1 In some cases there is a clear legal barrier to journal publication: if an author submits a paper previously published elsewhere, and if the publisher of the other publication holds the copyright, then it would be illegal for Language to publish part or all of the earlier paper without the publisher's permission (and in any case the LSA holds the copyright for all articles and reviews that appear in Language).

2 And your problems might not be only with editors. Most of us, at one time or another, have our entire scholarly output evaluated when we seek promotion or appointment to an academic or research position. If an outside evaluator discovers (for example) that a candidate has published the same paper in several different places under several different titles, s/he is likely to form a negative opinion of the scholar, no matter how good the paper is. (This stricture of course applies only when the duplication is not acknowledged; articles reprinted in anthologies are another matter entirely.)