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Reviewer: Chiswick Chap ( talk · contribs) 13:04, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
I'll take this on. Quite a topic.
Chiswick Chap (
talk)
13:04, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
"...many languages...", "several languages...": Wikipedians are wary of such generalisations. I hate language lawyering (ahem, given the article's subject), but these phrasings are probably best avoided, using such things as "some languages..." unless you're really sure in a specific case (when "most languages" or "Indo-European languages" or whatever would be better).
"today", "currently": these quickly go / may have already gone out of date. Please replace such time-dependent words or phrases with specific dates.
There needs to be a sentence or two on the philosophy of language in the lead, to summarize (well, at least to mention) the range of views discussed in the Definitions section.
Definitions, Main article: Philosophy of language: I think this section is probably underweight, given the range and strength of views on the subject. For FA the article will definitely need to cover more of the philosophy of language; for GA, Kant/Chomsky/Fodor are probably covered sufficiently, as are de Saussure and Wittgenstein.
W.V.O. Quine does I think deserve a mention, however; and it might be best at least to mention the theories of empiricism and of Tarski briefly.
Mental faculty: do we need to have the word "often" in there (twice)? Seems a bit weaselly. By the way, can we do better than "One definition sees..." - could we not say something like "The mental faculty view of language ..."?
Mental faculty: "Kant and Descartes": perhaps say "the philosophers...".
The lead image in the Syntax section correctly describes
predicate (grammar) in the caption but fails to show it in the image. It would be best if the label "Predicate" could be added to the image at the (unlabelled) node above "Prepositional phrase". This would both clarify the structure of the tree shown in the image and match the caption.
Anatomy of speech: there seem to be too many uses of italics here. Scientific English words like
uvula should not, I think, be in italics (they're just English words, as confirmed by the lack of italics for that article's title). Please review all the uses of italics in the section (if not the whole article) and remove all that are not essential.
"The study of the genetic bases for human language is still on a fairly basic level": suggest link to
genetics (or something more specific), and avoid the word "basic" (and probably "fairly", which sounds OR-ish) in the context. "positively implied" -> "definitely implicated".
"fossils can be inspected to look for traces of physical adaptation to language use". Some examples of what such traces might be would be worth giving (not obvious); in fact, this would be a good place for a photograph of such evidence.
" Often, semantic concepts are embedded in the morphology or syntax of the language in the form of grammatical categories". Please provide a brief example (could with benefit be an image with caption). Actually I'm unsure what is meant by categories here. Pinker in
Words and Rules p4 says "the word's part of speech, or grammatical category, which for rose is noun (N)", whereas the WP article says "Categories may be marked on words by means of inflection." Which is meant here?
"the beginning of the
Bronze Age in the late
Neolithic period of the late
4th millennium BC": there's something wrong here. Suggest remove mention of Neolithic unless a specific point is being made about overlap of ages, in which case the word "overlap" should appear somewhere.
"Language change may be motivated by "language internal" factors, such as changes in pronunciation motivated by certain sounds being difficult to distinguish aurally or to produce, or because of certain patterns of change that cause certain rare types of constructions to drift towards more common types" uses "certain" three times. Please rephrase.
Language contact: does this section need four "main" links?
Language contact already links to pidgin, creole etc.
BTW the formatting of names in citations is not a GA matter, but "de Saussure" is certainly the man's surname. He wasn't christened "De".
Chiswick Chap (
talk)
15:16, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
Images should generally be of default width, i.e. should use "thumb" with "upright" as needed; this has the clear advantage of resizing automatically for different user preferences, providing a measure of future-proofing also. I understand the impulse to make maps in particular appear large, but their thumbnails cannot be made large enough to be fully readable, and giving a fixed size is awkward for users of mobile devices, and fails to accommodate change and user preference.
The de Saussure image is out of copyright in Europe but its USA status is unclear, so this needs fixing (on Commons).
The descriptions of the Hangul wi symbol and the KSL wi hand gesture as spectrograms on Commons are wrong. (this is a display bug)
All other images ok (all on Commons).
The citations are in 'Author (year:page range)' format, with 7 exceptions. This does not matter for GA but would need to be tidied up for FA.
I have marked up places where citations are needed in the main text.
Quite a number of references (e.g. 10 Saussure, 13 Chomsky, 21 Tomasello, 22 Deacon, 34 Trask, 72 Bauer, 73 Haspelmath, 80 Nichols, 80 Comrie, 82 Greenberg, 84 Campbell, 91 Kennison, 93 Foley, 94 Agha, 97 Aitchison, 102 Labov, 103 Labov, 108 Thomason & Kaufman, 108 Thomason, 109 Matras & Bakker, 110 Lewis, 113 Katzner, 113 Comrie, 113 Brown, 114 Moseley) are to entire books. This may be appropriate in some cases (e.g. to the general drift of The Language Instinct) but looks wrong in other cases, where suitably narrow page ranges are needed. Especially in cases like the multiple uses of 113 Katzner, Comrie and Brown, separate page ranges are probably required for each usage of each book, rather than lumping the whole of three entire books together. This could be a critical issue for GA.
The Newmeyer 2005 dead link would be best fixed using Wayback Machine or a similar archive service, or else replaced. Needed for FA.
This is an elegantly written and well-structured article. A few issues remain to be fixed. The work of bringing major (top-level) topics to GA is very welcome.
Chiswick Chap (
talk) 13:28, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
I am now happy to pass this article at GA. Thank you to everyone who contributed.
Chiswick Chap (
talk)
14:34, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
@ User:Maunus, User:Peter Isotalo: this GA process is in danger of timing out for lack of activity. We need to round this off now; if you need more time I can put it on hold. Please let me know your timetable for closing out the remaining issues. I would also say that while the issue of page ranges is not necessarily a show-stopper, I am surprised that no action has been taken to supply any of them at all; most GA articles are fully cited with exact page numbers. Chiswick Chap ( talk) 08:02, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
The first sentence of the lead has been changed, mid-review, from "Language is the human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, and a language is any specific example of such a system." to suggesting that language is a "tendency". Since "human capacity" seems to this reviewer to be exactly correct, and to reflect the body of the article, I'd suggest we put it back as it was, unless there are strong reasons to the contrary. Chiswick Chap ( talk) 13:00, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
(discussion below copied from user page)
Human beings have the capacity to acquire written language. However, anybody defines written language as "the human capacity for acquiring writing systems". All the best, James343e. 10 September 2014 (UTC)
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Reviewing |
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visual edit |
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Reviewer: Chiswick Chap ( talk · contribs) 13:04, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
I'll take this on. Quite a topic.
Chiswick Chap (
talk)
13:04, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
"...many languages...", "several languages...": Wikipedians are wary of such generalisations. I hate language lawyering (ahem, given the article's subject), but these phrasings are probably best avoided, using such things as "some languages..." unless you're really sure in a specific case (when "most languages" or "Indo-European languages" or whatever would be better).
"today", "currently": these quickly go / may have already gone out of date. Please replace such time-dependent words or phrases with specific dates.
There needs to be a sentence or two on the philosophy of language in the lead, to summarize (well, at least to mention) the range of views discussed in the Definitions section.
Definitions, Main article: Philosophy of language: I think this section is probably underweight, given the range and strength of views on the subject. For FA the article will definitely need to cover more of the philosophy of language; for GA, Kant/Chomsky/Fodor are probably covered sufficiently, as are de Saussure and Wittgenstein.
W.V.O. Quine does I think deserve a mention, however; and it might be best at least to mention the theories of empiricism and of Tarski briefly.
Mental faculty: do we need to have the word "often" in there (twice)? Seems a bit weaselly. By the way, can we do better than "One definition sees..." - could we not say something like "The mental faculty view of language ..."?
Mental faculty: "Kant and Descartes": perhaps say "the philosophers...".
The lead image in the Syntax section correctly describes
predicate (grammar) in the caption but fails to show it in the image. It would be best if the label "Predicate" could be added to the image at the (unlabelled) node above "Prepositional phrase". This would both clarify the structure of the tree shown in the image and match the caption.
Anatomy of speech: there seem to be too many uses of italics here. Scientific English words like
uvula should not, I think, be in italics (they're just English words, as confirmed by the lack of italics for that article's title). Please review all the uses of italics in the section (if not the whole article) and remove all that are not essential.
"The study of the genetic bases for human language is still on a fairly basic level": suggest link to
genetics (or something more specific), and avoid the word "basic" (and probably "fairly", which sounds OR-ish) in the context. "positively implied" -> "definitely implicated".
"fossils can be inspected to look for traces of physical adaptation to language use". Some examples of what such traces might be would be worth giving (not obvious); in fact, this would be a good place for a photograph of such evidence.
" Often, semantic concepts are embedded in the morphology or syntax of the language in the form of grammatical categories". Please provide a brief example (could with benefit be an image with caption). Actually I'm unsure what is meant by categories here. Pinker in
Words and Rules p4 says "the word's part of speech, or grammatical category, which for rose is noun (N)", whereas the WP article says "Categories may be marked on words by means of inflection." Which is meant here?
"the beginning of the
Bronze Age in the late
Neolithic period of the late
4th millennium BC": there's something wrong here. Suggest remove mention of Neolithic unless a specific point is being made about overlap of ages, in which case the word "overlap" should appear somewhere.
"Language change may be motivated by "language internal" factors, such as changes in pronunciation motivated by certain sounds being difficult to distinguish aurally or to produce, or because of certain patterns of change that cause certain rare types of constructions to drift towards more common types" uses "certain" three times. Please rephrase.
Language contact: does this section need four "main" links?
Language contact already links to pidgin, creole etc.
BTW the formatting of names in citations is not a GA matter, but "de Saussure" is certainly the man's surname. He wasn't christened "De".
Chiswick Chap (
talk)
15:16, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
Images should generally be of default width, i.e. should use "thumb" with "upright" as needed; this has the clear advantage of resizing automatically for different user preferences, providing a measure of future-proofing also. I understand the impulse to make maps in particular appear large, but their thumbnails cannot be made large enough to be fully readable, and giving a fixed size is awkward for users of mobile devices, and fails to accommodate change and user preference.
The de Saussure image is out of copyright in Europe but its USA status is unclear, so this needs fixing (on Commons).
The descriptions of the Hangul wi symbol and the KSL wi hand gesture as spectrograms on Commons are wrong. (this is a display bug)
All other images ok (all on Commons).
The citations are in 'Author (year:page range)' format, with 7 exceptions. This does not matter for GA but would need to be tidied up for FA.
I have marked up places where citations are needed in the main text.
Quite a number of references (e.g. 10 Saussure, 13 Chomsky, 21 Tomasello, 22 Deacon, 34 Trask, 72 Bauer, 73 Haspelmath, 80 Nichols, 80 Comrie, 82 Greenberg, 84 Campbell, 91 Kennison, 93 Foley, 94 Agha, 97 Aitchison, 102 Labov, 103 Labov, 108 Thomason & Kaufman, 108 Thomason, 109 Matras & Bakker, 110 Lewis, 113 Katzner, 113 Comrie, 113 Brown, 114 Moseley) are to entire books. This may be appropriate in some cases (e.g. to the general drift of The Language Instinct) but looks wrong in other cases, where suitably narrow page ranges are needed. Especially in cases like the multiple uses of 113 Katzner, Comrie and Brown, separate page ranges are probably required for each usage of each book, rather than lumping the whole of three entire books together. This could be a critical issue for GA.
The Newmeyer 2005 dead link would be best fixed using Wayback Machine or a similar archive service, or else replaced. Needed for FA.
This is an elegantly written and well-structured article. A few issues remain to be fixed. The work of bringing major (top-level) topics to GA is very welcome.
Chiswick Chap (
talk) 13:28, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
I am now happy to pass this article at GA. Thank you to everyone who contributed.
Chiswick Chap (
talk)
14:34, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
@ User:Maunus, User:Peter Isotalo: this GA process is in danger of timing out for lack of activity. We need to round this off now; if you need more time I can put it on hold. Please let me know your timetable for closing out the remaining issues. I would also say that while the issue of page ranges is not necessarily a show-stopper, I am surprised that no action has been taken to supply any of them at all; most GA articles are fully cited with exact page numbers. Chiswick Chap ( talk) 08:02, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
The first sentence of the lead has been changed, mid-review, from "Language is the human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, and a language is any specific example of such a system." to suggesting that language is a "tendency". Since "human capacity" seems to this reviewer to be exactly correct, and to reflect the body of the article, I'd suggest we put it back as it was, unless there are strong reasons to the contrary. Chiswick Chap ( talk) 13:00, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
(discussion below copied from user page)
Human beings have the capacity to acquire written language. However, anybody defines written language as "the human capacity for acquiring writing systems". All the best, James343e. 10 September 2014 (UTC)