Field Procedures while Working with Diegueño

Hayes, Alfred S.

doi:10.1086/464276

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The informant can be asked to describe what he sees, but it is perhaps more effective to leave a well-illustrated book or magazine with a small group of people near a running tape recorder (Hayes 1954;Harris and Voegelin 1953;Yegerlehner 1955). 6 The difficulty with pictorial stimuli, however, is that they may not be understood by preliterates; long periods of silence during which the informant studies the pictures hardly seem to justify the effort when other techniques are available.…”

Section: Techniques For Collecting a Corpusmentioning

confidence: 99%

Field Linguistics: A Guide to Linguistic Field Work.

Bennett¹,

Samarin²

1967

Man

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This book has few predecessors. The best of them are two small works published over twenty years ago, Bloomfield's Outline Guide for the Practical Study of Foreign Languages (1942) and Bloch and Trager's Outline of Linguistic Analysis (1942). There were at that time a few books about general linguistics, but not one of them was designed for the investigator taking up for the first time the study of a hitherto "unknown" language. Methodology was an important subject of discussion, but it was treated almost exclusively in technical articles. One learned how to describe languages, as it was then termed, by working with people who had already grappled with problems of analysis. To meet the need for more guidance among the growing number of field workers, Nida produced his Morphology (1946, 1st edition) and Pike his Phonemics (1947). Although these volumes were acclaimed for the contribution they made to linguistic pedagogy, they were not, strictly speaking, field guides. Linguistic researchers have been extraordinarily silent-in print-about the field aspects of their investigations. In the preparation of this book I tried vi Preface Preface Vil is not identical with discovery procedures, but it is also true that linguistics cannot do without them.In a book of this type it is easy for an author to be more prescriptive than he means to be. One needs to give advice, but one must not give the impression that there is only a single way of doing something when there may be equally good alternatives. There is no more a best way of studying a language in the field than there is a best way to survive if stranded on a raft in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. But it does help to have had some coaching in survival techniques, and it does help to go prepared with a survival kit. Ultimately, however, the survivor is one who can cope with his situation. This is equally true of the field worker as my last field trip to Africa reminded me. Carefully designed research projects may have to be jettisoned under circumstances beyond one's control.Here and elsewhere in this volume I may give the impression that field work is more awesome than it really is. A field worker should take his work seriously, but he need not do it lugubriously, for an exciting and lifeenriching experience awaits him. Field work is characterized in one wordat least for me; it is fun. It is fun to be intimately involved with people of different linguistic (and therefore cultural) backgrounds; it is fun to respond to challenges never confronted at home; it is fun-simple and exhilarating fun-to try to work out the puzzle of some aspect of linguistic structure. There is pleasure indeed in solving an analytical problem in the privacy of one's study, but to me there is more pleasure, because it is more exciting, in working at something step by step with an informant.Many people have contributed to the making of Field Linguistics. It gives me real pleasure to publicly acknowledge their help.

show abstract

Section: Techniques For Collecting a Corpusmentioning

confidence: 99%

Field Linguistics: A Guide to Linguistic Field Work.

Bennett¹,

Samarin²

1967

Man

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Grammar Gathering Techniques

Chelliah

Reuse

2010

Handbook of Descriptive Linguistic Fieldwork

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

On the Methodology of Semantic Fieldwork

Matthewson

2004

International Journal of American Linguistics

240

124

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper presents and motivates a methodology for conducting semantic fieldwork on languages of the Americas. I first argue that one cannot gather adequate information about meaning from spontaneous discourse alone. Thus, direct elicitation (including asking consultants for judgments) is an indispensable methodological tool. I then present more detailed methodological suggestions. I offer techniques for eliciting translations and discuss how one should interpret the results of a translation task. I discuss which types of judgment are legitimate, how to obtain judgments, how to interpret the results, and how discourse contexts should be presented. I make the (somewhat controversial) claim that consultants are unlikely to be influenced by the use of a meta-language (such as English) and that a meta-language is often the best option when presenting discourse contexts.

show abstract

Field Procedures while Working with Diegueño

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Field Linguistics: A Guide to Linguistic Field Work.

Field Linguistics: A Guide to Linguistic Field Work.

Grammar Gathering Techniques

On the Methodology of Semantic Fieldwork

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About