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Linguistic fieldwork is the backbone of an empirically-based science of linguistics. Firsthand information on barely known minority languages is essential for our understanding of human languages, their structural properties and their genetic relationships. ‘Immersion’ fieldwork as major ‘must’ is contrasted to ‘interview’ fieldwork as a less desirable option. We aim at an open-ended documentation of each language, intended for various audiences, being both accessible and user-friendly. This introductory essay introduces a number of issues concerning linguistic fieldwork, discussed in some detail by the contributors to this issue, each a highly experienced fieldworker and a recognised authority in their fields. This is what makes the issue special.

This manual provides basic information concerning linguistic fieldwork. What is it? Why do it? The ethics involved. How to choose a field language and a field location. How to go about it. What to get – a comprehensive reference grammar (written in terms of basic linguistic theory), a volume of texts, and a dictionary/thesaurus. What to do: insofar as possible, become a member of the community (for ‘immersion fieldwork’); analyse texts; only use elicitation at a late stage, within the language of study (not from a lingua franca). How to work with consultants (and some things which should be avoided). Writing up the grammar. There is a short final section concerning field methods courses in a university.

The following is an account of fieldwork experience in the Old Order Mennonite community of Waterloo County, Ontario. The language spoken here is Pennsylvania German and this paper focuses on methodological and ethical challenges that arise for any linguist wanting to study this language in its natural setting. This is a close-knit, ultra-conservative and deeply religious speech community, specifically one that wants to remain apart from the outside world. Even the issue of language survival does not give the linguist a natural role to play. Formal maintenance efforts are not in demand. Pennsylvania German is a language that has been holding its own for nearly 400 years and it is the humble, separate and ‘peculiar’ existence of these speakers that holds the key to the continued existence of this language.

Earlier in the history of our discipline, it was sometimes assumed that the primary audience for linguistic documentation would be other linguists. Now, as more and more languages are endangered, documentation is becoming increasingly valued by the communities in which the languages are or were spoken. It can be useful for linguists and community members to consider together the kinds of documentation that will meet not only current needs but also those of future generations. Here we will focus on some ways in which evolving community concerns might affect documentation.

In this paper I discuss my experience in working in the late 1950s on Konda, a previously undescribed Dravidian language from Central India, in terms of its phonetics, phonology, morphology and syntax. The analysis and the collection of data involved work with texts and conversations and elicitation of paradigms. This grammar was cast in terms of basic linguistic theorty, without adhering to any of the particular formal models then in vogue, and is the most comprehensive grammar of any minority Dravidian language. It has been instrumental for our understanding of Proto-Dravidian.

This paper describes fieldwork experiences among the Goemai of Central Nigeria. It first introduces the fieldwork setting, and then focuses on one illustrative example: the investigation of property-denoting (‘adjectival’) expressions. The paper describes the different methods employed, compares them, and evaluates their results. It shows some advantages and disadvantages, and – on this basis – advocates using a combination of methods in order to benefit from each method's advantages while counterbalancing its disadvantages. In particular, the paper argues in favour of a semantics-based approach to fieldwork, illustrating the invaluable insights to be gained from it.

This paper proposes methodology and provides practical tips for associating plant and animal names of little-known languages with scientific designations, especially for the purpose of producing accurate dictionary entries. The focus is on how a linguist can accomplish this task with or without the assistance of biologists, while avoiding the unsound practice of relying solely on vernacular names in the contact language. The points presented here are illustrated with examples from Matses, a language in the Panoan family spoken by an indigenous society living in western Amazonia, with whom the author has conducted extensive zoological, ethnobiological and linguistic field research.