[Lexicog] authentic recordings versus generated elicitation forms

[billposer at ALUM.MIT.EDU]

Michael Krauss, who worked with the last truly fluent speaker of Eyak,
told me that toward the end of his work, in order to try to elicit
any residual verb roots, he generated a list of all phonologically
possible verb roots and tried out all of those that were not already
attested. In several cases the root turned out to have a meaning.
What I don't recall is what forms he used since the roots are not
words by themselves. 

It seems to me that there is a difference between proposing a form
and asking what if anything it means, which is relatively safe,
and asking if form X can have meaning Y, which asks for a
judgment and is more dangerous.

In both cases, you do have to be aware that last generation speakers
may do things that are not in the spirit of the language. In my work
on Carrier, for example, I worked at one point with various elders
plus a middle-aged woman. The middle-aged woman was fluent in the sense
that she could converse freely and say whatever she wanted to. She
didn't exhibit the usual characteristics of a semi-speaker. However,
her approach to word-formation was different from that of the elders.
If asked, for example, how to say "water bed", she responded with a
compound of "water" and "bed", exactly parallel to the English.
The elders all agreed that that sounded funny and that the proper way
to say it was with a phrase meaning "bed inside which is water".

There are really two issues here. The first is, how does one probe the
linguistic knowledge of a speaker so as to obtain maximal information
with minimal distortion due to the elicitation technique. The second is
the extent to which the information obtained from speakers of a
dying language is an accurate reflection of the language as spoken
when still vital. Unfortunately, I think that we have to recognize
that the process of language death in and of itself affects the
language even of people who appear to be (and are, by normal standards)
fluent and that data obtained from moribund languages is always
to some degree suspect as not representing a "normal" language.

Bill
 


------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> 
Get fast access to your favorite Yahoo! Groups. Make Yahoo! your home page
http://us.click.yahoo.com/dpRU5A/wUILAA/yQLSAA/HKE4lB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~-> 

 
Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lexicographylist/

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    lexicographylist-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/