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<div dir="auto"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman">Dear typologists,</span><br>
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<span style="font-family:Times New Roman">For my doctoral thesis, I am planning to investigate 50+ linguistic features in 50+ East Asian languages.</span><br>
<span style="font-family:Times New Roman">Approximately a third of the features are morphosyntactic features (others being phonological or semantic).</span><br>
<span style="font-family:Times New Roman">For the morphosyntactic features, I am wondering whether it would be desirable to write the example that illustrates the feature of each language.</span><br>
<span style="font-family:Times New Roman">Suppose that I want to illustrate the basic word order feature of the sample East Asian languages.</span><br>
<span style="font-family:Times New Roman">There are two options:</span><br>
<br>
<strong style="font-family:Times New Roman">Option 1.</strong><span style="font-family:Times New Roman"> Write the examples and the citation information.</span></div>
<blockquote class="spark_indent" style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;">
<div style="indent-size: 1"><span style="color:var(--textColor);background-color:var(--backgroundColor);font-family:Times New Roman">Mandarin: SVO.</span></div>
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<div style="indent-size: 1"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman">(1) Example sentence. (Wang 2001:100)</span></div>
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<div style="indent-size: 1"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman">Korean: SOV.</span></div>
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<div style="indent-size: 1"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman">(2) Example sentence. (Kim 2002:200)</span></div>
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<strong style="font-family:Times New Roman">Option 2.</strong><span style="font-family:Times New Roman"> Only write the citation information.</span></div>
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<div style="indent-size: 1"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman">Mandarin: SVO. (Wang 2001:100)</span></div>
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<div style="indent-size: 1"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman">Korean: SOV. (Kim 2002:200)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family:Times New Roman">The advantage of Option 1 would be that the reader has a clearer view into the feature of each language. The disadvantage is that my thesis will be very long, likely more than 100,000 words, since there are 50+ sample
languages, thus hundreds of example sentences.</span><br>
<span style="font-family:Times New Roman">The advantage of Option 2 will be that my thesis will be more concise, foregoing a long list of examples. The disadvantage is that the reader will have to consult the cited literature in order to actually see how that
feature is realized in each language.</span><br>
<span style="font-family:Times New Roman">As a reader, which of the two options would you find most helpful? I would like to hear your opinion.</span></div>
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From Hong Kong,
<div dir="auto">Ian</div>
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