Talk:Noam Chomsky/GA1

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch

Reviewer: Wugapodes (talk . contribs) 23:52, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Previous Reviewer: CodexJustin (talk · contribs) 16:27, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

Starting the review on this date and it may take a day or two to complete. Please indicate when you are ready to start. Here are some initial comments. CodexJustin (talk) 16:27, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

Review by CodexJustin

See Talk:Noam Chomsky/GA1/Archive for older threads

6 Personal life

The location of this section looks a little odd and can either be put at the end of the article or merged into the earlier biography sections. CodexJustin (talk) 16:11, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

I agree that this shuld be merged into the earlier biography sections. I bring it up in my review, so see that section as well. Wug·a·po·des​ 01:38, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

7 Reception and influence

Chomsky's theory of linguistics is no longer the only one at center stage. Current research has move far from generative grammars to explain natural languages, and their simulation is much more influenced by advances in AI which were never part of Chomsky's program. The prominent rival theory today which displace Chomsky should be mentioned here. CodexJustin (talk) 16:11, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

The whole linguistics section needs attention, I give some detailed feed back in my review below. Wug·a·po·des​ 01:38, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

In the politics section, some mention should be made of the Walt-Mearsheimer debate 10 years ago and Chomsky's viewpoints. CodexJustin (talk) 16:11, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

Small Philosophy section

The previous preference of Czar was to include this section as a subsection of the other sections already in the article, with which I agree. The article should be returned to the Czar format of integrating this short section into the other sections, just like it was already done by Czar previously. CodexJustin (talk) 14:50, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

The paragraph was expanded from two sentences, as it was prior. I think the small paragraph can stand alone as a section vs. forcing it somewhere else. Are there any outstanding issues for the GA criteria? I think the other content expansion discussions can continue on the talk page. czar 13:24, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Your previous version of this section as part of the other section looked better. I am supporting your previous version of assimilating this section as subsection. CodexJustin (talk) 16:03, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Also, the Philosophy section in its current form appears to fully ignore Political philosophy. This is done in spite of the fact that this biography as a whole has been going out of its way to legitimize Chomsky Political activism as being on a par with his academic background as a scholar of Linguistic studies, predominantly while at MIT. From the list which you currently give as "philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science", this is an odd list. Thomas Kuhn is normally cited at the top of the list for the philosophy of science, and Chomsky is not even a distant second in this field if one reads the article on the Philosophy of Science. Similarly for the Philosophy of Mind which is usually looked at as a specialist field within Philosophy and studied by philosophers in philosophy departments. That leaves the Philosophy of language for Chomsky which seems the only justified point. If this section is meant as a Philosophy of language section then it should be called that. It still should be assimilated into the larger Language studies section of this article as was previously done by Czar. In its current form it continues to look like an 11th hour section which was bolted on to the article at the last minute. It looks poorly in its current placement as an independent section. If you insist on this direction for the article then at least at Political philosophy to your list with some supportive cites. CodexJustin (talk) 14:34, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Worth clarifying that while Chomsky is certainly known for his political activism, he is not known for "political philosophy" per se. Whereas McGilvray 2014 (p. 19, cited in the Philosophy section under discussion) has an entire section (through p. 25) dedicated to "Chomsky's work in the philosophies of mind and language and the philosophy of science, particularly as it bears on the science of mind and the science of human nature", mainly re: the cognitive revolution, so I would think the short paragraph does sufficient justice to that. I don't see a particular issue with keeping it as its own section. czar 02:19, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

Bare References 7/27/2019

There appear to be a large number of unformatted references in the bibliography which need to be tended to; normally not acceptable for GAN. In its current numbering, these unformatted references include: #94, 95, 226, 227, 228, 299. CodexJustin (talk) 14:23, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Those links were very, very recently added. I've removed them as superfluous. czar 02:03, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

Second opinion and new reviewer

A second opinion is requested on the Friederici section below. I've requested a one sentence quote from Chomsky about Friederici and provided 3 cites for including a one sentence quote in the article. User:Czar has challenged this as being NOR. Requesting second opinion based on 3 citations being given. Also, after nearly 6 months on this article, it seems that the article my benefit from a new set of eyes taking over at this time. My request is that the second opinion editor also take over as the new reviewer of this article as of this time. CodexJustin (talk) 14:45, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

@CodexJustin: I've been lurking here for a while, so picking up where you left off shouldn't be too much trouble. I did participate a bit above, so if anyone has any concerns about me taking over let me know. Otherwise I can get around to the second opinion in a couple days. Wug·a·po·des​ 18:19, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Friederici

Since Chomsky is a living author, it is of some significance to know who he is currently using as his main source for evolution and physiology of the brain, which is Prof. Friederici and her new book; and she is the co-author with Chomsky of articles for the last few years. The Wikipedia article here currently appears to ignore Friederici in spite of her importance to Chomsky. Chomsky speak positively of her book summarizing his high appraisal with his own words: "The result of this wide-ranging exploration (of Friederici) is a fascinating array of insights into what has been learned in this rapidly developing field (of brain sciences) and a picture of the exciting prospects that lie ahead," by Noam Chomsky in November 2016.

Another quote by Chomsky about her book on page x, states: "Friederici's extensive review covers a great deal of ground... the study deals with the dissociation of syntactic/semantic processing both structurally and developmentally. It reviews the evidence that right hemisphere specialization for prosody may be more primitive in evolution, and that its contributions are integrated very rapidly (within a second) with core language areas for assignment and interpretation of prosodic externalization." A quote from Chomsky about his appraisal and use of the research of Friederici should be included in the article. You may apply either one or both of the quotes which I have just provided for you. Chomsky in his own words calls her 'fascinating'. CodexJustin (talk) 16:03, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

I alluded to this in an earlier section but if Friederici is important to Chomsky's thought, wouldn't it be covered in the reams of secondary sources about Chomsky? The aforementioned foreword to Friederici's textbook doesn't read as being biographically important to Chomsky—i.e., that Chomsky finds the book "fascinating" does not necessitate its biographical importance to Chomsky. (Indeed the two pages read like hagiography, standard for forewords.) czar 02:08, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

Here is another Friederici paper coauthored with Chomsky this time from 2017: AD Friederici, N Chomsky, RC Berwick, A Moro and JJ Bolhuis, Language, mind and brain, Nature Human Behaviour, 2017, 1, 713–722. That is quite a track record with Chomsky including Chomsky's generous Foreward written for his coauthor. He does write Forewards for everyone, and this a one where he calls it 'fascinating'. Its also not for you, not for me, and not for anyone at Wikipedia to accuse Chomsky of writing 'Hagiography' in your words. He wrote the forward for her, he co-authored several articles with her, and she is prominent among his current co-authors. In answer to your question, no, it is not odd that a one or two year old paper to not have an extensive secondary literature. You can look up on Web-of-Science the citation analysis of their co-authored papers together if you would like (2013, 2017, her new book). Chomsky recognizes her as a 'fascinating' coworker in his own words. A short one sentence quote is all that's needed in the Wikipedia article to recognize that Chomsky is now in active research with the co-director of the Max Plank Institute in Germany [1]. The sentence and the citation should be added into a section which you select. CodexJustin (talk) 15:06, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Look, sure, they've coauthored papers together and maybe even Chomsky's foreword was more laudatory than normal, but we don't do that sort of independent analysis ourselves as editors. If a secondary source, e.g., another scholar, writes that Chomsky's relation to Friderici's ideas is noteworthy, I'd be happy to work that in. But right now, it feels like a stretch to make that assessment on our own. If the quote you want entered in the article is that Chomsky found her work "fascinating" then how many other primary source quotes should we be adding along the same lines? Or if the line is to the effect that Chomsky is working with her, then should we not mention many other scholars with whom Chomsky actively works? I would not want to call unreasonable attention to one relation unless a secondary source has called attention to its noteworthiness. Is that position unreasonable and is it holding up the GA review for breadth, or if more discussion is warranted, is this something that can transfer to a talk page discussion? czar 19:26, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Second Opinion It's rather beyond typical editorial synthesis to claim that one person influences his thought without a secondary or primary source making that assertion. Czar is right that he's had many intellectual relationships, and highlighting one without other sources noting that relationship would be undue. I don't think this has much influence on whether the GA criteria are met. Wug·a·po·des​ 01:46, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Review by Wugapodes

Got through the lead and early life sections. Wug·a·po·des​ 07:02, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

And now also through to 1980. To be explicit, anyone is free to undo any of my copy edits they disagree with per BRD. Wug·a·po·des​ 01:02, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

I've gotten through the Linguistic Theory section. Wug·a·po·des​ 01:50, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

Finished reading. Still need to do the technical stuff like citations, images, and captions. Wug·a·po·des​ 23:20, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Checklist

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

---

1. Is it reasonably well written?

   A. Prose is "clear and concise", without copyvios, or spelling and grammar errors:

   In general, the prose seems to be fine. I haven't found any major problems yet and doubt I will. Most suggestions on prose will be beyond GA requirements; exceptions will be noted.

   B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists:

   Lead seems fine, I'll look at once I've read the article to make sure it's an adequate summary.

2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

   A. Has an appropriate reference section:

   B. Cites reliable sources, where necessary:

   C. No original research:

   I'll inline tag anything that I think needs cited but citations are generally well above typical GA quality

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. Major aspects:

   B. Focused (see summary style):

   See comment 1, 4, and 5.

4. Is it neutral?

   Fair representation without bias:

   See comment 2, 6 and Justin's comment in #7Reception and influence.

5. Is it stable?

   No edit wars, etc:

6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?

   A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content:

   Haven't checked this yet. Captions in general seem good though.

   B. Images are provided if possible and are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:

   The images are used well, and this is one of the few articles I've seen that have used pull quotes well, with some caveats.

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

Comments

If the comment is numbered, it must be addressed for the article to pass, if it is bulleted, it's an optional suggestion or comment that you don't need to act on right now.
When I quote things, you can use ctrl+f to search the page for the specific line I quoted.

1. This page is huge at 150kb. It's a good problem to have, but we'll need to discuss what should be spun out. There are a number of places where it goes into too much detail for this biography, such as:

   -the paragraph on his time at elementary school. It's not a particularly important topic, all things considered, and it winds up breaking the flow of the prose.

   -The clause "where the translation of his political writings was delayed until the 2000s" doesn't seem to add much given that we already knew the French weren't hug on Chomsky, and the subordinate clause breaks the flow of the sentence.

2. The neutrality issue is not huge, and mostly is about folding criticism into the prose better so that a good balance is reached. See Wikipedia:Criticism#Integrated throughout the article and other sections for suggestions.

   -"This Chomsky-Herman thesis has been challenged by Sophal Ear" should not be hidden in a footnote. If it's an important enough criticism that it warrants mention, it should be discussed in running prose.

   There's a list, with citations, of scholars who disagree with Chomsky's theory of universal grammar in the reception section, but very little coverage of any of those challenges in the description of his work. These critiques should similarly be folded

3. The Yergin pull quote in the Linguistic Theory feels non-neutral. Partly because it is a highly laudatory quote near another laudatory quite in a section that doesn't much describe contemporary criticism of Chomsky's theories.
4. The Transformational generative grammar section is an inadequate summary of Transformational generative grammar.
5. Similarly, the Chomsky Hierarchy section does not cover a major point which is its application to linguistics. The references at Chomsky hierarchy have good information on its application to linguistics (which is also notably lacking from that article). I've put the two I think will be most useful below.
   1. Chomsky, Noam (1959). "On certain formal properties of grammars" (PDF). Information and Control. 2 (2): 137–167. doi:10.1016/S0019-9958(59)90362-6.
   2. Chomsky, Noam (1956). "Three models for the description of language" (PDF). IRE Transactions on Information Theory (2): 113–124. doi:10.1109/TIT.1956.1056813.
6. The use of quotes in this article needs some attention and I'd recommend reading WP:QUOTEFARM for more on some of my concerns:
   1. The end notes are all, save one, quotations. It's not clear what any of them add to the article. If they're for verification, they're much too long and should be bundled with the reference not separate from it.
   2. The use of pull quotes is, in some instances, very engaging and helpful for understanding the prose that is to come. Those good uses are washed out by the overwhelming number of pull quotes, which seem to increase as the article goes on. Some serve only as illustrations of things Chomsky has said which would be better summarized in context in the prose, rather than pulled away. I think the Chomsky on Vietnam, Marcotte, McGilvray, and Sperlich pull quotes are worth keeping. Barsky, Chomsky on Israel, and Szabo should not all be kept, but all serve important purposes so pick a couple to keep. I think the rest should be removed.
   3. The selection of quotes has neutrality problems per WP:IMPARTIAL. Some, like Sperlich, are rather matter-of-fact descriptions, even summaries, of the content and are extremely useful in that regard by providing readers an obvious snippet to get a sense of what is to come. Others, like McNeil quote in note K seem to only be laudatory which does not add substance, and leads to situations where, to balance out the praise, pull quotes like Halliday's get introduced which seek to introduce some criticism. However out of context these quotes just seem to editorialize the subject and rather than bringing about neutrality disrupt the encyclopedic tone of the article. By using quotes in this way without meaningful context moves the article away from describing disputes to engaging in them by highlighting some views and not others.
7. The bibliography section needs content. One possible way to select a subset is to provide citations important enough to have been mentioned in our article's prose.

• The use of hidden comments in the lead is really cool. Helps keep it focused and guides new editors to making helpful edits. I started to miss them further down!
• Any reason for that particular lead image? Some Wikipedias and the Commons page use File:Noam Chomsky portrait 2015.jpg. Nothing wrong with it as is. Full disclosure I edited the linked file a day or two ago so am probably biased.
• "established his role in public dissent" reads strange to me. I don't have a better wording though so hopefully someone comes along with an idea.
• The section "Anti-Vietnam War activism and rise to prominence: 1967–75" doesn't read very smoothly. I get the point of it however, so I think it satisfies the clear and concise criterion.
• You've probably noticed my pet is the linking in the article. That's partly because most problems have already been addressed. These link-related comments are mostly explaining why I've made some of the edits. I'm probably also a little overzealous, so revert changes you don't think are improvements.
  • In general, readers shouldn't have to follow a link to have an acronym defined. When first used, it's generally better to link the full word and then use the abbreviation subsequently.
  • Avoid having multiple links right next to each other as it can confuse readers when they click what looks like one link, only to find its two or more. A particular example from the prose is "Israel at Hashomer Hatzair's HaZore'a kibbutz."
  • In general link the more specific of two related terms in a sentence. Especially try to avoid linking terms that can be found in the lead of a nearby link. Fewer links are often better, and the more specific link often gives readers better context than general articles. Those who don't get what they need from the specific article will then be able to find the more general topic within, rather than following it from this article. Example: "Chomsky continued to frequent the office of the Yiddish anarchist journal Fraye Arbeter Shtime". Our article on Fraye Arbeter Shtime almost certainly links to our article on Yiddish in its first sentence, so readers are provided with much more context for what they will find in that article. There are frequent exceptions though so use best judgement.
  • In the sentence "In 1952 Chomsky published his first academic article" I'm not sure the link is particularly helpful but wanted others' thoughts.
• The sourcing is exemplary for a GA. However if you plan to take this to FA, you'll want to look into the work of John E. Joseph. Joseph is a major authority in the study of the history of American linguistics and his analysis of Chomsky's place in the history of linguistics is a glaring omission from this bibliography. I've provided citations for his three works on Chomsky below. If anyone needs help accessing them feel free to ask me or post at WP:REX.
  • Joseph, John E. (2002). From Whitney to Chomsky: Essays in the history of American linguistics. John Benjamins. doi:10.1075/sihols.103. ISBN 9789027275370.
  • Joseph, John E. (2010). "Chomsky's atavistic revolution (with a little help from his enemies)". In Kibbee, Douglas A. (ed.). Chomskyan (R)evolutions. pp. 1–18.
  • Joseph, John E. (2011). "Theories et politiques de Noam Chomsky [Political Theories of Noam Chomsky]". Langages (in French). 182 (2): 55--68. doi:10.3917/lang.182.0055.
• I feel like the early and later life sections are a somewhat arbitrary division. Is this standard in our larger biographical articles? Is there any way they could be combined into a single level-2 header rather than having two of them?
• In general the linguistic theory section is lacking. The caveat above notwithstanding, it's fine for GA but will need some work to get up to FA. In general the sections don't adequately explain the concepts or provide examples, and important points are missing. For example, one of the cornerstones of the minimalist program is bare phrase structure grammar which Chomsky developed and yet is notably absent from this section.
• The clause "he is largely responsible for establishing the field as a formal, natural science" while attributed in text, is pretty one sided. The neogrammarian hypothesis, for example, was among the first attempts to formalize the field of linguistics into a science. Suzanne Kemmer at Rice University, for instance, attributes to Osthoff and Brugmann (1878) the goal of establishing linguistics as a formal science: "O&B's aim is to ... emphasize the strongly rule-governed nature of one type of change, namely what might be termed 'ordinary sound change'. This property makes the study of language change amenable to the discovery of law-like principles, almost like those of the natural physical world. In effect, such law-like behavior makes it possible to see Linguistics as a science, which can develop its own empirical methodology for the discovery of general principles." (Kemmer 2009). Leonard Bloomfield in the second volume of Language published an article titled "A Set of Postulates for the Science of Language" in which the entire work was dedicated to describing and deriving formal principles for a scientific study of language. I won't go much deeper into the weeds, but essentially, the quote from McGilvray misrepresents the development of the field of linguistics.

Responses

In general, I've been trying to keep out of the GA process, as my interest is more in the long-term improvement of the article. However:

Re 6.1 above: "The end notes are all, save one, quotations. It's not clear what any of them add to the article. If they're for verification, they're much too long and should be bundled with the reference not separate from it."

No, no, no! Short quotes are OK within the long citations, but then only if there is only one short cite pointing to it, or if the quote is necessary to verify text supported by all the short cites pointing to it. Otherwise it is better to put them in a separate notes section, and I have been moving quotes out of the long citations for this reason. For a good example, see the Featured Article Balfour Declaration, where almost all the notes are quotations, or substantially quotations with just a brief description of their source. I do agree, though, with the point made elsewhere that there are too many quote boxes in the article.

--NSH001 (talk) 09:15, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I read through the relevant parts of the two Balfour Declaration FACs and the rationale for extended quotes was the highly controversial nature of the article, meaning that the quotes were foremost an aid to verifiability. Does this article use the quotes in the same way? There were at least two major objections to this format, but not ultimately presented as a blocker. Only case I can see for the endnotes is that the quotes are necessary for verifiability and, based on their length and usage, it making more sense to keep them in a separate notes section than to add them in-line at either the {{sfn}} or full citation. I'll work on the pull quotes. czar 16:42, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

I've struck the part regarding bundling of citations. I'm not too concerned about this point, but do still wonder what the value of most of them are. Note d is a good example of one that does add value; it presents a sequence of quotes along with their citation which together show not only that he has been called the "father of modern linguistics" but also provides context for a number of those statements. Others, like notes e-g seem to at best reproduce the content which was said in the sentence. Because end notes pull the reader out and far away from the prose, they need to add substantial information and context to justify that interruption. The sentence says that Chomsky's father fled Russia and moved to Baltimore, so a note saying that same thing is redundant; a citation with a page number serves the same function but without pulling the reader's attention. Bundling notes e,f,g, and citation 20 into a single note like was done with d would be a good compromise, though its worth considering if those quotes are really needed (they might be, I'm pretty ambivalent). Note k seems to mostly be a coat rack; it's not clear why such an extended quotation about Donald Knuth's life is relevant for an article on Chomsky other than the tangential intellectual connection. And note l doesn't seem that related to the sentence it is attached to. That sentence says he has generated controversy, which is a statement obvious to anyone who has read the article, doesn't really need a citation, ad the quote chosen is less a statement that he has generated controversy, and more a statement about hy he has done so which is better explained in context in the prose. I don't think they all need to go, but they are not all equally valuable and we should think about which ones are worth keeping. Wug·a·po·des​ 17:47, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, Wugapodes. My editing style is slow and contemplative, paying meticulous attention to detail, which is partly why I'm trying to stay out of the GA process. However, FWIW, the only note I've had anything to do with is note (e). That note is there because of some earlier edit-warring about whether Chomsky père moved from Ukraine, or from Russia. So the footnote gives some extra detail about where in Ukraine he moved from, his age when he moved, and some family details – useful information that's worth having, but put into a footnote to avoid cluttering the main body of the article. That's a good use of footnotes in my opinion. Most of the other notes were moved automatically out of the long citations when my ETVP script moved them all out of the article body, replacing them with short-form citations (see my talk page for the motivation behind that script). Someone added note (k) to a full citation in the biblio, but I manually moved it out into a separate note. Contrary to what you say, it is not a coat rack, but a quote from a single source. Although it's not my work, I quite like it, as it adds some human interest to an otherwise dry article (someone who takes along a maths textbook on his honeymoon!?)

The long list of linguistics critics with an equally long list of short cites bundled into a single note (#264) is horrible, and should be fixed, but I'm not going to touch it until I've done some more reading on linguistics.

Yes, the footnotes can certainly be reviewed, and good luck to anyone who does so. For myself, I expect to make substantial revision to the notes as part of the slow process of revising the article. I do like this use of notes, which fits a contentious article very well. For another example, see Israeli occupation of the West Bank, an article on which I've done some significant work, although I'm not the main author. --NSH001 (talk) 22:18, 11 August 2019 (UTC)؛

Results

On hold for two weeks until 24 August 2019. If most things are resolved by then I'm fine extending it as well. As I said above, I still need to do some checks of technical things, but most of my comments above should be pretty stable. Wug·a·po·des​ 23:20, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

• Thanks! Giving us room to thread below. re: archiving the older threads—is it standard to create a subpage as you did? I seen hatting but don't think I've seen that subpage practice before. czar 02:53, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
  • It was more a practical issue than a standard thing; the review size and the article size together were causing my browser some issues (and syntax highlighting just gave up). Plus the headers would still show up in the TOC when hatted which clutters the main talk page. It's by no means standard practice, and if anyone feels they should be restored feel free to move them back. My thinking was that, since it already has talk page archives and this is just a special talk page discussion, creating an archive page would be the easiest way to pare down this page and cause minimal problems elsewhere. Wug·a·po·des​ 05:14, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
• re: length (#1), do you think anything needs to be immediately split? The prose is at 56k, which given the breadth of Chomsky, makes sense. The WP:SIZESPLIT recommendation is to start serious pruning at 60k. I shortened re: elementary school and the Faurisson affair in France. czar 02:52, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Thinking some more, spinning things off isn't an immediate concern. The shortening of those sections helps somewhat, and I think deciding on what to spin out is better once the GA review is over since things will be changing. Wug·a·po·des​ 05:14, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
• Removed Yergin pull quote (#3) czar 02:52, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
• Added selected bibliography (#7) czar 04:52, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
• Pull quotes addressed (#6) czar 03:57, 20 August 2019 (UTC)
  • I like that you added some of the quotes back into the text. I think it actually makes the article better than just outright removing them. A good idea I'll keep in mind for other reviews. Wug·a·po·des​ 20:38, 20 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Also, @Czar:, I'm probably going to be busy the next few days and might not respond swiftly. Despite setting deadlines for my holds, I'm incredibly lax with them, so let me know if you need more time to work on the article especially since I may not be able to answer your questions quickly. Wug·a·po·des​ 20:41, 20 August 2019 (UTC)
• Resolved neutrality issues and distributed egregious list of critics (#2); revised endquotes (#6) czar 02:42, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
• Rewrote/reintroduced the linguistics concepts (#4 and #5) but it's tricky to walk the line between what is relevant to a general reader learning about Chomsky's life and the linguistics student who wants to know Chomsky's role in the development of jargon-intensive concepts. My stance is to sway towards the former, because the summary style split articles already exist specifically for the latter. czar 15:44, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
• Re: the bullet points (non-numbered),
  • I can't find it in writing, but I've usually seen the infobox image default to the most recent image with sufficient quality. No strong opinions on my end, but 2017 looks like the latest image we have.
  • Retitled sections
  • I'll review the additional links, but I think many of the new redlinks are just going to be rephrased out of existence
  • I didn't think any of the sequential bluelinks were particularly egregious
  • I think it's fine to link academic article as I wouldn't assume a reader has heard of one before
  • re: Fraye Arbeter Shtime (btw, I wrote that article ), I think it's important to give sufficient context for the reader within the existing article. For example, just seeing the name of the publication, I'd have no idea whether it's animal, vegetable, mineral, but with context that it's a Yiddish journal, knowing its name has more importance. That said, there are more proper nouns in this article that can be dispensed with altogether.
  • Happy to balance out the McGilvray quote re: establishing the field, if you have suggested source leads/material

czar 19:27, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

• @Wugapodes, okay! I believe I've resolved the major outstanding points and cleanup tags, if you have time to take a look. For the sake of wrapping this very long review, I might take any of the minor suggestions that warrant discussion to the talk page so they can continue ad hoc outside of the review. Thanks again for the thorough review! czar 18:55, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
  • The article looks good! The images all have suitable licenses (though one is nominated for deletion, that can be handled outside GA). I've passed the nomination. Wug·a·po·des​ 20:33, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.