User talk:Mfechter26/bardi

Lead
The lead is complete and contains appropriate information about the speakers of the language, the region it is spoken in, and a bit about the history and changes the language has gone through. Some of the writing could be more formal. For example, in the last sentence of the lead, "that being said" seems a bit casual and takes away from the informative tone of the Wikipedia article.

Phonology
The Phonology section and its subsections appear to be well organized. The introduction of the Phonology section could include brief introductions to interesting aspects of the phonemes in the language. The phoneme tables are well constructed; however, the phonemes aren't separated to the right and the left of the cells to indicate voicing, making it a bit confusing to go over. Also, the /w/ phoneme should be incorporated into the table somehow because someone glancing over it might miss the note you make at the bottom and mistakenly think table contains all the consonant phonemes.

The Syllable Structure section is clear and concise. The examples are well-chosen and presented clearly. My only note is that the section could mention something about onsets and codas instead of only giving the template. Similar to the lead, "on the other hand" takes away from the informative tone.

For the Stress section, I think you should explain "demarcative" or indicate more clearly when you are explaining it. It wasn't clear to me if "demarcative" is related to the primary stress being on the first syllable or having complex secondary stress or is something else entirely. Lastly, including all the rules regarding secondary stress would really flesh out this section of the article, though I'm not sure if that is required for the course.

Morphology
The introduction to the Morphology section could possibly mention the distribution of prefixes and suffixes in the language. The derivational affixation section mentions derivational affixes with regards to nouns so maybe include an example of that. Also, maybe further explain the types of derivational morphology adjectives can undergo since that is what your example is about. For the inflectional affixation section, give examples of the types of inflectional affixes that verbs can take on. It would also help flesh out the section if you explained what the one derivational affix that verbs can take on is. The for inflectional affixation are good and clearly show how they are applied to verbs.

I think it would be helpful to give Reduplication and Infixation and Compounding their own subsections under Morphology. These sections would also flow better if the descriptions of the processes came before the examples. For reduplication/infixation, describe more generally what the process of infixation usually conveys (e.g. reduplication conveys repetition, increasing degree, etc.). Similarly, for compounding, try to go into detail about which types of words can be compounded (if there are certain restrictions) and if compounding creates any special meaning that can't be derived by the constituent stems.

Syntax
It would flow better if the information you put in Other ordering preferences was stated at the beginning of the Word Order section. It seems important to know about the word order preferences of the language before giving all the different examples. Also, as a small note, the Free word order subsection seems unnecessary since it only contains examples and does not contain any new or specific information. For ergative/absolutive, if there is additional information about those cases you could include, that probably constitutes a new subsection under Syntax. If not, you could probably mention it at the beginning of the Syntax section.

For the Headedness section, maybe give an explanation for why or how the possessee/possessor complement pair can be head-initial and head-final in different contexts or explicitly state that there is not condition if it's random. Otherwise, the Headedness section is clear and the examples are all well-chosen.

--Bcatoto (talk) 21:01, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

Erin's Peer Review
Lead comments Phonology comments Morphology comments Syntax comments Citing
 * If you have the year that European settlement began it would be good information to include to give a better perspective of when there were ~1500 speakers
 * I would suggest including /w/ in the consonant phoneme chart (potentially in brackets to indicate that it is in multiple places) so that all 17 consonants are featured on the chart
 * This is very minor, but under the syllable structure section I would let the reader know that the syllable example is bolded in the word because it might not be intuitive to some people why one syllable is bold and the others aren't
 * When you get a chance in your next draft I would link to the Wiki page on what demarcative stress actually means
 * In response to your question about stress I would leave out what the rules specifically say but mention that there are 10-15 rules so that the reader understands that the secondary stress is rule governed.
 * An example in the stress section would be helpful to see how demarcative stress works in Bardi
 * I would include a short sentence at the beginning of the section indicating what type of morphology Bardi primarily has (agglutinating, synthetic, etc)
 * The derivational affixation example is really great and clear, it would be made better if the 3 line gloss was included at the bottom
 * If your language has unique morphological processes like clitics, vowel change, etc I would make sure to include some information on that, totally fine if your language doesn't have these!
 * In terms of organization I would include subheadings for reduplication and compounding so they show up under "Other Morphological Processes" on the table of contents
 * Derived from gardi—through the joint processes of reduplication and infixation—is gardardi, meaning 'to enter over and over again.' --The structure of this sentence is slightly confusing it might be better to switch it around so it reads something like "Gardardi, meaning "to enter over and over again" is derived from...
 * Great clear example and explanation for compounding!
 * I might suggest moving the information on word order preferences to the beginning of the word order section because as I was reading I was wondering if speakers had a preference and then the information was provided at the bottom, but it felt a bit out of place
 * The break down in the word order examples is super clear and helpful to understand what the V,S, and O are in each example
 * In response to your question about being ergative-absolutive, I would add a new subsection in Syntax called Case Marking. I would see what Professor Kalin says first but this is my guess.
 * The examples and tables in the headedness section are super clear and look great, I love it!
 * To answer your question on citing I think that we are supposed to include citations at the end of every subsection, I may be wrong but that seems to be a happy medium between citing every single sentence and not citing enough.

Final comments Your draft looks super great so far and the questions you included highlight areas that you want to focus more on which is great. Your use of examples and tables throughout makes the processes of your language very clear and understandable to your reader. My biggest suggestion would be in changing up the order of some of the sections and also including subheading in certain areas. Your page is heading in a really good direction and you've done a great job so far! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Erinboateng (talk • contribs) 05:54, 13 April 2019 (UTC)