[Lingtyp] languages of scholarship

Fri Jun 26 11:26:30 UTC 2020

I also want to add that publishing in several languages is an extremely useful intellectual exercise and leads to self-discipline and self-awareness when you realize that what you have written in one language simply does not work in one of the others – a good reason to rethink what you have written.
Hartmut

Fra: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> På vegne af Peter Austin
Sendt: 26. juni 2020 13:22
Til: Ilja Seržant <ilja.serzants at uni-leipzig.de>
Cc: <LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG> <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship

With all due respect, I find it incredible that someone could write: "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). ... 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".

There are hundreds of excellent research papers in linguistics and related fields published annually in languages like Chinese, Japanese and Arabic, much of which never pierces the consciousness of English-only researchers because of attitudes like having language hierarchies composed entirely of European languages. Sheesh.

Peter

On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 10:58, Ilja Seržant <ilja.serzants at uni-leipzig.de<mailto:ilja.serzants at uni-leipzig.de>> wrote:

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 - we were able to persuade the publishers to allow one of the articles to be published in French.
[Billede fjernet af afsender.]<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<http://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><mailto:hartmut at ruc.dk>
Sent: Friday, June 26, 2020 11:22 AM
To: Nigel Vincent <nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk><mailto:nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk>; Wiemer, Bjoern <wiemerb at uni-mainz.de><mailto:wiemerb at uni-mainz.de>; Gilles Authier <gilles.authier at gmail.com><mailto:gilles.authier at gmail.com>
Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org><mailto: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><mailto: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><mailto:wiemerb at uni-mainz.de>; Gilles Authier <gilles.authier at gmail.com><mailto:gilles.authier at gmail.com>
Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto: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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Prof Peter K. Austin
Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS
Visiting Researcher, Oxford University
Foundation Editor, EL Publishing
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Department of Linguistics, SOAS
Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square
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