Field Methods (LING 630)

Spring 2026

Facilitator

Bradley McDonnell

Modified

February 20, 2026

Language expert: Evangeline Anton
Course number 80983
Time: F 10:30 – 1:15
Location: Moore Hall 227
Office hours: M 4:00 – 5:00
R 11:00 – 12:00
Office: Moore Hall 582
Virtual meeting: https://hawaii.zoom.us/my/mcdonn
Lamakū https://lamaku.hawaii.edu/d2l/home/113245

Course description

This course is primarily designed to equip graduate students to carry out advanced linguistic fieldwork and develop focused research projects on non-dominant languages. It is the second part of a two semester course in which students build upon foundational fieldwork skills by working with an expert user of a language previously unknown to them to produce multipurpose documentation that addresses specific gaps in the research or resources on the language. Students shift from broad descriptive work to developing individual research projects that integrate existing literature with newly collected documentation. Working in close collaboration with a language expert, students design and implement strategic fieldwork with defined goals and timelines, while continuing to contribute to the shared corpus, lexical database, and grammatical resources developed in the first semester.

Student learning outcomes

This course addresses all seven of UH Mānoa Advanced Degree Learning Objectives (ILOs). At the end of the course, a successful student should be able to:

  1. Design and implement fieldwork projects with defined goals and timelines that produce multipurpose documentation with potential for serving both scholarly and community needs.
  2. Develop research projects that address gaps in the research or resources on the language by integrating existing literature on the language and related languages with newly collected documentation.
  3. Select, adapt, and/or troubleshoot audio and video recording equipment, software, and questionnaires and other elicitation tools to meet the specific requirements for creating a multipurpose language documentation and a linguistic research project.
  4. Construct detailed analyses that integrate relevant theoretical frameworks with empirical findings and situate the research project within the larger typological and sociocultural context.
  5. Establish and maintain productive, long-term collaborative relationships with language consultants that support community-driven documentation goals and outcomes.

Course readings

There is no required textbook for this course, and there will be sporadic required readings. These readings can be accessed through Lamakū.

Prerequisites

First semester Field Methods (LING630)

Sessions with language expert

There are two types of sessions: class sessions and individual sessions (detailed below). Students are expected to attend each and every session. Students must notify the course facilitator if they are unable to make the session. It is the student’s responsibility to watch the recording of the session to see what was missed.

Class sessions

  • Everyone meets during the scheduled course time slot with the entire class.
  • Class sessions will primarily be spent working with the language expert, carrying out elicitation, transcription, and/or translation.
  • Class sessions may also be used to discuss organizational issues, analysis of the language, and discussion of readings on fieldwork.
  • Each student will rotate facilitating sessions. Students are responsible to (i) plan and facilitate the session, (ii) record and (if necessary) edit sessions, (iii) upload session recordings to Google Drive immediately after class, and (iv) fill out the metadata and activity log.
ImportantClass sessions follow the schedule below:
10:30-11:10 Data sessions, presentations
11:15-11:50 Elicitation Session 1
11:55-12:30 Elicitation Session 2
12:35-1:10 Elicitation Session 3
1:10-1:15 Review, questions, wrap up discussion

Individual sessions

  • Each student will meet with the language expert for approximately 45 minutes per week.
  • It is the students’ responsibility to find an appropriate location for these meetings. In the past students have used Moore Hall 476, Moore Hall 575 (if available) as well as GA offices.
CautionNoisy Air Conditioning

The air conditioning in rooms in Moore Hall create a lot of noise that is noticeable in recordings. Make sure you test the equipment in the room adjust the recording setup accordingly.

  • If students need to cancel a individual session, they need to notify the facilitator before doing so with information on when the student plans to hold a make up session. Students should only meet on Zoom if someone is feeling sick. It is important to meet regularly in person with the language expert.
  • Students need to work with the language expert to work out times that fit her schedule. (Keep in mind that she has her own responsibilities.)
  • Each session needs to be audio and video recorded. It is the responsibility of the students to make sure that the audio and video recorders are available and ready for use in each individual session. If there is an issue with the equipment, make sure to notify everyone in the class. Students meeting virtually may record their sessions using Zoom.
  • Students who wish to work collaboratively may combine their sessions together.

Course assignments & grading

All course assignments must be turned in on time and should be submitted to the appropriate folder on Google Drive by the deadline given below. Some tasks (e.g., activity log, backing up and file naming recordings) do not have a due date per se, but need to be completed after each individual session. If I notice a backlog, I may suspend students from individual sessions until they have caught up on these tasks.

  1. Sessions & Activity log 10%
  • Students are required to record each session with the language consultant using both audio and video. The resulting video and sound file(s) need to be given appropriate file names, annotated with metadata, and prepared for archiving.
  • Students are required to take detailed notes either in a notebook or on a text document of all sessions with the consultant.
NoteFieldnotes

Notebooks must follow best practices for keeping a field notebook, see pp. 52-55 in Bowern (2015) and Sakel & Everett (2012). Notebooks themselves are never turned in, but scanned pages in the notebook must be archived as PDF/A.

Text documents must be well organized with clear transcriptions and translations. Once it is finished, it needs to be converted to a PDF/A.

  • Students are required to upload audio and video files to their computer, name the files, and back them up the originals and archive-ready versions on the class external hard drive and upload smaller edited versions to Google Drive immediately after each session.
  • Students are required to keep a record of each individual session or class session they are in charge of. The information that should be included is: (i) the goal of the session, (ii) the activity or activities planned for the session, (iii) the outcome of the session (i.e., what was actually learned/accomplished in the session), and (iv) what questions came up or still remain from the session. (i) and (ii) should be filled out before the session. (iii) and (iv) should be filled out after the session. Each of these should be short notes in complete sentences that anyone in the class (or future researchers interested in the language) can search for and understand.
  • The activity log is a shared spreadsheet file in Google Drive that should be filled out immediately after each session.
  • Even though only a portion of the recorded sessions will be archived in Kaipuleohone (see below), all recordings must be synced and prepared as if they will be archived.
  1. Culminating research project 40%
  • Each student will develop a culminating project on some aspect of the language in regular consultation with the instructor. Potential projects include:
    • Option 1: Develop an in-depth research paper that explores one aspect of the language.
    • Option 2: Produce a resource on the language in consultation with the language expert that is grounded in Kosraean culture and the analysis of Kosraean (both elicited and naturally-occurring data). The project must be accompanied by a write-up (minimally 1,500 words) that explains the conceptual foundation of the resource.
      • Readers for children or adults (e.g. produced in Bloom).
      • A topical ‘mini-dictionary’ that explores a semantic domain (e.g. fishing, edible plants).
      • A transcribed, translated, and annotated corpus that is made publicly available, which goes well beyond our the texts collected by MURAL students.
      • See e.g. Lise Dobine’s annotated texts made with IATH ELAN
ImportantCulminating project and sessions with language expert

It is sometimes the case that the culminating project relies on a restricted data set, and it does not necessitate regular meetings throughout the semester. However, in this course, it is critical that students continue to learn the language and hone their fieldwork skills. Thus, students are expected to continue regular meetings, even if the topics covered do not focus on the culminating project.

  1. Curated archive collection linked to culminating project 20%
  • Each student is responsible for preparing their bundles–whether that be an individual or class session–for archiving. That means that each person has appropriate metadata and has all files prepared for archiving. Data will be uploaded to the archive at the end of the semester, but I will be intermittently checking the activity log and backed up recordings on Google Drive to make sure everything is up-to-date. This includes the following tasks:
    • Backing up original audio and video files on an external HD.
    • Scanning notebooks as PDF/A files for each individual session and every class session, not only the class session your group is facilitating.
    • Providing detailed metadata required by Kaipuleohone for each consultant session and each class session that they are facilitating.
    • Upload edited files (e.g., .mp4 video files, .wav audio files, .jpg notebook scans and the recording setting) into the archive folder.
    • If necessary, editing files in Davinci Resolve (i.e., syncing audio and video, and cropping audio and video to the same length) each individual session and each class session that they are facilitating.
  • Each student will archive a selection of at least three sessions. These three sessions should be good examples of your work and must be accompanied annotation in ELAN. Students will be graded on the quality of their recordings, metadata, and annotations.
  • This semester the curated archive collection is meant to be fully annotated, such that every example cited in a student’s paper can be located in their curated collection.
ImportantRecording quality

It is important for students to test the recording equipment before each session and monitor the recorders during the session. Students should watch and listen to their session to identify any problems (e.g. loud background noise, noise from microphones, gain too low to hear speaker’s voice, poor lighting or framing, etc.)

  1. Recording/‘Text’ for Kosraean corpus 15%
  • Each student will work together with a MURAL student to assist in recording, transcribing, translating and glossing (at the word and morpheme levels) one speech event.
  • MURAL students have received training in each of these areas, so the task for field methods students is provide additional support to allow MURAL students to produce the highest quality recordings and annotations possible.
  • Field methods students will help the MURAL students prepare the recording for archiving (e.g., provide complete metadata, description of the context, summary description of the content of the recording).
  • Field methods students will check the following areas for accuracy and consistency: the segmentation of the recording into intonation units, transcription using a (simplified) Discourse Transcription (Du Bois et al. 1993), the free translations of the transcriptions.
  • The field methods students will be responsible for glossing at the word- and morpheme-levels in FLEx and exported back into ELAN for archiving.
NoteA simplified Discourse Transcription minimally contains

Intonation Unit, Boundary Intonation (Final: ‘.’, Continuing: ‘,’, Appeal: ‘?’), Short Pause ‘..’, Long Timed Pause ‘(0.0)’‘, Laughter’@‘, Word Truncation’-‘, IU Truncation’–‘, In-breath’(H)’‘, Out-breath’(Hx)’.

  1. Data discussion sessions 10%
  • Each student facilitates a discussion of a curated dataset focussed on a single phenomenon in Kosraean.
    • The dataset can be on any topic in Kosraean and may be related to the eventual topic the student’s culminating project.
    • The purpose of these sessions are to present data that is challenging to analyze in some way and facilitate discussion of the dataset among students.
    • Students should not simply present their analysis to the class, but lead a discussion of the dataset with the following structure:
      1. Present the dataset with a basic description of the data, previous analyses, and the analytical challenge(s).
      2. Provide students the opportunity to analyze the data themselves either individually or in small groups.
      3. Facilitate a discussion of the potential analyses of the data.
      4. Present your own analysis of the dataset, if you have one.
    • Students must provide a handout that presents a well-organized dataset.
    • Students must reference previous literature on Kosraean.
    • Students should plan to facilitate a 30 minute session.
    • Students are free to organize the session as they please, which may involve small group discussions.
    • Sessions will begin January 30 and must be completed by March 27.
  1. Culminating project presentation 5%
  • Each student will present their culminating project.
    • The purpose of this presentation is to share your culminating project and receive feedback from me and students in the class.
    • The presentation should be structured as a typical conference presentation, but it is excepted that the student may still have outstanding questions or areas of the analysis that have not be fully worked out.
    • Students must reference previous literature on the topic and specifically on Kosraean.
    • Students should plan to present for 10-15 minutes, leaving ample time for questions .
    • Sessions will begin April 17 and must be completed by May 1.

Data management

It is important for students to plan before each session and process recordings and field notes after each session. We will follow the workflow below.

flowchart TD

    subgraph 1 ["`**Before Session**`"]
        A("Plan Session & Input Plans in Activity Log") --> B("Setup Equipment & Test Equipment to Ensure It's Running Properly 
        Erase SD Cards")
    end
  
subgraph 2 ["`
**After Session**
`"]
  D("Transfer Recordings from SD Cards to originals folder on External HD 
  in a Folder named FM10-SESSION NUMBER-O(riginal),  
  (e.g. FM10-001-O) for Original Files")
  --> E("Sync/Edit Original Audio-Video Files in Davinci Resolve") 
  --> F("Export Synced Files 
  (HD quality .mp4/.wav files) 
  in the 'edited' Folder on External HD") 
  E --> G["Export Synced Files 
  (SD quality .mp4/.wav files) 
  in FM8 folder 
  in Shared Google Drive"]
  --> H["Fill out metadata (completely!) on Activity Log"]
  F --> H
  H --> I["Edit Field Notes & Convert to PDF/A 
  Scan Notebooks & save as PDF/A"]
  end

1 --> C["Hold Session, Monitoring Audio/Video, 
    Taking Detailed Field Notes"] --> 2

File naming conventions

We will follow a prescribed file naming system that follows conventions adopted by Kaipuleohone. A single dash - is used to separate each of the elements listed below:

  1. The archive collection for this class will be named FM10, and we will use this name at the beginning of each file.
  2. Each session will be numbered using three digits, e.g. 001, 002, …. Each file associated with a single session will be have these three digits.
  3. The original unedited files will be kept at least until files have been archived. They appears with the letter “O” at the end. This helps us distinguish original files from edited files.
  4. In the case that there are multiple files of the same type, a two digit code is appended to the file.
  5. In the case that there are two recordings of the same type with the same content, a capital letter is appended to the end, beginning with A.

Below is a list of sample file names followed by a description:

FM10-001
Folder name for the first session that contains the archive-ready files
FM10-001-O
Folder name for the first session that contains original files
FM10-002.mp4
Video file for the second session.
FM10-003-01.wav
Audio file for the third session in which there is more than one audio file.
FM10-003-01-O.wav
Audio file for the third session in which there is more than one audio file and it is the original recording.
FM10-003-01-A.wav
Audio file for the third session in which there is more than one audio file in the session and there is a second audio file with the same content.

Important Dates

Due dates are subject to change.

Metadata check Feb 9
Culminating project topic proposal Feb 18
Culminating project topic proposal Mar 2
Metadata check Mar 9
No class Mar 20
Culminating project outline with bibliography Mar 23
No class Apr 3
Metadata check Apr 6
Transcribed, translated, glossed ‘text’ Apr 13
Metadata check May 4
Culminating project May 12
Curated archival materials. May 12

Course Policy

  • Please be respectful to everyone in the class. More than any other course, Field Methods has the potential for conflict between students.
    • If you know that you are the type of person to talk a lot in class, be conscious of the students around you who may not be so quick to share. It is not enjoyable to be in Field Methods when it is dominated by one or two people.
    • If you know that you are a more reserved person in class, you may need to challenge yourself to speak up.
  • Remember that Evangeline is the only expert on the language in our class. She should be treated as such. Be mindful of the questions that you are asking and how you are asking them. Don’t get lost in the ‘data’ and forget your manners.
  • Attendance in this course and individual sessions is crucial. In order to be successful in the course, you need to attend every class and be punctual. Excessive absences or tardiness may result in a grade reduction.
  • Please be attentive during class, and please refrain from working on anything unrelated to class during individual and class sessions, including checking email, Discord, texting, etc. It can be especially tempting to do this if we are taking notes in a text document.

References

Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2014. The Art of Grammar: A Practical Guide. Oxford University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199683215.001.0001
Bowern, Claire. 2015. Linguistic Fieldwork: A Practical Guide 2nd ed. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Chelliah, Shobhana L. & Willem J. de Reuse. 2011. Handbook of Descriptive Linguistic Fieldwork. Dordrecht: Springer.
Du Bois, John W., Stephan Schuetze-Coburn, Susanna Cumming & Danae Paolino. 1993. Outline of discourse transcription. In Jane Anne Edwards & Martin D. Lampert (eds.), Talking data: Transcription and coding in discourse research, 45–89. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.
Sakel, Jeanette & Daniel L. Everett. 2012. Linguistic Fieldwork: A Student Guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Thieberger, Nicholas (ed.). 2012. The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Fieldwork. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Tsikewa, Adrienne. 2021. Reimagining the current praxis of field linguistics training: Decolonial considerations. Language 97(4). e293–e319. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2021.0072