Symposium: Language Endangerment and Language Maintenance: An Active Approach

1. documentary vs. descriptive linguistics

linked audio / video / transcript (see "archiving" links)

the documenting linguist, as creator /transcriber/ annotator, is in the best position maximise value of base materials: to document with a view to a variety of uses (incl unforeseen uses), incl educational / maintenance /revival;
small early decisions can save later labour / barriers to use

e.g. tags in lexicon: semantic domain coding; register (incl school-suitable, derivable from finer coding eg "archaic", etc); pictureable;

intonation, gesture; conversation (eg turn-taking, multilingual), utterance planning, code-switching (typically omitted from the description of any one language)

"meta-data": provenance, access/use grading
archiving of value-added data e.g. coding of speech errors
LDC
electronic publication of data (on-line (Bird 1999), CD-ROM)
master-keeping, edition cycles

2. place of EL associations

• activism: publicity, awareness, education
• links with others with overlapping goals (TEK, IP, endangered species, biological diversity)
• fund raising and distribution
• development of strategies, techniques
• clearinghouse for status reports
• inventories: SIL Ethnologue, national agencies; UNESCO, LSA

References

© 1999David Nash