Bringing psycholinguistics to the field: Experiences from Solomon Islands

Abstract

The world’s linguistic diversity is severely underrepresented in research on cognitive and neural aspects of language processing, with great consequences for our understanding of the relationship between language, cognition, and the human brain. The practical challenges of carrying out neurophysiological (but also behavioral) experiments under fieldwork conditions is one factor that contributes to this lack of diversity, and meeting them necessarily requires the integration of experimental work in a larger descriptive and documentary context. This paper discusses these challenges and how they may be met, based on the authors’ experiences in carrying out an EEG study on sentence comprehension in Solomon Islands. It argues that reconciling the requirements of experimental studies with those of working with speech communities in the field is certainly challenging, but can be achieved with coordination and a realistic assessment of the resources required. Moreover, while field-based experimental research should not compete with descriptive and documentary linguistic work as a means of supporting a community in maintaining and developing their language, it can be beneficial in promoting a sense of the value of the language that is not based on its status as endangered, but rather on its specific linguistic features that contribute to insight into human language more generally.