Article published in:
Language Documentation and Endangerment in Africa
Edited by James Essegbey, Brent Henderson and Fiona Mc Laughlin
[Culture and Language Use 17] 2015
► pp. 215–238

Folk definitions in linguistic fieldwork

Informal paraphrases by native speaker consultants are crucial tools in linguistic fieldwork. When recorded, archived, and analysed, they offer rich data that can be mined for many purposes, from lexicography to semantic typology and from ethnography to the investigation of gesture and speech. This paper describes a procedure for the collection and analysis of folk definitions that are native (in the language under study rather than the language of analysis), informal (spoken rather than written), and multi-modal (preserving the integrity of gesture-speech composite utterances). The value of folk definitions is demonstrated using the case of ideophones, words that are notoriously hard to study using traditional elicitation methods. Three explanatory strategies used in a set of folk definitions of ideophones are examined: the offering of everyday contexts of use, the use of depictive gestures, and the use of sense relations as semantic anchoring points. Folk definitions help elucidate word meanings that are hard to capture, bring to light cultural background knowledge that often remains implicit, and take seriously the crucial involvement of native speaker consultants in linguistic fieldwork. They provide useful data for language documentation and are an essential element of any toolkit for linguistic and ethnographic field research.
Published online: 22 October 2015
https://doi.org/10.1075/clu.17.09din
References
Agar, Michael
2009 Ethnography. In Culture and Language Use [Handbook of Pragmatics Highlights 2], Gunter Senft, Jan-Ola Östman & Jef Verschueren (eds), 110–120. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ameka, Felix K
2008 Constructing and describing meanings. Plenary lecture presented at the West African Languages Congress, University of Education, Winneba.
Bernard, H. Russell
2006 Research Methods in Anthropology. Lanham MD: Altamira Press, Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Blench, Roger
2010 The sensory world: Ideophones in Africa and elsewhere. In Perception of the Invisible: Religion, Historical Semantics and the Role of Perceptive Verbs, Anne Storch (ed.), 275–296. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe.Google Scholar
Bouquiaux, Luc & Thomas, Jacqueline M.C
(eds) 1992 Studying and Describing Unwritten Languages. Dallas TX: Summer Institute of Linguistics.Google Scholar
Bowern, Clair
2007 Linguistic Fieldwork: A Practical Guide. Houndmills: Palgrave MacMillan. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Casagrande, Joseph B. & Hale, Kenneth
1967 Semantic relationships in Papago folk definitions. In Studies in Southwestern Ethnolinguistics: Meaning and History in the Languages of the American Southwest, Dell Hymes & William E. Bittle (eds), 165–193. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Chelliah, Shobhana L. & de Reuse, Willem J
2011 Handbook of Descriptive Linguistic Fieldwork. Dordrecht: Springer. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Childs, G. Tucker
1993 Lexicography in West Africa: Some problems and issues. Lexikos 3: 13–28.Google Scholar
1994a African ideophones. In Sound Symbolism, Leanne Hinton, Johanna Nichols & John J. Ohala (eds), 178–204. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
1994b Expressiveness in contact situations: The fate of African ideophones. Journal of Pidgin and Creole languages 9(2): 257–282. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Crowley, Terry
2007 Field Linguistics: A Beginner’s Guide. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Cruse, D. Alan
1986 Lexical Semantics. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Diffloth, Gérard
1972 Notes on expressive meaning. Chicago Linguistic Society 8: 440–447.Google Scholar
Dimmendaal, Gerrit J
1995 Studying lexical-semantic fields in languages: Nature versus nurture, or where does culture come in these days. Frankfurter Afrikanistische Blätter 7: 1–28.Google Scholar
Dingemanse, Mark
2011 The Meaning and Use of Ideophones in Siwu. PhD dissertation, Radboud University Nijmegen. http://​thesis​.ideophone​.org/
2012 Advances in the cross-linguistic study of ideophones. Language and Linguistics Compass 6(10): 654–672. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2013 Ideophones and gesture in everyday speech. Gesture 13(2): 143–165. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Dingemanse, Mark, Blythe, Joe & Dirksmeyer, Tyko
2014 Formats for other-initiation of repair across languages: An exercise in pragmatic typology. Studies in Language 38(1): 5–43. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Dixon, Robert M.W
2007 Field linguistics: A minor manual. Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung 60(1): 12–31.Google Scholar
Enfield, Nick J
2003 The definition of what-d’you-call-it: semantics and pragmatics of recognitional deixis. Journal of Pragmatics 35(1): 101–117. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2009 The Anatomy of Meaning: Speech, Gesture, and Composite Utterances. Cambridge: CUP. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Enfield, Nick J., Kendrick, Kobin H., de Ruiter, Jan Peter, Stivers, Tanya & Levinson, Stephen C
2011 Building a corpus of spontaneous interaction. In Field Manual, Vol. 14, Kobin H. Kendrick & Asifa Majid (eds), 29–32. Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.Google Scholar
Everett, Daniel L
2001 Monolingual fieldwork. In Linguistic Fieldwork, Paul Newman & Martha Susan Ratliff (eds), 166–188. Cambridge: CUP. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Franklin, Karl J
1971 Some comments on eliciting cultural data. Anthropological Linguistics 13(7): 339–348.Google Scholar
Garvey, Catherine
1977 The contingent query: A dependent act in conversation. In Interaction, Conversation, and the Development of Language, Michael Lewis & Leonard A. Rosenblum (eds), 63–94. New York NY: Wiley.Google Scholar
Geurts, Kathryn Linn
2002 Culture and the Senses: Bodily Ways of Knowing in an African Community. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Hellwig, Birgit
2006 Semantics: Field work methods. In Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics, Keith Brown (ed.), 180–183. Oxford: Elsevier. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2010 Meaning and translation in linguistic fieldwork. Studies in Language 34(4): 802–831. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kockelman, Paul
2010 Language, Culture, and Mind. Cambridge: CUP. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Levelt, Willem J.M., Roelofs, Ardi & Meyer, Antje S
1999 A theory of lexical access in speech production. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22(1): 1–38. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lydall, Jean
2000 Having fun with ideophones: A socio-linguistic look at ideophones in Hamar, Southern Ethiopia. In Proceedings of the XIV International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, Baye Yimam, Richard Pankhurst, David Chapple, Yonas Admassu, Alula Pankhurst & Birhanu Teferra (eds), 886–91. Addis Ababa: Addis Ababa University.Google Scholar
Lyons, John
1977 Semantics, Vols 1–2. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Malinowski, Bronislaw
1923 The problem of meaning in primitive languages. In The Meaning of Meaning, Charles Kay Ogden & Ivor Armstrong Richards (eds), 296–336. London: Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Manes, Joan
1980 Ways of defining: Folk definitions and the study of semantics. Forum Linguisticum 5: 122–139.Google Scholar
Mathiot, Madeleine
1967 The place of the dictionary in linguistic description. Language 43(3): 703–724. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
1979 Folk-definitions as a tool for the analysis of lexical meaning. In Ethnolinguistics: Boas, Sapir and Whorf Revisited, Madeleine Mathiot (ed.), 121–260. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
McNeill, David
1992 Hand and Mind. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Mithun, Marianne
1982 The synchronic and diachronic behavior of plops, squeaks, croaks, sighs, and moans. International Journal of American Linguistics 48(1): 49–58. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Moshi, Lioba
1993 Ideophones in KiVunjo-Chaga. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 3(2): 185–216. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Newman, Paul & Ratliff, Martha
(eds) 2001 Linguistic Fieldwork. Cambridge: CUP. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Noss, Philip A
1999 The ideophone: A dilemma for translation and translation theory. In New Dimensions in African Linguistics and Languages, Paul F.A. Kotey (ed.), 261–272. Trenton NJ: Africa World Press.Google Scholar
Nuckolls, Janis B
2000 Spoken in the spirit of gesture: Translating sound symbolism in a Pastaza Quechua Narrative. In Translating Native Latin American Verbal Art, Joel Sherzer & Kay Sammons (eds), 233–251. Washington DC: Smithsonian Press.Google Scholar
Okpewho, Isidore
1992 African Oral Literature: Backgrounds, Character, and Continuity. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Payne, Thomas E
1997 Describing Morphosyntax. A Guide for Field Linguists. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Perchonock, Norma & Werner, Oswald
1969 Navaho systems of classification: Some implications for ethnoscience. Ethnology 8(3): 229–242. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Pole, Leonard M
1982 Decline or survival? Iron production in West Africa from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. Journal of African History 23(4): 503–513. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Prietze, Rudolf
1908 Die spezifischen Verstärkungsadverbien im Haussa und Kanuri. Mittheilungen des Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen 11(3): 307–317.Google Scholar
Rattray, Robert S
1916 The iron workers of Akpafu. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 46: 431–435. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Samarin, William J
1967a Determining the meaning of ideophones. Journal of West African Languages 4(2): 35–41.Google Scholar
1967b Field Linguistics. New York NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
1969 The art of Gbeya insults. International Journal of American Linguistics 35(4): 323–329. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
1971 Survey of Bantu ideophones. African Language Studies 12: 130–168.Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A., Jefferson, Gail & Sacks, Harvey
1977 The preference for self-correction in the organization of repair in conversation. Language 53(2): 361–382. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Schlegel, Joh. Bernhard
1857 Schlüssel der Ewesprache, dargeboten in den grammatischen Grundzügen des Anlodialekts. Stuttgart.Google Scholar
De Schryver, Gilles-Maurice
2009 The lexicographic treatment of ideophones in Zulu. Lexikos 19: 34–54. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Silverstein, Michael
1981 The Limits of Awareness. Austin TX: Southwest Educational Development Laboratory.Google Scholar
Vidal, Owen Emeric
1852 Introductory Remarks. In A Vocabulary of the Yoruba Language, Samuel Ajayi Crowther (ed.), 1–38. London: Seeleys.Google Scholar
Voeltz, F.K. Erhard & Kilian-Hatz, Christa
(eds) 2001 Ideophones [Typological Studies in Language 44]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Watson, Richard L
2001 A comparison of some Southeast Asian ideophones with Some African ideophones. In Voeltz & Kilian-Hatz (eds), 385–405. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Weinreich, Uriel
1962 Lexicographic definition in descriptive semantics. In Problems in Lexicography, Fred W. Householder & Sol Saporta (eds), 25–44. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press & The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Werner, Oswald
1993 Short take 10: Semantic accent and folk definitions. Cultural Anthropology Methods 5(2): 6–7. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Badenoch, Nathan
2022. Silence, Cessation and Stasis: The Ethnopoetics of “Absence” in Bit Expressives. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 32:1 ► pp. 94 ff. Crossref logo
Nuckolls, Janis B.
2020. “How do you even know what ideophones mean?”. Gesture 19:2-3 ► pp. 161 ff. Crossref logo
Thompson, Arthur Lewis, Thomas Van Hoey & Youngah Do
2021. Articulatory features of phonemes pattern to iconic meanings: evidence from cross-linguistic ideophones. Cognitive Linguistics 32:4 ► pp. 563 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 31 july 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.