[Lingtyp] languages of scholarship

Fri Jun 26 11:32:28 UTC 2020

I did a quick-and-dirty search over older (pre-1933) grammars (written in
English) and there are many grammars from at least the 1850s and on which
do use the term and concept agreement, e.g.

* O'Donovan, J. (1845) A Grammar of the Irish Language. Dublin: Hodges and
Smith.

"Of the Agreement of the Article with its Substantive, and of its
Collocation"

"Of the Collocation and Agreement of Pronouns with their Antecedents"

"Of the Agreement of a Verb with its Nominative Case"

...

* Davies, J. (1851) A Tahitian and English dictionary, with introductory
remarks on the Polynesian language, and a short grammar of the Tahitian
dialect. Tahiti: London Missionary Society.

"The rules of syntax are usually comprised under those of concord or
agreement of words, and those of government or dependence of words; many of
the English rules of concord and government will not apply to the Tahitian
dialect, but the following observations may be of some use."

"There is nothing inherent in the verb, (a few of the reduplicates only
excepted) to signify persons numbers non gender, and consequently the rules
about their concord or agreement with the verb have no place in Tahitian."

...

* Buckner, H. F. & G. Herrod. (1860) Grammar of the Maskwke, or Creek
Language. Marion, Alabama: Domestic and Indian Mission Board of the
Southern Baptists Convention.

"The part of Grammar called Syntax has reference to the agreement and
government of words; and of their proper arrangement in sentences.
Agreement is nothing more than the obedience which one word pays to the law
of the governing word ; as, in English, a verb agrees with its nominal live
case, because the nominative case governs the verb.
Government in language consists in the power which one Word has over
another, according to tho laws which are founded upon tho established use
of the best speakers or writers of the language."

Pada tanggal Jum, 26 Jun 2020 pukul 12.07 Martin Haspelmath <
haspelmath at shh.mpg.de> menulis:

> 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>
> <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Martin
> Haspelmath <haspelmath at shh.mpg.de> <haspelmath at shh.mpg.de>
> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 11:43 AM
> *To:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> <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>
> <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> <wiemerb at uni-mainz.de>;
> Gilles Authier <gilles.authier at gmail.com> <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>
> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 9:44 AM
> *To:* Gilles Authier <gilles.authier at gmail.com>; Nigel Vincent <
> nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk>
> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <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
> <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>
> *Cc:* 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> 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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>
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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
>
>
> --
> 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
>
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing list
> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>
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