Language Learner's Field Guide

by Alan Healey (editor)

Originally published as:   Alan Healey, editor. 1975. Language Learner’s Field Guide. Ukarumpa, EHD, Papua New Guinea: Summer Institute of Linguistics Printing Department. 486 pages. 0-7263-0356-9. © 1975 Summer Institute of Linguistics, Inc

Complete Table of Contents

Summary

This book is a systematic guide to investigating language and culture by Alan Healey, published in 1970. It gives specific guidelines for aspects of the language and culture to explore and also contains some general articles on field language learning. Although this work was mainly intended for linguists who would be investigating and describing unwritten languages, and was originally developed in Papua New Guinea, there are articles which should be of general interest.

Front Matter

Previously published articles

Preface

Introduction

What do you expect?

Preparing for fieldwork

Surveying where to live

How to use this guide

The consecutive approach

The need-ordered approach

Two starting points

Kinds of learners

Learning without analyzing

Allocating your time

The first day

Part 1:. Day-by-day guide

Unit 1:. “What is his name?”; “Who is that?”; mimicry

Unit 2:. Greetings and farewells; intonation; tape file

Unit 3:. Dwellings; tracking; “What is this?”

Unit 4:. Tools; “What is that?”; equative clauses

Unit 5:. Review; anthropology file; dictionary file

Unit 6:. Village routines and leisure times; mimicry; verbs

Unit 7:. Conversation starters; person morphemes; pronouns

Unit 8:. Clothing; gifts; possessive forms

Unit 9:. Food; conversation and mimicry; “Whose is this?”

Unit 10:. “What is he doing?”; “What did he say?”; agreement

Unit 11:. Review; “Where?”; locationals; CV patterns

Unit 12:. Adornment; pictures; yes/no questions, and negatives

Unit 13:. Kin relationships; imperatives

Unit 14:. Workload; genealogies; “When?”; time words; tenses

Unit 15:. Another hamlet; transcribing; transitive clauses

Unit 16:. Communal work and authority; numerals; verbs

Unit 17:. Review; phonetic work charts; verb “to be”

Unit 18:. Use of fire; “Whom?”; verb affixes

Unit 19:. Pets; “Why?”; “Because”

Unit 20:. Art; emphasis; locationals

Unit 21:. Gift exchange; “How?”; instrumental phrase

Unit 22:. Review; gestures; tones

Unit 23:. Attitudes; intonation contours; prohibitions

Unit 24:. Recreation; plural nouns; residual pronouns

Unit 25:. Sickness and health; object pronouns; testing data

Unit 26:. Review; check lists; pitch, stress, and length

Unit 27:. Creative work; benefactives; “For whom?”

Unit 28:. Flora; hortatory constructions; verb stem formation

Unit 29:. Methods of communication; multiclause sentences; dependent verbs

Unit 30. Analyzing length, stress, and pitch; sentences

Unit 31:. Visiting; complex sentences in other modes

Unit 32:. Religion; descriptives; agreement

Unit 33:. Dancing; demonstratives; comparatives

Unit 34:. Collecting songs; different subject sentences

Unit 35:. Review; preliminary phoneme statement

Unit 36:. Social organization; accompaniment and locational constructions

Unit 37:. Life cycle; desiderative; purposive; reason

Unit 38:. Daily life in detail; vocatives; connectives

Unit 39:. Work patterns; embedded clauses; verbs of speech; cognition and perception; kin terms

Unit 40:. Review; morpheme classes; translation

Unit 41:. How to continue language learning

Unit 42:. Language learning away from the language area

Part 2:. Appendix

On learning monolingually¹

The monolingual approach to studying Amuzgo

Learning Candoshi monolingually

Learning Xavante monolingually

Language learning

Language learning in relation to focus^*

Grammatical drills

Programmed review cards

Language learning without tears

Stress-producing factors in cultural adjustment^*

Obtaining linguistic data

Eliciting vocabulary, meaning, and collocations^*

A method for eliciting paradigmatic data from text

On eliciting transformations in Vietnamese

Testing the recognition of utterance pairs

Collecting genealogies¹

Using tape recorders

Plain card filing

Punch card filing

Page filing

List of words suitable for monolingual eliciting

Useful expressions

Back Matter

Progress charts

End of first week

End of second week

End of third week

End of first month

End of second month in the village

At the end of each month (after the second)

Classified list of topics for observation

Grammar topics

Phonology topics

Classification for cultural observations

Glossary