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Wikipedia Assignment 2 – Affix

a.) The article about Affixes on Wikipedia is a Start-Class level article. This article is still being developed and just needs some revision before it can rise on the quality scale. According to Wikipedia, this article has some relevant information, but not enough to fully educate a reader on the topic. The next step for this article is for contributors to find more relevant sources that could be used to revise the article. The article currently only has four articles listed as references and three articles listed on its bibliography. This leaves the majority of the article without any footnotes or citations for the definitions and analysis it claims to provide.

b.) The Talk page of this article is mainly used for clarification, making it a useful resource for analyzing affixes. Many of the comments are between people working to negotiate the meaning or clarity of things that are written on the main page. Many comments are also from contributors requesting more examples be added to the main page. This is another indicator that the main page needs to be revised because it doesn’t provide enough information for a reader to to gain a clear understanding. It appears that the discussions are divided between a few main issues. Most commenters ask for more examples to be added to the main page, while others are working on clarifying and improving the information on the main page.

c.) One of the issues discussed on the Talk page is whether the term “stem” or “root” would be more appropriate to use on the main page of the article. The confusion seems to come from the fact that other linguistics-related pages use “root” where this article uses “stem”. The discussion involves several people trying to negotiate with each other how root should be defined and when it should be used in place of stem. Interestingly, this conversation involves at least one person noting that they’ve gone back and edited other linguistics related articles to reflect the content of this discussion. Although the conversation ends, it doesn’t appear that a resolution is fully reached by anyone in the discussion. The general consensus is shared that a stem is basically any modified form of a root, which is the base morpheme that can be augmented to form new words. As one commenter notes, every word must start with a root, which can then be modified with affixes to create new stems.

Another topic discussed on the Talk page of this article is whether “confix” or “circumfix” is the generally accepted term in linguistics. Both were referenced or used on the main page of the article, leading to some confusion. One contributor found that both articles had relatively similar information, with the only main difference being that the two articles used examples from different languages. After some other commenters responded, it was agreed that the two articles were talking about the same issue and should be merged to avoid further confusion. It appears that since in the time since these comments were posted, the two articles have indeed been merged. Confix now redirects to circumfix and all references to confix on the affix page have been changed to circumfix to reflect this.

d.) In class, we have also taken a look at affixation and how it is used in word formation. The information in this article seems to align with what we learned in class. An affix is a morpheme that is used by connecting it with a stem to create a new word. There are both derivational affixes and inflectional affixes. Derivational affixes change the category of a word, like changing the adjective “sad” to the noun “sadness”. Inflectional affixes doesn’t change the use of the word, only the tense or from singular to pluaral. An example would be the change from singular “dog” to plural “dogs” using an inflectional plural -s.

e.) While there are still more questions to be discussed about the topic of root vs stem, I think the consensus reached by the discussion on the Talk page is a reasonable for the article to stick with until it is revised with more information. Because the contributors were able to work together to create a definition that mostly satisfied their needs, it came across as very reasonable and productive. This article is still a work in progress, so for the purposes of clarifying things for the readers, it makes sense to distinguish root from stem. It also aligns with what we have learned in class.