Talk:Black American Sign Language/Archive 1

Archive 1

Capitalization

Gronk Oz, Thank you for the copy-editing! I have recapitalized instances of "Black" and "White" per the APA style guidelines which is the style for the rest of the article. I have also recapitalized some instances of "Deaf" to reflect the style used in the literature and the Deaf community where "deaf" denotes a physically deaf person while "Deaf" denotes any person who is culturally Deaf but may or may not be physically deaf. Wugapodes (talk) 20:37, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Wugapodes, don't you hate it when well-meaning editors mess things up! I am sorry for the extra work this has caused. I don't know the APA style guidelines, and I am really not sure whether they should take precedence over Wikipedia's own Manual of Style here. I agree there could be a good case to treat the "culturally deaf" as described in the linked article. But Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters does not make any allowance for capitalizing terms like black or white. So we seem to have a difference between the two styles - what is your basis for using the APA style instead of Wikipedia's style in this case?--Gronk Oz (talk) 02:51, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

You didn't mess things up, there were a few cases where I was inconsistent so this was actually a chance to fix those too; plus find and replace is my friend. The rational given by the APA Style is that–similar to say Gaelic, Armenian, or more pertinent, African-American and Caucasian–Black and White denote ethnicities and are thus proper nouns which ought to be capitalized. Other manuals of style like the AP prohibit it, however the APA requires it to increase precision in writing and reduce the bias implicit in language, namely that what is referred to is the culture and ethnicity of the group, not the color of their skin. I find this compelling because one can be culturally Black or culturally White without actually being "black" or "white", and that is actually an important issue for this article as Black Deaf signers of BSV do not have to be African-American (or even physically deaf), in the same way that speakers of African-American English need not be African-American, but simply enculturated into that specific language. In scholarly publications, most importantly those cited in this article, the terms are capitalized because they use the APA style. I don't see this as in conflict with Wikipedia MOS because WMOS doesn't explicitly forbid capitalization of Black and White and seems to condone the capitalization of ethnic groups derived from words typically given lowercase (see MOS:CAPS#Religion: "Do not capitalize terms denoting types of religious or mythical beings such as angel, fairy or deva.[...]An exception is made when such terms are used to denote ethnicities in fantasy fiction, in which case they are capitalized if the source capitalizes them." If we extend this rational outside the world of fantasy beings to actual ethnic groups, it could apply here). Wugapodes (talk) 14:14, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

Wugapodes - okay, let's leave it as is. I still think it's inconsistent with other articles and the MoS, but I don't have any particular axe to grind and you have enunciated the reasons well in case the question comes up again.

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Black American Sign Language/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Calvin999 (talk · contribs) 10:56, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Hi Calvin999. My life has gotten rather busy lately. If you need me to address anything once you've completed the review, please leave a message on my talk page and/or email me directly so that I can respond as soon as possible to this. Thanks for taking the time to review the article! Wugapodes (talk) 05:20, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the memo.  — Calvin999 17:18, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Lead

• On first glance, the lead looks very short and doesn't look as though it provides a summary for everything the rest of the article, which does have a lot of detail to it in comparison.

  Does it look better now? I tried to address your below points in the rewrite as well. Wugapodes (talk) 21:01, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

• Can you write a caption for the info box image so briefly explain what it's showing.

  I realized that I never fixed the image after the name change, so I'll be updating the image as it says BSV currently, but should say BASL. Wugapodes (talk) 21:01, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

• particularly in the South. → particularly in the southern states
• It differs from ASL → As you're using a abbr. then I would put (ASL) after American Sign Language in the previous sentence.
• in a number of respects → Such as?

History

• Tables are supposed to go at the bottom of an article.
  • Can you link to the states? As a non-American, I don't know what many of the abbr. for the states are and which one they correspond to.

  Could you point me to the MOS that says that? I believe you, I just want to read through it so I can format the table correctly. And I linked the states, though if the table is moved further down they will probably be written out rather than abbreviated. Wugapodes (talk) 22:08, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

• BASL arose as a result → As this is the first time you're using this term in the main body, use the full written out term here and then the abbr. from thereafter.

  Fixed. Wugapodes (talk) 22:08, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

• segregation of deaf students → Link as you did in the lead

  Fixed. Wugapodes (talk) 22:08, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

• admitted students of color. → Isn't saying 'color' a bit awkward, because white people are of colour too.

  This is a term used in the US to refer to any non-white ethnicity, see person of color. I wikilinked it to be more clear, however if you think that it should be changed outright we can discuss it further. Wugapodes (talk) 22:08, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

• Do White and Black need to be capitalised?

  Theoretically no, however I tend to use the APA style guide which says to capitalize "White" and "Black" as they denote ethnicities, not colors. There was a brief discussion on the talk page about this if you want more information. Wugapodes (talk) 22:08, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

• Because of this segregation, → Never start a sentence with 'Because'

  Fixed. Wugapodes (talk) 22:08, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Differences between Black American Sign Language and American Sign Language

• To have a section within a section within a section, multiple times, looks really bad structural, especially as the sections within a section are quite short paragraphs. A sub-section is okay, but to have a sub-sub section when the sub-section itself has not prose looks odd.

  Fixed. This was one of my first articles so I wasn't familiar with MOS:Paragraphs when I wrote it. Wugapodes (talk) 22:08, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

• Namely, in most situations, → Omit 'Namely,'

  Fixed. Wugapodes (talk) 22:08, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

• clarifying as it was most instances were → This part of the sentence doesn't read right.

  Fixed. Wugapodes (talk) 22:08, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

• A study by Metzger and Mather → Use full names, this is their first mention. And what study.

  I used their full names and gave the year, though not the title as I think it interrupts the prose too much and it is directly cited so if a reader wanted to know the specific study it can easily be found. Wugapodes (talk) 22:08, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

• Older signers are more likely to have variant signs than younger signers, and most refer to every day life.[2] Older signers likewise responded that many signs they used in segregated schools → Repetition of 'older signers' at the start of both sentences

  Fixed. Wugapodes (talk) 22:08, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Outcome

On hold for 7 days. Interesting article, I learned some new things.  — Calvin999 17:35, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

@Calvin999: I have addressed everything except the table and the image. I'll work on those the next chancce I get (likely tonight or this weekend). In the mean time, if you would like to read through the changes and see if any more changes need to be made, I'll address those as well. Thanks for taking the time to do this review! Wugapodes (talk) 22:08, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Okay. Ping me when you're finished.  — Calvin999 07:24, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

@Calvin999: I think I am done. Are other revisions needed? Wugapodes (talk) 19:22, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

No, everything looks good. Passing.  — Calvin999 19:36, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

initial "because"

@Calvin999 and Wugapodes: I saw this article mentioned in Signpost and got very excited. I am a retired research linguist, and my doctoral dissertation (Linguistics, UC Berkeley, 1981) was titled "Phonotactics and morphophonology in American Sign Language". I am very pleased with the article; bravo, Wugapodes!

I've always been a language geek, and now that I'm retired I'm inching into freelance editing. Calvin999, one of your comments above was

• Because of this segregation, → Never start a sentence with 'Because'

When I first read this it seemed strange to me. After I'd thought about it, it still seemed, well, unjustified. Although I don't know the original text, I can think of two reasons for objecting to such constructions, one quite reasonable but the other, in my opinion, not:

If the subordinating conjunction "because (of)" introduces a sentence fragment, I'd agree that it should be changed in formal writing-- for the sake of avoiding fragments, not because there's anything wrong with initial subordinating conjunctions. But if it does so because the subordinate clause leads off the sentence, as is the case in the four sentences immediately preceding this one, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with that ... now is there? Thnidu (talk) 05:03, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the compliment, and maybe I'll happen upon some of your work one day! While I generally agree that there's nothing categorically wrong with starting a sentence with "because", I think the article was improved by the suggestion. Here's the version Calvin999 was talking about. Wugapodes (talk) 08:06, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

FA

Whoops, edited before talking on an FA. Hope my edits are constructive rather than otherwise! Great article! valereee (talk) 12:26, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Just because it's an FA doesn't mean you can't be bold! Thanks for the edits. Wugapodes (talk) 04:45, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

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Lexemes

1. Word formation

a. Compounding

b. Acronyms and Initialism

c. Word Structure

2. Classifiers

3. Tenses and Aspects

Mingyu'sMine (talk) 16:03, 28 September 2017 (UTC) Mingyu'sMine