No, the class was not spoken Yoruba!

Linguistic Field Methods

Spring 1995; Judith Maxwell

Acquiring and using techniques for conducting linguistic fieldwork. Investigation of one or more languages by working with native speakers. Emphasis on defining problems, developing and testing hypotheses.
This one was a treat. We happened to have a Nigerian grad student (Fehintola Mosadomi) who served as our Yoruba guinea pig.
Selected Topics from the Syllabus

"Field" methods
Sampling-- then and now
Phonetics review-- English
Contact-- no common language
Contact-- common language
Phonetics-- Yoruba
Phonology
Phonology-- Yoruba style
Morphology
Yoruba morphology
Syntax
Yoruba syntax
Transcribing discourse
Prosody and function
Transcribing conversational exchanges
Larger texts/genres
Text elicitation
Working with more than one speaker
Working with a community based grammar
Variability

Projects and Papers
Yoruba Morphology Sets. Different morphology questions were passed out, and I got stuck with abstract nouns. Very boring.
Yoruba Syntax. This time I got an interesting topic: voice distinctions. I chose to expand on it for my final project, so there's no need to present this one.
Text and Genre. Elicitation of a text of a particular genre and analysis of felicity conditions. To be quite honest, I never quite grasped the concept of felicity conditions, so my "analysis" is rather shallow. The story is amusing, though.

Voice Constructions in Yoruba. I thought the topic was interesting at the time (still do in fact), but the truth was, I just didn't know enough about syntax and typology when I wrote it. I'd never heard of ergativity, so didn't have a concept of "anti-passive". Live and learn, eh?

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