North Germanic Negation - Munin

METHODOLOGY
Methodological details concerning for instance the recording of the questionnaires (mostly
relevant for the Norwegian part), and the practical work of the collecting data, may also have been
affected. One example is the case of the pre-recorded test sentences, which is addressed in the next
subsection.
As for the data collecting and in particular the elicitation task, the fieldworker plays an important
part in giving instructions, clarifying, and helping the informant such that the sentences are judged
according to their intended meaning. These tasks may have been carried out differently by the
different fieldworkers involved.
2.2.2.5.2 Presentation of the test sentences
The questionnaire was presented orally, and the reasoning behind this choice was among other
things that the informants should hear the test sentences in their own dialect, making it easier to
give judgements. In order to do this, the questionnaire was pre-recorded by a speaker of the local
dialect. Although the intentions are good, there are however a few potential problems with this
practical method. One concerns the dialect of the reader, and another how supposedly
unacceptable sentences are pronounced. Both these potential problems directly concern my work.
Consider the following three sentences from the questionnaire.
(3) a. Derfor leste ikke han a. (Norwegian)
therefore read not he her
b. Derfor leste han ikke a.
therefore read he not her
c. Derfor leste han a ikke.
therefore read he her not
‘Therefore, he didn’t read it’
In this triplet the placement of unstressed pronouns with respect to negation is tested, and it is very
important that the pronouns are unstressed. In at least one particular case, the questionnaire, and
hence also the sentences in (3) was recorded in another dialect of the same region. The sentences
were read with a different form of the pronoun, and with the negative marker ikkje instead of the
negative marker itj in the target dialect. Clearly, this was not ideal.
As for the latter issue, the reader must pronounce unacceptable sentences in a way that they
sound natural. I have heard one recording of (3b) above that did not sound natural and having pause
before the final pronoun. When played to the informants, it must have been difficult to judge the
sentence in accordance with its intention, unless the fieldworker could clarify for them what the
intention was.
2.2.2.5.3 Recruitment of informants
On each location the informants were recruited by a local person, whose task was to engage
informants meeting the specific requirements of age, gender, background and so forth. The
recruitment was in most cases successful in the sense that the informants met the requirements
given in section 2.2.2.1 above (Øystein Vangsnes, p.c.).
There are, unfortunately, a few exceptions to this, such as the old informants from one of the
places in Northern Norway, whose dialect background diverges from the condition specified above:
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