Executive Summary - Centre for Language Studies

spent a lot of time searching for households instead of conducting interviews.Some villages, too, were also far away from each other and in some cases thesealso had just a few households. This did not match with the number ofquestionnaires expected to be administered per day.1.6.4 Bad condition of roadsTraveling from one location to another was hampered by the poor state of someroads. In some places bridges had fallen into disrepair whereas in others thebridges were not there at all. Notwithstanding these problems, the research teamstried their best to cover all the intended areas. What was worrying though, wasthat in some cases, time and other resources were wasted traveling to an area thatin the end proved to be inaccessible. Curiously, some of these cases arose becausesome people did not provide the research teams with the correct information aboutthe state of disrepair of the roads. Inaccurate information was deliberately given tomislead the research teams apparently in order to make them appreciate thedifficulties the local communities meet in their travels. As a consequence, someareas received restricted coverage.1.6.5 Establishing the centres of villagesFor cartographic purposes, the GPS readings were required to be taken from thecentre of the village. But in some cases the centre of the village was either in aforest, water body, or on a hill or mountain. In some cases, the villagersthemselves did not know where the centre was and sometimes they took the placewhere their village headman/woman had built his/her house as the centre. Thismight have some implications on the accuracy of some locations on the languagemap.1.6.6 Lack of adequate linguistic knowledgeSome respondents especially during the administration of individual15