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Article review
I will be doing my second assignment on Classifier Linguistics Roxxr31 (talk) 20:22, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia discussion/evaluation assignment 2
1. What is the level of importance assigned to the topic? What is the class-level of the article, and what reasons did you find for it?

This article doesn’t have a level of importance assigned to it. However, there is an article on a closely related topic Chinese Classifiers which is identified as a featured article, and even called one of the best articles produced by Wikipedia. The article I chose, which is Classifier (Linguistics) is more general; but it has several Chinese language examples, therefore, I believe they could share a somewhat similar grade. However, just because they share a related topic does not mean that they are both well written. I noticed a comment on the talk page of someone asking for feedback on the Chinese Classifiers article which seems to me is better written. The examples given on the article I chose could be confusing and the discussion of each topic can also be contradicting. I am not sure what level of importance it should be given; maybe this is why there is no grade assigned to it?

2. Is there a focus for the comments or are there several? What are the issues that the comments address?

There are several comments in the talk section, a lot of them relate to the examples given. Some suggest that there should be better examples given and others suggest that there should be more examples given. Another thing that they mention a lot is how many of the terms used in the article could be confused by some. Some of the participants suggest that there be a clear definition of all these terms so that they don’t confuse the reader. But in this discussion, I see that the participant’s can’t seem to agree on whether classifiers are different from measure words or if classifiers in fact evolve into class systems.

3. Select two of the issues, and summarize the discussions. How does the discussion relate to what you have learned, or feel you know about the issue? Is there resolution? How does the language of the actual page relate to the talk about it?

One of the issues I read about is that the examples given in the article are all of Asian languages, and this gives us a biased view on the topic. The person who brought this issue up was saying how they should give more examples of other types of languages, because then their theories would not be the same. He suggests the use of Athabaskan languages and the use of sign language. There was a brief sentence added about the use of classifiers in sign language, but it was not very informative. Another issue I saw was that the participants can’t agree on whether or not a classifier can be merged with measure words. There are 4 different people who comment on this issue, and none of them can agree on a similar outcome. They differ on the what exactly a classifier is and whether or not it attaches to the heads of their NP’s, another person says that a measure word IS the head of the NP, one person says that they are both confusing terms, and the last person says that they are the same thing! On the actual page, it sounds just as confusing as someone mentioned on the talk page.

4. How do the article and discussion relate to our treatment of the topic – in our reading and in our discussion? Did we address it at all? If so, did we do so in ways consistent with the understanding in the article or the talk page? You may find agreement with some of the discussants and disagreement with others.

Our book talks about classifiers being explicitly used in Mandarin in a different way than how we would use them in English, or in any other given language. There is a discussion on the talk page about making a distinction between classifiers and class systems. Our book says that class systems are often called classifiers by linguists. On the discussion someone suggests that classifiers evolve into class systems, these two are somewhat contradicting. I agree with the book, I believe that classifiers and class systems are very similar to each other and we often times use classifiers to attach to noun phrases.

5. What is your sense of the discussion? In other words, what do you conclude is most convincing or explanatory? Why?

The discussion was very interesting; a lot of points were made. I believe that there should be more examples given from different languages because no language is the same. We can’t just expect a language rule to be true for every language out there. And in order to proof a theory there should be many examples given that support it. I did find that some of the stuff on the actual page was not cited, for example someone said, “…although some writers make a distinction between the two terms.” I believe it would have been helpful and more credible if there were names of authors or works cited to give it a better understanding. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Roxxr31 (talk • contribs) 17:17, 9 November 2017 (UTC)