This report covers the period from September 2020 until the beginning of June 2021 (for our previous year’s report see here).
In February 2021 Jorge Emilio Rosés Labrada joined Peter Austin and David Nathan as a co-editor of Language Documentation and Description with a special responsibility to develop and extend our portfolio of papers on Latin American languages, particularly to encourage authors to contribute submissions in Spanish. Jorge is Assistant Professor of Indigenous Languages Sustainability and Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Alberta, Canada. His research focuses primarily on language documentation, description, and revitalization of Indigenous languages in the Americas, especially those of the Northwest Amazon and the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. He also specialises in morphosyntax and historical-comparative linguistics. Previous editor Julia Sallabank has become a Consulting Editor, and is joined by Mark Turin, Associate Professor in Anthropology and Critical Indigenous Studies at the University of British Columbia, Canada; Jeff Good, Lenore Grenoble, and Anthony C. Woodbury who are continuing their roles as Consulting Editors. We have also restructured our Advisory Board and now include a wider range of locations among the membership.
In terms of publication activities, this has been a very busy time for EL Publishing during which we have produced two volumes of Language Documentation and Description:
1. Volume 19 (LDD 19) edited by Peter K. Austin contains 20 papers, with 10 being published on December 2020 and 10 published in March 2021. The volume contains one general research paper, two Language Contexts papers, and 17 Language Snapshot papers. Further details of the contents can be found in this blog post and this blog post.
2. Volume 20 (LDD 20) edited by Peter K. Austin. The first 7 papers in this volume were published in June 2021, and include one general research paper, four Language Snapshots, and two Language Contexts papers. Details of their contents can be found in this blog post, along with information about some of other accepted papers in this volume which will be published later in the year.
Particularly notable is the publication in LDD19 and LDD20 of our first paper in Spanish (on Sáliba by Jorge Emilio Rosés Labrada & Hortensia Estrada Ramírez), in French (on Baraïn by Joseph Lovestrand), and a section of a paper in an Indigenous language (on Kala Kawaw Ya by Alistair Harvey). The last is only the second linguistics publication ever in an Australian Indigenous language (see discussion here). The languages of Summary abstracts now also include Nepali, Urdu, Punjabi, Sunam, Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Russian, Tok Pisin, and Kala Kawaw Ya.
As in previous years, the majority of papers were written by early career researchers, ranging from MA students to post-doctoral researchers, and junior faculty members from a wide range of countries. All submissions were double-blind peer reviewed according to our usual processes, and accepted papers met or exceeded our expected international standards. It is pleasing to be able to continue to support such excellent work by early career researchers, for some of whom this was their first ever academic publication.
Since our previous annual report in August 2020, Language Documentation and Description has received 58 submissions (up from 30 in the previous year), of which 27 were accepted for publication, 9 are awaiting revision and re-submission, 17 are currently under review, 3 were rejected after review, and 1 was withdrawn due to the passing of the author. We are grateful to the following colleagues for their generous support in reviewing submissions over the past year (some of them more than once): Leonora Aditi, Nana Ama Agyeman, Marc Allassonnière-Tang, Julie Auger, Linda Barwick, Elena Bashir, Steven Bird, David Bradley, Bernard Caron, Marina Chumakina, Lorena Cordova, Alain Dawson, Wilson De Lima Silva, Willem de Reuse, Kleber de Silva, Scott DeLancey, Pierpaolo Di Carlo, Lise Dobrin, Owen Edwards, James Essegbey, Sidney da Silva Facundes, Anna-Maria Fehn, Peter Garrett, Karolina Grzech, Tjerk Hagemeijer, Charlotte Hemmings, Kristine Hildebrandt, Lynn Ho, Laura Horton, Andrew Hsiu, Marian Klamer, Masato Kobayashi, Martin Kohlberger, Frantisek Kratochvil, Philippe Martinez, Yaron Matras, Bradley McDonnell, Douglas McNaught, Marianne Mithun, Toshihide Nakayama, William O’Grady, Lee Pratchett, Romola Rassool, Keren Rice, Michael Riessler, Bonny Sands, Anju Saxena, Adam Schembri, Frank Seidel, David L. Shaul, Aaron Sonnenschein, Jesse Stewart, Lesley Stirling, Anna Stirr, Akira Takada, Yukinori Takubo, Tuuli Tuisk, Mark Turin, Gregory Urban, Nikolay Vakhtin, Pilar Valenzuela, Melanie Voljoen, Judith Voss, Lindsay Whaley, Josh Wilbur, Thomas Willet, Alena Witzlack, Anthony Woodbury, and Lynell Zogbo. Tom Castle provided magnificent support with design and layout for both volumes. General editorial advice throughout the year, for which we are extremely grateful, was provided by Jeff Good, Lenore Grenoble, Julia Sallabank, Mark Turin, and Anthony Woodbury.
It looks like the coming year will be equally busy for us. In addition to receiving and reviewing submissions for LDD 20, we are working on two special issues and a book:
- The social lives of linguistic legacy materials edited by Lise Dobrin & Saul Schwartz;
- Quotative constructions in Amazonian Languages edited by Suzi Lima & Tonjes Veenstra; and
- Writing click languages by Sheena Shah & Matthias Brenzinger.
We also expect to collaborate with the Foundation for Endangered Languages on the publication of their conference proceedings for 2019 and 2020. Comments and feedback on this report are welcome.
Peter K. Austin, Jorge Emilio Rosés Labrada, and David Nathan
London, Alberta, and Groote Eylandt, June 2021