LSA 2020 Annual Meeting Symposium on the Intellectual Merit of Language Documentation Research

Symposium: The Intellectual Merit of Language Documentation Research

Organizers:

Kristine Hildebrandt (Southern Illinois University, Edwardsvile)
April Laktonen Counceller (Alutiiq Museum)

Sponsor:
LSA Committee on Endangered Languages and their Preservation (CELP)

Participants:
April Laktonen Counceller (Alutiiq Museum)
Christian DiCanio (University at Buffalo)
Lenore A. Grenoble (University of Chicago)
Kristine Hildebrandt (Southern Illinois University, Edwardsvile)
Gary Holton (University of Hawai’i Manoa)
Laura McPherson (Dartmouth College)
Keren Rice (University of Toronto)

This Symposium, co-sponsored by the Committee on Endangered Languages and Their Preservation, features invited participants who will focus on the history and achievements of the Documenting Endangered Languages (DEL) program in the past fifteen years since it was formed within the national Science Foundation and National Endowment for the Humanities. The participants of this Symposium will consider DEL particularly in the context of “Intellectual Merits,” namely the potential of documentation research to advance knowledge in linguistics and related fields in significant and potentially transformative ways.

At the end of the 20th century, scholars gave voice to the growing crisis of language endangerment and death at a global scale. Linguists organized the first plenary on the subject at the 1991 LSA annual meeting and edited a special issue of Language on those talks. They highlighted the potential loss of information and insight on our collective human cognitive capacity, and also the profound cultural and historical loss that this threat poses. U.S. federal funding agency directors and program officers took note of the urgency of this endangerment and also the lack of materials, archival facilities, or event financial support for training and documentation. They acknowledged the great need to facilitate the preservation of “human riches” that world languages represent.

Since that time, DEL has funded over 300 projects, institutes and conferences, workshops, fellowships, and doctoral dissertations, two Early Career Development Program grants, EAGER and RAPID grants, and one REU site. These initiatives encompass “standard” documentation and materials-archiving efforts, they have resulted in publications, tools, and infrastructure that have substantially advanced knowledge in the fields of linguistics, cultural anthropology, archaeology, ethnobotany, geography, and information sciences. They have also contributed to significant advances in archival infrastructure, and in new technologies for documentation.

These past fifteen years are an opportunity for both reflection on significant achievements, and also for discussion about what directions documentation, archival preservation, and revitalization projects should take for the future. At this same time, with the United Nations has International Year of Indigenous Languages (IYIL), the LSA has committed to tailoring programming at its annual meeting to celebrate indigenous languages, community-centered initiatives and resources for further involvement and investment. This proposed session is intended to dovetail with IYIL such that participants can make meaningful connections about initiatives with maximal intellectual merit impact, and how they might best be supported with federal funds.

The Symposium will begin with an overview of the diverse perspectives that have been impacted by DEL-funded documentation and what this means for the progress in science and the humanities (Rice, “A Brief Introduction to DEL: A Reflection on the Intellectual Merit of Language Documentation”). This will be followed by a presentation on methodological innovations in tone research in documentation (McPherson: “Speaking Through Music: The Role of Balafon Surrogate Speech in the Documentation and Analysis of Seenku”). Next is a presentation on the part that the language documentarian plays in forging connections between phonetics and other areas of linguistic inquiry (DiCanio: “Phonetics and DEL: Experimental Methods and Tools for Endangered Language Corpora”). This is followed by a presentation on how DEL-funded documentation contributes to better understanding the mechanisms behind contact-induced language change (Grenoble: “Experimental Methods in Documenting Multilingualism and Change”). The final presentation will summarize by considering the role of DEL-funded projects in the past fifteen years (Holton: “What Is DEL and What Is It Good for?”).