User:Wtpillars/sandbox

Article Evaluation
Article of choice: Speech community

Is everything in the article relevant to the topic?
For the article Speech community, all the information from the article seemed to be directly tied to the concept, or people who have helped shaped the concept of a speech community. The page was also set up very well, there was never a moment while reading the article where I felt that something did not belong.

Is the article Neutral?
Being that the article is related to the concept of speech communities, the article does not really show any bias. The only point that I would mention would be that the editors of the article make the statement that Speech communities are seen as dated, and the term has mostly been replaced by the community of practice. This statement is accurate, but as discussed in the discussion, both can still be used, the community of practice has not yet been completely abandoned. Is there viewpoints that are over-represented, or underrepresented? As stated in the previous point, the decision to say that communities of practice have been largely abandoned seems to be an over-representation. Other than that however, the article's editors have done a pretty decent job of getting information about different definitions.

Citations?
The citations that are available seem accurate, however there are a few bits of information that need to be cited, as there is just information without any source to back up rather it is indeed true. This problem is the biggest problem I have with the article, as without the sources it can be hard to believe if the information is accurate or not.

Out of date information?
While reading the article I have noticed the article has been edited quite heavily, even going back to just last month, so with that in mind I feel that the information is up to date.

Talk page and overall grade.
The talk page shows two comments, both of which were from 2007. Both criticized the article for not being accurate, and one did clean up for the article before stating that it needed a complete redo. The grade that it has is a C for its quality scale, and the article is a part of wiki projects.

How does it compare to class?
The article seems pretty accurate to what was talked in class, it is missing a lot of the fine details that were brought up in the oral presentations, but other than that the information seems pretty consistent with what was discussed.

Choosing a Topic
My article was Claire Bowern, and the changes that I added to the talk page are as follows:

The stub has a lot that can be added that will make it a much better article. The first change would be adding some background information on Claire Bowern, or at least have some more information about her life as to give the article some base knowledge. In addition to this, going through some of her works to get a sense of what she thinks about certain topics and add a section that maybe posts some of her findings in her field.

Bibliography: Haynie, H., Bowern, C., LaPalombara, H. (2014) Sound symbolism in the languages of Australia, PLoS ONE, 9(4), 1-16. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0092852 Bowern, C. (2010). Historical Linguistics in Australia: trees, networks and their implications. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 365(1559), 3845-3854. Bowern, C. (2012). The riddle of Tasmanian Languages. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological sciences, 279(1747), 4590-4595. doi:10.1098/rspb.2012.1842.\

Ways to Improve the Article
Create a current section: a section that details what she is doing currently.

Create a section that deals directly with her research instead of just listing sources.

I would add Claire Bowern is researching Pama-Nyungan “border” areas. I would also add that she maintains the Chirila data base of Australian languages, and that most of her research comes from it. I'm also going to mention how she is interested in historical linguistics and prehistory in addition to Australian languages. Also mention how she disagrees with Punctuated Equilibrium in regards to Australia, and some points that she made against the model.

Outline

Section 1: similar to how it is now, but with more information about her work in specifics.

Section 2: add this before the publications, this section will be devoted to important findings that Claire Bowern has found through her work.

Section 3: the publications, as well as adding to it the sources I will be using to fill out section 2.

Section 4: Section that deals with Claire Bowern's opinions on Punctuated Equilibrium.

Section 5: A what has she done recently section, give information and context as to what Claire Bowern has been doing for the past couple of years.

Edited Article
Claire Bowern is a linguist who works with Australian indigenous languages.

Bowern received her PhD from Harvard University in 2004 for her research on the historical morphology of complex verb constructions in non-Pama-Nyungan languages. In 2007, the NSF/NEH awarded her a grant to study Bardi Texts from the 1920's. She is currently an associate professor at Yale University, and also serves as the vice president of the Endangered Language Fund. Her teaching at Yale University focuses on research, as she wants her students to be excited about learning, and she wants to make sure her students know how to get away from their preconceived assumptions.

Key publications

 * (2012) Bowern, Claire. A Grammar of Bardi. Mouton de Gruyter.
 * (2011) Bowern, Claire. Sivisa Titan: Sketch Grammar, Texts, Vocabulary Based on Material Collected by P. Josef Meier and Po Minis. University of Hawaii press.
 * (2010) Bowern, Claire and Terry Crowley. An Introduction to Historical Linguistics. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. Fourth edition.
 * (2008) Bowern, Claire. Linguistic Fieldwork: A practical guide. Palgrave.
 * (2004) Bowern, Claire and Harold Koch (eds). Australian Languages: Classification and the Comparative Method. Benjamins

Findings

 * There is a network which Karnic languages fell into three groups, northern, central, and eastern. There is also sub-grouping and borrowing occurring in the Karnic subgroup of Pama-Nyungan.
 * According to the article "The Riddle of Tasmanian Languages" There is no evidence that support that Tasmanian languages are related to each other. Nor are they related to indigenous languages from the Mainland of Australia.
 * In the journal "Computational phyolgenetics and the internal structure of the Pama-Nyngan" there is a conclusion that Australian languages are not so exceptional that methods used elsewhere don't work there. The work in this study also allows for studying patterns of language and cultural co-evolution, specifically in hunter-gatherer languages.

Forthcoming Work
Claire Bowern plans to publish a Work on Tasmanian Languages with Tyler Lau. In addition to that she is working on looking at Aspects of Pana-Nyungan with Barry Alpher, Erich Round and others. The final piece she is working on currently is looking into the dynamics of Hunter-gatherer langauge change, which includes examining etymology and ethno-biographical nomenclature.