Lujana123

The article I selected is talking about Word (linguistics). Regarding the article’s grade,  there was no grade given to it. This article provides some linguistic information about ‘word’ and its meaning. The article relates its explanation of ‘word’ to a number of linguistic areas. For example, it provides us with the semantic definition of ‘word’. It also talks about other areas like morphology, philosophy, and orthography. It is, kind of, relating its explanation to ‘word’ to some of the important areas in linguistics.

Most of the facts in the article are referenced with reliable and appropriate reference. But, there are a number of facts which needed citation. There is one paragraph, in the philosophy part, which consists of a number of facts which need to be referenced. This exact part is what I found, somehow, irrelevant or, in other words, distracted me. The confusion which that paragraph caused is either because the facts need more clarification or because they are irrelevant to the linguistic clarification of ‘word’.

The article is highly neutral. It is written without bias and it, kind of, represents all facts and views fairly. Most of the facts represented in the article are taken from reliable sources. The sources are mostly textbook, there are no external links (in the external links part) . One of the books that I looked up is “English Words: Structure, History, Usage” by Francis Katamba, This book talks about English words their structure, usage and history. This book doesn’t talk about one area in looking at English words, rather it provides information about English words in relation to morphology, pragmatics, and sociolinguistics. Another book is “Word-formation in English” by Ingo Plag. This book looks at English words for a morphological point of view. It talks about words, affixation, derivation, and productivity. One more reference that I checked is an article called “The search for the shared semantic core of all languages” by Cliff Goddard which looks at word from a semantic point of view. This article doesn’t only looks at English Examples but, also, at other languages. The only thing that I didn’t find neutral in some of the sources is that they only looked at English words, whereas other languages were not looked at in these references.

There are some underrepresented viewpoints. Regarding the semantic part, the article only provided us with a semantic definition. The semantic and pragmatic meaning of words are not discussed.As I was reading, I hoped that there were more details about words from a semantic point of view. Another part that was under represented is the features part. I believe that more clarification and examples would make this part in the article stronger. Moreover, the part about morphology was not fairly covered. More details and examples are needed in order to clarify for other readers (or non linguists) what morphology has to do with words. I believe that some of the word boundaries part are overrepresented. For example the potential pause and indivisibility parts should have been briefly discussed (a sentence or two at most). I believe that these two parts should be discussed in further details in another article but not this one.

Unfortunately, the article doesn’t provide any links for the references, except for one (PDF link) which didn’t work. But regarding the notes at the bottom of the article, there are two links provided. One link has an article called “Of the Signification of Words”, whereas the other is called “Ludwig Wittgenstein”. These article links work properly. There was no plagiarism or close paraphrasing since the editor or the article used quotation marks to quote the authors of the two articles.

After checking these articles, I checked the talk page of the ‘word’ article, and found some issues raised by others about the topic:

- Different kinds of words: the editor says that there are other definitions of ‘word’ in linguistics. s/he listed them as the morphological word and phonological word (also called prosodic word).

- Definition: one editor argued that the phonological properties should be discussed in the article. S/he added that a word is also “an association of group of sounds”.

- Definition and Lede : the editor didn’t like the addition of the word (linguistics) next to the article’s topic, since s/he believes that some readers might not be familiar with this term. Rather, a term like (applied to language) should be used. Moreover, s/he requires more clarification regarding phrases, clauses and sentences and show the differences between them.

I agree with the first two contributors, since we have more than one definition of words in linguistics. This will allow the reader to gain more knowledge about words and how to, linguistically, differentiate between words. The article, somehow, overlooked the phonological part. Contributors have brought up this topic in order to improve the article and have it look at the phonological part more deeply. On the other hand, I disagree with the third contributor. The article provides a link to the word (linguistics) in case the reader was not familiar with the word. The reader can click on the link and read about linguistics then go back to the ‘word’ article. Another thing is that there is no chance to discuss the differenced between clauses, phrases, and sentences, since this article is concerned about clarifying, linguistically, what a word is.

By the use of linguistic comparison, a word can be, also, defined as an essential linguistic unit that is created by combining both content and expression. In which the content is the meaning of the word, whereas the expression is the orthographic (the written form), phonetic (the spoken form), or gestural (the use body language).