ABSTRACT
Broadly speaking, “fieldwork” is collecting data for analysis from a natural context. It involves the collection of primary data by researchers directly from language users, and usually combines participant observation, structured quasi-experimental tasks, translation, and freer language prompts. Planning fieldwork with ETI includes travel, funding, and equipment considerations. While the broad methods employed in human-based linguistic fieldwork are likely to be transferable (assuming the presence of language and culture), other aspects of fieldwork are poorly resourced and likely inadequate for work with ET languages. Fieldwork tools (recording devices) and data organization are very heavily skewed towards a small part of the human language space. Because fieldwork is cooperative and collaborative, its success depends on shared assumptions about how the world works, about participant interaction, and about language, none of which can be taken for granted in a ETI encounter. It requires sustained interactions and the building of shared understanding.
