[Lingtyp] languages of scholarship

Fri Jun 26 12:08:03 UTC 2020

>
> 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.
>

But is it really because of attitudes? Or rather because very few people
are able to master dozens of languages to the level where they can fluently
read scholarly work (and keep track of everything published)? And dozens is
actually an understatement, if we truly abandon the idea of having the
lingua franca of science, it should rather be thousands. It would be great
to live in a world like that, but that's hardly possible (excellent work
will inevitably remain invisible), and I think the drawbacks of the
compartmentalization of science outweigh the benefits of linguistic
diversity and multicentric perspectives in this case.

Ulrich Ammon put forward a "somewhat utopian" idea of "International
English" -- a set of varieties of English where not only Anglophone
countries define the norms. I think that's very close to what Martin and
Ilja are proposing, and that something like that is actually the best
practically possible solution.

>
> On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 10:58, Ilja Seržant <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.
>> <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> <hartmut at ruc.dk>
>> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2020 11:22 AM
>> *To:* Nigel Vincent <nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk>
>> <nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk>; 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
>> <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>
>> <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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>>
>> --
>> 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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>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>
>
>
> --
> 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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