Article contents
Naive linguistic explanation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2008
Abstract
Five examples are presented of how native speakers may try to explain a grammatical point to a linguist, and, in the absence of a suitable metalanguage, adopt some “lateral” way of demonstrating the point. They may, for instance, give another paradigmatic form of a word under scrutiny to show its word class; they may switch to another dialect to clarify some ambiguity; they may add some extra sentence constituents to each noun in a lexical elicit, to reveal its gender class. (Field methods, grammatical explanation, use of informants/consultants, Australian Aboriginal languages, Amazonian languages)
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992
References
REFERENCES
- 4
- Cited by