Attention prospective students: If you are interested in taking this course, please contact the instructor as soon as possible. There is a possibilty that the course will be cancelled if there is insufficient enrollment. Note that the prerequisite is graduate standing or permission of instructor.

Download course information flyer in pdf format.

Food for thought

• More than 6000 languages are spoken today
• Half of these will cease to be spoken by the end of the century
• That’s one language gone every 12 days

The major issue we will address in this class is how these languages can be documented for future generations. This involves understanding something of what is means to "know" a language, and how best to record that knowledge.

For some background on the subject and a description of the evolving field of documentary linguistics, read:

• Himmelmann, Nikolas P. 1998 Documentary and descriptive linguistics. Linguistics 36:1.161-95.
• Woodbury, Anthony C. 2003 Defining documentary linguistics. In: Peter Austin (ed. Language Documentation and Description, Volume 1, 33-51. London: Hans Rausing Endangered Langauge Project. 

Topics to be covered in LING 627 include:

• what counts as documentation
• documentation vs. description
• ethics and documentation projects
• community language documentation
• field work equipment and technologies
• recording and annotation tools
• metadata and language archiving

Further information about the course, including reading assignments, will be posted at this site in early January.

 

 

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