2008 Field Manual entries
This field guide is for eliciting information about grammatical resources used in describing perceptual events and perception-based properties and states. A list of leading questions outlines an underlying semantic space for events/states of perception, against which language-specific constructions may be defined. It should be used as an entry point into a flexible exploration of the structures and constraints which are specific to the language you are working on. The goal is to provide a cross-linguistically comparable description of the constructions of a language used in describing perceptual events and states. The core focus is to discover any sensory asymmetries, i.e., ways in which different sensory modalities are treated differently with respect to these constructions., Additional info: Volume 2008, filed under Categories across language and cognition. Tags: grammar, perception, How to cite this resource:, Enfield, N. J., & Majid, A. (2008). Constructions in 'language and perception'. In A. Majid (Ed.), Field Manual Volume 11 (pp. 11-17). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.492949.
This entry provides some orientation and task suggestions on how to explore the perceptual world of your field site and the interaction between the cultural world and the sensory lexicon in your community. The material consists of procedural texts; soundscapes; other documentary and observational tasks. The goal of this task is to explore the perceptual world of your field site and the interaction between the cultural world and the sensory lexicon in your community. PREREQUISITE: Language of perception stimuli (Field Manual 2007). NOTE: The stimulus materials are not yet available for distribution., Additional info: Volume 2008, filed under Categories across language and cognition. Tags: ethnography, How to cite this resource:, Dingemanse, M., Hill, C., Majid, A., & Levinson, S. C. (2008). Ethnography of the senses. In A. Majid (Ed.), Field manual volume 11 (pp. 18-28). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.492935.
In this task we aim to find what the best exemplars or “focal colours” of each basic colour term is in our field languages. This is an important part of the evidence we need in order to understand the colour data collected using 'The Language of Vision I: Colour' (https://hdl.handle.net/1839/aeadc92d-8110-4535-a340-e13b2fee0a42). This task consists of an experiment where participants pick out the best exemplar for the colour terms in their language. The goal is to establish language specific focal colours. PREREQUISITES: (i) Colour stimuli with focal colours; (ii) List of basic colour terms; (iii) establish the most frequent colour terms from the Colour naming task 2007 (https://hdl.handle.net/1839/aeadc92d-8110-4535-a340-e13b2fee0a42). NOTE: The stimulus materials are not yet available for distribution., Additional info: Volume 2008, filed under Categories across language and cognition. Tags: colour, perception, vision, How to cite this resource:, Majid, A. (2008). Focal colours. In A. Majid (Ed.), Field Manual Volume 11 (pp. 8-10). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.492958.
To understand the underlying principles of categorisation and classification of sensory input semantic analyses must be based on both language and culture. The senses are not only physiological phenomena, but they are also linguistic, cultural, and social. The goal of this task is to explore and describe sociocultural patterns relating language of perception, ideologies of perception, and perceptual practice in our speech communities. PREREQUISITE: Language of Perception stimuli (see Field Manual 2007). NOTE: The stimulus materials are not yet available for distribution., Additional info: Volume 2008, filed under Categories across language and cognition. Tags: ethnography, perception, How to cite this resource:, Le Guen, O., Senft, G., & Sicoli, M. A. (2008). Language of perception: Views from anthropology. In A. Majid (Ed.), Field Manual Volume 11 (pp. 29-36). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.446079.
This entry has been superceded by the 2009 version! People of all cultures have some degree of concern with categorizing types of communicative social action. All languages have words with meanings like speak, say, talk, complain, curse, promise, accuse, nod, wink, point and chant. But the exact distinctions they make will differ in both quantity and quality. How is communicative social action categorised across languages and cultures? The goal of this task is to establish a basis for cross-linguistic comparison of native metalanguages for social action., Additional info: Volume 2008, filed under Interactional Foundations of Language. Tags: interaction, lexicon
This entry has been superceded by the 2009 version! Human actions in the social world – like greeting, requesting, complaining, accusing, asking, confirming, etc. – are recognised through the interpretation of signs. Language is where much of the action is, but gesture, facial expression and other bodily actions matter as well. The goal of this task is to establish a maximally rich description of a representative, good quality piece of conversational interaction, which will serve as a reference point for comparative exploration of the status of social actions and their formulation across languages. PREREQUISITES: You must be in possession of good quality video-recordings of maximally informal conversational interaction in your language. See Field Manual 2007 for a guide on collection., Additional info: Volume 2008, filed under Interactional Foundations of Language. Tags: interaction
This entry has been superceded by the 2009 version! Synaesthesia is a condition in which stimulation of one sensory modality (e.g. hearing) causes additional experiences in a second, unstimulated modality (e.g. seeing colours). The goal of this task is to explore the types (and incidence) of synaesthesia in different cultures. Two simple tests can ascertain the existence of synaesthesia in your community., Additional info: Volume 2008, filed under Categories across language and cognition. Tags: perception
This entry contains: 1. An invitation to think about to what extent the grammar of space and time share lexical and morphosyntactic resources − the suggestions here are only prompts, since it would take a long questionnaire to fully explore this; 2. A suggestion about how to collect gestural data that might show us to what extent the spatial and temporal domains, have a psychological continuity. This is really the goal − but you need to do the linguistic work first or in addition. The goal of this task is to explore the extent to which time is conceptualised on a spatial basis., Additional info: Volume 2008, filed under Categories across language and cognition. Tags: lexicon, questionnaire, time, How to cite this resource:, Levinson, S. C., Bohnemeyer, J., & Enfield, N. J. (2008). Time and space questionnaire. In A. Majid (Ed.), Field Manual Volume 11 (pp. 42-49). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.492955.
How do different languages and cultures conceptualise time? This question is part of a broader set of questions about how humans come to represent and reason about abstract entities – things we cannot see or touch. For example, how do we come to represent and reason about abstract domains like justice, ideas, kinship, morality, or politics? There are two aspects of this project: (1) Time arrangement tasks to assess the way people arrange time either as temporal progressions expressed in picture cards or done using small tokens or points in space. (2) A time & space language inventory to discover and document the linguistic coding of time and its relation to space, as well as the cultural knowledge structures related to time. PREREQUISITES: You will require (i) stimulus cards, (ii) poker chips, pebbles or some similar tokens (see below), (iii) coding sheets, (iv) a compass., Additional info: Volume 2008, filed under Categories across language and cognition. Tags: picture stimuli, time, How to cite this resource:, Boroditsky, L., Gaby, A., & Levinson, S. C. (2008). Time in space. In A. Majid (Ed.), Field Manual Volume 11 (pp. 52-76). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.492932.
Citation
Stephen C. Levinson, Asifa Majid, N.J. Enfield, Mark Dingemanse, Alice Gaby, Clair Hill, Gunter Senft, Juergen Bohnemeyer, Lera Boroditsky, Mark A. Sicoli, Olivier Le Guen, Tanya Stivers, and Tessa van Leeuwen. (2008). Item "2008 Field Manual entries" in collection "Field Manuals". The Language Archive. https://hdl.handle.net/1839/6e3a4105-4f13-43c9-916a-e1425fab72a4. (Accessed 2023-10-03)
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