The Lingua Descriptive Studies Questionnaire
Author : Bernard Comrie & Norval Smith
Publication date : 1977
Goals
This template was designed to describe the grammar of a language in detail and with labeled sections ensuring comparability of the description across languages.
Protocol summary
The template is organized as follows:
- Syntax: general questions, structural questions, coordination, negation, anaphora, reflexives, reciprocals, comparison, equatives, possession, emphasis, topic, heavy shift, other movement processes, minor sentence-types, operational definitions
- Morphology: inflection and derivational morphology
- Phonology: inventory of the sounds, phonological units, phonotactics, suprasegmentals, morphophonology (segmental) and morphophonology (suprasegmental)
- Ideophones and interjections: inventory of these, analysis.
- Lexicon: structured semantic fields, basic vocabulary (a list of 207 English words to translate).
Development context
''A questionnaire primarily designed for grammar-writing, but with useful structural questions that should be addressed in the field; the Lingua Questionnaire underlies the North Holland/Croom Helm/Routledge Descriptive grammar series. This questionnaire provides the basic questions for the description of many of the constructions found in human language. A large number of grammars have been written based on the questionnaire. These constitute excellent models for users of the questionnaire." (Typological tools for field linguistics website, http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/tools-at-lingboard/questionnaire/lingua-descriptive_description.php)