Wikipedia: Article Critique.
• What is the "grade," if any, that the article has. What is its indicated importance?
The grade for this article is start, and it is marked as mid importance.
• Is each fact referenced with an appropriate, reliable reference? Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you?
Not all of the facts that are discussed in the article have a proper citation. While there are some sources at the end of some paragraphs, some heavy statements are not cited, that I believe should be cited, so that if the reader so chooses can research on their own. For example, within the first paragraph that states what a blend is, the second sentences states “These parts are sometimes but not always morphemes” in this case I feel like a direct citation is needed that will direct the reader to an article that talks about this concept. I think that the need to have references within the first paragraph should be greatly emphasized, as this will be the first thing readers will see. Because there is the belief that Wikipedia is not a reliable source, viewers will overlook the article itself and most likely will head straight to the reference list. Although this is not a bad method when looking for sources, this goes against what Wikipedia stands for. Wikipedia is supposed to be a free encyclopedia used in order to gain knowledge about different topics, if the reader is not learning or reading what Wikipedia has to offer then it defeats the purpose. In terms of relevance, I felt like the editors did a great job in staying within topic, throughout the whole article. Perhaps the most distracting thing that is incorporated in this article is the section of blending two roots. I felt as though they could have provided a paragraph describing how words in Hebrew can be blended at the root, while indexing to the example glossary. For example the editor could have said “if you look at example 1a you can see that the words bulldozer is a hybridizes the word push and dig” it would be similar to what we find in Lieber’s book.
• Is the article neutral? Are there any claims, or frames, that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?
The article seems to be neutral; there were no claims that seemed to be heavily biased.
• Where does the information come from? Do these seem to be neutral sources? Choose three sources cited, and find them yourself.
The first source I searched was “Shouldn’t it be breakfunch? A quantitative analysis of blend structure in English”. By Stefan Th. Gries.
This source comes from the department of linguistics at the University of California Santa Barbara, and it seems to be a neutral sources
The second source I searched was “Cross-disciplinary perspectives on lexical blending” by Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton
Unfortunately, for this source I was not able to check if it was biased as access to the book and to the blending chapter is not free.
The third source I searched was “Blends a Structural and Systematic View on JSTOR”, by John Algeo.
This source comes from JSTOR and does not seem to be biased.
• Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented? If your answer is "yes," (a) indicate what viewpoint(s) you think might qualify as overrepresented, and (b) what viewpoint you think might be underrepresented. What leads you to this conclusion?
In my opinion, I think that the section of lexical selection is underrepresented, as they talked about only one concept within lexical selection, I think that talking about lexical selection in bilingual speakers, is equally as important especially now a days as we are moving towards a more diverse world.
• Check four citations. Do the links work? Is there any close paraphrasing or plagiarism in the article?
The link for Klein Ernest’s book “A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language” did not work. When I searched for the article manually I was not able to access the article since it is not free, therefore I was not able to check whether there was an instance of close paraphrasing, or plagiarism. The link for Malinger by Harper Douglas, works and it does not appear that there is any instance of close paraphrasing, or plagiarism. The link for “An introduction to language” by Fromkin Victoria, Rodman R and Hyams, N does not work. Although access to the book is free, it is difficult to find where the editor must have found this particular information from as the book is 640 pages long. I was not able to find whether close paraphrasing or plagiarism took place with this citation. The link “Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment” by Ghil’ad Zuckermann worked, but access was denied as you have to pay in order to read the article, therefore I was not able to check whether there was an instance of close paraphrasing, or plagiarism.
• Select and list up to three major topics or issues raised about the article from the Talk page related to the article. Do you agree with what the contributors say, or not? Why? I agree with Floridian Blaschke’s idea of changing the name of the article portmanteau to portmanteau morpheme and then changing portmanteau (disambituiation) to portmanteau. I agree with him/her because the function of a portmanteau morpheme and a blend word are very different according to him, thus mixing these two topics within the same article; portmanteau would create more work for admins who have to link both the blend article and the portmanteau article. This would in turn have the readers go back and forth between the two articles. I agree with editor Kvsh5 in that the blending of two roots section of the article uses too many examples from Hebrew and the way they set up the examples is very confusing and distracting to read if we do not know Hebrew. I do not agree with editor Jarble in that we should change the name of the article blend (linguistics). I don’t agree with s/he because while there are many uses for the word blend, by having the articles name be blend word, this already signals that we will be talking about an aspect of language and not per say a brand or the album.
Added sentences: I would like to expand on the use section of blending by giving examples in how blending occurs in Korean. Thus adding the line “While the encouragement of shortening of foreign borrowed words happens in Japanese, in Korean, words that are blended and are native to Korean tend to follow the same phonological patterns we find in English blended words.”
Ahn, Suzy. "Faithfulness conflict in Korean blends." University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 20.1 (2014): 4.
• a 1-2 paragraph reflection on why you felt your contribution would be valuable and what it would contribute to the article
While doing this assignment I found it difficult to decide as to whether add more information or edit information. Even though there are different and many opportunities to edit the article, I believe that expanding the use section was the most important. I believe it’s important as it can help us get an idea about how other languages create blends. Since not all the languages in the world follow the same pattern when they create blended words, it is important to see how they differ or how they are alike in at least a few different languages from different language families. I think it is important specially now a day, as we are becoming a more diverse world.