Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Notes on contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Fieldwork as a state of mind
- 2 Who shapes the record: the speaker and the linguist
- 3 Places and people: field sites and informants
- 4 Ulwa (Southern Sumu): the beginnings of a language research project
- 5 Escaping Eurocentrism: fieldwork as a process of unlearning
- 6 Surprises in Sutherland: linguistic variability amidst social uniformity
- 7 The role of text collection and elicitation in linguistic fieldwork
- 8 Monolingual field research
- 9 The give and take of fieldwork: noun classes and other concerns in Fatick, Senegal
- 10 Phonetic fieldwork
- 11 Learning as one goes
- 12 The last speaker is dead – long live the last speaker!
- Index
8 - Monolingual field research
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Notes on contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Fieldwork as a state of mind
- 2 Who shapes the record: the speaker and the linguist
- 3 Places and people: field sites and informants
- 4 Ulwa (Southern Sumu): the beginnings of a language research project
- 5 Escaping Eurocentrism: fieldwork as a process of unlearning
- 6 Surprises in Sutherland: linguistic variability amidst social uniformity
- 7 The role of text collection and elicitation in linguistic fieldwork
- 8 Monolingual field research
- 9 The give and take of fieldwork: noun classes and other concerns in Fatick, Senegal
- 10 Phonetic fieldwork
- 11 Learning as one goes
- 12 The last speaker is dead – long live the last speaker!
- Index
Summary
I have no idea whether I am doing the right thing or not, or how valuable my results will be. It all weighs rather heavily on my mind.
Margaret Mead to Franz Boas, January 16, 1926 (cited in Freeman 1999: 115)The purpose of this paper is to present the methodology, axiology, and teleology of monolingual fieldwork – how to do it, the values and ethics of engaging in it, and its ultimate aims. The paper also argues that monolingual fieldwork should not be restricted to only those environments in which other methods are not available, but that it should be the method of choice, wherever the linguist is able. In connection with this, I argue that language learning, so crucial to the monolingual approach, is a vital part of all fieldwork.
A good case can be made for the claim that the most important tasks facing linguistics today are the preparation (or discovery or theorization or invention – choose your predicate) of grammars of little-studied or unstudied languages and the construction of theories of the nature of human language. Neither of these vital tasks should be postponed. Neither should they be compartmentalized or isolated from each other. Ideally, the terms fieldworker and theoretician ought to designate the same set of individuals.
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- Information
- Linguistic Fieldwork , pp. 166 - 188Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001
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