Understanding Linguistic Fieldwork

Felicity Meakins is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Queensland. She specialises in the documentation of Australian languages in the Victoria River District in northern Australia and the effect of English on Indigenous languages.Jennifer Green is a Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Her main research interests are descriptive linguistics, lexicography, multimodality in narrative practices and sign language.Myfany Turpin is a Research Fellow at the University of Sydney. Her research is in descriptive linguistics, poetry, song, ethnobiology and language revitalization.

• List of Figures List of Tables Acknowledgements Abbreviations 1. Introduction 2. Planning for fieldwork 3. Equipment and recording 4. Data management, annotation and archiving 5. Phonetics and Phonology 6. Morpho-syntax 7. Semantic fieldwork and lexicography 8. Sign and gesture 9. Child language acquisition 10. Contact Languages 11. Verbal art 12. A final word AppendicesMap of major languages referred to in this bookAnswers to ExercisesGlossary and AbbreviationsIndex

"This book aims to be a one-stop introduction to fieldwork as it is currently conceived, covering not only the expected topics, but also a variety of areas that are not standardly found in the fieldwork literature, including sign language, child language acquisition, contact languages, and verbal arts, all areas that figure prominently in language documentation today. It will be an invaluable resource for the novice fieldworker, with much of value for the experienced one as well."Keren Rice, University of Toronto, Canada"The authors take exquisite account of the community contexts in which linguistic documentation and discovery unfold, which they work into a humanistically and scientifically rich, holistic introduction to the subject."Anthony C. Woodbury, The University of Texas at Austin, USA