seeking advice

[Lyle Campbell]

Dear All,

A second edition is being done of my textbook, 1998 Historical
Linguistics:   an Introduction .  Edinburgh University Press (and
1999 MIT Press) (Lyle Campbell), and I am writing to ask for advice.
Two questions have come up about which I would especially like to
hear opinions.

One is the recommendation that the spelling be changed from the
British spelling of the first edition (with -ise, -isation, -our
[colour], centre, tyre, programme, etc.) to follow American spelling
conventions (with -ize, -isation, -or, center, tire, program, etc.)
for the second.  What do you think?  What is your advice, your
opinion about this?  (Edinburgh University Press apparently do not
mind one way or the other now, though for the first edition they did
want British orthographic conventions to be followed.  Some suggest
it would be more accessible (= sell better?) with American spelling.
My guess is that for several other countries, which orthographic
conventions are followed may matter little, but I wonder to what
extent one or the other may be important for North America or for the
UK?  In particular, I wonder whether it makes a significant
difference in the US?  (The MIT edition has UK conventions, which
were commented on by some reviewers).)

The second recommendation is about the phonetic symbols used, and is
probably subject to even stronger feelings:  some suggest that the
book perhaps should be changed from the IPA symbols used to represent
examples in the first edition to American phonetic usage.  What do
you think?  What is your opinion here?  In particular, it would be
helpful to know whether IPA or American usage has any advantage or
disadvantage for students in North America.  Possibly the differences
are not so great (or at least frequent) except for some vowel symbols
and for certain fricatives and affricates.   A problem, though, comes
from the different conventions typically used in the traditions for
different language areas.  For example, to use [y] for IPA [j] in
Germanic examples just looks odd/wrong to some scholars.  However, to
use [j] for American [y] just seems wrong to others when used to
represent various American Indian languages, and various Romance
languages, and others, where the scholarly tradition is with "y" not
"j" -- (some readers probably noticed some inconsistency in this
regard in this in the first edition, alas -- sorry).  What advice
would you offer?
        There is a possible compromise, with, say IPA representations
given first and then with the forms repeated in American phonetics in
parentheses adjacent to the IPA forms.  (This might be OK for some
forms, but it could get cumbersome when very many examples requiring
phonetic notation are given in any one place.)   My question is
whether there is enough advantage to make giving both IPA and
American usage worthwhile?

Finally, I would be very happy to receive any comments, advice,
recommendations, or corrections which would be useful for the second
edition.  (As a preview to the changes anticipated for the 2nd
edition, I hope to correct the typos; I expect to cull out some of
the less accessible examples and substitute hopefully better ones; I
expect to make fairly substantial changes in the exercises of several
chapters, taking out some that don't seem to work so well and also
adding several new ones to give a better range from easy to
intermediate to more challenging cases.  Also, I hope to update and
improve the discussion of a few topics.)  Any feedback will be
gratefully received.

Many thanks in advance,
Lyle






--
Professor Lyle Campbell,
Dept. of Linguistics
University of Canterbury
Christchurch, New Zealand
Fax:   64-3-364-2969
Phone: 64-3-364-2242 (office), 64-3-364-2089 (Linguistics dept)
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