Talk:High German consonant shift/GA1

GA Reassessment
The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the reassessment.''

I'm not comfortable with initiating this GA review because I feel (though I am no expert on anything Indo-Germanic and did not verify the infos) that it meets GA requirements. However, there are two exceptions: The guidelines (2a) and (2b) are not met.


 * (2)
 * (a) it provides references to all sources of information in the section(s) dedicated to the attribution of these sources according to the guide to layout;
 * (b) it provides in-line citations from reliable sources for direct quotations, statistics, published opinion, counter-intuitive or controversial statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged

There is probably little controversial information in this article, but the violation of (2a) is pretty significant. I hope that someone familiar with this stuff might be ready to improve this, else this article must be demoted.

In the course of reading this article, I also came upon a few other points that, however, are not crucial to this GA review:


 * “High German experienced the shift /sp/, /st/, /sk/ → /ʃp/, /ʃt/, /ʃ/ in initial position.” word-initial position?
 * The exact nature of gemination should be addressed, eg why do you write “*k→hh” when we have modern High German /x/? Or “*p→ff”: couldn’t we determine a rule that in order for {IPA|/ɪ/} to stay short, “/f/” has to be geminated in {IPA|/ʃɪf/}, thus relegating the gemination to a synchronic process at the interface of phonology and phonotactics? I’m not saying that my suggestion must make sense, but it appears quite obvious, so that it might be discussed and rejected.
 * The use of standard orthography only doesn’t make understanding easier. IPA might sometimes be helpful.
 * Standard High German for  seems to be {IPA|[fɛɐt]} (or something like that), not {IPA|[pfɛɐt]}.  seems like mere orthography to me if it doesn’t coincide with a syllable boundary. I'm pretty sure this could be verified with appropriate literature.

G Purevdorj (talk) 23:19, 18 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Hi. A couple of fair points there. But  really is pronounced /pf/ except in some dialects. Initial position means word-initial position. (We distinguish initial, medial and final position - it's standard terminology.) I thought we did use IPA quite a lot in this article, and you have cited some of it.
 * The only controversial things in this article are the question of whether soundshifts outside the core group are included as belonging to the shift, the question of whether to divide the core group into two or three phases, some aspects of the dating, and the theory about Gothic. All of those have been given good citations already. Most of the rest could be taken from ANY of the standard reference books, and I am not sure how helpful it would be to cite the same pages again and again in each section. Does good article status really require this when the whole article can be based on a single source?
 * --Doric Loon (talk) 23:47, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

As long as I don’t verify my claim about /pf/, my perception isn’t of any relevance. Being from Hannover, I perceive myself as saying /kamf/, not /kampf/, /ferd/ instead of /pfert/ etc. But I’ll try to check this during the next few days from my fellow speakers. Be this as it may, back to in-line citations and references:


 * Vennemann, Ernst Schwartz aren’t cited. The same holds for several books cited in the footnotes.
 * Primary sources such as Sachsenspiegel, Deutschenspiegel and other sources are not cited (it is not improbable that some of these texts are part of more complex editions).
 * “If, as some scholars believe, Lombardic was an East Germanic language”. Scholars aren’t identified.

The problem that any of these infos could be retrieved from almost any standard source is problematic for me as well, but as far as I understand the GA requirements, yes, the article would probably better confirm to GA requirements if at least every major paragraph had a reference. So I do think that referencing is an issue for this article from this more general and the more specific point of view mentioned first. G Purevdorj (talk) 20:33, 19 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Aha, Hanover. A friend from Lüneburg says the same.
 * It would be very easy to give a citation for every paragraph; the reason we didn't do it is because it would be the same citation for every paragraph, and because it would be arbitrary, picking one of the hundred possible books for no particular reason. But if you want it, we will do it. I don't have time for that just now, but I will offer to find editions for the Deutschspiegel and Sachsenspiegel. The point about scholars who think Lombardic is East Germanic is more difficult. I think we took that from the Wiki article on Lombardic, so I suppose we would need to copy over a citation from there. --Doric Loon (talk) 08:22, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, take your time (I guess we are not talking of months, but of weeks) - the article itself is really good (congrats, by the way), so it may remain on hold for quite a while. G Purevdorj (talk) 10:52, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

A bit of time has passed, but the source issues have not been addressed so far. Just as a reminder. G Purevdorj (talk) 13:08, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Originally I intended to do something about the source situation of this article myself if nothing happens, but I won't find the time. If no one declares that s/he will do something about it within a week, or if no considerable improvements are made within three weeks, I will delist this article. G Purevdorj (talk) 13:23, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not happy to do so as I think that this article is within close reach of the GA criteria, but as no improvements were made during the considerable time span of this reassessment, I close it by degrading this article. G Purevdorj (talk) 18:42, 7 October 2009 (UTC)