Mapping language vitality in the post-endangerment era

Abstract

Nearly three decades ago in Chicago, Ken Hale and other perceptive LSA members identified a crisis within the discipline of linguistics, warning that the field risked becoming “the only science that presided obliviously over the disappearance of 90% of the very field to which it is dedicated” (Krauss 1992:10). The response has been both global and paradigm-shifting, leading to a renewed focus on language documentation and language reclamation. There is no doubt that the National Science Foundation Documenting Endangered Languages (DEL) program has been central to that effort. Not only has DEL provided direct support for documentation efforts, it has also contributed to capacity building; the development of new tools for documentation; and the adoption of new approaches to documentation. As we reflect on 15 years of DEL funding, two important questions emerge. First, to what degree has a distinct DEL program contributed to the successful response to the endangered languages crisis? Specifically, could this effort have been equally-well achieved directly within existing NSF programs? Even if we answer this question in the affirmative, there remains a second, perhaps more relevant, question. Namely, is a distinct DEL program still useful? In other words, has the DEL program now achieved its intended purpose and outlived its usefulness as a distinct program?

This second question is less heretical than it might first appear. The success of the DEL program has led to an increased awareness of endangered languages across the entire field of linguistics. It is no longer unusual for a theoretician to engage in field work, and few field workers now ignore the plight of language loss within indigenous communities where they work. DEL-funded efforts such as the Austin Principles of Data Citation in Linguistics (Berez-Kroeker et al. 2018) promote increased citations of primary data in linguistics publications. No longer a fringe topic, endangered language documentation and reclamation are now part of the fabric of the discipline of linguistics. So it is not unreasonable to argue that while DEL may have once been useful, the changes in the field over the last three decades have made the need for a distinct funding program less compelling.

In this paper I argue that the answer to both of the questions posed above is “no.” Drawing on examples from several DEL-funded projects I show that at least in some cases DEL projects would have been unlikely candidates for NSF support without a dedicated funding stream. I then review key features of DEL which distinguish it both from the Linguistics program and from other programs with NSF, showing that the innovations facilitated by DEL are largely unique to this program and not replicated elsewhere within NSF, nor in other funding agencies (cf. Holton and Seyfeddinipur 2018). Extrapolating from these examples I conclude that there is still a need for a distinct DEL program. Whether or not the world’s languages are still in crisis, there remains much work to be done. We are far from completing the work of documenting the world’s languages; there is still great need for new tools and infrastructure for language documentation; and there is much yet to do to build capacity for undertaking documentation work.

References

• Berez-Kroeker, Andrea L.; Lauren Gawne.; Susan Kung.; Barbara F. Kelly.; Tyler Heston.; Gary Holton.; Peter Pulsifer.; et al. 2018. Reproducible research in linguistics: A position statement on data citation and attribution in our field. Linguistics 57.1–18. doi:10.1515/ling-2017-0032.
• Holton, Gary.; and Mandana Seyfeddinipur. 2018. Reflections on funding to support documentary linguistics. Reflections on Language Documentation 20 Years after Himmelmann 1998, ed. by Bradley McDonnell, Andrea Berez-Kroeker, and Gary Holton, 100–109. Language Documentation & Conservation Special Publication 15. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
• Krauss, Michael E. 1992. The world’s languages in crisis. Language 68.4–10.