The field of study is restricted here to non-national or minority languages. National languages and their sub-varieties are excluded because the special problems their study involves will be treated in another chapter on dialect recordings. Pidgin and creole varieties are, however, included in this section.
In Australia, for example, Standard Australian English and its sub-varieties would not be covered by the concerns of this chapter but the over two hundred Australian (Aboriginal) languages and their English based pidgin/creole varieties would be included. Clearly for some other countries the situation is more complex. For instance, there might be a number of national languages or it may be difficult to decide whether some national language, in Africa for example, should be excluded. Admittedly restricting the field of study in this way is arbitrary and inevitably there will be overlaps. In addition to dialect other fields of study dealt with in this volume which overlap include ethnomusicology, folklore and oral history.
Often the languages treated here will have no writing system or otherwise a writing system that has only recently been introduced. There will be little or no literature for such languages so that sound recordings may form their most substantial permanent record and be of tremendous value to users of the archive and to the speakers themselves.
In the past the primary function of linguistic recordings has usually been seen as research. This will always remain an important reason for recording language material; indeed much of the material has been and presumably will continue to be recorded by linguistic researchers in the course of their fieldwork. However, linguists are becoming increasingly aware of the value of their recordings as a means of preserving the linguistic heritage of the speakers of the languages being recorded.
In a recent survey of the Australian Aboriginal situation1 the need for preservation is apparent. Of 202 languages, 114 are listed as having ten or less speakers. Similarly many of New Guinea's estimated nine hundred languages (or more) are rapidly disappearing. 2 The reasons for the demise of many little known languages are complex. Without going into all the reasons why people may 'lose' their language there are increasing numbers of people who regard it as important that their languages be recorded for their descendants. In other cases descendants of speakers of now-extinct languages have a keen interest in the nature and, of course, the sound of the languages of their forebears.
For researchers a sound archive has many advantages. The archive provides a safe place for their own collections to be housed and gives them ready access to the recordings of other collectors. A collector would be unlikely to be able to match the standards of storage and preservation to which a sound archive should aspire. The archive can be used for library research. Linguistic researchers or students may use already existing recordings as the basis for a research project rather than collect recordings themselves. Such work can assist the archive by providing added documentation for its recordings. It will be a useful policy for the archive to require researchers to deposit a copy of their transcriptions with the archive; researchers will usually be willing to comply provided they have some control over the use of the material (see section 7).
Inevitably the content of the recordings collected by linguists will overlap with other fields of interest. Linguists collect text material which will be of interest to ethnologists, folklorists, natural historians and historians. Text collections3 often include life histories of prominent members of the linguistic group and stories of contact of that group with newcomers on the frontier. While linguists may be primarily interested in a text for its discourse techniques, particular grammatical constructions or unusual items of vocabulary, others will be interested only in the content. Close liaison between specialised sound archives or sections of a general sound archive should ensure that the multiple interests of a particular recording are widely known. Publication of catalogues of the archive's holdings and regular lists of recent acquisitions will ensure dissemination of such information. One example of acquisition listings of tape recordings can be found in the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies Newsletter published since 1974. Prior to this the Institute published catalogues with more detail on the contents of the recordings (AIAS Catalogue of Tape Archive Nos. 1-7; Canberra: AIAS;1967-l970). Other archives of course need different listings to suit their purposes.
Much of the data collected by linguists is intended for linguistic description of otherwise little-known languages. The data can be collected from any good speakers of the language under study provided, of course, they can communicate adequately with the researcher. This latter point has implications for a linguistic sound archive since the eliciting medium might not be standard English (or whatever is the national language). It could be any native language known in common by the researcher and the person to be interviewed or it could be a mixture of a number of these. The problems for a linguistic sound archive can be considerable, especially where a transcription for the recording is not available. Frequently the data collected will contribute to 'whole' language descriptions comprising grammars, dictionaries and text collections. Material may also be collected on particular aspects of a language. Sometimes there is no choice in the matter because a language is so moribund that it is difficult to do more than sketch in the details of the sounds of the language and its vocabulary with a general account of word structures (i.e. phonology, lexicon, morphology). In such cases the collector should strive to gather material from as many surviving speakers as possible, including partial speakers who may provide valuable information in a group interview. Areas which require more detailed study such as sentence structure and meaning and the differing use of language in day to day situations (i.e. syntax, semantics, pragmatics) may be focused on according to the interests of the researcher.
Material should be gathered which places the particular language under study in a wider context. Even if material is only recorded from one language, information should be gathered about neighbouring languages. Attitudes to neighbouring languages can give a first approximation to the nature of the linguistic geography of the area and the relatedness of the languages in the area. A statement like 'We can't talk with those to the west; they speak too rough' may reflect the fact that the form of speech to the west is part of a different language or linguistic grouping. The same statement could yield information about metalinguistic terminology in that language: there may be other linguistic features which are described as 'rough'. Metalinguistic terminology (i.e. the special terms used to describe features of a language in that language) can be a useful tool in gaining linguistic insights. When such terms are known it will be easier to involve the speakers in the investigations (see also section 8).
Any language stands in an intimate relation to its culture and society. The life-style, interests and customs of a speech community will be reflected linguistically. There will usually be differences in speech according to the age of the speaker. In some speech communities female speech is markedly different from male speech. There may be special varieties of speech used only in the presence of certain relations4 or used only by people of a certain seniority or status within the group (the seniority being determined in some cases by the extent of their knowledge of ritual). Attention should also be directed towards gathering data on various linguistic styles. A special style may be used for delivering narrative speeches; in ritual settings; talking to strangers; in songs. 5 Material on how the language is used in practice may also be recorded on tape; although careful observation over a long period will be an essential complement to such recordings.
Too little attention has been focused on this area in the past and it is hoped researchers will direct their energies to this most important component of any language. It is one thing to gain basic communicative competence in a language but far more difficult to convey the 'same' message in a culturally appropriate way to the priest, the prime minister, the mechanic and the mother of one's recently estranged spouse!6
It is difficult to generalize on the criteria needed for setting collecting priorities simply because the linguistic situation varies so much from place to place. However, it is important today that whatever priorities are agreed upon should take into account the requirements of the Third World communities who provide the data as well as the interests represented by researchers. With proper consultation there is no ' reason why this should involve any conflict of interests. For example, a community's aspirations for a bilingual programme could easily be matched with a linguist's research interests which sometimes are not so immediately applied. 'People come along and take the language from us, they get degrees and jobs and we get nothing!' is a complaint too often heard and well worth avoiding. A linguistic revival project inspired by a community whose language is on the wane could closely complement a collector's research interests and at the same time offset the hostile reaction that might have resulted from the researcher embarking on an unsolicited linguistic salvage project.
In purely linguistic terms the absence of information, whether written or sound recorded, will suggest the languages which should be given special attention. Where linguistic sub-grouping has already gone ahead a language from a sub-group or a language family, none of whose members have been studied, should receive priority. On the other hand if linguistic sub-grouping for an area is not available or is still fairly crude, high priority should be given to a collecting programme which surveys a large number of languages, concentrating on those features which will assist in producing a picture of how all the languages are related to each other. When this is known it is far easier, especially in a language salvage operation, to make the difficult decision as to which language(s) will remain largely unrecorded.
There will usually be a limited number of experienced researchers and an apparently unlimited number of languages requiring further study. The ongoing business of finding out where the gaps are and deciding which ones to fill is covered in sections 6 and 7 but here it seems worth putting forward some remarks on how much recording should be done. People tend to fall into two categories: those who use a lot of tape and those who use little. The ones who use little tape tend to produce neater (almost edited) recordings with full transcriptions. Those who use a lot of tape are sometimes said to have 'low yield' recordings since the information they have been seeking forms but a very small portion of what they have actually collected. To give an example, linguists at an early stage in work on an unstudied language frequently carry out simple lexical elicitation: 'What is the word for "hand"? ‘Ngani'; 'How do you say "food"?' 'Batu'; and so on. The parsimonious tape user might produce a recording lasting ten minutes on which there are one hundred words while the conspicuous consumer gets the one hundred words in a recording lasting an hour and a half. Which is preferable? There is no simple answer but a long, low-yield recording can prove to be more valuable. The 'background' discussion, usually in the language of the speakers, can later in the study become the primary object of investigation while the other material now becomes the 'background'. This will only be possible when the investigator can throw light on areas such as the ethnography of speaking, attitudes to language, sociolinguistics as well as providing the researcher with a body of unsolicited text material.
Returning to the examples above, rather than a one-word answer batu (food) there could be a discussion among the language speakers about an appropriate answer. It might seem strange that there would be anything to discuss but in the Australian language, for instance, there would be at least two 'correct' answers: minya (flesh food, meat) and mayi (vegetable food). Again, in English, there are various possible answers: 'grub', 'tucker', 'chow', 'meat' (as in 'sweetmeat'), etc. Remarks on the answer like 'But, that's slang' might not be communicated directly to the investigator but be recorded on the taped interview as background information. For the speakers themselves or their descendants this longer version can be of more interest too since they can hear the language as it was spoken or, in a salvage situation, they will hear their (sometimes deceased) relatives talking in a form of English -which, incidentally, may be of interest to those involved in pidgin or creole studies.
Of course the two positions have been represented here in an extreme way and what is often done is some kind of compromise. On the debit side for doing 'full' recordings it should be noted that transcription is highly labour intensive, particularly so in a language not very familiar to the transcriber. Thus the fate of many 'full' recordings is that it may be a long time before they are transcribed and consequently they will be of less immediate value to the archive and its users.
The most important prerequisite for fieldwork is adequate training. Many university departments of linguistics offer a field methods course. Collectors should be strongly encouraged to complete such a course. It will be useful, too, to have a fieldwork manual specifically designed for a particular region. 7 Although there are general works available8 a regional manual will address problems only to be found in that area and will be especially suitable for equipping those who have completed field methods courses or had fieldwork experience elsewhere. Fieldworkers should have a firm grounding in the major areas of linguistics with particular attention to phonetics, analytic techniques and historical/comparative linguistics. A first degree with a major in linguistics (or comparable training) will be essential while field experience will be a great advantage. Collectors with little or no field experience should be encouraged to work first on languages with a substantial number of speakers. Salvage linguistic projects with the last few speakers should be reserved for more experienced fieldworkers; not only because the work is much more difficult and can be very frustrating for the neophyte but also because an insensitive or inexperienced collector can antagonize the few remaining speakers and may spoil the situation altogether.
To ensure the most efficient use of staff, research co-ordination is essential. Depending on the size of the archive there could be a member of staff responsible for documenting past and ongoing research and regularly updating research priorities; otherwise the. researcher would have to investigate the intended project before going into the field (see also section 8).
When the data has been collected it can be of great assistance to have it arranged in standardised formats. Linguistic descriptions presented in a basically standard format can be found in Dixon and Blake's Handbook of Australian Languages. 9 The parallel treatments offer ease of comparison from language to language and assist in finding gaps and filling them. Vocabulary can also usefully be arranged in a standard format. The Wordlist for Australian Languages10 lists over two thousand lexical items arranged in semantic domains with a finding list. When this information has been compiled it would be a fairly simple matter to record a parallel aural version to be deposited in the tape archive. In this way a substantial portion of the lexical resources of a language would be available on audio tape arranged so that particular concepts could be pinpointed very quickly.
Any fieldwork project will be dependent to a large extent on the goodwill, co-operation and knowledge of local people in the field. It is to local expertise, particularly as regards native speaker knowledge, that we now turn our attention.
Linguistics is unique as a field of study in that the medium of discovery, the medium of exposition and the subject of inquiry are all the same: language. Much has been said elsewhere about the difficulty in gaining an intimate knowledge of a second language. Linguists, recognizing this, have sometimes tried to explain their methods and say what they are looking for. This is in contrast to traditional 'indirect' questioning which can be difficult to avoid. It would be a very sophisticated informant who made much sense out of an inquiry like 'Give me the second person dual subjunctive of "slice".' If language interviewees have been introduced to certain basic linguistic concepts it may be feasible to elicit some verb form and then say 'Now give me the reflexive of that', so that informants become less the passive respondents to carefully framed questions and to a greater extent active collaborators in the research.
Carrying the participation further it seems easier to teach a native speaker the principles and techniques of linguistics rather than for a linguist to attempt the near impossible task of gaining native speaker fluency of the language under study. The native speaker/linguist can then introspect on his own language and quickly gain insights into its structure which would take the outsider years to hit on. 11 A programme of this kind was begun in Australia in 1974 by the School of Australian Linguistics. 12 All students at the School have an Australian language as their first language. When graduates begin carrying out research it will be interesting to see to what extent their choice of subject material differs from their white counterparts in recording language. There is no reason why this sort of programme could not be duplicated in other Third World countries. In terms of recording priorities the presence of native speaker collectors would probably shift the emphasis to salvage work for the European collectors -depth studies being left for those who could go deepest! Such programmes are particularly relevant to a sound archive since it is probable that collectors who have native speaker fluency of the language being investigated will produce recordings of a quite different kind from researchers striving to overcome the difficulties of an intermediary language.
Once the material has been collected it is essential that the archive provides documentation which is as detailed as possible. There will need to be a number of guides to the overall collection as well as detailed information on each recording.
In a linguistic sound archive a language index will be essential. Inquirers should be able to gain quick access to all the material the archive holds on a particular language. It is important then that all alternative spellings of language names be cross-referenced. In some instances this is not difficult because the differences are rather minor.
For instance, in the case of some Australian (Aboriginal) languages we have variations such as Arabana and Arabanna but sets of alternative names for a single language such as these: Murrinhpatha, Garama and Mariwuda; Yir-Yoront and Koko-Mindjena. Such variations or alternatives clearly need cross-referencing. This can be effected by a card file or running list which is regularly updated. It is not uncommon for the linguistic literature of a region to spawn a plethora of terms of varying status. Some are clearly language or dialect names and their alternates but others are more difficult to categorise being hapax legomena from rather esoteric sources. 13 One is loath to discard the information (or misinformation) but the very large number of names can obscure the overall picture for the uninitiated. It is important for the documentation of a linguistic sound archive that there be some kind of guide through this maze. Careful work through all the sources will enable some identifications to be made and subgroupings to be devised. In some cases it will not be possible to assign particular terms (and the language material that goes with those terms) to any other known category: this will point the areas to be investigated in later fieldwork. The language index can assist fieldwork in other ways. It will be useful for the fieldworker to go into the field armed with all the alternative names that might be expected in the area, otherwise important connections may be missed. It would be a pity if a linguistic research project foundered because a potential informant said: 'No, I never heard of "English"; I only speak "American"'!
To assist the user of the archive there should also be an area catalogue. There are a variety of ways in which such a catalogue could be organized: in terms of culture areas; administrative/government areas; ecological areas; or simply in terms of major named localities.
Information in the archive should also be catalogued according to the people involved in the recording: the depositor; the collector/researcher (usually the same as the depositor); and the informants or collaborators who provided the information. The last mentioned file will assist other field researchers in contacting subjects.
Of major importance, too, is the content of the recording. In some other subject areas, for instance oral history, it would probably be usual rather than the exception for there to be a full transcription of a recording. This is less likely to be so in a linguistic sound archive since the work involved in transcribing unfamiliar language material of quite short duration is quite considerable. It would be unrealistic to expect all material coming into the archive even to be partially transcribed and it would be a disastrous policy decision to refuse to accept such material. The exigencies of the field situation are such that a researcher may decide to collect material simply because it is available, important and unlikely ever to be recorded if this opportunity is not taken and yet he may have no particular research interest in that material himself.
One must expect to receive documentation from outside collectors of widely varying depth. At worst there might be no information at all other than the knowledge that it is appropriate for the recording to be lodged in the archive. Approaching the ideal would be a full transcription with timings. An example of a timed segment of a recording might be:
| Archive Tape | |||
| 607 | Side B | 02:30-10:50 | Elicitation of colour terms. For Transcription see MS No. 1014 pp.45-5l |
As much as possible collectors should be encouraged to provide at least a general statement of the content of the recordings. Rough timings with a detailed list of contents are clearly more desirable. There should be a member of the staff engaged in soliciting further information from depositors of materials as well as processing the incoming information and doing 'detective' work on material for which too little information is already available. In addition each recording could be cross-referenced to available literature, e.g. transcriptions held by the archive, by other agencies or in private collections.
To ensure that potential depositors feel confident in lodging their material with the archive there should be an adequate system of control. A range of choices governing the access to and use of the recordings should be available and be formalised in a signed contract of deposit. This will protect the interests of the depositors as well as the archive. In such contracts the interests of the linguistics groups who originally provided the material must be respected. In particular material of a secret or sacred nature should be treated with due discretion. In the event of material for which there is no contract of deposit and any doubt about the status of the material as regards its secret/sacred nature, it would be better to err on the side of caution. In a more general context the staff of the archive should have at least some general familiarity with local copyright regulations or otherwise take expert advice.
A regular assessment of the data held will improve the archive in deciding priorities for research and in keeping the public informed. Regular (e.g. annual) research questionnaires to collectors which could then be collated in a master list for distribution back to those collectors is one method which will help to find the gaps. The archive can then encourage or sponsor depending on finance -specific research projects to fill the gaps. On a regular basis archive staff should solicit data from private collections, particularly where they existed before the creation of the archive.
The structure and management of an archive will be dependent on the scope of the recording programme, in financial backing and on the availability of suitable staff. At the very least an archive will need a research section and a technical section. Within the archive four major functions can be distinguished: research coordination; cataloguing/auditioning; clerical and typing work; technical duties. It would be an advantage to have a separate staff member for each function although it might be possible to reduce staff by sharing some of the functions.
In the archive there should be a linguistic research coordinator whose main responsibility would be maintaining an overview of research. In addition he or she could advise researchers in the field, answering linguistic enquiries from researchers or the public, and perhaps train field researchers. It would be desirable for the research coordinator to be carrying out at least some field recording to maintain familiarity with the special problems to be found in the field.
A cataloguer/auditioner would devise the format for documentation of the tape archive in consultation with the research coordinator. Ideally this staff member would audition tape recordings, cross-referencing them to full or partial transcriptions held in the archive or compiling lists of contents with timings. To give an example of what an auditioner might achieve, the relevant staff member at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies processes from 300 to 400 archive tapes (which would amount to around the same number of recorded hours) per year. This involves producing a fairly detailed list of contents with timings for each tape. More detailed auditioning will reduce the number of tapes processed in a year while a greater yield will obviously be possible with less documentation. At the time of writing the rate of tape auditioning at AIAS does not even keep up with the incoming tapes to be archived. It is a matter of policy to maintain a certain standard of documentation even though this means the backlog will keep increasing unless more auditioners can be employed. Each archive will need to arrive at its own policy on such matters.
Another essential staff member would be a technician who would see to the selection and maintenance of recording equipment, ensure optimal storage for the archive collection and make preservation or working copies of the recordings.
Finally a clerk/typist would maintain files, type up correspondence and documentation and perhaps handle non-linguistic and non-technical enquiries from the public.
Depending on the size of the archive additional staffing might be warranted. An administrative officer could handle many tasks which would otherwise have to be carried out by the research coordinator and technician, thus releasing them for their more specialized duties. Ideally there should be one or more research fellows/ collectors on staff to carry out research projects designed specifically to meet the needs of the archive, whether filling gaps or expanding areas already entered on.
At least some of these staff would require specialized qualifications. The research coordinator should at least have a first degree with a specialization in linguistics but preferably a higher degree and certainly should be experienced in the field. The cataloguer/ auditioner should have similar qualifications but could be less experienced than the research coordinator. The technician would need to have appropriate technical qualifications to be able to maintain and select the equipment used by the archive and have up-to-date knowledge on recording, copying, storage and preservation. The clerk/typist would require experience and appropriate qualifications in clerical duties and typing. Provided he worked closely with the research coordinator there would be no need for the administrative officer to have special expertise beyond general administrative experience.
Overall policy making is particularly important in an archive's management. Policy can be decided on internally but it may be appropriate to have a board or committee for this purpose which includes non-staff, regional experts. Representation from the linguistic groups being studied in such a policy structure is highly desirable, not only so that the subjects of study have some control over the research being carried out on them, but also so that harmonious relations can be maintained. If relations between researchers and their subjects should deteriorate it would seriously affect the ongoing role of the archive. Such a board would oversee the archive's structure and management, policies on collecting programmes, the documentation, control and assessment of data and perhaps investigate methods of gaining additional funding from outside bodies.
Linguistic sound recording has a few special requirements which will be raised here. General requirements are covered in the chapter in this volume on technical aspects of sound archive work. Technical excellence in sound recording may have to be sacrificed in field situations with unsophisticated linguistic informants. A high quality open reel recorder with a separate microphone of professional standard on a tripod may intimidate the informant to the extent that the recording is of high technical quality but the content is relatively poor. In such a situation a small cassette recorder with an internal microphone would be preferable. The archive should provide equipment of both sorts. The collector would be advised to take equipment of both kinds to the field using the bulkier or more compact recorder according to the situation. This will give the added insurance of still having one recorder to continue the work should one of them become faulty in a remote area.
The sound archive might also provide special facilities for ethnoscientific studies or detailed lexical investigation. By providing a nature library, collectors could be encouraged to make more accurate identifications of floral and faunal species and other features of the environment. Some researchers collect and preserve specimens from the field for accurate identification by experts later. The archive could provide preserving/ collecting equipment for this. The advantages to the archive are to be found in the documentation; a transcription which includes twenty different vocabulary items from a little-known language all glossed as 'insect species' leaves a lot to be desired!
As for ethnology recordings, added expenditure must be anticipated for a linguistic sound archive because of the remoteness of the field locations. In budgeting attention should be paid to travel expenses, the maintenance and capital cost of four-wheel drive vehicles, caravans, camping equipment and so on. Even if the collectors are not on the staff, the archive may need to supply and service them with tape and tape recorders. This may result in air freight and insurance costs as well as impinging on the technician's other duties.
The staff of the archive should keep abreast of current developments in their field of expertise. Budgeting, therefore, should allow for their participation in appropriate national and international conferences.