Monolingual fieldwork is the practice of conducting

linguistic Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

fieldwork Field research, field studies, or fieldwork is the collection of raw data outside a laboratory, library, or workplace setting. The approaches and methods used in field research vary across disciplines. For example, biologists who conduct f ...

solely through the target language under investigation, without the use of interpreters or a

lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, link language or language of wider communication (LWC), is a Natural language, language systematically used to make co ...

. In this approach, the linguist attempts to acquire proficiency in the target language in order to communicate directly with native speakers. Margaret Thomas writes that in monolingual approach it is "the linguist bears the burden of connecting the target language to the language(s) of analysis and of dissemination of research findings"; in the bilingual approach it is the native speaker who need to identify "equivalences across the target and contact languages, and communicating those equivalences to the linguist." The monolingual approach was advocated by linguist-anthropologist

Franz Boas Franz Uri Boas (July 9, 1858 – December 21, 1942) was a German-American anthropologist and ethnomusicologist. He was a pioneer of modern anthropology who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology". His work is associated with the mov ...

, who studied Native American languages, in the early 20th century. Boas believed that gaining command of the language was essential for understanding the culture and worldview of the speech community. Nevertheless, Boas was not fluent in any language he studied and often used English as lingua franca.

Edward Sapir Edward Sapir (; January 26, 1884 – February 4, 1939) was an American anthropologist-linguistics, linguist, who is widely considered to be one of the most important figures in the development of the discipline of linguistics in the United States ...

, one of the best known student's of Boas, used only bilingual approach, even when he worked with

Ishi Ishi ( – March 25, 1916) was the last known member of the Native American Yahi people from the present-day state of California in the United States. The rest of the Yahi (as well as many members of their parent tribe, the Yana) were ki ...

, the last known speaker of the

Yana language The Yana language (also Yanan) is an extinct language that was formerly spoken by the Yana people, who lived in north-central California between the Feather and Pit rivers in what is now the Shasta and Tehama counties. The last speaker of the ...

Leonard Bloomfield Leonard Bloomfield (April 1, 1887 – April 18, 1949) was an American linguist who led the development of structural linguistics in the United States during the 1930s and the 1940s. He is considered to be the father of American distributionalis ...

also used monolingual fieldwork, and even wrote some letters to his American colleague in

Ojibwe The Ojibwe (; Ojibwe writing systems#Ojibwe syllabics, syll.: ᐅᒋᐺ; plural: ''Ojibweg'' ᐅᒋᐺᒃ) are an Anishinaabe people whose homeland (''Ojibwewaki'' ᐅᒋᐺᐘᑭ) covers much of the Great Lakes region and the Great Plains, n ...

. The monolingual approach was not very widespread, but gained some popularity in 1940s by "monolingual demonstrations". However, the use of interpreters and lingua francas became more common as linguistics grew more theoretical and removed from ethnography. Another school of linguistics that used monolingual approach was the

Summer Institute of Linguistics SIL Global (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics International) is an evangelical Christian nonprofit organization whose main purpose is to study, develop and document languages, especially those that are lesser-known, to expan ...

(SIL), a Christian missionary organization. Linguist

Kenneth Lee Pike Kenneth Lee Pike (June 9, 1912 – December 31, 2000) was an American linguist and anthropologist. He was the originator of the theory of tagmemics, the coiner of the terms "emic" and "etic" and the developer of the constructed language ...

was the president and central figure of the organization. SIL linguists sometimes spend years learning the languages in distant communities, with the goal to learn a language on a level needed to translate the Bible; SIL linguists "embraced, even insisted on, the challenges of monolingual fieldwork".

Daniel Everett Daniel Leonard Everett (born July 26, 1951) is an American linguist and author best known for his study of the Amazon basin's Pirahã people and their language. Everett is currently Trustee Professor of Cognitive Sciences at Bentley Universit ...

, who started his career at SIL, became the most notable proponent of monolingual fieldwork in the 1990s. He spent more than 20 years in Brazil, in the Amazonian jungles, studying

Pirahã language Pirahã (also spelled ''Pirahá, Pirahán''), or Múra-Pirahã, is the indigenous language of the Pirahã people of Amazonas, Brazil. The Pirahã live along the Maici River, a tributary of the Amazon River. Pirahã is the only surviving dial ...

References

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External links

* Language By Gesture, a televised 1966 example of one of

's "monolingual demonstrations"
"Monolingual Fieldwork" Demonstration
by

Field research Linguistics

Further reading

References

External links