David NathanEndangered Languages Archive

SOAS University of London

3L Summer School, Conference, 6 July 2012

Training for language documentation:

trends in training and methods

Training for language documentation:

trends in training and methods

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Who are we?

School of Oriental and African Studies, U London

Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project

Documentation ProgramELDP Archive Program

ELARAcademic ProgramELAP

funds

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What is language documentation?

documentary linguistics: you already know

from a training perspective:documentation skills = linguistics skills + X

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phonology, morphology, typology etc

documentation skills = linguistics skills + X

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What is ‘X’?

field skills media (recording etc) data management …

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Field skills

language learning language investigation health and safety manage equipment,

electrical supply etc interpersonal skills others as appreciated or needed by

community

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Media

what to record environment equipment choice and

combination equipment settings, methods, usage carrier, backup, labeling, naming editing, selecting, converting etc

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Data management

logical organisation of files file naming formats and encoding inventory/catalogue metadata backup

ELAR

Project Project

Collection Collection

Bundle Bundle

Item

Item

Item

Item

Item

Collection

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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

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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

1990 1995 2000 2005 2010

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Who is training who?

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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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Problem

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

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Planet of the apps

a thought experiment …

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Planet of the apps

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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

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fini the end