Field Linguistics
A Beginner's Guide
Published on 18. January 2007
Book
Paperback/Softback
218 pages
978-0-19-921370-2 (ISBN)
Description
Crowley's voice of experience brings us the best practical fieldwork guide to date. Sensible, frank, and comprehensive, this book prepares beginning field workers for the rigours ahead and will save years of costly trial and error. N. J. Enfield
This book is a comprehensive, practical guide to field linguistics. It deals in particular with the problems arising from the documentation of endangered languages. Deploying a mixture of methodology and practical advice and drawing on his own immense experience, Terry Crowley shows how to record, analyse, and describe a language in the field. He covers the challenges and problems the researcher is likely to encounter, offers guidance on issues ranging from ethics to everyday diplomacy, and provides full discussions of corpus elicitation, how to keep track of data, salvage fieldwork, dealing with unexpected circumstances, and many other central topics. "We all learn by our mistakes," he writes, "and I have plenty of my own to share with you."
This book is a comprehensive, practical guide to field linguistics. It deals in particular with the problems arising from the documentation of endangered languages. Deploying a mixture of methodology and practical advice and drawing on his own immense experience, Terry Crowley shows how to record, analyse, and describe a language in the field. He covers the challenges and problems the researcher is likely to encounter, offers guidance on issues ranging from ethics to everyday diplomacy, and provides full discussions of corpus elicitation, how to keep track of data, salvage fieldwork, dealing with unexpected circumstances, and many other central topics. "We all learn by our mistakes," he writes, "and I have plenty of my own to share with you."
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Dimensions
Height: 244 mm
Width: 170 mm
Thickness: 12 mm
Weight
385 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-921370-2 (9780199213702)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
01/2007
Oxford University Press
€36.60
Shipment within 15-20 days
Person
Terry Crowley was Professor of Linguistics at the University of Waikato. He researched Oceanic languages for over a quarter of a century during which time he produced original accounts of seventeen of them including Bislama, Sye, Ura, Yaygir, Bandjalang, Uradhi, Mpakwithi, and Cape York Creole. His OUP books include Serial Verbs in Oceanic (2002) and An Introduction to Historical Linguistics (third edition, 1998).
When Terry Crowley died in January 2005 he left behind a complete and almost final draft of the present book. This has been checked and prepared for publication by Professor Crowley's friend and colleague, Dr Nick Thieberger of the University of Melbourne.
When Terry Crowley died in January 2005 he left behind a complete and almost final draft of the present book. This has been checked and prepared for publication by Professor Crowley's friend and colleague, Dr Nick Thieberger of the University of Melbourne.
Content
1. Field Linguistics: Why Bother? ; 2. Ethical Issues ; 3. Getting Started ; 4. Gathering Your Data ; 5. Beyond Elicitation ; 6. Problems and Pitfalls ; 7. Salvage Fieldwork ; References