[Lingtyp] To write or not to write the examples

[Sandra Auderset]

Hi Ian,

I would recommend you include the examples. You are looking them up anyway and your readers might not have access to all the original sources you are using. And why not spare them the time to go find the example you’ve already collected?
If you are worried about the examples interrupting the flow of your text, you can always move them to an appendix (either in a separate document or at the end of your main document). Given that theses are mostly circulated online in PDF, I don’t think length is a real concern.

Best,
Sandra

—
Sandra Auderset
PhD Candidate | [she/her]
Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology
&
Department of Linguistics
University of California Santa Barbara

> On Thursday, Feb 25, 2021 at 16:10, Sebastian Nordhoff <sebastian.nordhoff at glottotopia.de (mailto:sebastian.nordhoff at glottotopia.de)> wrote:
> Dear Ian,
> take a reader-centric perspective. Will an example help the reader in
> getting your point? As for word order, I would trust that most linguists
> are able to make sense of SOV/SVO without additional illustrations. This
> might be different for more arcane features.
> Best wishes
> Sebastian
>
> On 2/25/21 4:05 PM, JOO, Ian [Student] wrote:
> > Dear typologists,
> >
> > For my doctoral thesis, I am planning to investigate 50+ linguistic
> > features in 50+ East Asian languages.
> > Approximately a third of the features are morphosyntactic features
> > (others being phonological or semantic).
> > For the morphosyntactic features, I am wondering whether it would be
> > desirable to write the example that illustrates the feature of each
> > language.
> > Suppose that I want to illustrate the basic word order feature of the
> > sample East Asian languages.
> > There are two options:
> >
> > *Option 1.* Write the examples and the citation information.
> >
> > Mandarin: SVO.
> >
> > (1) Example sentence. (Wang 2001:100)
> >
> > Korean: SOV.
> >
> > (2) Example sentence. (Kim 2002:200)
> >
> >
> > *Option 2.* Only write the citation information.
> >
> > Mandarin: SVO. (Wang 2001:100)
> >
> > Korean: SOV. (Kim 2002:200)
> >
> >
> > The advantage of Option 1 would be that the reader has a clearer view
> > into the feature of each language. The disadvantage is that my thesis
> > will be very long, likely more than 100,000 words, since there are 50+
> > sample languages, thus hundreds of example sentences.
> > The advantage of Option 2 will be that my thesis will be more concise,
> > foregoing a long list of examples. The disadvantage is that the reader
> > will have to consult the cited literature in order to actually see how
> > that feature is realized in each language.
> > As a reader, which of the two options would you find most helpful? I
> > would like to hear your opinion.
> >
> > From Hong Kong,
> > Ian
> >
> >
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