[Lingtyp] languages of scholarship

Fri Jun 26 09:43:09 UTC 2020

Maybe if you're Danish (like Hartmut and Nigel), or were otherwise 
raised in some small (and rich) European country, then understanding 
many of these languages is kind of natural.

But somehow asking *all linguists* to be like this seems Eurocentric to 
me. Korean/Chinese linguists (like Ian Joo) or African linguists will 
simply not have the chance to encounter so many languages in which other 
linguists have written relevant work. (In Africa, even big languages 
like Hausa and Yoruba are rarely used for academic purposes, it seems.)

On the other hand, it's also ethnocentric to only cite work by American 
linguists and somehow assume that there is nothing else of relevance.

So what's the solution? I think it must be (i) practical universalism 
(only use English/Globish), combined with (ii) awareness of the 
parochialism of English-language traditions.

As an example of the latter, consider the term "agreement": As I 
realized only after reading Cysouw (2011) 
(https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/17668/1/thli.2011.011.pdf), this term 
did not exist in linguistics before Bloomfield (1933), and the relevant 
concepts didn't exist earlier either. Same with "grammatical relation" 
(due to Chomsky 1965), "focus" (due to Chomsky 1970), and quite a few 
other terms. Natural as these terms seem to us, they may not be the 
results of scientific discoveries that we made, but mostly due to the 
spread of the English language (and the influence of a few linguists 
working at rich U.S. universities).

Universalism and parochialism are in a certain tension, but I think we 
really need to adopt both at the same time if we want to progress in our 
scientific understanding of language(s).

Martin

Am 26.06.20 um 11:22 schrieb Hartmut Haberland:
>
> Et si l'article porte sur le grec moderne, il doit souvent se référer 
> à la tradition grammaticale grecque (Tzartzanos) ou française 
> (Roussel, Mirambel). Restricting oneself to discourses in /one/ 
> language is myopic. Most linguists really need to read more than just 
> two or three languages to keep up with the relevant literature, but 
> how many do?
>
> (Robert E. Wall said in the famous McCawley Festschrift, “More people 
> can make out what it is about in French than actually read it”.)
>
> To take a concrete example: /Acta Linguistica Hafniensia /was founded 
> in 1939 and its first issue contained papers in German, French and 
> English. Today, it still calls itself an ‘international journal’, but 
> now practically all papers are in English, with very few exceptions. 
> However, if you take a random issue (51(1), May 2019), apart from one 
> paper specifically dealing with English, there are references to 
> literature in German, French, Greek, Norwegian, and Swedish. So 
> linguists are at least not passively monolingual.
>
> Hartmut Haberland
>
> *Fra:*Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> *På vegne af 
> *Nigel Vincent
> *Sendt:* 26. juni 2020 10:04
> *Til:* Wiemer, Bjoern <wiemerb at uni-mainz.de>; Gilles Authier 
> <gilles.authier at gmail.com>
> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> *Emne:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship
>
> Et si l'article est sur une langue romane mais les références jugées 
> indispensables sont écrites en allemand ou en danois … ?
>
> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE
> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics
> The University of Manchester
>
> Linguistics & English Language
> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures
>
> The University of Manchester
>
> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> *From:*Wiemer, Bjoern <wiemerb at uni-mainz.de <mailto:wiemerb at uni-mainz.de>>
> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM
> *To:* Gilles Authier <gilles.authier at gmail.com 
> <mailto:gilles.authier at gmail.com>>; Nigel Vincent 
> <nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk <mailto:nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk>>
> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org 
> <mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> 
> <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org 
> <mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>>
> *Subject:* AW: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship
>
> Je pense que oui…  Actually, the same applies to articles on (a 
> language from) other language groups (e.g., Slavic) or subgroups 
> (e.g., Scandinavian)…
>
> BW
>
> *Von:*Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] *Im 
> Auftrag von *Gilles Authier
> *Gesendet:* Freitag, 26. Juni 2020 09:35
> *An:* Nigel Vincent <nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk 
> <mailto:nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk>>
> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org 
> <mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> *Betreff:* Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship
>
> Si l'article est sur une langue romane et que les références jugées 
> indispensables sont écrites dans une langue romane, il me semblerait 
> devoir être rejeté, oui.
>
> GA
>
> On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:52 AM Nigel Vincent 
> <nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk 
> <mailto:nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk>> wrote:
>
>     A related question to Ian's that I have sometimes thought about
>     concerns the languages a researcher should be able to read in
>     order to access relevant scholarship. Should, for example, a paper
>     be rejected or revisions asked for if someone writing in English
>     on a general linguistic topic has not cited relevant work written
>     in a language other than English?
>
>     Nigel
>
>     Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE
>     Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics
>     The University of Manchester
>
>     Linguistics & English Language
>     School of Arts, Languages and Cultures
>
>     The University of Manchester
>
>     https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html
>
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-- 
Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at shh.mpg.de)
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10	
D-07745 Jena
&
Leipzig University
Institut fuer Anglistik
IPF 141199
D-04081 Leipzig

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