1. Universität zu Köln Working with texts (Discourse & Conversation Analysis) Nikolaus P. Himmelmann Universität zu Köln & Center for Endangered Languages Documentation, UNIPA (Manokwari)

2. Universität zu Köln Two major ways for collecting data in the field Elicitation of words or phrases (sentences), often done with structured questionnaire Recording and analyzing natural speech, i.e. record “texts”

3. Universität zu Köln Two major types of ‘text’ data monologue: single speaker, e.g. narrative (folkstory, personal story, etc.), speech polylogue (dialogue): more than one speaker, major example: conversation (of 2, 3, 4, n people), interview “pure” monologue rare (mostly during formal speeches), otherwise often hearer feedback (ya, mm, oh ya, etc.)

4. Universität zu Köln Two major uses of ‘text’ data as a source for naturally occurring examples for grammatical phenomena, e.g. clause with intransitive predicate, relative clause construction, inflected verb form, order of adjective and noun, etc. as an object of study in itself – structure of narrative discourse: how are participants introduced, reference tracking, episode boundaries, temporal grounding, etc. – structure of conversational exchanges: turn taking, repair, question-answer, ending

5. Universität zu Köln Ways of generating ‘text’ data ask people to tell a story or ask permission to record an ongoing conversation use of “props” (pictures, films, etc.) for people to talk about. This is particularly helpful if one wants to get comparable data from different speakers/languages.

6. Universität zu Köln Widely used props Pear film (Chafe et al. 1980, 1994) Frog Story Space games MPI Nijmegen video clips: put-series, reciprocals QUIS-set from Uni Potsdam and many more! ALL AVAILABLE ON THE INTERNET see, for example, http://fieldmanuals.mpi.nl/

7. Universität zu Köln Two major uses of ‘text’ data many grammatical topics best studied in context, i.e. on the basis of texts, for example: - voice alternations (when do you use dibeli, when membeli) - use of pronouns and deictics, switch reference systems (anaphora) -word order variation - information structure (topic, focus) - agreement