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Naive linguistic explanation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

R. M. W. Dixon
R. M. W. Dixon
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, Arts, The Australian National University, GPO Box 4, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia
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Abstract

Five examples are presented of how native speakers may try to explain a grammatical point to a linguist, and, in the absence of a suitable metalanguage, adopt some “lateral” way of demonstrating the point. They may, for instance, give another paradigmatic form of a word under scrutiny to show its word class; they may switch to another dialect to clarify some ambiguity; they may add some extra sentence constituents to each noun in a lexical elicit, to reveal its gender class. (Field methods, grammatical explanation, use of informants/consultants, Australian Aboriginal languages, Amazonian languages)

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , March 1992 , pp. 83 - 91
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

REFERENCES

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