Reflections on Linguistic Fieldwork Within Moribund Speech Communities

• Published in: Études finno-ougriennes
• Main Author: Siegl, Florian
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: INALCO 2019
• Subjects: language documentation; linguistic fieldwork; moribund languages; documentation linguistique; langues moribondes; terrain linguistique; keelte dokumenteerimine; keelelisi välitöid; väljasurevad keele; Tromsø; Tuva; Arjeplog; Dudinka; Arvidsjaur; Ammarnäs; Potapovo; Enets; Laponie; nenets; saami; samoyed*; Taimyr; Tundra; Yukaghir
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/efo/7615

Whereas linguists conducting fieldwork tend to be a minority among linguists, linguists conducting fieldwork among the last speakers of an underresearched/underdocumented or even undocumented language are a minority within a minority. Although a number of fieldwork manuals have been published in recent decades, the perspective of fieldwork in extreme sociolinguistic situations such as among the last speakers of a language is usually underrepresented in the literature. It is precisely this perspective which will be presented by shedding some light on personal experiences and challenges from ongoing work on two moribund languages Forest Enets (Samoyedic, Uralic) and Ume Saami (Saami, Uralic). These impressions are contrasted with personal experiences from fieldwork and consultant work on other languages such as Dolgan and Tuvin (both Turkic), Taimyr Tundra Nenets (Samoyedic, Uralic) as well as Meithei (Sino‑Tibetan) and Tundra Yukaghir (isolate). A central claim of this article is to show that work with extremely endangered languages does not allow any meaningful equation; field sites are unique and working with speakers of moribund languages in different countries may mean very different things and imply highly diverging challenges—what works in field site X does not necessarily work in field site Y and vice versa. Alors que les linguistes de terrain ont tendance à être une minorité dans leur discipline, ceux qui font leurs terrains parmi les derniers locuteurs de langues sous-étudiées, sous-documentées, voire non documentées sont encore une minorité de la minorité. Même si un certain nombre de manuels de terrain ont été publiés dans les dernières décennies, la perspective du terrain dans des situations sociolinguistiques extrêmes comme c’est le cas parmi les derniers locuteurs d’une langue est en général sous-représenté dans la littérature existante. C’est cette perspective qui fait l’objet du présent article à partir d’une expérience personnelle d’un travail sur le terrain, ainsi que de consultations sur des ...