Work in Progress continued
So, last time I wrote I kind of eschewed the task of describing the trials and tribulations of my first interview, and now I can barely remember them. The good thing is, all I need to do to remember is go back to the -now annotated - video of that first meeting, all my successes and failures are documented faithfully.
As we learnt in school, when judging somebody's performance on anything, highlight the positive aspects first, as hard to find as they may be, and then plunge into your criticism tirade.
What I considered positive about that first interview was that it provided me with the necessary self-confidence to continue my work. I realised that I was not going to fail completely, that my camera was set up well, that it wouldn't just stop recording right through the middle of the interview, and I was able to communicate my questions through pictures, hand-written and typed out English sentences and fingerspelling. I was lucky to have an amateur linguist as my first consultant (I learnt much later to call them consultants, I used 'participant' and 'subject' before, but now I think I'm gonna stick with consultant, sounds most professional and least insulting). Not only was he very much aware of the differences between English and ASL grammar, teaching them to students every day, but he realised early on that we were talking about compounds, so I was able to slip in metalinguistic questions of the sort 'Do you consider this one word or two? Is this a compound'?
I also decided to not randomise my questions but go through verbs first, proceeding to nominal compounds after and finishing off with adjectical ones. The rationale behind this procedure was that once the consultant knew what I wanted from him, he'd supply some of the information himself. For example, I would show him a picture of a calf (BABY COW) next to its mother and ask for the sign for calf. Next, I would ask if any sign could intervene between BABY and COW and the last question would be if he could form the plural of that sign by repeating the sign for COW accompanied by a body shift from left to right. When I then showed the next picture of a baby deer, the consultant would already know what type of questions I was going to ask and sometimes provided replies without my even asking the question. Proceeding in this fashion has the further advantage of enabling the consultant to use analogies for his judgements, e.g. if he cannot form the plural of BABY COW by reduplicating the head, he might also not be able to form the plural of BABY DEER in this way. Or he might be, and then the contrast would become obvious right away.
My first consultant also helped me eradicate several mistakes in my questions based on vague assumptions I had previously about what was possible in the language and what was unusual, or influenced by English. In my search for signs I might use to split up compound candidates (to see if they could be split up, rather), I came across the intensifier 'really' and thought myself real smart for having found such a convenient adverb to put between adjectival and verbal signs. I'd ask my consultant how to say that the dog was 'really wet' or how the man 'really' smuggled cigarettes (ok, no 'intense' meaning there) and I'd meet with outright rejection. That the dog was 'really wet' would be expressed not by an extra sign for 'really' (and I had chosen the wrong one for that anyway, I had chosen one that is used to affirm the truth of an expression or express surprise at a certain proposition), it would be expressed by using the 'intense' inflection on the sign for 'wet', i.e. a short hold at the beginning of the sign followed by a rapid and forceful execution of it. So I had to come up with different signs to put between the compound sign that translates as 'wet', namely WATER SOFT.
So much for the positive aspects of that meeting. Now to the downsides, and of course there were and are downsides. Namely that things didn't work out the way I wanted them to work out. Namely that I couldn't show formal headedness on compound heads as I set out to do. I'm not sure about verbal compounds yet, things are looking a bit brighter on that side, but for nominal and adjectival ones, I fear I can't. I know, that's a result, too, and I'll be able to write enough about it to fill the required amount of pages, but it's not the revolutionary thesis we all dream we'll write. Should I go into detail? I'll skip the theoretical aspects for now, if you want them, post a comment.
The second annoying downside of elicitation work for me during that first interview was being considered ill-prepared and ill-informed by the consultant. Of course he didn't say it in so many words, but asked me if I had looked up the answers to my questions in books. My ASL was not sufficient (nor is it now) to explain that of course I had done my reading on compound formation in ASL, that I know how you're supposed to set up things in space before you expound on the relations between them (ok, I suppose I really had neglected that aspect in my preparation!), that I knew plural formation was generally possible on nouns through reduplication but there was no literature on how this is done in compounds - in short, he must have thought me pretty ignorant and unprofessional. And yet, when I got out of the Deaf Culure Centre that afternoon, I had my first set of data, and it was pretty good data and I knew I'd be able to converse in ASL for my next interviews - and that was a darn good feeling.
I forgot to mention the last downside of this first interview: I ended it after 'only' 90 minutes, maybe two hours, we took one or two short breaks in between, so I don't remember exactly, but after I had gone over all my test items I decided to call it a day and meet up with my consultant at the end of the week for the remainder of the semantic questions and to review stuff that had been recorded so far. Only that there never was to be a second interview. The following week was very busy for my consultant, who had just started a new job, and the next weekend was just as bad, since it was the long Labour-Day weekend and he had gone away for a trip. So I never got my second interview. We settled for me asking him questions via email, which I'm planning on doing once I have reviewed all the other consultants' data.
So much for my first interview.
Work in Progress
Since I promised a few notes on my work here and since I was just informed by Joseph that I'm supposed to take field notes on the ups and downs of my fieldwork experience, I will hereforth lay down meticulously the trials and tribulations in my quest for data.
It all really started months ago when I decided I would need the intuition of native signers for my thesis project. If I wanted to know more about compounds in ASL I would need to go out and ask signers for their opinions on which two signs formed a unit and which didn't. And it was clear to me from the start that the best place to do my research would be in Montreal. I knew the location, I knew some Deaf people (with whom I'd taken signing classes when I studied there), I thought it would be no problem to find a couple of volunteers to interview. Plus I would get to spend some time in Montreal, which I love and kept missing after I left it last July.
Things turned out to be more difficult than I thought. Montreal's deaf population is considerably smaller than, say Toronto's, partly because LSQ (Langue des Signes Québecoise) is quite strong in the region, as is its oral counterpart French. I contacted the Mackay Rehabilitation Centre, also the Montreal Association of the Deaf, emailing them a leaflet which contained the prerequisites for participating (native signer with at least one Deaf parent) as well as my contact details. I asked them to send it out via email or put it up on the walls of the Mackay Centre, but I fear no leaflets were actually put up on the walls. I spoke to a former teacher of mine, Lea Mavroudis, about finding subjects. I contacted my 'Psychology of the Deaf' professor, I even posted a notice on facebook market place. Furthermore I contacted Rachel Mayberry, a linguistics professor at UC San Diego who worked on the acquisition of ASL in Montreal a few years back. She put me in contact with one of her co-workers, Marc-André Bernier, who had assisted her in recruiting deaf participants for her studies in Montreal.
First I didn't receive any positive feedback. It was July, people were on vacation and nobody seemed available. Then Marc-André got back to me and explained that he was working in Toronto at the Deaf Culture Centre at the moment and could try to help me find subjects there. Through him I found my first and up to now only participant Adrian, who happened to be a friend of a friend of mine from Vancouver. I contacted Adrian and we scheduled a meeting in Toronto.
That's all I really knew before I stepped into the plane in Berlin, I had one informant and was hoping to find more through him. I didn't know where I would interview him yet, for he didn't seem to like the idea of being interviewed at his place, and I didn't know where I would be staying in Toronto. I asked at UofT, at George Brown College (which among other things has an ASL English interpreting programme) and at the Deaf Culture Centre (DCC) and heard back from its co-director Joanne that I would be able to use space at the DCC. So on my second day in Toronto, Friday, I walked down to Toronto's historic district, where the DCC is located, and walked in. That was my 'Feuertaufe' in terms of ASL usage, and I don't think I did too well. I had to somehow make myself understood in ASL, and I had to fingerspell quite a bit, until Slava, the IT communications person at the Centre, took care of me. He speaks English well and accompanied his signing by speech. He showed me the opening hours of the Centre and also showed me their studio. The studio is an open area with green curtains, very good light and a tripod and camera. Slava explained to me how to use the tripod with my camera, got me an extension cord and generally made sure I was well equipped to do my recordings. I could even have used their video cameras, hadn't I brought my own. I was surprised and grateful for the DCC people's generosity in letting me use their space and equipment and I will certianly mention them in my acknowledgements.
I had my first interview there on Sunday, and I was sooooo prepared. Not only had I checked that I had all my cables on me, enough recording space (4 tapes), knew how to work the camera, had gone over all my test items again (except for the adjectives, I went over them right before the interview), I had tied my hair together so it wouldn't be in my way when signing, I had put on a black shirt because they provide the best contrast to white signing hands - in other words, I was prepared. I had also printed out a short questionnaire to elicit information on my participant's history of Deafness, I had printed out a short explanation of the tasks that awaited the participant and let them sign an 'Einverständniserklärung'.
I got to the DCC an hour in advance and was lucky to meet Jessica, who works at the centre and who helped me set up my camera in front of the green curtain. I had placed a table and two chairs behind it and thought Adrian and I would both be signing more or less toward the camera. Things turned out differently - we looked at each other during the interview, so the camera caught us in profile most of the time. I did signal to Adrian once to sign more toward the camera, but I still got lots of profile.
While waiting for Adrian to arrive Jessica introduced me to Lucia, a girl from a Deaf family who's involved with the DCC and that Sunday stepped by to guide a couple of visitors thorugh the exhibition part of the DCC. Seizing my chance I explained my study to her and asked if she had time to participate. She agreed to be interviewed the following Friday (Aug. 29) and gave me her blackberry email address. I could barely believe my luck in having found another native signer in so short a time. It bolstered my confidence in the Adrian interview. I felt more comfortable signing with him than in my first ASL encounters in Toronto, since now I was on firm ground, I had practised the vocabulary I needed for the study. Still, Adrian had to repeat and fingerspell for clarification quite a bit, since my receptive ASL skills are rather low. It's such a fast language that my visual processing system is working 100% and still too slow.
more on the interview next time
