[Lingtyp] linguistic standards

Tue Jul 7 02:50:54 UTC 2015

Very much agreed. We need to keep language-specific descriptive categories
apart from comparative concepts, and not assume that comparative concepts
need be "real" but rather need be well enough defined tools that are
crucial to consistent systematic cross-linguistic comparison. If
language-specific descriptivists uncritically adopt comparative concepts in
their descriptions we run into having translation grammars from
"typologese" and circular problems of only finding what we thought to look
for.

/Hedvig

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2015-07-07 1:14 GMT+10:00 Martin Haspelmath <haspelmath at eva.mpg.de>:

>  I would say that both Grev Corbett and Dan Everett are right:
>
> Dan is right that similar categories across languages are often not "the
> same". The Tagalog ang-Nominal is similar to a Subject in English, but it's
> not the same, and the German Future tense is similar to the French Future
> tense, but they are not "the same".
>
> Grev is right that different terms can obscure the similarities, and since
> we want to understand the similarities, we should see beyond the accidents
> of local traditions.
>
> Dan has in mind the level of descriptive categories (which are different
> across languages), and Grev has the in mind level of comparative concepts
> (which are a prerequisite for cross-linguistic generalizations).
>
> An interesting question is whether comparative concepts can/should be
> "standardized" (perhaps so), and whether one should urge grammar writers to
> use these standard comparative terms for the language-specific
> counterparts. I'm less sure about the latter, because I wouldn't want to
> send the message that there are only as many possible categories as
> typologists have set up comparative concepts.
>
> Regards,
> Martin
>
> P.S. And of course Bernhard Hurch is right as well: In a diverse world,
> different styles should be acceptable. But to be honest, globalized science
> is not a diverse world – it's supposed to be ruthlessly efficient, like
> globalized business. (In this way, and quite ironically, globalized
> language typology is part of the kind of process that is drastically
> reducing linguistic diversity.)
>
> On 06.07.15 08:29, Everett, Daniel wrote:
>
> Wrt the larger issue, Grev, about things being "the same" I am not so
> sanguine. Many people think there is a passive construction that is
> universal but I think that is mistaken. I am more concerned about over
> homogenization of typological/descriptive terms than LaTeX. But I am sure
> you are too. The problem is when people begin thinking that there are "same
> contructions" - this can become self-fulfilling. Not always perhaps.
>
>  Dan
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Jul 6, 2015, at 09:23, "g.corbett at surrey.ac.uk" <g.corbett at surrey.ac.uk>
> wrote:
>
>  I guess there is a small answer and a larger answer.
>
> small: changing commas to full stops for journal A, and then back to
> commas for journal B isn’t a great use of people’s time. Better we
> diversify our thinking rather than our reference formatting. Share the
> tools but diversify the products.
>
>  larger: we don’t always realise which things are the same and which are
> different, and that’s a waste too. For instance, there are Africanists who
> believe that ‘pluractionals' are special to the languages of Africa. But
> they are what others call ‘verbal number’ and you can find that all over.
>
>  And then there’s the worst case scenario:
> http://www.cse.lehigh.edu/~gtan/bug/localCopies/marsOrbiter
>
>  Very best, Grev
>
>
>  On 6 Jul 2015, at 13:30, Hurch, Bernhard (bernhard.hurch at uni-graz.at) <
> bernhard.hurch at uni-graz.at> wrote:
>
>  Can anybody tell me why everything must be standardized, unified,
> vereinheitlicht?
>
>  Can’t people live with diversification / in a diversified world?
>
>  Aren’t different styles the (necessary) result of different traditions,
> different discourse types and different views of the world?
>
>  I seem not to know what modern typology is about. Traditional typology
> presumably wasn’t like that.
>
>  Best wishes,
>
>  Bernhard
>
>
>
>  Am 06.07.2015 um 12:38 schrieb Martin Haspelmath <haspelmath at eva.mpg.de>:
>
>  On 04.07.15 08:37, Kilu von Prince wrote:
>
> Dear all,
>
>  I agree that acceptance of articles in LaTeX format should be more
> widespread than it is at the moment. I may add that the style guides of
> many linguistics journals could be significantly improved if they
> incorporated more of the established best-practices in typesetting that are
> automatically implemented by default LaTeX styles.
>
>
> Moreover, it would be better if linguistics journals agreed on a single
> style guide, see
> http://www.frank-m-richter.de/freescienceblog/2015/03/18/how-to-make-linguistics-publication-more-efficient-use-discipline-wide-style-rules/
>
> These issues should ideally be discussed by a committee of linguistics
> editors, such as the LSA's CeLxJ (http://celxj.org/).
>
> There will be a meeting of European linguistics editors just before the
> next SLE meeting in Leiden (see http://sle2015.eu/programme,
> "pre-conference mini-workshop"), which will primarily discuss other issues,
> but where we may decide to found such a committee of the SLE.
>
> Regards,
> Martin
>
>
>  Also, to share a related anecdote,  it is sometimes in fact the editors
> rather than the publisher who insist on a submission in .doc format. I once
> submitted an articles to a Benjamins journal. When the editors requested a
> .doc version, I asked them to speak with their publisher if they couldn't
> work with a LaTeX or PDF file. Then I learned that it was the editors
> themselves who needed the .doc file for their workflow during the revisions
> process. I'd like to appeal to editors to have mercy on their LaTeX-using
> authors and try to develop a workflow that is compatible with PDFs.
> Converting LaTeX to .doc is time-consuming and depressing.
>
>  Kind regards,
> Kilu
>
> On Sat, Jul 4, 2015 at 1:35 PM, Guillaume Jacques <rgyalrongskad at gmail.com
> > wrote:
>
>> Dear Don,
>>
>>  It is obvious to anyone who has learned LaTeX that word-processors like
>> "word" or "open office" are completely inadapted to the typesetting of
>> linguistics dissertations or articles. LaTeX is superior in particular for
>> handling aligned glossed examples (package gb4e), complex figures (tikz),
>> Stammbäume, cross-references, bibliography, complex scripts and of course
>> math formulas. I actually now require from all my new MA and PhD students
>> to write their dissertations in LaTeX (in general, three days are enough to
>> master the most important commands).
>>
>>  Fortunately, the number of linguistics journal and of publishers
>> accepting LaTeX is now growing year after year. At the present moment, most
>> if not all linguistics journals published by the following major publishers
>> accept LaTeX submissions (only those I have personnally tested; the list is
>> not exhaustive):
>>
>>  Mouton de Gruyter
>> Benjamins
>> Brill
>> Elsevier
>> MIT Press
>>
>>  I rarely have to convert my articles into word format anymore.
>>
>>  Publishers that are still lagging behind with LaTeX include (we should
>> collectively give them some pressure to catch up with the rest of the
>> world):
>> Cambridge University Press (for instance, Journal of the IPA)
>> Chicago University Press (IJAL)
>> (perhaps also Wiley)
>>
>>  Some journasl do not use LaTeX files, but will convert them for you
>> (from my personal experience, Anthropological Linguistics and Journal of
>> Chinese Linguistics)
>>
>>  If you submit to a collective volume for Mouton de Gruyter or
>> Benjamins, they should be able to handle a LaTeX submission even if most of
>> the volume is in word, but the editors of the volume may have to insist a
>> little bit.
>>
>>  Best wishes,
>>
>>  Guillaume
>>
>> 2015-07-04 11:22 GMT+02:00 Don Killian <donald.killian at helsinki.fi>:
>>
>>> Dear all,
>>>
>>> After fighting with Microsoft Word for the past few weeks, I was
>>> wondering if there is any way we can find additional standards for article
>>> and chapter submission?
>>>
>>> It seems that a majority of editors still have a fairly strict
>>> requirement of Microsoft Word and Times New Roman, even if the publisher
>>> itself is more open to other formats. Times New Roman is more flexible, but
>>> I have not had very much luck with alternatives to Word (such as Open
>>> Office or pdfs made from LaTeX).
>>>
>>> This is a problem for more than one reason. The biggest problem I can
>>> see (in addition to the fact that both Word as well as Times New Roman are
>>> proprietary!) is that the technological requirements do not actually
>>> support the formatting requirements we suggest. Neither Word nor Times New
>>> Roman support the IPA in its entirety.
>>>
>>> While these problems do not affect all linguists (such as those who do
>>> not have certain sounds in their languages they work on), it definitely
>>> affects plenty of others.
>>>
>>> For instance, there is no way to change glyph selection in Word, and <a>
>>> changes to <ɑ> when italicized. It is relatively common to italicize words
>>> when you mix languages in text. But if you are discussing a language which
>>> has both a and ɑ, this is problematic. Furthermore, Word has no way of
>>> rendering the MH or HM tonal contours properly, in any font. Those symbols
>>> are only supported in Charis SIL and Doulos SIL fonts, and Word renders
>>> them incorrectly.
>>>
>>> There are plenty of other difficulties (e.g. making a vowel chart), so
>>> these are just some examples.
>>>
>>> I realize the main reason for using Word/TNR is simplicity and what
>>> people are used to, but I do find it problematic that our technology
>>> requirements do not support or make it easy to deal with common problems in
>>> our field.
>>>
>>> Is there any way to change this? LaTeX does support almost everything I
>>> have ever needed, but I admit it is not always very easy to learn or use. I
>>> would be happy to hear alternative views or suggestions.
>>>
>>> Best,
>>>
>>> Don
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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