[Lingtyp] To write or not to write the examples

[Luigi Talamo]

Dear Ian,
yes, go for an appendix in a digital format. The data you have gathered may be helpful for other scholars!

All the best,
Luigi

> On 28 Feb 2021, at 15:20, JOO, Ian [Student] <ian.joo at connect.polyu.hk> wrote:
> 
> Dear all,
> 
> thank you for your helpful comments regarding my dilemma between including or not including a comprehensive list of examples in my thesis. The majority’s opinion seems to be not including it, at least not in the thesis itself (but rather as a digital format). I will take that into consideration and tilt towards that direction.
> 
> Regards,
> Ian
> On 27 Feb 2021, 3:31 PM +0800, Reggie Duah <reggieduah at gmail.com>, wrote:
>> Dear Ian,
>> 
>> I don't know if you need to cite each language that has a particular feature you discuss. In most cases, it should be possible to cite some  languages as representative of the feature you are discussing and provide a comprehensive list of languages in the sample with references (in a table?). 
>> 
>> In terms of page and/or word  limit, this would depend on your university's requirements. In the case where you're limited by number of words or pages, you may consider using an appendix to include the relevant data and references which do not make it into the text, as some have suggested. 
>> 
>> Although your priority must include presenting data within your text rather than referring the reader to another source, if it is important not to overwhelm the reader with so much examples within the text.
>> 
>> It's a balancing act between providing helpful information, flow of text, University's requirements and the art of writing itself. 
>> 
>> Best regards, 
>> 
>> Reggie. 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Thu, 25 Feb 2021, 3:05 pm JOO, Ian [Student], <ian.joo at connect.polyu.hk> 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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> 
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