Christmas is drawing near and then I will soon be on vacation for two weeks. This means that this term is coming to an end and it’s time to reflect over what I’ve done the last two weeks.
The most important thing I’ve done lately is the field trip to Snåsa, where I’ve recruited new informants and collected some more data. But first I went to Trondheim for a talk at NTNU. I was there to visit them for the first time earlier this fall, when I attended a course the Norwegean National Linguistics research school organized on Multlingualism and Grammar. Really interesting course and following conference with experts in the field taking part. This second visit was a much shorter shorter one, where I had a presentation with the title ”Object positions and Scrambling in South Saami”. It was interesting indeed also this time go there to present my work to an audience working within the generative field. I had expected and hoped for feedback and additional things to look for during my following fieldwork and I’m happy that just as I expected, I did get a lot of good feedback and comments on my work. One signal of an interested audience, one that really pays attention to the details, is when they spot things I’ve glossed incorrectly. I think this happens to me every time I write a handout, presentation or paper where I use glossed examples. Since it for instance makes a huge difference if an indirect object is in accusative or illative case, this glossing has to be correct. If you can read South Saami it’s not that big a problem, but since most linguists can not the gloss must give you the correct information. However, my audience at NTNU notices the incorrect glosses right away and asks about it. A good lesson to take with me. (I will later update this post with wrongfully glossed items in order to illustrate.)