Research tools

The order of research tools below is a recommendation, it is not obligatory. The morphological, syntactic and lexical cards are administered at the beginning of the interview so that we could collect relatively spontaneous data before the linguistic awareness of the informant begins to grow as a result of the ``Which is correct?'' questionnaire.

The ordering in the section is advisable to keep to.

The different modules of the guided conversation should be interlaced with the tests - to provide relaxation and distraction. When all the tests have been done, the rest of the tape should be filled with conversation.

The Uher tape recorder must not be stopped during the three perception tests either. This will result in minutes of idle tape but possible problems (e.g. misunderstanding of the instruction) and the resulting commentary will be well documented.

On the other hand, the Uher tape recorder could be stopped while the informant is reading the seven passages to himself.

Cards

There are sixty cards to elicit data on the major questions listed in sections 3.1 and 3.2. The general format is the following: The informant gets a card from the field worker. The card has a sentence with a blank in it. The citation form of the word to fill the blank is given on the card. For example:

Mari ................ egy ingemet tegnap.KIMOS `wash'

`Mary washed-def./indef. a my shirt yesterday'

So the informant receives the above card (without the gloss, of course) and has to say the sentence with the appropriate form of kimos . This means s/he has to choose between the form kimosta (definite conjugation) and the form kimosott (indefinite conjugation).

For the convenience of our field workers (who are not trained linguists) we provide another set of cards, the field worker's cards, which contain the variants the cards are supposed to elicit. Only the variants of primary data are listed. Instructions:

PLEASE READ OUT THE SENTENCE ON THE CARD SO THAT YOU INSERT THE WORD ON THE RIGHT INTO THE SENTENCE ON THE LEFT. FOR EXAMPLE:

Én tegnap nem  ...  eleget.ALSZIK `sleep'

`I yesterday not  ...  enough'

Reading passages

Each passage will be handed over on a separate sheet with the following instruction:

HERE IS A PASSAGE. PLEASE READ IT CAREFULLY IN SILENCE THEN ALOUD NATURALLY, WITHOUT MUCH ADO AS IF YOU WERE READING IT TO A FRIEND WHOSE EYE HAS JUST BEEN OPERATED ON AND HE CAN'T READ.

After the informant has read the passage:

PLEASE READ THE SAME TEXT FAST. SUPPOSE YOU HAVE TO GO TO THE LOO URGENTLY BUT YOU CAN'T UNTIL YOU HAVE FINISHED WITH READING ALL THIS ALOUD.

(If the informant does not read fast enough, the field worker should urge him by waving his hand.)

The following is one of seven reading passages, slightly altered and provided with detailed explanations for the English reader.

Tibor barátom, akinek a kabátján /1/ két lyuk /2/ is van, fölbiztatta /3/ a vele hasonszorü /4/ srácokat, hogy irjanak /5/ hosszu /6/ dolgozatokat /7/ - hadd kinlódjanak /8/ a tanárok a javitással! /9/ Mikor már a sokadik nagyon hosszu /10/ dolgozatot /11/ javitották, /12/ a tanárokban /13/ fölmerült a gyanu, /14/ hogy az ujabban /15/ irt /16/ dolgozatok /17/ nem véletlenül ilyen hosszuak. /18/

(Gloss: My friend Tibor on whose coat there are two hole