David Nathan Endangered Languages Archive SOAS University of London 3L Summer School, Conference, 6 July 2012 Training for language documentation: trends in training and methods

2 Who are we? School of Oriental and African Studies, U London Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project Documentation Program ELDP Archive Program ELAR Academic Program ELAP funds

3 What is language documentation?  documentary linguistics: you already know  from a training perspective: documentation skills = linguistics skills + X

4  phonology, morphology, typology etc documentation skills = linguistics skills + X

5 What is ‘ X ’?  field skills  media (recording etc)  data management  …

6 Field skills  language learning  language investigation  health and safety  manage equipment, electrical supply etc  interpersonal skills  others as appreciated or needed by community

7 Media  what to record  environment  equipment choice and combination  equipment settings, methods, usage  carrier, backup, labeling, naming  editing, selecting, converting etc

8 Data management  logical organisation of files  file naming  formats and encoding  inventory/catalogue  metadata  backup ELAR Project Collection Bundle Item Bundle Item Collection Project Collection

9 Is there something else?  revitalisation: pedagogy, curriculum and materials development, language policy etc  ‘applied linguistic’: lexicography, orthography, pedagogy, multimedia, dissemination  archiving  true multidisciplinary approaches  publicity and raising wider awareness

10 Training trends  AILDI (1978-) Arizona, Leanne Hinton and Lucille Watahomigie – community workshops, run in universities  Rama Project (1984-) Colette Grinevald  master-apprentice program (1992)  DoBeS projects and training, late 1990s-  postgraduate programs, University of Hawaii, SOAS (2002-)  growing summer schools and workshops, institutional, in-country or in community (2005-)  within-documentation project training (2005- ) Julian Lang

notebook audio glossing s/w computer www annotation s/w multimedia video hi audio lo audio (eg BOLD) images social networking mobile, GPS

12 Who is training who?

13 Community member roles  community members have higher profile as revitalisation goals appear  it’s up to them which languages are revitalised  they know who are relevant learners, teachers  they know suitable (and unsuitable) topics, teaching theories/methods  only they can evaluate the outcomes  increasingly, ‘they’ are us!

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15 Problem  how to maintain the agency and drive of speakers and to reward speakers throughout the whole process ??

16 Planet of the apps  a thought experiment …

17 Planet of the apps

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19 Discussion  documentary linguistics has grabbed the agenda for addressing language endangerment, bringing with it certain values, goals and methods  challenges  dealing with diversity  “best practices” ?  lack of co-ordinated training curricula and progression  unclarity about what documentation is, its accountability, and its methods and training  how to maintain agency of speakers throughout

20  fini  the end