Field Linguistics

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 Study of languages in field

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Why Bother?

 In 21st century no linguist can fail to

be aware that a substantial number
of languages ceased to be spoken

 We can hope to maintain linguistic

diversity, but if we can’t at least
hope they will be recorded for
posterity

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Some Lessons from Truganini

 What could Truganini have taught us?

So who was Truganini then?
 In one sense, she was nobody terrible
important at all.
 A woman who died in 1876 in
Tasmania
 She was not formally educated, never
held a public office; did not become a
famous leader; never accumulated
wealth; wrote no books.
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 Last speaker of Aboriginal
language of Tasmania
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 Before 1803 every one spoke a
Tasmanian Aboriginal language. After
1876, nobody did
 Construction of sentences, Noun class,
Distinction between Singular & Plural
 Regrettably the main lesson that she
can teach linguists now is the folly of
allowing a language to disappear without
properly documenting it first

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Diversity still
Undocumented
 It was estimated that in 2001 that of the 250 or
so languages that were originally spoken in
Australia about 17 could be considered strong
(McConvell & Thieberger 2001:61)
 In U.S. & Canada many languages have
disappeared (Nettle & Romaine 2000:5)
 The indigenous languages of Caribbean, where
first settlement took place have long been
extinct (Crystal 2000:24)

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Arm Chair & Dirty Feet Linguists
Dirty Feet Linguists Arm Chair Linguists
 Typically characterize  Tend to look down on
arm chair formalists their counterparts
as being out of touch because they feel
with reality and to that they fail to carry
take data without out analysis at
empirical verification sufficient levels of
and as delving often derivational depth
into theoretical trivia and because there is
no theoretical
sophistication

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Fieldwork at Home &
Fieldwork in Field

 There are some who claim that they

have done field work on such and such
language, though in reality they have
not.
 Should you consider field work at home
having informant at your desk?
 Elicitation may not be varied pragmatically
to produce a full range of vocabulary
 Your single speaker may be trying to flatter
you

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 Terry Crowley
 There is part of me which says that for your
grammar to be truly worthy, you must have
suffered at least from Malaria – or some other
impressive sounding tropical ailment – in its
writing, or you should have had at least one
toe nail ripped off by your hiking boots, or you
shall have developed a nasty boil on an
unmentionable part of your body. I, of course,
have suffered all of these misfortunes in field
and many more. And if I had to go through this
then I feel that everybody else should have to
suffer a similar extent

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Field Linguistics – Which type of
Linguistics?
 Some descriptive Linguistics, the type of
linguistics documentation is all about writing a
grammar and phonetics; composing a
dictionary and publishing a volume of
annotated texts (Dixon 2001)
 Linguistics in daily round is often neglected
 Linguistic Anthropologists have provided the
language in social context

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To document
language as it is
participant
observer is best
way but
demanding

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 No field linguist can fail to be part
anthropologist, and no failed
anthropologist can fail to be part-
linguist.
 As field linguist we have advantage of
knowing which patterns we are going
to follow

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Ethical Issues
 Informed Consent
 Voluntary Participation -- Insider
 Money & Few
 Public Awareness
-- Motivated Informant
-- Reluctant Informant

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Earlier Approaches to
Linguistics Description

American Descriptivist

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 Field methods were developed by
American Descriptivist
 The concern of field methods were
mainly dying American Indian
Languages.
 Some linguists working in this field were
Boas, Bloomfield, Sapir.
 American linguists following the line of
reasoning exemplified by Bloomfield
developed the scientific method of
descriptive linguistics.
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 They strove to obtain objectivity by
developing accountable procedures deriving
linguistics generalization from observable
data
 The important methodological principle
springing this concern was that the language
should be analyzed in order (phonological,
morphological, syntactic, semantic pattern)
so that the analyst could remain in touch
with observable part of language.

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 The concern with accountability is
hallmark of Labov’s work.
 Labov’s view resembles of earlier
American linguists but differs from
Chomsky.
 Generativists- No corpus of data can
serve for linguistics generalization since
any corpus is a partial collection of
utterances.

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 Revolution in linguistics has affected
the way of field linguistics methods.
 But American Descriptive methods
still provide basis for many
contemporary techniques of data
collection and analysis.

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Traditional Dialectology
 The descriptive methods of language
have been adapted by urban
dialectologists.
 Dialectology- to produce a geographical
account of linguistics difference.
 The main objective was to study
contemporary reflexes of older
linguistics forms in their natural
settings.
 Dialectologists- Orton, McIntosh

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Methodology
 Selecting Speakers
 Collecting Data
 Identifying Linguistics Variables
 Processing the Figures
 Interpreting Results

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Selecting Speakers
Researcher should select such speaker
who are true representative of that
community on which s/he wants to
research.

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Collecting Data
Finding people who are willing to be
interviewed or recorded and collecting
data through interviews and tape
recordings.
Identifying Variables
Researcher listen to the recordings and
find out different variables.

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Processing of figures
Counting the number of identified
occurrence of each variant in the data.
Interpreting Results
It involves two stages
1- Description of patterns
2-Explanation

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DATA COLLECTION

 ON - THE - SPOT PHONETIC

TRANSCRIPTION

 POSTAL QUESTIONNAIRE

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ON - THE - SPOT PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION

 This technique has been adapted in various ways which has provided
the major model for later work.
 Supplemented by the Tape recorder which has made possible to study
larger stretches of spoken language rather than isolated lexical items.

 POSTAL QUESTIONNAIRE
 pioneered in Germany by George Wenker who published his work in
1876.
 Mcintosh (1952) and Le Page (1954)
 Large volume of easily processible data collection method.
 ALUS survey of the Linguistic Minorities Project (1985)
 Amuda’s study of Yoruba/ English code-switching patterns in Nigeria
(1986)

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 The main disadvantage of questionnaires is that data
may be inaccurately reported by informants who are not
trained in phonetic transcription.

 Mcintosh proposes using a postal questionnaire

whenever possible , supplemented by the observations
of a trained fieldworker.

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DE CAMP’S SURVEY OF JAMAICAN DIALECTS

 used traditional dialect-mapping techniques to plot linguistic differences

between Jamaican dialects.
 De camp comments,
‘’Many people , including some educated Jamacians, say that
there are two kinds of English spoken in Jamaica – STANDARD ENGLISH
and the DIALECT, meaning the folk speech of the uneducated. ‘’

 ‘’Nearly all speakers of English in Jamaica could be arranged in a sort of

linguistic continuum , ranging from the speech of the most backward
peasant or labourer all the way to that of a well educated urban
professional.’’

 It is evident from the remarks that De’Camp is interested in finding a way to

model patterns of contemporary language use , rather than in applying his data
in the mannner of traditional dialectologist to the solution of historical problems.

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 Full Grammar-- Few Informants

 The linguist will begin by asking the informant for

simple words and write them down with all the phonetic
detail he is able to distinguish ;subsequently he will
attempt to analyze these by asking the informant to
repeat words that seem similar to him.And arrives at a
crude and first description of phonological system.

 In the meanwhile the fieldworker collects more

vocabulary and data for his description of morphology.

 To keep track of the progress of the data collected ,

all the information is entered in notebooks.

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NARROW FOCUS– MANY SPEAKERS

 The objective is to collect as much vocabulary and as much

data about the phonological and grammatical structure of the
language as possible.
 An example of this fieldwork was carried out by William
Labov who in this study focused on the pronounciation of ‘’r’’
among New Yorkers.

 It was carried out in a department store . The interviewer

approached the informant in the role of a customer asking for
directions to a department located on the ‘’fourth floor’’.

 The interviewer noted the utterance ‘’fourth floor’’ spoken in

careful style and then made a written note of the data.

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