User:Anitaebadi/sandbox

Hello. My name is Anita Ebadi. I am a Linguistics Major and am currently taking a Morphology class (LING 403).

ARTICLE CRITIQUE

The article I have chosen for this assignment is the Compounding article found in Wikipedia. According to the Talk page, the grade given to this article is a C. This indicates that the article does provide substantial information to the reader but is far from complete. Moreover, this grade indicates that this article does not have enough reliable and scholarly references and citations included. As for the Importance of this article, it was indicated that this article is of Mid-Importance, which marks this article as an article that includes some details not known to casual readers.

Considering the references in this article, there were barely any references found in this article. In total there are four references and eight citations. There were various facts stated throughout the article. However, most not referenced with reliable sources. In terms of relevance, everything stated in the article was relevant to the topic of compounding. However, there were various aspects of the article that I found to be very distracting. For example, the amount of examples that were presented in the article, including the extensive section regarding the examples of compounding from other languages was extremely distracting. These numerous examples confused the reader instead of aiding the reader in their attempts to understand the material. This article might have been less distracting and better structured if there were less examples or if there was a chart that presents a few examples from each language. This way this article would have a better structure and not be so verbose or compact. Another distracting aspect of this article was in regards to the Recent Trends section. This section, to me, did not seem to add any substantial information about the topic of compounding. For example, it mentions the German language and how this language hyphenates compound nouns. This piece of information, although interesting, does not seem to be very important and does not add to the article in terms of compounding.

For the most part, this article appears to be neutral as it merely discusses the different classifications of compounds and providing various examples. There does seem to be a focus on Germanic langauges in the article but it is not to the extent that disturbs the neutrality of the article. As mentioned in the Talk Page, there did seem to be some biased work in the Recent Trends section. The biased material was in regards how English compounding affected other languages. However, this material has been removed from the main page and the Recent Trends section remains neutral and slightly trivial.

There were barely any references in this article. Whilst some articles have more than ten sources, this article had only four references. The first source I have chosen to find is Kortmann’s: English Linguistics: Essentials book. This book was written in the German language. Thus, due to the fact that the book is written in German and not accessible unless bought, the neutrality of the source cannot be determined. The second source I decided to find is called The Oxford Handbook of Compounding, written Lieber, & Štekauer. This book is written in English language. However, this book was also not accessible unless bought. Fortunately, there is a review of the book and after thoroughly reading the review, it seems that the book is a neutral source and a preferable source to be used in this article. The third reference I decided to find Plag’s Word-formation in English. This is a book was also written in English and the first one to be accessible. It can be found at the following link: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.739.5278&rep=rep1&type=pdf. This book has a very basic explanation of compounding but still seems to be a neutral source with no overt biased views and thus suitable for referencing in a Wikipedia article. Due to the fact that there were only four sources, I had also searched for the fourth source, which is Scalise Sergio & Irene Vogel’s Cross-Disciplinary Issues in Compounding. Although this book was written in English, it was not accessible unless purchased. However, the table of contents could be viewed and there did not seem to be any over representation of a viewpoint or bias against a viewpoint. Thus, based on the table of contents this book seems to be a neutral and useful source to be referenced in this article.

When considering over-representation or under-representation of a viewpoint or topic in this article, I believe that there was certainly an area that was not mentioned as thoroughly as it could have been. Moreover, I do believe that there is also another section where one topic was over-represented. In my opinion, the section about syntactic classification was over represented with various explanations and an abundance of examples for each and every concept presented. Moreover, the reason why I believe this section was over-represented is because examples from various languages were given to try to explain simple concepts. On the other hand, the section on semantic classifications of compounds did not have the same abundance of examples. Moreover, this section was underrepresented due to the fact that there was missing information about other semantic classifications of compounds. For example, attributive compounds, coordinative compounds and subordinative compounds could have been mentioned, explained and exemplified in this section but they were not. Furthermore, even the concepts presented in this section such as the concepts of copulative and appositional compounds were not explained thoroughly enough and did not have any examples to clarify their meaning. Thus, the fact that there was basic information missing from this section leads me to believe that this section was underrepresented.

Onto the topic of citations, this article only had eight citations. I have selected four to check and see if there is any close paraphrasing or plagiarism. The first citation is called the "Seattle FinnFest". The citation link worked and directed me to a website that contained Finnish examples of compounds and their translations. When observing how the example and definition of the Finnish compounds were stated, there does seem to be signs of close paraphrasing. The second citation I selected was called the "Diccionario De La Lengua Española : limpiaparabrisas". The link cited did work and directed me to a page written in Spanish. There were no signs of close paraphrasing between the source and the sentences in the article. The third citation selected was Harper's definition of the word "Himalaya" in the Online Etymology Dictionary. The link did work and directed me to the definition. Unfortunately, there was close paraphrasing of the definition, the only difference being the sentence structure. However, I do think that some close paraphrasing was bound to occur from this citation due to the fact that this was a etymological definition of the word, and any changes to the wording of the definition may have resulted in an incoherent definition. The fourth citation chosen was called "Virudavali – Jagadguru Rambhadracharya". Unfortunately, the link to this citation did not work. Thus, it cannot be determined if there was any close paraphrasing or plagiarism involved regarding this citation.

There are several issues and discussions available in the Talk page. One of this discussions was in the General Comments Section. The contributor in this section stated that the article contained too many examples that caused the structure of the article to suffer. Moreover, the contributor stated that the section regarding Syntactic Classification was too wordy. I agree with this contributor because I also felt that there were too many examples and this issue was mentioned above as being one of the distracting aspects of the article. Moreover, I also agree with the notion that the section about syntactic classification to be too wordy as there were no breaks or clear structure in this section. The individual who wrote this section did not structure the section in an effective way. Therefore, when looking at this section, a reader may feel overwhelmed.

Another issue raised in the Talk Page that I agree with is raised in the section titled Greek O, Latin I. The contributor commented that there was no mention about Latin and Greek being a part of the classical compounds. The contributor voiced their frustrations due to the fact that they spent a long period of time trying to find information about Latin and Greek compounds without knowing that there was another article titled Classical Compounds that included the information he or she needed. I agree with this notion because it may be very time consuming to find a specific language’s compounds if there is no mention of it in the article, or an indicator that it may be in another article. A more frustrating point is that in the article, it is mentioned that Russian is a language that has classical compounds and that further information about Russian compounds can be found in an article titled Classical compounds, but there was no mention of other languages that have classical compounds such as Greek and Latin.

One issue mentioned in the Talk Page is that about longer compounds in English and how they should be more examples presented regarding these longer compounds. I disagree with this contribution because in my opinion there are already too many examples in the article. I think that first there needs to be a mention of these compounds with explanations on how and why they occur before adding more examples to this article.

TOPIC NOT SUFFICIENTLY DISCUSSED

I think that the topic of stress in compounds was not discussed enough in this article. It was mentioned once at the very beginning of the article but was not discussed thoroughly or mentioned again. Thus, this citation would be helpful in expanding the topic of Stress in noun-noun compounds in English.

ADDITION TO ARTICLE

The idiomatic status of compounds should be discussed in an article discussing compounds. Therefore, I think that these sentences may be added to the article.

According to Kavka, various authors discussing the topic of compounds disregard the idiomatic aspect in their work. However, idiomatic compounds are extremely important, especially in the English language. Many compounds in English are exo-centric. Thus, both components or parts in the compound are not the semantic head. If the idiomatic meaning of these compounds is not understood, individuals will not be able to make sense of the compound or understand something other than what the compound was referring to. For example, the compound ‘lady killer’ may be used to illustrate the idiomatic nature of exo-centric compounds. The compound ‘Lady killer’ is an exo-centric compound, due to the fact that the semantic head of this compound is not the syntactic head and also due to the fact that the killer mentioned is not a lady. Another way this compound may be understood if taken literally is that the person this compound refers to kills ladies. However, this definition is also incorrect. Individuals have to specifically be told or learn that this compound refers to a gentleman who is flirtatious and charms most, if not all the women he comes in contact with. This compound satisfies a requirement of idioms as idioms are not inherently understood. They have to be learned and used multiple times in order for individuals to understand it.

CONTRIBUTION

In my opinion, I believe that the contribution I have provided is valuable and also one that contributes positively to the article. Firstly, the topic of idiomatic compounds was not mentioned in the article, thus by adding this section, the article is expanded with a concept that is relevant to the topic of compounding. Moreover, I believe that this contribution is valuable as it provides new information to the article about a topic that is important and educational but not vast enough to have an article of its own. Furthermore, this section about idiomatic compounds further expands on the notion of exo-centric compounds and explains how these compounds may be confusing to individuals who have heard them for the first time. By illuminating the fact that some compounds are idiomatic, certain individuals may feel relieved that they do not know their true definitions and will understand that these compounds have to be used extensively and frequently in order for individuals to know and fully understand their meanings. Moreover, individuals studying compounds will become aware of the ambiguity these idiomatic compounds present.

In addition, I believe that the use of an example in this contribution is valuable because not only was the concept of idiomatic compounds explained but an example was used to further explore this concept. Only one example was used, so that it aided in the explanation of idiomatic compounds. This way the example was used effectively and not merely listed in the article. Lastly, this contribution is important for this article because it provides it with another reliable source, thus making the article itself more reliable and more useful to readers.