Methods of data collection and analysis

METHODS OF DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS

Recent decades have seen a dramatic increase of interest in new empirical methods of obtaining and analyzing linguistic data, accompanied by increasing awareness of challenges presented by the new methodologies. In this seminar we will read foundational work discussing various methodological issues related to the collection of data through fieldwork, experimental work, and corpus research. The goal of the seminar is to introduce students to practical challenges of dealing with empirical data, to familiarize them with possible ways of dealing with these challenges, and to develop their ability to design a study to test a particular hypothesis. All seminar participants will work on their individual research projects. They will collect, analyze and interpret their own data using one of the methods discussed. In addition to reading and discussing seminal work on methods of data collection, students will be required to lead discussions of selected readings and to write an essay presenting the results of their own research.

Structure of the course

1. 
   What corpora tell us
   
2. 
   The basics of data analysis
   
3. 
   Setting up an experiment
   
4. 
   The challenges of fieldwork
   
5. 
   Experimental fieldwork
   

Selected readings
Bowern, C. 2008. Linguistic fieldwork: A practical guide. Palgrave Macmillan.

Fillmore, C. J. 1992. “Corpus linguistics” or “Computer-aided armchair linguistics”.In J. Svartvik (ed.)

Directions in Corpus Linguistics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 35-60.

Gippert, Jost, NikolausHimmelmann, and Ulrike Mosel.2006. Essentials of Language Documentation. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Grenoble, L. A. & N. L. Furbee (eds.). 2010. Language documentation: Practice and values. Amsterdam: John

Benjamins.

Hyman, L. M. 2001. Fieldwork as a state of mind. In Newman, P. & M. Ratliff (eds.) Linguistic Fieldwork. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 15-33.

Lecocq, B. 2002. Fieldwork ain’t always fun: Public and hidden discourses on fieldwork. History in Africa 29: 273-282.

Vaux, Bert, Justin Cooper, and Emily Tucker. 2007. Linguistic Field Methods. Eugene, Or.: Wipf& Stock.