Linguistic FieldworkPaul Newman, Martha Susan Ratliff This book is a collection of original essays on the practice of linguistic fieldwork and language documentation. Twelve of the leading field linguists in the world have written personal essays about the study of languages in a natural setting. Drawing on extensive research experience, they pass on the lessons they have learnt, review the techniques that they found worked best in practice, and discuss a variety of relevant topics, including the attitude of the linguist, the structure and content of the work session, the varied roles of native speakers, and the practical and personal challenges of doing research in an unfamiliar environment. Covering a wide range of field areas, and written in an accessible manner, the book will be indispensable to fieldworkers in linguistics, anthropology, folklore and oral history. |
Contents
Fieldwork as a state of mind | 15 |
Who shapes the record the speaker and the linguist | 34 |
Places and people field sites and informants | 55 |
Ulwa Southern Sumu the beginnings of a language research project | 76 |
Escaping Eurocentrism fieldwork as a process of unlearning | 102 |
Surprises in Sutherland linguistic variability amidst social uniformity | 133 |
The role of text collection and elicitation in linguistic fieldwork | 152 |
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analysis asked aspects Athapaskan Bamileke Bantu Bantu language Bearlake Central Pomo chicken clause consonants construction consultant context Croker Island cultural dialect dissertation distinct East Sutherland elicitation endangered languages English Eurocentric example experience fact Fatick field linguists field methods field research fieldwork Gaelic goal Golspie grammar guage guist Gwari high tone Hokkien important informants initial interest investigation involved Karawala Kayardild knowledge last speaker learning lexical linguistic fieldwork marker Marrgu Marrithiyel Mayangna Mc Laughlin meaning Meithei Miskitu monolingual morpheme morphology native speakers noun classes one's paradigms particular person phonetic phonology Pirahã plural possible prefix problem pronoun Pulaar questions recording Riau Riau Indonesian role Scottish Gaelic Seereer semantic sentences sessions situation Slave social speak speech community spoken structure suffix Sumu syllable syntactic Tagalog tape texts theoretical theory tion translation Ulwa understanding University verb stem vocabulary vowel Wolof words
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