[Lingtyp] languages of scholarship
Martin Haspelmath
haspelmath at shh.mpg.de
Fri Jun 26 11:35:02 UTC 2020
Peter, are there actually linguistics papers published in Arabic? Is
Portuguese still being used to write about African languages? (It seems
to me that only English and French are relevant for African linguistics
these days.)
But to the larger point: Some Europeans may be proud of the various
other (European) languages they can read, but de facto, young linguists
are not competitive if they publish in other languages. And certainly,
papers in general linguistics usually have zero impact if they are not
written in English.
Sad as it may be, this is the reality of the 21st century. We may
deplore it, but we will hardly be able to change it. (What we *may* be
able to do is change the name we use for our common language: Globish.)
Martin
P.S. Thanks to Nigel and Harald for the additional info on "agreement" –
really useful!
Am 26.06.20 um 13:21 schrieb Peter Austin:
> 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
>> <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 <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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>
> --
> 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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>
>
> --
> Prof Peter K. Austin
> Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS
> Visiting Researcher, Oxford University
> Foundation Editor, EL Publishing
> Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society
>
> Department of Linguistics, SOAS
> Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square
> London WC1H 0XG
> United Kingdom
>
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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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