The Essentials of Language Documentation

Language Documentation

What is it and what is it good for

What is a LANGUAGE
DOCUMENTATION
A lasting, multipurpose record of a language
Should strive to include as many and as

varied records as practically feasible,
covering all aspects of the set of interrelated
phenomena commonly called LANGUAGE.
What is it
LANGUAGE DOCUMENTATION could serve a
large variety of different uses in, for
example:
Language planning decisions
Preparing educational materials
Analyzing a set of problems in syntactic theory
What is it
The goal is a not short-term record for a
specific purpose or interest group, but a
record for generations and user-group
whose identity is still unknown and who may
want to explore questions not yet raised at
the time when the language documentation
was compiled.
What is it
This rests on the assumption that it is
possible and useful to compile a database
for a very broadly defined subject matter (“a
language”) without being guided by a
specific theoretical or practical problem in
mind.
What is it
THE GOAL: to create a record of a language
in the sense of comprehensive corpus of
primary data
What is a LANGUAGE
DOCUMENTATION good for
There are three reasons for engaging in
language documentation:
Language endangerment
Economy of research resources
Accountability
Language Endangerment
A substantial number of the languages still
spoken today are threatened by extinction
Creating lasting multipurpose

documentations is one major linguistic
response to the challenge of the
dramatically increased level of language
endangerment observable in our times
Research economy
It is in the interest of research economy (and
accountability) to feed all the primary data
collected in the project work into an open
archive and not to limit itself to publishing
the analytical results plus possibly a small
sample of primary data illustrating their
basic materials
If it were a common practice,
comprehensive documentations for quite a
number of little-known languages could
grow over time
This would, in turn, strengthen the empirical

basis of all disciplines working on and with
such languages and cultures
Accountability
Establishing open archives for primary data is
also in the interest of making analyses
accountable
Many claims and analyses for which no

documentation is available remain unverifiable
as long as substantial parts of the primary data
remain inaccessible to further scrutiny
A basic format for language
documentation
Primary data
Apparatus
Primary Data
A language documentation should contain a
large set of primary data which provide
evidence for the language(s) used at a given
time in a given community (in all of the
different senses of ‘language’)
Of major importance to this regard are
specimens of OBSERVABLE LINGUISTIC
BEHAVIOR
ISSUES
Theoretical: There is no principled way for
determining a temporal boundary for such a
recording of all communicative events
There is a need to sample the kinds of

communicative events to be documented
METALINGUISTIC KNOWLEDGE
It is the tacit knowledge speakers have
about their language
It refers to the ability of native speakers to

provide interpretations and systematizations
for linguistic units and events
It includes all kinds of linguistically based
taxonomies:
Kinship systems
Folk taxonomies
The documentation includes much of the

basic information that is needed for writing
descriptive grammars and dictionaries
Corpus of primary data
Shorthand for corpus of recordings of
observable linguistic behavior and
metalinguistic knowledge
Apparatus
To be accessible to a broad range of users,
the primary data need to need to be
accompanied by information of various kinds
- this could be called APPARATUS
METADATA
Cataloguing function
They facilitate access to a documentation or
specific record within a documentation by
providing key access information in a
standardized format
Organizational function
They define the structure of the corpus
Annotation
A transcription and a translation so that users
not familiar with the language are able to
understand what is going on in the recording
General access resources

Information accompanying the primary data
set other than metadata
What’s new
Focus on primary data
Explicit concern for accountability
Concern for long-term storage and
preservation of primary data
Work in interdisciplinary teams
Close cooperation with and direct
involvement of speech community
Limitations
A language documentation has the potential
to profoundly change the social structure of
the society being documented
On a more profound level, documentation
generally introduces a new way for
accessing information and thereby may
change the whole psychosocial fabric of the
society
Other formats
Grammar-dictionary format
This format of language description targets
the language
This essentially involves compiling a:
Grammar = set of rules for producing utterances
Dictionary = a list of conventional form-meaning
pairings using in producing these utterances
Extended format
References
Himmelmann N., et al. Essentials of Language
Documentation. New York and Berlin:
Mouton de Gruyter

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Language Documentation

What is it and what is it good for

Should strive to include as many and as

Creating lasting multipurpose

This would, in turn, strengthen the empirical

Many claims and analyses for which no

There is a need to sample the kinds of

It refers to the ability of native speakers to

The documentation includes much of the

General access resources

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