Talk:Navajo language/GA2

GA Review

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Reviewer: Maunus (talk · contribs) 06:37, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Comments by Maunus

History section looks good. Few Comments:

1. . I dont believe that the statement that Navajo was the only code talking language not to be deciphered is correct. None of the other indigenous languages used for the purpose were deciphered to my knowledge - including Choctaw, Comanche, Meskwaki - probably also Basque. The source giving is an obituary for Chester Nez which is of course written by a journalist and not a specialist in code talking history or Navajo who can be expected to know about the other languages used. So I would either leave out the claim, or find it from a better source.

   Removed. Tezero (talk) 21:00, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

2. . Sloane's 2001 encyclopedia of rhetoric is not a useful source for any claims in this article. It is probably just repeating Mithun's statement.

   I added it because I foresaw it being a controversial claim and I thought it'd be best to have more than a single source. Of course, as I rewrite this whole part, it may not end up being necessary at all. Tezero (talk) 21:00, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

3. . The revitalizaion and status section is excellent.
4. . Phonology could do a better job at describing the articulation contrasts in prose. It seems to be something wrong when it says stops exist in three three laryngeal forms, a plain stop is not laryngeal. It would be more accurate to say that it contrasts plain, aspirated and ejective stops. It also ought to mention the labialized, plain contrast in velars and glottals which is not that common, and probably the fact that there is only voicing distinction in continuants but not in stops. I would look at WALS and see which features are particularly rare and be sure to mention those. IN anycase I think there should be more prose summary of the tables here.
5. . Vocabulary section is very good. I would put it after the grammar section, since usually phonology and morphosyntax is considered "grammar" and opposed to "lexicon" but this is not a necessity.

   Done. This may have messed with wikilinking the first instance of a phrase at some points, though I don't think so, but otherwise, yeah, this is fine. Tezero (talk) 21:00, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

6. . Typology, too much focus on the difficulties of describing it in terms of a typological category. Today's linguists are neither surprised by languages not fitting the old categories, nor do they waste time arguing about it. Would be more useful to describe morphology in more functional terms. What do affixes do? What do stem changes do? Which words have many morphemes, which have few? Is it head marking or dependent marking? Does it have agreement? these kinds of things are more typologically interesting that a paragraph describing how it cannot be easily fit into the old typological categories.

   Yeah, I didn't really realize that at first since it seemed like every single Native American language's grammar article, as well as the sources about it, were just like, "It's polysynthetic. Know what that means? Full sentences in a single word. Because it's not like any other languages do that or this is a completely misleading categorization, right? Have we mentioned it's polysynthetic?" I'm guessing I'll get to this after the rest; just thought I'd let you know. Tezero (talk) 21:00, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

7. . I really dont like the section on verbs, it gives a lot of information that is not useful such as the lists of categories or examples of disjoint morphemes with generic glosses. And it does not give the most useful information, namely an overview of the way that verbs work in the language, what are their morphological structure, what grammatical categories are inflected by which means, and it does not give text examples of how the different morphemes work. It includes random and irrelevant information such as that Navajo has no verb for "to give". Ideally there should be no mentions of grammatical categories without text examples of their use. This section should be rewritten from scratch based on a thorough reading of a good Navajo grammar, and it should be structured so that it starts with the most basic stuff (examples of the forms of inflection, examples of the categories inflected for and proceeding to the more advanced stuff). What categories does the verb mark? How does it mark them? How is it used in context? That is what this section need to describe.

   I've decided it's easier to just completely rewrite the whole grammar section from scratch. I'm doing that in a personal tempspace now. Tezero (talk) 21:46, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

   For the record, the point about there being no verb for "to give" was made in the context of explaining the classificatory verbs, not just as a quirk. Tezero (talk) 20:36, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

8. . The Noun section is better (because of the good examples it does have), but has similar problems to the verb section in that it does not provide the basic information necessary. The first information has to be what the categories of inflection of nouns are. The section mentions the third and fourth person out of the blue without ever having mentioned what the Navajo person/number system looks like. The basic stuff needs to go first = what categories does the Navajo noun mark? How does it mark them.
9. . Other parts of speech come out of the blue since we have nowhere been given a description of the main parts of speech. This should be the first part of the grammar section. What is a demonstrative adjective? How do adjectives and adverbs work syntactically?
10. . The grammar section has no information on syntax or sentence formation at all.

    Frustratingly, this book doesn't seem to, either. I'll see if I can't find anything better online. Tezero (talk) 21:00, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

    Okay, I've been quite occupied with some extremely unpleasant ongoing arguments and such lately, but I might have some time soon. I think this source is already used somewhere in the article; would further use of it be helpful? (I notice right away that it says Navajo is head-marking, which I didn't include before because I only recently learned what that means.) Also, would this be a reliable source? What from WALS would be most helpful to include? Tezero (talk) 03:09, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

It is hard to imagine a Navajo grammar that doesnt have syntactic information. It may be under a header that doesnt say syntax, but remember that everything that concerns the expression of sentences is syntax. The Hale, Munro Platero pape is certainly a reliable source, but not the best given that it is a low profile conference paper. Navaho is one of the better described native American languages - so you really should find and use the highest profile sources. Faltz 1998 and Young 2000 for the verbs, Young and Morgan 1943 and Speas and Yazzie 1996 and Yazzie and peas 2007 for basic grammar (including syntax), Neundorf 1983 for a dictionary, Elgin 1973 and several articles by Speas for syntax. These would be not only helpful but necessary to include to have a well rounded coverage of the literature. Minimum to include for syntax should be negation, interrogation, and clause subordination and coordination. From WALS alignment, word order, order of Noun genitive and noun adjective, internally headed relative clauses would be good to include as a minimum, with examples of each. Luckily WALS gives precise references for where you can find exampoles of each - they use Speas 1990 and Morgan & Young so you should probably get your hands on those.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 03:35, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Maunus, I just spent about an hour reorganizing, researching, and adding information to the section in my tempspace. I know it's not anywhere close to being complete - most notably, I haven't touched the WALS stuff yet, nor have I added everything in about aspect/mode and a few other features. Just wanted to let you know I'm still working. Tezero (talk) 04:36, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

I am in no hurry, take you time. But do try to get your hands on as much of the relevant literature as possible. Dont rely on online sources.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 04:42, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

1. . The orthography section could do a better job of describing the history of orthographies by showing how orthographies have differed, and attributing the Young/Morgan orthography to its developers. It also doesnt actually provide an overview of the orthography, so after reading the section the reader doesnt have a clear idea of how the orthography works.

   I can look for things about the history, but what would you expect about "how the orthography works"? It's the Latin alphabet with diacritics for tone and nasality and apostrophes for ejective consonants. Tezero (talk) 21:00, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

There is quite a bit about the history, both n the book by McDonough and in the work of Bernard Spolsky. Also the orthography is more complicated than what you described because it is not fully phonemic. I added some sources about this further up. Orthography is not just the relations between symbols and phones, but also their representation of morphophonemic and grammatical processes and of allophony.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 21:07, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

1. . the example text is good.

Thats it for now.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 06:14, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Sorry about neglecting this. I've been almost completely occupied with finals and school projects, culminating in one last web design project I'm doing now. Starting tomorrow, I should be able to begin work again. I'll still be at school tomorrow and the day after, during which time I'll still have access to the Navajo grammar text they have - might be able to check it out, but because of its immense size I'd prefer to tackle all of the incompleteness issues while I'm still here. Tezero (talk) 21:40, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Is everything proceeding well here? Given the above notes I can understand if progress is slow, but since there hasn't been anything here in a month I'm just making sure. Wizardman 15:27, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Wizardman, Tezero has over 175 edits since you posted the above; indeed, the same you did, Tezero opened Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Sonic the Hedgehog (1991 video game)/archive1. With no edits to the GAN article by Tezero since December 23, and no response from either nominator or reviewer in the two weeks since your question, I'd recommend that this be closed. BlueMoonset (talk) 19:50, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Coincidentally, I worked a small amount on my personal (temp) copy of the grammar section earlier today. That said, I don't really care if this gets closed; I can simply renominate it if/when I ever make all of his requested changes. Tezero (talk) 19:55, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Given the writer wants it closed and the reviewer hasn't touched this page since 2014, I believe it should be closed as well. Wizardman 22:26, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Your opinion is your right, as is voicing it. Closing someone else's review is not. When you do that an automated message is sent in my name.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 22:39, 15 February 2015 (UTC)