Talk:Linguistic competence/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Pyrotec (talk) 19:03, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

I will review. Pyrotec (talk) 19:03, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

• comment I would advice a quick-fail. The lead doesn't work as such, the article gives a very cursory treatment of most critical engagements with the concept (before today it left out functionalist arguments all together), and it doesn't adequately describe how Chomsky's concept derived from earlier work by Saussure. It also has a bit of ASCII art which is discouraged by the MOS. And the flow of the article isn't really very clear at all and it seems to glide off on tangents on several occasions. Not a good article in my opinion - and it would need non-trivial work to become so.·Maunus·ƛ· 23:19, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Initial comments

I'm sorry for the slow start to this review.

I think that this article has the potential to become a GA, but it is not quite there yet; and so more work will be needed to bring it up to GA standard (i.e. WP:WIAGA).

I normally leave the WP:Lead until last and will do so here. However, I would note that the lead is intended to both introduce the topic, which it does, and to summarise the main points in the article, and in this aspect it needs some improvement.

The article is generally referenced, but most of them refer to books and in many cases no page numbers are provided.

I will now work my way through the article, giving more details, but leaving comments on the WP:Lead until last. I will also bear in mind the comments made by ·Maunus·ƛ·. Pyrotec (talk) 12:21, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

• The WP:Lead -

• This is intended to both introduce the topic and provide a summary of the main points in the article.
• Almost all of the topics discussed in the article are not mentioned in the lead. So in respect of providing a summary of the main points this lead must be considered non-compliant.
• I would go further than that, the Lead only discusses Noam Chomsky's theory of Linguistic competence (the topic of the second section) and contrasts that with linguistic performance (the topic of the first section). The lead makes no reference to any of the remaining sections, so either they are "padding", or the lead was poorly drafted.
• Much of this article is about Noam Chomsky's theory, he appears to be important, so I would have expected that the lead would have stated who Noam Chomsky was and why his views are important (if they are not, why is there an article on this topic?).

• Competence versus performance -

• The main problem here is lack of WP:Verifiability: citations are made to two books, but no page numbers are given. The first one is a direct quotation, so verifiability is particularly important here.
• There are a number of technical terms that are used without explanation:

• The section title is "Competence versus performance", which I assume is shorthand for Linguist competence versus linguist performance, but I will let this one go.
• The terms "speaker-hearer" and "speaker-listener" are used and I'm not sure what the difference, if any, is.
• The last paragraph contains terms, such "delimiting the study of performance", "descriptivist limitation-in-principle to classification and organization of data", that appear to be meaningless technobable. What is this sentence talking about?
• The last paragraph appears to suffer from WP:vagueness, in that it is dismissing (undefined) criticisms as "unwarranted and completely misdirected". But fails to address simple questions, such as: what criticisms, who made them, when, why, etc, ? Since the Schools of thought sections mentions some other "Other generativists" by name and then moves onto other topics, are these the unnamed critics that Chomsky dismisses, people that agree with him, or both? Its not made clear.

• Competence and components of grammar -

• Since the title of this article is "Linguistic competence", the Manual of Style would tend to preclude the use of "Competence" in this section's title.
• There are a few technical terms, such as: "linguistic idiom", "innate", "innate knowledge of rules", that are undefined.
• The only cited example in green and green ink came from ref 6. Ref 6 appears to a book by Roger Hawkins, which has a copyright claim, however ref 6 has a link to a pdf file at [1]. Unless this web site has the copyright owners permission to publish this extract, wikipedia should not be invoking sites that appear to breach copyright. The book should be cited in full, as book and not as a web link (the template {{Cite book}} may be used).

...to be continued. Pyrotec (talk) 13:05, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

• This section consists, mostly, of a single paragraph and one sentence followed by a list of five topics, each of which has a "definition" and one or more examples. There is no attempt at explaining how these five topics fit into the rules of grammar. The example "My hair needs washing is acceptable but not *My hair needs washed[6]" relates to English-language in respect of the relationships of verbs, nouns, etc, and may not be valid for other languages, where word order is less important.
• Interestingly, in the following Chomsky and Generative Grammar subsection there is a statement that "Chomsky's notion of linguistic competence is purely syntactic". So why list the five topics without explanation when only one appears to be relevant to Chomsky, perhaps it is something to do with the Other generativists?

• Schools of thought -

It not clear what this section title means?

The first few subsections appear to deal with "generalists", followed by those who think it is wider than just syntax. After that, it just seems to drift off onto other topics.

• • Chomsky and Generative Grammar -

• Most if not all the references are books, but no page numbers are given in the citations.
• The WP:LEAD attempts to constrain Linguistic competence to native speakers, but this subsection does not appear to distinguish between native and non-native speakers, so which is correct?

• • Other generativists -

• Most if not all the references are books, but no page numbers are given in the citations.
• The title seems to suggest that Chomsky might be a generativist, but that is not stated thus far in the article.

• • Ray S. Jackendoff -

• This subsection is unreferenced.

• Rest of the article -

• This material is not mentioned in the WP:Lead so it is not clear whether any of this is important in respect of the topic, or is just "padding"?
• The lead only mentions Chomsky, but there are quite a few other people who are mentioned by name and/or by their work. A number of (unasked) questions need to be addressed: Is Chomsky important, did he get it right, are these people supporters of his work, critics, developers/expanders of his work?

• At this point in the review, I regard the article as non-compliant with WP:WIAGA. I will decide soon whether to fail or place On Hold; I note that ·Maunus·ƛ· recommends a "fail" and I tend to agree in principle. Pyrotec (talk) 08:42, 16 February 2011 (UTC)