User talk:Juliekallini/Yimas Language

Peer review overall impressions

Julie, amazing work. The morphology of Yimas is extremely complex and I feel like you did a good job overall of trying to explain it all. You have all the proper sections and have examples for each phenomenon. This is a well-researched first draft. The flow is pretty logical (see comments below for specifics but the only section I worried about flow was syntax). There were very few grammar/spelling issues and they are all mentioned below. Your greatest strengths were the tables and examples for the most part, but I think on occasion, you may have assumed too much knowledge of your readers and could use a little more explanations (see below but mostly regarding the noun class table and headedness).

LEAD

This section was terrific. Very thorough without being overwhelming. You put in what was needed and the table is looking great. 'live' should be 'lives' I think (as in: 'the total lives'). Having the number classification might be a plus (the one on the 4-10 scale). Everything else is great and your table is goals.

PHONOLOGY

The tables are great and the IPA chart is linked and fully described. The syllable table is great and the explanations are thorough but when you get to the 'special cases' I think throwing in an example for each would be enormously helpful: i.e. (VC₁.C₂V) (EX. word). The stress section seems to be the least developed. The last sentence could use more framework I think and so if 'minimal pairs' were defined and why it matters that stress does not distinguish one word from another, that would be helpful for me. When I think of minimal pairs, I tend to think of two words that vary only by one letter+sound (not differing based on stress). I think adding even a little background would be enormously helpful.

NOUN MORPHOLOGY

Small thing: "nouns classes" should be "noun classes" I think. I am a little confused on the noun classes table - what is present makes sense, but the blanks I think should have an 'x' or '-' in the table so that readers do not expect the table to be fully filled in. A third column for an example word might be helpful as well. Is there no overlap between classes I-IV and V-X (like the word for 'crocodile' that also ends in 'n' or something)? Maybe we could say '10 mutually exclusive noun classes' if that's the case. The Class I table doesn't quite make sense to me yet. Is it ways to transform a noun into each of these forms (by adding pre/suffixes)? That seems to be what the paragraph below the table indicates. The rest looks great unless I note an issue with a subsection below.

Oblique Suffix

I know we haven't totally figured out how to do citations yet, but I think it might be a good idea to add a footnote since what you have is a direct quote. Otherwise, the explanation makes total sense.

VERBAL MORPHOLOGY

Good intro to the subsections. You had a lot of information to cover and tried to keep it succinct and clear.

Pronominal prefixes

You explain what A/O/S are later in this section, but since you mention them before the table, it might be good to at least define them and then give the examples in the table and proceed. Also super sorry but I don't know what 'DL' stands for (is it dative?). PL and SG are plural and singular with the 'person' (1, 2, 3) but I haven't seen DL before so maybe just adding a quick sentence about that would be helpful. I didn't readily find it when googling either.

Dative suffixes and ditransitive verbs

Your morphology is very complex and I am so impressed by the work put into documenting it. For the examples, I would try to bold the meaning of interest in the English gloss line as well (which, I think, would mean bolding 'They showed me'). In the second example should 'two' be 'to'? What makes the -mpn unique? Simply that it is different from the 1SG? Also you mention that the 'first person singular dative prefix /ɲa-' when in the above paragraph you say that '/ɲa-' is the ditransitive verb 'give'? Is it both? Sorry, I may have just gotten lost somewhere in the explanation.

Tense, aspect, and mood

The word 'actually' feels a little awkward. Sorry to be nit-picky. I might also add to 'takes place in the remote past' sentence what the /-mpun/ does just as a refresher. I.e.: 'In the following example, the suffix /-ntuk/ indicates that the action takes place in the remote past while the suffix /-mpun/ indicates that _______' and i would then bold the respective points of interest in each line of the gloss. In the realis (real events) section, I might clarify 'aspectual' and say that the tense is distinguished by how completed the action is. I would also change the agreement to 'as scheduled events in a person's day.' I would also add the word 'respectively' after 'occur farther in the future' to clarify. Will you go on to add examples for the 'modality and negation'? I think that would be helpful too.

Reduplication

I would add bolding to each line of the gloss to show where the phenomenon you talk about comes into practice in the English meanings.

SYNTAX

Good, clear explanation. I would try to add more physical spacing between concepts for clarity so that the reader is not constantly referring back text to example, etc. I would also add the bolding to each line of the gloss again, sorry. For headedness, I think it would be helpful to indicate what constitutes heads and complements (as if for someone brand new to linguistics as a field).

Gracesearle (talk) 16:42, 12 April 2019 (UTC)gracesearle

Peer Review

Dear Julie,

(Firstly, I apologize if it looks like I wrote an entire essay in response, but I'm trying to make sure I "evaluate each section" and thus pass this class, fr fr.)

You crafted your Wikipedia draft very well, especially being that it is a draft, and not the final version. Your lead paragraph was very detailed and grounded the background of your language, Yimas, very thoroughly, as you continued to do throughout the entirety of your Wikipedia page.

The Phonology section was straightforward, and it was very clever to include links to the linguistic terms that may not be universal knowledge to other people in our linguistics class. Though, it may be more informative to possibly include examples of the differentiating use of monophthongs compared to diphthongs wihtin Yimas, but this is a minor detail that is very optional. Likewise, the consonant section of Phonology was equally as detailed, thorough, and straightforward.

In the Syllable Structure section, the only part that may need improvement was the change of the word "predictable," to avoid the misinterpretation of bias and include a word that indicates more neutrality. And, though you explain the syllabic rules of Yimas, and you provided us with examples in the chart of syllable templates above, it may be helpful to provide one or two more examples that portray the vowel rules listed below the chart, as well. The only improvement I felt may be needed for the Stress section would be the inclusion of an example to illustrate stress in Yimas, for the "three or more syllable" word, in particular.

The Noun Morphology section was immensely detailed and interesting, yet, because you included an example of the set of agreement affixes for a specific class of nouns of semantic property, it may better orientate the reader to also provide an example of agreement affixes, if they exist, for a specific class of nouns of phonological property, as well, unless I am misunderstanding the basic way noun classes work in Yimas. Perhaps, another way to distinguish both properties more, would be to state that, of the ten major noun classes, four are of semantic property, and the remaining six are of phonological property. I guess I am attempting to say, that it would be helpful to provide just a little bit more information on the phonological property portion of the noun section, to balance the information given on both properties. Noun Compounding and Suppletion do not need any more frame-working, and are clear and informative the way they already are.

In the Verbal Morphology section, I found myself uncertain on what A/O/S exactly stood for, along with "DL" and "PL." Like you clearly stated in the prior Noun section, it may be more beneficial to clearly state the number of pronominal affixes in the lead paragraph of this section, and maybe even provide us the chart (and the notable ergative feature part) immediately after the leading paragraph, and provide the example after, to better orientate us.

Throughout each section of the rest of your Wikipedia page, the only thing I found lacking was the inclusion of examples of Irrealis mood, and Tenses for real events in the section Tense, aspect, and mood. Word Order was extremely detailed and I don't think there is anything that needs to be improved, at all. Headedness, since we learned about this concept and what we should include in our Wikipedia article relatively later in class, is less detailed, thus, another sentence or two on headedness in Yimas, (and perhaps tying it back to the ergative aspect of Yimas, as mentioned in class, maybe?) will help complete this section.

Overall, I was really impressed reading your Wikipedia page, and found myself wishing that I had made some of the very intelligent decisions you made to better orientate any readers and the Wikipedia page, itself.

                                                                                              Jspruill (talk) 23:06, 13 April 2019 (UTC)