Linguistic Fieldwork

By: Martínez-Alemán, Ana M.

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521669375
• ISBN13: 9780521669375
• Release Date: July 2001
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

An entertaining collection of papers on all aspects of fieldwork, from how to collect good data to h

This 2001 collection of papers on various aspects of fieldworks proved to be highly informative reading for this graduate student of linguistics who can't wait to get out into the field himself. Marianne Mithun's "Who shapes the record: speaker and linguist" warns against relying on only elicitation and calls for letting the informant speak naturally, because you can go through his utterances for data later. In "Places and people: field sites and informants" Gerrit J. Dimmendaal gives useful advice on the recruitment of informants and how to treat them during the research process. David Gil's "Escaping Eurocentrism" exhorts fieldworkers to describe languages based on their own internal logic instead of how they compare to the Standard Average European type. Nancy C. Dorian's "Surprises in Sutherland" observes that within a community each informant may reveal a very different idiolect from the others. When it comes to practical advice on how to get reliable data, Shobhana L. Chelliah's "The role of text collection and elicitation in linguistic fieldwork" is probably the most important of the papers. She explains how to mix those two methods to avoid the pitfalls of each alone, and warns the reader about the tendency of informants to use prestige forms if not carefully directed. In the essay that follows, "Monolingual fieldwork", Daniel Everett makes the case that data gathered when the linguist makes use of no intermediary language and directly seeks to converse in the language being studied is of greater quality. Certainly this approach is not feasible for all, and Everett himself admits that this adds six months to a fieldwork project, but it will nonetheless be thought-provoking to all. In the contribution "The give and take of fieldwork" linguist Fiona Mc Laughlin and informant Thierno Seydou Sall give their personal perspectives on such cooperation. Ian Maddieson's "Phonetic fieldwork" is a concise tutorial on how to accurately record the sounds of the language being studied with whizbang modern technology and a lot of old-fashioned listening. Karen Rice's "Learning as one goes" is a set of personal observations on how to approach aspects of the language for which have not been adequately studied yet. Finally, Nicholas Evans talks about the problem of identifying the "last speaker" of a language in Australian environments where everyone is multilingual in his essay "The last speaker is dead - long live the last speaker! Some of the essays are written in a fairly conversational tone, and there's plenty of entertaining anecdotes on travel complications, so in the main LINGUISTIC FIELDWORK is a breeze to read compared to most books in the field.

Excellent guide for would-be fieldworkers

I bought this because it is the prescribed textbook for my graduate Field Methods class. This does not deal with theoretical material: instead, it is a collection of essays about fieldwork and its many aspects, both linguistic and non-linguistic. If one wants to do fieldwork as the principal method of research, then this book can prepare one for the task. Personally, I do not see myself as a fieldworker but more of an experimentalist, but reading this book made me want to try the endeavor somehow.

Great resource for those considering fieldwork

This is a collection of personal essays from linguists who have done fieldwork all over the world. I found the content to be very accessible, enjoyable to read, and very helpful (I am preparing to begin linguistic fieldwork this fall). In the introduction, the editors state that the goal of the book is to a) convey the intellectual excitement of lingistic fieldwork and b) give a realistic picture of the complexities involved in describing a language as it is used by actual speakers in natural settings. They have definitely succeeded in achieving this goal. Topics covered include: the pros and cons of doing monolingual fieldwork, escaping Eurocentrism, phonetic fieldwork, text collection vs. elicitation, finding consultants, and a number of other practical tips for carrying out fieldwork from experienced fieldworkers. Contributors include: Larry Hyman, Marianne Mithun, Gerrit Dimmendaal, Ken Hale, David Gil, Nancy Dorian, and many others.