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Discussions
editI'm an evolutionary biologist. Punctuated equilibrium does nothing to obscure the shape of a tree. Does anybody understand what Dixon was talking about by using that term? David Marjanović (talk) 15:57, 16 July 2014 (UTC)
I felt that the lead of the article was too short, and doesn't say much about who he was. It only lists basic biographical information, and I thought that it can be improved a lot more by adding a description of what field of Linguistics he focused on, and what his main contribution in academia was. I assume that this is because the article itself isn't too long, but it would be helpful if it briefly included what he focused in Linguistics.
The citations for the "Early Life" section was decent, and the paraphrasing was good, because it was condensed and rewrote in the author's original words.
The "Career" section seemed very choppy, and seemed like a list of different accomplishments or contributions he made in the field of Linguistics. It jumped from different topic to another very abruptly.
Lastly, I felt that his main contribution of explaining the "Punctuated Equilibrium Theory" with regards to language change was lacking in this article. There was only one line that mentions it briefly, and I think that this could definitely be improved by adding much more elaborate research and description into the article.
Overall, the article seemed neutral and to the point. Yerimj (talk) 21:21, 6 February 2017 (UTC)