User:Itsybitsykatie/sandbox

Wikipedia Assignment #2-ASL Grammar

The Wikipedia article I used is the American Sign Language grammar page.

1. Check the "Talk" page of the article you've selected. What is the level of importance (or quality) assigned to the topic? What is the class-level of the article, and what reason(s) did you find for that “grade?”

It doesn’t have any importance assigned to it such as a “Featured Article” or anything of the sort but there is an extensive amount of information on this article. The class level is definitely an A because of the amount of research that is included in the article to explain how the grammar of ASL works. The sources used are also credible because they are written by well known ASL linguistics such as Bahan, Supalla, Stokoe, etc. This article is a more in depth article of the grammar specifics rather than the language in general. The talk page says the article is part of a few Wikiprojects such as Linguistics, United States and Deaf. It says it’s listed as B-class, although I’m not sure what that means. I assume being part of Wikiprojects is a big deal in the Wikipedia world but I’m not sure. The amount of work put into the article shows in the format and information itself. It’s a very well written article.

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

There are several comments for this article’s talk page. They usually focus around the specifics of the grammar. One such topic is the word order of ASL, several people commented and this section is very long with all the back and forth to try to figure out what the proper word order is. They have deemed it to be a topicalized language rather than object-subject-verb but they also say the object is usually the topic.  Another subsection is titled “Allophonic (or not) Handshapes” and this section has many comments added that discuss minimal pairs. The issue with this section is that the commenters can’t really figure out what is right and what isn’t. Since Stokoe’s original analysis was in the 60’s and nothing else has been as extensive as his research (on allophonic variation according to the commenters), it makes it hard to pinpoint what’s right and what’s wrong. The other subsections are very short in comparison so those are the main two issues that drew a lot of attention.

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 on the actual page relate to the talk about it?

The two issues were mentioned above: word order and allophonic variation. The word order section is a discussion about whether ASL is topic/comment or OSV language. The discussion involves specifics of how one would sign a sentence as an example that it’s topic/comment or as an example to show it’s not OSV. At the end of the discussion, it seems there’s an agree part where I assume everyone agrees that in ASL the topic is typically the object but not always. I learned in my classes that ASL was topicalized but it’s also OSV so I understand where the discussion is coming from. They seem to compromise to include both labels, which I would agree with. The article says that ASL is S-V-O and that it’s altered by topicalization. What’s interesting is that the talk page debates about O-S-V not S-V-O. There’s some discrepancy there that I’m not sure they are aware of.

The second issue is about the allophonic handshapes. This section is trying to figure out what handshapes or signs are allophonic or minimal pairs. Stokoe discusses allophonic variation and he is referenced many times to support or refute a claim made by a commenter. Many of comments say that in some “minimal pair” examples, one is actually an initialism. This means the handshape refers to the first letter of the word being signed. Such as DATE the talk page claims this an initialism since the handshape used for the sign is the D handshape. When learning ASL, I never learned or realized this so I don’t know where I stand on this example. There wasn’t a resolution to the problem listed yet in that section. It was a lot of back and forth between what was allophonic variation and what wasn’t. What’s interesting is there actually isn’t a section on allophonic variation in the article. I assume they were discussing it to possibly include it in the Wikipedia article. It would be an interesting addition but it’s not currently there.

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.

The discussion isn’t really morphology centered. Instead it’s more phonology or syntax. But the article has a really good morphology section which is why I picked this article. The morphology section includes sections like reduplication which is a topic we discussed in our class and in our reading. It also includes compounds and affixation which is another part of our previous readings.

The article and reading both made sense which helped to further my understanding of ASL morphology. With reduplication there are many signs where the amount of times the sign moves doubles to create a new word. Such as FOOD vs. EAT. Nouns get two movements and verbs get one movement. Therefore FOOD is one movement and EAT is two of the same movements. Both have the same handshape, location, palm orientation but the only difference is the movement. For compounds, an example would be AGREE which is the combination THINK^ALIKE. You take two signs THINK and ALIKE, put them together to make a new word, hence the label compounding. For affixation, this is similar to what was in our test with DANCER. This is the formation of DANCE^AGENT which refers to person so the affix, AGENT, turns the verb into a noun. With these examples, I agree with the article. The other parts I don’t understand completely and it’ll take more time to me to grasp the concept completely in order to reiterate it.

5. 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 think the article is really well written and it has a lot of really good information. I think the parts that I mentioned above are some of the most convincing. If one knows ASL, it makes sense and the citations also help to support the claims. Since this isn’t the ASL general page it’s a little more technical therefore if one is reading and doesn’t have enough experience with ASL it may not make sense to the reader. The talk page is also really useful because it has discussion on other topics that may or may not be in the page. There were some subsections on the talk page that weren’t as important as the ones discussed above but the ones that I did mention had an extensive amount of knowledge.