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Talk:Agglutinative language

Article title
Shouldn't this be agglutinative language? --Chuck Smith

-- Probably yes. 'Agglutinative language' language gives 800 hits in Google, while 'agglutinating language' only gives 200 hits. --HJH

Len I didn't miss that; but Wikipedia is not authoritative, I took the time to read the other hits Mintguy

 * Take the time to minor in Linguistics and learn about the various types of polysynthetic languages, like me. The error you are seeing on the web is the near-ubiquitous one of mistaking "agglutinative" for a synonym of "(poly)synthetic". It is not. (you might find the article on fusional language, skeletal as it is, rather instructive.) --User:LenBudney

I see that German is given as an example of an Agglutinative_language and also as an example of a fusional language. Which one is it? The text implies that if it's one then it can't be the other. Or can it? --Zoicon5

 * I see that each type also claims Esperanto as an example. -- Zoicon5

I've moved German and Esperanto to the back, saying 'and to a lesser extent'. More seriously, I've changed 'polysynthetic' to 'synthetic'. The term 'polysynthetic' refers to languages like those in North America that incorporate both the noun and verb into a single phonological word. The term 'agglutinative' covers two things: (a) multiple morphemes in the same word, and that's in core inflection of nouns and verbs (so a few English examples like kind+ness+es don't count); and (b) each morpheme phonetically separate, as opposed to other synthetic types. In fact, the core morphology of German is fusional: -es is gen.+sg.+m/n., so it really shouldn't be in the list. Gritchka 17:43 25 Jul 2003 (UTC)~

 * I would like to agree with you (Gritchka) about the idea that 'polysynthetic' => noun incorporation. However, several months ago I had a conversation about this on a mailing list, and at least etymologically (going back to Sapir, I think) 'polysynthetic' simply means "extremely agglutinative" or "containing in a single word what would be complete sentences in other languages."  Of course the latter is vague (you can arguably do this in a pro-drop fusional language), but the general idea is that there are a whole lot of morphemes in a single word.  And this seems to be a (not necessarily the only) widespread idea of what 'polysynthetic' means.  (I've actually never heard the term 'synthetic' used this way, but maybe I have just overlooked it.)
 * Mcswell 22:55, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Examples!
Could we have some examples of this type of formation in action? I've read the article, but I still have only a vague idea of what this is!

 * Here are some examples in some languages I'm familiar with:
 * ka:?a:?a:kó:khá:r?a (Wichita)
 * (ka:? - a:? - a: - ki - wakhahr - ?a) (six morphemes)
 * intensive - quotative - third person subject and preverb - aorist - patient is an activity - come
 * long ago it came to pass that... (used to start a story) (Wichita is basically agglutinative; the differences between the morphemic gloss and the surface form are governed by a few basic phonological rules.)

 * aqhjazbacr'aghawdætwaaylafaq'ayt'madaqh (Ubykh)
 * (a-qhja-z-bacr'a-gha-w-dæ-tw-aay-la-fa-q'a-yt'-ma-da-qh) (16 morphemes)
 * them - benefactive - me - under - ablative - you -causative - take - again - exhaustive - able - past - imperfective - negative - conditional - optative
 * if only you had not been able to make him take it all out from under me again for them

thefamouseccles 00:37 13 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I'd like to give an example from Turkish, a word primary-school kids like to play on:

Çekoslovakyalılaştırabildiklerimizden misiniz?

This is one word, and one sentence, actually, meaning: are you among the ones whom we were able to turn into a Czechlovakian? (politically outdated, though)

Çekoslovakyalı[Czechoslovakian] + -laştır[turn into] + abil[ability = to be able to] + -dik[past tense = were] + -ler[plural suffix for the object -> so that it becomes first person plural; "we" namely] + -imiz[this doesn't mean "we" actually, but indicates that the object performing the action is "we", first person plural] + -den[among] + -mi[question suffix] + -siniz [are you? -> makes the subject the second person plural]

The longest known word in Finnish (and possibly in the whole world) is 103 letters long:

Kumarreksituteskenteleentuvaisehkollaismaisekkuudellisenneskenteluttelemattomammuuksissaansakaankopahan

As its creator, professor Artturi Kannisto, has died, nobody has been able to actually interpret its meaning -- or even tell how many morphemes there are in it. However, it is definitely a real word.

 * Um, if no one knows what it means, or even what the morphemes are, how can we be sure it's a real word? I'm not slagging, I'm seriously curious.  I could just as easily say that freemjaboodinalitatiousnessism is a new long word, and as no one could say what it means, then by the logic apparent above, it would be a "real" word...?  Or am I missing something in your argument?

 * Also, not to rain on any parades, but my (probably limited) understanding was that the longest words on record were chemical names. Due to the complicated atomic structure of some rather large molecules, it becomes possible to come up with some truly ridiculously long formal names for these compounds (such as that listed here at Fun-With-Words.com, sporting 1,185 letters).
 * In that case, the parts (individual names of the chemicals) sould be considered separate and separately they are not so long. Also in some languages like Finnish or German, the spaces from between words that describe a single object are left out (like "ferry boat deck paint" -> "ferryboatdeckpaint") but these are not considered to be long words as in the article, since there is no upper limit on how long a word you could form this way.

No, the spaces aren'T "left out". English has those spaces, German has not. In fact, the ability to form compound nouns is rsther unique to German since you can also change adjectives and Verbs to fit into the word.
 * Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi 23:21, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

 * Hi, I am a native Finnish speaker, and to me it looks sort of intelligible, but definitely it's too complex a compound to understand its meaning. It is a synthetic word created by a professor, so it's probably grammatically correct, but quite impossible to understand completely as the structure of the word is too complex to be understood all at once. Furthermore, grammatic shift makes it increasingly difficult to even break the compound down into all of its parts cohesively. The word begins with "kumar-", the stem of "kumara" which means bent. It's used as a verb "kumartaa" which means to bow. Now, if that would be agglutinated into "kumarretuksi" that would mean "to become bowed" (meaning the object (probably a person) becomes someting that people bow in front of). The word goes on to characterizing that this bowing-of is a tendency of the object (like one's personality). The middle part of the word twists the attibute further, revolving around the theme that the tendency is characteristic of the object person and that the object person might be prone to it. This part also negates the tendency quite a few times until it becomes quite utterly unclear (to me) as to whether the object has this tendency or lacks the tendency. All in all, the middle part is really difficult to understand. The end part ("...ttelemattomammuuksissaansakaankopahan") is quite clear, however, and it describes a wondering if an accomplishment (which would be defined in the next word) of the object person has been due to a (momentary or nondeliberate) state of lacking the tendency, further noting that the speaker does not quite firmly believe that it would be so. That's what it looks and feels like to me, anyway, but please correct me if I am wrong :) Panu-Kristian Poiksalo (talk) 08:33, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Examples that illustrate the agglutinative structure
It would be very helpful to include an example from each language which shows the full structure of its agglutination. By this I mean which agglutinative morphemes can appear in which positions.

It would be nice to have one example for a verb, and one example for a noun.

Some languages are regularly stated to be agglutinative but their agglutinative properties are seldom discussed. Japanese and Korean fall into this category. Illustrative examples for them will be valuable.

Some languages can be analysed in multiple ways with one way being more accepted, or different ways accepted by different groups. For instance, Hungarian is considered to have cases by some, and considered to have nouns built from individual particles by others. Japanese verbs are usually described as conjugating but the conjugations can be broken down into functional pieces. Japanese nouns are pronounced with their following particles attached but described in terms of the particles being separate words. It would be good to show the more agglutinating analysis here, perhaps with a note. — Hippietrail 13:38, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * The postposed particles in Japanese are indeed part of the same phonological word, but they're not agglutinative morphemes; they're clitics. Note also that the copula is also a clitic (I mean anything like da, desu, deshou, etc.). I don't know enough Japanese to propose good examples, but I guess I can chip in with tabetakunakatta: tabe- "eat", -ta- "want", -ku adverbial operator, -na(i) negative, -katta past tense mark for adjectives = "did not want to eat". --Pablo D. Flores 11:03, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * Thanks for the example. I have the Finnish structure for nouns, verbs, and participles downstairs. I think I have the Basque structure too. I'll try to post them soon.
 * A couple of questions, am I right in thinking the difference between the enclitics and agglutinative morphemes is that the latter would only be able to join specific word classes (nouns or verbs but not both) whereas the former can join onto any kind of word whatsoever?
 * Also, can clitics be added in arbitrary order or does the degree of freedom vary by word class and by language? Do you know the answer at least in the case of Japanese? — Hippietrail 12:18, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * A clitic is more or less defined as a morpheme that behaves syntactically like a separate word, and phonologically like a bound morpheme. That is, a clitic appears in places where you would expect a separate word, but sounds as if it were an affix (which it isn't). An affix is applied to specific word classes, as you say, while a clitic may be attached anywhere (well not anywhere, but the distribution rules are not as rigid). For example, the articles in Romance languages are proclitic: Spanish un beso "a kiss" is phonologically one word. But you can add an adjective in between: un apasionado beso "a passionate kiss". The article just cliticizes on the first word it encounters.

 * As for the rules: I'm sure no language allows clitics complete freedom of order (it's the same with words). In Japanese the clitics are the postpositions, the copula and some other particles, and they all come after the rest. They're not distributed arbitrarily. Suppose this (clumsy) example:

 * Kore wa anata no desu ka?
 * this (TOPIC) you (GENITIVE) (COPULA) (QUESTION)

 * Phonologically those are two words: kore-wa and anata-no-desu-ka. Neither can be ordered differently: the genitive always follows the noun/pronoun, the copula or the verb comes at the end in declarative sentences, and if the sentence is an interrogative one, you add ka after the verb. --Pablo D. Flores 12:11, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Number of Japanese irregular verbs
At the bottom of the page, there is the statement:

"Agglutinative languages tend to have a high rate of affixes/morphemes per word, and to be very regular. For example, Japanese has only two irregular verbs, and Turkish has only one."

I believe that there are three irregular Japanese verbs:

"suru" (to do) has the stem form "shi" -- if it was regular, it would be "su" or "suri"

"kuru" (to come) has the stem form "ki" -- if it was regular, it would be "ku" or "kuri"

"iku" (to go) has the gerund form "itte" -- if it was regular, it would be "iite"

I suspect that the two noted verbs in the article are "kuru" and "suru". Is there any reason that "iku" was left out?

-Seth

 * Some analyses of Japanese grammar don't consider "suru" to be a true verb but rather an "auxiliary". So maybe that writer was only considering "kuru" and "iku" — Hippietrail 22:59, 29 May 2004 (UTC)

 * Suru is an independent verb, not only an auxiliary. In the sentence "Nani o shimashou ka?" ("What shall we do?"), it is plainly not an auxiliary, as there is no other verb. It's much more likely that the verbs the author had in mind are "kuru" and "suru", because these are the only two verbs that are not classified as ichidan or godan verbs in traditional Japanese grammar. Iku is definitely irregular, though, as is "aru" (its negative is "nai", rather than the expected "aranai"), and there are other irregular verbs once you consider honorific speech (e.g., the imperative of "kudasaru" is "kudasai", the masu form of "gozaru" is "gozaimasu" and not "gozarimasu", etc.). - furrykef (Talk at me) 10:28, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Can it really be said that Japanese has only 3 irregular verbs? That is based on the idea that the verb です - basically, "to be" - is not a verb, rather a thing that is added to end of a sentence that lacks a verb, even though it acts like a verb. An IRREGULAR verb. And there are also several other verbs formed from a noun + one of those three irregular verbs, and so they too are irregular. elvenscout742 22:55, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * I concur that some consideration should be given for what to do with the Japanese ending copula da / desu. However, I would not go so far as to include compound verbs formed by nouns + irregulars.  On the one hand, the list gets ridiculously long pretty quickly, and on the other, they are after all compounds.  Though 勉強する benkyō suru translates roughly as "study" or "to study" in English, the basic morphemes in Japanese are quite separate and distinct -- benkyō, and suru.  One may as well advocate lumping together similar constructs in English as single verbs -- but then "dothelaundry" doesn't seem to work very well.  :)   ---  Eirikr 05:42, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The wiki Irregular Verbs page, which links from this page, gives the number of Japanese irregular verbs as + or - five, not the two mentioned in this article. Should a footnote--or more information--be added on either or both pages to reconcile/explain this discrepancy? For example, I found the information in this discussion to be extremely helpful. Perhaps an edited version could be included on the wiki itself, not just in the discussion? --Sabishii 06:55, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Irregular verbs in Turkish
It says there is only one. i'm a native turkish speaker but i haven't heard of it yet. could somebody tell me?

 * I just had a quick look with Google and found this site which lists at least 14 irregular verbs in Turkish! This seems to be restricted to the aorist. Here is another site which goes into more detail about to be, which is probably what the writer on this article had in mind. — Hippietrail 07:14, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I have been to the website, but I do not see why they are irregular (the site which lists the supposedly 14 irregular verbs). I have consulted with over 5 teachers of Turkish in the United States and Europe, and they claim that Turkish does not have any irregular verbs. That is why I corrected the article, saying that Turkish has no irregular verbs.

If 'to be' isn't conjugated the same as every other verb in Turkish - in other words, if you can't take the infinitive and deduce all forms of the verb using a consistent rule - then it's irregular. By that definition it seems irregular to me, based on the link above. 65.96.15.43 01:07, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

 * I don't know about "to be" in Turkish, but it's quite possible that some people analyse it as a verb and others as a copula which they see as not a verb though usually with many similarities. — Hippietrail 02:08, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

 * If the verb in question is "one of a kind", it's a copula, and is morphosyntactically different from the others in some way, then maybe it should not be called an irregular verb. You don't call a vast plain with a single tall mountain "an irregular surface". :) --Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 22:37, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Irregularity happens when a non-Turkic word came into usage. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.179.207.204 (talk) 00:41, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

 * Turkish has native irregular verbs (and nouns for that matter): For example the aorist tense (geniş zaman) suffix -r requires an epenthetic vowel after verb stems with a final consonant. It's open (-e- or -a- depending on the vowel harmony) for monosyllabic verbs (dal-a-r) and close (-ı-,-i-,-u- or -ü-, again with vowel harmony) for polysyllabic verbs (otur-u-r). But about twenty monosyllabic verbs get close vowels (gel-i-r). It's clearly an irregularity. Also some verbs go through lenition of the last consonant, but most don't (bit-ecek, but gid-ecek, not *git-ecek). Causative form construction is also very irregular (al -> al-dır-, iç -> iç-ir, git -> götür) but it's a borderline case between inflection and derivation so I'll stop here. So I vote for changing the article as Turkish having "only a handful of irregular verbs".Cyco130 (talk) 18:03, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Irregular verbs in Nahuatl
What is the reference for there being only a few irregular verbs in Nahuatl? I can't find anything on the 'Nahuatl' wiki page. Also at issue is which Nahuatl. Presumably this refers to classical Nahuatl, i.e. the form attested in various written manuscripts from the early post-conquest era. I'm working with another researcher on building a morphological transducer for several varieties of modern-day Nahuatl, and I can attest to the fact that these varieties are *full* of irregularity. (Of course some of the irregularity is predictable on a phonological basis, if you allow your phonological rules access to lexical features; but to me, needing to refer to lexical features in the phonology is synonomous with "irregular".) Mcswell 14:31, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Comment added later: I just ran across the Wikipedia entry for 'Irregular verb', which also does not mention Nahuatl. Mcswell 20:11, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Hungarian conjugation
Some Hungarian verb endings have even 3 meanings.

-k: first person / singular / indefinite -m: first person / singular / definite

--88.112.229.248 15:35, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Hi guys, my name is plc580e. I was born in the US but hungarian was spoken in the house as my grandmother only spoke hungarian. After many years of not using the language I started to re-learn it. I visited hungary a few years ago and had no difficulty communicating with the locals but I'm sure my grammar was a riot. ( Either that or I was telling a lot of jokes I wasn't aware of). Anyhow,  I am relearning the language rapidly. I have a gripe though. I've been out to the net and searched "hungarian grammar",Hungarian verbs" hungarian conjugations" and any other Ungar things I can think of. What I found is that all the popular dictionaries and tutorials have very idiomatic translations from hun-->eng and eng--->hung. This makes it impossible to learn actual words and usages. A phrase I heard a lot when I was a kid was " adok neked nyaklevest" which I knew the literal xlation as well as the idiomatic xlation very well. All the dictionaries had such definitions as "I'll give you what for", "you'll be sorry". How the heck is anyone one supposed to learn new works when the xlations are so misleading. A suggestion to all the dictionary and phrase book writers is to provide both a literal and an idiomatic xlation going in both direction. Some of the xlations are so far afield or arcane that the xlation makes no sense what so ever in either language. To learn a language this way is pure "phrase memorization/pronunciation" with no real understanding of the words used. Any sources you can reccomend that are accurate and literal would be appreciated.

Regards, plc580e@yahoo.com —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.213.14.217 (talk) 20:11, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Fusional/inflected distinction
The article currently states, "Agglutinative is sometimes used as a synonym for synthetic, although it technically is not. When used in this way, the word embraces fusional languages and inflected languages in general." However, the first sentence of the fusional language article basically says that "fusional language" and "inflected language" are synonyms (also, Inflected language currently redirects to Fusional language).

If these terms are really synonyms, then this article shouldn't talk about them as if there's a distinction; if the terms refer to different things, then Fusional language should be fixed to reflect this. I'm not a linguist, so I'll leave the task to someone who knows. Gzabers (talk) 17:41, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Arabic language could have agglutinative morphology.for example the single arabic word=أوفلاليستأمنوننكموهالهن awafalaliyasta'minunannakomuhalahonna
Arabic language could have agglutinative morphology.for example the single arabic word=أوفلاليستأمنوننكموهالهن awafalaliyasta'minunannakomuhalahonna meaning=

and so should you not let them insist to entrust it(feminine object) to you(plural) for them(feminine)?

Humanbyrace (talk) 11:41, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

 * Most languages are agglutinative. That means it's not too special to be able to construct very long words. I think there's no need to farm examples. --vuo (talk) 21:47, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

So I can add this fact to the article.

Humanbyrace (talk) 14:43, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

 * To clarify, no, please do not add that example. Furthermore the division between this article and the article Agglutination (check it first) is a work in progress. --vuo (talk) 22:25, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

 * Although this word seems to be circulating the internet as the longest word in Arabic, it's not a real Arabic word, and it makes no sense. Even "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" is more real!! Xevorim (talk) 15:00, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Arabic is an agglutinative language. When translating a normal sentence from Arabic to English or from Arabic to French, one doubles the number of the words. Nevertheless, since Hebrew is much like Arabic but has much western influence, one can phrase Hebrew either as an agglutinative language or not. Examples:
 * Is it as bad as it sounds? = הכצעקתה? (In Hebrew it is a one word sentence - HaKeTzeaaqata - Ha = is it, Ke = like, Tzeaaqa = scream, ta = of it).
 * I did not get them to know each other.= عرّفتهمش (In Arabic it is a one word sentence - Arraftuhumsh - Arf = A Semitic root with the meaning "knowledge", the morph doubling the r means that the verb is done by one person on other ones, the tu means "I did", the "hum" means "them", and the "sh" means "not").
 * * Will you remember me? = ?התזכרני (In Hebrew it is a one word sentence - HaTizkereni)
 * * I did not see you. = شوفتكش (In Arabic it is a one word sentence - Shuftaksh)
 * Arabic is an agglutinative language, and a fancy Hebrew speaker can turn Hebrew into such a language too. Please put the Arabic language on the list. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.160.137.152 (talk) 15:28, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
 * "Arabic as an agglutinative language", Arabic Natural Language Processing: Challenges and Solutions, Ali Farghaly	@ Khaled Shaalan, ACM Transactions on Asian Language Information Processing (TALIP) Volume 8 Issue 4, December 2009, Article No. 14  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.160.137.152 (talk) 16:18, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
 * The fact that a language has some agglutinative morphology does not make it an agglutinative language. Languages on this list should be commonly described as agglutinative in reliable sources. The TALIP source is a start, but it is quite clear that it is proposing a novel way of analysing Arabic which is not commonly accepted. So no, Arabic should not be included.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 18:33, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Arabic has much more than some agglutinative morphology. Please learn some Arabic before arguing about it. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.160.137.152 (talk) 19:51, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Please provide some mainstram linguistic sources for your claim that Arabic is commonly considered an agglutinative language. Thank you very much. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 20:00, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Persian is an agglutinative language !
Persian is not an agglutinative language it is Iranic language with Indo-Earopean branch how it can be a Agglutinative language? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Snake co1 (talk • contribs) 20:40, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

 * Your statement is a nonsequitor. There are agglutinative langauges in many language families and it is certainly possible for a family to have both agglutinative and non-agglutinative languages in it. If there is an argument for or against Persian being agglutinative then this is the wrong argument. — Hippietrail (talk) 14:03, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

 * Persian is indeed agglutinative, not as much as Turkish or other "pure" examples, but there is a lot of agglutination "going on"... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.169.49.216 (talk) 21:14, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Agglutinative languages list
"Altaic /ælˈteɪɨk/ is a proposed language family of central Eurasia."
 * In the Wikipedia Altaic languages article:

 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altaic_languages

Recently, Altaic languages was removed from the Agglutinative language article because the editor (Jijwatmaat) felt that it is "Not an actual language family".

Is it not possible to list Altaic languages with the (editorial?) NOTE from the relevant article that that "Altaic is a proposed language family of central Eurasia." ??

MaynardClark (talk) 21:05, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

List of examples
The article lists "Japonic languages" as well as "Japanese". Isn't it odd? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.216.30.126 (talk) 01:55, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

"Korean has only ten irregular forms of conjugation." - Wait
This is highly misleading, especially as an example of "agglutinative languages having regular inflection!"

Not sure why this sentence is in the introduction. Maybe some readers would imagine Korean verbs being highly regular, with only ten irregular forms you have to remember.

Any native Korean speaker can tell you that this is *definitely* not the case. What it means is that Korean has (maybe) ten different *classes* of irregular verbs: many classes have hundreds (or maybe thousands) of verbs each, and you just have to memorize whether a verb is "regular" or "ㄷ-irregular" or so on.

(It is somewhat helped by the fact that each irregular form can only appear with a particular sound, so given the dictionary form, there are at most two or three ways it can inflect, or so I think.)

And then there are hundreds of verb suffixes, which can combine in a messy way, sometimes with optional (or mandatory) contractions.

In short, Korean verbs are definitely *NOT* an example of a grammar with regular inflection.

24.5.249.55 (talk) 05:42, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Indonesian
Is not an agglutinative language, but f.e. Batak is. Maarten van Thiel — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.206.47.172 (talk) 18:54, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

Malay is agglutinative but with analytic features. It uses little inflection. Each verb has at most several dozen inflected forms, and there is no overt tense marking, subject agreement, or number distinction. Similarly, nouns do not inflect for number (this usually being covered by reduplication) or case. However, Malay makes heavy uses of affixes which are not fused (i.e. they almost always have only one meaning). --2A02:AB04:2AB:700:5B1:11BB:85C3:9253 (talk) 20:56, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Linguistics in the Digital Age
— Assignment last updated by Fedfed2 (talk) 00:54, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

what a bad intro
this is a general encylopedia but the inro is written for a PhD. To use technical langauge the intro sucks. honestly people — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.245.17.105 (talk) 13:32, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Agglutinative language


text:
Adin Steinsaltz

Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz (11 July 1937 –7 August 2020) (עדין אבן-ישראל שטיינזלץ) was an Israeli Chabad Chasidic rabbi, teacher, philosopher, social critic, author, translator and publisher.

His Steinsaltz edition of the Talmud was originally published in modern Hebrew, with a running commentary to facilitate learning, and has also been translated into English, French, Russian, and Spanish. Beginning in 1989, Steinsaltz published several tractates in Hebrew and English of the Babylonian (Bavli) Talmud in an English-Hebrew edition. The first volume of a new English-Hebrew edition, the Koren Talmud Bavli, was released in May 2012, and has since been brought to completion.

Steinsaltz was a recipient of the Israel Prize for Jewish Studies (1988), the President's Medal (2012), and the Yakir Yerushalayim prize (2017).

Steinsaltz died in Jerusalem on 7 August 2020 from acute pneumonia.

Biography
Adin Steinsaltz was born in Jerusalem on 11 July 1937 to Avraham Steinsaltz and Leah (née Krokovitz). His father was a great-grandson of the first Slonimer Rebbe, Avrohom Weinberg, and was a student of Hillel Zeitlin. Avraham and Leah Steinsaltz met through Zeitlin. They immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1924. Avraham Steinsaltz, a devoted communist and member of Lehi, went to Spain in 1936 to fight with the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. Adin was born the following year.

Steinsaltz became a baal teshuva during his teenage years and learned from Rabbi Shmuel Elazar Heilprin (Rosh yeshiva of Yeshivas Toras Emes Chabad). He studied mathematics, physics, and chemistry at the Hebrew University, in addition to rabbinical studies at Yeshivas Tomchei Temimim in Lod and with Rabbis Dov Ber Eliezrov and Shmaryahu Noach Sasonkin. Following graduation, he established several experimental schools after an unsuccessful attempt to start a neo-Hassidic community in the Negev desert, and, at the age of 24, became Israel's youngest school principal.

In 1965, he founded the Israel Institute for Talmudic Publications and began his monumental work on the Talmud, including translation into Hebrew, English, Russian, and various other languages. The Steinsaltz editions of the Talmud include translation from the original Aramaic and a comprehensive commentary. Steinsaltz completed his Hebrew edition of the entire Babylonian Talmud in November 2010, at which time Koren Publishers Jerusalem became the publisher of all of his works, including the Talmud. While not without criticism (such as by Jacob Neusner, 1998), the Steinsaltz edition is widely used throughout Israel, the United States, and the world.

Steinsaltz's classic work on Kabbalah, The Thirteen Petalled Rose, was first published in 1980, and now appears in eight languages. In all, Steinsaltz authored some 60 books and hundreds of articles on subjects including Talmud, Jewish mysticism, Jewish philosophy, sociology, historical biography, and philosophy. Many of these works have been translated into English by his close personal friend, now deceased, Yehuda Hanegbi. His memoir-biography on the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, was published by Maggid Books (2014).

Continuing his work as a teacher and spiritual mentor, Steinsaltz joined the original faculty of the nondenominational Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem in 1972, along with David Hartman, Eliezer Schweid, Menachem Froman, Dov Berkovits, and others. He established Yeshivat Mekor Chaim alongside Rabbis Menachem Froman and Shagar in 1984 and Yeshivat Tekoa in 1999. He also served as president of the Shefa Middle and High Schools. He has served as scholar in residence at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. His honorary degrees include doctorates from Yeshiva University, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Bar Ilan University, Brandeis University, and Florida International University. Steinsaltz was also Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Hesder Tekoa.

Being a follower of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson of Chabad-Lubavitch, he went to help Jews in the Soviet Union assisting Chabad's shluchim (propagators) network. In 1995, the chief Rabbi of Russia, Adolph Shayevich gave Steinzaltz the title of Duchovny Ravin (Spiritual Rabbi), a historic Russian title which indicated that he was the spiritual mentor of Russian Jewry. In this capacity, Steinsaltz travelled to Russia and the Republics once each month from his home in Jerusalem. During his time in the former Soviet Union, he founded the Jewish University, both in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. The Jewish University is the first degree-granting institution of Jewish studies in the former Soviet Union. In 1991, on Schneersohn's advice, he changed his family name from Steinsaltz to Even-Israel. Besides Chabad, Steinsaltz was also inspired by the teachings of the Kotzker Rebbe. He was in close contact with the fifth Gerrer Rebbe, Yisroel Alter, and his brother and successor, Simcha Bunim Alter.

Steinsaltz took a cautious approach to interfaith dialogues. During a visit of a delegation of Roman Catholic cardinals in Manhattan in January 2004, he said that, "You do not have to raise over-expectations of a meeting, as it doesn't signify in itself a breakthrough; however, the opportunity for cardinals and rabbis to speak face to face is valuable. It's part of a process in which we can talk to each other in a friendly way", and called for "a theological dialogue that asks the tough questions, such as whether Catholicism allows for Jews to enter eternal paradise".

Steinsaltz and his wife lived in Jerusalem until his death and had three children and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. In 2016, Steinsaltz suffered a stroke, leaving him unable to speak. His son, Rabbi Menachem ("Meni") Even-Israel, is the executive director of the Steinsaltz Center, Rabbi Steinsaltz's umbrella organization, located in the Nachlaot neighborhood of Jerusalem.

Steinsaltz died in Jerusalem on 7 August 2020, from acute pneumonia, at the Shaare Tzedek Medical Center. He was hospitalized earlier in the week with a severe lung infection. His wife Sarah survived him, together with three children and eighteen grandchildren.

Head of the new Sanhedrin
Steinsaltz accepted the position as Nasi (President) of the 2004 attempt to revive the Sanhedrin. In 2008, he resigned from this position due to differences of opinion.

As an author
Steinsaltz was a prolific author and commentator who wrote numerous books on Jewish knowledge, tradition and culture, and produced original commentaries on the entirety of the Jewish canon: Tanakh (the Jewish bible), the Babylonian Talmud, the Mishna, the Mishneh Torah, and Tanya.

His published works include:

 * Biblical Images (1984)
 * The Candle of God (1998)
 * A Dear Son to Me (2011)
 * The Essential Talmud (1976)
 * A Guide to Jewish Prayer (2000)
 * The Passover Haggadah (1983)
 * In the Beginning (1992)
 * My Rebbe (2014)
 * The Tales of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav (1993)
 * On Being Free (1995)
 * The Miracle of the Seventh Day (2003)
 * Simple Words (1999)
 * The Strife of the Spirit (1988)
 * A Reference Guide to The Talmud (2012)
 * Talmudic Images (1997)
 * Learning from the Tanya (2005)
 * Opening the Tanya (2003)
 * Understanding the Tanya (2007)
 * Teshuvah (1982)
 * The Longer Shorter Way (1988)
 * The Seven Lights: On the Major Jewish Festivals (2000)
 * The Sustaining Utterance (1989)
 * The Thirteen Petalled Rose (1980)
 * We Jews (2005)
 * The Woman of Valor (1994)

As a speaker
Steinsaltz was invited to speak at the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies at Yale University in 1979.

Prior to his stroke, he gave evening seminars in Jerusalem, which, according to Newsweek, usually lasted until 2:00 in the morning and attracted prominent politicians, such as the former Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and former Finance Minister Pinchas Sapir.

Awards and critical reception
On 21 April 1988, Steinsaltz received the Israel Prize for Jewish Studies.

On 9 February 2012, Steinsaltz was honored by Israeli President Shimon Peres with Israel's first President's Prize alongside Zubin Mehta, Uri Slonim, Henry Kissinger, Judy Feld Carr, and the Rashi Foundation.[15] Steinsaltz was presented with this award for his contribution to the study of Talmud, making it more accessible to Jews worldwide.

Steinsaltz was also presented with the 2012 National Jewish Book Award in the category of Modern Jewish Thought & Experience by the Jewish Book Council for his commentary, translation, and notes in the Koren Babylonian Talmud. The Modern Jewish Thought & Experience award was awarded on 15 January 2013 in memory of Joy Ungerleider Mayerson by the Dorot Foundation.

On 22 May 2017, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat visited Steinsaltz at his home to present him with the Yakir Yerushalayim ("Worthy Citizen of Jerusalem") medal. This medal of achievement was awarded to Steinsaltz for his writing and translating work.

On 10 June 2018, Steinsaltz was honored at a Gala Dinner at the Orient Hotel in Jerusalem for his pedagogical achievements throughout a lifetime dedicated to Jewish education. A limited-edition version of "The Steinsaltz Humash" was presented to the attendees of this event.

Academic criticism
Jacob Neusner's ''How Adin Steinsaltz Misrepresents the Talmud. Four False Propositions from his "Reference Guide"'' (1998) displays strong disagreement. In what was an overall favorable review, Dr. Jeremy Brown notes that the Koren Talmud Bavli contains some inaccurate scientific information, such as identifying Ursa Major as a star and describing polycythemia vera as a disease causing excessive bleeding from the gums and from ordinary cuts. Aharon Feldman penned a lengthy critical review of the Steinsaltz Talmud contending that the work "is marred by an extraordinary number of inaccuracies stemming primarily from misreadings of the sources; it fails to explain those difficult passages which the reader would expect it to explain; and it confuses him with notes which are often irrelevant, incomprehensible, and contradictory." Feldman says he fears that, "An intelligent student utilizing the Steinsaltz Talmud as his personal instructor might in fact conclude that Talmud in general is not supposed to make sense." Furthermore, writes Feldman, the Steinsaltz Talmud gives off the impression that the Talmud is "intellectually flabby, inconsistent, and often trivial."

Haredi reaction and ban
Publication of the Steinsaltz Hebrew translation of the Talmud in the 1960s received endorsements from prominent rabbis including Moshe Feinstein and Ovadia Yosef. However, in 1989, when the English version appeared, Steinsaltz faced a fierce backlash from many leading rabbis in Israel such as Elazar Shach, Yosef Shalom Eliashiv, Eliezer Waldenberg, Nissim Karelitz, Chaim Pinchas Scheinberg, and Shmuel Wosner, who harshly condemned his work and other publications. Branding him a heretic, Shach was at the forefront of a campaign which banned all his works, believing that his literary and psychological explanations of biblical characters and events rendered them heretical. He also slated his translation of the Talmud, describing it as being written in the style of a secular book causing "any trace of holiness and faith to vanish." Waldenberg wrote that he was shocked to see the way in which Steinsaltz described the Patriarchs and Talmudic sages, writing that the works had the power to "poison the souls" of those who read them. Striking a more conciliatory tone in the controversy, however, were the Gerer Hasidim who praised his works and commended him on his willingness to amend various passages "which could have been misconstrued." After the Jerusalem-based Edah Charedis limited the ban to three books, Steinsaltz publicly apologised for his error and offered to refund anyone who had bought the books. The ban nevertheless caused thousands of schools and individuals to discard the Steinsaltz Talmud, with Rabbi Avigdor Nebenzahl ordering all copies to be placed in genizah. This led to more liberal Jewish movements placing adverts in the press asking for the edition to be donated to their institutions instead. For his part, Steinsaltz countered that much of the criticism he faced was rooted in opposition to the Chabad-Lubavitch community with which he was affiliated.

Praise
While certain members of the Haredi community may have opposition to Steinsaltz's works, other Jewish leaders, rabbis, and authors have spoken or written about their appreciation for Steinsaltz's unique educational approach. Rabbi John Rosove of Temple Israel of Hollywood featured "Opening The Tanya", "Learning the Tanya", and "Understanding the Tanya" on his list of the top ten recommended Jewish books. These volumes are written by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of the Chabad Lubavitch movement, and include commentary by Steinsaltz. Through reading the Tanya, readers can explore all aspects of the central text of Chabad movement. Rabbi Elie Kaunfer, a rosh yeshiva and the CEO of Mechon Hadar Yeshiva, discussed his gratitude for Steinsaltz's Global Day of Jewish Learning and the opportunity created by this online platform for learning and creating a deeper connection to Torah, other Jewish text, and Jews worldwide. Rabbi Pinchas Allouche, who studied under Steinsaltz, notes that Steinsaltz "is a world scholar" who "revolutionized the Jewish landscape" through his commentary, other writings, and educational organizations. In 1988, secular Israeli historian Zeev Katz compared Steinsaltz's importance to that of Rashi and Maimonides, two Jewish scholars of medieval times. In addition, Ilana Kurshan, an American-Israeli author, wrote that Steinsaltz's ability to bring "the historical world of the Talmudic stages to life" created an enjoyable Jewish learning experience for her when she was intensely studying Talmud.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Adin Steinsaltz


text:
A. E. Housman

Alfred Edward Housman (26 March 1859 – 30 April 1936) was an English classical scholar and poet. After an initially poor performance while at university, he took employment as a clerk in London and established his academic reputation by publishing as a private scholar at first. Later Housman was appointed Professor of Latin at University College London and then at the University of Cambridge. He is now acknowledged as one of the foremost classicists of his age and has been ranked as one of the greatest scholars of any time. His editions of Juvenal, Manilius, and Lucan are still considered authoritative.

In 1896, he emerged as a poet with A Shropshire Lad, a cycle in which he poses as an unsophisticated and melancholy youth. After a slow start, this captured the imagination of young readers, its preoccupation with early death appealing to them especially during times of war. In 1922 his Last Poems added to his reputation, which was further enhanced by the large number of song settings drawn from these collections. Following his death, further poems from his notebooks were published by his brother, Laurence. It was then too, though Housman had made no admission himself, that his sexual orientation began to be questioned.

Early life

The eldest of seven children, Housman was born at Valley House in Fockbury, a hamlet on the outskirts of Bromsgrove in Worcestershire, to Sarah Jane (née Williams, married 17 June 1858 in Woodchester, Gloucester) and Edward Housman (whose family came from Lancaster), and was baptised on 24 April 1859 at Christ Church, in Catshill. His mother died on his twelfth birthday, and his father, a country solicitor, then married an elder cousin, Lucy, in 1873. Two of his siblings became prominent writers, sister Clemence Housman and brother Laurence Housman.

Housman was educated at King Edward's School in Birmingham and later Bromsgrove School, where he revealed his academic promise and won prizes for his poems. In 1877, he won an open scholarship to St John's College, Oxford, and went there to study classics. Although introverted by nature, Housman formed strong friendships with two roommates, Moses John Jackson (1858 – 14 January 1923) and A. W. Pollard. Though Housman obtained a first in classical Moderations in 1879, his dedication to textual analysis led him to neglect the ancient history and philosophy that formed part of the Greats curriculum. Accordingly, he failed his Finals and had to return humiliated in Michaelmas term to resit the exam and at least gain a lower-level pass degree. Though some attribute Housman's unexpected performance in his exams directly to his unrequited feelings for Jackson, most biographers adduce more obvious causes. Housman was indifferent to philosophy and overconfident in his exceptional gifts, and he spent too much time with his friends. He may also have been distracted by news of his father's desperate illness.

After Oxford, Jackson went to work as a clerk in the Patent Office in London and arranged a job there for Housman too. The two shared a flat with Jackson's brother Adalbert until 1885, when Housman moved to lodgings of his own, probably after Jackson responded to a declaration of love by telling Housman that he could not reciprocate his feelings. Two years later, Jackson moved to India, placing more distance between himself and Housman. When he returned briefly to England in 1889, to marry, Housman was not invited to the wedding and knew nothing about it until the couple had left the country. Adalbert Jackson died in 1892 and Housman commemorated him in a poem published as "XLII – A.J.J." of More Poems (1936).

Meanwhile, Housman pursued his classical studies independently, and published scholarly articles on Horace, Propertius, Ovid, Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles. He also completed an edition of Propertius, which however was rejected by both Oxford University Press and Macmillan in 1885, and was destroyed after his death. He gradually acquired such a high reputation that in 1892 he was offered and accepted the professorship of Latin at University College London (UCL). When, during his tenure, an immensely rare Coverdale Bible of 1535 was discovered in the UCL library and presented to the Library Committee, Housman (who had become an atheist while at Oxford) remarked that it would be better to sell it to "buy some really useful books with the proceeds".

Later life
Although Housman's early work and his responsibilities as a professor included both Latin and Greek, he began to specialise in Latin poetry. When asked later why he had stopped writing about Greek verse, he responded, "I found that I could not attain to excellence in both." In 1911 he took the Kennedy Professorship of Latin at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he remained for the rest of his life.

Between 1903 and 1930, Housman published his critical edition of Manilius's Astronomicon in five volumes. He also edited Juvenal (1905) and Lucan (1926). G. P. Goold, Classics Professor at University College, wrote of his predecessor's accomplishments that "the legacy of Housman's scholarship is a thing of permanent value; and that value consists less in obvious results, the establishment of general propositions about Latin and the removal of scribal mistakes, than in the shining example he provides of a wonderful mind at work … He was and may remain the last great textual critic". In the eyes of Harry Eyres, however, Housman was "famously dry" as a professor, and his influence led to a scholarly style in the study of literature and poetry that was philological and without emotion.

Many colleagues were unnerved by Housman's scathing attacks on those he thought guilty of shoddy scholarship. In his paper "The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism" (1921) he wrote: "A textual critic engaged upon his business is not at all like Newton investigating the motion of the planets: he is much more like a dog hunting for fleas". He declared many of his contemporary scholars to be stupid, lazy, vain, or all three, saying: "Knowledge is good, method is good, but one thing beyond all others is necessary; and that is to have a head, not a pumpkin, on your shoulders, and brains, not pudding, in your head".

His younger colleague, A. S. F. Gow, quoted examples of these attacks, noting that they "were often savage in the extreme". Gow also related how Housman intimidated students, sometimes reducing the women to tears. According to Gow, Housman could never remember the names of female students, maintaining that "had he burdened his memory by the distinction between Miss Jones and Miss Robinson, he might have forgotten that between the second and fourth declension". Among the more notable students at his Cambridge lectures was Enoch Powell, one of whose own Classical emendations was later complimented by Housman.

In his private life, Housman enjoyed country walks, gastronomy, air travel and making frequent visits to France, where he read "books which were banned in Britain as pornographic" but he struck A. C. Benson, a fellow don, as being "descended from a long line of maiden aunts". His feelings about his poetry were ambivalent and he certainly treated it as secondary to his scholarship. He did not speak in public about his poems until 1933, when he gave a lecture "The Name and Nature of Poetry", arguing there that poetry should appeal to emotions rather than to the intellect.

Housman died, aged 77, in Cambridge. His ashes are buried just outside St Laurence's Church, Ludlow. A cherry tree was planted there in his memory (see A Shropshire Lad II) and replaced by the Housman Society in 2003 with a new cherry tree nearby.

A Shropshire Lad
During his years in London, Housman completed A Shropshire Lad, a cycle of 63 poems. After one publisher had turned it down, he helped subsidise its publication in 1896. At first selling slowly, it rapidly became a lasting success. Its appeal to English musicians had helped to make it widely known before World War I, when its themes struck a powerful chord with English readers. The book has been in print continuously since May 1896.

The poems are marked by pessimism and preoccupation with death, without religious consolation (Housman had become an atheist while still an undergraduate). Housman wrote many of them while living in Highgate, London, before ever visiting Shropshire, which he presented in an idealised pastoral light as his 'land of lost content'. Housman himself acknowledged that "No doubt I have been unconsciously influenced by the Greeks and Latins, but [the] chief sources of which I am conscious are Shakespeare's songs, the Scottish Border ballads, and Heine".

Later collections
Housman began collecting a new set of poems after the First World War. His early work was an influence on many British poets who became famous by their writing about the war, and he wrote several poems as occasional verse to commemorate the war dead. This included his Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries, honouring the British Expeditionary Force, an elite but small force of professional soldiers sent to Belgium at the start of the war. In the early 1920s, when Moses Jackson was dying in Canada, Housman wanted to assemble his best unpublished poems so that Jackson could read them before his death. These later poems, mostly written before 1910, show a greater variety of subject and form than those in A Shropshire Lad but lack its consistency. He published his new collection as Last Poems (1922), feeling that his inspiration was exhausted and that he should not publish more in his lifetime.

After Housman's death in 1936, his brother, Laurence published further poems in More Poems (1936), A. E .H.: Some Poems, Some Letters and a Personal Memoir by his Brother (1937), and Collected Poems (1939). A. E. H. includes humorous verse such as a parody of Longfellow's poem Excelsior. Housman also wrote a parodic Fragment of a Greek Tragedy, in English, first published in 1883 in The Bromsgrovian, the magazine of his old school, and frequently reprinted.

John Sparrow quoted a letter written late in Housman's life that described the genesis of his poems: "Poetry was for him …'a morbid secretion', as the pearl is for the oyster. The desire, or the need, did not come upon him often, and it came usually when he was feeling ill or depressed; then whole lines and stanzas would present themselves to him without any effort, or any consciousness of composition on his part. Sometimes they wanted a little alteration, sometimes none; sometimes the lines needed in order to make a complete poem would come later, spontaneously or with 'a little coaxing'; sometimes he had to sit down and finish the poem with his head. That... was a long and laborious process."

Sparrow himself adds, "How difficult it is to achieve a satisfactory analysis may be judged by considering the last poem in A Shropshire Lad. Of its four stanzas, Housman tells us that two were 'given' him ready made; one was coaxed forth from his subconsciousness an hour or two later; the remaining one took months of conscious composition. No one can tell for certain which was which."

De Amicitia (Of Friendship)
In 1942, Laurence Housman also deposited an essay entitled "A. E. Housman's 'De Amicitia'" in the British Library, with the proviso that it was not to be published for 25 years. The essay discussed A. E. Housman's homosexuality and his love for Moses Jackson. Despite the conservative nature of the times and his own caution in public life, Housman was quite open in his poetry, and especially in A Shropshire Lad, about his deeper sympathies. Poem XXX of that sequence, for instance, speaks of how "Fear contended with desire": "Others, I am not the first, / Have willed more mischief than they durst". In More Poems, he buries his love for Moses Jackson in the very act of commemorating it, as his feelings of love are not reciprocated and must be carried unfulfilled to the grave:

His poem "Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists?", written after the trial of Oscar Wilde, addressed more general attitudes towards homosexuals. In the poem the prisoner is suffering "for the colour of his hair", a natural quality that, in a coded reference to homosexuality, is reviled as "nameless and abominable" (recalling the legal phrase peccatum illud horribile, inter Christianos non nominandum, "that horrible sin, not to be named amongst Christians").

Musical settings
Housman's poetry, especially A Shropshire Lad, was set to music by many British, and in particular English, composers in the first half of the 20th century. The national, pastoral and traditional elements of his style resonated with similar trends in English music. In 1904, the cycle A Shropshire Lad was set by Arthur Somervell, who in 1898 had begun to develop the concept of the English song-cycle in his version of Tennyson's "Maud". Stephen Banfield believes it was acquaintance with Somervell's cycle that led other composers to set Housman: Ralph Vaughan Williams is likely to have attended the first performance at the Aeolian Hall on 3 February 1905. His well-known cycle of six songs On Wenlock Edge, for string quartet, tenor and piano, was published in 1909. Between 1909 and 1911, George Butterworth produced settings in two collections, Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad and Bredon Hill and Other Songs. He also wrote the orchestral tone poem A Shropshire Lad, first performed at Leeds Festival in 1912.

Ivor Gurney was another composer who made renowned settings of Housman's poems. Towards the end of World War I, he was working on his cycle Ludlow and Teme, for voice and string quartet (published in 1919), and went on to compose the eight-song cycle The Western Playland in 1921. One more who set Housman songs during this period was John Ireland in the song cycle, The Land of Lost Content (1920–21). Charles Wilfred Orr produced 24 Housman settings in songs and song cycles composed from the 1920s into the 1950s. Even composers not directly associated with the 'pastoral' tradition, such as Arnold Bax, Lennox Berkeley and Arthur Bliss, were attracted to Housman's poetry.

Housman's attitude to musical interpretations of his poetry, and indeed to music in general, was either indifference or torment. He told his friend Percy Withers that he knew nothing of music and it meant nothing to him. Withers once played him a record of the Vaughan Williams setting, but realised he had made a mistake when he saw the look of disgust on the poet's face. Nevertheless, by 1976, a catalogue listed 400 musical settings of Housman's poems. As of 2023, Lieder Net Archive records 646 settings of 188 texts.

Commemorations
The earliest commemoration of Housman was in the chapel of Trinity College in Cambridge, where there is a memorial brass on the south wall. The Latin inscription was composed by his colleague there, A. S. F. Gow, who was also the author of a biographical and bibliographical sketch published immediately following his death. Translated into English, the memorial reads: "This inscription commemorates Alfred Edward Housman, who was for twenty-five years Kennedy Professor of Latin and Fellow of the College. Following in Bentley's footsteps he corrected the transmitted text of the Latin poets with so keen an intelligence and so ample a stock of learning, and chastised the sloth of editors with such sharp mockery, that he takes his place as the virtual second founder of these studies. He was also a poet who, with a slender sheaf of verses, claimed for himself a secure place on our Helicon. He died on 30th April 1936 at the age of seventy-six."

From 1947, University College London's academic common room was dedicated to his memory as the Housman Room. Blue plaques followed later elsewhere, the first being on Byron Cottage in Highgate in 1969, recording the fact that A Shropshire Lad was written there. More followed, placed on his Worcestershire birthplace, his homes and school in Bromsgrove. The latter were encouraged by the Housman Society, which was founded in the town in 1973. Another initiative was the statue in Bromsgrove High Street, showing the poet striding with walking stick in hand. The work of local sculptor Kenneth Potts, it was unveiled on 22 March 1985.

The blue plaques in Worcestershire were set up on the centenary of A Shropshire Lad in 1996. In September of the same year, a memorial window lozenge was dedicated at Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey The following year saw the première of Tom Stoppard's play The Invention of Love, whose subject is the relationship between Housman and Moses Jackson.

As the 150th anniversary of his birth approached, London University inaugurated its Housman lectures on classical subjects in 2005, initially given every second year then annually after 2011. The anniversary itself in 2009 saw the publication of a new edition of A Shropshire Lad, including pictures from across Shropshire taken by local photographer Gareth Thomas. Among other events, there were performances of Vaughan Williams' On Wenlock Edge and Gurney's Ludlow and Teme at St Laurence's Church in Ludlow.

Poetry collections

 * A Shropshire Lad (1896)
 * Last Poems (1922, Henry Holt & Company)
 * A Shropshire Lad: Authorized Edition (1924, Henry Holt & Company)
 * More Poems (1936, Barclays)
 * Collected Poems (1940, Henry Holt & Company)
 * Collected Poems (1939); the poems included in this volume but not the three above are known as Additional Poems. The Penguin edition of 1956 includes an introduction by John Sparrow.
 * Manuscript Poems: Eight Hundred Lines of Hitherto Uncollected Verse from the Author's Notebooks, ed. Tom Burns Haber (1955)
 * A. E. Housman: Collected Poems and Selected Prose, ed. Christopher Ricks (1988, Allen Lane)
 * Unkind to Unicorns: Selected Comic Verse, ed. J. Roy Birch (1995; 2nd ed. 1999)
 * The Poems of A. E. Housman, ed. Archie Burnett (1997)
 * A Shropshire Lad and Other Poems (2010, Penguin Classics)

Classical scholarship

 * P. Ovidi Nasonis Ibis (1894. In J. P. Postgate's "Corpus Poetarum Latinorum")
 * M. Manilii Astronomica (1903–1930; 2nd ed. 1937; 5 vols.)
 * D. Iunii Iuuenalis Saturae: editorum in usum edidit (1905; 2nd ed. 1931)
 * M. Annaei Lucani, Belli Ciuilis Libri Decem: editorum in usum edidit (1926; 2nd ed. 1927)
 * The Classical Papers of A. E. Housman, ed. J. Diggle and F. R. D. Goodyear (1972; 3 vols.)
 * "Housman's Latin Inscriptions", William White, The Classical Journal (1955) 159–166

Published lectures
These lectures are listed by date of delivery, with date of first publication given separately if different.
 * Introductory Lecture (1892)
 * "Swinburne" (1910; published 1969)
 * Cambridge Inaugural Lecture (1911; published 1969 as "The Confines of Criticism")
 * "The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism" (1921; published 1922)
 * "The Name and Nature of Poetry" (1933)

Prose collections
Selected Prose, edited by John Carter, Cambridge University Press, 1961

Collected letters

 * The Letters of A. E. Housman, ed. Henry Maas (1971)
 * The Letters of A. E. Housman, ed. Archie Burnett (2007)

Poems

 * Profile and poems at Poetry Foundation
 * Complete poems of A. E. Housman
 * Poems by A. E. Housman at English Poetry
 * Profile and poems at Poetry Foundation
 * Complete poems of A. E. Housman
 * Poems by A. E. Housman at English Poetry

title: A. E. Housman


text:
Talk:Augusto Pinochet

garbled sentence
This sentence in the introduction is garbled: "According to the Chilean government, the number of executions and forced disappearances was 3,095.[20]" So was it 3,095.executions? Or 3,095 disappearances? Or 1 execution and 3,094 disappearances? Or, 3,094 executions and 1 disappearance?

Citations for "dictator" in lead
AFAIK, "dictator" is the scholarly consensus, and should remain in the lead. But we should cite historians. Not news organization, not the "Journal of Design History", not the "Inquiries Journal" (written by undergrads), not a news article attributing use of the adjective to George W. Bush, and not an NSA book (primary source).

The point of citations isn't so editors can defend themselves from accusations of bias ("I'm not saying it, WaPo did!").

It's to give readers a starting point from which to learn more about a subject. For this specific phrase in the lead, we should use exclusively scholarly sources (historians), published by scholarly publishers (not "pop history") of which there are plenty. We don't really care that Reuters thinks Pinochet is a dictator; what matters is that historians think that. DFlhb (talk) 11:59, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

You put label "dictator" in the lead for Pinochet and I invite you to put label "dictator" in the lead for Jiang Zemin. Forza bruta (talk) 00:49, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

 * I've never edited this article or its lead. DFlhb (talk) 01:07, 7 December 2022 (UTC)
 * That'd just show you have no idea how the chinese government works Orocairion (talk) 13:05, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

You in previous comment support the presence of "dictator" in lead. Forza bruta (talk) 01:19, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

 * I support it as long as it’s cited to scholarly sources. I don’t think news orgs are a sufficient source for this type of claim about a well-researched historical figure. DFlhb (talk) 11:49, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Section's wrong title
Section's title ACCUSATIONS OF FASCISM is wrong because fascism is an ideology founded on economic system named CORPORATIVISMO in Italian language: some Italians were inventors of fascist ideology which have several imitations in all the world. Pinochet ruled his nation in similar manner of Mussolini, Franco, Salazar, Peron, etc. but Pinochet did not inserted economic corporativismo in totally manner: for these reason I suggest title COMPARISON WITH FASCISM. Forza bruta (talk) 01:16, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

 * Your premise is incorrect. Corporatism was a much broader economic phenomenon in post-WWI Europe. Fascism's early emphasis on corporatism wasn't at all unique, and the fascist movement later transcended any and all economic doctrines. Anyone who would like to read a classic bit of scholarship on the topic should check out Charles Maier's Recasting Bourgeois Europe Generalrelative (talk) 18:59, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Please define...
'Thatcherite'. 110.174.52.185 (talk) 23:03, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

 * I added a link to Thatcherism, which I think is most relevant. –CWenger (^ • @ ) 23:18, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Neoliberal?!
I’m not a big fan of neoliberalism, but isn’t it a little insulting to connect it to a murderous fascist dictator, just because he took the advice of free market economists? Island Pelican (talk) 20:22, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

 * Whether it's insulting or not is beside the point. We follow what the reliable sources say, e.g. this and this. Generalrelative (talk) 00:13, 28 August 2023 (UTC)
 * His economic lean is somewhat at a tangent to the question. Capitalism and Hitler, Communism had Stalin and Mao, all economic doctrines have produced monsters. 103.94.51.49 (talk) 08:47, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Not really, as the implementation of neoliberal policies was part of the conditions and goals to get support from the US in his coup. Orocairion (talk) 13:10, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

About my edit and its arbitrary removal
Hi, after hours of work my edit was in a matter of seconds removed without discussion or proper argumentation.

In my post I only expanded what was already there in regards to the economic policy which is my area of interest I removed nothing, my edit consisted of adding more data, dates and properly referencing the Laws of Chile in question, and connecting ideas that were not properly connected.

Therefore I please ask for the restoration of my edit, my references were the Congress Library, the World Bank and Mainstream Media therefore no one can claim I used questionable sources, and because all of it is just economic data it cannot be accused of being something else than numbers.

Nachowski1809 (talk) 00:09, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

 * A good part of the text you added into the Pinochet article is written in some biased terms. I don't mind some of the text getting readded in due course, given that it provides appropriate context; my problem is with the manner you present the topics. For example: "economic liberalization under the leadership of Minister Hernán Büchi" replaces "privatization". "poverty had fallen from 50% in 1975 when the reforms began to 38% in 1990 when Pinochet left power" <-- these percentages are not comparable, even current right-wing economists from Chile disregard such comparations. "in response to growing inequality in the country which can be traced back to the neoliberal policies of the Pinochet dictatorship." <-- you removed that appropriately referenced phrasing; refbombing won't help (you did so); and then you added a phrase to justify such changes which is just laughable (and taken from a piece of opinion) "Chile has historically been an unequal country since its foundation in 1541". I can't stand such changes. Bedivere (talk) 00:40, 28 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't mind the text being rewritten using other words, for example preferring "privatization" although I changed it because economic liberalization is more encompassing, privatization is just part of economic liberalization, it was not a random rewording especially considering that the article then proceeds to talk about the lowering of tariffs, that is economic liberalism not privatization.
 * Second, those percentages are actually comparable because they were both done according to the old system instead of the new system in use by CASEN since the early 2000's, and that data was already in the article I did not add it, I just reworded it.
 * "even current right-wing economists" this is not a left vs right, this is numbers.
 * Third, you can keep the last point if you want, but restore everything else.
 * Although it is a factual error economic as data by the World Bank and others supports that income inequality has fallen, that is not opinion it is DATA, what I changed then was a factual error which claims that inequality is rising when the numbers show otherwise, I do not deny that Chile is a highly unequal country, that is why I said it is very unequal for OECD standards, Chile has also been historically unequal you can't deny it.
 * This is just numbers, Nachowski1809 (talk) 01:04, 28 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Let me elaborate my point. I don't mind that you add relevant content. My problem is with the unclear context and inappropriate wording. If you can make a suggestion here so we can have a consensus, I'd be all up for that. Bedivere (talk) 02:08, 28 August 2023 (UTC)
 * As I said before I have absolutely no issue with adding a completely different wording and I would greatly appreciate if you could help me in some way or another. How can I leave a suggestion? Like a draft. Nachowski1809 (talk) 19:48, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
 * You could propose alternative wordings for some of the phrases I've suggested before. I hope we can reach a consensus rapidly so that your content gets reinstated. soon. Bedivere (talk) 16:56, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Sorry for not doing so earlier I have been quite busy! Where should I propose the wording? here? I do not want to do an edit without previous approval by others Nachowski1809 (talk) 18:01, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Augusto Pinochet


text:
Causes of climate change

The scientific community has been investigating the causes of climate change for decades. After thousands of studies, it came to a consensus, where it is "unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land since pre-industrial times." This consensus is supported by around 200 scientific organizations worldwide, The dominant role in this climate change has been played by the direct emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels. Indirect emissions from land use change, and the emissions of methane, nitrous oxide and other greenhouse gases play major supporting roles. The warming from the greenhouse effect has a logarithmic relationship with the concentration of greenhouse gases. This means that every additional fraction of and the other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has a slightly smaller warming effect than the fractions before it as the total concentration increases. However, only around half of emissions continually reside in the atmosphere in the first place, as the other half is quickly absorbed by carbon sinks in the land and oceans. Further, the warming per unit of greenhouse gases is also affected by feedbacks, such as the changes in water vapor concentrations or Earth's albedo (reflectivity).

As the warming from increases, carbon sinks absorb a smaller fraction of total emissions, while the "fast" climate change feedbacks amplify greenhouse gas warming. Thus, both effects are considered to each other out, and the warming from each unit of emitted by humans increases temperature in linear proportion to the total amount of emissions. Further, some fraction of the greenhouse warming has been "masked" by the human-caused emissions of sulfur dioxide, which forms aerosols that have a cooling effect. However, this masking has been receding in the recent years, due to measures to combat acid rain and air pollution caused by sulfates.

Factors affecting Earth's climate
A forcing is something that is imposed externally on the climate system. External forcings include natural phenomena such as volcanic eruptions and variations in the sun's output. Human activities can also impose forcings, for example, through changing the composition of Earth's atmosphere. Radiative forcing is a measure of how various factors alter the energy balance of planet Earth. A positive radiative forcing will lead towards a warming of the surface and, over time, the climate system. Between the start of the Industrial Revolution in 1750, and the year 2005, the increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (chemical formula: ) led to a positive radiative forcing, averaged over the Earth's surface area, of about 1.66 watts per square metre (abbreviated W m−2).

Climate feedbacks can either amplify or dampen the response of the climate to a given forcing. There are many feedback mechanisms in the climate system that can either amplify (a positive feedback) or diminish (a negative feedback) the effects of a change in climate forcing.

The climate system will vary in response to changes in forcings. The climate system will show internal variability both in the presence and absence of forcings imposed on it. This internal variability is a result of complex interactions between components of the climate system, such as the coupling between the atmosphere and ocean. An example of internal variability is the El Niño–Southern Oscillation.

Human-caused influences
Factors affecting Earth's climate can be broken down into forcings, feedbacks and internal variations. Four main lines of evidence support the dominant role of human activities in recent climate change:
 * 1) A physical understanding of the climate system: greenhouse gas concentrations have increased and their warming properties are well-established.
 * 2) There are historical estimates of past climate changes suggest that the recent changes in global surface temperature are unusual.
 * 3) Advanced climate models are unable to replicate the observed warming unless human greenhouse gas emissions are included.
 * 4) Observations of natural forces, such as solar and volcanic activity) show that cannot explain the observed warming. For example, an increase in solar activity would have warmed the entire atmosphere, yet only the lower atmosphere has warmed.

Greenhouse gases

Greenhouse gases are transparent to sunlight, and thus allow it to pass through the atmosphere to heat the Earth's surface. The Earth radiates it as heat, and greenhouse gases absorb a portion of it. This absorption slows the rate at which heat escapes into space, trapping heat near the Earth's surface and warming it over time. While water vapour and clouds are the biggest contributors to the greenhouse effect, they primarily change as a function of temperature. Therefore, they are considered to be feedbacks that change climate sensitivity. On the other hand, gases such as, tropospheric ozone, CFCs and nitrous oxide are added or removed independently from temperature. Hence, they are considered to be external forcings that change global temperatures. Human activity since the Industrial Revolution (about 1750), mainly extracting and burning fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas), has increased the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, resulting in a radiative imbalance. Over the past 150 years human activities have released increasing quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. By 2019, the concentrations of and methane had increased by about 48% and 160%, respectively, since 1750. These levels are higher than they have been at any time during the last 2 million years. Concentrations of methane are far higher than they were over the last 800,000 years.

This has led to increases in mean global temperature, or global warming. The likely range of human-induced surface-level air warming by 2010–2019 compared to levels in 1850–1900 is 0.8 °C to 1.3 °C, with a best estimate of 1.07 °C. This is close to the observed overall warming during that time of 0.9 °C to 1.2 °C. Temperature changes during that time were likely only ±0.1 °C due to natural forcings and ±0.2 °C due to variability in the climate.

Global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions in 2019 were equivalent to 59 billion tonnes of. Of these emissions, 75% was, 18% was methane, 4% was nitrous oxide, and 2% was fluorinated gases.

Carbon dioxide
emissions primarily come from burning fossil fuels to provide energy for transport, manufacturing, heating, and electricity. Additional emissions come from deforestation and industrial processes, which include the  released by the chemical reactions for making cement, steel, aluminum, and fertiliser.

is absorbed and emitted naturally as part of the carbon cycle, through animal and plant respiration, volcanic eruptions, and ocean-atmosphere exchange. Human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels and changes in land use (see below), release large amounts of carbon to the atmosphere, causing concentrations in the atmosphere to rise. The high-accuracy measurements of atmospheric concentration, initiated by Charles David Keeling in 1958, constitute the master time series documenting the changing composition of the atmosphere. These data, known as the Keeling Curve, have iconic status in climate change science as evidence of the effect of human activities on the chemical composition of the global atmosphere.

Keeling's initial 1958 measurements showed 313 parts per million by volume (ppm). Atmospheric concentrations, commonly written "ppm", are measured in parts-per-million by volume (ppmv). In May 2019, the concentration of in the atmosphere reached 415 ppm. The last time when it reached this level was 2.6–5.3 million years ago. Without human intervention, it would be 280 ppm.

In 2022-2024, the concentration of in the atmosphere increased faster than ever before according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as a result of sustained emissions and El Nino conditions.

Methane and nitrous oxide
Methane emissions come from livestock, manure, rice cultivation, landfills, wastewater, and coal mining, as well as oil and gas extraction. Nitrous oxide emissions largely come from the microbial decomposition of fertiliser.

Methane and to a lesser extent nitrous oxide are also major forcing contributors to the greenhouse effect. The Kyoto Protocol lists these together with hydrofluorocarbon (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), which are entirely artificial gases, as contributors to radiative forcing. The chart at right attributes anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions to eight main economic sectors, of which the largest contributors are power stations (many of which burn coal or other fossil fuels), industrial processes, transportation fuels (generally fossil fuels), and agricultural by-products (mainly methane from enteric fermentation and nitrous oxide from fertilizer use).

Aerosols
Air pollution, in the form of aerosols, affects the climate on a large scale. Aerosols scatter and absorb solar radiation. From 1961 to 1990, a gradual reduction in the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth's surface was observed. This phenomenon is popularly known as global dimming, and is primarily attributed to sulfate aerosols produced by the combustion of fossil fuels with heavy sulfur concentrations like coal and bunker fuel. Smaller contributions come from black carbon, organic carbon from combustion of fossil fuels and biofuels, and from anthropogenic dust. Globally, aerosols have been declining since 1990 due to pollution controls, meaning that they no longer mask greenhouse gas warming as much.

Aerosols also have indirect effects on the Earth's energy budget. Sulfate aerosols act as cloud condensation nuclei and lead to clouds that have more and smaller cloud droplets. These clouds reflect solar radiation more efficiently than clouds with fewer and larger droplets. They also reduce the growth of raindrops, which makes clouds more reflective to incoming sunlight. Indirect effects of aerosols are the largest uncertainty in radiative forcing.

While aerosols typically limit global warming by reflecting sunlight, black carbon in soot that falls on snow or ice can contribute to global warming. Not only does this increase the absorption of sunlight, it also increases melting and sea-level rise. Limiting new black carbon deposits in the Arctic could reduce global warming by 0.2 °C by 2050.

Land surface changes
According to Food and Agriculture Organization, around 30% of Earth's land area is largely unusable for humans (glaciers, deserts, etc.), 26% is forests, 10% is shrubland and 34% is agricultural land. Deforestation is the main land use change contributor to global warming, Between 1750 and 2007, about one-third of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions were from changes in land use - primarily from the decline in forest area and the growth in agricultural land. primarily deforestation. as the destroyed trees release, and are not replaced by new trees, removing that carbon sink. Between 2001 and 2018, 27% of deforestation was from permanent clearing to enable agricultural expansion for crops and livestock. Another 24% has been lost to temporary clearing under the shifting cultivation agricultural systems. 26% was due to logging for wood and derived products, and wildfires have accounted for the remaining 23%. Some forests have not been fully cleared, but were already degraded by these impacts. Restoring these forests also recovers their potential as a carbon sink. Local vegetation cover impacts how much of the sunlight gets reflected back into space (albedo), and how much heat is lost by evaporation. For instance, the change from a dark forest to grassland makes the surface lighter, causing it to reflect more sunlight. Deforestation can also modify the release of chemical compounds that influence clouds, and by changing wind patterns. In tropic and temperate areas the net effect is to produce significant warming, and forest restoration can make local temperatures cooler. At latitudes closer to the poles, there is a cooling effect as forest is replaced by snow-covered (and more reflective) plains. Globally, these increases in surface albedo have been the dominant direct influence on temperature from land use change. Thus, land use change to date is estimated to have a slight cooling effect.

Livestock-associated emissions
More than 18% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are attributed to livestock and livestock-related activities such as deforestation and increasingly fuel-intensive farming practices. Specific attributions to the livestock sector include:
 * 9% of global anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions
 * 35–40% of global anthropogenic methane emissions (chiefly due to enteric fermentation and manure)
 * 64% of global anthropogenic nitrous oxide emissions, chiefly due to fertilizer use.

Carbon sinks
The Earth's surface absorbs as part of the carbon cycle. Despite the contribution of deforestation to greenhouse gas emissions, the Earth's land surface, particularly its forests, remain a significant carbon sink for. Land-surface sink processes, such as carbon fixation in the soil and photosynthesis, remove about 29% of annual global emissions. The ocean also serves as a significant carbon sink via a two-step process. First, dissolves in the surface water. Afterwards, the ocean's overturning circulation distributes it deep into the ocean's interior, where it accumulates over time as part of the carbon cycle. Over the last two decades, the world's oceans have absorbed 20 to 30% of emitted. Thus, around half of human-caused emissions have been absorbed by land plants and by the oceans.

This fraction of absorbed emissions is not static. If future emissions decrease, the Earth will be able to absorb up to around 70%. If they increase substantially, it'll still absorb more carbon than now, but the overall fraction will decrease to below 40%. This is because climate change increases droughts and heat waves that eventually inhibit plant growth on land, and soils will release more carbon from dead plants when they are warmer. The rate at which oceans absorb atmospheric carbon will be lowered as they become more acidic and experience changes in thermohaline circulation and phytoplankton distribution.

Climate change feedbacks

The response of the climate system to an initial forcing is modified by feedbacks: increased by "self-reinforcing" or "positive" feedbacks and reduced by "balancing" or "negative" feedbacks. The main reinforcing feedbacks are the water-vapour feedback, the ice–albedo feedback, and the net effect of clouds. The primary balancing mechanism is radiative cooling, as Earth's surface gives off more heat to space in response to rising temperature. In addition to temperature feedbacks, there are feedbacks in the carbon cycle, such as the fertilizing effect of on plant growth.

Uncertainty over feedbacks, particularly cloud cover, is the major reason why different climate models project different magnitudes of warming for a given amount of emissions. As air warms, it can hold more moisture. Water vapour, as a potent greenhouse gas, holds heat in the atmosphere. If cloud cover increases, more sunlight will be reflected back into space, cooling the planet. If clouds become higher and thinner, they act as an insulator, reflecting heat from below back downwards and warming the planet.

Another major feedback is the reduction of snow cover and sea ice in the Arctic, which reduces the reflectivity of the Earth's surface. More of the Sun's energy is now absorbed in these regions, contributing to amplification of Arctic temperature changes. Arctic amplification is also thawing permafrost, which releases methane and into the atmosphere. Climate change can also cause methane releases from wetlands, marine systems, and freshwater systems. Overall, climate feedbacks are expected to become increasingly positive.

Natural variability

Already in 2001, the IPCC Third Assessment Report had found that, "The combined change in radiative forcing of the two major natural factors (solar variation and volcanic aerosols) is estimated to be negative for the past two, and possibly the past four, decades." Solar irradiance has been measured directly by satellites, and indirect measurements are available from the early 1600s onwards. Yet, since 1880, there has been no upward trend in the amount of the Sun's energy reaching the Earth, in contrast to the warming of the lower atmosphere (the troposphere). Similarly, volcanic activity has the single largest natural impact (forcing) on temperature, yet it is equivalent to less than 1% of current human-caused CO2 emissions. Volcanic activity as a whole has had negligible impacts on global temperature trends since the Industrial Revolution.

Between 1750 and 2007, solar radiation may have at most increased by 0.12 W/m2, compared to 1.6 W/m2 for the net anthropogenic forcing. Consequently, the observed rapid rise in global mean temperatures seen after 1985 cannot be ascribed to solar variability." Further, the upper atmosphere (the stratosphere) would also be warming if the Sun was sending more energy to Earth, but instead, it has been cooling. This is consistent with greenhouse gases preventing heat from leaving the Earth's atmosphere. Explosive volcanic eruptions can release gases, dust and ash that partially block sunlight and reduce temperatures, or they can send water vapor into the atmosphere, which adds to greenhouse gases and increases temperatures. Because both water vapor and volcanic material have low persistence in the atmosphere, even the largest eruptions only have an effect for several years.

Fourth Assessment Report

Fifth Assessment report

 * . AR5 Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis – IPCC

Special Report: Climate change and Land

title: Causes of climate change