Reflections on Linguistic Fieldwork Within Moribund Speech Communities

• Published in: Études finno-ougriennes 2019-02 (49-50)
• Main Author: Siegl, Florian
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0071-2051; 2275-1947
• DOI: 10.4000/efo.7615

Whereas linguists conducting fieldwork tend to be a minority among linguists, linguists conducting fieldwork among the last speakers of an underresearched/underdocumented or even undocumented language are a minority within a minority. Although a number of fieldwork manuals have been published in recent decades, the perspective of fieldwork in extreme sociolinguistic situations such as among the last speakers of a language is usually underrepresented in the literature. It is precisely this perspective which will be presented by shedding some light on personal experiences and challenges from ongoing work on two moribund languages Forest Enets (Samoyedic, Uralic) and Ume Saami (Saami, Uralic). These impressions are contrasted with personal experiences from fieldwork and consultant work on other languages such as Dolgan and Tuvin (both Turkic), Taimyr Tundra Nenets (Samoyedic, Uralic) as well as Meithei (Sino‑Tibetan) and Tundra Yukaghir (isolate). A central claim of this article is to show that work with extremely endangered languages does not allow any meaningful equation; field sites are unique and working with speakers of moribund languages in different countries may mean very different things and imply highly diverging challenges—what works in field site X does not necessarily work in field site Y and vice versa.