Basic guidelines: fieldwork programme, phonetics/phonology, morphology and syntax

Author : Claire Bowern

Publication date : 2008

Bibliographical references :

Bowern, Claire, 2008. Linguistic Fieldwork: A practical guide. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Goals

In her 2008 Linguistic Fieldwork: A Practical Guide, Claire Bowern provides some useful checklists in appendices B, C, D, and G :

- Appendix B: Suggested fieldwork programme for an undescribed language.

- Appendix C: A basic phonetics/ phonology checklist.

- Appendix D: A basic morphology/ syntax checklist. (based on the Lingua Questionnaire of Comrie and Smith 1977.)

- Appendix G: Basic Wordlist. (based on Comrie and Smith 1977).

It is aimed to guide students in their first steps of fieldwork.

Protocol summary

The appendix F 'Equipment Checklist' gives the full details about what to bring for fieldworking (Bowern, 2008: 222).

Development context

These checklists are added as appendices in her book Linguistic Fieldwork: A practical guide (2008) mostly intended for linguistic fieldwork students.

"This book describes methods for doing fieldwork on language. It grew out of a need for a text which would be useful both to new fieldworkers in linguistics and linguistic anthropology and to students in field methods classes. Although elicitation strategies and data processing are the focus of a field methods class, in the field there are many more skills needed than just data collection, and it may well be that linguistics is the least of the fieldworker’s worries. Therefore here I cover not only linguistic data recording, but also grant-writing procedures, ethics and living in the field" (Bowern, 2008: 1).