# Talk:Proto-Siouan language

This review is transcluded from Talk:Proto-Siouan language/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Nominator: ThaesOfereode (talk · contribs) 01:42, 22 June 2025 (UTC)
Reviewer: ZKevinTheCat (talk · contribs) 01:05, 5 July 2025 (UTC)

Interesting topic. Beginning the review.— ZKevinTheCat

Excellent. Looking forward to your comments. ThaesOfereode (talk) 01:39, 5 July 2025 (UTC)
@ZKevinTheCat: Responses below. Thanks for your patience on this one. ThaesOfereode (talk) 12:38, 9 July 2025 (UTC)
Suggestions and notes:

In the first paragraph of the lead it is mentioned that their origins along the American Eastern Seaboard are supported by toponymic and onomastic data, although this is not really mentioned anywhere in the rest of the article. Sure, it does mention that there are possibly some people groups from the atlantic and toponyms along the coast that are siouan, but these are reconciled with the Ohio River Valley hypothesis. The lead is inconsistent, basically. You could replace the sentence in the lead with their origins along the Eastern United States is supported by toponymic and onomastic data, which would be more correct.
Yep, I actually caught this one before I saw your comment and changed "origins" to "presence", which I think works here. ThaesOfereode (talk) 12:38, 9 July 2025 (UTC)
I would suggest deleting or expanding upon Several other terms for plants have helped linguists reconstruct other divisions within the greater Siouan family. It is very vague and is out of place compared to the rest of the article.
I've expanded a bit here. Hopefully this hits the mark for you. ThaesOfereode (talk) 12:38, 9 July 2025 (UTC)
I would consolidate the external relationships section a bit. That info would be better in the article for the whole family instead of the proto-language. It's not exactly off topic, but would be more appropriate in the former article in my opinion. You could move that part to the Siouan languages article and summarize it in this one. If you do this you should change the Further template link to Siouan languages rather than Yuchi. The page for Yuchi actually doesn't have much about its classification, so that would be a better target.
Totally right about the hatnote; I've removed it entirely. A minor pushback on the rest: I think this is the summed up version; anyone sprucing up the Siouan languages page or the Yuchi page would probably need more than two paragraphs each to express the relationship. But I don't think you can discuss the larger phylogenetic relationship without also discussing the relationship to the proto-language, nor discuss the proto-language without discussing possible links to other languages unless it doesn't give due weight or is a fringe theory. Macro-Siouan also has quite a bit of literature since it's been around so long. The purpose of this section is to telegraph to the reader possible ur-proto-languages. Yuchi's relationship is more widely accepted than Macro-Siouan's so I think it's best to keep them separated. ThaesOfereode (talk) 12:38, 9 July 2025 (UTC)
Also in the external relationships section, I would delete they were built on shakey data and small sets of comparanda. The wording comes off as a bit loaded and out of place for an encylopedia article. This would also be a good way to consolidate this section.
I'm going to push back again here: I don't think this is "loaded" or "out of place". The reader should know why these larger family constructions are not widely accepted. I don't think it's fair for us to express that these relationships are not widely accepted and then not answer the obvious question raised by stating it: "why?" These analyses are also by people who are now long dead (1856, 1871, the 1920s, etc.) and whose reputations are not sullied by having gotten something wrong. I don't think it's much different than discussing pseudoscientific alternatives to evolution on a page about evolution. ThaesOfereode (talk) 12:38, 9 July 2025 (UTC)
The Ohio Valley Siouan languages, comprising the attested Ofo and Biloxi languages... Tutelo is also an Ohio Valley Siouan language (at least according to Glottolog)
Good catch. Munro only says that Biloxi and Ofo had a different alignment so I've rephrased. ThaesOfereode (talk) 12:38, 9 July 2025 (UTC)
You should explain what Missouri-Valley Siouan includes
Good call; done. ThaesOfereode (talk) 12:38, 9 July 2025 (UTC)
Spot check:
[2] - good
[15] - good
[28] - good
[43] - good
[82] - good
Everything else looks alright. Your sources are all high-quality and from my spot check, accurate. Everything is organized and illustrated appropriately. Good work here. — ZKevinTheCat

Glad to see the spot check is clean on all counts. ThaesOfereode (talk) 12:38, 9 July 2025 (UTC)