And as far as linguistics consultants are concerned, one should never negatively jump on a consultee’s early ideas or early hypotheses. If you need to, try to gently persuade. But if at all possible,
try to develop the consulteee’s ideas if they have any at all. Try to expand and enhance them, and perhaps sometimes modify them. Their own ideas are the ones that they will own
10.4.4 Data organisation and checking of data against hypotheses
You need to check your data against the hypotheses you have. You’ll probably need to revise or reword some of your hypotheses so that the data fits. If the data doesn’t fit the hypothesis, it’s the hypothesis
that must give, never the data. See the write up on the perfect, in section 8.2. You may need to look for new kinds of data as indicated by the hypotheses. You will need well-motivated means of data
organisation perhaps some form of charting so that you can handle large volumes of data. Remember, your hypotheses need to be checked against large volumes of data. One example by itself proves nothing
10.4.5 Synthesis and critical evaluation
This involves having your data organised carefully and your conclusions described in words so that someone else can check and evaluate them. Make your statements precise and explicit so that they can
be either verified or falsified if at all possible. In fact, a very instructive way of learning more about your data and your language is to deliberately look at data and try to falsify your own hypothesis. When
you have got to the place where you can’t do it i.e., can’t falsify it, your hypothesis is probably in pretty good shape.
Don’t be afraid of counterexamples at this point. They will teach you a lot. Welcome criticism at this point. It is far better to find out now that you need to revise your solution,
rather than later after you have applied the conclusions to some practical end i.e., in literacy or translation and found out the hard way that your solution was inadequate.
Write up your solution coherently. You learn an enormous amount about your problem and your language by doing so; far, far more than by discussion alone. The fact of the matter is that most of us
need to go through the struggle of expressing the concepts clearly in writing before we really understand the material. Ideas get clarified and organised, and relationships that weren’t apparent before will come
to the fore. No one who has ever gone through the benefit of writing up a solution will ever deny its usefulness. But equally no one who has not tried writing something up, ever wants to do it. It is hard
work.
Be prepared to go through several drafts. Some of the very best people go through many drafts. Maybe it’s because they have been willing to go through those drafts that they are the best people.
Professor Harry Jones, a world authority on the theory of metals at the time, said once to me. “I had to write that one out twelve times before I understood it.” If Jones, a world authority, needed to do it,
surely we need to do so at times too. It could be that one reason why Jones was a world authority was because he had the patience and the humility to write the stuff out those twelve times
10.5 Some considerations in producing a good analysis
