Transcript consultation_elicitation

Fieldwork – consultation and
elicitation methods
ELDP Training 2007
Friederike Lüpke
Structure of the talk
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Motivation for methodological considerations in
the field of language documentation
Overview of Himmelmann’s types of
communicative events
Illustration of data resulting from different types
of communicative events, with a focus on staged
communicative events
Presentation and classification of different types
of stimuli
Potential problems
Links
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Motivation for methodological
considerations
Why bother
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So far, the field of language documentation has focussed
on the shape that a language documentation should take,
but not on what data should be included, how they
should be collected and to whom they should be of use.
A step toward this is a systematic investigation of the
goals of language documentation, of the data collection
methods associated with them, and the usability of the
data resulting from them.
Oral vs. written
I-language vs. E-language
Oral vs. nonverbal
Text vs. performance
Quality vs. quantity
…
4
The (new?) role of data
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“For description, the main
concern is the production of
grammars and dictionaries
whose primary audience are
linguists… In these products
language data serves
essentially as exemplification
and support for the linguist’s
analysis.” (Austin 2006: 87)
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[..] Language documentation,
on the other hand, places data
at the center of its concerns.”
(Austin 2006:87)
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One view of language documentation
Corpus (Himmelmann 1998)
Elicitations
(paradigms,
results of
tests...)
Observed communicative events
(conversation,
narratives…)
Qualitative analyses
(occurrence of x in
context y)
Staged communicative
events
(descriptions of picture
and video stimuli...)
Quantitative analyses (weighting of
occurrence of x in context y throughout
speakers, texts and genres…)
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Data types in the corpus
Corpus
Video, audio and image data
Speech in
cultural
context
Written data
Transcription,
annotation and
analysis of data
Metadata
Information about
the content,
format and
structure of data
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But exactly what data?
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“A language documentation
[…] conceived of as a
lasting, multipurpose record
of a language [… ] should
contain a large set of
primary data which provide
evidence for the language(s)
used at a given time in a
given community”
(Himmelmann 2006: 7)
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“The main goal of a
language documentation is
to make primary data
available for a broad group
of users.” (Himmelmann
2006: 15)
Which audience(s)?
Which community/ies?
Which language/s?
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Do we document a snapshot or
the production, transmission,
maintenance and change of
linguistic and cultural behaviour?
How do we establish
representativeness?
Do we aim at a
monolithic record or at
documenting variation
(of what) ?
Homogeneity vs. heterogeneity
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What status for negative evidence?
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“With regard to the usual way of obtaining negative
evidence (i.e. asking one or two speakers whether
examples x, y, z, are “okay”), it is doubtful whether this
really makes a difference in quality compared to evidence
provided by the fact that the structure in question is not
attested in a large corpus. Elicited evidence is only
superior here if it is very carefully elicited, paying
adequate attention to the sample of speakers interviewed,
potential biases in presenting the material, and the like.”
(Himmelmann 2006: 23)
How much methodological
and theoretical awareness
can we expect in language
documentation?
Which methods are
robust and widely
accepted?
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Data for who?
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We are aware of the
disciplines that also have
language as a centre of
interest – but do we cater
for their needs?
We want to create data
relevant for the speech
community/ies, but we
have little evidence for the
use of our electronic
corpora.
How can we create a
true multipurpose
record of a language?
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The (new?) role of the consultant
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“…some older field manuals
give advice on what kind of
questions to ask or not to ask,
… . In this manner, such
manuals quite automatically
assign a passive role to the
speaker. If we regard fieldwork
as a mutual teaching-learning
event, this approach is no
longer acceptable.” (Mosel
2006: 75)
What roles do we assume for
ourselves and our
consultants?
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What’s left? Data and methodology
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“The major discovery of post-1957 “syntactic theory”
is not “theoretical”, but methodological: That a huge
amount of generalizations can best be found by
adopting an “experimental” approach…What remains
of the published body of research is the empirical
part. So all the papers that are neatly divided into a
“data/generalizations” part and an “analysis” part
have a good chance of continuing to be useful”.
(Haspelmath 2006: Linguistlist 17.2304)
If its data that is central, how
can we assure that our data
are, and will be, relevant? ?
How can we reach maximal
transparency and explicitness
in providing information
about how and why we
collected our data ?
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Your turn
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Please take 5 minutes to:
– Think about the main goals and users of your research
project.
– Think about how you have collected and/or intend to
collect data in the field.
– What kind of methods of data collection (i.e. word
lists, questionnaires, stimuli…) do you use?
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We will discuss your findings and concerns in the
plenary.
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Data resulting from observed
communicative events
Data resulting from monologues
“This lecture is about the fascinating theory on...”
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PRO:
– Have a high degree of
ecological validity.
– Yield phonologically,
semantically and syntactically
natural utterances.
– Give insight into the culture, if
thematically balanced.
– Show high-frequency
phenomena.
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CON:
– Can seem natural but
factually aren’t because the
cultural settings are not
respected.
– Can contain pragmatic
oddities.
– Are not very controlled.
– Many features are not
quantifiable because a
unique performance of one
speaker.
– Don’t offer negative
evidence and are not good
for low-frequency
phenomena..
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Data resulting from conversation
A: “How do you like the ELDP training so far?”
B: “All I can say is they start too early and don’t give us
enough breaks!”
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PRO:
– Often seen as the non-plusultra in naturalness.
– Yields data that are
naturalistic in every respect.
– Also gives important
information about the culture.
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CON:
– Is not controlled at all.
– Is very difficult to get.
– Is tedious and timeconsuming to transcribe.
– Is even more timeconsuming to analyse.
– Doesn’t offer negative
evidence and insight into
low-frequency phenomena.
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Representativeness of a LDD corpus – Jalonke
high frequency verb kolon ‘know’
Causative
Reciprocal
Complement
Passive
Perfect
Many
transitive
uses
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Representativeness of a LDD corpus – Jalonke
low frequency verb
Past
NP subject
Goal PP
Causative?
?
Perfect?
Transitive uses?
Passive?
?
All uses are
intransitive
?
??
?
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Summary
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Observed communicative events that are
investigated in a qualitative way allow to
– Get a first impression of the most frequent syntactic
environments of the most frequent verbs.
– Formulate hypotheses and prepare elicitation
sessions.
But: these data don’t tell us anything about
markedness, about the full distributional range,
about low frequency items and constructions, and
about their semantic properties.
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Data resulting from
elicitation
Data resulting from contextualising
elicitation
“How do you greet in the morning?”
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PRO:
– Yield phonologically natural
utterances.
– Can be quantified to some
extent.
– Are highly controlled, or at
least seem to be.
– Yield phonologically natural
utterances
– Offer negative evidence
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CON:
– Results depend heavily on the
creativity of the researcher and
the receptiveness of the
consultant.
– Easily lead to
misunderstandings that go by
unnoticed.
– Can thus yield
syntactically/semantically/pragmatically odd utterances.
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Data resulting from translational equivalent
elicitation
“How do you say ‘bee’ in Dida?”
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PRO:
– Are easy when starting work
on an unknown language.
– Give good data to work on
phoneme inventory, basic
lexicon, and for lexical
comparison.
– Are quantifiable and highly
controlled.
– Offer negative evidence.
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CON:
– Yield phonologically odd
utterances.
– Can easily lead to
misunderstandings due to
the lack of context.
– Translatable items are
limited in number.
– Hyper-cooperative
consultants may create
neologisms and produce
calques to be helpful.
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Data resulting from acceptability judgements
“Can I say ‘this book’ when the book is lying over there?
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PRO:
– Are controlled and
quantifiable.
– Can give results for domains
that are difficult to cover
otherwise.
– Give comparable results for
many fields.
– Offer negative evidence.
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CON:
– Very often do not test
acceptability of the utterance,
but rather of the context
provided for it.
– Can therefore very often be
contradicted by the same
and/or different speakers.
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Summary
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Elicited data that are inspected in a qualitative
way allow to
– Get the full distributional range of a given
item/construction.
– Test the semantic properties of that
item/construction.
– Provide negative evidence, i.e. information on
unattested structures/uses, ungrammaticality, etc.
But: these data are often influenced by the
metalanguage/elicitation method and not
naturalistic at all.
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Your turn
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Please take five minutes to think about other data
collection methods you use, in particular about
stimuli-based data:
– Which media do you use if you collect data based on non-verbal
stimuli?
– How do you rate the quality of the data obtained with stimuli?
– Have you encountered any problems when working with stimuli?
– Do you have recommendations to make regarding specific stimuli
that worked well?
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We will compare your observations in the plenary.
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Data resulting from staged
communicative events
Staged communicative events
based on nonverbal stimuli
Types of stimuli
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Static stimuli:
– Comics
– Picture books
– Photos
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Dynamic stimuli:
– Acted videos
– Animated videos
– Staged life events
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Interactive stimuli:
– Puzzle tasks
– Map tasks
– Matching games
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Static stimuli
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Picture books
– Topological relations picture
book
– Frog story
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Photos
– Positional verbs picture book
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Comics
– Calvin & Hobbes
– Tintin
– Asterix & Obelix
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Dynamic stimuli
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Acted videos:
– Staged events
– Cut & Break
– Pear film
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Animated videos:
– Fish film
– Event triads
– ECOM clips
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Interactive stimuli
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Matching/sorting games
games:
– Basic colour terms Munsell chips
– Men and tree
– Cluedo
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Puzzles:
– Eisenbeiss/Matsuo puzzle
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Map tasks/route descriptions:
– HCRC map task
– Table top route description task
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Data resulting from static stimuli
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PRO:
– Are highly controlled, quantifiable
and comparable.
– Yield phonologically, semantically
and syntactically accurate data.
– Are free from linguistic
interference of the metalanguage
and from misunderstandings of
context.
– Can be used for nonlinguistic
categorisation tasks.
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CON:
– Validity of the data depends on
coverage of the domain under
inspection by the stimulus.
– If gaps in parameters, data can be
severely flawed.
– Cross-cultural applicability can be
limited.
– Use is limited to visually
depictable scenes.
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Data resulting from dynamic stimuli
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PRO:
– Yield phonologically, syntactically
and semantically quantifiable and
comparable data etc. (see
previous slide).
– Can be used for nonlinguistic
categorisation tasks.
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CON:
– See previous slide and:
– Require the use of high-tech, which is
complicated if not impossible in many
field settings.
– Depending on the abstractness of the
stimulus and the purpose of the
elicitation, misunderstandings can
occur.
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Data resulting from interactive stimuli
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PRO:
– Allow controlled interaction of
two or more speakers.
– Yield quantifiable and
comparable data.
– Can be used for nonlinguistics
categorisation tasks.
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CON:
– May create culturally
inappropriate or strange
situations.
– Since the true purpose of the
interaction is normally not
known to the consultants,
misunderstandings occur
easily.
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Examples for the use of static
stimuli
Posture verbs in stative positions (Ameka,
de Witte & Wilkins 1999)
English/Dutch: The bottle is
standing on the rock.
Goemai: The stick is hanging on the tree
trunk.
Jalonke: Biniir-<< d$$-xi g<m-<<
fari.
bottle-DEF sit-PF rock-DEF on
‘The bottle is sitting on the rock.’
Jalonke: Tam-<< kiran-xi wurixuntun-na
ma.
stick-DEF lean-PF tree trunk-DEF at
‘The stick is leaning against the tree
trunk.’
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Examples for the use of
dynamic stimuli
Event segmentation: ECOM clips (Bohnemeyer &
Caelen 1999)
English: The ball rolled from the square
past the house to the triangle.
Single clause;
single verb
Yukatek: The ball is at the square, and it
goes rolling, and then it passes the
house, and then it arrives at the triangle.
Multiple
independent
clauses
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Posture verbs in caused positions (Hellwig & Lüpke
1999)
Differences between stative
and caused positions:
Same posture verb used : Jalonke.
Different verbs with same extension
used: Goemai.
Different verbs with different
extensions used: English and Dutch.
English: She puts the
bottle on the table.
Jalonke/Goemai/Dutch:
She ‘sits’ the bottle on
the table.
Semantic differences:
In Jalonke and Goemai, objects with
a base sit/are ‘sat’, even when their
longest axis is vertical.
In English and Dutch, they stand,
but are put (English) or ‘sat’
(Dutch).
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Cut & break verbs (Bohnemeyer, Bowerman & Brown
2001)
English: cut (with scissors)
English: cut (with knife)
Dutch: knippen ‘cut with
scissors’
Dutch: snijden ‘cut with a
knife’
Jalonke: cut-iterative
(because cloth has already
been cut).
Jalonke: cut (because fish
hasn’t been cut yet).
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Examples for the use of
interactive stimuli
The Puzzle Task (Eisenbeiss & Matsuo 2003)

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Children have to describe
puzzle pieces in order to
be handed the piece to
be handed to them
The pictures are selected
in order to elicit
descriptions of external
possession and to ‘force’
the children to verbalise
all the relevant contrasts
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An Example of the contrasts involved
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The HCRC map task (HCRC Edinburgh)
The instruction giver’s map
The instruction follower’s map
Crucial:
landmarks on
both maps are
not identical in
order to
increase
motivation to
communicate.
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The men and tree matching game (MPI
Nijmegen)
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Two consultants, a ‘director’ and a
‘matcher’ have identical sets of photos
with similar scenes.
The director describes a photo to the
matcher, who has to find the matching
picture.
The photos are selected to uncover
the categories triggering the choice of
the matching photos – in this case,
intrinsic vs. absolute frames of
reference
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Ad hoc stimuli
Ad hoc stimuli

New technologies enable fieldworkers to create
stimuli ‘ad hoc’ in the field:
– Digital photos
– Video clips
– Animations

Although generally not usable for cross-linguistic
comparison, these stimuli can yield interesting
data difficult to get otherwise.
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Action descriptions (Lüpke 2005, ms.)
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
Videos recorded in the field that
are described by consultants.
PRO:
– Yield fine-grained event descriptions
difficult to obtain otherwise.
– Can be used to cover semantic
domains not attested so far in the
corpus.

CON:
– Don’t constitute a ‘speech event’ in
the sense of Hymes.
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Photos and Powerpoint animations


Useful for ethnobotany
Sequences of stills from
digital video or ppt
animations can be used
to elicit stages of an
event
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Potential problems
Ecological validity

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
It is important to aim at
culturally appropriate methods.
However, total ecological validity
leads to non-transferability.
Therefore:
– Elicitations and stimuli should
replace the names of culturally
unfamiliar items with more familiar
ones.
– Unfamiliar or uncomfortable
settings (elicitation sessions with
consultants of different rank/sex…,
elicitations games, etc.) should be
explained and negotiated
beforehand, and, if necessary,
amended.
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Procedure and analysis

The familiarity or unfamiliarity of certain devices,
techniques, or media in different cultures and groups
should be taken seriously but need not rule out using
them with caution and preparation:
– Pilot studies determine whether a technique works and if not, give
indications on what should be changed.
– Consultant training is important for all kinds of data collection.
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
Data resulting from one collection technique should
always be checked against data from another technique.
If the comparability of data is aimed at, collection
procedure and analysis should not deviate from
instructions or procedures given for the specific
technique, questionnaire or stimulus.
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My conclusion
Why all kinds of data?
Field-based corpora are relatively
Corpussmall. Thus:
 They don’t show the full distributional range of a given item.
 They don’t offer negative evidence.
Elicitations
Observed
communicative
events
Staged
communicative
events
Are
controlled,
but
linguistically
prompted Thus:
Are very
relatively
highly
controlled,
uncontrolled.
butnot
linguistically
Thus:
prompted.
Thus:

the controlled
of a of
situation.
 They
They permit
don’t’ allow
an active variation
manipulation
 They
likely
of
toassessment
be influenced
by the
by real-world
the
 parameters
Theyare
allow
thevariation
of researcher.
the
linguistic
input. to.
situation
referred

Often, texts do not permit the reconstruction
 of
Their
the ‘naturalness’
real-world context
cannotforbea assessed.
given item.
 They yield data that are directly comparable across
languages.
55
A circle
Action
description
Observed
communicative
events
Staged
communicative
events
BowPed picture
stimulus
Elicitation
Demonstrative
questionnaire
56
Your conclusion?
Useful links

MPI Nijmegen Language & Cognition and Acquisition Groups:
– Large number of stimuli on a range of topics; stimuli and manuals upon request:
http://www.mpi.nl/world/index.html


The MPI EVA Leipzig links to field tools:
– http://lingweb.eva.mpg.de/fieldtools/tools.htm
Russ Tomlin’s Fish Film:
– Stimulus designed to uncover the motivation for voice contrasts, topicality, etc.
http://logos.uoregon.edu/tomlin/research_fishfilm.html

Wallace Chafe’s Pear Film
– Designed to compare narrative structure
http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/faculty/chafe/pearfilm.htm

Phillip Wolff’s animations on causality (upon request?)
– Aimed at testing Talmy’s force dynamics model of causation
http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~pwolff/

Sonja Eisenbeiß’s elicitation games (upon request)
– A variety of games and tasks for language acquisition studies, focussing on three
participant events and external possession
http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~seisen/index.htm
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