Documentary and Descriptive Linguistics

Himmelmann (1998) proposed Documentary Linguistics. He distinguished Documentary Linguistics from the traditional Descriptive Linguistics. It used to be that gathered data serve the purposes of Descriptive Linguistics, in abstracting and understanding the grammar and other structures of a language. The data are not published, but only the resulting product of Descriptive analysis of the language see the light of publication, such as grammar books, dictionaries,etc. In Descriptive linguistics the data is as good only as it serve descriptive and analytic purposes.

However, in Documentary Linguistics, the data is important. A comprehensive documentation of the language of the speech community is an important work in itself. The data is independent and can be used by other fields, not only the field of Descriptive Linguistics. But other theories may help to work on the data. In Documentary Linguistics the documentation faces the challenge of sustainability into the future. And it must be made availabe especially for collaboration of many other fields, and most especially made availabe to the language communities to help in their language revitalization or development. The language communities role in the documentation and revitalizatioin is highly important.