User talk:Esotericbubbba/sandbox

Suggestions

Morphology 1. The sentence "The Greek root ‘morph’ means shape or form; thus morphology is interested in how words form." should have a comma after thus 2. Should be another parentheses after Fortson 3. After the third sentence under the bolded "Morphology", I would just say the examples w/o the repetition of the word similar/similarity and go into more depth on what you mean 4. "In terms of affixes, all Indo-European languages mark their nouns and verbs with various affixes to indicate a wide range of information such as number and case." -- put a comma before such

Ablaut 1. Change the wording of the second sentence -- you say "in English the verb infinitive sing", but that should be worded differently and should be to sing AND you should split up the sentence because it is too wordy and confusing 2. "Linguists do not yet completely agree whether or not ablaut is a phonetic or morphological process" -- incorrect grammatically so I would put the yet' with a comma in the beginning of the sentence

Word Structure 1. put a comma after optionally (1st sentence of this section) 2. Comma before such as in the second sentence 3. In this sentence, "In terms of placement, affixes can be divided into prefix, suffix, and infix", I would say affixes can be divided into subcategories: prefix, suffix, infix. 4. No comma after derivational affixes 5. Omit are those that serve to 6. no need for also in English

Root Structure 1. "Examples of each variation is shown in the following table" -- changes to are shows

Verb Structure 1. combine the first two sentences 2. say what PIE is or use the actual word

Syntax 1. Put a comma after grammar in the second sentence 2. would say that are underlying forms of a sentence's structure instead of unifying structures that underlie a sentence’s surface form 3. change the third sentence because it is confusing -- make sure to not keep repeating the word rare 4. No need for careful, persistent, and ingenious in the last sentence -- make it concise

Word Order 1. Refrain from saying IE languages or say beforehand what it is 2. Hittite came out of nowhere so sort of confusing -- maybe explain what it is 3. would not say school of thought because it is not supposed to be oppnionated

Clause Structure 1. put a comma before the moreover in the last sentence

Reanna.shah (talk) 23:34, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

Review

Dear Esotericbubbba,

You have done so much great work in your sandbox that I am sure will clear up the article! Your explanations are clear and concise. I am personally working on the Proto-Indo-Language family, so maybe we could work together to make sure our articles don't have too much overlap. I am the book by Fortson that you mentioned as one of your potential sources. In general, I would be careful about using words such as "all" because it makes your work easier to disprove as you only need one counter example. You say "Linguists do not yet completely agree whether or not ablaut is a phonetic or morphological process" (Clackson, Fortson). I would clarify that you're talking about how the ablaut originated because it is a morphological process today and even at the time of the PIE break up. I recommend looking at 4:16 of Indo-European Language and Culture an introduction.

You say "Each variant of the vowel is called a grade. The vowel e is called e-grade. It is the most common vowel and is also called the full grade. Other grades are o-grade, long e-grade, and empty grade when the vowel is missing". Make sure to make clear that these grade names are based on the vowels of PIE because the English word "sit" for example comes from an e-grade root and "sat" comes from an o-grade root. I am very excited to see the table you proposed!

I wouldn't call it the "first-person plural in the past progressive." Try "first-person plural imperfect indicative."

I recommend getting rid of the section where you say "In the simplest form, all Indo-European roots take on the form of CeC where C stands for a consonant and e stands for a vowel. The choice of e to stand for a vowel is because it is the most frequent vowel in all Indo-European languages." First of all, the CeC thing is mainly for PIE, not Indo-European languages. Three of the PIE consonants (the "laryngeals") turned into vowels in most daughter languages so this root patten would not be preserved. Second, not even all PIE roots take on this form; the root for apple was *abel-. Third, Portuguese, Icelandic and likely other languages have a more frequently than e.

I would get rid of "Proto-Indo-European languages had much more markings than their modern descendants. For example, PIE verbs were thought to have hundreds of forms." Languages such as Latin had a four conjugation system with their own unique endings leading to many more markings. Older Lithuanian (and even some modern dialects) had ten grammatical cases as opposed to the eight or nine that PIE had.

The quote "subjects need to agree with their predicates in either number, gender, or case, or all," may be an overgeneralization.

I feel bad criticising this draft because there is so much I love about it! You have obviously done a lot of work, and you are much further ahead in the drafting process than I am.