Language Log

Geoffrey Pullum, "Chomsky's Forever War", National Review 2/17/2022:

Few American linguists were puzzled when they saw the title of Randy Allen Harris’s book about events in their discipline between 1965 and 1975: “The Linguistics Wars.” Aca­demic feuds are famously bitter, but the hostilities that Harris chronicled were unusual even by the standards of the humanities and social sciences.

Studying and interviewing linguists the way an anthropologist might study the culture of a belligerent primitive tribe, Harris produced his insightful but also entertaining book in 1993. Oxford University Press has recently published a revised and expanded edition (2021). Typically, historiography of arcane in­tra­disciplinary wrangling among grammatical theorists would not get that far. The wide appeal of this book is probably due to its central character. Looming over the whole story is the charisma, influence, and personality of a single individual whose work utterly dominates the field: Noam Chomsky.

It is quite difficult to explain in nontechnical terms what triggered the linguistics wars, but let me try.

[This is a guest post by Conal Boyce]

Your wonderful arabesque on the world of 'kedi'* (and the disappearance of cats for a time — perhaps to a different planet, because they had grown weary of trying to school us humans?) reminded me that you are a connoisseur of languages plural, not just Chinese. In that connection, you might find my 2019 article** on Mendeleev interesting.

Below is a guest post by Christian DiCanio:

2019 was named the International Year of Indigenous Languages by UNESCO. My friends and colleagues at the recent Annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) have been on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media discussing what this means for Linguistics as a field. With respect to publishing, several journals have pushed to emphasize linguistic research on indigenous languages. The LSA's own flagship journal, Language, has put out a call for submissions on different indigenous languages of the world. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America has even put out a call for submissions on under-represented languages.

The title of a post at MedPage Today echoes the widely negative reaction to obviously blown calls in the recent NFL conference title games — "Is Journal Peer-Review Now Just a Game? Milton Packer wonders if the time has come for instant replay":

Many believe that there is something sacred about the process by which manuscripts undergo peer-review by journals. A rigorous study described in a thoughtful paper is sent out to leading experts, who read it carefully and provide unbiased feedback. The process is conducted with honor and in a timely manner.

It sounds nice, but most of the time, it does not happen that way.

For some comments about the process from the perspective of editors, reviewers, and authors, see the rest of Packer's post. His experience is in the biomedical field, but the situation is similar in other fields. Amazingly bad stuff is often published in respectable and even eminent journals, and genuinely insightful work can be delayed for years by painfully slow interactions with inattentive and dubiously competent reviewers.

I'm now at the second day of an event with the long name "Second International Workshop on Language Resources and Intelligence". The first day was at Beijing Language and Culture University, where they set up an impressive mural on the wall outside the workshop venue. Here's a picture of my colleague Jiahong Yuan standing in front of it:

The second day of the workshop, where I'm sitting at the moment, is being held at the Penn Wharton China Center.

Xavier Marquez, "Stalin as Reviewer #2", Abandoned Footnotes 117/2018:

Most people reading this blog probably know about Trofim Lysenko, who, with Stalin’s help, set back Soviet genetics in the late 1940s, preventing any discussion of Mendelian inheritance. Yet Stalin’s influence on Soviet scholarship after WWII was much more far reaching. He intervened in disputes concerning philosophy, physics, physiology, linguistics, and political economy; in fact one of the epithets by which he was sometimes referred in the press was “the coryphaeus of science”, i.e., the leader of the chorus of Soviet science. (Lysenko himself used the term in his eulogy for Stalin in 1953, though it was first used in 1939).

Most of these interventions were editorial in character. He edited pre-publication drafts of articles and books, often in close consultation with their authors and at great length (he was actually a decent editor), and occasionally provided feedback on published and unpublished work. And he did this despite the fact that he was the undisputed ruler of one of the victors of World War II, a country that was facing the gigantic task of reconstruction after one of the most destructive conflicts in human history. In short, he was the editor and reviewer from hell.

The story of Stalin’s intervention into Soviet linguistics is particularly funny, at least in the morbid way that anything from that time can be funny. And it also brings out some interesting points about how official ideological commitments both constrained and enabled Stalin and Stalinism.

I continue to be astonished by the sheer volume of the junk email I get from spam journals and organizers of spamferences, and by the linguistic ineptitude of the unprincipled responsible parties. I have been getting dozens per month, for a year or more: journal announcements, calls for papers, requests for conference attendance, subscription information, and invitations to editorial boards. Today I got a prestige invitation that began thus:

After careful evaluation and reading your article published in Journal of Logic, Language and Information entitled “On the Mathematical Foundations of", we decided to send you this invitation.

Clearly the careful evaluation and reading did not enable them to get to the end of my title (it does not end in of). And what was the invitation?

In light of your remarkable achievements in Critical Care, we would like to invite you to join the Editorial Board of Journal of Nursing.

[This post was written with input from Emily M. Bender, Claire Bowern, Andrew Garrett, Monica Macaulay, David Pesetsky, Leslie Saxon, Karen Shelby, Kristen Syrett, and Natasha Warner.]

Many linguists, and probably also many regular Language Log readers, will have by now heard about the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint recently filed by a set of faculty members currently or formerly associated with the University of Rochester’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. The complaint alleges a long-term pattern of sexual harassment and other abuses of power by another member of the BCS faculty, the mishandling of investigations into this pattern of abuse by the BCS and UR administrations, and evidence of retaliation against the complainants. Some key links, for those who haven’t yet seen them:

• EEOC complaint (9/1/2017)
• “She Was a Rising Star at a Major University. Then a Lecherous Professor Made Her Life Hell.” (Mother Jones, 9/8/2017)
• University statement on EEOC matter (9/9/2017)
• To the University Community regarding recent EEOC filing (email from UR President Joel Seligman)
• Statement by University of Rochester EEOC complainants (9/10/2017, in response to President Seligman’s email)
• “U. of Rochester Professor Accused of Harassment Apologizes for ‘Emotional Turmoil’” (Chronicle of Higher Education, 9/12/2017; updated 9/13/2017)

[Update, 9/18/2017: here are some more reports.

• "Tensions Grow at Rochester on Harassment Allegations" (Inside Higher Ed, 9/13/2017)
• "11 Women Accuse University Of Rochester Professor Of Sexual Harassment" (Huffington Post, 9/13/2017)
• "Scientists' sexual-harassment case sparks protests at University of Rochester" (Nature, 9/14/2017)
• "'An Example of the System Gone Awry'" (Slate, 9/14/2017)
• "UR student criticism of handling sexual harassment allegations mounts" (Democrat & Chronicle, 9/14/2017)
• "Sexual Harassment Charges Roil Elite University Department" (The New York Times, 9/15/2017)

… plus lots of reporting from the University of Rochester Campus Times, just two links to which Mark Liberman provided in a comment below. (end update)]

While we process the horror and come to terms with the publicity of this particular case, linguists everywhere are also mobilizing both to discuss and to do more to address the widespread problem of academic abuses of power, and sexual harassment in particular. We do not pretend to think that academia is somehow unique in any particular regard, but a key point that is emerging in these discussions is the recognition that its promotion procedures and incentives, its models of supervisory relationships, and its institutional structures may unfortunately serve to play mutually-reinforcing roles in attracting, fostering, and protecting abusers of power. We need to recognize that the whole field suffers when such abuse goes unchecked. Actions taken by those who would protect abusers distort the learning and research environment for victims, their allies, and our entire community.

Among the very first and most productive public discussions was this one initiated by Lauren Hall-Lew on her blog (9/9/2017). We know many department chairs have already addressed all members of their departments to express their strong commitment to working against sexual harassment and other abuses of power, and we think that this is an important discussion to begin in every department. A group of Linguistic Society of America members has been brought together by Claire Bowern to help draft an open letter to the LSA calling for attention and action from the Society, given the failures of our institutions (9/12/2017, with over 700 signatures as of this writing). The LSA, in turn, has responded to calls from both the Committee on the Status of Women in Linguistics and the Executive Committee and has announced a special workshop on “Sexism, Harassment, and Title IX Rights” for the 2018 Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City in January (9/12/2017).

[Update, 9/22/2017: The LSA Executive Committee has now officially responded to the open letter, now signed by over 1000 members of the LSA and broader linguistics community.]

And, of course, there are countless other discussions, some private, some more open, happening everywhere. Personal stories are being shared, from heartbreaking to horrific, and expressions of support for victims of abuse are everywhere. There is now a grassroots movement to foster an environment where linguists can have open discussions of this sort, sharing anonymously (or not) these kinds of stories so that the message gets out to our colleagues and junior members of the field that the problem affects more than just young women, and that there are options for responding.

All of this in just a few days. Linguists are good people. We can and will do better.

This is a guest post submitted by Nathan Sanders and colleagues. It's the text of an open letter to Neil deGrasse Tyson, who made a comment about linguists on Twitter not long ago.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrung my hands on Facebook over the proliferation of commercial publishers' Handbooks of Linguistics. These are usually priced out of individuals' budgets, being sold mostly to university libraries, and the thousands of hours of work poured into them by dedicated linguists are often lost behind a paywall, inaccessible to many of the people who would most like to read them.

That post prompted a flood of urgent discussion; it seemed like this was a thought that was being simultaneously had around the world. (Indeed, Kai von Fintel had posted the identical thought about six months prior; probably that butterfly was the ultimate cause of the veritable hurricane  that erupted on my feed.)

Long story short, a few weeks later we now have a proto-editorial board and are on to the next steps of identifying a venue and a business model for the series. Please check out our announcement below the fold, and follow along on our blog for updates as the series develops!

[This is a joint post by Eric Baković and Kai von Fintel, cross-posted at Kai's blog.]

We have been following an ongoing story involving Zombie Lingua with great interest. For those unaware of it, and perhaps for those with only some awareness of it, here is what we currently know.

It will help to start by identifying the main characters in this story:

• Islam Youssef, Associate Professor of English Linguistics at the University College of Southeast Norway,
• Zombie Lingua, the illegitimate continuation of the journal Lingua that Elsevier has propped up after Lingua's entire editorial team left to start the fair open access journal Glossa (in case you missed it, or need a refresher, see our first joint post with the story), and
• Bassil Mashaqba and Anas Huneety, both of the Department of English Language and Literature at The Hashemite University in Jordan (and both of whom received their PhD from the University of Salford).

OK, here we go.

I was recently moved (screaming and struggling, as four strong men held me down by my arms and legs) to a new web-based university email system designed and run by Microsoft: Office 365. Naturally, it's ill-designed slow-loading crap, burdened by misfeatures and pointless pop-ups that I do not want popping up, and it fails to allow various elementary operations that I often need (every upgrade is a downgrade). But that is not my topic today. I want to note one special sad consequence of moving to an entirely new system: all my previous email system's Bayesian machine learning about spam classification has been lost. The Office 365 system has had hardly any data to learn from as yet, so I am seeing some of the stuff that would have been coming to me all along if it had not been caught by machine learning and dumped in the spam bin. And what has truly amazed me is the daily flow of advertising for spamferences and junk journals.

Anyone familiar with academia will have noticed how often the high-prestige invited participants at conferences or summer schools and the holders of endowed professorships tend to be men. Well, not so much in linguistics, it would seem. Look at the list of the faculty members selected to hold the four prestigious endowed professorships at the 2017 Linguistic Institute, a large summer school sponsored by the Linguistic Society of America and hosted next year by the University of Kentucky:

• Collitz Professor: Joan Bybee (University of New Mexico)
• Sapir Professor: Penelope Eckert (Stanford University)
• Hale Professor: Lenore Grenoble (University of Chicago)
• Fillmore Professor: Julia Hirschberg (Columbia University)

One hundred percent women for the top invited professorships! And make no mistake, they are all very distinguished senior professors, known worldwide for their research. This isn't tokenism. It's the way our discipline has been developing over the past thirty years or so. Makes a feller proud to be a linguist.