Hi. This will be my second attempt. The first one seems to have sailed off to the land of lost socks. I'm a middle-aged American with some experience in copyediting. Here goes:
On Mar 2, 11:48 am, "Petr Hrubis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hello Everyone, > > As I'm not a native speaker of English (I've never been to a country > in which English is the official language...well, in fact, I was on an > eleven-day school trip in Britain many years ago, but I guess that > doesn't count) I'd like to ask for help. > > I have been co-working on a Wikipedia article and I'd like somebody to > check the following article for grammatical and stylistic mistakes. > Thanks a lot in advance! :-) > > The link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Den%C3%A9-Caucasian_languages > > Here's a copy of the Introduction: > > The Dené-Caucasian (also called Sino-Caucasian or Dené-Sino-Caucasian) > language family is a conjectural language superfamily containing the > Basque1, North Caucasian2, Yenisseian3, Burushaski, Sino-Tibetan, and > Na-Dené4 languages 5. The numbers should, of course, be superscript. And close up number five. Otherwise, put them in parentheses with a space before. As it stands I at first took the numbers to be part of the language names. > The first glimpses of the hypothesis appeared in the > works of such scholars as Robert Bleichsteiner, Karl Bouda, E. J. > Furnée, René Lafon, Edward Sapir, Robert Shafer, Morris Swadesh, > Olivier Guy Tailleur, Vladimir N. Toporov, Alfredo Trombetti and > others. However, in the 1980s, it was Sergei Starostin who, using > strict linguistic methods (regular phonological correspondences, > reconstructions, glottochronology comma > etc.) first put the ideas on a > firmer ground. I think you want "on a firmer footing." That's a cliche, and ordinarily to be avoided as such, but used sparingly they don't detract, in my humble opinion. "On firmer ground" (no "a") would be OK, too. > Despite the increasing amount of lexical and > morphological evidence, the proponents of Dené-Caucasian > still more often consider their > hypothesis "an explanatory model" rather than a final and definitive > solution to the problem of possible deeper genetic links among the > groups. > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Notes > Put a period after each numeral heading below, and leave a blank line between parts. > 1 It has been suggested that the ancient Aquitanian and maybe also > Iberian languages Unclear. I can't tell whether this is COIK error (Clear Only If Known) or overly optimistic use of the conjunction. If the Iberian you refer to is the ancient one, if ancient one there be, it should be, "...the ancient Aquitanian and maybe also the ancient Iberian languages...". If not, then, "...the ancient Aquitanian and maybe also the Iberian languages...", and the next word has to change from "were" to "are." I don't know the facts here, but that works to our advantage. The above will seem fussy to many people, but clarity trumps concision every time, sez me. > were related to Basque, belonging to the so-called > Vasconic language family. John D. Bengtson proposes a so-called > Vasco-Caucasian family, comprising the Vasconic and North Caucasian > languages, and a so-called Macro-Caucasian family, adding Burushaski > to the former two. > 2 The North Caucasian family consists of two distinct subbranches: "sub-branches" > Northeast Caucasian (or Nakh-Daghestanian) and Northwest Caucasian (or > Abkhazo-Adyghean). The ancient Hurrian, Urartian and sometimes > Etruscan Same problem as above. If "ancient" applies to both Hurrian and Urartian, "Ancient Hurrian and Urartian, and sometimes Etruscan,...". Delete the "the" at the head of the sentence. > have been proposed to belong the the former, "Proposed to belong" is a clinker. I suggest, "It has been proposed that ancient Hurrian...Etruscan belong to the former,...". > whereas the > latter might include the ancient Hattic language as well. As well as what? > A brand-new > branch has been tentatively proposed by Vitaliy Shevoroshkin, > consisting of the Salishan, the Wakashan, and maybe a few other North > American language families.. Superfluous period. > 3 Edward Vajda has suggested that Tlingit, Eyak and the Athabaskan > languages This implies that Tlingit and Eyak are individual languages (for the purposes of this sentence) and not language groups. If so, fine. > are closely related to the Yeniseian languages, rejecting > any genetic relationship of the former to Haida. > 4 Hans-Jürgen Pinnow has recently revived the idea of Haida's Na-Dené > affiliation.. Superfluous period. > 5 The ancient languages mentioned above have rather uncertain > positions within North Caucasian and Dené-Caucasian. This is mainly > due to the > severe paucity and stereotypical character of linguistic > material (cf. Etruscan), or rather uncertain semantics or phonetics > (cf. Sumerian, which might be a separate branch of Dené-Caucasian > according to Bengtson). For these reasons it should be noted that > other hypotheses exist: Sumerian and/or Etruscan are thought by some > to be Nostratic languages, while others consider Sumerian to be an > Austric, if not specifically Munda comma > language. I didn't check the spellings of the proper nouns I've never seen before, and I'll admit there were quite a few. Hope this helps. Post a revised version, and I will do this again, if you like. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Correct my English" group. 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