User:Yoonju4/sandbox

I. Article Critique

The article that I have assigned myself is “Polysynthetic language”, and it does not have a “grade” yet. In the article, the definition of ‘polysynthetic language’ is clearly stated, with the etymology from Greek roots. Background information on how a ‘word’ is defined in linguistics and the concept of ‘morpheme’ are introduced, merging into introducing the features of polysynthesis and how they are formed. Examples from Chukchi, Ainu, Nahuatl, Tiwi, Mohawk, and Greenlandic are given to draw pictures of polysynthetic languages. The history of the concept of “polysynthesis” is explained, with introduction of some important personnel in this particular linguistic typology. Lastly, contemporary approaches to the concept of polysynthetic languages by handful of scholars are discussed.

In my opinion, each fact is referenced with an appropriate reference, and everything discussed in the article is relevant to the topic of the article, polysynthetic language. I liked that not only it provided definition and examples, it also introduced the history and contemporary approaches – it let me look at the past and present of how polysynthesis has become a part of linguistic typology. At the end of the article, the list of polysynthetic languages is provided, categorized in the continents they are found. However, some of these languages, such as Siouan language of North America or Ket and Nivkh languages of Siberia are labeled “probable”, “possible”, and “mildly” polysynethetic, and there is no citation or explanation to support these arguments.

I think the article itself and the sources are quite neutral; they are not really biased heavily toward a particular position. Actually the article presents different approaches and views regarding polysynthesis over time, enabling the reader to access to different viewpoints on the subject. Most, if not all, of the references cited in the article are published work by credible scholars, and since a lot of the works are from dates where things were not digitalized (the oldest source is from 1819 by Peter Du Ponceau!) there were only three sources with the links that directs the reader to the documents. But these three links works perfectly well, taking the reader to the websites or the PDF document that they can access to the original documents cited in the article.

One of the issues raised about the article from the Talk page was that Russian is not a polysynthetic language. One of the contributors of the article argued that Russian is polysynthetic language since it can “create words that consist two or three multiple words that can stand alone” and gave an example. However, the other contributor pointed out that definition of polysynthesis is not about the length of the words, but about the “amount of grammatical information that is encoded in a single word”. I agree with the latter contributor; what defines polysynthesis is not whether the word has three, four, five words put together as one word. The other issue that was raised was that Coptic language is a polysynthetic language since it is able to “attach morphemes to each other to make one ‘word’ that expresses a complete sentence”. On the surface level, I might agree with this contributor’s argument, but the contributor does not cite any sources and only gives one sentence as an example. I wouldn’t be too fast to agree without looking more closely in to Coptic to examine is polysyntheticity. Lastly, the examples of Inuktitut in the article is questioned because in one paragraph Inuktitut is used as an example of a polysynethtic language, and in the other it is given as an example of afixal polysynthetic language. The other contributor points out that there are two different viewpoints on Inuktitut, from the linguist Mark Baker and other uncited source. I agree with the contributor that pointed out that it was confusing when the same language was given as an example for two different typologies. Either it had to be stated clear in the paragraphs or the contributor who added it to the article should have found a credible source to support either viewpoints.

Overall, this article is well organized, with credible and reliable sources properly cited.

II. Contribution

One thing I would add is Fijian on the list of the polysynthetic languages, as argued by Aranovich (2013). Also I would add Fijian example to the list of examples,

From Fijian language,

a. au a taga ura tiko e na bogi

1sg pst catch prawn cnt in det night

‘I was catching prawns last night.’

b. au sa taga-va oti na ura

1sg asp catch-tr asp det prawn

‘I have finished catching the prawns.’

Also, I would add Dene Suliné, the Athapaskan language spoken in Canada as an example. Verbs in Dene typically have “extraordinary polysynthetic and fusional” characteristics.

(3) begha´yeniËt(i (from Li, 1946, p. 417)

be- -    gha´-   -ye- -n - -i-                  -l-                    -ti

3SG     for      3SGO  MOMENTANEOUS 1SGS CLSF        handle animate object

‘‘I have given him/her to him/her’’

III. Reflection

I feel like my contribution to the article would help the readers see broader examples from languages of different regions in the world. Both articles that I have found and extracted the examples from are written by credible scholars, exploring the languages that have not been studied in depth much. My contribution might be a motivation for readers to look up these less-explored languages in an aspect of their polysynthetic characteristics.