Theme 1

Lecture # 1. General Methods of Obtaining and Processing Linguistic Data

Present-Day Linguistics.

1. Informants. 2. Recording. 3. Elicitation. 4. Experiments.

5. The comparative method. The reconstruction technique.

6. Quantitative methods.

7. Computer techniques.

8. Corpora.

Методы исследования языка: эмпирический/дедуктивный, пассивный/активный, интроспективный/аналитический/экспериментальный, инструментальный, статистический, сравнительный.

Метод включает в себя понятийный аппарат и определенные способы исследования и описания материала. Теория должна содержать сведения о свойствах, являющихся для человеческого языка необходимыми или высоко вероятными, т. е. верными для каждого отдельного языка или для большинства языков.

Key words: kinship (спорідненість); kindred (споріднений); nomenclature (the terminology used in a particular science)

Method in a science presupposes the nomenclature and definite means of research and description of the material within the framework of a certain theory. A theory should contain the data about the properties which are necessary and highly likely for a l-ge, are true of a certain l-ge and majority of l-ges.

Present-Day Linguistics

The development of linguistics has been particularly conspicuous in re­cent decades. There has been increased popular interest in the role of lan­guage in relation to human beliefs and behaviour, and an accompanying awareness of the need for a separate academic discipline to deal adequately with the range and complexity of linguistic phenomena. The university teaching of Linguistics emerged during the XIX century and since then several branches of linguistic enquiry have been established.

Different dimensions of the subject can be distinguished, depending on the focus and interests of the linguist. Diachronic (or historical) and synchronic types of linguistics have developed as a result of the distinction intro­duced by Saussure (1857-1913, a Swiss linguist and semiotician); the former is the study of language change, the latter the study of language states regardless of their history. When linguists try to establish general principles for the study of all languages, they are said to be practising Theoretical (or General) Linguistics. When they con­centrate on establishing the facts of a particular language system, they practise Descriptive Linguistics. And when the focus is on the similari­ties and differences between languages, the subject is often referred to as Comparative (or Typological) Linguistics.

Linguistics (the scientific study of language) shares with other sciences a concern to be objective, sys­tematic, consistent, and explicit in its account of language. Like other sciences, Linguistics aims to collect data, test hypotheses, design models, and con­struct theories. Its subject-matter, however, is unique: on the one hand it overlaps with such "natural" sciences as physics and anatomy; on the other hand, it involves such traditional "arts" subjects as philosophy and literary criti­cism.

Many methods are available for obtaining and processing data about a language. They range from a carefully planned intensive field investigation in a for­eign country to casual introspection about one's mother tongue.

1. Informants – an empirical, active method

In all cases someone has to act as a source of language data - an inform­ant or consultant. Informants are ideally native speakers of a language who provide utterances for analysis and other kinds of information about the lan­guage (e.g. translations, comment about correctness or judgements on usage). Often, when studying their mother tongue, linguists act as their own inform­ants, judging the ambiguity, acceptability, or other properties of utterances against their own intuitions. The convenience of this approach makes it widely used, and it is considered a primary datum in the generative approach to Lin­guistics. But a linguist's personal judgements are often uncertain, or disagree with the judgements of other linguists, at which point recourse is needed to more objective inquiry, using non-linguists as informants. The latter proce­dure is unavoidable when working on foreign languages, or in such mother-tongue fields as child speech or language variation.

Many factors must be considered when selecting informants - whether one is working with single speakers (a common situation when languages have not been described before), two people interacting, small groups, or large-scale samples. Important factors are: age, sex, social background, and other aspects of identity, as these factors are known to influence the kind of language used. The topic of the conversation and the characteristics of the social setting (e.g. the level of formality) are also highly relevant, as are the personal qualities of the informants (e.g. their fluency and consistency). For larger studies, scrupu­lous attention has to be paid to the sampling theory employed. And in all cases decisions have to be made about the best investigative techniques to use.

2. Recording – an empirical, active, instrumental method

Today, data from an informant are often recorded. This enables the linguist's claims about the language to be checked, and provides a way of making those claims more accurate ("difficult" pieces of speech can be listened to repeatedly). But obtaining naturalistic, good quality data is never easy. People talk abnormally when they know they are being re­corded. A variety of recording proce­dures have thus been devised to minimize the effects of the "observer's paradox" (how to observe the behaviour of people when they are not be­ing observed – the term Observer’s Paradox was coined by William Labov, who stated with regards to the term: the aim of linguistic research in the community must be to find out how people talk when they are not being systematically observed; yet we can only obtain this data by systematic observation).

Some recordings are made without the speakers being aware of the fact - a procedure that obtains very natural data, though ethical objections must be anticipated. Alternatively, attempts can be made to make the speaker forget about the recording, such as by keeping the recorder out of sight, or using radio microphones. A useful technique is to introduce a topic that quickly involves the speaker, and stimulates a natu­ral language style (e.g. asking older informants to talk how times have changed in their locality).

Audio recording does not solve all the linguist's problems, however. Speech is often unclear or ambiguous. Where possible there­fore, the recording has to be supplemented with the observer's notes about the non-verbal behaviour of the participants, and about the context in gen­eral. A facial expression, for example, can dramatically alter the meaning of what is said. Video recordings avoid these problems to a large extent, but even they have limitations (the camera can be highly intrusive, and cannot be everywhere), and transcriptions always benefit from any addi­tional commentary provided by an observer.

3. Elicitation (встановлення (правди); виявлення)

Linguists also make great use of structured sessions, in which they systematically ask their informants for utterances that describe certain actions, objects or behaviours. With a bilingual informant, or through the use of an interpreter, it is possible to use translation techniques ("How do you say table in your language?" "What does gua mean?"). A large number of points can be covered in a short time, using interview worksheets and questionnaires. Often, the researcher wishes to obtain information about just a single variable, in which case a restricted set of questions may be used: a particular feature of pronunciation, for example, can be elicited by asking the informant to say a restricted set of words. There are also sev­eral indirect methods of elicitation, such as asking informants to fill the blanks in a substitution frame (e.g. I – (can) see a car), or feeding them with the wrong stimulus for correction ("Is it possible to say I no can see?").