User talk:Qwertqwert128/sandbox

Lead Section
This was a really nice, thorough introduction to the language. However, I actually think there might be more information in this lead paragraph than you need? I would maybe go back through and make sure there are no distracting details given in the lead that don’t feel relevant to setting up the overarching context for the rest of the article. A line that stuck out to me as potentially less relevant was “Some old Pendau men view themselves as having no class distinctions and hold that the Pendau have never had a king, although hierarchical roles did exist in decision-making and conflict resolution.” My inclination would be that it would be better to keep all of the contextualizing details grounded in the language. Maybe better to include a detail like this in the “history” section.

History and Geographical Location
This information was clear and easy-to-follow. Maybe try to be more consistent in terms of what concepts you link to Wikipedia pages. For instance, the history section had a lot of links in it to things that felt fairly self-explanatory like hunting. However, the geography section did not have any links with some more specific details that could be helpful to link if those pages exist.

Phonology
This section was great and had a lot of very clear information with really easy-to-follow examples. The use of tables throughout this section was really helpful. However, I thought there were some places that potentially did not need a table and that including a table made the information feel a little redundant. For instance, I think the creaky voice section is complete and clear enough without the additional example shown in the table.

In your consonant chart, I was wondering why you organized the voiced and voiceless plosives in this way? Is this how your grammar does it? Does that mean that the rest of the phonemes on the chart are voiceless unless otherwise indicated? Maybe include a note saying how voiced and voiceless phonemes are being represented on the chart.

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Morphology
Right now you have both morphology and syntax placed under “Grammar.” I think it would be helpful to split this up and give morphology and syntax each their own section.

I think there could be a more helpful introductory line that gives the reader a more general look into the morphology before delving into the details, something that signals whether affixation is Pendau’s only morphological process and whether Pendau has both inflectional and derivational morphology.

The first table in the morphology section is slightly unclear, as we are not given any information regarding what these various affixes do and the table does not tell us what the word without the affix means. Therefore, all this table is really showing us is where affixes can be put in a word, which I don’t think is that helpful, as that seems to already be entailed in calling something a prefix, affix, or suffix. I think a table would make more sense after you explain the types of affixes so that we can see these examples with a relevant explanation of what the affixes actually do.

Syntax
Mentioned this above, but probably helpful to make syntax its own section.

The tables in this section seemed to be serving more as a way around the three-line gloss. I do think it would ultimately be more clear as just a three-line gloss without the table, as it was not immediately clear to me how the tables were functioning.

Overall thoughts on article as a whole
I think you did a really great job of going beyond the practicum preps to incorporate additional information that allowed you to give the reader a much more complete understanding of your grammar. The use of examples throughout the article was extremely helpful, and for the most part the examples were organized in a very clear way that made it really easy to understand the concepts you were talking about in the body of the text. I would mainly just go through and make sure that no information is being unnecessarily repetitive and that all of the tables are serving an important purpose that lends itself to this visual representation and would not just be better represented using a three-line gloss.

Dhoffman 20 (talk) 13:06, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Lead Section
I thought the lead section did an excellent job of orienting the reader in respect to the facts any reader should know before reading further into Pendau. There were just one or two things I noticed which I think perhaps would fit better into other sections that you have. The detail that old Pendau men view themselves as having no class distinctions and the detail about hierarchical roles and the absence of a king are all quite specific and would likely flow more easily within your page in the history section. Another small thing I noticed was you wrote that some Pandau have worked to persevere their language when I think you mean preserve their language. Overall I thought it was an effective and informative lead section.

History/Geographical distribution
I thought this section was generally very good and provide the basic information necessary to give the reader a good idea of both Pendau History and Geographical distribution. I think it may be worthwhile to provide some examples of the synonyms for fish and fishing. I also thought that it may also be helpful to add some links for the more obscure regions noted in the geography section.

Phonology
I thought this section was generally very clear and gave an in depth overview of Pendau phonology. I thought your explanation of W-glide formation was a particularly good explanation of an idea that is fairly complex. The description of the behavior of allophones in Pendau was likewise very instructive. There were a few smaller specific things which I think could be useful to change. Firstly, I noticed in your consonant chart you conveyed the voiced/voiceless distinction in a quite unconventional way. While it is for the most part clear what you mean, would it be better to denote this distinction in the side by side way we discussed in class? I also think it could be useful to put in a link for marginal consonants.

Morphology
I thought this section did a very good of giving a general overview of affixation in Pendau while also going into detail about other morphological processes as well. I noticed that you seem to be using tables instead of the three line gloss technique. I think especially for morphology the three line gloss is maybe more clear than the information you convey in the tables. I also thought it might be worthwhile to give examples of clitics in a sentence rather in their isolated form. It is helpful to see the actual morphological relationship between the clitic and the rest of the word. You also have combined the morphology section with the syntax section; I think it makes sense to keep them separate just for the sake of consistency. I think it could be beneficial to explain the phonotactic restraints on reduplication, as it is not entirely clear why 'eleo' becomes 'seseleo'.

Syntax
The syntax section clearly explained both word order and headedness in Pendau. The only thing that I would say is that again I think it would be better to use the three line gloss technique as opposed to tables. It may also be worthwhile to give a slightly more in depth description of why Pendau sometimes uses VOS vs SVO.

Final Thoughts
In general I thought this page gave an excellent overview of Pendau grammar while still explaining the various nuances in a meaningful way. It is evidently a very morphologically complex language and this page reflects that in a comprehensible way. The only things that I would note for the page as a whole is to make sure you are providing context for each morphological process which you discuss. There are times (like with clitics) when you examples are quite isolated. The only other things I would keep in mind is whether you use a table or a three line gloss for morphological processes.

Isaactgisaactg (talk) 20:07, 13 April 2019 (UTC)