User:JeanLackE/sandbox/article-review

Constraint-based grammar

This page has... problems. Let's go through in order:

The content here is quite limited: One section with no main headings, consisting of a single paragraph of two sentences and two quotes followed by a short list of constraint-based grammars (CBGs). Were I writing this article, I'd try and name some specific things that CBGs do differently from one another, and maybe get rid of the list. There's also a problem with the quotes in the middle of the article: they're really not contributing very much to the content, given that they've just been stated in the previous sentences. I would also avoid making an explicit contrast to GG in the very first sentence of the article, and instead wait another couple paragraphs. Really, the whole thing needs to be re-written from scratch to look something like this:
 * 1) Broad overview of the topic - explain what a constraint-based grammar is independent of generative grammar.
 * 2) Make an explicit contrast to generative grammar - still in the introduction, but in a separate paragraph
 * 3) Talk about the theoretical background behind CBGs and how they arose (I honestly have no idea on this one), perhaps in contrast to GG.
 * 4) Give examples of CBGs, including HPSG, LFG, etc.

The article also has some tone problems. First of all, the reliance on quotes and explicit allusions to authors on the main text of the article makes it feel more slanted than it necessarily is; second, the very first sentence starts "can perhaps best be understood...," which is not the tone an encyclopedia article should be taking (too hedge-y, too casual, etc). There's not really a lot to talk about here, though; the article's main problem is the lack of content, which needs to be rectified before problematic tone starts to arise. That said, the author did a reasonably okay job of presenting factual information rather than nonsense.

The citations here are not formatted correctly - mostly external links rather than a reference section - but in general the text is well-supported. There are four citations for two hundred words or so, which isn't half bad, and that only counts the proper in-text citations (not links to other sites). Two of them are actually the same person, another mistake, but that's easily rectified, and with some cleaning up the citation section would be in good order.