Reflections on ethics: Re-humanizing linguistics, building relationships across difference

Himmelmann (1998) uses the word 'ethics' only once, but his arguments for proposing a field of documentary linguistics reflect assumptions about ethical stances that have been addressed in linguistics publications since 1998. This paper begins by outlining some of these ethical assumptions, and then focuses on considerations closely connected to what Dobrin & Berson (2011: 207) refer to as "re-humanizing linguistics'' and "building relationships across difference". The paper suggests that ethical language documentation work must be grounded in considerations of the human nature of research relationships, the histories of interactions between peoples which inform those research relationships, and varying conceptions of knowledge. Since language documentation work inevitably has social consequences for human beings, aligning language documentation practice with Indigenous research paradigms which emphasize relational accountability (Wilson 2008: 99), allows for a practice based on respect, reciprocity and responsibility and ultimately leads to good documentation.National Foreign Language Resource Cente

Language as a Link to Wellness

This poster presents a visual representation of wellness considering seven important elements (worldview, land, language, identity, spirituality, social relations, and health) established from a literature review and interviews with Indigenous experts. is conceptualization focuses on language as a link connecting the other elements and is adaptable to other understandings of wellness

Investigations into Polish morphology and phonology

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 1989.Title as it appeared in M.I.T. Graduate List, February, 1989: The interaction of phonology and morphology in Polish.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 281-291).by Ewa Czaykowska Higgins.Ph.D

Research Models, Community Engagement, and Linguistic Fieldwork: Reflections on Working within Canadian Indigenous Communities

This paper reflects on different research models in linguistic fieldwork and on different levels of engagement in and with language-speaking communities, focusing on the Canadian context. I begin by examining a linguist-focused model of research: this is language research conducted by linguists, for linguists; the language-speaking community’s participation is limited mostly to being the source of fluent speakers, and the level of engagement in the community by a linguist is relatively small. I then consider models that involve more engaged and collaborative research, and define the Community-Based Language Research model which allows for the production of knowledge on a language that is constructed for, with, and by community members, and that is therefore not primarily for or by linguists. In CBLR, linguists are actively engaged partners working collaboratively with language communities. Collaborative models of research seem to be closest in spirit to models advocated by Indigenous groups in Canada and elsewhere. I reflect here on (1) why one might choose to work within a collaborative research model, and (2) what some of the challenges are that linguists face when they conduct research collaboratively. In a broad sense the purpose of this paper is to think through some questions that an “outsider” linguist might face when undertaking linguistic research in an Indigenous community today.National Foreign Language Resource Cente

Changing fieldwork roles in Community-Based Language Research

This paper examines several fieldwork situations from a community-based language revitalization project taking place in British Columbia, Canada. Through this examination I intend 1) to exemplify possible types of roles played by linguists and community members, with a view to expanding linguists’ perspectives on fieldwork, and 2) to touch upon several interesting implications of changing the roles and relationships of linguists and community-members in fieldwork. There is a growing movement amongst linguists to conduct linguistic research on small Indigenous languages in collaboration with community members (e.g., Yamada 2007, Stebbins 2003). A consequence of conducting research collaboratively is that the roles which outsider linguists and community members take on in fieldwork situations are no longer simply expert/informant types of roles in which a linguist is the outside expert and a speaker is a language-data source (see Rice 2006: 140-145 for discussion of roles). For example, in a Community-Based Language Research model, research on a language is conducted for, with and by the language-speaking community within which the research takes place and which it affects (Author 2008; cf. Grinevald 2003). This model allows for the possibility that community members participating in fieldwork research will be explicitly recognized as experts and as researchers, not simply as informants, consultants, teachers, or even collaborators. As experts, the community researchers direct and lead the research; outsider linguists, in contrast, take on supporting roles. In one fieldwork situation that I discuss, for instance, two elders and their community research assistant defined the focus of their fieldwork and their working methodology. Only once the fieldwork was underway was a linguist asked to provide support in specific aspects of the fieldwork, such as helping to organize a database. One interesting aspect of this fieldwork situation is that the roles that the community members and the linguist have taken on do not fit standard roles assumed by Human Research Ethics Boards and university Research Services. This in turn raises ethical and intellectual questions about ownership and authorship, and practical questions such as whether the elders should sign the usual informed-consent forms to participate in the grant-funded project and how Memoranda of Understanding between the community and university apply to the research. As this example suggests, collaborative research requires linguists to re-define themselves as fieldworkers and researchers, to re-think research roles, and to address new issues. This paper aims to contribute to the redefinition and rethinking

On adverbial modification in English

Higginbotham (1985) outlines a theory of adjective modification, which characterizes this modification in terms of syntactic configuration, different types of thematic discharge, and a particular view of the relationship between syntactic structures and semantic values. His theory rests on the assumption that, in addition to traditional argument positions, there exist in the formalism " ... certain unapparent referential places, namely those for e [the event position], and the attribute A" (Higginbotham 1985, p. 563; following Davidson 1966); it captures the observation, encoded in various Montague-type semantic theories of modification, that, syntactically and semantically, modifiers combine with expressions of the appropriate type to yield new expressions in the same category and new semantic values of the same type (see, for example, Thomason and Stalnaker 1973, and McConnell-Ginet 1982). The advantage of this theory over those using higher types and functionals is that it does not require semantic postulates since it represents different types of modification (distinguished in terms of semantic postulates in Montague's theory) by means of different types of thematic discharge (see Higginbotham 1985 and below).The purpose of this paper is to extend Higginbotham's theory of adjective modification to account for the various types of modification exhibited by adverb words (Jackendoff 1972 calls them the -ly adverbs). More specifically, I deal with adverbs of mood, aspect, manner, and degree, and combinations of these. I argue that adverbs are predicates with one or two open places and that they discharge these places by theta-identification or antonymous theta-marking