User:Ashf1879/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Autosegmental phonology

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
This article was listed on the WikiEdu page as a suggested place to start, and upon first glance, I could see that there was likely enough information to get me started but definite room for expansion. Additionally, this subject is important because it demonstrates how distinctive features can be useful and, when structured in a specific way, give insight into how these features actually interact with and across different language segments.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section

While the first section gives a clear background on autosegmental phonology, it focuses more on the history of the theory more than what the theory actually is. However, this is expanded on in the first full paragraph, which gives a brief but sufficient description of the main tenants of autosegmental phonology as well as more historical details. I would recommend saving the historical details for the end of the paragraph rather than the start so readers can learn the main points of autosegmental phonology as quickly as possible. While the lead touches on subjects that come up in other sections of the article, there could be a clearer description of the upcoming sections.

Content

The information this article already has seems like a good start, but could use a bit of expansion. Autosegmental phonology is a theory from the 1970s, so while a lot of the information is older, this is because the theory itself is older. I would need to do more research on the subject before proposing any big edits, but from my understanding of autosegmental phonology, there are a few aspects of the content I would change. Firstly, I would make History its own section, allowing for more explanation of the theory right off the bat. Also, our class discussion of autosegments often revolved around the idea that a phonological feature may apply to a group of sounds or change which part of the segment it applies to - basically, that the feature isn't strictly tied to a segment. This is something I don't think the article addresses clearly, so I would add a more detailed explanation of the concept. Finally, this article doesn't deal with any equity gaps.

Tone and Balance

In my opinion, this article is generally written in a neutral tone. It is not trying to convince the reader that autosegmental phonology is the best phonological theory, it just presents its main concepts and explains the applications that made this a relevant theory. There is no apparent bias or over/under-representation of different viewpoints. The only section that might be less neutral is in the section on the Well-Formedness Condition where the author discusses which parts of the theory are interesting. This could be considered the author's personal interpretation, but if there are sources that show this is commonly-accepted in the phonological community, it would likely be fine to keep.

Sources and References

The sources are one of the most apparent problems with this article - while there is a bibliography with functional links, there are no inline citations. From what I can tell, the sources in the bibliography are good quality. Most are reviews of related literature or textbooks, which are good secondary sources that show consensus in the field, and are written by a variety of notable American and English linguists. However, without inline citations, it's hard to know what facts come from which sources. Many of the sources in the bibliography are older, from the 1950s-1990s, so while these likely give an accurate representation of what is an older phonological theory, it would be good to include some more recent reviews on the theory to see if it is still a commonly-used theory given the current state of the phonology field.

Organization and Writing Quality

This article is overall well written, although at times some of the explanation can get a bit technical and could use a bit more plain-language explanation. There are no apparent spelling or grammatical errors. The sections in place make the article easy to follow, but I would personally add an additional section for History and additional subsections under Examples to show how autosegmental phonology can apply to different features or languages.

Images and Media

The images used in this article are diagrams of phonological features and rules rather than photographs and are well-placed next to the written sections they supplement. These images, which are clearly captioned, help the reader visualize how different phonological features relate to one another, especially because hierarchies and tiers play a big role in autosegmental phonology. The editor of the page created the images themselves and chose a no copyright Creative Commons license, so these images are clear to use.

Talk Page Discussion

This article is rated a C-class article of undetermined importance and is a part of the Linguistics WikiProject. Currently, the only discussion on the Talk Page is about an incorrect link to another Wikipedia page, which has been fixed.

Overall Impressions

Overall, this page is off to a good start, though a little bare bones. Its strengths are that it is organized in a way that is easy to follow, draws on high-quality sources, and has done a lot of good background historical research. However, the article could use some more detailed and basic explanations of the phonological theory itself, more recent sources, and most importantly, inline citations. With some additional explanations and examples in addition to fixing the citations, this has the potential to become a very strong article.