What would you want to hear Thomas Payne (author of Describing Morphosyntax)

I would have to agree with some of the other comments.
The "nuts and bolts" type items are available
elsewhere. Heck, I even bought the man's book for that
reason! What I would like to hear from a true field
linguist is how it all works: how do you get people to
talk to you, what are the first things you typically
find out, what takes the longest, how involved with
the native speakers do you get, how close are you
allowed to get, etc. From a conlanger's viewpoint,
this would be invaluable since one could take this
information and run with it. We have a tendency to be
very methodical from a construction standpoint (first,
phonemes; next, morphology, now I'll work on
verbs.....). If we started like we were "discovering"
a new language instead of "inventing" one, that might
go a long way to helping us be both exotic and
naturalistic.
This would be a true coup, Sai, if you could get him
for a future LCC. As it is, I am really looking
forward to meetind David Salo!



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