages) we could start brainstorming.  I will announce this in 
the ISO working group.

As to "Sociolect": A sociolect in principle is characteristic for a 
certain social group in *all* their utterances, not just deliberately 
applied in a subset of utterances -- this latter is exactly 
characteristic of registers.  So I would strongly suggest that the word 
be exchanged by "register".

Best wishes,

Sebastian

--

---

From: Martin J. Dürst <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2020 09:58:52 +0900

> 1600-1699, but we can't have everything.)  In this case there is no actual

I guess Seicento would be tagged -cent6, not -cent16, if one wanted to 
stay close to the actual word.

Regards,   Martin.

---

From: Sebastian Drude <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2020 23:40:37 -0300

Thanks, John.

Arcaicam Esperantom: A 'chronolect' (such as a period, epoch, etc. of a 
language) may well be a possible alternative if the variety is indeed 
identical or very close to an earlier stage of Esperanto (I guess 
Esperanto is too young to have periods, let alone epochs).  I 
understand, however, that it has been deliberately deviced recently, 
with the aim of causing the impression of being archaic (similar to fake 
medieval varieties of major languages used in movies, for instance).  If 
that is correct, it is still closer to a register, characterized by a 
certain genre or usage situation.
Also, because the application states in point (4) that it is a register, 
I would stick with that characterization and correct the erroneous 
"sociolect" in point (3).

Thanks also for your interest in ISO TC 21636.  It is not yet official, 
and I am not sure whether if I am entitled to share it, so I will give a 
very brief summary:

Languages are conceived as sets, varieties are their *subsets*.

Varieties belong to different types -- there are dialects, sociolects, 
registers, etc.  These different types are indeed in principle 
independent one from another (there are of course interferences), so 
they form different *dimensions*.
That is, each language is internally subdivided **simultaneously** into 
varieties in each of the dimensions.  (Sometimes varieties can overlap, 
and some varieties can have more specific sub-varieties of the same 
dimension.)

Accordingly, each linguistic manifestation or resource (utterance, text, 
recording etc.) belongs to *some* variety on *each* of the dimensions.  
In other words, each manifestation can be located somewhere in an 
8-dimensional space. (Some very small languages may have no different 
varieties on a certain dimension, in particular no dialects, no 
sociolects and/or only one modality.)

The eight dimensions we identified for the purposes of standardized coding:

 1. Space (dialects & over-regional standard varieties)
 2. Time (epochs, periods, stages)
 3. Social group (sociolects, including more specific technolects)
 4. Medium (modalities: oral/multimodal, written, signed, whistled,
    drummed...)
 5. Situation (registers, e.g. of different formality, including genres
    and the like)
 6. Person (“personal varieties” ~ elswhere sometimes called “idiolects”)
 7. Proficiency (learner varieties)
 8. Communicative functioning (constrained communicative functioning
    varieties, 'anomalies')

The *elements* of languages are internally homogeneous and coherent 
means of communication, called "idiolects" -- one speaker thus has 
usually several, possibly many, different idiolects of the same 
language, some oral, some written, some formal, neutral and informal, 
some speakers may have idiolects belonging to different dialects (or, in 
particular, to an over-regional standard variety).  We prefer 'personal 
variety' for one speaker's share of a language because 'idiolect' 
traditionally has a connotation of being internally coherent, while we 
assume that what one speaker uses can be rather heterogeneous.

Like the linguistic manifestations where idiolects are used, also each 
idiolect belongs to (at least) one variety on each of the dimensions.  
For instance, I believe that I am right now using an idiolect belonging 
to the following English varieties:

 1. The over-regional variety, perhaps rather close to the US standard
    (space)
 2. The current stage (2020) (time)
 3. The academic middle class sociolect, more specifically the
    technolect of linguistics (social group)
 4. The written modality (medium)
 5. The neutral or possibly rather formal register (situation)
 6. My (SD's) personal variety (person)
 7. The advanced or proficient second language acquisition learner
    variety (proficiency)
 8. The regular communicative functioning variety (communicative
    functioning)

It goes without saying that not always each of the 8 dimensions need to 
be tagged/described for all linguistic resources; rather, default values 
can be indicated, or for certain purposes only one or a few dimensions 
can be targeted.  Other values often can be assumed as given (e.g., the 
personal variety and the precise chronolect, if author/speaker and time 
of writing/speaking are known or indicated elsewhere in the metadata).

Hopefully  this short characterization is sufficient to outline the 
conception.  The technical report includes proposals about how to 
characterize the relevant varieties when tagging a specific utterance or 
resource, but it is of course beyond the scope of the document to list 
all varieties of all dimensions (namely, there may be many tens of 
thousands dialects and many hundreds of sociolects), although some 
dimensions may have a small number of possible values (in particular the 
medium or proficiency dimensions).

Best wishes,

Sebastian

-- 

On 24/11/2020 21:42, John Cowan wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 24, 2020 at 6:37 PM Sebastian Drude <[email-masked] 
> <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
>
>     I only do not agree with the characterization as a "Sociolect" --
>     a variety of a language which is characteristic for a certain
>     (social) group within the whole speaker community.  As the
>     applicant explains, the same speakers/writers may use it in the
>     same text, so this is (according to the upcoming ISO TC 21636)
>     clearly some kind of *register*, not a sociolect.
>
>
> It might also be characterized as a chronolect.  Currently this 
> committee uses them only for specific orthographic reforms like 
> DE-1901 for the codified orthography of that year, but there is 
> nothing preventing something like "DE-cent16" for 16th century German 
> from being registered.  (This would be incorrectly understood in 
> Italian, where _Seicento_ means 1600-1699, but we can't have 
> everything.)  In this case there is no actual date, of course.
>
>     dimensions identified in ISO TC 21636 can be reflected/applied in
>     the current frameworks, in particular BCP 47).  Are there members
>     of this group who would like to participate with me in a working
>     group that would work out proposals for that?
>
>
> dimensions that I can find.  Is there any description not behind the 
> ISO paywall, or can you prepare a short precis?  I would be interested 
> if so.

---

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2020 21:48:45 -0500

> be exchanged by "register".

I agree that either "register" or "chronolect" would be better in this
case.

John Cowan          http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan        [email-masked]
C'est la` pourtant que se livre le sens du dire, de ce que, s'y conjuguant
le nyania qui bruit des sexes en compagnie, il supplee a ce qu'entre eux,
de rapport nyait pas.               --Jacques Lacan, "L'Etourdit"

---

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2020 22:04:28 -0500

> and I am not sure whether if I am entitled to share it, so I will give a

Thank you very much for this.

> People do, however, belong to more than one social group.  My daughter
speaks Standard English with me and AAVE with her friends, for example,
even in the same conversation.  Neither would be appropriate for all
circumstances.  The same is true of people who command both a local Arabic
variety and Modern Standard Arabic.  Both of these are usually thought of
as sociolects.

> 5. Situation (registers, e.g. of different formality, including genres

I normally think of technolects as belonging here with the registers.  See
Peter Trudgill's classic "Standard English: What it isn't", available at <
https://lagb-education.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/SEtrudgill2011.pdf>.

> varieties, 'anomalies'

[...]

> 3. The academic middle class sociolect, more specifically the technolect
> of linguistics (social group)
>

I'm using that too, and it happens to be the only one I command: but see my
daughter above.

John Cowan          http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan        [email-masked]
A witness cannot give evidence of his age unless he can remember being born.
                --Judge Blagden

---

From: Ben Scarborough <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2020 20:02:49 -0600

Doug,

There are two circumstances where I think the language tag would be useful.

1) Separating Arcaicam Esperantom data from standard Esperanto. Reading A.E.
requires a bit of knowledge beyond fundamenta Esperanto, and appropriately
tagged resources would make it easier to provide users with glosses or text
replacement or even automated translation. (A naïve translation of A.E. to
Esperanto is likely to sound stilted, but it is more feasible than an automated
process going the other way around.)

2) Screen readers. Any Esperanto text-to-speech program given unexpected
Arcaicam Esperantom text is going to have a hard time producing understandable
output. Being able to switch to different pronunciation rules, or to request an
alternate data stream, or even to notify the user that a blob of text is
"arkaike Esperanta teksto" might be more helpful than a system attempting
inhuman consonant clusters (or worse, interrupting words with the entire phrase
"latin small ligature oe").

Both of these cases are aided by being able to tag Arcaicam Esperantom text
differently than standard Esperanto.

—Ben Scarborough

---

From: Sebastian Drude <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2020 11:53:46 -0300

Thanks, John, and also Hugh.

I already answered the point of people having more than one sociolect -- 
true.

It is of course true that register and sociolect interact heavily, and 
in some (especially older) work "register" is used in a generalized 
sense that sometimes even includes dialects.
But I disagree with Peter Trudgill in this point -- technolects are 
characteristic of certain social (professional) groups and thus belong 
to the social dimension.  That these groups use the technical vocabulary 
etc. only in certain settings is indeed also related to the situation 
dimension, and it may well be that there are no informal or vulgar 
idiolects that belong to certain technolects and vice versa that 
idiolects belonging to vulgar registers do not belong to certain 
technolects (but rather socially neutral varieties).  I don't have all 
the answers here -- I just argue that we can only address these issues 
if we recognize that there are two different dimensions, and try to keep 
them apart (and then identify the interferences between them).  That's 
what ISO 21636 provides.

As to the term "register", I disagree with you, Hugh.  The south-east 
Asian and the pitch-related usages are by far not the default 
applications for the term -- a simple web search on "registers 
linguistics" shows that clearly.

Anyways, which alterantive term would you propose for the varieties in 
the situation dimension (such as formal, neutral, informal/familiar and 
vulgar registers)?  I do not know any other established term than 
"register".

Best greetings,

Sebastian

-- 

On 25/11/2020 00:04, John Cowan wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 24, 2020 at 9:40 PM Sebastian Drude <[email-masked] 
>     Thanks also for your interest in ISO TC 21636.  It is not yet
>     official, and I am not sure whether if I am entitled to share it,
>     so I will give a very brief summary:
>
>
> speaks Standard English with me and AAVE with her friends, for 
> example, even in the same conversation.  Neither would be appropriate 
> for all circumstances.  The same is true of people who command both a 
> local Arabic variety and Modern Standard Arabic.  Both of these are 
> usually thought of as sociolects.
>
>     5. Situation (registers, e.g. of different formality, including
>     genres and the like)
>
>
> I normally think of technolects as belonging here with the registers.  
> See Peter Trudgill's classic "Standard English: What it isn't", 
> available at 
> <https://lagb-education.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/SEtrudgill2011.pdf>.
>
>     8. Communicative functioning (constrained communicative
>     functioning varieties, 'anomalies'
>
>
> [...]
>
> I'm using that too, and it happens to be the only one I command: but 
> see my daughter above.
>
>
>
> <mailto:[email-masked]>

---

From: Mark Davis ☕️ <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2020 09:26:21 -0800

> they must be specified concretely somewhere

I'd like to emphasize that the list must be freely available (not behind
the common ISO paywall), versioned, and stable (in the sense that new items
can be added, and existing items can be deprecated, but nothing can be
removed). That is, similar to what we see in
https://www.iana.org/assignments/language-subtag-registry/language-subtag-registry
and
in https://iso639-3.sil.org/code_tables/download_tables for ISO 639-3.

Mark

On Tue, Nov 24, 2020 at 4:21 PM Doug Ewell <[email-masked]> wrote:

> I'd be willing to work with the ISO TC 21636 folks, as a specialist in
> encoding things rather than in languages or linguistics per se.
>
> Keep in mind that in order to make 21636 work with BCP 47, it really has
> to be framed as an extension, and the allowable values for each of the
> eight dimensions may not be open-ended; they must be specified concretely
> somewhere. See https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5646#section-2.2.6 for more
> information about BCP 47 extensions. Changing the syntax of BCP 47 tags to
> add new subtag types is almost certainly a non-starter.
>
> Regarding "sociolect," Ben may be open to changing that one instance of
> the word. Alternatively, it could be argued that users of Arcaicam
> Esperantom do indeed belong to a particular social group: that subset of
> Esperanto users who wish to explore a posited "early form."
>
> --
> this is the first time I reply directly to such a request, please forgive
> me if I do mistakes or do not know the correct procedures.
> upcoming ISO TC 21636) clearly some kind of register, not a sociolect.
> (Now I see that in point (4) of the proporal 'Arcaicam Esperantom' is also
> correctly identified as such, so the characterization as sociolect in (3)
> is probably a mistake or misunderstanding.)
>

---

From: Richard Wordingham <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Nov 2020 00:54:39 +0000

On Tue, 24 Nov 2020 23:40:37 -0300
Sebastian Drude <[email-masked]> wrote:

>  6. Person (“personal varieties” ~ elswhere sometimes called
> “idiolects”) 7. Proficiency (learner varieties)

I'm having a bit of trouble envisaging how one would apply this model
to certain situations.

The first one is orthography.  The simplest one is that of script.  For
example, articles in the Serbian Wikipedia may be delivered in Cyrillic
or Latin, at the reader's choice.  Which dimension does that difference
sit on?

After that comes the question of orthography within the script.  I'm
not sure that differences with a political tint (Russian, Lao) come
within the time dimension, and the gross differences in Thai script
Northern Thai (Thai names thap sap v. rup pariwat) definitely don't.

For the oral medium, where does tempo come in?  That significantly
affects a dropping of distinctions, so may be relevant for converting
text to speech and possibly vice versa.

Would 'communicative functioning' include matters like punctuation?
The same passage in the same script in Pali can have quite a
variation in punctuation system.  Perhaps that's a separate subdimension
within 'time'. Similarly, Pali chants in Thai script use different
writing systems for the masses and for more academic use - the former
is an 'alphabet' by Daniels' definition and the latter is an abugida.
Is this difference on the 'communicative functioning' dimension?

Old manuscript European documents can be full of abbreviations - bars
for Vr and rV survived quite late in Modern English.  The abbreviations
are usually expanded when such documents non-palaeographically
transcribed.  Is the use of these abbreviations on the 'communicative
functioning' dimension?

Comparing the English of Sebastian's post I'm replying to this reply, I
noticed only a few differences:

SD's regional variety could be British, using the spelling preferred by
the Oxford English Dictionary (viz. '-ize' rather than '-ise'), whereas
mine is, I think clearly British (shibboleth: 'palaeographic').

Mine might be older - 1960s or 1970s judging by the writing "viz.",
though the vocabulary is later.

'Situation' is difficult to name.  I think it's fairly formal, apart
from the seemingly mandatory use of contracted auxiliary verbs and the
use of first names.  Perhaps 'formal but for obligatory informality'.
Or are the deviations from formality covered by 'communicative
functioning'?  I could be wrong; perhaps my use of 'a bit of trouble'
makes it informal.

SD's 'proficiency' is within the usual native range.  The one grammar
error I spotted when scanning for Americansims, "whether if", looks
like a case of incomplete editing.

Richard.

---

From: Sebastian Drude <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2020 23:23:08 -0300

Dear Richard, all,

thanks for your thorough thinking and your comments and questions.  I 
will try to address them below in your text as good as I can.

I will investigate with the ISO people whether I am allowed to share the 
draft document with this group, this seems to be really useful.

Best,

Sebastian

-- 

> or Latin, at the reader's choice.  Which dimension does that difference

These details of script and orthography would systematically go to the 
medium dimension, as sub-categories of the written modality.  But in 
fact, as there is already an ISO standard for Scripts (ISO 15924:2004), 
and as dealing with such different writing systems and their variants is 
already excellently done in BCP 47, the future TR 21636 points to these 
documents and does not foresee to engage in any further details wrt. 
writings systems.

If different writing conventions are actually the consequence of 
belonging to a certain social group (e.g., in written African American 
English, some /-er/ endings are replaced by /-a/) or of being in an 
informal setting (such as contractions), then that would belong to the 
social or situation dimensions, respectively, of course.

ISO 21636 mainly proposes to differenciate between the 8 dimensions 
clearly.
BCP 47 is fine for dialects if they coincide with usual countries 
regions, and for writing systems (scripts and orthographies) and their 
variants.  But for time periods,  sociolects, registers, even modalities 
(signed, whistled, drummed speech of non-sign-languages)?  And learners 
varieties and the 'anomalies' (we use the less pejorative and 
pathologizing 'communicative functioning')?  There ISO 21636 can make a 
contribution, I believe, (see the case at hand: sociolect?  register?) 
and that may even help with those dialects that do not coincide with 
regional administrative borders.

> After that comes the question of orthography within the script.  I'mnot sure that differences with a political tint (Russian, Lao) come within the time dimension, and the gross differences in Thai script Northern Thai (Thai names thap sap v. rup pariwat) definitely don't.

I do not know what you are referring to here, so I do not understand at 
all why the time dimension would be involved.  In principle, the time 
dimension is there to capture differences such as Middle vs. Modern 
English, or 17th-century English vs. Contemporary English (and it can be 
even more fine-grained, of course).
If a certain language, like Turkish, changes its script (or the 
orthography) at a certain point in time, the different written 
sub-modality (medium dimension) and the different 'chronolects' coincide 
in most cases, but they are still independent, as people can choose, for 
example, to continue to use the older system.

> For the oral medium, where does tempo come in?  That significantly affects a dropping of distinctions, so may be relevant for converting text to speech and possibly vice versa.

That would be a typical application for the communicative funcioning 
dimension.  That dimension contains 'varieties' (they are actually not 
real varieties, as they concern performance, and not the 
system/competence, where idiolects => varieties lie, but we include this 
for the purposes of ISO as an additional dimension anyways) for 
phenomena such as stutter, lisping, and the like, or being drunk, 
breathless etc. -- this dimension also includes very slow or very fast 
speaking, if that needs to be tagged.  True, these are all features 
which apply mainly to speech, i.e. the oral modality, but you can have 
similar categories for the written modality -- think of an unredacted 
text written by a dyslexic, or someone writing due to stress, emotions 
etc. with many errors, or in handwriting, to write in a hurry, almost 
illegibly -- these are categories ('varieties') in the communicative 
funcioning dimension.

> Would 'communicative functioning' include matters like punctuation?
No, I would not think so (see previous comment).

> The same passage in the same script in Pali can have quite a variation in punctuation system.
Wouldn't that go into the same category as different orthographic rules?

> Perhaps that's a separate subdimension within 'time'.
I confess I do not know enough about Asian languages to grasp why the 
time dimension would be involved here -- did these rules for punctuation 
change over time?  Then see my comment on Turkish, above.

> Similarly, Pali chants in Thai script use different writing systems for the masses and for more academic use - the former is an 'alphabet' by Daniels' definition and the latter is an abugida.
No, this would all go into medium, just like script and orthography, but 
I reckon that these differences are already covered by BCP 47, and would 
not even attempted to be addressed by any implementation of ISO 21636.

> Old manuscript European documents can be full of abbreviations - bars for Vr and rV survived quite late in Modern English.  The abbreviations are usually expanded when such documents non-palaeographically transcribed.  Is the use of these abbreviations on the 'communicative functioning' dimension?
No, I would guess, same thing, orthography --> medium dimension if 
needed, hopefully already covered by BCP 47.

> Comparing the English of Sebastian's post I'm replying to this reply, I noticed only a few differences:
>
It's true, I have learned English in the UK (almost 40 years ago), and 
have never lived in the US, but as over many years I am much more 
frequently exposed to and interacting with speakers of American English, 
I assumed that my English would be closer to the American variety.  But 
it's true, I use (and defend) the Oxford rules when it comes to ...-ize, 
...-ization.

> Mine might be older - 1960s or 1970s judging by the writing "viz.", though the vocabulary is later.
I believe we all adapt to the time, so we all speak "2020 English". The 
phenomena of the younger using slang and new expressions that we elder 
do not use (or even understand) goes, for me, into the category 
sociolect: these are social (age-based) groups in the current 
English-speaking society.  When the teenagers from today are 40 or 50, 
they certainly will not use most of that youth-specific expressions any 
more.

> 'Situation' is difficult to name.  I think it's fairly formal, apart from the seemingly mandatory use of contracted auxiliary verbs and the use of first names.  Perhaps 'formal but for obligatory informality'. Or are the deviations from formality covered by 'communicative functioning'?  I could be wrong; perhaps my use of 'a bit of trouble' makes it informal.

I guess we, as most people most of the time, use the neutral register, 
which is appropriate in formal as well as in informal situations.  I 
probably imitate the English I read in texts, many of them scientific 
papers or interchanges like this one, others news-related, where 
contractions of auxiliaries are fairly common.  And indeed, I cannot 
remember having been adressed as "Mr. Drude" in a gathering of 
colleagues, however formal, so I use the first names, too.

> SD's 'proficiency' is within the usual native range.  The one grammar error I spotted when scanning for Americansims, "whether if", looks like a case of incomplete editing.

Thanks, but as a German who learned English in school (and two longer 
stays in the UK in holidays during highschool), I am certainly not a 
native speaker.  Although until recently I used English on an almost 
daily basis most of my work days for some 8 years, I know that my 
English (in particular orally) is far from perfect (my Portuguese is 
better, I assume).
Yes, "whether if" was an edititing error for sure.

---

From: Michael Everson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Nov 2020 03:13:09 +0000

“Dialect", please. “Chronolect” is a nonsense. It is not a register because it has different accidence than Esperanto does. (Not just like English “thou hast”, but throughout the system. 

Michael

> On 25 Nov 2020, at 02:48, John Cowan <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> I agree that either "register" or "chronolect" would be better in this case. 
>

---

From: Peter Constable <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Nov 2020 07:06:26 +0000

Right now, the draft for TR 21636 doesn’t provide any _list(s)_, other than the list of eight dimensions of variation. It does define a coding system; it defines a conceptual framework. A coding system could be developed based on the framework, but I think it would perhaps be a bit premature for it to do so in its initial publication (for which reason, a TR is more appropriate than an IS).

> the allowable values for each of the eight dimensions may not be open-ended; they must be specified concretely somewhere

Some of the dimensions would probably be amenable to defining an enumeration of values from the outset. E.g., maybe that would be possible for modality/medium; or perhaps a preliminary set of values could be defined for which there’s good confidence that they would be widely used, with other values added over time as there is more clarity.

But coded values for some dimensions really would need to be long-term extensible. Just like the list of variant subtags in BCP 47.

Of course, neither Mark nor Doug has suggested that lists of coded values would need to be defined up-front before a coding system could be useful. Only that the code sets would need to be publicly and freely documented. The Language Subtag Registry itself is a good model for that, as well as ISO 639-3.

In principle, one might expect the registries for the “t” and “u” extensions to be good examples, though they aren’t as good as the above examples.

  *   The documentation of the “u” extension is OK: they’re defined in a specific section of the LDML spec, and it’s not too hard to discover (UTS #35: Unicode Locale Data Markup Language<http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr35/#Locale_Extension_Key_and_Type_Data>); but if you want a machine-readable data file, you’ll have to figure out how to navigate all of the data contained in a CLDR release—which is not going to be easy for a newcomer. Of course, the “u” extension is primarily (solely?) used in connection with CLDR, so that’s not surprising. But it still means it’s not the best model for something based on 21636 to follow.
  *   The “t” extension really is not a good example to follow: assignment of ‘t’ subtags is done as part of the Unicode CLDR project. When RFC 6497 was written, it defined certain values, and it allows for future assignments to be made in the LDML spec; but it’s harder to discover the documentation since there’s no direct trail from the RFC or from the ‘t’ extension registration form to a specific section of the LDML spec; so the reader has to figure out it’s somewhere in the LDML spec and go navigate that doc to find it. Manageable if you’re somewhat familiar, but probably not otherwise. And, like ‘u’, any machine-readable data is buried in the CLDR data. And that’s unfortunate, really, since the ‘t’ extension is potentially useful outside of the CLDR context, unlike the ‘u’ extension.

Peter

From: Ietf-languages <[email-masked]> On Behalf Of Mark Davis ??
Sent: Wednesday, November 25, 2020 9:26 AM
To: Doug Ewell <[email-masked]>
Cc: [email-masked]; Sebastian Drude <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: [Ietf-languages] Language subtag registration form

> they must be specified concretely somewhere

I'd like to emphasize that the list must be freely available (not behind the common ISO paywall), versioned, and stable (in the sense that new items can be added, and existing items can be deprecated, but nothing can be removed). That is, similar to what we see in https://www.iana.org/assignments/language-subtag-registry/language-subtag-registry<https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.iana.org%2Fassignments%2Flanguage-subtag-registry%2Flanguage-subtag-registry&data=04%7C01%7C%7Cc49d24d160c5470eac7a08d891676aa3%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637419220639376226%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=G%2Fq%2BK%2BUuipRvaHKNHxEURA%2Fk%2FLP7GctcsZCzFs6OxcM%3D&reserved=0> and in https://iso639-3.sil.org/code_tables/download_tables<https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fiso639-3.sil.org%2Fcode_tables%2Fdownload_tables&data=04%7C01%7C%7Cc49d24d160c5470eac7a08d891676aa3%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637419220639376226%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=VfrQzsT10TuSSqRkEPgt86Fa0BDqtIg9n8a9sRU%2Bayk%3D&reserved=0> for ISO 639-3.

Mark

On Tue, Nov 24, 2020 at 4:21 PM Doug Ewell <[email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
I'd be willing to work with the ISO TC 21636 folks, as a specialist in encoding things rather than in languages or linguistics per se.

Keep in mind that in order to make 21636 work with BCP 47, it really has to be framed as an extension, and the allowable values for each of the eight dimensions may not be open-ended; they must be specified concretely somewhere. See https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5646#section-2.2.6<https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftools.ietf.org%2Fhtml%2Frfc5646%23section-2.2.6&data=04%7C01%7C%7Cc49d24d160c5470eac7a08d891676aa3%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637419220639386221%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=wXO%2B%2FbVB7Q%2FmvNU0tr0qcBCwIA0JuvpLzI8lismCTQw%3D&reserved=0> for more information about BCP 47 extensions. Changing the syntax of BCP 47 tags to add new subtag types is almost certainly a non-starter.

--
Doug Ewell, CC, ALB | Thornton, CO, US | ewellic.org<https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fewellic.org%2F&data=04%7C01%7C%7Cc49d24d160c5470eac7a08d891676aa3%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637419220639386221%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=5sYvwsPCUZv8rG%2FASYvqF716EEBzBvqYpjne3CblLlA%3D&reserved=0>

From: Ietf-languages <[email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>> On Behalf Of Sebastian Drude
Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2020 16:36
To: [email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: [Ietf-languages] Language subtag registration form

Hi everyone,

_______________________________________________
Ietf-languages mailing list
[email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages<https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ietf.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fietf-languages&data=04%7C01%7C%7Cc49d24d160c5470eac7a08d891676aa3%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637419220639386221%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=xmeWTKgk9DAu7TGtK4AhEqvnf0AEKseyjWSq5Gvz0Ts%3D&reserved=0>

---

From: Hugh Paterson III <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Nov 2020 08:15:26 +0100

I’m confused. My understanding is that whistle speech and drum speech are
being presented in the report as separate mediums (which it also appears
the report also equated with modalities, it seems to conflate the
distinction between medium and mode) but clearly whistle speech is an oral
speech modality the same as speaking is an oral speech modality. So
separating these in the medium dimension seems to be unnatural.

- Hugh.

On Thu, Nov 26, 2020 at 3:23 AM Sebastian Drude <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Dear Richard, all,
>
> thanks for your thorough thinking and your comments and questions.  I will
> try to address them below in your text as good as I can.
>
> Terra Firme <https://www.google.com/maps/search/Av.+Perimetral,+1901%0D%0ATerra+Firme?entry=gmail&source=g>, CEP: 66077-530 ▪ Belém do Pará – PA ▪ [email-masked] ▪ +55 (91) 3217 6024 ▪ +55 (91) 983733319
> Priv: Tv. Juvenal Cordeiro, 184, Apt 104 ▪ 66070-300 Belém <https://www.google.com/maps/search/Tv.+Juvenal+Cordeiro,+184,+Apt+104+%E2%96%AA+66070-300+Bel%C3%A9m?entry=gmail&source=g>
>
> Sebastian Drude <[email-masked]> <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
>
>
> medium dimension, as sub-categories of the written modality.  But in fact,
> as there is already an ISO standard for Scripts (ISO 15924:2004), and as
> dealing with such different writing systems and their variants is already
> excellently done in BCP 47, the future TR 21636 points to these documents
> and does not foresee to engage in any further details wrt. writings systems.
>
> If different writing conventions are actually the consequence of belonging
> to a certain social group (e.g., in written African American English, some
> *-er* endings are replaced by *-a*) or of being in an informal setting
> (such as contractions), then that would belong to the social or situation
> dimensions, respectively, of course.
>
> BCP 47 is fine for dialects if they coincide with usual countries regions,
> and for writing systems (scripts and orthographies) and their variants.
> But for time periods,  sociolects, registers, even modalities (signed,
> whistled, drummed speech of non-sign-languages)?  And learners varieties
> and the 'anomalies' (we use the less pejorative and pathologizing
> 'communicative functioning')?  There ISO 21636 can make a contribution, I
> believe, (see the case at hand: sociolect?  register?) and that may even
> help with those dialects that do not coincide with regional administrative
> borders.
>
> orthography) at a certain point in time, the different written sub-modality
> (medium dimension) and the different 'chronolects' coincide in most cases,
> but they are still independent, as people can choose, for example, to
> continue to use the older system.
>
> real varieties, as they concern performance, and not the system/competence,
> where idiolects => varieties lie, but we include this for the purposes of
> ISO as an additional dimension anyways) for phenomena such as stutter,
> lisping, and the like, or being drunk, breathless etc. -- this dimension
> also includes very slow or very fast speaking, if that needs to be tagged.
> True, these are all features which apply mainly to speech, i.e. the oral
> modality, but you can have similar categories for the written modality --
> think of an unredacted text written by a dyslexic, or someone writing due
> to stress, emotions etc. with many errors, or in handwriting, to write in a
> hurry, almost illegibly -- these are categories ('varieties') in the
> communicative funcioning dimension.
>
> I confess I do not know enough about Asian languages to grasp why the time
> dimension would be involved here -- did these rules for punctuation change
> over time?  Then see my comment on Turkish, above.
>
> No, this would all go into medium, just like script and orthography, but I
> reckon that these differences are already covered by BCP 47, and would not
> even attempted to be addressed by any implementation of ISO 21636.
>
> No, I would guess, same thing, orthography --> medium dimension if needed,
> hopefully already covered by BCP 47.
>
> frequently exposed to and interacting with speakers of American English, I
> assumed that my English would be closer to the American variety.  But it's
> true, I use (and defend) the Oxford rules when it comes to ...-ize,
> ...-ization.
>
> phenomena of the younger using slang and new expressions that we elder do
> not use (or even understand) goes, for me, into the category sociolect:
> these are social (age-based) groups in the current English-speaking
> society.  When the teenagers from today are 40 or 50, they certainly will
> not use most of that youth-specific expressions any more.
>
> remember having been adressed as "Mr. Drude" in a gathering of colleagues,
> however formal, so I use the first names, too.
>
> stays in the UK in holidays during highschool), I am certainly not a native
> speaker.  Although until recently I used English on an almost daily basis
> most of my work days for some 8 years, I know that my English (in
> particular orally) is far from perfect (my Portuguese is better, I assume).
> Ietf-languages mailing [email-masked]://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages
>
-- 
All the best,
-Hugh

Sent from my iPhone
Paris, France

---

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Nov 2020 13:51:31 -0700

I agree with Peter that while the RFCs that define the 'u' and 't' extensions may be used as good examples for future extensions, the code lists themselves should not be. They are wrapped in large zip files along with hundreds of other files, most of which have nothing to do with the extensions, but a few of which do (i.e. you might want the DTDs in order to validate the XMLs where the code lists live).

A better example of how to present the code lists might be ISO 15924:

https://www.unicode.org/iso15924/codelists.html

There are a few HTML tables, nicely formatted for human browsing, but the normative code list is in a single, semicolon-delimited text file. It's zipped to prevent mangling by download protocols ("Oh, good, a text file! Let's change line endings and convert everything to Windows-1252!"), but it's the only file contained within that zip file. Its name includes the release date, and individual records show the date each was added to the list.

At one point I had hoped that the CLDR data items pertaining to the 'u' and 't' extensions would be split out into their own Registry-like files, and I still have examples of how that would work, but in the end, doing this was not a priority of the CLDR project.

To their credit, they are still machine-readable text files, as opposed to HTML that one must scrape (like UN M.49), or any of several native spreadsheet, word-processor, or database formats (as ISO 4217 used to be; thankfully CLDR distills that for us for the 'u' extension). And, of course, they follow all the other requirements of BCP 47: freely available, versioned, stable, etc.

---

From: Richard Wordingham <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Nov 2020 23:43:15 +0000

On Wed, 25 Nov 2020 23:23:08 -0300

> clearly.  BCP 47 is fine for dialects if they coincide with usual
> countries regions, and for writing systems (scripts and
> orthographies) and their 
> variants.  But for time periods,  sociolects, registers, even
> modalities (signed, whistled, drummed speech of non-sign-languages)?
> And learners varieties and the 'anomalies' (we use the less pejorative
> and pathologizing 'communicative functioning')?  There ISO 21636 can
> make a contribution, I believe, (see the case at hand: sociolect?
> register?) and that may even help with those dialects that do not
> coincide with regional administrative borders.

BCP 47 can handle things like the Scanian dialect of Bornholm
(da-bornholm).  It can't handle street-by-street variations.

On the other hand, BCP 47 can tempt one to some dubious practices.  For
example, I might tag Unicode-encoded Pali in the Tham script as
pi-Lana-TH for material from Northern Thailand but as pi-Lana-LA
for material from North-eastern Thailand.  The latter may come unstuck
for text to speech - I can imagine a Siamese accent being used in NE
Thailand.

>> After that comes the question of orthography within the script.
>> I'm not sure that differences with a political tint (Russian, Lao)
>> come within the time dimension, and the gross differences in Thai
>> script Northern Thai (Thai names thap sap v. rup pariwat) definitely
>> don't.  

> I do not know what you are referring to here, so I do not understand
> at all why the time dimension would be involved.

BCP 47 has variant subtags for spelling schemes, such as
"1901" and "1996" for German.  These give a strong hint as to the
period of the text described by them, so I had though they were
categorisations along the time dimension.  You now tell me that they
apply along the medium dimension.

Some spelling differences have a political implication.  Russian
exiles between the World Wars generally ignored the spelling reforms
introduced after the Russian Revolution.  Rejection of the Lao
replacement of LO LING ('lo lot' in Lao) by LO LOOT ('lo ling' in Lao)
is reportedly a sign of political leanings.  I now gather such
differences are to be categorised along the medium dimension.

>> variation in punctuation system.  

> time dimension would be involved here -- did these rules for
> punctuation change over time?  Then see my comment on Turkish, above.

Yes, many Asian writing systems have recently adopted European
punctuation.  It can be quite uneven.  A novel in a Thai magazine will
have far more non-blank punctuation than a Thai text book. 

>> Similarly, Pali chants in Thai script use different writing systems
>> for the masses and for more academic use - the former is an
>> 'alphabet' by Daniels' definition and the latter is an abugida. Is
>> this difference on the 'communicative functioning' dimension?  
> No, this would all go into medium, just like script and orthography,
> but I reckon that these differences are already covered by BCP 47, and
> would not even attempted to be addressed by any implementation of ISO
> 21636.

It's in scope, but no subtags have been assigned for this case.

>> for Vr and rV survived quite late in Modern English.  The
>> abbreviations are usually expanded when such documents
>> non-palaeographically transcribed.  Is the use of these abbreviations
>> on the 'communicative functioning' dimension?  

It's in scope, but no subtags have been assigned for this case.

Hoping I've fleshed out my use cases,

Richard.

---

From: Sebastian Drude <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Nov 2020 21:25:16 -0300

Thanks, Richard!

Yes, you have fleshed out your use cases, although again in some cases I 
lack the factual knowledge to understand the subleties involved (as in 
your pi-Lana-TH example).

I would indeed argue that all variants related to writing systems, 
insofar they are not already covered by existing (or creatable, in the 
current framework) BCP47 subtags, would go into the medium dimension as 
subvarieties within written modality.  It is true that they vary over 
time (e.g., in the case of a reform), but as you are indicating 
yourself, at any given point in time there may be more than one system 
in use in parallel, for instance by writers adhering or not to new 
rules, or along other lines (Oxford vs. Non-Oxford spelling rules for 
BE), so this is again a case where different dimensions (here time & 
medium) have influence one on another, but still need to be recognized 
as different.  So yes, even "German 1901" and "German 1996" indicate 
different written sub-/*modalities*/ (which are labelled by their year 
of introduction).

As to dialects being identified down to the street level, I doubt that 
many convincing usecases could be made to create subtag-values of such a 
fine resolution (besides by Prof. Henry Higgins, that is).

Best wishes,

Sebastian

--