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vi Contents

10 Ethnography and recording interaction

Erez Levon 195

11 Using historical texts

Ans van Kemenade and Bettelou Los 216

PART I I D ATA P R O C E S S I N G A N D STAT I S T I C A L

AN ALYS IS 233
12 Transcription
Naomi Nagy and Devyani Sharma 235

13 Creating and using corpora

Stefan Th. Gries and John Newman 257

14 Descriptive statistics
Daniel Ezra Johnson 288

15 Basic significance testing

Stefan Th. Gries 316

16 Multivariate statistics
R. Harald Baayen 337

PART III FO UN DATIO NS FOR DATA AN ALYSIS 373

17 Acoustic analysis
Paul Boersma 375

18 Constructing and supporting a linguistic analysis

John Beavers and Peter Sells 397

19 Modeling in the language sciences

Willem Zuidema and Bart de Boer 422

20 Variation analysis
James A. Walker 440

21 Discourse analysis
Susan Ehrlich and Tanya Romaniuk 460

22 Studying language over time

Hélène Blondeau 494

Index 519
 Figures

3.1 An example of a two-alternative forced-choice task page 32

3.2 An example of the yes-no task 32
3.3 An example of a Likert scale task 33
3.4 An example of the magnitude estimation task 34
7.1 4
4 Latin squares design 121
8.1 Visual-world eye-tracking graph showing the probability of
fixating objects on the screen (0 ms = onset of the critical
word, e.g., beaker). Allopenna, Magnuson, and Tanenhaus
1998 (see Acknowledgments for full copyright information) 145
8.2 Examples of object-array displays. Allopenna, Magnuson,
and Tanenhaus 1998; Trueswell et al. 1999; Brown-Schmidt
and Konopka 2008; Sussman 2006 (see Acknowledgments
for full copyright information) 146
8.3 Examples of clip-art displays. Kamide, Altmann, and
Haywood 2003; Weber, Grice, and Crocker 2006; Kaiser
2011a; Arnold et al. 2000 (see Acknowledgments for full
copyright information) 150
8.4 Poor man’s eye-tracking, “Tickle the frog with the feather.”
Snedeker and Trueswell 2004 (see Acknowledgments for full
copyright information) 154
9.1 Common microphone mounts: stand-mounted (left),
head-mounted (middle), and lavalier (right) 174
9.2 Microphone jacks: XLR (left), mini-stereo (middle), and
USB (right) 174
9.3 Solid state recorders: Marantz PMD660 (left) and Zoom H2n
(right) 177
9.4 Range of data collection scenarios 180
9.5 Lip position for [ɸ] (left) and [sw] (right) in Sengwato 182
9.6 Palatogram (left) and linguogram (right) of American English /t/ 183
9.7 Artificial palate with embedded electrodes (left); sample
patterns for /s/ and /t/ (right). http://speech.umaryland.edu/
epg.html (left); www.rds-sw.nihr.ac.uk/succcess_stories_
lucy_ellis.htm (right) 184
9.8 Subject holding a sonograph transducer (top); sonograph
image for the vowel /i/ (bottom). Gick 2002 185

vii
viii List of figures

9.9 Example of an EGG waveform during modal voicing 187

9.10 Using a pressure/airflow mask (top); trace of pressure at the
lips during [aɸa] (bottom) 188
9.11 Pictures of abducted (left) and adducted (right) vocal folds,
taken via flexible endoscope. http://voicedoctor.net/media/
normal-vocal-cord 189
9.12 MRI image of Portuguese [ã]. Martins et al. 2008 190
9.13 EMMA apparatus (top); ample movement trace (bottom).
http://beckman.illinois.edu/news/2007/10/100307 (top);
Fagel and Clemens 2004 (bottom) 191
9.14 EMG trace (solid line) shows a burst of activity in the
cricothyroid muscle during pitch raising (dotted line) in Thai
falling and rising tone. Erickson 1976 192
11.1 Demonstrative elements in dislocates. Los and Komen 2012 219
13.1 Markup in the TEI Header of file A01 in the XML Brown
Corpus 265
13.2 The first sentence (and paragraph) in the text body of file A01
in the XML Brown Corpus (the tags beginning with p, s, and
w mark the paragraph, sentence, and each word respectively) 266
13.3 The annotation of in terms of as a multi-word unit in the BNC
XML 267
13.4 Two ways of representing the dispersion of a word (perl) in a
file 276
13.5 Python session illustrating some functions in NLTK 281
13.6 R session to create a frequency list of a file from the Brown
Corpus and the resulting plots 282
14.1 Stem-and-leaf plot of daily temperatures for Albuquerque in
2010 291
14.2 Histogram of Albuquerque temperatures in 2010 293
14.3 Histogram of men’s and women’s mean F0. Johnson, based
on Peterson and Barney 1952 293
14.4 Histogram of men’s and women’s natural-log-transformed
F0. Johnson, based on Peterson and Barney 1952 294
14.5 Three normal distributions: mean = 0, standard deviations =
{0.5, 1, 2} 294
14.6 Histogram of 2009 household income, with central
tendencies labeled 296
14.7 Dispersion of Peterson and Barney F0 for men and women 300
14.8 Plot of 2010 Albuquerque temperatures, by date 303
14.9 Plot of 2006–2010 Albuquerque temperatures, by date 304
14.10 F2 vs F0 for heed in Peterson and Barney data 304
14.11 The relationship between Pearson’s r and Spearman’s rho 306
14.12 Counts and proportions of quotative variants in 2006 York
corpus 308
 List of figures ix

14.13 Distribution of 335 ratings for “Mary has had more drinks
than she should have done so” (0 = completely impossible, 10
= perfectly natural) 309
14.14 Distribution of 335 ratings for “Who did John see George
and?” (0 = completely impossible, 10 = perfectly natural) 309
14.15 Mosaic plot of York quotative variants by grammatical
person 312
15.1 Probability distributions for outcomes of equally likely
binary trials. Three, six, and twelve trials (top row);
twenty-five, fifty, and one hundred trials (bottom row) 319
15.2 A normal distribution (left panel); an exponential distribution
(right panel) 323
15.3 Mosaic plot for the data in walk 326
15.4 Box plot of the Dice coefficients for the two subtractive
word-formation processes 331
15.5 Graphical representation of the differences between before
and after 334
16.1 A regression line (left) and a factorial contrast between a
reference group mean a on the intercept and a group mean b.
The difference between the two group means, the contrast, is
equal to the slope of the line connecting a and b: 2. Both the
regression line and the line connecting the two group means
are described by the line y = 1 + 2x 340
16.2 Multiplicative interactions in the linear model 342
16.3 Example of an interaction of a factor and a covariate in an
analysis of covariance 343
16.4 Tukey all-pairs confidence intervals for contrasts between
mean pitch for different branching conditions across English
tri-constituent compounds 346
16.5 Correlation of the by-word random intercepts and the by-word
random slopes for Sex=male in the linear mixed-effects
model fitted to the pitch of English tri-constituent compounds 353
16.6 Random effects structure for subject. Correlations of the
BLUPs (upper panels); correlations of the by-subject
coefficients (lower panels) 354
16.7 Fitted smooths (with 95 percent confidence intervals) for
Pitch as a function of Time for the four branching conditions
of the pitch dataset of English tri-constituent compounds 358
16.8 Tensor product for the interaction of Time by Danger Rating
Score at channel FC2 359
16.9 The pronunciation distance from standard Dutch for different
quantiles of word frequency 360
16.10 The probability of using was as a function of Age, Adjacency
and Polarity 363
x List of figures

16.11 Recursive partitioning tree for the Russian goal/theme data 365
16.12 The ndl network for the Finnish think verbs. Darker shades of
grey indicate stronger positive connections, lighter shades of
grey larger negative connections. For the abbreviations in the
nodes, see Table 16.14 368
17.1 Waveform of several periods of the Dutch vowel /i/,
illustrating glottal fold vibration 376
17.2 Waveform of several periods of the Dutch vowel /i/,
illustrating the first formant 377
17.3 Waveform of several periods of the Dutch vowel /i/,
illustrating the second formant 378
17.4 Waveform of several periods of the Dutch vowel /a/,
illustrating mangled formants 378
17.5 Waveform of a whole Dutch /i/, illustrating duration and
intensity 379
17.6 Waveform of the voiceless palatal plosive in [aca], illustrating
silence and release burst 380
17.7 Waveform of the voiceless palatal fricative in [aça],
illustrating the many zero crossings 380
17.8 Waveform of the alveolar trill in [ara], illustrating four
passive tongue-tip closures 381
17.9 Determining the pitch of the sound in Figure 17.1 at a time of
0.3002 seconds (cross-correlation method). The top row
shows parts of the sound just before that time, and the bottom
row shows equally long parts just after. The two parts look
most similar if they are 7.1 ms long 382
17.10 Pitch curve for the [i] vowel of Figure 17.5 383
17.11 Determining the intensity curve for the [i] vowel of Figure
17.5: (a) the original sound, as measured relative to the
auditory threshold; (b) the square of this; (c) the Gaussian
smoothing kernel, on the same time scale as the sound; (d) the
intensity curve, computed as the convolution of the squared
amplitude and the Gaussian; (e) the intensity curve along a
logarithmic scale 385
17.12 Splitting up two periods of the [i] vowel of Figure 17.5 into
six harmonics. At the top is the original sound. The rough
features of the original sound are reconstructed by adding the
first harmonic (1) and the second harmonic (2) to each other
(1+2). When we add the 15th, 22nd, 23rd, and 24th
harmonics to this, the original waveshape is approximated
even more closely (bottom) 387
17.13 The Fourier spectrum of the two-period [i]-like sound of
Figure 17.12 388
17.14 Spectrum of the vowel [i] 389
 List of figures xi

17.15 Spectrogram of the vowels [a], [i], and [u] 390

17.16 Spectrogram of sibilants 392
17.17 Spectrogram of [aca], showing the four acoustic correlates of
the plosive 392
17.18 Spectrogram of [ara] 393
17.19 Automated formant measurement in the vowels [a], [i], and
[u], superimposed on the spectrogram of Figure 17.15 394
19.1 Classes of representation of language 432
20.1 Excerpt from coding instructions for the English future 448
20.2 Fragment of an Excel coding sheet and GoldVarb token file
for the coding of the English future 450
22.1 Apparent-time distribution at Time 1 507
22.2 Real-time distribution at Time 1 and Time 2: age-grading
interpretation 507
22.3 Real-time distribution at Time 1 and Time 2: community
change interpretation 508
22.4 Stability over time for two speakers 510
22.5 Change over time for two speakers 510
 Tables

5.1 Relationship between sample size and sampling error. De

Vaus 2001 page 82
5.2 The database for Spanish second language acquisition.
Mitchell et al. 2008 84
13.1 A subset of the Uppsala Learner English Corpus. Adapted
from Table 1 in Johansson and Geisler 2011 260
13.2 Four tagging solutions for English rid 267
13.3 Sub-corpora of the Brown written corpus 270
13.4 Sub-corpora of the ICE corpora 271
13.5 Sub-corpora of the MICASE spoken corpus 272
13.6 Sub-corpora of the BNC 272
13.7 Sub-corpora of the written component of COCA, as of April
2011 273
13.8 Frequency lists: words sorted according to frequency (left
panel); reversed words sorted alphabetically (center panel);
2-grams sorted according to frequency (right panel) 275
13.9 Excerpt of a collocate display of general/generally 277
13.10 Excerpt of a concordance display of alphabetic and
alphabetical 278
13.11 Examples of regular expressions 278
14.1 Frequency table of daily temperatures for Albuquerque in 2010 292
14.2 Cross-tabulations for survival vs sex and survival vs age on
the Titanic 311
14.3 Cross-tabulation of York quotative variants by grammatical
person, observed 311
14.4 Cross-tabulation of York quotative variants by grammatical
person, expected (if no association) 312
15.1 All possible results from asking three subjects to classify
walk as a noun or a verb 318
15.2 Fictitious data from a forced-choice part-of-speech selection
task 325
15.3 Dice coefficients of source words for complex clippings and
blends 328
16.1 A multivariate dataset with n cases (rows) and k variables
(columns) 338

xii
 List of tables xiii

16.2 An example of treatment dummy coding for two-way

analysis of variance 341
16.3 Predicted group means given the dummy coding in Table
16.2 and regression equation (2) 341
16.4 Predicted group means for the data in Table 16.2 given
regression equation (4) 342
16.5 An example of treatment dummy coding for an analysis of
covariance with an interaction 343
16.6 Four kinds of compound stress patterns in English tri-
constituent compounds 344
16.7 Coefficients of an analysis of covariance model fitted to the
pitch of English tri-constituent compounds 345
16.8 Sequential model comparison for Pitch in English
tri-constituent compounds 347
16.9 A repeated measures dataset with gn cases with observations
on k variables collected for n items and g subjects 350
16.10 Notation for adjustments to intercept and predictors 351
16.11 Standard deviations and correlation parameter for the
random-effects structure of the mixed-effects model fitted to
the pitch of English tri-constituent compounds 352
16.12 Model comparison for a series of models with increasing
nonlinear structure fitted to the pitch dataset 356
16.13 Log odds for four Finnish near-synonyms meaning think 364
16.14 Naive discrimination learning weights for four Finnish
near-synonyms for think 368
20.1 Factors contributing to the occurrence of the alveolar
variant -in’ in Toronto English 452
22.1 Indirect and direct approaches to time 496
22.2 The pseudo-longitudinal effect in SLA 498
 Contributors

r eb ek ha ab bu h l
California State University, Long Beach, US
r. harald baayen
Eberhard Karls University, Tübingen, Germany, and University
of Alberta, Canada
j o h n be a v e r s
The University of Texas at Austin, US
h él è ne blondeau
University of Florida, US
pau l bo er sm a
University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
is ab el le b u ch st al le r
Leipzig University, Germany
s ho b h a n a c he l li a h
University of North Texas, US
b a rt de b oe r
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
penelope eckert
Stanford University, US
s us a n eh r li ch
York University, Canada
s us a n g a s s
Michigan State University, US
s te f a n th . gr i e s
University of California, Santa Barbara, US
daniel ez ra j ohnson
Lancaster University, UK
elsi ka iser
University of Southern California, US

xiv
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 List of contributors xv

ghada khattab
Newcastle University, UK
e re z l ev o n
Queen Mary University of London, UK
b et te l o u lo s
Radboud University, Netherlands
alison mackey
Georgetown University, US
naomi n agy
University of Toronto, Canada
john newman
University of Alberta, Canada
r o be r t j . p o d e s v a
Stanford University, US
tanya r omani uk
Portland State University, US
n a t a li e s c hi ll i n g
Georgetown University, US
c a rs o n t . s ch ü tz e
University of California, Los Angeles, US
p e te r se ll s
University of York, UK
devyani sharma
Queen Mary University of London, UK
j o n sp r o u s e
University of Connecticut, US
ans van kemena de
Radboud University, Netherlands
james a. walker
York University, Canada
wi llem zuid ema
University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
eli zabeth zsi ga
Georgetown University, US
 Acknowledgments

This book has been a truly collaborative enterprise. It could never have been
produced without the expertise and dedication of our contributing authors, to
whom we owe our greatest debt. In our effort to foster dialogue across the
subdisciplines of our field, we have asked contributors to take a broad perspective,
to reflect on issues beyond their areas of particular specialization, and to neatly
package their ideas for a diverse readership. In rising to meet this challenge,
authors have consulted scholars and readings that interface with their own areas of
expertise, endured a lengthy external review and extensive revision process, and
in all cases produced chapters that we think will be useful to wide swaths of
researchers. We thank the authors for their significant contributions.
The initial impetus for this book came from our students, who ask all the right
questions about data (who? when? how much?) and analysis (why? how?). We
hope they find answers and new questions in these pages. We are also indebted to
five anonymous reviewers who, at an early stage of this project, affirmed the
usefulness of the proposed collection and made crucial recommendations regard-
ing its scope, structure, and balance of coverage.
For their expert advice and truly generous contributions, we thank an army of
reviewers and advisors, none of whom of course bears any responsibility for the
choices ultimately made: David Adger, Paul Baker, Joan Beal, Claire Bowern,
Kathryn Campbell-Kibler, Charles Clifton, Paul De Decker, Judith Degen,
Susanne Gahl, Cynthia Gordon, Matthew Gordon, Tyler Kendall, Roger Levy,
John Moore, Naomi Nagy, Jeanette Sakel, Rebecca Scarborough, Morgan
Sonderegger, Naoko Taguchi, Marisa Tice, Anna Marie Trester, and Alan Yu.
We would also like to acknowledge our departments: the Department of
Linguistics at Stanford University and the Department of Linguistics at Queen
Mary University of London. The range of methods represented in the work of our
closest colleagues continues to inspire us and push our field forward. Thanks also
to the Department of Linguistics at Georgetown University and the Department of
English at the National University of Singapore, where we spent significant time
during the production of this volume.
Helena Dowson, Fleur Jones, Gnanadevi Rajasundaram, Christina
Sarigiannidou, Alison Tickner and the team at Cambridge University Press
provided efficient and very patient support throughout the production schedule.
Finally, special thanks to Andrew Winnard at Cambridge University Press for his
encouragement and support. Like us, he recognized the many challenges of

xvi
 Acknowledgments xvii

developing such a project, but also shared our enthusiasm for its potential uses in a
fast-developing field. We hope this book represents a proof of concept.

The editors and publisher acknowledge the following sources of copyright

material reproduced in Chapter 8 and are grateful for the permissions granted:
Figure 8.1 Reprinted from Journal of Memory and Language 38, Allopenna,
Magnuson, and Tanenhaus, Tracking the time course of spoken word recognition:
evidence for continuous mapping models. Copyright 1998, with permission from
Elsevier.
Figure 8.2 reprinted from:
(a) Journal of Memory and Language 38, Allopenna, Magnuson, and
Tanenhaus, Tracking the time course of spoken word recognition: evidence for
continuous mapping models. Copyright 1998, with permission from Elsevier.
(b) Cognition 73, Trueswell, Sekerina, Hill, and Logrip, The kindergarten-path
effect: studying on-line sentence processing in young children, 89–134. Copyright
1999, with permission from Elsevier.
(c) Cognition 109, Brown-Schmidt and Konopka, Little houses and casas
pequeñas: message formulation and syntactic form in unscripted speech with
speakers of English and Spanish, 274–80. Copyright 2008, with permission
from Elsevier.
(d) Verb-Instrument Information During On-line Processing, Rachel Sussmann,
Copyright 2006, with permission from the author.
Figure 8.3 reprinted from:
(a) Journal of Memory and Language 49, Kamide, Altmann, and Haywood,
Prediction and thematic information in incremental sentence processing: evidence
from anticipatory eye movements, 133–56. Copyright 2003, with permission from
Elsevier.
(b) Cognition 88, Weber, Grice, and Crocker, The role of prosody in the
interpretation of structural ambiguities: a study of anticipatory eye movements,
B63–B72. Copyright 2006, with permission from Elsevier.
(c) Language and Cognitive Processes 26, Kaiser, Consequences of subject-
hood, pronominalisation, and contrastive focus, 1625–66. Copyright 2011, reprin-
ted by permission of Taylor & Francis Ltd, www.tandf.co.uk/journals.
(d) Cognition 76, Arnold, Eisenband, Brown-Schmidt, and Trueswell, The
rapid use of gender information: eyetracking evidence of the time-course of
pronoun resolution, B13–B26. Copyright 2000, with permission from Elsevier.
Figure 8.4 Reprinted from Cognitive Psychology 49, Snedeker and Trueswell,
The developing constraints on parsing decisions: the role of lexical-biases and
referential scenes in child and adult sentence processing, 238–99. Copyright 2004,
with permission from Elsevier.
1 Introduction

Devyani Sharma and Robert J. Podesva

I would like to discuss an approach to the mind that considers language and
similar phenomena to be elements of the natural world, to be studied by
ordinary methods of empirical inquiry.
Noam Chomsky 1995

Linguists have forgotten, Mathesius argued, that the homogeneity of lan-

guage is not an ‘actual quality of the examined phenomena,’ but ‘a conse-
quence of the employed method’.
Uriel Weinreich, William Labov, and Marvin I. Herzog 1968

Some have seen in modern linguistic methodology a model or harbinger of a

general methodology for studying the structure of human behavior.
Dell Hymes 1962

1 Overview

The three views expressed above remind us of the peculiar status of

linguistics as a field. It represents a single discipline to the extent that it broadly
shares a single object of analysis, but little else can be said to be uniform in terms
of epistemology and method. Some linguists affiliate most closely with the social
sciences, others with the natural sciences, and others with the humanities. Perhaps
surprisingly, this diverse group has not (yet) splintered off into separate fields.
Rather, the deep heterogeneity of the field has come to be seen by many as a
strength, not a weakness. Recent years have witnessed a rise in creative synergies,
with scholars drawing inspiration from the methods and data used by “neighbor-
ing” linguists in order to enrich and expand the scope of their own investigations.
This has occurred in part due to constant refinement of methodologies over
time, leading to more clearly specified methodological norms within all sub-
fields of linguistics, which in turn facilitate more targeted cross-fertilization and
exchange. Sharing of methodological practices may take the form of bridge-
building across subfields of linguistics, or exchanges of methods between
linguistics and related fields. Bridge-building has taken many forms in recent
work; a few examples include the adoption of corpora, experiments, and stat-
istical measures in formal analysis (e.g., Bresnan and Ford 2010), the adoption
of experimental methods in sociolinguistics (e.g., Campbell-Kibler 2009) and

1
2 devyani sharma and robert j. podesva

pragmatics (e.g., Breheny 2011), and the use of sociolinguistic sampling in

laboratory phonology (Scobbie and Stuart-Smith 2012). Similarly, though less
central to the present collection, methods have been exchanged profitably with
neighboring fields as well, such as the borrowing into linguistics of genetic
modeling (McMahon and McMahon 2005), clinical imaging (e.g., Gick 2002;
Skipper and Small 2005; Martins et al. 2008), and sociological sampling princi-
ples (e.g., Milroy 1980; Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1992).
In this climate of creative collaboration and innovation, particularly in method-
ology, the dearth of general reference texts on methods used in linguistics is
striking. Almost all current overviews of methodology are specific to particular
subdisciplines (one exception is Litosseliti 2010, a shorter volume than the present
one). Specialization naturally permits greater depth and detail, and these texts are
indispensable for research in specific fields. But at present, few of these texts are
able to foreground insights and principles that should ideally be adopted across the
field, nor foster interdisciplinary methods. It is still common in core areas of
theoretical linguistics for courses to omit training in research methods at all, and
for courses in other areas to only review methods in that field. New researchers in
linguistics often complete their training without any exposure to entire methodo-
logical paradigms – for example, experimental methods, methods for elicitation,
statistics, or ethnography – many of which could strengthen their research con-
tributions. If students do expand their training, this often occurs much later and
haphazardly. This collection aims to offer a wider overview and a more diverse
toolbox at the outset of methods training.
Given the reality of greater cross-fertilization in linguistics today, a general
reference text can also better reflect the exciting state of the field today, and
can help promote recent trends and best practices in contemporary methods.
The present collection has been developed with this goal in mind. It is intended
for use in the training of advanced undergraduate and graduate students,
while also serving as a reference text for experienced linguists embarking on
research involving new domains, or researchers who simply wish to expand their
repertoire or familiarity with methods used to solve general problems in
research, such as eliciting language forms, sampling subjects, designing
experimental tasks, or processing raw data.

2 Structure of the book

Given the extraordinary complexity of the field of linguistics, it is

naturally impossible to provide a comprehensive introduction to all methodolo-
gies in a single volume. This collection is designed to be comprehensive in
breadth, but not necessarily in depth. Each chapter incorporates suggestions for
further reading, to enable readers with specific interests or questions to selectively
extend their knowledge.
 Introduction 3

The volume follows a structure designed to encourage users – teachers, stu-

dents, researchers – to take a wider view of questions of methodology and to aim
for a more comprehensive set of methodological skills than simply those typically
adopted for a particular subfield or question. While best practices tend to arise
independently within each of the subfields of linguistics, many of the same issues
surface from one subdiscipline to the next, and projects on seemingly unrelated
topics often require attention to the same methodological concerns. For example,
transcription is a concern for nearly all linguists, from those who focus on the
details of speech articulation to those who analyze turn-taking in conversation.
Similarly, any researcher who collects data from human subjects needs to devote
attention to the composition of their sample. And all linguists who record speech,
whether the recordings are intended for acoustic analysis, for survey materials, or
simply as records of data elicitation sessions, need to grapple with many of the
same issues. Finally, regardless of which statistical approaches dominate any
given subdiscipline, the underlying theoretical assumptions are the same. For
this reason, the volume is not strictly organized by subdiscipline, but rather
follows the trajectory of any research project, highlighting general issues that
arise in three core areas: data collection, data processing, and data analysis.
Part I (Data collection) focuses on types of data used in linguistics and best
practices in the collection of each data type. The section starts, in Chapter 2, with
Eckert’s discussion of ethical issues that must be considered at the start (and for
the duration) of any research project. The next two chapters cover methods of data
collection that require working with relatively small numbers of informants. In
Chapter 3, Schütze and Sprouse review recent methods used in the collection of
grammaticality judgment data, and Chelliah guides the reader through the process
of eliciting data for language description and documentation in Chapter 4.
Researchers who work with larger numbers of participants must devote special
consideration to sampling, discussed by Buchstaller and Khattab in Chapter 5.
One special population that linguists frequently work with is children; we do not
devote a specific chapter to children, but rather discuss issues pertaining to
children as subjects where relevant (in Chapter 2, Chapter 5, and in the discussion
of longitudinal data in Chapter 22, discussed below). Researchers might collect
data from selected population samples using a wide array of instruments. While
Chapters 3 and 4, described above, deal with close elicitation from fewer numbers
of participants, other methods often use larger groups. These include surveys
and interviews, discussed by Schilling in Chapter 6, experiments, as reviewed
by Abbuhl, Gass, and Mackey in Chapter 7 and by Kaiser in Chapter 8, and
ethnography, as discussed by Levon in Chapter 10. Levon’s discussion of how to
work with community members is an important concern not only for ethnogra-
phers, but for anyone who might need to make ties with community members
for research purposes. The final three chapters of the section turn their attention
to how to collect some of the most common media that linguists work with.
Podesva and Zsiga cover methods for making sound and articulatory recordings in
Chapter 9; Levon discusses concerns with working with video data in Chapter 10,
4 devyani sharma and robert j. podesva

and van Kemenade and Los discuss many of the challenges of working with
textual data in Chapter 11.
Data often need considerable preliminary processing before analysis and inter-
pretation. Part II (Data processing and statistical analysis) deals with some of the
common challenges of processing data once they have been collected. Since
transcription is involved in many subfields of linguistics, Nagy and Sharma
provide common practices and recommendations in Chapter 12. Corpora are
also increasingly used for a range of formal and variationist analyses, and Gries
and Newman review how to construct and extract data from corpora in Chapter 13.
The final three chapters of Part II focus on statistics, as linguists are now more than
ever adopting a quantitative approach to linguistic analysis. Johnson describes the
fundamentals of characterizing the basic distributional properties in a set of data in
Chapter 14. Gries moves from descriptive statistics to the selection of appropriate
statistical tests and how to execute them in Chapter 15. And Part II concludes with
Chapter 16, in which Baayen covers the most widely used multivariate statistics,
including multiple regression. Chapters 14–16 are cumulative; each is written
under the assumption that readers will be familiar with concepts discussed in
earlier statistics chapters.
Finally, Part III (Foundations for data analysis) is included because we believe
that in many subfields of linguistics, such as theoretical argumentation or dis-
course analysis, the analytic process is itself a method that should be taught
systematically. Furthermore, the intended analytic method directly informs data
collection and processing stages, so these should be planned together. This third
part is not intended as a comprehensive overview of theoretical approaches in
linguistics, but rather a practical guide to analytic methods in major areas. In
Chapter 17, Boersma reviews the fundamentals of speech acoustics and its most
useful forms of representation for linguists. In Chapter 18, Beavers and Sells
outline the incremental process of building a reasoned argument in theoretical
linguistics. Computational models have increasingly become a key method for
testing linguistic theories, and desiderata for a robust and reliable approach to
developing such models are set out by de Boer and Zuidema in Chapter 19. The
next two chapters cover analytical approaches in sociolinguistics, from the mostly
quantitative approaches that dominate variation, reviewed by Walker in
Chapter 20, to the mostly qualitative approaches that are prevalent in the study
of discourse, discussed by Ehrlich and Romaniuk in Chapter 21. Part III concludes
in Chapter 22 with Blondeau’s comparison of synchronic and diachronic methods
for analyzing language over time in different subfields of linguistics.
The volume will be supplemented with a companion website, so that links to
more time-sensitive online resources can be made available to users of the book,
and information on technological advances in software and equipment can be
updated regularly.
As noted, the present collection is designed to enhance research in all subdisci-
plines of linguistics by sharing best practices relevant to shared challenges. We
have aimed to facilitate this style of use with highlighted keywords within
 Introduction 5

chapters, detailed cross-referencing across chapters, as well as a detailed index,

and a few illustrations, described next, of how researchers might use the book.

3 Sample projects

In order to exemplify a few of the many ways this volume might be

utilized, we briefly describe a few sample projects here, involving typical research
questions in various subfields of linguistics. These examples highlight a few
reasons why thinking about methodology strictly in terms of subdisciplines can
be limiting, and demonstrate that a research project from any subdiscipline might
make use of several different chapters spanning the three sections of the book.

3.1 Phonological analysis of an understudied language

----------
Research on an understudied language requires finding language con-
sultants (Chapter 5), attending to the ethical issues associated with working with
human subjects (Chapter 2) and observing the community (Chapter 10). Upon
entering the community, the student will focus primarily on language documen-
tation (Chapter 4), which will likely draw on various forms of speaker introspec-
tion (Chapter 3). To facilitate note-taking, students may elect to record elicitation
sessions (Chapters 9, 10), and resultant recordings can subsequently be used in
acoustic analysis (Chapter 17). Depending on the phonological and phonetic
phenomena under investigation, students may find it useful to collect articulatory
data, such as static palatography, in order to ascertain the place of articulation of a
sound (Chapter 9). Upon returning from the field, students could transcribe and
construct a searchable corpus (Chapters 12, 13). Finally, students can refer to best
practices in constructing a phonological analysis (Chapter 18), and phonological
claims could be supported by identifying statistical trends in acoustic data or
distributional facts gleaned from the corpus (Chapters 14–16).

3.2 Social analysis of variation or code-switching

----------------
An investigation of the social meaning of a linguistic feature or
practice may take a qualitative and/or quantitative approach, any of which requires
attention to ethical considerations (Chapter 2). Students focusing on patterns of
production would likely need to establish contacts in a community (Chapter 10),
decide which speakers to interview (Chapter 5), and audio-record interviews
(Chapters 6, 9). In the context of ethnographic fieldwork (Chapter 10), students
might find it helpful to ask speakers to introspect about their own and others’
language use (Chapter 3) or to video-record naturally occurring interactions
(Chapter 10). Students embarking on more quantitative investigations will
likely need to sample a population appropriately (Chapter 5), transcribe data
(Chapter 12), use basic scripting to extract and properly format data
Other documents randomly have
different content
moisture (the water of life) to the mummy. 8 A Biblical reference to
the ceremony is found in 2 Kings, iii, 11, in which it is said of Elisha
that he “poured water on the hands of Elijah”. No doubt the
Egyptian soul received water as nourishment, as well as to ensure its
immortality, from the tree-goddess.

In the Book of the Dead (Chapter LIX), the Tree of Life is referred to
as “the sycamore of Nut” (the sky-goddess). Other texts call the tree
“the Western Tree” of Nut or Hathor. It may be that the solar cult of
the East took over the tree from the Osirian cult of the West.

This mythical tree figures in many ancient mythologies. The goddess

Europa was worshipped at Gortyna, in Crete, during the Hellenic
period, as a sacred tree. 9 The tree may be traced from the British
Isles to India, and there are numerous legends of spirits entering or
leaving [135]it. The Polynesians have stories of this kind. Their Tree
of Life was the local bread-fruit tree which “became a god”, or, as
some had it, a goddess. “Out of this magic bread-fruit tree,” a
legend says, “a great goddess was made.” 10

It may be that the island Paradise with its Tree of Life was specially
favoured after maritime enterprise made strong appeal to the
imagination of the Egyptians. No doubt the old sailors who searched
for “soul-substance” in the shape of pearls, precious stones, and
metals had much to do with disseminating the idea of the Isles of
the Blest. At any rate, it became, as we have seen, a tradition
among seafarers to search for the distant land in which was situated
the “water of life”. The home-dwelling Osirians clung to their idea of
an Underworld Paradise, and belief in it became fused with that of
the floating island, or Islands of the Blest. Those who dwelt in inland
plains and valleys, and those accustomed to cross the great
mysterious deserts on which the oasis-mirage frequently appeared
and vanished like the mythical floating island, conceived of a
Paradise on earth. There are references in more than one land to a
Paradise among the mountains. It figures in the fairy stories of
Central Europe, for instance, as “the wonderful Rose Garden” with
its linden Tree of Immortality, the hiding-place of a fairy lady, its
dancing nymphs and its dwarfs; the king of dwarfs has a cloak of
invisibility which he wraps round those mortals he carries away. 11

At first only the souls of kings entered Paradise. But, in time, the
belief became firmly established that the souls of others could reach
it too, and be fed there. The quest of the “food of life” then became
a popular [136]theme of the story-tellers, and so familiar grew the
idea of the existence of this fruit that people believed it could be
obtained during life, and that those who partook of it might have
their days prolonged indefinitely. For, as W. Schooling has written, “a
few simple thoughts on a few simple subjects produce a few simple
opinions common to a whole tribe” (and even a great part of
mankind), “and are taught with but little modification to successive
generations; hence arises a rigidity that imposes ready-made
opinions, which are seldom questioned, while such questioning as
does occur is usually met with excessive severity, as Galileo and
others have found out”. 12
 THE CHINESE SI WANG MU (JAPANESE SEIOBO)
AND MAO NU

From a Japanese painting (by Hidenobu) in the

British Museum

The apple, as we have seen, was to the Celts the fruit of

immortality: the Chinese favoured the peach—that is, it was
favoured by the Chinese cult of the West. As all animals were
supposed to be represented in the Otherworld by gigantic prototypes
—the fathers or mothers of their kind—so were trees represented by
a gigantic tree. 13 This tree was the World Tree that supported the
Universe. In Egypt the World Tree was the sycamore of the sky-
goddess, who was the Great Mother of deities and mankind. The sun
dropped into the sycamore at eventide; when darkness fell the
swallows (star-gods) perched in its branches. In Norse mythology
the tree is the ash, called Ygdrasil, and from the well at its roots
souls receive the Hades-drink of immortality, drinking from a horn
embellished with serpent symbols. The Tree figures prominently in
Iranian mythology: the Aryo-Indian Indra constructs the World-
house round [137]it. This Tree is, no doubt, identical with the sacred
tree in Assyrian art, which is sometimes the date, the vine, the
pomegranate, the fir, the cedar, and perhaps the oak. It may be that
the Biblical parable about the talking trees is a memory of the
rivalries of the various Assyrian tree cults:

The trees went forth on a time to anoint a king over them; and they said
unto the olive tree, Reign thou over us. But the olive tree said unto them,
Should I leave my fatness, wherewith by me they honour god and man,
and go to be promoted over the trees? And the trees said to the fig tree,
Come thou, and reign over us. But the fig tree said unto them, Should I
forsake my sweetness, and my good fruit, and go to be promoted over the
trees? Then said the trees unto the vine, Come thou, and reign over us.
And the vine said unto them, Should I leave my vine, which cheereth God
and man, and go to be promoted over the trees? Then said all the trees
 unto the bramble, Come thou, and reign over us. And the bramble said
unto the trees, If in truth ye anoint me King over you, then come and put
your trust in my shadow: and if not, let fire come out of the bramble, and
devour the cedars of Lebanon.

As in Assyria, there was in China quite a selection of life-giving trees.

The Chinese gigantic Peach Tree, whose fruit was partaken of by

gods and men, grew in the Paradise among the Kwun-lun mountains
in Tibet, and, like the Indian Mount Meru (“world spine”), supported
the Universe. Its fruit took three thousand years to ripen. The tree
was surrounded by a beautiful garden, and was under the care of
the fairy-like lady Si Wang Mu, the queen of immortals, the “Mother
of the Western King”, and the “Royal Mother of the West”. She
appears to have originally been the mother-goddess—the Far-
Eastern form of Hathor. In Japan she is called Seiobo. Her Paradise,
which is called “the palace of exalted purity”, and “the metropolis of
the pearl mountain”, or of “the jade mountain”, and is entered
through “the golden [138]door”, 14 was originally that of the cult of the
West. Sometimes Si Wang Mu is depicted as quite as weird a deity
as the Phigalian Demeter, with disordered hair, tiger’s teeth, and a
panther’s tail. Her voice is harsh, and she sends and cures diseases.
Three blue birds bring food to her.

Chinese emperors and magicians were as anxious to obtain a peach

from the Royal Mother’s tree in the Western Paradise, as they were
to import the “fungus of immortality” from the Islands of the Blest in
the Eastern Sea.

There once lived in China a magician named Tung Fang So, who
figures in Japanese legend as Tobosaku, and is represented in
Japanese art as a jolly old man, clasping a peach to his breast and
performing a dance, or as a dreamy sage, carrying two or three
peaches, and accompanied by a deer—an animal which symbolized
longevity. Various legends have gathered round his name. One is
that he had several successive rebirths in various reigns, and that
originally he was an avatar of the planet Venus. He may therefore
represent the Far-Eastern Tammuz, the son of the mother-goddess.
Another legend tells that he filched three peaches from the Tree of
Life, which had been plucked by the “Royal Mother of the West”.

Tung Fang So was a councillor in the court of Wu Ti, the fourth

emperor of the Han Dynasty, who reigned for over half a century,
and died after fasting for seven days in 87 b.c. In Japanese stories
Wu Ti is called Kan no Buti. He was greatly concerned about finding
the “water of life” or the “fruit of life”, so that his days might be
prolonged. In his palace garden he caused to be erected a tower
over 100 feet high, which appears to [139]have been an imitation of a
Babylonian temple. On its summit was the bronze image of a god,
holding a golden vase in its hands. In this vase was collected the
pure dew that was supposed to drip from the stars. The emperor
drank the dew, believing that it would renew his youth.

One day there appeared before Wu Ti in the palace garden a

beautiful green sparrow. In China and Japan the sparrow is a symbol
of gentleness, and a sparrow of uncommon colour is supposed to
indicate that something unusual is to happen. The emperor was
puzzled regarding the bird-omen, and consulted Tung Fang So, who
informed him that the Queen of Immortals was about to visit the
royal palace.

Before long Si Wang Mu made her appearance. She had come all the
way from her garden among the Kwun-lun mountains, riding on the
back of a white dragon, with seven of the peaches of immortality,
which were carried on a tray by a dwarf servant. Her fairy majesty
was gorgeously attired in white and gold, and spoke with a voice of
bird-like sweetness.
When she reached Wu Ti there were only four peaches on the tray,
and she lifted one up and began to eat it. The peach was her
symbol, as the apple was that of Aphrodite. Tung Fang So peered at
her through a window, and when she caught sight of his smiling
face, she informed the emperor that he had stolen three of her
peaches. Wu Ti received a peach from her, and, having eaten it,
became an immortal. A similar story is told regarding the Chinese
Emperor, Muh Wang.

In her “Jade Mountain” Paradise of the West (the highest peak of the
Kwun-lun mountains) this goddess is accompanied by her sister, as
the Egyptian Isis is by Nephthys, and the pair are supposed to flit
about in [140]Cloud-land, followed by the white souls of good women
of the Taoist cult. Her attendants include the Blue Stork, the White
Tiger, the Stag, and the gigantic Tortoise, which are all gods and
symbols of longevity in China.

Among the many stories told about Tung Fang So is one regarding a
visit he once paid to the mythical Purple Sea. He returned after the
absence of a year, and on being remonstrated with by his brother for
deserting his home for so long a period, he contended that he had
been away for only a single day. His garments had been discoloured
by the waters of the Purple Sea, and he had gone to another sea to
cleanse them. In like manner heroes who visit Fairyland find that
time slips past very quickly.

The Purple Sea idea may have been derived from the ancient Well of
Life story about El Khidr, 15 whose body and clothing turned green
after he had bathed in it. Purple supplanted green and blue as the
colour of immortality and royalty after murex dye became the great
commercial asset of sea-traders. Tung Fang So may have had
attached to his memory a late and imported version of the El Khidr
story.
 MOUNTAIN VIEW WITH SCHOLAR’S RETREAT

From a Chinese painting in the British Museum

The reference to Wu Ti’s dew-drinking habit recalls the story of the

youthful Keu Tze Tung, a court favourite, who unwittingly offended
the emperor, Muh Wang, and was banished. As the Egyptian Bata,
who similarly fell into disgrace in consequence of a false charge
being made against him, fled to the “Valley of the Acacia”, Keu Tze
Tung fled to the “Valley of the Chrysanthemum”. There he drank the
dew that dropped from the petals of chrysanthemums, and became
an immortal. The Buddhists took over this story, and [141]told that
the youth had been given a sacred text, which he painted on the
petals. This text imparted to the dew its special qualities. In the Far
East the chrysanthemum is a symbol of purity. The chrysanthemum
with sixteen petals is the emblem of the Mikado of Japan.

A Chinese sage, who, like the Indian Rishis, practised yoga until he
became immortal, engaged his spare moments in painting fish. He
lived on the bank of a stream for over two hundred years. In the end
he was carried away to the Underworld Paradise of the Lord of Fish,
who was, of course, the dragon-god. He paid one return visit to his
disciples, riding like the Chinese “Boy Blue” in the dragon story, on
the back of a red carp.

Another Chinese “tree-cult” favoured, instead of the peach tree, a

cassia tree. This cassia-cult must have been late. The peach tree is
indigenous. “Of fruits,” says Laufer, “the West is chiefly indebted to
China for the peach (Amygdalus persica) and the apricot (Prunus
armeniaca). It is not impossible that these two gifts were
transmitted by the silk-dealers, first to Iran (in the second or first
century b.c.) and thence to Armenia, Greece, and Rome (in the first
century a.d.).” In India the peach is called cinani (“Chinese fruit”).
“There is no Sanskrit name for the tree (peach); nor does it play any
rôle in the folk-lore of India, as it does in China.” … Persia “has only
descriptive names for these fruits, the peach being termed saft alu
(‘large plum’), the apricot, zard alu (‘yellow plum’).” 16

It is difficult to identify the cassia tree of Chinese religious literature.

“The Chinese word Kwei occurs at an early date, but it is a generic
term for Lauraceæ; and there are about thirteen species of Cassia,
and about sixteen species of Cinnamomum in China. The essential
[142]point is that the ancient texts maintain silence as to cinnamon;
that is, the product from the bark of the tree. Cinnamomum cassia is
a native of Kwan-si, Kwan-tun, and Indo-China; and the Chinese
made its first acquaintance under the Han, when they began to
colonize and to absorb southern China.” The first description of this
tree goes no farther back than the third century. “It was not the
Chinese, but non-Chinese peoples of Indo-China who first brought
the tree into civilization, which, like all other southern cultivations,
was simply adopted by the conquering Chinese.” 17 It has been
suggested that the cinnamon bark was imported into Egypt from
China as far back as the Empire period (c. 1500 b.c.) by Phœnician
sea-traders. 18 Laufer rejects this theory. 19 Apparently the ancient
Egyptians imported a fragrant bark from their Punt (Somaliland, or
British East Africa). At a very much later period cinnamon bark was
carried across the Indian Ocean from Ceylon.

The Egyptians imported incense-bearing trees from Punt to restore

the “odours of the body” of the dead, and poured out libations to
restore its lost moisture. 20 “When”, writes Professor Elliot Smith, “the
belief became well established that the burning of incense was
potent as an animating force, and especially a giver of life to the
dead, it naturally came to be regarded as a divine substance in the
sense that it had the power of resurrection. As the grains of incense
consisted of the exudation of trees, or, as the ancient texts express
it, ‘their sweat’, the divine power of animation in course of time
became transferred to trees. They were no [143]longer merely the
source of the life-giving incense, but were themselves animated by
the deity, whose drops of sweat were the means of conveying life to
the mummy.… The sap of trees was brought into relationship with
life-giving water.… The sap was also regarded as the blood of trees
and the incense that exuded as sweat.” As De Groot reminds us,
“tales of trees that shed blood, and that cry out when hurt are
common in Chinese literature (as also in Southern Arabia, notes
Elliot Smith); also of trees that lodge, or can change into maidens of
transcendent beauty.” 21

Apparently the ancient seafarers who searched for incense-bearing

trees carried their beliefs to distant countries. The goddess-tree of
the peach cult was evidently the earliest in China. It bore the fruit of
life. The influence that led to the foundation of this cult probably
came by an overland route. The cassia-tree cult was later, and
beliefs connected with it came from Southern China; these, too, bear
the imprint of ideas that were well developed before they reached
China.

There are references in Chinese lore to a gigantic cassia tree which

was 10,000 feet high. Those who ate of its fruit became immortal.
The earlier belief connected with the peach tree was that the soul
who ate one of its peaches lived for 3000 years.

This cassia world-tree appears first to have taken the place of the
peach tree of the “Royal Mother of the West”. It was reached by
sailing up the holiest river in China, the Hoang-Ho (Yellow River), the
sources of which are in the Koko-Nor territory to the north of Tibet.
It wriggles like a serpent between mountain barriers before it flows
northward; then it [144]flows southward for 200 miles on the eastern
border of Shensi province (the Chinese homeland), and then
eastward for 200 miles, afterwards diverging in a north-easterly
direction towards the Gulf of Chihli, in which the Islands of the Blest
were supposed to be situated.

It was believed that the Hoang-Ho had, like the Ganges of India and
the Nile of Egypt, a celestial origin. Those sages who desired to
obtain a glimpse of Paradise sailed up the river to its fountain head.
Some reached the tree and the garden of Paradise. Others found
themselves sailing across the heavens. The Western Paradise was
evidently supposed by some to be situated in the middle of the
world, and by others to have been situated beyond the horizon.

Chang Kiʼen, one of the famous men attached to the court of Wu Ti,
the reviver of many ancient beliefs and myths, was credited with
having followed the course of the sacred river until he reached the
spot where the cassia tree grew. Beside the tree were the immortal
animals that haunt the garden of the “Royal Mother of the West”. In
addition, Chang Kiʼen saw the moon-rabbit or moon-hare, which is
adored as a rice-giver. In the Far East, as in the Near East and in the
West, the moon is supposed to ripen crops. The lunar rabbit or hare
is associated with water; in the moon grow plants and a tree of
immortality. There is also, according to Chinese belief, a frog in the
moon. It was originally a woman, the wife of a renowned archer,
who rescued the moon from imprisonment in masses of black rain-
clouds. The “Royal Mother of the West” was so grateful to the archer
for the service he had rendered that she gave him a jade cup filled
with the dew of immortality. His wife stole the cup and drank the
dew. For this offence the “Royal Mother of the West” transformed
her into a frog, and [145]imprisoned her in the moon. In Egypt the
frog was a symbol of resurrection or rebirth, and the old frog-
goddess Hekt is usually regarded as a form of Hathor, the Great
Mother.
The lunar tree is sometimes identified with the cassia tree of
immortality. Its leaves are red as blood, and the bodies of those who
eat of its fruit become as transparent as still water.

The moon-water which nourishes plants and trees (eight lunar trees
of immortality are referred to in some legends), and the dew of
immortality in the jade cup, appear to be identical with the Indian
soma and the nectar of the classical gods. In Norse mythology the
lunar water-pot (a symbol of the mother-goddess) was filled at a
well by two children, the boy Hyuki and the girl Bil, 22 who were
carried away by the moon-god Mani. Odin was also credited with
having recovered the moon-mead from the hall of Suttung, “the
mead wolf”, after it had been stolen from the moon. The god flew
heavenward, carrying the mead, in the form of an eagle. 23 Zeus’s
eagle is similarly a nectar-bringer.

In Indian mythology the soma was contained in a bowl fashioned by

Twashtri, the divine artisan, and was drunk by the gods, and
especially by Indra, the rain-bringer. A Vedic frog-hymn was chanted
by Aryo-Indian priests as a rain-charm when Indra’s services were
requisitioned. In one of the Indian legends an eagle or falcon carries
the soma to Indra. The souls who reach Paradise are made immortal
after they drink of the soma. In India the soma was personified, and
the lunar god, Soma, became a god of love, immortality, and fertility.
The soma juice was obtained by the Vedic priests from [146]some
unknown plant. There are also references in Indian mythology to the
“Amrita”, which was partaken of by the gods. It was the sap of
sacred trees that grew in Paradise. Trees and plants derived their life
and sustenance from water. The Far-Eastern beliefs in “the dew of
immortality”, “the fungus of immortality”, and “the fruit of
immortality” have an intimate connection with the belief that the
mother-goddess was connected with the moon, which exercised an
influence over water. The mother-goddess was also the love-
goddess, the Ishtar of Babylonia, the Hathor of Egypt, the Aphrodite
of Greece. Her son, or husband, was, in one of his phases, the love-
god.

The sage of the Chinese Emperor Wu Ti, who followed the course of
the Yellow River so as to reach the celestial Paradise, saw, in
addition to the moon-rabbit, or hare, the “Old Man of the Moon”, the
Chinese Wu Kang and Japanese Gekkawo, the god of love and
marriage. He is supposed to unite lovers by binding their feet with
invisible red silk cords. The “Old Man in the Moon” is, in Chinese
legend, engaged in chopping branches from the cassia tree of
immortality. New branches immediately sprout forth to replace those
thus removed, but the “Old Man” has to go on cutting till the end of
time, having committed a sin for which his increasing labour is the
appropriate punishment.

A Buddhist legend makes Indra the old man. He asked for food from
the hare, the ape, and the fox. The hare lit a fire and leapt into it so
that the god might be fed. Indra was so much impressed by this
supreme act of friendship and charity that he placed the exemplary
hare in the moon. A version of this story is given in the
Mahábhárata.

In European folk-lore the “Old Man” is either a [147]thief who stole a

bundle of faggots, or a man who “broke the Sabbath” by cutting
sticks on that holy day.

See the rustic in the Moon,

How his bundle weighs him down;
Thus his sticks the truth reveal
It never profits man to steal.

Various versions of the Man in the Moon myth are given by S.

Baring-Gould, 24 who draws attention to a curious seal “appended to
a deed preserved in the Record office, dated the 9th year of Edward
the Third (1335)”. It shows the “Man in the Moon” carrying his sticks
and accompanied by his dog. Two stars are added. The inscription
on the seal is, “Te Waltere docebo cur spinas phebo gero (I will
teach thee, Walter, why I carry thorns in the moon)”. The deed is
one of conveyance of property from a man whose Christian name
was Walter.

Wu Ti’s sage travelled through the celestial regions until he reached

the Milky Way, the source of the Yellow River. He saw the Spinning
Maiden, whose radiant garment is adorned with silver stars. She had
a lover, from whom she was separated, but once a year she was
allowed to visit him, and passed across the heavens as a meteor.
This Spinning Maiden, who weaves the net of the constellations, is
reminiscent of the Egyptian sky-goddess, Hathor (or Nut), whose
body is covered with stars, and whose legs and arms, as she bends
over the earth, “represent the four pillars on which the sky was
supposed to rest and mark the four cardinal points”. Her lover, from
whom she was separated, was Seb. 25 In China certain groups of
stars are referred to as the [148]“Celestial Door”, the “Hall of
Heaven”, &c. Taoist saints dwell in stellar abodes, as well as on the
“Islands of the Blest”; some were, during their life on earth,
incarnations of star-gods. The lower ranks of the western-cult
immortals remain in the garden of the “Royal Mother”; those of the
highest rank ascend to the stars.

Wu Ti’s sage, according to one form of the legend, never returned to

earth. His boat, which sailed up the Yellow River and then along the
“Milky Way”, was believed to have reached the Celestial River that
flows round the Universe, and along which sails the sun-barque of
the Egyptian god Ra (or Re). One day the Chinese sage’s oar—
apparently his steering oar—was deposited in the Royal Palace
grounds by a celestial spirit, who descended from the sky. Here we
have, perhaps, a faint memory of the visits paid to earth from the
celestial barque by the Egyptian god Thoth, in his captivity as envoy
of the sun-god Ra.

There is evidence in Far-Eastern folk-tales that at a very remote

period the beliefs of the cult of the sky-goddess, which placed the
tree of immortality in the “moon island”, and the beliefs of the peach
cult of “the Westerners” were fused, as were those of the Osirian
and solar cults in Egypt.

A curious story tells that once upon a time a man went to fish on the
Yellow River. A storm arose, and his boat was driven into a tributary,
the banks of which were fringed with innumerable peach trees in full
blossom. He reached an island, on which he landed. There he was
kindly treated by the inhabitants, who told that they had fled from
China because of the oppression of the emperor. This surprised the
fisherman greatly. He asked for particulars, and was given the name
of an [149]emperor who had died about 500 years before he himself
was born.

“What is the name of this island?” he asked. The inhabitants were

unable to tell him. “We came hither,” they said, “just as you have
come. We are strangers in a strange land.”

Next day the wanderer launched his boat and set out to return by
the way he had come. He sailed on all day and all night, and when
morning came he found himself amidst familiar landmarks. He was
able to return home.

When the fisherman told the story to a priest, he was informed that
he had reached the land of the Celestials, and that the river fringed
by peach trees in blossom was the Milky Way.
In this story the Chinese Island of the Blest is, like the Nilotic “green
bed of Horus”, a river island.

Another memory of the Celestial River and the Barque of the Sun is
enshrined in the story of Lo Tze Fang, a holy woman of China who
ascended to heaven by climbing a high tree—apparently the “world-
tree”. After reaching the celestial regions she was carried along the
Celestial River in a boat. According to the story, she still sails each
day across the heavens.

Other saintly people have been carried to the celestial regions by

dragons. According to Chinese belief the “Yellow Dragon” is
connected with the moon. The reflection of the moon on rippling
water is usually referred to as the “Golden Dragon”, or “Yellow
Dragon”, the chief of Chinese dragons, and usually associated with
the sun.

One of the classes of Chinese holy men of the Spirit-world, the Sien
Nung, who bear a close resemblance to Indian Rishis, is connected
with the moon cult. They are believed to prolong their lives by eating
the leaves of the lunar plants. [150]

In an Egyptian legend it is told that Osiris was the son of the Mother
Cow, who had conceived him when a fertilizing ray of light fell from
the moon. In like manner a moon-girl came into being in Japan. She
was discovered by a wood-cutter. One day, when collecting bamboo,
he found inside a cane a little baby, whose body shone as does a
gem in darkness. He took her home to his wife, and she grew up to
be a very beautiful girl. She was called “Moon Ray”, and after living
for a time on the earth returned to the moon. She had maintained
her youthful appearance by drinking, from a small vessel she
possessed, the fluid of immortality.
As the dragon was connected with the moon, and the moon with the
bamboo, it might be expected that the dragon and bamboo would
be closely linked. One of the holy men is credited with having
reached the lunar heaven by cutting down a bamboo, which he
afterwards transformed into a dragon. He rode heavenwards on the
dragon’s back.

Saintly women, as a rule, rise to heaven in the form of birds, or in

their own form, without wings, on account of the soul-like lightness
of their bodies, which have become purified by performing religious
rites and engaging in prayer and meditation. Their husbands have
either to climb trees or great mountains. Some holy women, after
reaching heaven, ride along the clouds on the back of the Kʼilin, the
bisexual monster that the soul of Confucius is supposed to ride. It is
a form of the dragon, but more like the makara of the Indian god
Varuna than the typical “wonder beast” of China and Japan. Some of
these monsters resemble lions, dogs, deer, walruses, or unicorns.
They are all, however, varieties of the makara. [151]

Sometimes we find that the attributes of the Great Mother, who, like
Aphrodite, was a “Postponer of Old Age” (Ambologera), being the
provider of the fruit of immortality and a personification of the World
Tree, have been attached to the memory of some famous lady, and
especially an empress. As the Egyptian Pharaoh, according to the
beliefs of the solar cult, became Ra (the sun-god) after death, so did
the Chinese empress become the “Royal Lady of the West”. Nu Kwa,
a mythical empress of China, was reputed to have become a
goddess after she had passed to the celestial regions. She figures in
the Chinese Deluge Myth. Like the Babylonian Ishtar, she was
opposed to the policy of destroying mankind. She did not, however,
like Ishtar, content herself by expressing regret. When the demons
of water and fire, aided by rebel generals of her empire, set out to
destroy the world, Nu Kwa waged war against them. Her campaign
was successful, but not until a gigantic warrior had partly destroyed
the heavens by upsetting one of its pillars and the flood had covered
a great portion of the earth. The empress stemmed the rising waters
by means of charred reeds (a Babylonian touch), and afterwards
rebuilt the broken pillar, under which was placed an Atlas-tortoise.
Like Marduk (Merodach), she then set the Universe in order, and
formed the channel for the Celestial River. Thereafter she created
the guardians of the four quarters, placing the Black Tortoise in the
north, and giving it control over winter; the Blue Dragon in the east,
who was given control over spring; the White Tiger in the west, who
was given control over autumn; and the Red Bird in the south, who
was given control over summer, with the Golden Dragon, whose
special duty was to guard the sun, the moon being protected by the
White [152]Deity of the west. The broken pillar of heaven was built
up with stones coloured like the five gods.

Among the gifts conferred on mankind by this Empress-Goddess was

jade, which she created so that they might be protected against evil
influence and decay.

In this Deluge Myth, which is evidently of Babylonian origin, the

gods figure as rebels and demons. The Mother Goddess is the
protector of the Universe, and the friend of man. Evidently the cult
of the Mother Goddess was at one time very powerful in China. In
Japan the Empress Nu Kwa is remembered as Jokwa.

The Tree of Immortality, as has been seen, is closely associated with

the Far Eastern Mother Goddess, who may appear before favoured
mortals either as a beautiful woman, as a dragon, or as a woman
riding on a dragon, or as half woman and half fish, or half woman
and half serpent. It is from the goddess that the tree receives its
“soul substance”; in a sense, she is the tree, as she is the moon and
the pot of life-water, or the mead in the moon. The fruits of the tree
are symbols of her as the mother, and the sap of the tree is her
blood.

Reference has been made to Far Eastern stories about dragons

transforming themselves into trees and trees becoming dragons. The
tree was a “kupua” of the dragon. The mother of Adonis was a tree
—Myrrha—the daughter of King Cinyras of Cyprus, who was
transformed into a myrrh tree. A Japanese legend relates that a
hero, named Manko, once saw a beautiful woman sitting on a tree-
trunk that floated on the sea. She vanished suddenly. Manko had the
tree taken into his boat, and found that the woman was hidden
inside the trunk. She was a daughter of the Dragon King of Ocean.
 GENII AT THE COURT OF SI WANG MU

From a Chinese painting in the British Museum

A better-known Japanese tree hero is Momotaro [153](momo, peach,

taro, eldest son), whose name is usually rendered in English as
“Little Peachling”. He is known in folk-stories as a slayer of demons—
a veritable Jack the Giant-Killer.

The legend runs that one day an old wood-cutter went out to gather
firewood, while his wife washed dirty clothes in a river. After the
woman had finished her work, she saw a gigantic peach drifting
past. Seizing a pole, she brought it into shallow water, and thus
secured it. The size of the peach astonished her greatly, and she
carried it home, and, having washed it, placed it before her husband
when he returned home for his evening meal. No sooner did the
wood-cutter begin to cut open the peach than a baby boy emerged
from the kernel. The couple, being childless, were greatly delighted,
and looked upon the child as a gift from the Celestials, and they
believed he had been sent so as to become their comfort and helper
when they grew too old to work.

Momotaro, “the elder son of the peach”, as they called him, grew up
to be a strong and valiant young man, who performed feats of
strength that caused everyone to wonder at him.

There came a day when, to the sorrow of his foster-parents, he

announced that he had resolved to leave home and go to the Isle of
Demons, with purpose to secure a portion of their treasure. This
seemed to be a perilous undertaking, and the old couple attempted
to make him change his mind. Momotaro, however, laughed at their
fears, and said: “Please make some millet dumplings for me. I shall
need food for my journey.”
His foster-mother prepared the dumplings and muttered good
wishes over them. Then Momotaro bade the old couple an
affectionate farewell, and went on his way. [154]

The young hero had not travelled far when he met a dog, which
barked out: “Bow-wow! where are you going, Peach-son?”

“I am going to the Isle of Demons to obtain treasure,” the lad

answered.

“Bow-wow! what are you carrying?”

“I am carrying millet dumplings that my mother made for me. No

one in Japan can make better dumplings than these.”

“Bow-wow! give me one and I shall go with you to the Isle of

Demons.”

The lad gave the dog a dumpling, and it followed at his heels.

Momotaro had not gone much farther when a monkey, perched on a

tree, called out to him, saying: “Kia! Kia! where are you going, Son
of a Peach?”

Momotaro answered the monkey as he had answered the dog. The

monkey asked for a dumpling, promising to join the party, and when
he received one he set off with the lad and the dog.

The next animal that hailed the lad was a pheasant, who called out:
“Ken! Ken! where are you going, Son of a Peach?”

Momotaro told him, and the bird, having received the dumpling he
asked for, accompanied the lad, the dog, and the monkey on the
quest of treasure.
When the Island of Demons was reached they all went together
towards the fortress in which the demon king resided. The pheasant
flew inside to act as a spy. Then the monkey climbed over the wall
and opened the gate, so that Momotaro and the dog were able to
enter the fortress without difficulty. The demons, however, soon
caught sight of the intruders, and attempted to kill them. Momotaro
fought fiercely, assisted by the [155]friendly animals, and slew or
scattered in flight the demon warriors. Then they found their way
into the royal palace and made Akandoji, the king of demons, their
prisoner. This great demon was prepared to wield his terrible club of
iron, but Momotaro, who was an expert in the jiu-jitsu system of
wrestling, seized the demon king and threw him down, and, with the
help of the monkey, bound him with a rope.

Momotaro threatened to put Akandoji to death if he would not reveal

where his treasure was hidden.

The king bade his servants do homage to the Son of the Peach and
to bring forth the treasure, which included the cap and coat of
invisibility, magic jewels that controlled the ebb and flow of ocean,
gems that shone in darkness and gave protection against all evil to
those who wore them, tortoise-shell and jade charms, and a great
quantity of gold and silver.

Momotaro took possession of as much of the treasure as he could

carry, and returned home a very rich man. He built a great house,
and lived in it with his foster-parents, who were given everything
they desired as long as they lived.

In this story may be detected a mosaic of myths. The Egyptian

Horus, whose island floated down the Nile, had white sandals which
enabled him to go swiftly up and down the land of Egypt. There are
references in the Pyramid Texts to his youthful exploits, but the full
story of them has not yet been discovered. The Babylonian Tammuz,
when a child, drifted in a “sunken boat” down the River Euphrates.
No doubt this myth is the one attached to the memory of Sargon of
Akkad, 26 the son of a vestal virgin, who was placed in an ark and set
adrift on the river. He was found by a gardener, [156]and was
afterwards raised to the kingship by the goddess Ishtar. Karna, the
Aryo-Indian Hector, the son of Surya, the sun-god, and the virgin-
princess Pritha, was similarly set adrift in an ark, and was rescued
from the Ganges by a childless woman whose husband was a
charioteer. The poor couple reared the future hero as their own
son. 27

Adonis, the son of the myrrh tree, was a Syrian form of Tammuz.
Horus was the son of Osiris, whose body was enclosed by a tree
after Set caused his death by setting him adrift in a chest. When Isis
found the tree, which had been cut down for a pillar, the
posthumous conception of the son of Osiris took place. 28 The
Momotaro legend has thus a long history.

The friendly animals figure in the folk-tales of many lands.

Momotaro’s fight for the treasure, including the cloak of invisibility,
bears a close resemblance to Siegfried’s fight for the treasure of the
Nibelungs. 29 In western European, as in Far Eastern lore, the
treasure is guarded by dragons as well as by dwarfs and giants and
other demons. When the dragon-slayer is not accompanied by
friendly animals, he receives help and advice from birds whose
language he acquires by eating a part of the dragon, or, as in the
Egyptian tale, after getting possession of the book of spells, guarded
by the “Deathless Snake”. When the Egyptian hero reads the spells
he understands the language of birds, beasts, and fishes. The
treasure-guarding dragon appears, as has been suggested, to have
had origin in the belief that sharks were the guardians of pearl-beds
and preyed upon the divers who stole their treasure. [157]
The beliefs connected with the life-giving virtues of the tree of the
Mother Goddess were attached to shells, pearls, gold, and jade. The
goddess was the source of all life, and one of her forms was the
dragon. As the dragon-mother she created or gave birth to the
dragon-gods. Dragon-bones were ground down for medicinal
purposes; dragon-herbs cured diseases; the sap of dragon-trees, like
the fruit, promoted longevity, as did the jade which the goddess had
created for mankind.

The beliefs connected with jade were similar to those connected

with pearls, which were at a remote period emblems of the moon in
Egypt. In China the moon was “the pearl of heaven”. One curious
and widespread belief was that pearls were formed by rain-drops, or
by drops of dew from the moon, the source of moisture, and
especially of nectar or soma. Pearls and pearl-shells were used for
medicinal purposes. They were, like the sap of trees, the very
essence of life—the soul-substance of the Great Mother. 30

That the complex ideas regarding shells, pearls, dew, trees, the
moon, the sun, the stars, and the Great Mother were of
“spontaneous generation” in many separated countries is difficult to
believe. It is more probable that the culture-complexes enshrined in
folk-tales and religious texts had a definite area of origin in which
their history can be traced. The searchers for precious stones and
metals and incense-bearing trees must have scattered their beliefs
far and wide when they exploited locally-unappreciated forms of
wealth. [158]

L. W. King, Babylonian Religion (London, 1903), p. 171. ↑

1
L. W. King, Legends of Babylon and Egypt (London, 1918), p. 136. ↑
2
Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt, p. 130. ↑
3
Myths of Babylonia and Assyria, p. 71. ↑
4
 Westervelt, Legends of Gods and Ghosts (Hawaiian Mythology), p. 245. ↑
5
Breasted, Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt, pp. 120 et seq. ↑
6
Ibid., p. 134. ↑
7
G. Elliot Smith, The Evolution of the Dragon, pp. 23 et seq. ↑
8
Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, Vol. III, pp. 14, 30; Cook, Zeus,
9
Vol. I, p. 537. ↑
Westervelt, Legends of Old Honolulu, pp. 22 et seq., and p. 29. ↑
10
Teutonic Myth and Legend, pp. 424–32. ↑
11
Westminster Review, November, 1892, p. 523. ↑
12
When, some years ago, an ass was acquired by a tenant on a
13
Hebridean island, a native, on seeing this animal for the first time,
exclaimed, “It is the father of all the hares”. ↑
Dr. Joseph Edkins, Religion in China, p. 151. ↑
14
Myths of Babylonia and Assyria, pp. 185 et seq. ↑
15
Laufer, Sino Iranica (Chicago, 1919), pp. 539 et seq. ↑
16
Laufer, Sino-Iranica, p. 543. ↑
17
Transactions Am. Phil. Association, Vol. XXIII, 1892, p. 115. ↑
18
Sino-Iranica, pp. 542–3. ↑
19
G. Elliot Smith, The Evolution of the Dragon, pp. 36 et seq. ↑
20
Religious System of China, Vol. IV, pp. 272–6: and Elliot
21
Smith, The Evolution of the Dragon, pp. 38–9. ↑
The Jack and Jill of the nursery rhyme. ↑
22
Teutonic Myth and Legend, pp. 22 et seq. ↑
23
Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, pp. 190 et seq. ↑
24
Budge, Gods of the Egyptians, Vol. II, p. 104. ↑
25
Babylonian Myth and Legend, p. 126–7. ↑
26
Indian Myth and Legend, pp. 173 et seq., and 192–94. ↑
27
Egyptian Myth and Legend, p. 19 et seq. ↑
28
Teutonic Myth and Legend, pp. 352 (n.), 376, 383, 389,
29 391, 446. ↑
 For beliefs connected with pearls and shells, see Shells as Evidence of the
30
Migrations of Early Culture, I. Wilfrid Jackson (London, 1917). ↑
[Contents]
CHAPTER XI
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