[Lingtyp] languages of scholarship

Fri Jun 26 11:31:47 UTC 2020

Let's not oversimplify things, Martin. I think the right answer is not to say 'X is the language of scholarship in century Y'. There certainly was a period when Latin was dominant but already in the early 17th century other languages were being used - e.g. Galileo's 'Dialogo' in 1632 - and until relatively recently there were several languages commonly used before the current dominance of English. The history is well discussed in Michael Gordin's Scientific Babel: The Language of Science from the Fall of Latin to the Rise of English Chicago: Chicago University Press (2015). What the OED does is document the various uses but it is not projecting modern usage back. And it is interesting that it cites a use of 'agreement' as equivalent to 'concord' from the same grammar by Lily that Cysouw cites. Also since there is at least one use of 'agreement' in a specialist journal (Murray in Transactions of the Philological Society') in 1879, I would conclude that Cysouw is just plain wrong in attributing the first modern use to Bloomfield.

On the more general issue, I agree with Bernhard and Peter. It is ironic that a couple of years ago I was asked if I would mind giving my invited plenary at a specialist conference on Italian linguistics in Italian because most of the native speakers had chosen to give their papers in 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
________________________________
From: Martin Haspelmath <haspelmath at shh.mpg.de>
Sent: Friday, June 26, 2020 12:07 PM
To: Nigel Vincent <nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk>; lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship

Yes, Nigel, but as you know: In the 16th-17th century, English was irrelevant because Latin was the language of scholarship in Europe.

In the 18th century, English was irrelevant because French was the language of scholarship.

In the 19th century, English was irrelevant because German was the primary language of linguistics (it was Karl Ferdinand Becker, for example, who made the distinction between "subject" and "object" popular).

So looking at the OED gives a wrong impression – it appears to project the current supremacy of English back into the past. (Apparently, the established Latin term "concord" needed to be explained to English readers.)

That's one of the reasons why we should call out common language "Globish". There's no real continuity with "English".

Martin

Am 26.06.20 um 11:58 schrieb Nigel Vincent:
But the term 'agreement' has been around in writings about grammar for centuries. Here is the relevant entry from the OED:

6. Grammar. The fact or condition of agreeing in number, gender, case, person, etc., with another element in the sentence or clause. Cf. concord n.1 6<https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/38345#eid8665709>.
1549   W. Lily Shorte Introd. Gram. (new ed.) To Rdr. sig. Aiii   Lette hym passe to the Concordes, to knowe the agreement of partes amonge theim selues.
1669   J. Milton Accedence 41   The agreement of words together in Number, Gender, Case, and Person, which is call'd Concord.
1787   H. Blair Lect. Rhetoric (ed. 3) I. viii. 200   When I say, in Latin, ‘Formosa fortis viri uxor’, it is only the agreement, in gender, number, and case, of the adjective ‘formosa’..with the substantive ‘uxor’..that declares the meaning.
1879   J. A. H. Murray in Trans. Philol. Soc. 619   In the English ‘the men push the stone,’ we have neither formal expression of the destination [of the action] nor formal agreement of verb and subject.
1979   Amer. Speech 1976 51 134   Of the nine problems covered, subject-verb agreement receives a thorough treatment.
2004   H. Barber et al. in M. Carreiras & C. Clifton On-line Study Sentence Comprehension xv. 315   Agreement in gender between nouns and adjectives is mandatory in Spanish.

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: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org><mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Martin Haspelmath <haspelmath at shh.mpg.de><mailto:haspelmath at shh.mpg.de>
Sent: Friday, June 26, 2020 11:43 AM
To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org><mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] languages of scholarship

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><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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--
Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at shh.mpg.de<mailto: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

--
Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at shh.mpg.de<mailto: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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