User:Aiyaaaaaaaaa/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Tone sandhi

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this C-class article to evaluate because while learning Taiwanese Hokkien, I became curious how speakers acquire, internalize, and produce tone sandhi. My advisor also said that the cyclical nature of this variety’s tone sandhi has puzzled phonologists for years.

Evaluate the article
 Lead section 

This section concisely summarizes what tone sandhi is but could use better navigation for the entire article.

 Sources and references 

All of the sources are reputable, but they come mostly from Western (particularly American) sources.

 Images 

There is only on image on Taiwanese tone sandhi, and it is appropriately captioned. Images could be added to illustrate the non-Sinitic examples.

 Organization and writing quality 

This section is mostly well written and understandable. However, at times, it uses jargon without defining it, for example, when using phrases like "phonological phrase" or "citation tone." There should also be separate sections for different forms of tone sandhi. For example, “syntagmatic displacement” and “paradigmatic replacement" are identified as two forms of tone sandhi but are not elaborated on.

 Talk page 

The comments on the talk page focus mostly on tone sandhi systems for specific languages (mostly Sinitic) and do not discuss the non-language specific content.

 Content 

Strengths: The content is relevant and contains examples from diverse languages beyond Sinitic languages (the go-to when discussing tone sandhi). However, Yatzachi Zapotec could use a specific example of the tone sandhi rule described. The section on ruling out what is not tone sandhi is also helpful, but this section could use some work on explaining what actually motivates the examples given. In addition, this section also focuses exclusively on Sinitic languages, once again. The article could also compare and contrast tone sandhi with similar tonal phenomena in this section. For inspiration, Tone (linguistics) compares tone terracing, tone sandhi, and tone change.

Weaknesses: The major flaw with this article is that it does not explain the motivation / reasons for tone sandhi beyond “assimilation." How is tone sandhi formed or viewed from a diachronic perspective (e.g. is there a chain shift involved)? The article could also summarize current theories of tone sandhi in academia: whether it is an open question, whether there are a few schools of thought, or whether it is a settled question. Scattered pieces of phonological theory have appeared on other pages (e.g. the definition of right- and left-dominant sandhi is on the Tone (linguistics)  page), but Wikipedia largely lacks explanations of the theory behind tone sandhi. Additionally, pages on tone sandhi in Sinitic languages are more detailed than the Tone Sandhi article (If you do a quick search of tone sandhi on Wikipedia, many varieties have section on tone sandhi.). Taiwanese Hokkien is one example. Perhaps a glossary of existing articles on tone sandhi in specific languages could be compiled. Here are a few non-Sinitic articles I propose: Highland Chatino (also Oto-Manguean), Highland Chinantec language, Matlatzinca language, West Hmongic, and A-Hmao. Articles with mentions of "tone sandhi" but have no details of the rules include Kiowa and Dinka. One final suggestion is to include other languages such as Vietnamese (influenced by Sinitic) and proto-languages (which could illustrate how tone sandhi systems are inferred).