their work without even seeing either the students (because they have not yet been enrolled) or the audience (because they are remote either geographically or socially or both). The plight of such writers is implicit in the following quotation from the introduction to one textbook:
This grammar is designed for a highly heterogeneous audience, composed primarily of the following groups: (1) area specialists interested in language- or culture-studies of all parts of tropical Africa: (2) ethnographers focussing on the social structure of the Edo-speaking peoples: (3) historians working directly or indirectly on the Benin project sponsored by Ibadan University; (4) linguists more concerned with analytical procedures than with specific languages or language-groups: (5) missionaries in the Benin area who wish to reach their parishioners more immediately than they can in English: and (6) Bini-speaking teachers and writers who seek a more exact understanding of their own language than conventional training in English grammar offers them. As though this assemblage were not already diverse enough, the grammar is intended secondarily for any and all foreign visitors to Benin Province who may find a description of one of the Edo languages useful or interesting. The author's hope is that this volume may have something to offer to each of the abovementioned audiences, though he fully appreciates the very real possibility that it may fall between scholarly stools in such a way as to leave all of its prospective audiences unsatisfied.
Wescott, A Bini Grammar, page 1
Except where materials are being prepared in the midst of an ongoing training course, consultation with students is obviously impossible. (Consultation with students must take place during adaptation, and it is largely to enhance the status of adaptation that we have placed that chapter ahead of this one.) Getting preliminary information from spokesmen for anticipated audiences is not impossible, however, and writers should be willing to spend some time and considerable effort in assembling it. At the same
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