- 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. Liz Read! Talk! 05:20, 11 February 2022 (UTC)
Initiative case[edit]
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The content seems reasonable, but after some attempt to find reliable sources, I think this article might be WP:OR or otherwise fails WP:GNG. The Scholar searches "initiative case"+manchu and "initiative case"+grammar return no relevant results. The doubt in Talk:Initiative case hasn't been addressed. The corresponding section Manchu language#Less used cases has a {{citation needed}} since 2008. When I searched using the Chinese article title "起點格"+文法, only results about the Japanese particle から are returned, but I can find no reliable source saying this counts as the initiative case. HTinC23 (talk) 12:01, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
- Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions. HTinC23 (talk) 12:01, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
- The source that people seem to like to cite is Ivan Zakharov's 1879 grammar, republished as Zakharov 2010. I have no access to it, but I find Zikmundová 2013, p. 48 citing Zakharov and stating in no uncertain terms that "According to Zaharov, there are four case formants in written Manchu […] Thus the cases in written manchu are five in total." and also explaining "One of the traditional problems of description of cases in the Altaic languages is the relatively vague distinction between a case suffix on one hand and a particle or a postposition on the other.". I find others, such as Li 2010, p. 42 agreeing on four suffixes to make a total of five cases. So I think that we need a source at least as good as Zakharov to say that there aren't five cases in literary Manchu, and that this claimed case is genuinely a thing. I haven't turned up one. So at the moment this idea of an initiative case is unverifiable.
Furthermore, research also turns up Gorelova 2002, p. 193 explaining that there isn't really agreement on what "-deri" is, amongst those who actually do consider it a case marker. I found, as Goroleva says, someone calling it the prolative case. But no "initiative".
- Zakharov, Ivan Ilyich (2010). Vovin, Alexander (ed.). A grammar of Manchu. Languages of Asia classic texts. Vol. 1 (republished ed.). Global Oriental. ISBN 9781905246083.
- Zikmundová, Veronika (2013). Spoken Sibe: Morphology of the Inflected Parts of Speech. Karolinum Press. ISBN 9788024621036.
- Li, Gertraude Roth (2010). Manchu: A Textbook for Reading Documents. NFLRC monographs. National Foreign Languaghe Resource Centre. ISBN 9780980045956.
- Gorelova, Liliya Mikhaelovna (2002). Manchu Grammar, Part 8 (PDF). Brill. ISBN 9789004123076. ISSN 0169-8524.
- Delete. High probability that it's a postposition. Article is also a stub with no references and references that are available don't provide a conclusive answer --Burned Toast (talk) 22:28, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
- Note: This discussion has been included in the list of China-related deletion discussions. Cunard (talk) 06:58, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Star Mississippi 02:40, 6 February 2022 (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.