Bert Vaux

Linguistic Field Methods approaches the elicitation of linguistic data from native speaker informants in a novel and engaging manner. The authors follow introductory chapters surveying the general enterprise of field research with chapters exploring methods of eliciting data in eight major areas of current linguistic interest: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics and dialectology, and historical linguistics. Bert Vaux teaches phonology and morphology at the University of Cambridge. Though much of his fieldwork focuses on endangered dialects of Armenian, he has also conducted field research on Abkhaz, Aramaic, Calypso, Cape Verdean Creole, many dialects of English, Ghanaian Pidgin English, Gujarati, Krio, Lak, Singlish, Tigrinya, Tok Pisin, Turkish, Uyghur, Yakut, and Zaza. Justin Cooper studied linguistics at Dartmouth and Harvard. He is presently a lawyer at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP. Emily Tucker studied linguistics at Harvard and UCLA, and is currently a graduate student in computer science at the Oregon Graduate Center.

Linguistic Field Methods approaches the elicitation of linguistic data from native speaker informants in a novel and engaging manner. The authors follow introductory chapters surveying the general enterprise of field research with chapters exploring methods of eliciting data in eight major areas of current linguistic interest: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics and dialectology, and historical linguistics. Bert Vaux teaches phonology and morphology at the University of Cambridge. Though much of his fieldwork focuses on endangered dialects of Armenian, he has also conducted field research on Abkhaz, Aramaic, Calypso, Cape Verdean Creole, many dialects of English, Ghanaian Pidgin English, Gujarati, Krio, Lak, Singlish, Tigrinya, Tok Pisin, Turkish, Uyghur, Yakut, and Zaza. Justin Cooper studied linguistics at Dartmouth and Harvard. He is presently a lawyer at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP. Emily Tucker studied linguistics at Harvard and UCLA, and is currently a graduate student in computer science at the Oregon Graduate Center.

Armenian is geographically one of the most widespread languages of the world, with distinct dialects located as far west as Poland and as far east as India. It has a rich literary history dating from the fourth-century translation of the Bible into Classical Armenian. It is one of the most linguistically divergent of the Indo-European languages, having undergone a host of complicated phonological, morphological, and syntactic changes that continue to resist satisfactory analysis. However, the language has yet to receive a comprehensive treatment by theoretical linguists. Bert Vaux remedies this problem, bringing Armenian into the sphere of phonological discussion by making available to Western readers the results of Armenological work published in Armenian and Russian, and by presenting theoretical analyses of many of the more striking phonological phenomena described in these sources or culled from the author's fieldwork. The topics addressed include syllabification, stress assignment, vowel harmony, feature geometry, consonantvowel interactions, and prosodic structure. Series Information: The Phonology of the World's Languages Series Editor: Professor Jacques Durand, Université de Toulouse-le-Mirail Series ISBN: 0-19-961355-9 Series Description: The phonology of most languages has until now been available only in a fragmented way, through unpublished theses, or articles scattered in more or less accessible journals. Each volume in this series will offer an extensive treatment of the phonology of one language within a modern theoretical perspective and will provide comprehensive references to recent and more classical studies of the language.