Worlds of knowledge in Central Bhutan: Documentation of ’Olekha

Abstract

A re-emergence in language documentation has brought with it a recent recognition of the potential contributions which collaboration with other disciplines has to offer linguistics. For example, ten chapters of the recently published Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Fieldwork (Thieberger 2012) were explicitly devoted to cross-discipline collaboration. Among the topics covered were ethnomathematics, geography, astronomy, biology, and ethnobotany. Linguists who work in ethnobiology can make important observations about our interactions with the natural world, as has been persuasively argued by Si (2011). In a separate publication, Si (2013) shows that the Solega people of southern India possess an unusually rich knowledge of honeybees and their practices, despite not being beekeepers. Of course, the importance of these sorts of studies has been noted outside of linguistics for some time. The current study has grown from discussions with a biologist for a collaborative project.