[PapuanLanguages] Word Hunters: Field Linguists on Fieldwork

[Timothy Usher]

The cross-posting is quite jusitfied. Those are some pretty glowing
reviews. Thank you, Hannah, for alerting us to this upcoming volume.

On Wed, Feb 14, 2018 at 7:48 PM, Hannah Sarvasy <hannah.sarvasy at anu.edu.au>
wrote:

> Dear colleagues,
>
> Apologies for cross-posting! Diana Forker and I are pleased to announce a
> new compilation of linguistic fieldwork autobiographies, Word Hunters, out
> with Benjamins this month. The book includes contributions by eleven
> prominent career-long linguistic fieldworkers, including some on this
> listserv. Fieldwork on Papuan languages is well-represented, with chapters
> by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and Lourens de Vries; Austronesian's also
> accounted for, with a chapter by Robert Blust.
>
> Please see below for summary and advance praise.
>
> https://benjamins.com/#catalog/books/slcs.194/main
>
> Best wishes,
> Hannah Sarvasy
>
> Discover Early Career Researcher
> Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language
> Australian National University
> https://researchers.anu.edu.au/researchers/sarvasy-h
>
>
> In Word Hunters, eleven distinguished linguists reflect on their
> career-spanning linguistic fieldwork. Over decades, each has repeatedly
> stood up to physical, intellectual, interpersonal, intercultural, and
> sometimes political challenges in the pursuit of scientific knowledge.
> These scholar-explorers have enlightened the world to the inner workings of
> languages in remote communities of Africa (West, East, and South),
> Amazonia, the Arctic, Australia, the Caucasus, Oceania, Siberia, and East
> Asia. They report some linguistic eureka moments, but also discuss cultural
> missteps, illness, and the other challenges of pursuing linguistic data in
> extreme circumstances. They write passionately about language death and
> their responsibilities to speech communities. The stories included here—the
> stuff of departmental and family legends—are published publicly for the
> first time.
>
> “A paean to linguistic fieldwork, with all its trials and tribulations,
> but equally with all the triumphs and joys of giving a voice to speakers of
> endangered and other little-described languages, often from severely
> disadvantaged communities. The outsider will read with awe and envy.”
> — Bernard Comrie, University of California, Santa Barbara
>
> “Fieldwork is among the most fundamental kinds of linguistic research: it
> creates the empirical basis for an unbiased, non-Eurocentric theory of
> language. This book provides a nice selection of fieldworkers' personal
> accounts of their experiences, covering many language areas of the world.”
> — Andrej Kibrik, Russian Academy of Sciences
>
> “The essays in Word Hunters reflect on fieldwork by highly experienced
> fieldworkers working around the world, reviewing what they learned, details
> about the peoples they worked with, insights into the languages that they
> worked on, and the challenges, rewards, and responsibilities of life as a
> fieldworker. Each author brings their own story and their own interests,
> and the reader has much to learn. Thanks to all of those who contributed to
> giving the reader rich perspectives on fieldwork. Let’s hope that someday
> we see a companion volume, reporting on the experiences of fieldwork from
> the perspective of the speakers that the linguists were so fortunate to
> work with!”
> — Keren Rice, University of Toronto
>
> “Both aspiring and experienced field linguists will find much of value in
> this volume's focus on the very human side of fieldwork. It's not often in
> linguistics that one can get a glimpse into the ways that linguists manage
> the inevitable difficulties that arise when working on languages far from
> home as well as how they respond to the many small triumphs that make their
> work successful. This book should be required reading for any student
> contemplating a career involving linguistic fieldwork, and even seasoned
> fieldworkers will enjoy the opportunity it provides them to compare their
> own experiences with those presented in this collection.”
> — Jeff Good, University of Buffalo
>
> “The peaks and troughs of linguistic fieldwork have for too long remained
> something of a guild secret. This collection of autobiographical accounts
> by eleven 'unsung heroes of linguistics' is leavened by the insights of two
> editors who are themselves consummate fieldworkers. It vividly conveys the
> intellectual exhilaration, the manifold practical challenges, and the
> profound existential re-tuning that pervade this most fundamental aspect of
> the linguistic endeavour.”
> — Nicholas Evans, Australian National University
> <https://researchers.anu.edu.au/researchers/sarvasy-h>
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