Linguistic Fieldwork: A Student Guide

by Jeanette Sakel , Daniel L. Everett

• ISBN13: 9780521837279
• ISBN10: 0521837278
• Edition: Student
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-03-19
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

A handy beginner's guide, this textbook introduces the various stages of linguistic fieldwork, from the preparation of the work to the presentation of the results. Drawing on over forty years of fieldwork experience between them, in over two dozen languages, the authors pack the book with examples and anecdotes from their experiences and include practical exercises for students to test what they have learned. Independent of any particular perspective, the methods can be applied to a wide range of fieldwork settings, for projects with very different theoretical backgrounds and without the need to travel too far. The book covers 'traditional fieldwork' such as language description and documentation, as well as less typical methods, including language contact and quantitative studies with experiments or questionnaires.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xi
Acknowledgements	p. xii
Introduction: what is linguistic fieldwork?	p. 1
A definition of fieldwork	p. 2
Overview: the following chapters	p. 8
Summary and further reading	p. 8
Fieldwork projects: two examples	p. 10
Fieldwork project 1. Mosetén in Bolivia: text-collection, transcription, analysis and elicitation	p. 10
Fieldwork project 2. Somali in contact with English: setting up a fieldwork project	p. 20
Summary and further reading	p. 25
The languages	p. 26
Bilingual and monolingual fieldwork	p. 26
Bilingual fieldwork	p. 27
Monolingual fieldwork	p. 29
Learning the language(s)	p. 35
Types of language data	p. 37
Types of languages	p. 38
Major languages and languages with many speakers	p. 38
'Small' languages and endangered languages	p. 39
Well-described versus little-studied languages	p. 40
Working on a language that you speak	p. 41
How to find a language to work on	p. 42
Summary and further reading	p. 43
The people	p. 44
The speakers	p. 44
Speakers' language use and proficiency	p. 45
Contacting a language community	p. 49
Selecting the speakers	p. 50
The main teachers	p. 54
Other speakers	p. 54
The linguist	p. 55
The significance of the first day	p. 57
The role of the linguist among the speakers	p. 58
Teamwork among linguists	p. 60
Other parties	p. 61
The language community	p. 61
Organizations in the area or in related fields	p. 62
Other researchers	p. 64
Conflicting interests	p. 65
Fieldwork ethics	p. 67
Information and consent	p. 67
Payment and working conditions	p. 71
Training language teachers	p. 73
Helping the community	p. 74
Ethics for the dissemination of the data and the results	p. 75
Summary and further reading	p. 77
Fieldwork preparation	p. 79
Linguistic prefield preparation	p. 79
Research questions	p. 80
Choose a mentor	p. 81
Prefield literature review	p. 82
Computers and tools	p. 83
Financing your fieldwork	p. 84
Funding proposals for PhD theses and beyond	p. 85
Ethics application	p. 86
The place and timing of fieldwork	p. 87
Considerations for remote fieldwork	p. 88
Culture and relations	p. 89
Paperwork and bureaucracy	p. 90
Vaccinations and medicals	p. 90
Medical training	p. 91
Basic fieldwork equipment	p. 92
Additional equipment	p. 93
Consumable study supplies	p. 94
How long to stay	p. 95
Accommodation	p. 96
Travel arrangements	p. 98
Summary and further reading	p. 98
Fieldwork methods	p. 99
Types of research method	p. 99
Qualitative methods	p. 100
Quantitative methods	p. 100
Mixed methods	p. 101
Cross-sectional and longitudinal studies	p. 101
Metadata, recordings and field notes	p. 101
Text data	p. 104
Transcription	p. 107
Translation	p. 108
Glossing	p. 110
Elicitation	p. 113
Types of elicitation	p. 114
Limits of elicitation	p. 117
Ethical considerations for elicitation	p. 120
Monolingual elicitation	p. 121
Third-party interpreters	p. 126
Group teaching, serial teaching and individual teachers	p. 127
Quantitative questionnaires and structured interviews	p. 128
Questionnaires	p. 129
Structured interviews	p. 132
Experiments and stimulus tests	p. 132
Participant observation	p. 136
Integrating ethnography and fieldwork	p. 136
Summary and further reading	p. 137
The outcomes	p. 139
The fieldwork corpus	p. 139
Archiving	p. 140
Presenting methodology and results	p. 141
Presenting the results of qualitative studies	p. 143
Presenting the results of quantitative studies	p. 144
Grammars	p. 145
Dictionaries	p. 148
Language documentation	p. 150
Summary and further reading	p. 150
Perspectives on the history of fieldwork	p. 152
Phonology questionnaire	p. 159
Notes to chapters	p. 167
References	p. 171
Index	p. 176
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