Talk:Otomi language/GA1

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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GA Review

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Reviewer: G Purevdorj (talk · contribs) 18:47, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Hi! I intend to review this article. Currently I am a bit in a hurry, but I will start doing so next week. G Purevdorj (talk) 18:47, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

• Great thanks! I'm in no hurry myself, and will be perfectly happy to take it nice and slow.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 21:22, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Comments on the first part:

• Integrate “external classification” into ”history”. Rationale: you don’t need to deal with the external classification in more detail within this article, but having a single, almost empty headline with content that is repeated under “history” anyway doesn’t improve anything. “Main article: Oto-Manguean languages” then changes to “see also: ...”.
• “Because Spanish colonial historians such as Bernardino de Sahagún used primarily Nahua speakers as sources for their histories of the colony, the Nahuas' negative image of the Otomi people was perpetuated throughout the colonial period, which contributed to the Otomi gradually abandoning their language.”
• Either more on this, or less! It is not understandable why people should abandon their language due to history books that in older days nobody could read anyway.
• “in order to proselytize the Otomi peoples.” Is it appropriate to write “peopleS” here, or rather singular?
• For my taste, the “Internal classification” part is a bit too technical. If the “current” classification was given more weight and unnecessary in-text-naming of sources could be avoided ... But if you like it like this, I won’t object for GA.
• Divide mutual intelligibility and historical classification in two separate paragraphs, and don’t mix them. Overall, these parts are not bad, but the order of content is a bit chaotic.
• There is not a word about how the reversal of language politics affected the Otomi people and their language. Comment by Maunus There are no studies of this yet, this is in fact my dissertation project.
• ”Palancar 2009.[26] This is because it is the dialect for which the most complete phonological description is available and it is also similar to the system found in the Valle del Mezquital variety, which is the most widely spoken Otomian variety.” Get the author’s name and the “most complete description” into a footnote. You can then simply state the similarity to the main dialect in-text.
• I would not understand the explanation about the proto phonology if I wasn’t a linguist. If you want to go into this, be more explicit (e.g. by describing *b > xy in all positions and then *yz to b), either in-text or in a footnote. [You can keep the discussion where it is or rather integrate it into the next paragraph.]
• ”s in the singular determiner and the second person possessive marker”. Provide the forms! I simply removed that sentence
• Get the scientists from the tone discussion into the footnotes! Focus on tenable analyses. The reader of this article doesn’t want to learn about the history of Otomi linguistics, but about the history and/or current situation of Otomi itself.

G Purevdorj (talk) 18:38, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Those are very useful comments and I agree with all of your observations. I will get to work over the next week. I particularly agree with the notion that parts are too technical and refer to authors in ways that are more appropriate for a literature review than for an encyclopedic article. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 18:47, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

A few more comments. As you will see, I still have to commend on the grammar part from the verb section onwards.

• Orthography: Focus on what is central! First, start out with Classical orthography, and don’t confine yourself to the friars, but also refer to the orthographies used by native speakers themselves at that time! For the modern orthography, you may start with the debate about marking tones or not, but the system actually used as official is more important than the others and should get more weight. The more scientifically oriented orthography used in this article can be mentioned at the end. (No reference to the inventor needs to be made in-text here.) What could probably easily be done is a table comparing the different orthographic systems. Comment by Maunus:We don't know anything about orthographies used by native speakers, at least there are no published analyses of non-ecclestiastical orthographies.
• “Most dialects distinguish singular, dual, and plural numbers, but some of the more divergent dialects, such as those of Querétaro and of the Mezquital area, distinguish only singular and plural numbers.” Help! You need to get going with some typological features, then hint at the structure of the rest of the grammar part that is to come, then get into some subfield of grammar and ONLY THEN can you make such a statement.
• ”The possessive formatives may be prefixes or proclitics, depending on the analysis.” Too technical, might possibly be dropped entirely.
• ”The following table is based on data from Lastra (2006: 43–62).” into a footnote!
• I tend to include numerals into grammar, and as your grammar is already structured according to word classes, you might want to do so as well. Or you can keep it as it is.
• If you can, say a few more words of Nahuatl loans! Giving one example out of the blue is pointless.
• Glossing the morphemes of the song might be nice. Comment: Actually that would almost entirely be zero morphemes since its just a string of intransitive predicates.

Please tell me when you think you are done with the first comments, so I can look through that part again then. G Purevdorj (talk) 20:51, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

• “Verb morphology shows elements of fusion and agglutination depending on analysis.[2][51] In verb inflection, infixation, consonant mutation, and apocope are prominent processes, and the number of irregular verbs is large.” A lot of terminology without explanation.
• “The categories of person of subject, tense, aspect, and mood ("person of subject/T/A/M") are marked simultaneously with a formative which is either a verbal prefix, a proclitic, or a full word, depending perhaps on the dialect and on the analysis of the investigator (they are traditionally analyzed as words in the Mezquital, Amealco, and Sierra dialects[52]).” Adding the expression in brackets like that seems a bit clumsy.

G Purevdorj (talk) 17:49, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

I removed the virgules in T/A/M, thinking "subject/TAM" was easier to read (and added a link for those unfamiliar with the abbreviation), but you might have reason for implying they are 4 separate categories? — kwami (talk) 22:10, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

• Comment: Just a precaution, but make sure the links you choose are appropriate for tech terms, esp. for ambiguous ones like preterite. If clarification in the Otomi article would require too much detail to be appropriate, you might think of adding Otomi examples, with the necessary background evaluation, to those articles. This might be a good way to save some of the excessive detail you've deleted, which is nonetheless informative in the right context. (Or you could always clarify with a footnote like 'meaning past perfective' in the Otomi article, or just avoid the ambiguous term to begin with.) When I brought an article to FA, I rewrote quite a few of the articles it linked to, so that it was completely supported in the context of WP. Not that reviewers bother to evaluate that directly, but it does reassure them if they're puzzled and do some fact checking, and in any case is invaluable to the reader. (The negative consequence is that now your baby is integrated into the encyclopedia and you need to monitor and protect all of those articles too, but apart from maintenance and outright vandalism, it's not likely anyone else is going to be editing the Otomi examples in a TAM article.) And not just tech terms: in noting that rongorongo was incised with a shark's tooth, I thought it worthwhile to link to shark tooth and expand that article with a few examples of the use of shark's teeth in tools and weapons, as the article had been solely about anatomy and collecting. (And now that I'm thinking about it, I'm going to do the same with banana leaf.) For example, it might be nice if your geographic links had supporting information on indigenous languages: even if you write only a single line, that may inspire someone else to expand it and create a more rounded article, and lead to a better representation of Otomi or Mesoamerican languages on WP. You can also link to Wiktionary, though again you should verify the descriptions give the reader the background they need, and this improves the quality of Wiktionary as well. — kwami (talk) 22:06, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

A new set of comments

I went through the entire article now and noted down the following comments:

• The part on language classification is still repetitive, and considering its current form merging Mutual intelligibility into it would make a lot of sense as well.
• The part on orthography with all its enumerations feels unnecessarily heavy when reading. I considered a table, but that would do away with the entire section. As long as this article is not nominated for FA, I’m OK with keeping the current wording.
• In Firefox (at least there), the headings of the table on vocabulary have shifted too far to the right. (I presuppose that the headings are centered, while the table content is left-aligned.)
• For word meaning, the article sometimes uses ‘X’ and sometimes “X”. But this should be consistent.
• “Misc. prefix (e.g. adverbial, voice)” --- adverbial???
• ”The difference between Preterite and Imperfect is similar to the distinction between the [Spanish language|Spanish]] Preterite habló 'he spoke (punctual)' and the Spanish Imperfect hablaba 'he spoke/he used to speak/he was speaking (non-punctual)'.” --- first, only one comparandum where two are required. Second, a semantic explanation (e.g. with reference to aspect) would more sense to a non-Spanish-speaker than this comparison. But do I understand you correctly that the Imperfect is unmarked in contrast to the Preterite in both Otomi and Spanish?
• ”The Past and Present Progressive are similar in meaning to English 'was' and 'is X-ing', respectively.” --- You didn’t mention those two forms above when discussing the Preterite, Future etc. This causes confusion.
• Does ‘come’ have the full TAM paradigm?
• ”|he/past-write-me” --- past or preterite? I am still confused. (As you use the labels for TAM forms in a rather label-like way, please use capital letters.)
• ”Object number (dual or plural) is marked by the same suffixes that are used for the subject, which can lead to ambiguity about the respective numbers of subject and object.” --- Why? Their position is distinct, isn’t it?
• ”As for object alignment, it is a direct object language.” --- I don’t understand this, and if a term like “direct object language” (which sounds pretty unrealistic anyway) is not known to every linguist, presenting it in a Wikipedia article without any proper explanation can’t be a good idea.
• ”Lastra (1997:49–69)” --- into a footnote! Simply integrate “Ixtenco Otomi” into the second sentence and delete the first sentence.
• The morpheme glossing in the syntax section should follow the same conventions as the morpheme glossing in the verb section.
• A few more words about the different negative “particles” would be good. Likewise, a few more words about the grammar of numbers and adverbs and/or adverbials!

• ”In verb inflection, infixation, consonant mutation, and apocope are prominent processes, and the number of irregular verbs is large.” --- This is not dealt with in sufficient detail in the text body, so putting it into the lead is problematic.
• ”Verbs are inflected for either direct object or dative object (but not for both simultaneously) by suffixes.” --- Another thing that you mention two times, but forget to address properly. Ditransitive clauses should be treated in the text.
• ”A negative stereotype of the Otomi promoted by the Nahuas and perpetuated by the Spanish resulted in a loss of status for the Otomi, who began to abandon their language in favor of Spanish.” --- If you want to mention this theory in the lead, you have to go into more detail in the text. As it is now, mentioning it in running text without any supporting details is already a bit spurious.

First, we should get done with all these comments. Then, we should ask a third editor for copy-editing. (Currently, wording is probably sufficient for GA, but not comfortably so.) After these two steps, I will evaluate the article against the GA criteria. (And excuse me for being slow, but this term is more intensive than any term I experienced so far.) G Purevdorj (talk) 15:12, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Comment: It has been over four weeks since the above, and no edits have been made to the article except two typo corrections. If there isn't going to be any corrective action in response to the review, then perhaps it's time to close it. BlueMoonset (talk) 15:49, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

I considered doing so. But Maunus who asked for the review has not edited Wikipedia at all for more than a month now. For me, this indicates that some reason unrelated to Wikipedia prevents him from attending to this article. I am confident that when he can find the time to return to Wikipedia, he will take care of this matter. And I am not in a hurry. Still, I sent him an email, just to inquire. G Purevdorj (talk) 16:31, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

I've just looked at the top of Maunus's talk page, which shows the reason for the wikibreak: it appears to be a deliberate departure from Wikipedia on October 5 related to how things work here—Maunus cleared both user and talk pages, and the account password was scrambled to prevent subsequent logins—with no plans for a return. While it would be nice if Maunus did come back, if you haven't received a reply to your email by the end of the traditional seven days, I'd say it was time to close. BlueMoonset (talk) 14:46, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

I had a short email exchange with Maunus. I think he is willing to continue working on the article, in late December. So if nothing substantial happens until mid-January, this review will be closed. G Purevdorj (talk) 17:59, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

He's free to fix the issues and re-nom then, but given the lengthy timeline there this review will have to be closed. Wizardman 04:38, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Undid your edit on the main talk page. Do you know how long it takes to review and publish scientific books? Wikipedia is perversively fast in such matters, e.g. deleting an article without even giving a responsible author a month to respond etc. That is one of the reasons why so many scientists and other qualified folks just don't bother with Wikipedia. There is no need to close this review just because it "takes too long" and even further discourage people who just have some little, but precious time to spend on Wikipedia. G Purevdorj (talk) 10:01, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

The point being made here is that the Good Article process is not defined the way you want it: the review and any changes recommended are conducted with reasonable dispatch. It has been over a month since the editor left Wikipedia, and you aren't even sure he is willing to return six weeks from now to work on it. Standard practice is to close reviews that have been abandoned for so long: it's a simple matter for Maunus to renominate a couple of months from now if he returns and has addressed the issues that you've raised. BlueMoonset (talk) 15:00, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

• Purevdorj, just let our small-minded colleagues enforce their rules. This is exactly the kind of nonsense that makes me hesitate to come back. Just close the review, and get it over with. Maunus (talk · contribs).

Well, be it then. As is obvious from my comments on the grammar section, this article does not yet meet GA criteria, and I presume no detailed assessment is required. I hereby close this review by failing the article. G Purevdorj (talk) 18:29, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.