Reviewer #1 provided balanced, professional, and genuinely constructive feedback. Reviewer #2 raised some potentially legitimate methodological concerns; however, these were severely undermined by an unnecessarily hostile, dismissive, and at times impolite tone that falls below the standards expected of academic peer review. Rather than offering constructive criticism aimed at improving the manuscript, the reviewer repeatedly impugns the authors’ competence, honesty, and reliability—e.g., asserting that the authors’ “carelessness … ends up calling into question a lot of other aspects of the paper,” that the reader is left wondering “if they’re this careless here, are they just as careless even in the data,” and even stating “I’m not honestly sure that they did” the transcription/glossing correctly. The reviewer also used accusatory rhetorical questions and sarcastic framing (“Well, was it sold in an auction or towed?”; “Well, is it proximal or distal?”; “Is it a different dialect after all? Or what is going on?”), and escalated from critique to disparagement (“the lack of attention to detail makes the authors appear unreliable,” “I’m not even sure if they analyzed the demonstratives correctly either,” “I have to really question this”). This approach is inappropriate and unprofessional, and it risks biasing editorial decisions by shifting the focus from correctable issues in the manuscript to blanket judgments about the authors’ reliability and good faith.
