^* I would like to thank Hope Dawson for her help with the statistics and discussion about multiple authorship and for her very helpful comments on an earlier version of this column.

¹ 'What symbols shall we use?', by Leonard Bloomfield and George Melville Bolling, Language 3.2.123-29; the first article with more than two authors came in 1933: 'The influence of a change in pitch on the articulation of a vowel', by C. E. Parmenter, S. N. Treviño, & C. A. Bevans, 9.1.72-81.

² The best measure of any trend in multiple authorship would actually come from the statistics on papers submitted in a given year rather than those actually published. However, it is hard to get reliable information on such statistics for most years. Still, for the two most recent years, years for which my office has full records, the ratio for a given year of papers-to-authors for the published papers is comparable to that for the papers submitted in the same year (it must be borne in mind that the papers published in any year mostly are submitted in a previous year so that these are crude measures at best but certainly suggestive): in 2004 there were 111 submissions with a total of 169 authors, a paper-to-author ratio of 1:1.52 (versus 1:1.43 for papers published in 2004), and in 2005, for instance, there were 105 submissions with a total of 151 authors, a paper-to-author ratio of 1:1.44 (versus 1.76 for papers published in 2005).

³ Although further checking into the history of this policy is needed, it was particularly clearly enunciated by Sarah G. Thomason when she was editor (1988-1994), in her Editor's Department in Language 69.3, 1993, p. 639. If we may judge from the many articles by the same individuals (for instance, Edgar Sturtevant) in successive issues in the early days of the journal, this policy may not have come into being until somewhat later on (indeed, authors with two pieces appearing within a single volume are found at least into the 1950s, for example, in 1955, 1956, and 1957), though with a faster review process such papers need not have overlapped.

⁴ L, by the way, suggests that the overall review process tends to favor established authors; I point out in response that I have accepted papers written by graduate students and newly minted Ph.D.s, among others, as have my predecessors. I suspect that if most Language authors are established scholars, it is because such linguists tend to submit more papers to Language and have a better sense, through their experience, of how to reach the broad audience at which Language articles are aimed.

⁵ Current LSA vice-president/president-elect Stephen Anderson is the author of this bon mot of a title.

⁶ This suggestion was made by the now-late Peter Ladefoged, in the Oakland Executive Committee meeting (January 2005); this wonderful idea was a small suggestion to be sure, but it is just one of the many contributions to our field made by this great man.

⁷ This is as good a place as any to signal that there has been a change in Language's Review Editor: Stanley Dubinsky, after four years of extraordinary service to the journal, to the Society, and to the field, has decided to turn his considerable talents to other pursuits and leaves this post with my gratitude for a job well done. I am pleased to announce that Gregory Stump of the University of Kentucky has taken over, as of this issue, as the new Review Editor, and I look forward to working with him in the remaining years of my editorship to maintain the high level of interest that the book reviews have generated.