Behind the Scenes

When I have taught undergraduate classes on research methods in the past, I have devoted a week to demystifying the lifecycle of a research article by sharing samples of my own work, complete with reviewer comments and editorial correspondence. When an author is on the receiving end of a long list of suggested edits, it can be easy to focus on all the work of research and writing left to be done. But looking at an editorial exchange from the outside—from a record in an archive, for instance—can have the salutary effect of centering the labor of the editorial team instead.

This entry continues my exploration of the Stanford Language Universals Project correspondence, taking a detailed look at a series of letters between Arthur Schwartz and Edith Moravcsik sent over the course of 1971. Moravcsik, Project member and editor of its Working Papers, used most of the correspondence to develop a conference paper Schwartz had given that May on “General Aspects of Relative Clause Formation” for publication in the series. The letters contain detailed line-by-line discussion of both linguistic problems and matters of style. Schwartz adopted almost all of Moravcsik’s suggestions, though her name was not singled out for acknowledgment in the final published version of the paper (Schwartz, 1971).

In a letter dated June 22nd, Moravcsik indicated that further substantive contributions had been made to the review process by the Project’s secretary, Vicky Shu, concerning two sample sentences given to show that “a clause type that precedes the head [noun] can sometimes follow it” (Schwartz, 1971, p. 144). The examples that appear in the final published version of the paper are:

(i)(a) wo you maile shu de pengyou

I have bought book friend

‘I have a friend who bought books’

(b) wo you pengyou maile shu

I have friend bought book

‘I have a friend who bought books’

Moravcsik’s letter shows how these examples came to be included:

On page 5 our secretary, a native speaker of Mandarin, corrected your gloss in sentences (i)(a) and (b) from “buys” to “bought”. By the way she also thinks (i)(b) and, on page 6, (ii)(b) are awkward.

Schwartz responded to this critique on June 29th with partial acceptance:

(8) pp. 5-6: with respect to the Mandarin translation, I accept your secretary’s sense. As for the awkwardness of the supposedly shifted clause construction, I can only report that other speakers…think it possible. But significantly, it is at least “possible” because in other contexts, it is just “not Mandarin” to have the clause follow on the head; so, that you predicate somehow admits the alternants—and that is all I need to make my point.

Later that December, Moravcsik relayed another suggestion that Shu had made on a separate paper, which was published in 1972 and entitled, “The VP-Constituent of SVO Languages.”

Stanford University, Language Universals Project, records 1967-1976, SCO449, Box 1, Binder 3, titled “Language Universals Project 1971 Correspondence.”

Shu’s concern about the sample sentences “my friend BU gave me the tickets and my friend BU BA tickets gave me”—namely, that “BU in this case cannot concur with the past tense”—was addressed in Schwartz’ revision. He changed “gave” to “gives” in both cases, per Moravcsik’s suggestion.

When I asked Moravcsik about Shu’s contributions to the Project via e-mail last April, she told me that Shu “was a prominent member of the entire endeavor.” Not only did she bring a command of multiple languages to the table, Moravcsik mentioned that

…she single-handedly typed the extensive and often highly technical texts of the four volumes published as Universals of Human Language…before the “computer age”: she used an electric typewriter.

I bring out this example to underscore some of the central points of the volume I had the pleasure of co-editing on Invisible Labour in Modern Science last year. Scientific contributions come in many forms. Concealing some of those contributions in research outputs (with implications for the historical record) not only aligns with social and political hierarchies, it also expresses key logics and values of the scientific enterprise (e.g. a commitment to “objective” self-denial).

This case, in particular, gives us the opportunity to reconsider the valuation of editorial and secretarial labor in the production of scientific knowledge. More than that, it encourages reflection on the expertise claimed by speakers versus analysts of a given language—a longstanding point of tension and negotiation in the history of the language sciences.

Works cited:

Bangham, Jenny, Xan Chacko & Judith Kaplan. 2022. Invisible Labour in Modern Science. London: Rowman & Littlefield.

Schwartz, Arthur. 1971 “General Aspects of Relative Clause Formation.” Working Papers in Language Universals 6: 139-171.

Schwartz, Arthur. 1972. “The VP-Constituent of SVO Languages.” Working Papers in Language Universals 8: 21-54.