Talk:The Sound Pattern of English/GA1

GA review

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Nominator: Kisseran (talk · contribs) 19:58, 5 July 2026 (UTC)

Reviewer: Kusma (talk · contribs) 21:26, 9 August 2026 (UTC)

Planning to review this over the next couple of days. —Kusma (talk) 21:26, 9 August 2026 (UTC)

Content and prose review

I will comment on anything I notice, but not all of my comments will be strictly related to the GA criteria, so not everything needs to be actioned. Feel free to push back if you think I am asking too much, and please tell me when I am wrong.

I appreciate any comments beyond the GA criteria as well, since I do intend to take this to FAC eventually. Kisseran (talk) 17:59, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

• Note that I am not a linguist. I am reading this with my naive mathematician/generally educated person hats on.
• Lead: Not necessarily something for you to do now, but it is a bit sad that generative phonology is just a redirect to generative grammar, whose full content on generative phonology appears to be that one approach is optimality theory.
  • Yes, I do intend on eventually de-redirecting that page. Kisseran (talk) 17:59, 10 August 2026 (UTC)
• "In America, SPE revolutionized the field of phonology" only in America?
  • This is not to say that it wasn't influential elsewhere, but America is the only place where it clearly induced a scientific revolution. Kisseran (talk) 17:59, 10 August 2026 (UTC)
• Will comment on completeness of lead / whether it is a good summary of the article later.
• Background: this is basically just mentioning who the authors are. The actual background of the book is then mentioned in the first sentences of the "Publication" section. Either rename this section to "Authors" and the following one to "Writing and Publication" or move content around so it fits the section headers.
  • Done. I'd modeled the structure off of Syntactic Structures, but your suggestion does make more sense. Kisseran (talk) 17:59, 10 August 2026 (UTC)
• What is a "junior fellow"? At the very minimum link to Harvard Society of Fellows.
  • Linked. I'm not sure what kind of explication you're looking for. Kisseran (talk) 17:59, 10 August 2026 (UTC)
• If I pretend to read only this article, I am a bit confused about where in Chomsky's life we are. He is apparently still in Harvard and does not yet have a PhD. We are told a lot about his background in Hebrew (is this very important for this article?) and little about him becoming the world's most famous linguist.
  • I was worried that adding more biographical information would detract from the focus of the article. Would you be expecting more biographical information? I can easily add more if desired. Chomsky's background in Hebrew is rather important for this article, since the book is based on his work on Hebrew, as mentioned in the article; conversely, his rise to becoming the world's most famous linguist is mostly incidental from his work in phonology. Kisseran (talk) 17:59, 10 August 2026 (UTC)
• The Anderson reference could perhaps be combined with the "pre-publication manuscripts had already been circulating since 1964" since apparently this book was also first published in samizdat form among the insiders. (Or is this a dig at The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory not being published for 20 years?)
  • Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean by "be combined". I've tried to organize the first two sections chronologically, so I've ordered the pre-publication information before the remark about the effect of the publication itself. Kisseran (talk) 17:59, 10 August 2026 (UTC)
• General framework: "In SPE, Chomsky and Halle introduce the architecture of generative grammar" do they just give an introduction to generative grammar or is this the first book that talks about generative grammar? (that would kind of need to explain what the difference to Syntactic Structures is).
  • The former. I've rephrased to clarify. Kisseran (talk) 17:59, 10 August 2026 (UTC)
• Phonological rules: I know that this is a quote, but in the explanation for the notation $A\rightarrow B/X\_\_Y$, what does $\_\_$ represent?
  • Formally, nothing in particular: it only serves the visual purpose of separating X from Y. Pedagogically, it is usually explained as the position of A between X and Y. Kisseran (talk) 17:59, 10 August 2026 (UTC)
• The only place in the "Overview" section that makes the content seem specific to English is the section introduction. The subsections seem quite general (and there is nothing about the history of English vowels here). Does that reflect the book and/or its reception, or should there be more about the application of the general theory to English?
  • There's more than enough secondary coverage to write about it, yes, but the reception of the book is significantly more concentrated in its aspects of general phonological theory. The subject on my mind was how much technical detail I should go into for this kind of article, in keeping it focused on the book and not as a page on the history of phonology in general. Although I suppose in the grand scheme of thing the article really is not very long. Kisseran (talk) 17:59, 10 August 2026 (UTC)
• Now reading "Distinctive features". More later! —Kusma (talk) 13:26, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

General comments and GA criteria

Good Article review progress box

Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV () 3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant () Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed