User talk:ToddSGilman/sandbox

Comments (Fiona)

Lead

• Lead is missing and needs to be filled out
• Would be good to add a language infobox

Phonology

Vowels

• I think one citation here is sufficient
• You should have links to front/central/back as well as close/close-mid/open-mid/open Wikipedia pages in your table
• Pretty sure your pairs of short/long vowels can be on the same line
• I don’t think you need to keep your characters at the right side of the columns (if you’re worried about rounding, it’s clear based on notation + backness/closeness). If you really do want right/left alignment though, you can split cells in two and do it that way (you do something similar yourself in the word order examples)

Consonants

• Redundant to mention there are six areas and modes of articulation given that you show the table
• Typo: “affricates ant multi-placed consonants”
• Similar comments to vowels: provide links to row/column labels, can split cells in two if desired to show voicing
• I’m pretty sure that /w/ and your affricates should be placed in the table itself

Syllables

• You should explicitly state the general syllable template. Based on your examples it appears to be (C)CV(C)
• You list the pattern CCV twice in your table, which makes it seem like there are 5 different patterns at first glance. I’d remove the second CCV example to clear up this confusion
• Does Mahji have any phonotactic restraints on consonant clusters? Explicitly state whether it does or doesn't

Morphology

• Remove the further information section and just link to specific terms when necessary (as per Wikipedia, further information should “link to articles containing further information on a topic”; your topic isn’t morphology, it’s morphology in Mahji).
• I’d give a brief, one sentence overview here on what types of morphological processes are observed in Mahji (i.e. affixation, reduplication, compounding)
• Do you know if Mahji is agglutinating, polysynthetic, etc? Are its affixes mostly derivational or mostly inflectional? I’d try to find and list all this information in the beginning of the morphology section, since it’s pretty important

Affixation

• Mahji doesn’t seem to have any prefixes… is this true? If so, state there is only suffixation (and label your section with “suffixation” as opposed to “affixation”). If not, provide some examples of prefixation.
• You can be more concise by saying “Mahji includes several different derivational affixes, including nominalizers (transforming verbs into nouns) and verbalizers (transforming both nouns and adjectives into verbs).”
• Personal opinion: I would use a single table for your affixation examples, since your examples are so short and you only have one suffix each. In the table, each example would be a row and columns would be for the suffix being used, whether it’s derivational/inflection, its function, and then one column for each line in the gloss (there are examples of this format on my page). Personally, this would be much easier to read/follow, and would also be more concise
• If you do continue with a 3 line gloss, definitely use the interlinear template (instructions on Piazza) instead of the tables you are currently using
• Nitpick: don’t use dashes in the second line of the gloss (“daughter-in-law” in inflectional example 1), as this makes it difficult to interpret alongside affixes; choose some other character as a stand-in
• Nice job mentioning that verbs and nouns take different inflectional affixes!

Compounding

• Typo: “by coming two other words”
• Is compounding only for nouns? If so, explicitly state this
• I would give one or two additional examples, which means you’ll have to format your table differently (i.e. columns: “first root,” “meaning”, “second root,” “meaning,” “compound,” “meaning”)

Reduplication

• Nice job here, clear and concise!

Syntax

• Use 3 line gloss template for examples
• Typo: you wrote “compliment” instead of “complement”
• Typo: the translation of the auxiliary+verb phrase example is incorrect

Holistic Evaluation

Overall, I think you have a lot of good information and it is organized in a way that makes sense, so nice job! I’d say this is your page’s greatest strength.

There are a few issues, however, that are pervasive across the article. The largest of these, which I find to be your article’s greatest weaknesses, are:

1. Formatting (e.g. missing links in vowel/consonant tables, not using interlinear template for 3 line gloss)
2. Sparseness of detail (e.g. missing lead, only one example of compounding, no mention of the distribution of affixes in terms of prefixes/suffixes or derivational/inflectional)
   • You should try to go beyond just the practicum material.

I wasn’t sure where to put this comment so I’m putting it here: you should have a section titled “References” at the end, which your footnotes will go under. I would also put the page #s you have as part of the citations themselves.--Fgmacintosh (talk) 18:44, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

Nicholas' Peer Review

Phonology

- Your phonology section was very organized and gave a clear explanation of the vowels, consonants, syllable structures, etc. - You had some incomplete thoughts on your including your table. - The table should be fine to use and won't consider plagiarism if you cite it correctly. I think it would be helpful in this section to hyperlink some of the words so that readers could get a clear understanding of each word.

Hyperlinkable: Diphthongs, multi-place consonants, affricates

It might be helpful to include a more detailed explanation of your syllable structure that would clearly explain the nature of the chart you included.

Morphology

- Your morphology section was very clear and straightforward. - However, I felt that it lacked background information and a more detailed description of the language's affixation. - Also, in your compounding section, I think, "Mahji can form new words by coming two other words in a way that changes the meaning slightly" includes a type. Did you mean to say combining?

- I think including a chart for the reduplication section would help the reader understand the process more clearly.

Hyperlinkable: Derivational and Inflectional affixation never really had a clear definition in my mind, Declension

Syntax

Your Syntax section included a lot of great examples. I would suggest explaining or giving more information on the headedness of your language.

Overall

Overall this was a very good first draft. You included all of the necessary information and your writing was well organized and easy to understand. However, I did feel that this draft lacked in-depth explanations in all of the phonology, morphology, and syntax sections. Moving forward, I would suggest either actively hyperlinking all words that are not common knowledge and giving further explanations of why your language functions the way it does.