[Corpora-List] Re: SIL & MSLL references

[FIDELHOLTZ_DOOCHIN_JAMES_LAWRENCE]

Mark P. Line escribió: 

> geoffrey.williams wrote:
>>
>> Maybe that this just shows that in using abbreviations which are
>> unnecessarily giving extra work to our librarians and archivist as, as
>> time goes by, some of our published bibiographies will become more
>> obscure. I shall have to be more careful when I shorthand IJL and IJCL.
>  
> 
> Actually, journal title abbreviations are very easy to find except when
> the journal never had an ISSN number and was never cited often enough with
> a particular abbreviation to make it into anybody's database. 
> 
> Published bibliographies are becoming less and less useful as more and
> more citations are being listed online. Certainly, I wouldn't worry about
> using abbreviations in ongoing work, since practically all new citations
> are listed online. It's still a good idea to use the most current
> abbreviation for a journal if there is one, though. 
> 
> 
> -- Mark 
> 
> Mark P. Line
> Polymathix
> San Antonio, TX 
> 
Hi, Mark & everyone, 

Actually, I have serious reservations about the use of abbreviations 
*without* an *accompanying* list of abbreviations.  In fact, any linguist 
would be likely in the first instance to interpret 'SIL' as the Summer 
Institute of Linguistics, except, perhaps, in the given context, where the 
older coots among us will remember _Studies in Linguistics_.  In any case, I 
always insist that why refer to something if the manner of referring makes 
it impossible to find (here I include initialization, undefined 
abbreviations and other such practices).  Such practices, along with 
referring to barely or obscurely distributed papers is extremely elitist 
('anybody who's anybody will know what I am referring to and probably have 
read it') and anti-academic (ie, anti-scientific). 

Well, enough ranting.  Anyone who wants more can look up my previous rants 
on LinguistList about 10 years ago (1995) about the many evils of 
Initialization. 

Jim 

James L. Fidelholtz
Posgrado en Ciencias del Lenguaje, ICSyH
Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla     MÉXICO