Impact of Language Documentation

Abstract

Throughout this book we have seen that the activities of language documentation (curation, analysis, and archiving) have impacts on language science but also on people, products, and methods. For students of linguistics, language documentation is a way of learning about the world, traveling to new places and making new friends. For native language users, language documentation projects are a way to build capacity in the community and, for individuals interested in further linguistic study, to become a part of the international documentation effort. Indigenous linguists have knowledge of social networks and language use. Language documentation brings to the scientific community unique perspectives on climate change, traditional ecological knowledge, musical traditions, biological diversity and more. New data and new types of data afforded by language documentation have also increased computational tools, theories, and algorithms to automate transcription. Language documentation provides materials for language pedagogy and revitalization, strong positive personal and professional impact on language documenters.