Portrait of the Linguist as a Young Man: Linguistic Fieldwork on Nguna (Vanuatu) in 1966

Abstract

This account of linguistic fieldwork on Nguna in Vanuatu sketches the origin of the project, the preparation for the stay, and the adjustments necessary for a young (at the time) American linguist to survive on a small island with 789 Ngunese, a New Zealand missionary couple, and an Australian storekeeper in 1966. Although the methods of collecting language data then were not so different from current ones, in order to highlight the technological differences between the past and the present, I have described how I recorded, stored, and manipulated the data. Then, with the wisdom of hindsight, I discuss what I now perceive as successes and failures. Finally, I discuss how the data collected and analyzed in the 1960s might meet some current standards of language documentation and conservation.