Reviews of Peer-Reviewed Journals in the Humanities and Social Sciences
We give you the scuttlebutt on academic journals—aiding you in selecting the right journal for publication—in reviews that are sometimes snarky, sometimes lengthy, always helpful. Written by Princeton University graduate students and Wendy Laura Belcher.
Linguistic Typology
For those interested in publishing articles that discuss variation in a linguistic subfield across spoken or signed languages from either a theoretical or descriptive perspective.
Linguistic Typology is a field journal within the discipline of linguistics. The journal covers a wide range of topics related to linguistic typology and publishes studies on language variation from different perspectives. The research articles investigate aspects of the entire linguistic spectrum, with sound and grammar being more prominent than lexicon and discourse. Articles can also cover either a single language (family) or work across several languages. Most studies provide a qualitative discussion of the data rather than a large-scale quantitative analysis, which also allows for the publication of exploratory studies. That said, Linguistic Typology also publishes extensive studies with emphasis on theoretical considerations. In addition to traditional research articles, the journal also recently began accepting new types of essays, including language profiles and methodological contributions.
The journal was founded in 1997 by Frans Plank and is published by De Gruyter Mouton for the Association for Linguistic Typology (ALT). It is also associated with a biannual conference and has a very active community connected via a mailing list. Current debates within the field are featured in the form of short commentary articles. The discussions on the mailing list can be vigorous and often mirror opposing opinions. This part of an active dialogue is also reflected in some articles, which respond directly to the reviewers’ comments in the footnotes. Linguistic Typology seems to be an excellent journal to publish in as a junior or senior researcher in linguistics.
Review: May 2021
Word count: Maximum of 15,000 words, inclusive of references
Issues per year: Three
Current volume number: 25
Articles per year: 7–12
Citation style: The publisher, De Gruyter Mouton, has its own journal style, available as a PDF on the journal’s submission requirements page
Abstract length (if required): 100–200 words
Upcoming special issues (if available): None
Relevant editors: Maria Koptjevskaja Tamm
Open access? The journal is “hybrid open access,” meaning that authors have the option to pay €2,000 to make their articles freely available
Online? Yes
Submission method: Online
Submission fee: None
Bibliography (articles in the journal consulted for this review)
Evseeva, N., & Salaberri, I. (2018). Grammaticalization of nouns meaning “head” into reflexive markers: A cross-linguistic study. Linguistic Typology, 22(3), 385–435. https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2018-0014
List, J.-M., Greenhill, S. J., Anderson, C., Mayer, T., Tresoldi, T., & Forkel, R. (2018). CLICS²: An improved database of cross-linguistic colexifications assembling lexical data with the help of cross-linguistic data formats. Linguistic Typology, 22(2), 277–306. https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2018-0010
Miestamo, M., Bakker, D., & Arppe, A. (2016). Sampling for variety. Linguistic Typology, 20(2), 233–296. https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2016-0006
Round, E. R., & Corbett, G. G. (2020). Comparability and measurement in typological science: The bright future for linguistics. Linguistic Typology, 24(3), 489–525. https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2020-2060
About Wendy Belcher
