Primary Source

5 Key excerpts on "Primary Source"

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  eBook - ePub

  English-Latvian Lexicographic Tradition

  A Critical Analysis

  • Laura Karpinska(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter

    (Publisher)

  3 Primary and secondary sources of evidence in bilingual lexicography

  The quality and reliability of a dictionary largely depends on its sources or the lexicographic evidence it is based on (Atkins and Rundell 2008 : 46). There are two basic types of dictionary sources – primary (original linguistic material) and secondary (derivative material). Primary Sources can be citation files, corpora, fieldwork and introspection, while other dictionaries, encyclopaedias and grammars serve as secondary sources (e.g. Hartmann and James 2001 : 128; Čermák 2003 : 18–19; Svensén 2009 : 39–47).

  Although usually a particular type of information is selected as the basic source,it is possible that it proves to be insufficient, which results in a combination of sources (Hanks 1990 : 32; Hartmann and James 2001 : 128; Čermák 2003 : 18; Jackson 2002 : 28–29). Introspection, defined by Atkins and Rundell (2008 : 46) as “the process in which you give an account of a word and its meaning by consulting your own mental lexicon”, is an important and frequently applied source in practical lexicography; however, it has been noted by several scholars (e.g. Sinclair 1985 : 82; Hanks 1990 : 31–32; Ooi 1998 : 47–48; Atkins and Rundell 2008 : 46–47; Atkins 2008 : 271) that in lexicography judgements cannot be based purely and primarily on introspection because in comparison with other authentic data (e.g. from corpora, citation files) it does not give access to how the language is really used by the linguistic community. Another reason why a dictionary based on introspection only would be unreliable, lies in the fact that “one individual’s store of linguistic knowledge is inevitably incomplete and idiosyncratic” (Atkins and Rundell 2008

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  Using Internet Primary Sources to Teach Critical Thinking Skills in World Languages

  • Kent Norsworthy, Grete Pasch(Authors)
  • 2000(Publication Date)
  • Libraries Unlimited

    (Publisher)

  As described above in the case of sites focused on history, we found that groups from around the world have gone to great lengths in constructing attractive Web sites designed to highlight their cultural culinary traditions. While some of these sites are focused primarily on the publication of recipes, many provide a wealth of related data linking food to history, the economy, and social issues. Examples: 6 Using Internet Primary Sources Rolling Your Own Sushi, http://www.rain.org/~hutch/sushi.html Epicuria, le serveur de la gastronomie franc ¸aise, http://www.epicuria.fr/ Primary SourceS IN WORLD LANGUAGE TEACHING What constitutes a Primary Source for world language teaching? Cer- tainly any and every text in the Russian language cannot be considered a Primary Source in that language. At the same time, we would argue that nontarget language material about the given language or culture also plays a key role in language learning, and in some cases could be con- sidered Primary Source material. The point is, the language of the ma- terial is not the sole or the main determinant as to whether or not it is a Primary Source. There is no “litmus test” that is valid across the board; rather, it de- pends on the type of material under consideration. For example, Primary Source material about a person or a historical figure must include at least some direct products of that person’s work. A Web site about Diego Rivera that included reproductions of his paintings and essays penned by Rivera would be a Primary Source, but a scholarly journal article, in Spanish or in English, about Rivera would be a secondary source. A site about a town in the French countryside with photos taken in the town, interviews with local farmers, and music clips from the region would be a Primary Source, even if some of the material has been translated into English. A section about the same town in an online encyclopedia, even if it is in French, would be a secondary source.

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  Documenting Endangered Languages

  Achievements and Perspectives

  • Geoffrey Haig, Nicole Nau, Stefan Schnell, Claudia Wegener, Geoffrey Haig, Nicole Nau, Stefan Schnell, Claudia Wegener(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  18 Frank Seifart documentations. For instance, the empirical basis of linguistics may require unedited data from spoken language, while reading material for the use in a speech community may require edited texts, cleared of repetitions, false starts, etc. These requirements shape important aspects of language docu-mentation in crucial ways. They affect the two basic components of language documentation: the collection of primary data, on the one hand, and the ap-paratus, i.e. annotations, descriptive grammatical sketches, dictionaries, etc., on the other. This chapter thus also contributes to clarifying these two cen-tral concepts of documentary linguistics. These issues are discussed in this chapter with examples from documentation practices from the past 10 years, mostly within the DoBeS program of the Volkswagen Foundation. Section 2 introduces the theoretical framework of language documenta-tion. Section 3 discusses four motivations for language documentation and their implications for the collection of primary data and the apparatus of lan-guage documentation. Section 4 summarizes some of the potentially compet-ing requirements and Section 5 concludes this chapter. 2. The format of language documentation Within documentary linguistics, the format of language documentations is typically conceived of as in Table 1 (Himmelmann 1998, 2006). A key feature of this format is the clear separation of primary data, i.e. the contents , from any descriptive or analytical statement about these data, which are placed in the apparatus of the documentation. The first major component, the primary data, is organized into sessions , where one session is a recording of a communicative event. One such session ideally displays a unity of participants, place, and time, and may correspond to an observed event that may have naturally occurred, e.g. the performances of a song, as well as to a staged event, e.g. an elicitation session documenting metalinguistic knowledge.

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  Essentials of Language Documentation

  • Jost Gippert, Nikolaus P. Himmelmann, Ulrike Mosel(Authors)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  Linguistic and anthropological fieldwork in the Boasian tradition has also always put major emphasis on the recording of speech events. Within linguistic anthropology, recording and interpreting oral literature is a major task. All of these traditions have had a major influence on documentary linguistics as developed in this book. Chapter 1 – Language documentation: What is it and what is it good for? 15 Nevertheless, the idea of a language documentation as sketched above is new for mainstream linguistics, and even compared to these earlier ap-proaches, it is new with regard to the following important features: – Focus on primary data : The main goal of a language documentation is to make primary data available for a broad group of users. Unlike in the philological tradition, there is no restriction to culturally or historically “important” documents, however such importance may be defined. – Explicit concern for accountability : The focus on primary data implies that considerable care is given to the issue of making it possible to evaluate the quality of the data. This in turn implies that the field situa-tion is made transparent and that all documents are accompanied by metadata which detail the recording circumstances as well as the further steps undertaken in processing a particular document. – Concern for long-term storage and preservation of primary data : This involves two aspects. On the one hand, metadata are crucial for users of a documentation to locate and evaluate a given document, as just men-tioned. On the other hand, long-term storage is essentially a matter of technology, and while compilers of language documentations do not have to be able to handle all the technology themselves, they need to have a basic understanding of the core issues involved so that they avoid basic mistakes in recording and processing primary data.

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  Research Guide on Language Change

  • Edgar C. Polomé(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  Situations (a) and (b) do not invalidate a case, especially if the scholar makes allowance for the possibility of errors. Even situation (c), if handled with sufficient care, may permit effective analysis; if the correct information is carefully separated from the incorrect information, it cannot be seriously contaminated. In fact, some of our most important linguistic information from remote times and places comes to us mixed with errors, and scholars recognize that it can be used. Finally, our respect for the inviolability of linguistic evidence turns to the fact that such evidence has a life outside of linguistic method. Kahane, Kahane, and Ash (1979: 67 — 68) observe that Linguistic evidence is, in principle, threefold: (a) When other forms of evidence are scarce, particularly in prehistoric times, language (plus or minus archeological sup-port) is often decisive for hypotheses of reconstruction ... (b) Frequently historical events and linguistic data supplement and confirm each other ... While the docu-mentary sources reveal the circumstances of their transmission, an etymological, semantic, distributional analysis of the words provides many details which round out the chronicler's reports ... (c) Often linguistic data function as an analogue for historical events, stimulating a hypothesis even though absolute proof is unavailable ... Recorded linguistic behavior becomes, in short, a model for unrecorded social behavior. Linguistic evidence of language change thus ultimately evidences his-tory, society, and above all, man, in spite of himself. 40 Irmengard Rauch 2.1. Datable documents Indo-European is the family best known to us at present, because texts in the various languages have been most thoroughly studied, and because these texts extend through a period of almost four thousand years ...

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