research methodology

[Dennis R. Preston]

arnold,

For "extra credit" in my large intro to lang and cult class (300
persons), we often offer a time when students can "stop by" our lab
and be recorded. We sometimes "filter out" interesting subjects (but
for their phonology) and more extensively record them later. The
principle would apply, however, to other items of linguistic
interest; we have not had difficulty getting human subjects approval
for this way of doing things. Woking back from a (published) corpus
seems much dicier.

dInIs

>sali mufwene refers me to studies on grammaticality judgments.
>i know these well, and i myself have used questionnaires (on
>fairly large numbers of subjects) to ferret out systems of idiolects.
>my question, however, had to do with getting at relatively rare
>systems.  i'm especially interested in hearing from people who've
>used corpus searches (or very large questionnaire studies) to find
>individuals with particularly interesting varieties and then
>following up with them.  there are practical and ethical issues
>here.
>
>arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)

--
Dennis R. Preston
Department of Linguistics and Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
preston at pilot.msu.edu
Office: (517)353-0740
Fax: (517)432-2736