User:K.Fleckenstein/sandbox

Backchannel (Linguistics) Edits
Due to research development, backchannel responses have been expanded to include sentence completions, requests for clarification, brief statements, and non-verbal responses and now fall into three categories: non-lexical, phrasal, and substantive.

Non-Lexical Backchannels
A non-lexical backchannel is a vocalized sound that has little or no referential meaning but still verbalizes the listener's attention, and that frequently co-occurs with gestures. In English, sounds like "uh-huh" and "hmm" serve this role. Non-lexical backchannels generally come from a limited set of sounds not otherwise widely used in contentful conversational speech; as a result, they can be used to express support, surprise, or a need for clarification at the same time as someone else's conversational turn without causing confusion or interference.

English allows for the reduplication, or repetition, of syllables within a non-lexical backchannel, such as in responses like "uh-huh," "mm-hm," or "um-hm", as well as for single-syllable backchanneling. In a study examining the use of two-syllable backchannels that focused on "mm" and "mm-hm," Gardner found that the two tokens are generally not identical in function, with "mm" being used more productively as a continuer, a weak acknowledgment token, and a weak assessment marker. In contrast, "mm-hm" is generally used as a backchannel to signal that the speaker is yielding their conversational turn and allowing the other speaker to maintain control of the conversational floor.

Phrasal and Substantive Backchannels
Phrasal backchannels most commonly assess or acknowledge a speaker's communication with simple words or phrases (for example, "Really?" or "Wow!" in English). Substantive backchannels consist of more substantial turn-taking by the listener and usually manifest as asking for clarification or repetitions.

One of the conversational functions of phrasal backchannels is to assess or appraise a previous utterance. Goodwin argues that this is the case for the phrasal backchannel oh wow, where use of the backchannel requires a specific conversational context where something unexpected or surprising was said. Similarly, more substantive backchannels such as oh come on, are you serious? require a context where the speaker is responding to something exasperating or frustrating. In both of these cases, Goodwin argues that the backchannels focus only on addressing some aspect of the immediately proceeding utterance rather than the larger conversation itself. As a result, they have a broader conversational distribution, appearing both in the middle of extended talk as well as at the end of longer conversational turns.

Article Evaluation - Scalar implicature

 * Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you?: The discussion of the 2006 study on Greek-speaking children's ability to derive scalar implicature is a little distracting and seems out of place in the middle of a section outlining the general theory of scalar implicature
 * Is any information out of date? Is anything missing that could be added? The article starts off with a good explanation of what scalar implicature is, but ends the overview by mentioning Grice's maxims. This would be a good place to build off of in adding an explanation of Q-based and R-based implicature (Horn is cited on the article, but the theory isn't mentioned). Additionally, Hirschberg's contributions to the theory of scalar implicature are overlooked, and I think there are probably more recent/contemporary papers that should be included.
 * What else could be improved? I think just having more information would benefit the article. As is, the information is pretty sparse. In particular, I think a discussion of the function of discourse particles in scalar implicature would be a good thing to include.
 * Is the article neutral? Are there any claims that appear heavily biased toward a particular position? The article is neutral, and the claims presented in it seem to come from an unbiased viewpoint.
 * Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented? Many of the post-Gricean perspectives on scalar implicature are underrepresented or not mentioned at all.
 * Check a few citations. Do the links work? Does the source support the claims in the article? Many of the citations do not include links, and of the links that are included, only three work. The link to the study on children's use of scalar implicature leads to the department website where the study was conducted, but not to the study itself.
 * Is each fact referenced with an appropriate, reliable reference? Where does the information come from? Are these neutral sources? If biased, is that bias noted? There are several references cited at the end of the article, but they do not appear to be linked to any specific claim within the article and many of them are not even mentioned in the article. This could definitely be improved, as it looks like some of the references cited include recent studies on scalar implicature that could be used to update the information on the page. The information that is referenced does all come from reputable sources, including peer reviewed articles, books, or university resources.

Talk Page

 * What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic? Not much conversation is happening on the talk page. The only comment is from 2008 stating that more references will be added later.
 * How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects? This article is rated as start-class and low-importance. It is part of both WikiProjects Philosophy and WikiProjects Linguistics
 * How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class? There isn't much discussion on Wikipedia to compare to, but the fact that the topic of the article seems to be one that people don't have much interest in updating is contrary that there's still a lot of new and interesting information about implicature being published. In the article, scalar implicature is also discussed from a more semantic perspective than pragmatic one.