Planning language documentation

1. Planning language documentation Anthony Jukes CRLD, La Trobe University

2. Things to consider • What kind of project? • Size/scope • Time constraints • Who is the audience? • What kind of outcomes do you/the community want? • What skills do you have? • What do you need to learn? • Who can you work with? • What is feasible given the time, money, skills and resources available? • Funding? • Don’t promise impossible things

3. Remember - • All documentation projects are different • There is no one-size-fits-all approach • Be prepared, be creative, be flexible

4. What kind of project? • Many early documentation projects aimed at producing ‘a lasting, multipurpose record of a language’ (Himmelmann’s ambitious definition). E.g: • Documentation of Toratán (Jukes) • Documentation of four moribund Moluccan languages (Florey) • Newer projects tend to be focused • Documentation of 'Olekha, with a Focus on Traditional Ethnobotanical Knowledge (Hyslop) • Documenting traditional agricultural songs and stories of the SumiNagas (Teo) • Having a focus will help you get started – but be flexible! • Starting small and building up can make it less daunting

5. Timelines • Projects can be time-limited (days or weeks, working towards a particular outcome) or long-term, even open-ended. • Things to consider • Are the speakers elderly? • Are the community in a hurry (e.g waiting for a dictionary so they can start teaching programs…) • Is there an external deadline? (Funding agency, university degree)

6. Who is the audience? • Who are you documenting for? • Posterity / ‘the archive’ • Scholars (anthropologists/linguists/botanists/…) • The speech community and/or their descendants for language maintenance/revitalisation • The general public • Unimagined users

7. Outcomes • Grammar • Linguistic/typological data • Dictionary • Storybooks • Schoolbooks • Scholarly papers • Websites • Accessible audio/video • etc

8. Skills • FINDING THINGS OUT! • Interviewing/eliciting/facilitating • Making audio recordings • Shooting/editing video • Managing data • Transcribing/annotating • Analysing – ‘doing linguistics’ • Writing/publishing • … • ORGANISING!

9. Skills • Some skills you have already, some you may need to learn • Become familiar with your equipment, tools, and techniques BEFORE going to the field • Work with others • People in the community • Other linguists • Other disciplines • Technicians / professionals

10. What is feasible? • How much money do you need? • Salaries, equipment, travel, production, professionals • Where can you get it? • Endangered Languages Documentation Project, etc • Foundation for Endangered Languages, etc • Government/academic funding • Indigenous organisations • Charitable institutions

11. Don’t promise impossible things • ‘I’ll write a grammar for my PhD, and produce a dictionary, a bunch of subtitled DVDs, and an archived collection of 400 hours of glossed conversations in my spare time’ • ‘I’ll record 40 hours of spontaneous speech in an archaic language only used in ritual’ • ‘I’ll save the language!’ • Lots of activities are very time-consuming / expensive • Transcription • Glossing • Analysis • Editing • Bureaucracy • Time, money, and energy are always limited!

12. More info • Bowern, Claire. 2011. Planning a language documentation project. In Austin, Peter & Sallabank, Julia (eds.). The handbook of endangered languages. Cambridge: CUP, pp. 459-482. • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5kYDOU6nAA