A Question of Reliability

[stoutfellow]

As an amateur linguist, I subscribe (but do not contribute) to the LINGUISTLIST mailing list. For the most part, I do this for the reviews; there are a number of books in my collection which I first heard of on this list.

The most recent review to hit my mailbox is not one which I will seek out. Nonetheless, I found the review very interesting, and I'd like to say a few words about it. The full review is here.

The book is Norwegian Examples in International Linguistics Literature, by Jan Engh. In it, Engh undertook a large-scale survey of the use of examples from Norwegian in books and articles on linguistics; the results of the survey are very disturbing. Engh found that a large number of those examples were flawed, often seriously.

• There were mistakes of attribution, confusing the two Norwegian standards (Bokmål and Nynorsk) with each other, and both with their sister languages, Danish and Swedish - sometimes within the same example!
• There were typographical errors, often introducing letters which do not even appear in Norwegian.
• There were misreferences - quotations which did not in fact appear in the supposed originals - and references drawing on non-native speakers.
• Most seriously, purported examples of Norwegian constructions were often archaic, marginally acceptable, or simply wrong. Some were things a Norwegian child might say, but not an adult, and some were utterly inappropriate to their supposed context.

Engh also shows, more briefly, that similar errors occur in connection with other languages - Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, German, Portuguese, and Hebrew. The errors are systematic, propagating from one text to another and surviving repeated editions of particular texts. The presence of refereeing doesn't seem to make much difference, either.

What is most disturbing is that this is happening in connection with Norwegian - a well-documented language, in current use in a developed country, which - among other things - provides its own supply of linguists! What, then, can we conclude about publications concerning less advantaged languages - Tzotzil, or Warlbiri, or !Kung? This is extremely disturbing news for the entire linguistic enterprise.

(Once again, my Jukebox throws up an apposite title....)