[Lingtyp] languages of scholarship

Fri Jun 26 09:57:11 UTC 2020

Dear all,

if I may add another perspective to this. I think passive knowledge of 
other languages is, of course, important and if a paper does not cite an 
important paper on the topic written in a language other than English 
that is, of course, a good reason for sending the paper back for revision.

However, a very different topic is publishing new papers in languages 
other than English. I personally have strong reservations here. 
Linguistics is such a complicated matter and it is often so difficult to 
exactly understand others. I think one should not make the problem of 
mutual understanding even larger by publishing in languages other than 
English (unless there is absolutely no escape). Even more, perhaps, 
research English itself should also be different from the native English 
in that one should try to avoid dialectal, non-transparent idiomatic 
expressions, write in short sentences, etc.

If you publish in languages other than English then you need a sort of 
hierarchy of which languages are considered publishable (German, French, 
Russian ?, Latvian ??) and which are not. I think this issue is 
difficult to resolve in a fair way.

Best,

Ilja

Am 26.06.2020 um 11:39 schrieb Nigel Vincent:
> I am pleased that when Frans Plank and I edited a special issue of 
> 'Transactions of the Philological Society' on suppletion last year - 
> https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1467968x/2019/117/3 
> <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1467968x/2019/117/3> - we were 
> able to persuade the publishers to allow one of the articles to be 
> published in French.
> <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1467968x/2019/117/3>
> 	
> The Diachrony of Suppletion: Transactions of the Philological Society: 
> Vol 117, No 3 - Wiley Online Library 
> <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1467968x/2019/117/3>
> If the address matches an existing account you will receive an email 
> with instructions to retrieve your username
> onlinelibrary.wiley.com
>
>
>
> 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:* Hartmut Haberland <hartmut at ruc.dk>
> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 11:22 AM
> *To:* Nigel Vincent <nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk>; Wiemer, Bjoern 
> <wiemerb at uni-mainz.de>; Gilles Authier <gilles.authier at gmail.com>
> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org 
> <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> *Subject:* SV: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship
>
> 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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-- 
Ilja A. Seržant, postdoc
Project "Grammatical Universals"
Universität Leipzig (IPF 141199)
Nikolaistraße 6-10
04109 Leipzig

URL: http://home.uni-leipzig.de/serzant/

Tel.: + 49 341 97 37713
Room 5.22

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