A自然段

Many procedures are available for obtaining data about a language. They range from a carefully planned, intensive field investigation in a foreign country to a casual introspection about one’s mother tongue carried out in an armchair at home.

A自然段：

获取语言数据的方法有很多种。从精心策划的在国外进行的深入调查，到在家中的扶手椅上对母语进行随意内省，范围非常广。

B自然段

In all cases, someone has to act as a source of language data – an informant. Informants are (ideally) native speakers of a language, who provide utterances for analysis and other kinds of information about the language (e.g. translations, comments about correctness, or judgements on usage). Often, when studying their mother tongue, linguists act as their own informants, judging the ambiguity, acceptability, or other properties of utterances against their own intuitions. The convenience of this approach makes it widely used, and it is considered the norm in the generative approach to linguistics. But a linguist’s personal judgements are often uncertain, or disagree with the judgements of other linguists, at which point recourse is needed to more objective methods of enquiry, using non-linguists as informants. The latter procedure is unavoidable when working on foreign languages, or child speech.

B自然段：

无论哪种情况，都需要有人作为语言数据的来源-一位信息提供者。信息提供者（理想情况下）是一位该语言的母语使用者，他们为分析提供言语和其他关于该语言的信息（例如翻译、对正确性的评价或对使用方式的判断）。在研究自己的母语时，语言学家经常以自己为信息提供者，根据自己的直觉对话语的歧义、可接受性或其他属性进行判断。这种方法的方便性使其被广泛使用，并被认为是生成语言学方法的标准。但是，语言学家的个人判断经常不确定，或与其他语言学家的判断不一致，此时就需要诉诸更客观的调查方法，利用非语言学家作为信息提供者。当研究外语或儿童语言时，后一种方法是不可避免的。

C自然段

Many factors must be considered when selecting informants – whether one is working with single speakers (a common situation when languages have not been described before), two people interacting, small groups or large-scale samples. Age, sex, social background and other aspects of identity are important, as these factors are known to influence the kind of language used. The topic of conversation and the characteristics of the social setting (e.g. the level of formality) are also highly relevant, as are the personal qualities of the informants (e.g. their fluency and consistency). For larger studies, scrupulous attention has been paid to the sampling theory employed, and in all cases, decisions have to be made about the best investigative techniques to use.

C自然段：

在选择信息提供者时，需要考虑许多因素-无论是与单个说话者合作（在语言尚未被描述过的普遍情况下），还是与两个人互动、小组或大样本合作。年龄、性别、社会背景和身份等方面都很重要，因为这些因素已知会影响所使用的语言类型。谈话的主题和社交环境的特点（例如正式程度）也非常相关，信息提供者的个人特质（如流利度和一致性）也很重要。对于较大的研究，人们已经对采样理论进行了仔细的关注，在所有情况下，必须对最佳调查技术做出决策。

D自然段

Today, researchers often tape-record informants. This enables the linguist’s claims about the language to be checked, and provides a way of making those claims more accurate (‘difficult’ pieces of speech can be listened to repeatedly). But obtaining naturalistic, good-quality data is never easy. People talk abnormally when they know they are being recorded, and sound quality can be poor. A variety of tape-recording procedures have thus been devised to minimise the ‘observer’s paradox’ (how to observe the way people behave when they are not being observed). Some recordings are made without the speakers being aware of the fact – a procedure that obtains very natural data, though ethical objections must be anticipated. Alternatively, attempts can be made to make the speaker forget about the recording, such as keeping the tape recorder out of sight, or using radio microphones. A useful technique is to introduce a topic that quickly involves the speaker, and stimulates a natural language style (e.g. asking older informants about how times have changed in their locality).

D自然段：

如今，研究人员通常会进行录音。这样一来，语言学家对于语言的主张可以进行核查，并提供更准确的言语（可以重复听取“困难”的言语片段）。但是，获取自然、高质量的数据从来都不容易。当人们知道自己被录音时，他们的谈话方式通常会不正常，并且录音的音质可能很差。因此，设计了各种录音程序，以最小化“观察者悖论”（如何观察人们在没有被观察时的行为方式）。有些录音是在说话者不知情的情况下进行的-这种方法可以获得非常自然的数据，尽管可能会遇到道德上的反对意见。另外，也可以采取措施让说话者忘记录音的存在，例如将录音机放在隐蔽处，或使用无线麦克风。一种有用的技巧是引入一个迅速让说话者投入其中并刺激其自然语言风格的话题（例如询问年长信息提供者他们所在地区的变化情况）。

E自然段

An audio tape recording does not solve all the linguist’s problems, however. Speech is often unclear and ambiguous. Where possible, therefore, the recording has to be supplemented by the observer’s written comments on the non-verbal behaviour of the participants, and about the context in general. A facial expression, for example, can dramatically alter the meaning of what is said. Video recordings avoid these problems to a large extent, but even they have limitations (the camera cannot be everywhere), and transcriptions always benefit from any additional commentary provided by an observer.

E自然段：

然而，音频录音并不能解决语言学家的所有问题。说话时通常存在着不清晰和含糊的现象。因此，在可能的情况下，需要通过观察者对参与者的非语言行为以及整体环境的书面评论来补充录音。例如，面部表情可以极大地改变说话内容的意义。视频录音在很大程度上避免了这些问题，但它们也有局限性（摄像机无法无处不在），而且转录始终受益于观察者提供的任何额外评论。

F自然段

Linguists also make great use of structured sessions, in which they systematically ask their informants for utterances that describe certain actions, objects or behaviour. With a bilingual informant, or through use of an interpreter, it is possible to use translation techniques (‘How do you say table in your language?’). A large number of points can be covered in a short time, using interview worksheets and questionnaires. Often, the researcher wishes to obtain information about just a single variable, in which case a restricted set of questions may be used: a particular feature of pronunciation, for example, can be elicited by asking the informant to say a restricted set of words. There are also several direct methods of elicitation, such as asking informants to fill in the blanks in a substitution frame (e.g. /__ see a car), or feeding them the wrong stimulus for correction (‘Is it possible to say I no can see?’).

F自然段：

语言学家还经常大量使用结构化会话，其中他们有系统地要求信息提供者提供描述某些动作、物体或行为的言语。通过双语信息提供者或使用翻译工具（例如“您的语言中如何说‘桌子’？”），可以迅速涵盖大量的问题，使用访谈工作表和问卷调查。研究人员通常希望获得关于单一变量的信息，这种情况下可以使用一组受限的问题：例如，可以通过要求信息提供者说出一组特定词语来引出发音的特定特征。还有一些直接的引证方法，例如要求信息提供者填写替换帧中的空白（例如“/__看见一辆车”），或者给出错误的刺激词以便纠正（“是否可能说‘我不会看见’？”）。

G自然段

A representative sample of language, compiled for the purpose of linguistic analysis, is known as a corpus. A corpus enables the linguist to make unbiased statements about frequency of usage, and it provides accessible data for the use of different researchers. Its range and size are variable. Some corpora attempt to cover the language as a whole, taking extracts from many kinds of text; others are extremely selective, providing a collection of material that deals only with a particular linguistic feature. The size of the corpus depends on practical factors, such as the time available to collect, process and store the data: it can take up to several hours to provide an accurate transcription of a few minutes of speech. Sometimes a small sample of data will be enough to decide a linguistic hypothesis; by contrast, corpora in major research projects can total millions of words. An important principle is that all corpora, what-ever their size, are inevitably limited in their coverage, and always need to be supplemented by data derived from the intuitions of native speakers of the language, through either introspection or experimentation.

G自然段：

用于语言学分析目的的代表性语料库被称为语料库。语料库使语言学家能够对使用频率做出无偏见的陈述，并为不同研究人员提供易于获取的数据。其范围和规模是可变的。有些语料库试图覆盖整个语言，从各种文本中提取片段；而其他语料库则极具选择性，提供仅涉及特定语言特征的材料集合。语料库的大小取决于实际因素，例如收集、处理和储存数据所需的时间：准确转录几分钟的言语可能需要几个小时的时间。有时，少量的数据样本就足以确定一个语言假说；相比之下，在重要研究项目中，语料库的规模可以达到数百万字。一个重要原则是，无论其大小如何，所有语料库在其覆盖范围上都具有局限性，并且始终需要通过母语使用者的直觉（通过内省或实验）补充数据。