Fieldwork Forum (FForum)

When? Fall 2025: Every other Wednesday, 3:10PM-4:00PM (alternating with LRWG)

Where? Hybrid Format (in-person in Dwinelle 1303 and via Zoom; email organizers for passcode)

What? We are a working group dedicated to the critical examination of methodologies in language documentation, description, and revitalization, as well as to the linguistic and ethnohistorical analysis that falls out from that work. Our aim is to learn from and ultimately improve upon methods for carrying out more rigorous, insightful and ethical linguistic and cultural documentation, revitalization, and revival, as well as to help researchers implement those methods.

How? Fieldwork Forum is made possible through a Working Group Grant provided by the Townsend Center for the Humanities at the University of California, Berkeley.

Who? FForum is organized by Becky Everson (reverson@berkeley.edu) and Zachary Wellstood (wellstood@berkeley.edu). We welcome all those interested in linguistic fieldwork, with all levels of experience, including those in other departments. To join our mailing list, please write to the organizers.

See a list of our past talks here.

Upcoming Meetings

November 12, 2025: Panel Discussionwith Claudia Iron Hawk (UC Berkeley), Wendy Liz Arbey Lopez Marquez (UC Berkeley), Nafisa Iyatunde Rashid (UC Berkeley), and Hei Vangz (UC Berkeley)

Identity and Fieldwork: Perspectives from Working within our Communities

Past Meetings

September 3, 2025: Round Robin

Join us for the first FForum meeting of the semester (and year!), where we will do a round robin to catch up on summer fieldwork developments. All are welcome!

September 17, 2025: Becky Jarvis, Andrew Liu, and Katie Russell (UC Berkeley)

Developing community-facing story corpus web resources

In this talk, we will present our work on (two versions of) the Atchan Song and Story Corpus (version 1 live here, and version 2 beta visible here).  We’ll discuss background on the project, some technical details of how adding content to the website works, and some currently in-progress work on making it easier to develop similar websites. We welcome discussion throughout this presentation and encourage department members who have worked on or are interested in similar projects to attend.

October 1, 2025: Bernat Bardagil (Ghent University)

Traces of (language) contact in the Guaporé-Mamoré region of southern Amazonia
To what extent can we use linguistics and material culture to open a window into human history when we lack tangible historical information? The Guaporé-Mamoré region, overlapping significant territory in the Bolivian and Brazilian lowlands, is one of the most linguistically and culturally diverse regions in the continent. In spite of that, we know extremely little about the history of a vast majority of the languages and the indigenous nations who speak them before the 20th century.
This talk discusses the author’s ongoing research that combines a high-resolution view of linguistic, ethnomusicological and material culture comparative elements in order to triangulate historical information about the indigenous peoples of the eastern Guaporé-Mamoré area. The talk will also address how linguistic and cultural revitalization is integrated as part of the fieldwork portion of this research. 

October 15, 2025: Nadine Grimm (U. of Rochester)

Tone in grammar and grammar-writing

Tone is often treated as a phonological phenomenon, yet its versatility in marking grammatical categories is well-established, especially in African languages (e.g. Rolle 2018). For instance, in Gyeli (Bantu), tone marks a distinction between the proximal and distal demonstrative paradigms, it distinguishes seven TAM categories and encodes argument structure (Grimm 2021). Tone’s nature to “be everywhere” in Gyeli has largely guided my research agenda for the last decade.  In this talk, I reflect on my experience with tone as a fieldworker/linguist/grammar-writer, addressing methodological questions about investigating grammatical functions of tone and grammar writing.

October 29, 2025: Lewis Lawyer (UC Davis)

Two paths, walking together: Patwin fieldwork in the 21st century
What is the Patwin language? The Patwin language (ISO 639-3 code: pwi) is a Wintuan language traditionally spoken in the southwestern drainage of the Sacramento River, where Proto-Wintuan–speaking people first arrived about 1,500 years ago. What is the Patwin language? The Patwin language is the heart of Patwin culture, and has been spoken on Patwin land since the creation of the world. What is Patwin language work? Gathering archival materials, data management, linguistic analysis and publication. What is Patwin language work? Patwin people reclaiming, learning and teaching, guided by elders and Tribal leaders.
Patwin language research moves along two paths, informed by two traditions: on the one hand the colonial science of anthropological linguistics, and on the other hand the survivance of the Patwin way of speaking that lies at the heart of Patwin culture. This talk describes a continuing journey along these two paths, and seeks to answer the question: what does it mean to be a field linguist working on Patwin in the 21st century?

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