[Corpora-List] Re: SIL & MSLL references

From: FIDELHOLTZ_DOOCHIN_JAMES_LAWRENCE (jfidel@siu.buap.mx)
Date: Wed Sep 14 2005 - 00:05:39 MET DST

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    Mark P. Line escribió:

    > geoffrey.williams wrote:
    >>
    >> Maybe that this just shows that in using abbreviations which are
    >> unnecessarily giving extra work to our librarians and archivist as, as
    >> time goes by, some of our published bibiographies will become more
    >> obscure. I shall have to be more careful when I shorthand IJL and IJCL.
    >
    >
    > Actually, journal title abbreviations are very easy to find except when
    > the journal never had an ISSN number and was never cited often enough with
    > a particular abbreviation to make it into anybody's database.
    >
    > Published bibliographies are becoming less and less useful as more and
    > more citations are being listed online. Certainly, I wouldn't worry about
    > using abbreviations in ongoing work, since practically all new citations
    > are listed online. It's still a good idea to use the most current
    > abbreviation for a journal if there is one, though.
    >
    >
    > -- Mark
    >
    > Mark P. Line
    > Polymathix
    > San Antonio, TX
    >
    Hi, Mark & everyone,

    Actually, I have serious reservations about the use of abbreviations
    *without* an *accompanying* list of abbreviations. In fact, any linguist
    would be likely in the first instance to interpret 'SIL' as the Summer
    Institute of Linguistics, except, perhaps, in the given context, where the
    older coots among us will remember _Studies in Linguistics_. In any case, I
    always insist that why refer to something if the manner of referring makes
    it impossible to find (here I include initialization, undefined
    abbreviations and other such practices). Such practices, along with
    referring to barely or obscurely distributed papers is extremely elitist
    ('anybody who's anybody will know what I am referring to and probably have
    read it') and anti-academic (ie, anti-scientific).

    Well, enough ranting. Anyone who wants more can look up my previous rants
    on LinguistList about 10 years ago (1995) about the many evils of
    Initialization.

    Jim

    James L. Fidelholtz
    Posgrado en Ciencias del Lenguaje, ICSyH
    Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla MÉXICO



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