Fieldwork in linguistics

Cómo se recoyen os nomes tradicionales dos sitos

by Fernando Álvarez-Balbuena

published in Actas das I Xornadas de Toponimia del Eo-Navia. «Os nomes dos nosos sitos» (A Caridá, 19 y 20 de mayo del 2006), pp. 65-75 (2007)

Turco-Samoiedica

by Marek Stachowski

CEGS: An elicitation took kit for studies on case marking and its acquisition.

by Sonja Eisenbeiss

Essex Research Reports in Linguistics 60,1. 2011

This paper presents a set of Case Elicitation Games and Stimuli (CEGS). The aim of this elicitation tool kit is to... more This paper presents a set of Case Elicitation Games and Stimuli (CEGS). The aim of this elicitation tool kit is to encourage speakers to produce a broad range of case-marked forms in a variety of different syntactic contexts, including subjects, direct and indirect objects, prepositional phrases and noun phrases that are not selected by a verb or preposition. The games involve two tasks - the Puzzle Task and the Picture-Pairing Task (Eisenbeiss 2009, 2010). Both tasks are semi-structured and involve flexible procedures and an informal interactional setting. The same target words are used in different games and syntactic contexts, which allows for cross-context and cross-method comparisons. CEGS was designed to provide rich semi- naturalistic speech samples of speakers from the age of two years. It can complement spontaneous speech sampling and controlled experiments on the use and comprehension of case marking; and the games are particularly effective for children that are too young to take part in controlled production experiments on case acquisition. The picture stimuli described in this paper were designed for studies involving German children, but we will discuss how tasks and stimuli can be adapted to other languages or adult participants, and to speech therapy or language documentation contexts.

Documenting Child Language

by Sonja Eisenbeiss

Eisenbeiss, Sonja (2006): Documenting Child Language. In: Peter K. Austin (ed.), Language Documentation and Description, Volume 3, London: Soas, The Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project, 106-140.

This paper argues for the integration of child language data into language documentations projects and shows the... more This paper argues for the integration of child language data into language documentations projects and shows the benefits that the documentation of child language can have for (i) acquisition researchers, (ii) descriptive, theoretical and historical linguists, and (iii) members of language maintenance or revitalisation projects. Moreover, it discusses which implications different user requirements have for data collection and provides pointers to resources, tools and stimuli.

Contrast is the Name of the Game: Contrast-Based Semi-Structured Elicitation Techniques for Studies on Children’s Language Acquisition.

by Sonja Eisenbeiss

Essex Research Reports in Linguistics 57 (7). NOTE: This paper is aimed at a wider audience, including teachers, speech therapists, and parents.

This paper discusses a series of so-called “elicitation” games that encourage children to
talk in a situation... more This paper discusses a series of so-called “elicitation” games that encourage children to
talk in a situation that is as natural and relaxed as possible. Such games have played a
central role in language teaching and speech therapy, where they have been employed to
provide language training or to assess children’s linguistic development without putting
them under stress. Recently, such games have become more widely used in language
acquisition research. Here they are employed to obtain rich sets of language production
data from children who are too young to take part in controlled experiments on language
production. Moreover, they can be used in longitudinal studies where children are
recorded over longer periods of time and might develop strategies in experiments. Most
of these elicitation games target a specific construction or domain of grammar and so
language teachers, speech therapists and researchers spend a lot of their time developing
new games for each individual construction they would like to elicit from children. As
this can be very time-consuming, there is a demand for games that can be adapted to a
broad range of phenomena and situations (for instance, situations with one or several
players). In this paper, I will present three such games, which might be useful for
acquisition researchers, language teachers and speech therapists: the Bag Task, the
Picture-Pairing Task and the Puzzle Task. In addition, I will discuss the advantages and
disadvantages of using such games in a research context.

Endangered languages and linguistic fieldwork

by Gerd Jendraschek

Public lecture given on 14 April 2009 at Gyeongsang National University, Jinju, South Korea

1. Linguistic situation in the world
2. Counting, classifying, and ranking languages
3. Language... more 1. Linguistic situation in the world
2. Counting, classifying, and ranking languages
3. Language endangerment and shift
4. Language description
5. Linguistic fieldwork
6. Fieldwork on Iatmul
7. Data collection
8. Products of language documentation

Review of Handbook of Descriptive Linguistic Fieldwork, by Shobhana L. Chelliah and Willem J. de Reuse

by Daniel Hieber

Book review published with Linguist List

Workflow for linguistic analysis using FLEx

by Ken Manson

A revision of the language documentation workflow focusing on linguistic description.
Suggested software for each stage is listed above the task(s).

Традиционална култура Влаха североисточне Србије: могућности секундарне анализе теренске грађе

by Svetlana Cirkovic

С. Ћирковић: Традиционална култура Влаха североисточне Србије: могућности секундарне анализе теренске грађе, Положај националних мањина у Србији (ур. Војислав Становчић), Београд 2007, 447–480.

Cognitive Approaches to Documenting Languages

by Ryan Dewey

first draft

Since the emergence of the cognitive linguistic framework, little attention has been paid to one of the great... more Since the emergence of the cognitive linguistic framework, little attention has been paid to one of the great traditions of modern linguistics: descriptive grammar writing. While much cross-linguistic work has taken place in the cognitive framework, little of that work has aimed for comprehensive treatments of the languages in study. The approach, by and large, has been one that studies some particular phenomena cross-linguistically, satisfied in finding evidence from smaller and less studied languages. While this is not in itself a negative approach, it does neglect an approach to studying understudied languages from a cognitive semiotic standpoint, which views language as being intimately entwined with every aspect of culture (77, Oakley: 2009). Furthermore, general cross-linguistic approaches gloss over the range of correlations that might exist between the different elements of conceptualization in a particular culture, especially in the domains of space, time, sensory perception, and in the language-specific manifestations of categorization, metaphors, force-dynamics, and conceptual blends.

In line with Lakoff’s (1991) Generalization Commitment and Cognitive Commitment, the proposed model of grammar writing seeks generalizable principles that govern language structure and attempts to align with what is known about cognition from the cognitive sciences. Cognitivist acceptance of characteristics such as processing that is both on-line and dynamic, approaches that are neo-empiricist and falsifiable, emphases on distributed cognition, and a concern with usage-based analyses of form-meaning pairs form the baseline assumptions of this approach to kick-starting the writing of cognitive grammars. Critiques such as that posed by Gibbs (2007) about experimental methods in cognitive linguistics, and the critique from Levinson (pp.13-14: 2003) regarding details that cannot be gleaned from data collected by cognitive linguists, this paper begins to define the best practices of a cognitivist grammar by providing a template for a minimal cognitive grammar sketch.

A suite of approaches (including: ethnography, elicitation, experimentation, interviewing, observation, discourse methods, and statistical corpus analysis) is detailed with methods for studying space, time, motion, and other domains of principal interest to cognitivists. These methods are abstracted from the methods, protocols, and procedures in leading empirical research and brought together to form the basis of an end-to-end approach for the working field-linguist.

Ibarski Kolašin između tradicije i svakodnevice

by biljana sikimic

Ибарски Колашин између традиције и свакодневице, Косово и Метохија у цивилизацијским токовима, међународни тематски зборник, књига 1, Језик и народна традиција (С. Милорадовић, ур.), Косовска Митровица: Универзитет у Приштини, Филозофски факултет, 2010, 275–289.

De la Torac la Clec

by biljana sikimic

De la Torac la Clec: informaţia minimală de teren, Caiete de teren. Torac – metodologia cercetării de teren (ed. A. Sorescu-Marinković), Novi Sad 2006, 173–201.

Srbi na Čepelskoj adi

by biljana sikimic

Срби на Чепелској ади, етнолингвистички поглед, Етнографија Срба у Мађарској 4, Будимпешта 2003 (2004), 34–48.

Aktuelna terenska istraživanja dijaspore. Srbi u Mađarskoj

by biljana sikimic

Актуелна теренска истраживања дијаспоре: Срби у Мађарској, Теме 2, Ниш 2004, 847–858.

Linguistic Data Management of text and wordlist recordings

by Ken Manson

This summary provides a step-by-step process for getting recordings (both worlist and texts) from audio recording to interlinearised text.

Langues en danger: le phénomène et la réponse des linguistes

by James Costa

Grinevald, C., & Costa, J. (2010). Langues en danger: le phénomène et la réponse des linguistes. Faits de Langues, 35-36, 23-37.

Appears in a special issue of Faits de Langues on linguistic fieldwork in endangered language contexts, co-edited by Colette Grinevald and Michel Bert.

Fieldwork in Language Contact Situations

by Claire Bowern

How to write a grammatical sketch. Methods and techniques of elicitation

by Gerd Jendraschek

Lecture given at the 'International Summer School 2011: Theory and methods of language documentation'. University of Regensburg, 19-26 September 2011.

Describes how linguists can obtain and handle data when doing fieldwork. Describes how linguists can obtain and handle data when doing fieldwork.

Working in the language community

by Gerd Jendraschek

Lecture given at the 'International Summer School 2011: Theory and methods of language documentation'. University of Regensburg, 19-26 September 2011.

Describes the logistics of linguistic fieldwork on un(der)described languages spoken in remote locations. Describes the logistics of linguistic fieldwork on un(der)described languages spoken in remote locations.

Fieldwork in Neo-Aramaic

by Eleanor Coghill

in Postgate, Nicholas (ed.). 2007. Languages of Iraq: Ancient and Modern. London: British Institute for the Study of Iraq.
Courtesy of British Institute for the Study of Iraq:
http://www.britac.ac.uk/institutes/iraq/publications.htm