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Part of
Predication in African Languages
Edited by James Essegbey and Enoch O. Aboh
[Studies in Language Companion Series 235] 2024
► pp. 20–42

Chapter 1
Linguistic fieldwork as team science

| University of Melbourne
| Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University
| Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University

Linguistic fieldwork is increasingly moving forward from the traditional model of lone fieldworker with a notebook to collaborative projects with key roles for native speakers and other experts and involving the use of different kinds of stimulus-based elicitation methods as well as extensive video documentation. Several cohorts of colleagues and students have been influenced by this inclusive and interdisciplinary view of linguistic fieldwork. We describe the challenges and benefits of doing multi-methods collaborative fieldwork. As linguistics inevitably moves into the direction of multiple methods, interdisciplinarity and team science, now is the time to reflect critically on how best to contribute to a cumulative science of language.

Keywords: multiple methods, collaborative fieldwork, interdisciplinarity, Avatime, Siwu
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Why team science fieldwork?
  • 3.Three case studies
    • 3.1Serial verb constructions and single events: Interdisciplinary multi-methods investigation
    • 3.2The language of perception: Interdisciplinary cross-linguistic studies
    • 3.3Folk definitions in semantic fieldwork
  • 4.Looking forward
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Note
  • References
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