The Editor's Department

THE EDITOR'S DEPARTMENT The following Editor's Report was submitted to the LSA Annual Meeting in Philadelphia in January 1992: Volume 67 of Language, for the year 1991, consists of the usual four issues, comprising 897 pages. The volume contains 14 articles, 2 review articles, 41 reviews, 119 book notices, and 4 Editor's Department columns, plus the annual index. The time gap between receipt of the final version of an accepted article and its publication date ranged from 3 to 8 months, with an average of about 5 months. In all, 150 articles, review articles, and discussion notes were submitted between mid-November 1990and mid-November 1991; this total includes 27 revisions, so 123 new manuscripts were submitted . Of the 150 submissions, 11, including one review article and one discussion note, were accepted; 16 were not accepted, but the authors were encouraged to revise and resubmit the papers; 98 were declined; one was withdrawn by the author; and 23 were still pending as of 3 December 1991 . The acceptance rate (excluding the 23 pending submissions and the paper that was withdrawn) was 9%. A comparison between the 1991 figures and the 1990 figures shows that total submissions were down in 1991 (150 in 1991 vs. 161 in 1990), and the acceptance rate was also lower in 1991 (9%, vs. 15% in 1990). The time between the receipt of a submission and the decision date ranged from one day to over 6 months in 1991; the period was one month or less for 30 submissions and over 4 months for 18. Decisions were sent to 82 authors in 3 months or less after the ms. arrived in the editor's office. More authors had to wait over 4 months for a decision in 1991 than in 1990, but the average wait was about the same in 1991. I try to keep authors' waiting time to a minimum; my assistants routinely remind referees about overdue reports, and I try to send a new ms. out to referees (usually two) within a week after it arrives in my office. As in the previous three years, the largest category of submissions in 1991 was syntax (33 mss.), but the gap between syntax and other areas was less again this year. There were 27 phonology submissions and 23 semantics submissions (especially in lexical semantics); 15 historical linguistics mss. were submitted, followed by 10 papers on discourse, 7 each on morphology, first-language acquisition, and sociolinguistics, 5 on typology, 2 on the history of linguistics, and the remainder on a variety of other topics. Requests for referee reports went out with submitted papers to 203 different scholars in 1991. Of these, 161 have sent at least one evaluation; they are listed at the end of this report. Fourteen scholars declined to review papers, 5 did not decline but sent no report, and as of 3 December 1991I was expecting reports from 23 other referees on pending mss. In all, I received 235 referee reports in 1991. I am, as always, immensely grateful to everyone who refereed one or more manuscripts for the journal in 1991. Scholars who give up some of their own time to perform this vital service for the journal and for the profession deserve the gratitude of all linguists. To my twelve Associate Editors for 1991 I offer special thanks for the very large amount of work they undertook for the journal, and for the consistently excellent advice they gave me: Niko Besnier, Dan Everett, Mark Hale, Paul Kay, Beth Levin, Dick Oehrle, Bill Poser, Ellen Prince, Peter Sells, Marilyn Shatz, Robert Van Valin, and Moira Yip. In Pittsburgh, I have again had the invaluable assistance of a dedicated group of people who have served for varying periods as journal-office staff: Paula Locante, Joel Marcus, Dave Jeffery, Sasha Nikolic, and Sara Lickey. In Massachusetts, Kathleen Fenton's outstanding proofreading skill remains the primary reason for the paucity of typos in the journal. And in Washington, the staff of the LSA Secretariat have, as always, provided moral and other support for journal operations . Here is the list of scholars (other than Associate Editors) who refereed one or more manuscripts for Language...