Interacting with experts - grambank/grambank GitHub Wiki

This article gives basic guidelines to our coders what they need to consider if they are interacting directly with language specific experts.

Sometimes, the literature will not tell you everything you need to know about a language to code all features. In those cases, it may be possible to contact an expert on the language. Experts are often happy to help and may either be speakers/signers and/or linguists working on describing the language. Contacting experts is also a good opportunity to spread awareness of Grambank among its potential users. Before contacting an expert, make sure that you have already filled in the questionnaire to the best of your abilities with the available sources. The main goals of contacting experts are:

Clarifying phenomena that were difficult to code on the basis of the available descriptions.
Confirming whether certain constructions or markers are absent from the language or simply absent from the descriptions of the language.

When interacting with experts:

You should introduce yourself, the task and the project.
Show respect for what the expert and others have already contributed to our understanding of the language. Mention which sources you are familiar with and ask them if they have any other source recommendations. We are not trying to skip the process of reading what we can before we get in touch. Experts will generally appreciate it if you have already put some effort into finding information in their and others work.
Mention that they will be cited as personal communication in our database if they contribute new information. Ask them if they would prefer to be cited in another way.
We do not have funds allocated to monetarily compensate experts for their time, this should be made clear if necessary and we should be respectful of their time, effort and expertise and not ask too much of them.
If the formal analysis by an expert does not align with Grambank's comparative concepts, explicitly mention that you understand/agree with their analysis for the language specific situation, but that our framework adopts another perspective. Mention the experts's opinion in the comments field and the reasons why it deviates from the coding. We do not want to credit something to an expert that they did not say or that they do not fully agree with.
Mention that some questions in the questionnaire may remain unanswered. We prefer accuracy over completeness. Question marks are sometimes the most appropriate answer.
Do not just send the raw sheet and leave it to an expert to figure out what is going on. Select specific topics and prepare a session to ask questions about those topics. It is good to focus on topics rather than individual features.
Start small and be respectful. Gauge if the expert is interested in corresponding further, or is too busy and go from there.
If you schedule a personal meeting, feel free to ask your node leader to attend as well and keep the meeting to max 1,5 hours unless there are exceptional circumstances.

A sample message

Subject: Grambank database: some questions on < insert language name >

Dear colleague (or: Dear < title + full name >),

I am involved in Grambank, a typological project based at the MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. For this project, we try to answer a set of 195 morphosyntactic questions for as many languages as possible (see https://glottobank.org/#grambank). We have currently coded over < currently 2,000, but update this if appropriate > languages. The database will be open for everyone and can be used to investigate deep language prehistory, geographical and historical grammatical patterns, language universals and the functional interaction of grammatical features.

I recently tried to answer the questionnaire for < insert language name >, based on .

I was not able to answer all questions with full certainty. Some questions may require expert input, and I was wondering if you would be willing to take some time to meet (online) and go over some of these issues with me over email? I do not want to take up too much of your time, and I understand if you are currently very busy and unable to meet.

To give you an idea of what we would discuss, some open questions remain on < insert two topics here, e.g. 'comparative constructions', 'polar questions' >. The questionnaire consists of yes-no questions, and most answers should be fairly straightforward to an expert while adding essential information to the database.

If you are happy to contribute, you will be cited as personal communication in the database, or we can cite you differently if you so wish. For example, if you are planning to publish something on these topics yourself, or if you prefer to write up our interaction so that it can be cited as a manuscript. Unfortunately, we cannot financially compensate you for your time and expertise.

All the best,

< Your name and your affiliation >