Posts tagged methodology

This journal article describes a variety of methods that I used in my PhD research to elicit evidentiality. It was really nice to have the opportunity to revisit this work for a special issue of Folia Linguistica on Knowing in Interaction, edited by Karolina Grzech, Eva Schultze-Berndt and Henrik Bergqvist.

One of the challenges of working with evidentiality is knowing why someone used a particular evidential in a particular conversation. I used a range of methods that created semi-structured but still naturalistic contexts that made it easier to track people’s knowledge states. Some of these methods I borrowed from other people and I discuss how useful I found them. For others I took inspiration from outside of research, including using games like 20 questions, and optical illusions.

I really enjoy opportunities to talk about research methodology, and I hope this is helpful to other people trying to understand how grammar works in interaction.

Abstract

This article describes the use of eight research tools used in the documentation of evidential and modal use in Lamjung Yolmo, a Tibeto-Burman language of Nepal. For each tool, the methodology is described, and some examples of the usefulness and limitations are discussed. The methods include use of existing and novel tools and materials. Image tasks included the existing resources Family Problem Picture Task and Jackal and Crow, as well as optical illusions. Object tasks included the hidden objects game and magic tricks. Listening and talking tasks included the game twenty questions, reporting previous speech, and a grammaticality judgement task based on multiple reports. Making research methods more transparent, and the open sharing of data and materials, allows us to move forward with better understanding of the contexts of evidential use, and more nuanced cross-linguistic typological analysis of evidential systems.

Reference

Gawne, Lauren. (2020). Looks like a duck, quacks like a hand: Tools for eliciting evidential and epistemic distinctions, with examples from Lamjung Yolmo (Tibetic, Nepal). Folia Linguistica, 54(2): 343-369. https://doi.org/10.1515/folia-2020-2042

Open Access preprint on Figshare [embargoed until Oct 2021]: https://doi.org/10.26181/5f5fef5ddfca9

See also

• Questions and answers in Lamjung Yolmo (article that uses the methods described in the new paper)
• Lamjung Yolmo copulas in use: evidentiality, reported speech and questions (My 2013 PhD thesis where I originally discuss these methods)
• Lingthusiasm Episode 32: You heard about it but I was there - Evidentiality