The experience of working with the indigenous languages of North America has given a good deal of American linguistic theory its practical character and its sense of urgency. Many of these languages were spoken by very few people and would soon die out. Unless they were recorded and described before this happened, they would become forever inaccessible for investigation. In these circumstances, it is not surprising that American linguists have given considerable attention to the development of what are called 'field methods' -techniques for the recording and analysis of languages which the linguist himself could not speak and which had not previously been committed to writing.

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