User talk:Shaalattar/sandbox

LING 403

Morphology

Sharifah Alattar

'''Wikipedia Discussion/Evaluation Assignment 2 '''

Respond to the following questions—you may do so with question numbering and in sentences and paragraphs—thoughtfully and carefully composed sentences and paragraphs, but separate paragraphs. In other words, the assignment does not ask for an essay.

'''a. What is the level of importance assigned to the topic? What is the class-level of the article, and what reason(s) did you find for that “grade?”'''

The first topic I have chosen is word stem. The article word stem has not been rated yet and is not within the scope of WikiProject Linguistics. The lack of rating may be due to the topic being not talked about as much as others. The article is only developing and I believe, in time, the article would grow and have more interaction.

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

There are only very few comments about the article as the article is only developing. The comments commonly only address one issue. The exchange of ideas are only between two users. The issue revolves around a portion of the original article being deleted. The first commenter stated that he would be placing “Ending” (a portion of the article) up for deletion. The original article writer, in reply, concedes why the portion was problematic. He explains that he thinks suffixes have two categories: the narrow sense and broad sense, although the commenter corrects this and says the suffixes are suffixes, regardless if they’re inflectional or derivational. He explains further that the original writer’s inclusion of “ending” suggests derivational suffixes. Although the comments are exhanged only between two users, I still feel that the content of their discussion was very compact and helpful to the article.

'''c. 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 on the actual page relate to the talk about it?'''

There is only one issue addressed in the discussion. As I have mentioned previously, the two users (the original writer and the commenter) discuss on suffixes and how the original article included “ending” suffixes (or derivational suffixes). The commenter placed the portion including “ending” to be up for deletion, however the original writer defended himself and explained that he thinks suffixes are separated in narrow and broad senses which the commenter disagrees with, obviously, insisting that there is only one definition of suffix and that it is a “bound morpheme that is added to the end of a word...whether it is inflectional or derivational. As I am only starting learning on the subject, I honestly have nothing to say about it so I only observed this exchanged and tried to weigh their explanations individually. The exchange really ended with the portion deleted because I could no longer see what they were talking about in the article available today.

'''d. 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 ''' In this article, I see that the users have addressed the topic as it is used outside the classroom. The commenter explains some issues regarding suffixes as it is taught in classrooms although he insists on sticking with the definition of a suffix, which is “any morpheme attached to a stem”. The choice of discussion, I also noticed, is not about the word stem itself, but to a subtopic included in the article.

'''e. What is your sense of the discussion? In other words, what do you conclude is most convincing or explanatory? Why? (i.e., what reasoning led you to draw the conclusion you have drawn?)'''

I cannot say that the discussion has been very vast as the discourse only involves two people talking about a single issue in the article. I, however, see that the original writer is more flexible with his definitions which the commenter does not agree with. The original writer separated “ending” (-s, -is, -ing) from suffixes while the commenter says that they are still suffixes, nonetheless. Personally, the commenter was more convincing despite the original writer’s analogies, because his use of definitions is more concrete and not based on opinion and observation alone.