Linguistic Fieldwork

Introduction Paul Newman and Martha Ratliff; 1. Fieldwork as a state of mind Larry M. Hyman; 2. Who shapes the record: the speaker and the linguist Marianne Mithun; 3. Places and people: field sites and informants Gerrit J. Dimmendaal; 4. Ulwa (Southern Sumu): the beginnings of a language research project Ken Hale; 5. Escaping Eurocentrism: fieldwork as a process of unlearning David Gil; 6. Surprises in Sutherland: linguistic variability amidst social uniformity Nancy C. Dorian; 7. The role of text collection and elicitation in linguistic fieldwork Shobhana L. Chelliah; 8. Monolingual field research Daniel L. Everett; 9. The give and take of fieldwork: noun classes and other concerns in Fatick, Senegal Fiona McLaughlin and Thierno Seydou Sall; 10. Phonetic Fieldwork Ian Maddieson; 11. Learning as one goes Keren Rice; 12. The last speaker is dead - long live the last speaker! Nicholas Evans.

Paul Newman is Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Director of the West African Languages Institute at Indiana University. Martha Ratliff is Associate Professor of Linguistics in the Department of English at Wayne State University.

'This collection will play an invaluable role in maintaining the growing renewal of interest in an area of linguistics which for a good number of years has been neglected.' Forum for Modern Language Studies '... there are certainly no bad essays here ... Several of the essays are enhanced by photographs, and the quality of the proofreading is excellent ... Before the appearance of this book, budding linguistic fieldworkers had often to learn about the nitty-gritty of fieldwork through conversations with existing fieldworkers, or through reading the introductions to grammars and other works which are the fruit of fieldwork. This book, with its zest and flashes of humour, will give new fieldworkers a good idea of what to expect in the field, and at least some inkling of why people go there - and why they usually return again and again.' The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute