Documentary Linguistics

Peter K. Austin: Current Trends in Documentation of Endangered Languages

excerpt: Documentary Linguistics

new field of linguistics “concerned with the methods,
tools, and theoretical underpinnings for compiling a
representative and lasting multipurpose record of a
natural language or one of its varieties” (Himmelmann
1998, 2006)
has developed over the last decade in large part in
response to the urgent need to make an enduring record
of the world’s many endangered languages and to
support speakers of these languages in their desire to
maintain them, fuelled also by developments in
information and communication technologies
essentially concerned with role of language speakers
and their rights and needs