800 Literatur und Rhetorik
Refine
Has Fulltext
- yes (1)
Year of publication
- 2015 (1)
Document Type
- Article (1)
Language
- English (1)
Is part of the Bibliography
- yes (1)
Keywords
- Awing (1)
- descriptive grammar (1)
- focus realization (1)
- question formation (1)
Institute
- Sonderforschungsbereich 632 - Informationsstruktur (1) (remove)
According to Aikhenvald (2007:5), descriptive linguistics or linguistic
fieldwork “ideally involves observing the language as it is used,
becoming a member of the community, and often being adopted into
the kinship system”. Descriptive linguistics therefore differs from
theoretical linguistics in that while the former seeks to describe natural
languages as they are used, the latter, other than describing, attempts
to give explanations on how or why language phenomena behave in
certain ways. Thus, I will abstract away from any preconceived ideas
on how sentences ought to be in Awing and take the linguist/reader
through focus and interrogative constructions to get a feeling of how
the Awing people interact verbally.