Wikipedia:Peer review/Weise's law/archive1

Weise's law

A fairly short technical article on an oft-forgotten Proto-Indo-European sound law. I've listed this article for peer review because I would like to get this article to FA status, but have never been through the process before. I was lucky enough to have a tough GA reviewer which greatly improved the article and I think new eyes on it would further improve the quality of the article. I've never taken anything to FA so I don't know what to expect and I would appreciate any guidance before I take it there.

Thanks, ThaesOfereode (talk) 14:33, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

RoySmith

Nice little article. Here's some comments:

• I'm not an expert on copyright, but you should seek out somebody who is to look at File:Eisenberg Wohnhaus Oskar Weise Tafel.jpg. Different countries have different laws about photographing historical markers like this. I've had some similar photos deleted from commons as copyvios. Best to make sure you've got that sorted out before FAC.

• My GA reviewer noted that Germany has freedom of panorama so the image was alright. Should I still seek out another opinion or was this what you were talking about?

• The main body starts with "Oskar Weise first described the problem", but you haven't yet said what "the problem" is. You do state it in the lead, but you really want the main body to stand on its own, and the lead just be a summary of the body, which is optional to read. See MOS:LEAD.

• Fair point. It does need a little rewording.

• File:Voiceless alveolar sibilant affricate.gif is difficult to understand. I imagine people who are experts in the field will have no problem, but I'm having trouble identifying the various structures. Nasal sinus? Palatte? Tounge? Vocal cords? I'm really not sure. If the structures could be labeled, that would be a help.

• Yes, I think this gets into the tension between WP:SS and WP:MTAU. I wrote that the tongue's point of contact moves from the palate to the alveolar ridge ("just behind the teeth"); is it not interpretable from the first picture that the two bits making contact are the tongue and the palate? Genuinely curious because I wrote the second sentence with the possibility of this critique in mind and I'm concerned I may have dropped the ball. I'd like to avoid putting labels on it if possible, but if it's not possible then alas...

• As somebody who is only vaguely familiar with linguistics, I'm finding a lot of this to be difficult reading because I don't know the vocabulary. Frictive? Depalatize? Palatovelar sounds? plain velars? Stops? Rhotic? Morphemic boundary? High front vowel? Satem language? It would make this easier reading if you explained what these are the first time they are used, although it certainly can be tricky to find the right balance between "dumbing down" the article too much for experts vs it being too unapproachable for non-experts.

• Yes, this came up at GAN. I've tried to define as many terms as I can, but unfortunately this runs the risk of going from a narrow article on a very specific sound law to Outline of linguistics very quickly (not to mention they can wreck the flow of the prose). Another issue is that the precision of these terms is the matter of some debate. I discussed it a bit at GAN, but a lot of terms that seem precise in historical linguistics are actually quite opaque and ill-defined (I remember reading that some linguists argue that the "laryngeals" in laryngeal theory are actually uvular consonants, not laryngeal at all!). Would it be too outside the bounds of WP:SS to have a "Background" or "Terminology" section, which would explain terminology? If not, I'm similarly concerned about its length and the extent to which I need to source. Can it be bulleted? Do I need to source that Fricatives are pronounced with a constricted but not stopped articulation.? If I define palatovelars as "having the qualities of both palatal consonants and velar consonants", is that enough or do "palatal" and "velar" need further definition? In any case, I will attempt to work this article a little bit to make it a hair more accessible, at least in the lede.

Hi, @RoySmith: Thanks for having a look at this before I drop this at FAC (and for the kind words about the article). I've responded to your comments and I really appreciate your insight. ThaesOfereode (talk) 19:18, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

On the freedom of panorama stuff, like I said, I'm not an expert. If you've got somebody who says it's OK, then I guess it's OK.

Having a Terminology section sounds like a great idea. If I'm understanding you correctly, there's no universal agreement even among experts what all these terms mean. I could see you saying things like "WORD is used by different sources to mean either X or Y: in this article, we have adopted the X meaning", so even your expert readers will all be on the same page. RoySmith (talk) 19:46, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Regarding "Do I need to source that Fricatives are pronounced with a constricted but not stopped articulation?", the answer is "yes". If it's not sourced, then it's just you saying what you know personally, i.e. WP:OR. RoySmith (talk) 21:26, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

UC

Good to see this one on its way to FAC -- I will be certain to chime in when it gets there. Just a quick note for now on italics -- it's common practice in academic writing to emphasise important or new words (like depalatalization here), but we don't do it on Wikipedia: save the italics for when you're talking about the word itself rather than the thing by that name, or using a non-English word (and there they should really come from a lang template). UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 09:26, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, UndercoverClassicist! I was hoping you'd either be here or at FAC, but I'm glad you'll be at both! With regards to italics, I was using that MOS anchor just below it to guide me. It looks like the {{xt}} text there is indicating that definitions should be italicized and flanked by <dfn> </dfn>. Was I misinterpreting something? Or missing some discourse like I did with WP:ONEDOWN on the GAN? Let me know what you think. ThaesOfereode (talk) 11:57, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

As I read that part of the MoS, it's a subset of MOS:WORDSASWORDS, so applies when you're defining a word -- really, one which is a subset of the title. So, as it sets out, you might want to explain what Access consciousness is in an article about Consciousness, or what makes French onion soup different in an article about onion soup -- you wouldn't apply that principle to intelligence in the consciousness article or gazpacho in the soup one, because those are only loosely-related words that you might have to define or explain in the course of the wider article. There are a few cases in the Terminology section where it's defensible, but the majority of uses there are out of step with the norm on here. In particular, if you're on the use side of the use–mention distinction, MOS:WORDSASWORDS doesn't apply at all -- see for instance They are contrasted with plain velar consonants ... which are articulated with the back part of the tongue or Centum languages ... are those languages in which the palatovelar sounds underwent depalatalization. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 14:04, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Okay, I think I understand. I'll remove the dfn tags and italicization on all of them for uniformity's sake. ThaesOfereode (talk) 00:44, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Matarisvan

Hi ThaesOfereode, saving a spot, will be adding my comments by the 23rd or 24th. Cheers Matarisvan (talk) 05:45, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Excellent. I look forward to your commend. ThaesOfereode (talk) 11:06, 17 July 2024 (UTC)