Few studies

[dr_whom]

Am I allowed to be annoyed by a paper whose abstract begins "Few studies have examined the vowel systems of communities that border areas characterized by the Northern Cities Shift and the low back vowel merger" but doesn't cite (shall we say) any of the studies that actually have?

Comments

[midnight-sidhe.livejournal.com]

Yes.

[ophblekuwufu.livejournal.com]

I think so.
Also, this is a garden path sentence for me. It wasn't until I reached the end of it that I realized "border" was supposed to be a verb.

[dr_whom]

Me too!

[tiamat360.livejournal.com]

I'm assuming those studies are not cited later in the paper? Because it's kind of taboo (at least in the biological sciences) to cite anything in your abstract. But if this author ignores those studies in the rest of the paper, then by all means be annoyed :).

[silkspinner.livejournal.com]

Ditto math. (You can mention important names in an abstract but usually not specific references.) But if they don't subsequently appear in the intro, heresy!

[dr_whom]

Right, they say in the abstract "few studies", but there's little evidence in the paper that they're aware of even such studies as there are.

[midnight-sidhe.livejournal.com]

Moreover, the study you link to is required reading in this area (the seminal work, really), which implies all the stronger that they don't know the literature.

[dr_whom]

You better believe it!